˖ ֹ੭୧ soph ⊹ ࣪ ⑅

“Because, I’m— there’s a line—”

“We’ve crossed plenty of lines already.”

“This is different. I’m not doing this—”

“What’s that guy’s name...? The, uh, unsub that you’ve been chasing since September.”

“The Baltimore Strangler?”

“The Baltimore Strangler, that’s it! Do you wanna know where he is?”

“You don’t have that information.”

“Yes, I do.”

…

“Come on. I’m a reliable source, aren’t I? Remember when I helped you out in Minneapolis?”

“That was different. It wasn’t in person.”

“Yeah, well, my rates have changed. If you want to find this guy, then meet me at the hotel. You’re still on your little redemption journey after Amherst, right? I’m sure your team would be thrilled if you cracked this for them—”

“I’m hanging up.”

—

Spencer is choking. Throat swollen shut around the lump of shame that has been lodged in there, rotting, for months. Almost a year. It feels as though its size has been increasing with each passing week. Poison seeps into his bloodstream, infecting him with a putrid disease that is steadily eating him from the inside. Guilt and depravity and all things undesirable, living in the pit of his stomach, the hollow of his chest.

There’s a book in his hands, wrapped in brown paper and topped with a black bow. He found it wedged in the door, keeping it propped open and giving him ease of access to Hell. How considerate.

The hotel room is too big. Too dark. And cold, too. A void that exists separately from his reality, a coffin masquerading as a bedroom.

You said you wouldn’t hurt him—promised it, even—but what good is the word of a serial killer?

And what good is Spencer when he’s standing here, paralysed? How can he have faith in your self-control when he makes such a perfect target? A willing lamb to the slaughter.

He hasn’t unwrapped the book. Isn’t sure he will at all. He’ll probably toss it when—if—he gets out of here. Leave it on the side of the road, maybe, or set it on fire—anything but taking it home with him.

There’s already enough of you defiling his apartment: case files, crime scene photographs, notebooks crammed with pages upon pages of you. Notes on your life, your victims; maps scrawled across double-page spreads, detailing where you’ve been; drawings of you, as he remembers you. Necklace stacks and shiny rings and flowy dresses. All soft smiles and wide, disconcertingly innocent eyes. The snow in your hair.

And now he can see you. Your silhouette, out of the corner of his eye. You’re sitting with patience on the balcony, obscured by sheer curtains. But he isn’t looking at you. Not yet.

His gaze is fixed on the wall before him, on the photographs that he can just about discern through the dark. Photographs of victims, your victims, the ones that Spencer has spent months searching for, displayed in chronological order. There are pictures missing, gaps in your story that you’ve yet to fill him in on, long stretches of empty space that leave him feeling sick. 

He finds the face of Miles Richmond, the man Spencer had to fly out to Cleveland to dig up the bones of last week. There are no more pictures after him, just an expanse of wall that continues, uninterrupted, for several feet. He does not want to, but he can’t help but imagine the rows of faces that will eventually fill that space.

Far from Miles, nearing the bottom of the wall, are the grad students that you killed in Amherst. The final pawns in a decade long series of murders. Pieces of a country-wide puzzle that Spencer had been too blind, too stupid, to recognise when it mattered most. 

“I used those, uh, paint-friendly command strips. The walls’ll be fine.”

Your voice pierces his ears like a crack of thunder. He’s heard you speak hundreds of times, static-laced over the phone, or distorted in his dreams, but this is different. Your words are clear, sharp. Unmistakably and hauntingly real.

“Are you doing this to taunt me?”

Spencer can hardly squeeze the words out around the limp in his throat. They’re uncertain, unsteady, imbued with the rapid pounding of his own heart.

“Just keeping track of your progress,” you say. “I thought you liked visual aids.”

Slowly, he turns toward the balcony. Stares at your silhouette for a moment, frozen, before setting the book aside and taking a tentative step forward. He reaches the open glass doors, feels the icy breeze on his skin, but he doesn’t cross the threshold.

You’re sitting with your back to him. Legs crossed, gazing out at the view of the city.

“Why did you insist on doing this?” he asks. He tries to keep his voice calm. Steady. Tries to pretend that the mere sight of the back of you isn’t enough to give him a head rush. 

You shrug. “I was bored. Wanted to spice things up a little.”

“You were bored,” he repeats in quiet disbelief. “You brought me out here, risked your entire game, your freedom, because you were bored?”

“And I missed you,” you add, like that makes it any better.

“I could have SWAT outside that door—”

“Do you?”

Spencer’s silence speaks well enough for him. Your breath catches in a soft laugh and, shaking your head, you slowly rise to your feet.

“You know, you could—”

Your words are silenced by a click. Quiet, but distinct. You don’t look surprised when you turn to see the revolver in his hand, aimed directly at you. You aren’t fazed at all. In fact, a slight smile seems to cross your face—almost imperceptible, but Spencer swears he sees it.

“…a little happier to see me.”

Your sentence ends on a soft, almost disappointed sigh, like his weapon is little more than an inconvenience in your eyes, and your attention quickly shifts from Spencer’s revolver to Spencer himself. His hair, shorter than it was when you last stood like this; his face, set in this cold, tense stare meant to hide whatever lies bubbling under the surface, barely contained; his eyes, and the slight softness they hold that betrays his entire façade. 

His expression twitches, wavers as you meet his gaze as he has no choice but to see you. Not as you were, but as you are now, eleven months from your first meeting. He compares what he sees with the version of you he’s been holding in his mind for so long, noting the differences in the way you hold yourself, the way you appear sharper, almost. Confident. Cold. 

Those memories of you have grown hazy around the edges. Coated with snow and soft December fog, lit by the dim yellow glow of a dying reading lamp. All of your sharpness, dulled by what he thought you were—what he wanted you to be.

But it’s different now. The crisp light of the moon brings out the edges that he was once blind to, cuts through those softer memories until there’s nothing left to cling to. November looks good on you.

You still aren’t dressed for the winter. You’re still only wearing a dress—black, made of a material so thin he’s sure the wind must be sailing straight through it—under that same knitted shawl, but it isn’t the style he’s used to seeing you in (or imagining you in, it doesn’t really matter—they’re one in the same). The dress is shorter, lighter, made of satin. A slip dress, instead of the flowy empire waist dress that he has come to associate you with. He isn’t sure why that bothers him so much.

You watch with shameless amusement as he takes you in and, when his wandering gaze comes to rest on your face once more, you flash him a smile.

“Hey.”

Spencer’s throat runs dry. A low thrum, misfired electrical pulses, replaces his every thought. Tension seizes him, piling on his chest, grasping his lungs, until he forgets how to breathe.

He doesn’t lower his gun. He doesn’t do anything. He just stares at you, sweat beginning to collect on his forehead despite the cold breeze.

“God, Spencer.” You take a step forward, biting back a grin. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He curses himself when he takes a step back, his body moving of its own accord, distancing himself before you can get too close. 

“It really has been a while, hasn’t it? Since we were last…” You continue your advance until you’re standing right in front of him, in front of the barrel of his revolver. “…face to face like this. It’s a little rude, though, to pull a gun on an unarmed woman.”

“It’s a safety precaution,” he mutters stiffly.

“Oh, I bet it is.”

The quiet delight in your voice is already making him uneasy, but then you slowly lift your hand. Your fingers dance along the cool metal of his revolver, and you nudge it gently, silently asking— no, telling him to lower it.

And he does so without second thought.

“There we go,” you murmur. “Did you take a look at the book?”

“No,” he says. He feels sick. 

“Hm.” You pout. Cock your head to the side. “No interest in gifts from serial killers?”

Spencer shakes his head. His words fail him. His jaw is cemented shut; feet glued to the ground. He knows where this is going, but he can’t bring himself to stop it.

“That’s…interesting.” You click your tongue, and your gaze drops to his neck. A small, almost curious frown crosses your face as you take that final step forward and reach up. Two fingers slip under the collar of his shirt, and they graze something familiar. 

His hands close around your wrists. “Don’t touch me.”

“Relax,” you mutter.

You pull yourself free and, instead of feeling around under his clothes, you take the liberty of opening his shirt. You only unfasten the top buttons, just enough to reveal the chain of his necklace and watch, proud, as he holds his breath. You can feel the tension radiating off him, see the muscles straining in his neck as your fingers glide along the metal chain until they reach the pendant. The silver cross.

“No interest in gifts,” you murmur, looking up at him through your lashes, “yet you’re wearing one. Is there an explanation for that, or do you just…like it?”

“You told me to wear it.”

“And you said you weren’t going to. In fact, I seem to recall you saying that you would never brand yourself like that—what changed? Did you only put it on today, thinking it would appease me somehow? Or did you put it on the day I left it for you and feign otherwise?”

You watch the way his jaw works, teeth grinding against each other in response to your question, and you smile. That alone is an answer in itself, you don’t need a verbal one—he’d only try to lie, anyway.

Your free hand reaches for your own necklace, fingers grazing the matching pendant as you gaze up at him. “Do you want to kill me, Spencer?” you ask. “Or is the gun just to make yourself feel better?”

“I told you, it’s a safety precaution—”

“And we both know that I pose no threat to you. I couldn’t kill you, doc, even if I wanted to; that would spoil all my fun,” you say. “You could kill me, though. You could do anything. Shoot me, throw me over the balcony…whatever you wanted—I’m in no position to stop you. Of course, that would mean you’d lose out on everything else; the story, the bodies…” you give his necklace a gentle tug. “Quality time with me.”

Spencer’s so close you can feel his breath on your skin, and that isn’t entirely your doing; he’s been leaning in, slowly—so slowly that he hasn’t even noticed. Drawing closer to you like he’s been caught in your gravitational pull.

You tilt your head up, and his nose brushes against yours.

And then he snaps back. His necklace slips from your fingers, and, without another word, he turns away.

He retreats into the hotel room, and you watch as he sets his gun on the desk with an unsteady hand before gripping the wood veneer like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. He lowers his head, closing his eyes as he takes a slow, deep breath.

“The Baltimore strangler,” he says, barely keeping his voice steady, “where is he?”

You waltz into the dimly lit room, smile plastered across your face, feeling as though you’re walking on air. You lean back against the desk and sigh.

“No idea.”

You could live in the silence that follows your confession. Strained and dense with electricity, like the air would ignite if you lit a match, and the whole room would go up in flames. 

You’re looking at Spencer, but he’s not looking at you. His gaze is on the table, the gun, your hand dangerously close to his own. You can hear him hear him trying to control his breathing, trying to suppress the reaction that you so desperately want.

“…what?”

He says it through his teeth.

“I don’t know where he is,” you say, shrugging off your shawl. You set it on the desk, right beside his revolver. “I just—”

“You lied to me.” He straightens up, giving you full view of his barely contained frustration. “You manipulated me into—”

You scoff. “I gave you what you wanted.”

“Excuse me?”

“You wouldn’t— couldn’t have let yourself agree to this without some kind of moral justification,” you explain. “You needed a reason that went beyond your own desire—”

“No.”

“—and I gave you a reason. I only brought up the Baltimore strangler to make you feel better about yourself, because you and I both know that the real reason you’re here is because you just want to—”

A hand grabs your jaw, and the next thing you know your back is hitting the wall, hard. A dull pain blooms at the back of your head, trickles down your spine.

Spencer’s leaning over you, one hand braced against the wall as the other keeps tight hold of your face.

“I didn’t want to come here,” he hisses, “I didn’t want any of this, but you—” he shakes his head, trying to dismiss whatever words, whatever confessions, are trying to claw their way out of him. “This is your fault. Your…fucking fault that I— that I’m—"

It’s like watching a dam break. The cracks you left in his foundations, left untreated, festered like infected wounds. And now they’re grown too large, too deep, to fix, and he’s coming apart.

You broke him.

“Don’t you dare try to pin this on me, Love. I didn’t ask for this. I don’t deserve this—”

“You were too stupid to figure me out in Amherst.”

You’re grinning. Baring your teeth as his fingernails dig into your skin.

“You think I don’t know that? You think that I don’t regret that—regret you—every fucking day without your added bullshit?” He tilts your head up, breath hot against your face. “I didn’t ask for you to come back.”

“You wanted it, though.”

“No. I wanted you to leave me alone. You had already ruined everything: my sleep, my relationship with my team, my life— you were already in me. And you coming back, you disrupting my life any fucking further, was the last thing I ever would have wanted.”

“I ruined your life?” You laugh. “I wasn’t there, Spencer. Whatever happened in those six months has nothing to do with me—”

“It has everything to do with you.”

“—and I haven’t done anything to you. Nothing that you didn’t agree to. Nothing that you didn’t want—”

Something cuts your words off. A hand on your throat. His hand. Pressing down on your windpipe, restricting your air—choking you.

“I didn’t want this,” he hisses. “I don’t want you.”

He presses harder, and a noise escapes you. Strangled and high-pitched and weak. Delicate in a way he never thought he’d hear.

You’re clawing at his hand. You don’t mean to; you know he won’t take this too far, he can’t. But even as you tell yourself that, your body still starts to panic. An age-old primal response that you have seen dozens of times in your victims, now igniting in you, pushing you to write and scratch like an animal all while he stands and watches.

“I don’t want you.”

His voice has lowered to a whisper, barely audible over the blood rushing in your ears, and the faint ringing it carries with it. 

He repeats it again, maybe. You can’t be sure. His lips move silently around the words, mouthing them to himself like they may somehow alter his reality.

There’s this look in his eyes. Laser-focused, yet far-off. He’s staring you dead in the eyes, watching the burning tears that threaten to spill, but he isn’t seeing you.

Or maybe he is seeing you. Maybe he’s seeing you, clearly, for the first time.

He releases your throat the same moment his lips come crashing down onto yours, leaving you no choice but to gasp into his mouth. Breathe him in. Rely on him for oxygen. With your brain so scattered, you don’t fully understand what’s happening until you feel his tongue against yours.

He’s kissing you. Not gently, as he had done in Amherst, but ferociously. There’s no thought, no meaning. It’s all primal. All need. You meet the way magnets do, overwhelmed by a force greater than yourselves, helpless against the energy between you.

I can’t see you. That’s what he had said over the phone. Not because he couldn’t trust you, not because of the risks that came with meeting you like this, but because he couldn’t trust himself. Because he knew exactly what would happen the moment he got you alone. 

He’d lose control. You’d let him. You’d ruin each other.

The kiss ends as abruptly as it started. Spencer tears himself away, chest heaving with ragged breaths. His eyes find yours, and he stares down at you with this look that you can’t quite pick apart. Like he’s searching for something. For a sign that you want him to stop, or to carry on—you aren’t sure.

His mouth works, lips giving shape to words that have no sound because whatever he wants to say—if he even knows what it is—gets stuck in his throat. So, instead of speaking, instead of fighting, he just kisses you again.

It’s all he seems to know how to do, and he does it with the certainty, the specificity, of someone who has done it a hundred times over. And he doesn’t falter, not once. His hands grab your cheeks like they belong there, tilting your face up so he can deepen an already dangerous kiss.

It isn’t confidence. Can’t be; his hands are shaking. He’s clearly in two minds about this whole endeavour, and yet he’s doing it anyway. He doesn’t even want this, allegedly, yet he’s on you like he can’t fathom being anywhere else.

Spencer isn’t confident. He’s helpless. It’s evident in his breathing; shallow, erratic, almost panicked. This isn’t something he has control over, and it isn’t as simple as attraction—attraction doesn’t do this.

This is something worse. You aren’t sure what this is.

“You…fuck…”

He can barely allow himself space to say a single word. He whispers them into your mouth with a kind of desperation that makes your stomach flip. His hands are all over you now, never staying in one spot for too long before moving on to the next. Mapping out your body with his palms. Tracing your curves over the thin satin. Making sure you’re real.

Your fingers are in his hair, one hand cradling the back of his head as the other tugs at the collar of his shirt, urging him closer until there’s no space left between you. He slips an arm around your waist, hisses when you nip his bottom lip so hard he tastes blood on his tongue, your tongue. You giggle against his mouth, and whine when he pulls away.

The sight of him like this, red-faced, lip swollen and oozing with fresh blood, stirs something within you. Something vile. You press your thumb to the wound, smear the blood across the bruised plush before pushing it into his mouth. He accepts it without thinking, and you can’t help the whine that escapes you when his tongue circles your thumb, lapping at the metallic fluid like its instinct. Like it’s normal.

Spencer’s hands settle against your ribs, just under your breasts. His thumb sits where the underwire of your bra would be, if you were wearing one. Perhaps he was too caught up in the kiss, in his own need, to notice earlier, because the discovery is evident on his face. You watch the subtle shifts in his expression, the way his gaze trails across your body as he realises the position he has you in. Pinned, back to the wall, held in place by his own bodyweight. You wouldn’t be able to move if you wanted to.

You told him he could do anything he wanted. You handed all the power over to him. Relinquished control—physically, at least.

He’s tugging at your dress before he dares second guess himself. Sliding the thin straps down your arms and guiding the fabric down, leaving you exposed before him.

Time, for Spencer, comes to a screeching halt, and for a moment all he can do is stare. His fingers glide along the curve of your ribs with unexpected gentleness—reminiscent, almost, of how he was all those months ago—before settling on your chest. His palms fit so perfectly to your body you’d think he was made for this. Carved out of marble just to touch you. To feel your heart racing under his fingertips, tantalisingly close yet cruelly inaccessible.

And then he squeezes. Fingers curling into your skin with such force you can’t help but gasp. You pull your thumb from his mouth, try to kiss him, but he dodges. His mouth meets your collarbone, progresses down your chest, and he isn’t kind. 

He leads teeth-first, nipping hard at the sensitive skin before smoothing the red marks with his tongue, painting your chest with a trail of slow-drying saliva mixed with his blood.

You’re already a mess by the time his mouth finds your nipple. Maybe it’s the tension, the months of build-up, the heat that persists despite the breeze coming in from the balcony, or just the fact that you’ve been deprived of this kind of attention for so long—whatever it is, it has you soaked through your panties. Clenching your thighs as Spencer ravages your tits like he’s trying to get to your heart. Like he’d rip it straight from your chest, if he could.

It's a high, a familiar one, that you haven’t felt in almost a year. An insatiable burning in your veins, pungent with a discordant need that leaves you nauseated. Sends your head spinning. Pushes you right up to the edge of a cliff, dares you to take the leap, promises catharsis.

It takes possession of you, drives your fingers into his hair. You tear him away, pushing him until his legs meet the edge of the bed, and you force him down and straddle him.

Your hands shake, taught fast-crumbling restraint, as you fumble with the buttons of his shirt. You only make it about halfway before giving up, and then you mouth is on him. Trailing sloppy, bestial kisses down the column of his throat as his hands roam your body. Back, hips, ass. He’s pulling your dress up, exposing bare thighs that he doesn’t hesitate to sink his fingers into.

Your drag your tongue along the chain of his necklace, relishing in the way he shudders beneath you, before your teeth meet his skin. You bite him. Hard. Likely hard enough to have drawn blood if he weren’t so quick to grab a fistful of your hair and pull you off of him.

He shoves you with such force that you actually bounce when your back hits the mattress, and before you can sit up, he’s pinning you down. Hands grasping your wrists. One leg between your thighs, knee pressing against your cunt. The cross dangles from his neck. Touches your chin.

There’s something on the tip of his tongue, you can sense it. An insult, probably. More empty words, declarations of hatred that mean nothing. 

Whatever it is, he can’t bring himself to say it. It’s too difficult when you’re under him like this, dress pulled down past your chest, pushed up to your hips, shifting subtly against his knee, unable to stop yourself from seeking that little bit of friction.

So he just brings his lips down onto yours once more. Releases your wrists, keeps one hand braced beside your head as the other trails down your body.

His fingers slip past the elastic of your panties, circle your clit for a fleeting, electric moment, and slip into you with ease. You moan into his mouth, too drunk on the curl of his fingers, that intoxicating metallic taste on his tongue, to bother keeping it down as you bend your knee, angling your hips so he can thrust his fingers deeper and hit that spot that’s bound to make you come apart. 

Spencer groans against you, fingers working faster as your hand skims over the smooth, warm skin of his chest, his abdomen, before reaching his belt.

“Please,” he whispers, breathless, “tell me you have condoms.”

It must show on your face, the brief flash of poorly concealed disappointment, because Spencer’s expression sours instantly. 

He starts pulling back. You whine, grab his arm, and he pulls back harder, taking his fingers with him.

You huff in defeat, head falling back against the mattress. “There should be some in the bathroom,” you mutter. “Complimentary.”

Spencer sits back on his knees, gives you a stiff nod, and then he’s gone. He vanishes into the bathroom. You hear the faucet running. Stopping. Starting again.

And he doesn’t come back.

He doesn’t come back, but he doesn’t lock the door, either. So, really, it’s just an invitation for you to follow him.

You give him a few minutes—one minute, if you’re being honest—before sitting up. You scan the dark room for any sign of his phone, and you find nothing.

…okay. One hell of an oversight on your part. Cool. 

You fix your dress, pulling the fabric back into place as you scramble to your feet. Smooth out your hair, lick the blood from your lips, make yourself look pretty in a normal way, not in a serial killer way, before sauntering into the bathroom.

His phone sits face-up on the counter, next to a bloody tissue. Fingers grip the porcelain as he leans over the sink. He can see you—your reflection—behind him in the mirror, lingering in the doorway, watching the rise and fall of his shoulders.

“We can’t do this.”

You lean against the doorframe. Arms crossed, voice light. “We can.”

“I can’t let us do this.”

The faucet is leaking. Counting the beats that pass after his words. Measuring the silence.

“You can,” you say.

“I can’t.”

Either he didn’t shut it off all the way, or this hotel has shitty plumbing. It’s more likely the latter; Spencer isn’t the type to leave a job half-done, or a girl half-fucked. 

A text half-sent, though, might be a different story—you hope it’s a different story.

He’ll snap at you if your next words are you can. He knows he can; that isn’t what he’s saying.

But you don’t know what he is saying.

He could be having a moral dilemma, grappling with the reality that his mouth, his fingers, are now soiled with you.

Or he could be stalling. Buying time for feds, snipers, SWAT—whatever cavalry come out of the woodwork when an agent pushes the “I’m in a hotel with a serial killer, send help!” button.

“Why not?” you ask.

Spencer scoffs. “Are you serious?”

“Are you?”

He turns to face you, back pressed to the sink. He licks his still-bleeding lip. Presses his teeth to the wound. Subtly. Like he’s hoping you won’t notice.

He looks exhausted. You’re only just starting to realise how rough he looks. Eye bags. Neglected stubble. A dullness in his once-bright eyes.

But he doesn’t look anxious. He doesn’t steal a glance at his phone. Doesn’t tap his fingers against the porcelain. Doesn’t leave the wound alone; makes it worse.

“Are you serious, Spencer?”

Did you snitch, Spencer?

“This isn’t right,” he mutters, defeated.

“Nothing about this is right,” you say, watching him closely. “Forgive me for thinking that was the whole point.”

“For you.”

“Not for you?”

“I’m only here…” He sighs, rakes his fingers through his hair. “So I can get closer to putting you away.”

“You could call your team right now,” you say, “there’s nothing stopping you.”

Spencer nods, but his gaze drops to the tile floor. His shoulders droop, and he purses his lips for a moment before saying, “you know I can’t do that.”

The smile that lights your face is a genuine one, full of relief. Spencer didn’t snitch. He may have thought about it—definitely thought about it—but he refrained.

“Aww.” You tilt your head to the side, grinning. “Because you care about me?”

“Because I care about the families of the people you killed,” he corrects, tone turning icy, “they deserve closure.”

“Right…” You nod slowly. “And that’s why you kissed me, is it?”

“I’m not doing this.”

He storms out of the bathroom, leaves his phone on the counter. 

You deflate as he walks past you, but you only let him stray a few steps before you speak up again.

“Isn’t this what you’ve been dreaming about?”

You don’t have to turn to watch his reaction. You can see him in the mirror. He freezes a little ways beyond the doorway, footsteps halting as your question pierces straight through him.

You can see yourself, too. Your smudged make up, your still-flushed face, the marks on your chest that are already starting to darken into bruises. The rings of dried blood that encircle each one.

You think, for a moment, that he might keep walking. That he might storm straight out of the hotel, abandon his belongings, and refuse to meet with you like this ever again. But he doesn’t, of course. He can’t.

“…what?”

He turns to you, slowly, and you look over your shoulder with a smile.

“You thought I couldn’t tell? I’m a smart girl, doc, I know when—”

“Don’t.”

A warning. Soft-spoken and desperate.

Not a warning. A plea.

And you ignore it.

“It makes sense, really,” you continue, facing him fully, “the brain latches onto things it deems unfinished—”

“Stop it.”

“It’s a natural response, Spencer. You had a crush on me, I fucked you over—”

He walks away, back into the bedroom.

“—and now you’ve been fucking me, haven’t you? Every night. For how long?”

He’s shaking his head, dragging his fingers through his mussed hair, tugging at the strands like it might wake him up. Like this might just be another dream.

Sighing, you follow him into the bedroom.

“You said I ruined your life, right? Is this why? Because you’ve been tormented by sex dreams?” you ask. “Because I just have that much power over you? Because you don’t recognise yourself anymore?”

“You…” He lets out a shuddering breath. One that seems to shake his entire being. “…have no idea what this has been like. This year,” he mutters, pressing his palms to his eyes, “You— you have no idea what you’ve…done to me. What you—"

He spins around, ready to raise his voice, but the sight he is met with silences him instantly.

You’re holding his revolver. Flexing your fingers around the grip like it’s a toy.

“I didn’t…do anything to you, Spencer,” you say, voice calm—thoughtful, almost—as you inspect the chamber. Six bullets. “As much as I wish I could torment you like that, your dreams are, unfortunately, beyond my control.”

It’s a pretty gun. Old school. Reliable. The metal is cool to the touch. You wonder how hot it gets when it fires.

“And as for power— I’m not gonna hurt you, Spence, come here,” you gently grab his arm as he tries to back away, and you pull him closer, speaking slowly, clearly, giving your voice an almost seductive edge as you press the gun into his hand. “The only power that I have here…is power that you have given me…”

Spencer’s hand trembles under your own as you carefully guide the gun to your chest, aligning the barrel with the pendant of your necklace. He flinches when you cock back the hammer, and the chamber locks into place.

You move slowly, dragging the gun up the column of your throat before pressing it firmly to the underside of your jaw. To your jugular vein. And you flash him a smile.

“…you can take it back.”

His lip is still bleeding. Swollen. He’s staring at you like you aren’t human. Something beyond comprehension. 

If only he knew how wet you are right now. Your life, his hands. The fact that he could—should—but won’t. You’d take his hand, if you were a little more daring, making feel just how much you’re enjoying this. Make him finger you with a loaded gun to your neck. That would be one hell of a way to die.

“…what the fuck is wrong with you?”

He’s so close. Closer than he should be. You can feel his breath on your face. Smell his blood.

His tone is harsh. Words spoken in a whisper, laced with volatility, disbelief, the slightest bit of fear.

Your smile widens. Grows sharper. “You’re the profiler, you tell me.”

Maybe it’s more than a bit of fear. Spencer’s shaking his head, just barely—an unconscious movement, one he probably isn’t even aware of. Whatever façade he’s trying to maintain is offset by his pretty eyes, wide with fright. Discomfort. Concern. 

“You’re sick.”

You gasp, mock surprise flooding your expression as you ask, “really?”

Spencer doesn’t appreciate your humour. The tension in his jaw seems enough to crack his teeth, chock with frustration—and restraint. 

“Come on, doc, what’ll it be?” you pose, innocently batting your lashes at him. “Fuck me, or kill me?”

Two options. Each requiring a betrayal of Spencer’s self: his morals, or his desires.

There is, of course, a third option: he could just leave. Get out of here before he damns himself any further—but where’s the fun in that?

He brushes a strand of hair from your face, fingers grazing your skin. His face betrays nothing. His gun remains pressed to your neck.

A hand settles on your cheek, thumb tracing slow, soothing circles. You can hardly think for the sound of your own heartbeat. You can feel it in your throat, hammering against the barrel of the gun. You don’t realise you’re holding your breath until you start feeling lightheaded. Adrenaline sits stagnant in your veins, and it burns.

Spencer leans in like he’s about to kiss you, but doesn’t. His lips ghost over yours, and you can practically feel his resolve crumbling in the seconds before he speaks.

“Get back on the bed.”

And he lowers his gun. Steps back.

Relief manifests itself as laughter. Breathless, slightly manic. “Fuck,” you breathe, “you had me worried for a—”

“Now.”

His voice is sharp, cuts through your laughter with such a brusque certainty it’s clear that killing you is, in fact, not off the table just yet. In all the months you’ve spent tormenting him, you’ve never heard him use that tone before.

It’s just a single word, but it carries with it an unmistakable air of control.

You purse your lips, suppressing a smile as you step back. “As you wish.”

Spencer lowers his head as you turn away. You hear him set his revolver on the desk, carefully, as you make your way back over to the bed.

You take the liberty of removing your dress—or you try to, but Spencer catches your arm. He spins you around so fast you almost lose balance, and his mouth is on yours without warning. 

Your hands grasp the collar of his open shirt to steady yourself as his dip down to your mid-thigh, where the lace hem of your dress sits. He breaks the kiss briefly, just enough to tear it off over your head, and then he’s back on you. Hands on your waist, pulling you flush against him as his thumbs press against your stomach.

Quickly, you finish what you started earlier; unbuttoning his shirt until you can slip it off of his shoulders and have it fall to the floor. You’re scratching him before he can stop you, dragging your nails down his chest and relishing in the groan it elicits.

A shove, and your back hits the mattress. Spencer’s crawling on top of you, lips reuniting with yours in another fervent kiss as he kneels between your legs. You grasp his hand as he reaches for your tits, and you instead guide it down to your cunt, pressing his fingers to the sodden fabric of your panties. You’re soaked, more than you had been earlier, and his reaction to it is visible. Audible. A hitch in his breath. A shudder. A quiet groan. One that you echo as his fingers brush against your clit.

“Is this what your dreams are like?” you murmur between kisses, grinning. “Pinning me down? Having your way with me?”

He responds by kissing you harder, like forcing his tongue into your mouth might succeed in shutting you up. You grab his jaw, push him away a little to break the kiss, get a better look at him.

“Or am I on top?” You raise an eyebrow, fingers pressing into his skin. “Am I calling the shots? Bossing you around? Am I—”

“Stop talking.”

He pulls free from your grasp, swats your hand away before diving into you again. His hand cups the pack of your neck, pulling you closer and giving you no choice but to let him kiss you.

Whining, you wrap your legs around his waist. His cock presses up against your cunt through the layers of fabric, and his hips instinctively buck against yours.

Your fingers are lost in his hair, curling into the soft strands as he moves his hips—consciously, now. Laboured breaths fill the space between kisses, accompanied by the occasional soft moan as he ruts against you.

“Fuck…” Spencer breaks the kiss to drag his lips along your jaw, moistening the skin with his saliva before attacking your neck.

You’re not one to turn down an opportunity when it presents itself to you, so you’re quick to sink your teeth into his shoulder with a force that you hadn’t bothered to calculate in advance. Spencer yelps—almost squeaks—and jerks back. Your teeth scrape against his skin, and when you finally let him go, he’s pinning you by your neck, holding you down like you’re some wild animal.

“Spencer,” you whine, writhing as his hips stop moving, “come on—”

“Stop biting me.”

“Oh, you’re fine,” you mutter, as if his shoulder isn’t starting to bleed. “I can’t help it.”

“You can’t help it,” he repeats, unamused.

“It’s instinct.”

“Yeah?”

He’s tugging your panties off, peeling the soaked fabric from your aching cunt.

“You want to bite something?”

His hand grabs your face, parts your lips. He balls up your panties and pushes them into your open mouth.

Something in your brain slips out of place. Goes quiet. Dormant. 

You moan when the fabric touches your tongue. The taste—the smell—of your own arousal fills your senses, drowns out whatever rational thoughts dare remain until you’ve nothing left to give but pathetic whines as you nudge his belt with your foot. Begging, almost. Because you’re beginning to think you might die, or succumb to some arousal-driven madness, if he doesn’t fuck you.

He seems to get the message, because he pulls one of the hotel condoms from his pocket and sets it on the bed. You try to reach for it, but he grabs your wrist, holding it firm as he unfastens his belt, then his slacks.

And then he’s standing up, taking the condom with him as he strips down to his underwear—a plain pair of purple boxers, with a rather pronounced wet patch at the crotch. You sit up, looking about ready to pounce on him if he takes any longer, already clenching at the mere sight of him like this.

He takes his boxers off, and all you can do is stare, slack jawed, at the view you’ve been blessed with.

You’ve pictured Spencer Reid naked thousands of times, daydreamed about him for eleven months, but all of your fantasies pale in comparison to the real thing. Because he’s perfect. Gorgeous in ways you hadn’t even considered. A work of art.

Your panties fall from your mouth, land in the crevice between your clenched thighs. Spencer lifts your chin and gently stuffs them back into your mouth.

“Bite down.”

And you bite down.

Spencer purses his lips when you follow his instruction without hesitation, and the slight twitch of his cock is all you need to know that this is having the exact same effect on him as it is on you. 

Him in control. You, submitting. Positions neither of you are used to. A dynamic flipped on its head. It’s maddening.

He keeps hold of your chin for longer than he should, studying you with an expression that you can’t quite decipher. His dark eyes bore holes into you, saturated with emotions that he himself likely doesn’t understand.

When he does eventually let you go, he moves fast. He tears open the condom, fumbles with it for a short, uncoordinated moment, and rolls it on before grabbing your legs and pulling you to the edge of the mattress. He grabs a pillow, positions it under your hips quickly. Mechanically, almost; like he’s trying real hard not to think too much about what he’s doing, what he’s going to do.

And you aren’t thinking at all. You stopped doing that as soon as he took his pants off. Your act shattered and need took hold, loud and feverish and so desperate. The game doesn’t matter, none of it does. Spencer could do anything, and you would let him. You had meant that before, and you mean it even more now.

He’s leaning over you, one hand braced against the mattress and the other gripping the back of your thigh, lifting it. You raise your hips, and he takes that as permission.

He straightens up, steadying his cock with one hand as he lines it up with your entrance. He takes your leg, hooks it over his shoulder, and nudges your cunt with his tip, watching the way you clench for him, the way you’re dripping for him, before taking that deep breath.

A push, a gasp, an arch of a back, and he’s inside of you. Your teeth dig into the fabric of your panties as your body yields to his length, and you take him to the hilt in one slow, deep thrust.

Spencer’s cursing under his breath, hissing about how tight you are as he tries to adjust, to acclimate to the feel of you, before he comes undone. His fingers dig into the plush of your thigh as he eases himself out almost all the way before slamming back into you, eliciting a moan—or a cry, you can’t be sure—that your panties do very little to muffle.

He quickly finds his rhythm, and with every rock of his hips you feel yourself break that little bit more. With his free hand, he tears your panties from your mouth and cups the back of your head as he leans down.

“Is this what you wanted?” he hisses, voice strained. “Is this why you called me here?”

You struggle, for a moment, to regain your grasp on language—on reality. But when you do, you look him dead in the eye and bare your teeth in a crazed grin. “Is this why you came?”

Spencer grabs your jaw, forces your head back against the mattress as his pace shifts into something brutal. Hips slamming into yours until you can do nothing but moan as you cling to him, fingers tangling in his hair, nails digging into his scalp.

And then he’s grabbing your other leg, throwing it over his shoulder, folding you in half and fucking you like it’s his purpose. Like he was made for you—or you for him. When you start slipping, he pulls you back into position, hips atop the pillow, making sure to hit that perfect angle over and over until you’re too fucked to think.

You don’t realise you’re speaking until he’s telling you to shut up. Broken strings of pleases and yeses have been tumbling, unrestrained, from your lips for God knows how long, breathy and feverish and shamelessly needy. This, apparently, is something he doesn’t like, though you aren’t sure you believe him given that, every time you speak, his grip grows tighter, his breathing heavier, and when you say his name—when you beg him not to stop—he fucking moans.

And when you keep babbling, when you tell him that you’re close, he pulls back. Straightens up. Gets a real good look at you; your tear-streaked makeup, your swollen lips, the cross necklace that’s gotten tangled in your hair. He slows his pace, retrieves it, and you think for a brief, uncertain moment that he’s going to break it, pull it from your neck, snap the chain, but he doesn’t.

He gives it a small tug, pulling you up as he continues rolling his hips. The metal cuts into the back of your neck, embeds in your skin.

“Touch yourself.”

“Spence—”

“Please.”

He pulls harder on your necklace, but your hand is already moving. Fingers skimming over sweat slick skin until they find your clit. He releases you, lets you fall back onto the mattress, and he fixes your necklace. Positions the pendant, carefully, on your chest. Between your tits.

Spencer’s hips gradually return to their almost brutal pace, spurred on by the sight of you working your clit beneath him. His fingers twitch against your thighs as your walls hug his cock, tensing as the pressure builds and you bring yourself closer and closer to release. 

He doesn’t take his eyes off you for a second; back arched, drunk on his cock, touching yourself for him—you’re perfect. Dreadfully, beautifully perfect.

And once he allows that thought into his mind, he comes undone. He ruts into you, pushing you over that edge, and he follows close behind.

His hips sputter as he finishes. Legs and arms tremble with fast-fading adrenaline, with exhaustion, and with the immediate, suffocating weight of what he’s just done.

He stays leaning over you for as long as it takes him to catch his breath, and then he’s forcing himself to move. He pulls out, ignoring the latent sparks of desire it ignites, ignoring the way you whimper helplessly, and immediately gets to work on cleaning himself up.

Shaking hands remove the condom, tie it off, and toss it in the trash before he begins gathering his clothes. All while you lie back, looking disgustingly pretty, as you try to reorient yourself.

He’s about halfway through getting dressed when you speak up, voice soft and mellow.

“The Baltimore strangler,” you murmur, watching with tired amusement as he rushes about the dark hotel room, “he owns a bar in Fells Point…Lancaster Street, I think.”

Spencer pauses, shirt crumpled up in his hands. “I thought you didn’t know anything.”

“You, uh…” You press your lips into a smug little smile. “Jogged my memory.”

He stares at you for a long moment, jaw working as he chews on every response that crosses his mind, none of which are at all pleasant. But, ultimately, he keeps his mouth shut, pivots away from you, and slips his shirt on before holstering his gun.

“Can you at least open my gift?” you ask, suppressing a yawn. “It could be important, you know.”

Huffing, Spencer picks up the book and quickly tears away the brown paper, letting the scraps fall to the floor as he inspects the cover.

"De mon esprit humilié, faire ton lit en ton domaine…"

Baudelaire. Les Fleurs du Mal.

"…infâme à qui je suis lié comme le forçat à la chaîne."

You’re grinning, he can hear it in your voice. His fingers tremble against the cover of the book and, for a moment, he finds himself utterly seized by the urge to throw it in your face. To grab you, flip you over, and—

God, he feels sick.

“We’re not doing this again.”

The tremble reaches his voice, taints his words. Makes him sound as small as he feels.

“Of course not,” you say, smiling. “I’m not crazy.”

He’d probably laugh, if he didn’t feel as though he were choking. He can’t breathe. Can’t think with you in the room, with you all over him—in him. Your bruises. Your bite marks. Your DNA embedded in his skin. He needs to shower. Clean his wounds. Nurse his pride. Update his tetanus. 

He needs to leave, before you pull him back in. Before he loses any more of himself to you, to this. 

So, he gathers the last of his belongings, tucks the cursed book under his arm, and he walks out, head held as high as he can manage with the shame piling on his shoulders.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

And your voice is the last thing he hears as he closes the door behind him.

This year, Spencer is on a mission, and he is ready to go to great lengths to achieve his goal. He is determined to let go of the past, to leave his demons in 2009 and charge head-first into the new decade without the regrets of the last month weighing him down.

But he cannot do that Not yet.

In order to relinquish his guilt, he must first confront the source of it, and the only way to do that is to find the unsub responsible for this change within him. The fugitive that has soured his temperament. The woman who, in stealing a kiss, stole his dignity, too.

Spencer Reid is determined to find you, and he will not stop looking until he has you.

He is going to put you behind bars this year, if it is the last thing he does.

.⋆♱❦

It is early in January, and Spencer is leaning on the back of Penelope's chair after being lured into her office with the promise of riches beyond his wildest dreams. She has spent the last month working overtime trying to track you down and, at last, she seems to have made a breakthrough. 

But a breakthrough is not what Spencer sees displayed on her many monitors. He expects to see security footage, bank records, anything that may help them figure out where you are, but what he sees instead is a birth certificate, educational records, and notes from both a school counsellor and a child psychologist.

"So now we know that her last name isn't actually Lovelace, it's—"

Penelope keeps making a point to call you by your real name as she lists everything she has uncovered about you, oblivious to the fact that Spencer does not seem to be listening to her at all. He's skimming through the documents she has presented him with, trying to figure out why she has pulled him away from his work to look at something so pointless.

"This isn't going to help us find her," he says, interrupting her little informative speech.

She does not take too kindly to being cut off. Immediately, she crosses her arms and puts on a frown. "Well excuse me, I thought part of building a profile was understanding the unsub's history—"

"I have a profile," he says. "I don't need to know who she was, Garcia, I need to know where she is."

He regrets his words almost as soon as they leave his mouth and, as Penelope opts to respond with silence, Spencer quickly shakes his head.

"I'm sorry."

"Spence—"

"This isn't your fault, I just—" he sighs. "I'm sorry."

This is his fault. He shouldn't be taking his frustration out on her, not when she's only trying to help him.

He takes another look at the records displayed on the monitors, squinting at them as though the answer to the question of your whereabouts may be hidden in there somewhere, but he finds nothing. Occasional reports of fighting in the school yard, several letters regarding unauthorised absences, report cards showing nothing but straight As, and so on — nothing that comes close to indicating where you may be.

"Hey," sensing his disappointment, Penelope twists around in her chair to look up at him, "we're going to find her."

"I know," he says, nodding slowly. Mechanically, almost. It couldn't be more obvious that he's struggling to believe her words.

Her brows furrow in sympathy, and she reaches out to touch his arm. "I know you feel…pretty bad about what happened—"

"Don't," he mutters, pulling his arm back, "please."

"Spence," she sighs, concern spoiling her usually upbeat tone as she watches the way he begins wringing his hands, "have you been sleeping?"

"What?" Spencer tenses at her question, and his fidgeting ceases entirely. "Yes, of course I've been—"

"You look exhausted," she presses. "Seriously, are you—"

"I'm fine, Garcia," he says, stepping back with a dismissive shake of his head. "Just, um, send me everything you have on her. I'll look through it later."

Penelope opens her mouth to protest, but he's already heading for the door. She stares after him, looking about as helpless as she feels, as he leaves.

The BAU are not stupid, Penelope included; they all know Spencer hasn't been sleeping, It's evident in the dull, slightly hollow tone of his voice and the dark circles under his eyes. Everybody knows, and yet nobody asks why. Perhaps it is because they already know — or think they do, at least. They think he's still struggling to process the Amherst case, your case, and he is, just not in the way they seem to believe. They've made an assumption, and Spencer has no intention to correct them. 

Letting the BAU assume is the best thing that Spencer can do right now, because he does not have the words, for once, to explain what his true problem is. He doesn't even know where he would begin, or how he would ever be able to convey what it is that he is feeling. How can he tell the team of the torment he has endured over the past month? How can he tell them that his soul feels as though it is rotting from the inside out?

It started the night they returned from Amherst. He had stumbled, limbs leaden with regret and exhaustion, into his apartment where he had promptly collapsed onto his bed. Sleep had taken him almost instantly, enveloping his minefield of a mind in a darkness, a quiet, which he was more than grateful for.

But then something strange occurred. Upon opening his eyes, he found himself back in that study room, crime scene photographs scattered around him, staring holes into the board as he wracked his brain, endlessly, to figure out what he was missing.

Any memory of the truth behind the Amherst case had been sealed away, and he had been transported, mind and body, back to that fateful night. Only the room was darker than he remembered it being, and the words scrawled across the board were nonsensical, with letters plucked from a myriad of different alphabets both dead and alive. They seemed to move before his eyes with a restlessness that mirrored the one that he felt deep in his bones. The photographs, too, appeared to come alive around him. They tried to speak, to tell him something, but they were unable to make a sound.

He felt a hand tap him, gently, on the shoulder, and he did not have to question who it was. It was the missing piece. It was you.

And the pieces began to fall back into place. The chess game, the kiss, his foolishness, your victory. It overloaded his brain until his legs started to move of their own accord and he turned around to face you, and—

And then he woke up.

He remembers staring at his ceiling, helpless against the guilt that was gnawing away at him, chewing holes through his flesh like an army of maggots would. That was your gift to him: a feeling that he would never forget, and never truly be able to move on from.

He had not thought much of the dream at the time. It was easily explainable, easily rationalised; the case was fresh in his mind, the emotions were raw, of course he would dream about it. It made sense.

But that dream marked the start of something that would soon make no sense at all. Something inexplicable— no, something that Spencer has decided is inexplicable, because there isn't an explanation that exists that does not leave him utterly disgraced.

.⋆♱❦

As the weeks slip by, the BAU's focus gradually shifts away from you and your whereabouts. Garcia has set up a dozen alarms that will sound if you're caught on any of her systems but, even as January bleeds into February, they continue to come up empty. 

As much as they may wish to, they can no longer afford to dedicate their time to hunting a ghost. There are other cases that need their attention; cases that can be solved, killers that can actually be caught. So, they move on, because they have no other choice.

But Spencer will not do that. For as long as he continues to have these dreams, he cannot move on. His mind, the one thing that has never failed him, will not allow him to. 

He has come to dread falling asleep, because he knows where he will end up. He will be in the study room, agonising over a case that he already knows the answer to, and his heart rate will skyrocket as he senses your presence behind him. And then he will turn around, and you will not be there. You never are. 

That dream has become the standard. For those first two months of 2010, Spencer has this exact dream five, sometimes six times per week, and he gets used to it. He grows accustomed to the feeling of being haunted by something that refuses to show its face. Something he can always feel, but can never see. 

And then something changes.

It happens without warning, on a particularly dreary night where he has just gotten home from a long, difficult case in Indiana. The kind of case that, even though they catch the unsub at the end of it all, leaves the team with a lingering unease. It gets to them; all of them. Even the more seasoned agents, like Hotch and Rossi, take home with them a heaviness that they can usually leave at their desks.

Spencer is no stranger to heaviness. He has been carrying it with him, wherever he does, since Amherst. It sits on his chest, immovable, compressing his ribs until breathing stops being second nature to him. He must inhale manually, fighting against the weight, and exhale slowly, for fear his lungs may collapse under it. 

Much like the dreams, he has gotten used to this heaviness, too. He has accepted it as a part of himself — another aspect of his life that has been altered, and will remain that way until he finds you.

Sleep begins creeping up on him almost as soon as his head meets his pillow. He feels it creeping up on him, the peace, the all-too-brief respite that lasts for those few fleeting moments between states of consciousness, where he is not quite awake and not quite asleep. 

And then he is on the metro. 

The train car is packed with people on their morning commutes. Spencer keeps his head down, trying to focus on the garbled, illegible contents of the book in his hands. Everyone around him is unbearably loud, and the screech of the train pierces through his ears like the point of a needle. He has trained himself to tune out the noise, in real life, but, in this dreamscape, he can do no such thing. Every sound is amplified tenfold, and he cannot even hear himself think.

He can feel something, though. A pull of a magnet coaxing him to lift his head. Without second thought, he finds himself obliging. It's the same pull he has felt in every dream prior to this one and, even with the change of scenery, he knows it's you. He can feel your presence, as he always does, and he knows that he will not see you as he looks around the train car. You're the missing piece, the ghost he is chasing, it would make no sense for you to be there.

But you are there.

You're leaning against the train doors, gaze glued to your own book as though you belong there. As though you're just another person commuting to work. But you're not. You stand out against the faceless crowd, like you have been rendered in high definition and they have not. Your dress sways slightly with the movement of the train, back and forth like the hypnotic swing of a pendulum. It's the same dress you had been wearing the first time he laid eyes on you, gorgeous and covered in snow, he is sure of it. But that dress was black, and the one he is seeing now is a bright, almost luminous white. You're glowing the way he imagines an angel would; breathtaking and radiant and, above all, pure — the one thing he knows you not to be.

All Spencer can do is stare. He is frozen in place, dumbfounded, as he tries to make sense of what he is seeing. His heart has crawled up into his throat, nestling behind his adam's apple and making it near impossible to breathe. The only thing he can do is blink. Repeatedly. As though you may vanish into thin air right before his eyes. But you don't.

You're there. He could get up and touch you, if he wanted to. And he does want to.

The train comes to a sudden halt, and you slip through the doors before he can move. Shaking himself free from his trance, Spencer scrambles to his feet, abandoning his book, and chases after you. He pushes past any passenger that stands in his way and jumps out onto the platform, glancing around frantically as he searches for you in the crowd. He can barely hear over the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. It echoes through his skull, disorientating him, but his eyes manage to locate you once more, just a few metres away, weaving your way through the sea of faceless bodies.

He stumbles after you, stepping on toes and tripping over luggage until, by some miracle he's there. Behind you. Close enough to touch you, to smell you.

His hand closes around your arm, and—

He wakes up.

.⋆♱❦

"What are you thinking about, pretty boy?"

"Huh?"

Spencer's head jerks up at the sound of Morgan's voice. He glances around, bewildered, and somehow misses him leaning against his desk, right in front of him, twice before his eyes snap back into focus.

"You've been staring into space for the last ten minutes," Morgan says, eyeing him with a barely concealed smirk.

"Oh," he clears his throat, shaking his head as though it may kickstart his brain. "I'm just, um—"

Morgan narrows his eyes. "Spill it."

"It's nothing," he says quickly.

Of all the lies Spencer has told in his lifetime, that may just be the worst one yet.

Crossing his arms, Morgan raises an eyebrow. He stares at him for a moment, profiling him, before finally asking: 'You seeing someone?"

Spencer blinks at him. "What?"

"You've got that look in your eye," he says, nodding like he has just singlehandedly cracked an impossible code. He scoots closer and leans down with a knowing smile. "I know it from a mile away, trust me."

Spencer backs his chair away from him, frowning. "Morgan, I'm not—"

"Who is she?"

"What?" Spencer can hear his own voice getting higher as heat rushes to his cheeks. He sputters and tries to roll away, but Morgan grabs the arm of his chair and pulls him back in, grinning. "There isn't a…she," he mutters.

"A he?" Morgan asks. "You know I don't judge, man. Love is love."

"Ah, yeah…you got me," Spencer pulls his lips into a smile, ironic and full of anything but love. "His name's Richard. Richard Feynman."

Morgan's grin falters slightly, unable to tell if he's being serious or not. "Who?"

Across the room, Emily raises her head. "The physicist?"

With an exaggerated sigh, Morgan rolls his eyes. "Funny," he mutters, giving Spencer's chair a light kick, "but there's definitely something weird going on with you, kid. More weird than usual."

"I'm not joking," he says with a shrug, leaning back in his chair, "his thoughts about superfluidity and supercooled liquid helium have me weak in the knees."

Scoffing, Morgan reaches out to ruffle his hair before retreating back to his office. "Whatever."

As he walks away, Spencer raises his hands to rub at his eyes. He can feel a headache coming on. It doesn't hurt yet, but it will — hopefully he'll be back at home by then. 

He tries to return to his work, but no sooner has he picked up his pen does Emily appear at his desk, right where Morgan had just been.

"You okay?" she asks,

"I'm fine."

He is beginning to tire of these conversations. Every day it seems his coworkers insist on checking in on him: how are you feeling? Are you okay? Do you need anything? All variations of the same question, all spoken with that same tentative, almost hesitant tone of concern, as though they're afraid he may snap at them at any moment.

Spencer has said "I'm fine" one hundred and fifty-three times over the past two months, that is an average of 2.5 times per day, and he is sick of it. Emily, too, appears to be sick of this, because she leans against his desk with a dejected sigh.

"Reid," she says, "come on."

Scooting his chair closer to his desk, he returns his gaze to his paperwork, ignoring her request entirely.

"Is this because of the Amherst case?" she asks.

He still does not respond.

"Spence—"

"Can we not do this right now?" he mutters. "I'm trying to work."

"You can't keep refusing to talk about this—"

"There's nothing to talk about," he says, "you know what happened."

"And you know that's not what I mean," she counters, crossing her arms.

Spencer keeps his attention fixed on the papers in front of him as he tries to ignore the pressure behind his eyes and the tension building in his jaw. He's gripping his pen so tight his knuckles are turning white, and he doesn't even realise. 

"You can't keep blaming yourself for this," Emily continues in a softer tone, "we all failed to see it."

Gritting his teeth, Spencer raises his head and meets her gaze with a cold, tired stare. "I spoke to her every day," he says simply, keeping his voice steady as he tries to mask the frustration bubbling inside of him 'I went out of my way to speak to her, to get to know her, because I—" he cuts himself off with a quick shake of his head. "Please, don't tell me that this isn't my fault, Emily, because it is. I gave her the information she needed to get away, that is a fact, and— and he put that damn cross on her last victim on purpose."

Emily is frowning now. Half concern, half exasperation. "To make sure we knew it was connected to—"

"To make sure that I knew it was her," he snaps, talking over her. "She didn't have to leave that necklace, but she did. She didn't have to expose herself like that, but she did. Because she wanted to make sure that I knew just how fucking naive—"

"Reid."

Hotch's voice silences him instantly. He's standing in the bullpen, hands on his hips, staring daggers at Spencer like a parent who is just about at the end of their tether. 

Spencer huffs, but he shrinks back all the same, muttering an apology as he lowers his head. Emily stares at him for a moment, wanting to say more but knowing she shouldn't, before finally backing off.

.⋆♱❦

Spencer begins going to therapy at the tail end of February. Mandated therapy, arranged by Hotch, with a man whose questions cause him far more stress than the dreams ever have.

He feels like a child again, sitting in that room, providing a therapist with answers he rehearsed beforehand. Spencer is very good at telling people what they want to hear; it's something he learned when he was young. He understood quickly that therapy, like most human interactions, was a game with concrete rules that, with the correct knowledge, could be exploited. If he gave the right answers, his therapists would stop pestering him with questions about his parents, about the divorce, about how his mother's condition affected him — he would be left alone and, really, that was all he wanted.

Maybe his childhood therapists weren't very good at their jobs, because the man he is now required to meet with every Friday does not seem the least bit convinced by whatever answers Spencer tries to throw at him. He sees straight through him in a way that is equal parts impressive and infuriating, and every session, without fail, he manages to circle the conversation back to the one thing Spencer does not want to talk about: Amherst, and how that incident made him feel. 

Spencer is a profiler, not a middle schooler. What he feels doesn't matter, not right now. He can talk about his feelings later, but what he needs now is to find you. That's the only way these dreams are going to stop, the only way his life will be able to go back to normal, he is sure of it.

But the only place he can find you is in the depths of his unconscious; where you move like liquid, a half-ghost composed of brief encounters, and where he is no longer himself.

Or maybe he is himself, in those dreams, and maybe that is the problem.

.⋆♱❦

He's chasing you through the metro station again, barging his way through the crowd without second thought — they aren't real; they can't feel it. The white fabric of your dress billows out and twirls around your legs as he grabs you by the arm and turns you, at last, to face him.

You look exactly as you did in Amherst. You're staring up at him, wide-eyed, the way you had been when he kissed you. Your cheeks are dusted with a slight pink. Your lips are parted. You are positively breathtaking.

And he's grabbing you by your throat. He feels your breath hitch, feels your pulse racing under his fingertips. You feel real. Impossibly so.

His breath his hot against your face, ragged from the chase, from the adrenaline coursing through his veins. His heart is pounding frantically against his ribcage. Each beat a fresh bruise.

You wince as his fingers press divots into your skin, but you make no effort to push him away. Your gaze does not waver. You do not seem scared, or surprised, in the slightest. In fact, your lips curl into the beginnings of a smile as he stares down at you, frozen, torn between the urge to yell at you and his desire to—

He's jolting awake before he can finish the thought.

.⋆♱❦

Spencer is no stranger to fearing he may one day lose his mind. It's part of his daily routine, it has been for years: wake up, brush his teeth, stress about the probability of a schizophrenic break, make coffee, go to work, and so on.

This constant anxiety has underlined his very existence since he was a child. He grew up a witness to his mother's struggles, and he saw it as a concrete projection of his future. In his developing mind, his fate was sealed. It was never a matter of if, but a matter of when, even if the statistics said otherwise.

Maybe this is it. Maybe the other shoe has finally dropped and he has, indeed, lost his mind.

He cuts his hair in the first week of April on account of it irritating the sensitive skin of his neck and shoulders. He was well overdue for a haircut anyways. 

Upon his return to work that Monday, Hotch had asked if he had joined a boy band. The rest of the team apparently found this hilarious and, after a brief moment of confusion, Spencer just forced an ironic smile and moved on. It was, however, better than Morgan's comment that came later that same morning: he asked Spencer if he had a mental breakdown over the weekend that made him chop all of his long, luscious hair off. It may have actually earned a laugh from him, had it not been so dangerously close to the truth.

Because he should be moving forward. He should be making progress and bettering himself, but with each dream that unfolds you become more real and Spencer's feelings, whatever they are, increase in their intensity. The initial attraction he felt towards you has stuck, and it has collided with the hatred he feels for you now, turning into a nauseating, volatile feeling that has all but ruined him — that is ruining him, still.

Everybody else has moved on. They were able to let this case go, as they have done hundreds of times in the past, but Spencer is stuck here in this nightmare with nothing but his putrid disdain and the memory of you. He is trapped in purgatory, doomed to repeat the same wretched story every night with no end in sight.

He puts his hand on your throat. Feels the steady beat of your pulse.

He wants to tear you apart.

Your eyes bore holes into his soul. Your lips curl into a smirk.

He wants to— to—

He has started forcing himself to wake up.

.⋆♱❦

Chronic sleep deprivation weakens the connection between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, which significantly impairs both emotional regulation and decision-making ability. In extreme cases, it can lead to delusional thinking and, rarer yet, hallucinations.

Spencer isn't thinking rationally. He can't be. The lack of sleep is affecting his brain; it can't process what needs to be processed, and that is reflected in these recurring dreams. That is the only explanation, aside from having lost his mind completely, that makes sense — and it is the only explanation he is willing to accept, because it is reversible. He may be locked in a box of madness, but you are the key. He just needs to find you.

But, if this were just the result of sleep deprivation, it would be affecting his ability to work, too. The toll these months have taken on his emotional stability is impacting his work, he isn't denying that; he's restless, irritable, and his relationship with the team is growing increasingly strained by the day, but the quality of his work has remained the same. If anything, it has improved.

Driven by the fear of making another fatal mistake, Spencer's profiling skills are sharper than ever.

His therapist, unsurprisingly, has called this out as hypervigilance and, as badly as Spencer wants to argue with him, he knows he can't. He may be losing his mind, but he isn't stupid, and what he is experiencing is indeed textbook hypervigilance.

But self-awareness isn't going to eliminate his problem. Putting a name to his feelings isn't going to make them stop, and no amount of therapy is going to stop him from waking up in the middle of the night, sweating and panting like someone has stolen the air from his lungs. It isn't going to save him from the guilt and the shame that crawl like bugs under his skin every morning, and it isn't going to stop him from feeling dirty every time his coworkers look his way. God, what would they think of him if they knew what was happening in his head?

The BAU gave him grace, probably too much of it, when they learned of what transpired in Amherst: your late-night meetings, the chess game, Spencer having his breakthrough and you listening, innocently, as he gave you all the information you needed to get away. He remembers the look on their faces as he confessed to it all; confusion, then disbelief, and then, at the end of it all, disappointment. A quiet kind of disappointment that tore through his skin and left him vulnerable to their wordless judgement. He would have preferred it if they were angry, at least then he would know what they were thinking.

But, ultimately, Spencer was granted their forgiveness, even when he could not forgive himself.

His naivety was something the team could leave in the past. It was pardonable, a one-time offense that he would learn from, but this? There's no brushing past this. No forgiving this. He can't tell the team about this, not unless he wants them to see him the way he sees himself; disgraced, and filthy.

They can't know that his own mind is out of his control. They can't know that he has been forcing himself to wake up because he knows what will happen if he does not, and that it terrifies him. They can't know that, deep down, there is a part of him that wants that, and it is growing bigger by the day.

Spencer now spends his evenings scouring the internet in search of any advice on how to stop these recurring dreams, but it has not been much help at all. Everyone gives the same copy-paste list of remedies: reduce stress, relax before bed, avoid caffeine, resolve related problems — God, how easy his life would be if he could do that.

April is fast approaching its end, and he is no closer to finding you than he had been in January. You're gone. You could be dead, for all he knows. And maybe you are; maybe you're haunting him. He doesn't believe in ghosts, but he is willing to believe just about anything if it will put a stop to these stupid, incessant dreams.

Hell, if he could just see you, in person, for just a moment, maybe this torment would end.

But the odds of seeing you are no higher than the odds of catching you, so now Spencer is researching meditation techniques and drinking green tea instead of coffee. He's doing yoga with Garcia every Sunday, and he's going to sleep listening to white noise in the vain hope that it may dispel the thought of you, but it doesn't. Nothing does. He still ends up in limbo, with you, every night. He still ends up dancing that same dance and waking up before he reaches the crescendo.

He has started going on talks in the middle of the night, praying that he may find some peace of mind in the darkness blanketing DC. He wanders laps around parks, wondering where you have gone, until his legs begin to ache; until the sun comes up and he realises he hasn't slept at all, and that he still has to go to work. This is killing him. You are killing him — the mere thought of you is. 

So, when he finds himself sitting across from his therapist on the final Friday of the month, something inside of him finally breaks. He admits, for the first time, to the true reason behind why he cannot sleep. He avoids going into detail and instead describes his issue in the vaguest of terms: "can't sleep", "weird recurring dreams", "disturbing thought patterns", and so on. When his therapist asks him to describe the contents of these dreams, Spencer skirts awkwardly around the topic, stammering and meandering until the man finally takes the hint.

He watches Spencer flounder for what feels like hours before finally imparting some advice, and he orders him to stop waking himself up. He must let whatever happens happen. He needs to confront it head-on, else his brain will never be able to process what he is feeling, and he will remain trapped in purgatory.

Spencer, of course, thinks this is absurd. Nothing good could come from letting these dreams play out. He cannot possibly…give in to this.

…but if the only way out is through, then so be it.

.⋆♱❦

He does not try to fight himself as he chases you through the metro station. He moves through the crowd with cold determination. He is calm. He has to be.

He's grabbing your arm. He's putting his hand on your throat as though it belongs there. Like his fingers were moulded to fit perfectly to the shape of your neck. With no more inhibitions holding him back, he can see it now; how perfectly the two of you slow together. It's as though he was made for you — or you for him.

He does not let another second go to waste before he's kissing you. His lips meet yours with such force it should send you stumbling backwards, but it doesn't. Because you're already leaning into him. You're meeting him halfway, and with just as much desperation, as if you have been waiting for this just as long as he has.

His hands find your face, keeping you close as he kisses you with a ferocity that surprises even him. It is so unlike how he treated you in reality, in Amherst, where he could not fathom being anything but the kindest, gentlest version of himself out of fear he may make the wrong impression or, God forbid, hurt you. But there is nothing gentle about him now, not anymore, not here. Here, he's rough and unforgiving, and he acts without an ounce of restraint — because he does not have to; this isn't real.

It feels real, though. He feels the slight change in your breathing as his hands move from your face to your waist, and he feels the warmth of your body as he drags you closer until your chest is pressed up against his. The lace detailing of your dress under his fingertips is too intricate to be anything but real. It's uncanny, how real you feel in his hands even when he knows you are nothing but a figment of his wretched imagination. 

Your hands are in his hair, fingers weaving into the brown strands as you surrender yourself to him at last. He can smell your perfume with the same clarity he had done when you were last in his arms all those months ago. You haven't changed in the slightest; you can't, he supposes, because despite what his senses are telling him you are not real — this is not real. 

But he wishes, in that short, fleeting moment before he wakes up, that it was real.

And that realisation is one that haunts him for the rest of the night. It weighs on him, gnawing on him like something rabid, until it drives him out of his apartment, still in his pyjamas, and he goes for a walk.

.⋆♱❦

The lead up to summer feels like a death march. Watching the temperatures rise fills Spencer with more dread than any unsub ever has. There is no stopping the changing seasons and, as May begins to slip through his fingers, he is reminded of just how much he despises the heat.

A dry heat is something he can manage, given he has appropriate clothes, but a humid one? He would rather suffer one hundred winters in New England than be subjected to a single Floridian summer.

And the sunshine state is, unfortunately, exactly where he and the team have found themselves; and in the middle of a cruelly timed heatwave, no less. Spencer, for lack of a more sensible phrase, is sweating his balls off. He is half convinced he will be reduced to a puddle by the time they solve this case, and the team will have to scoop him up and carry him home in a jar.

By the time he returns to his hotel room, his shirt is soaked and his hair is sticking to his forehead, gross and damp with a day's worth of sweat. He's shedding his clothes as soon as the door closes behind him, and he makes an immediate beeline for the shower.

But the heat lingers long after sunset. Spencer opens his window as far as it will go, but it does little to dispel the sticky discomfort that hangs in the air, or the thoughts of you that resurface, as they always do, as he gets ready for bed.

Five months.

Twenty-one weeks.

One hundred and forty-nine days, each spent denying what has been eating him alive.

Four days of knowing you, versus five months of remembering you. It doesn't make any sense.

You were in his life for such an insignificant amount of time, yet you have taken root in him. Thoughts of you sprout up like weeds in his exhausted mind, chemical-resistant and beautiful, easily mistaken for pretty little flowers. He has made that mistake; trusting you, falling for your charms and letting his apprehension give way to blind, foolish optimism. 

He thought you a flower, and now you will not let him be. Or he will not let you be. It doesn't make much of a difference anymore.

Spencer has never considered himself obsessive; it's a term with predominantly negative connotations, ones he would rather not be associated with. He much prefers to think of himself as driven or passionate, rather than obsessive. The dictionary defines obsession as "a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling", and that is not what Spencer feels. Not in regard to his work, or his research, or his books, or even his TV shows.

But what he feels for you…that is obsession. Undeniably, and with all of the negative connotations one could dream of. He is obsessed with the idea of finding you, of bringing you to justice, of doing…other, wildly unprofessional things to you. Things he does not wish to think about.

He tries to silence those thoughts as he gets into bed. He tries not to think about you whatsoever, or your case, or his feelings, or where he will inevitably end up once his consciousness fades. He is tired of it all; of chasing after you, and of running from himself. So he just closes his eyes.

And he is back in the study room.

The pliant flesh of your thighs yields to his bruising grip as you choke back a moan. Your legs are around his waist. Your hands are lost in his hair. You're perched on the table, chess game long forgotten, with your white dress bunched up around your hips and your tights torn just where he needs them to be. You're pressing your face into the crook of his neck, teeth bared as he buries himself to the hilt in your warmth. Over. And over. And over again until his legs are shaking and his fingernails are digging into your skin and you are begging him not to stop.

He can't fathom it. Stopping. Being apart from you. Being anywhere other than here.

He needs this. Needs you. Your body, your kiss, your touch. All of it.

He needs control. He needs to ruin you, as you have ruined him.

Slowly, you lift your head. The chain of your necklace sits between your teeth. The silver gross glitters in the low light, mocking him.

He's shooting upright before he is even fully awake, grasping at the sheets beneath him in a frantic attempt to ground himself as he tries, desperately, to escape his dream. He hunches over, gritting his teeth like he's in agony as he mutters curses under his breath. He curses you, himself, his body, every part he can put a name to in this machine of torment he is trapped inside of. He can’t breathe. He feels sick. Actually sick. He feels violated. He feels—

He presses his palms to his eyes, rubbing madly as he fights to erase that image from his head, but he cannot unsee what his unconscious has presented him with. He cannot unsee you, on that table. He cannot unhear you. He cannot rid himself of the feeling that lingers, like the heat does, long after the dream ends. That deep-seated longing. The ache that refuses to vacate him, no matter how much time passes.

A bead of sweat trickles down the side of his face. He's covered in it. His pyjama shirt is paper mache'd to his back. He needs another shower. Needs to wash all of this away; the dirt and the filth, the rancid feelings churning in his stomach and the warm discomfort stirring between his legs.

He's so hard he can barely think, and he's bitten his lip to the point where he's beginning to taste the metallic tang of his own blood. His hands move into his hair, raking his fingers through the damp strands and tugging at the roots as he pleads with a God that he doesn't even believe him for you to just leave him alone.

But his prayers fall on deaf ears, as they have done for months now. You won't get out of his head. No matter how hard he tries to push the thought of you away, you always come back to him. And now, with that dream—

He can't stop replaying it. It's stuck on loop in his mind, rewinding again and again like an old VHS tape. And he can't tear himself away.

He closes his eyes, and he can still feel you. Your warmth. Your hands in his hair. Your breath on his skin. His cock strains against his pants as he remembers how it felt to be inside of you, how perfect you had been—

He flops back against the mattress, squeezing his eyes shut as the nonsensical war continues to rage in his mind. Reason versus madness. Logic versus desire.

Spencer shouldn't be thinking about you, but he is. He shouldn't want you, but he does. He can't possibly give in to the base desires of his body, but his hands, possessed by it, begin to wander all the same. The vision of you spurs him on until he is tugging at the drawstring of his pyjama pants and freeing his cock with a weak kind of desperation that makes him feel utterly pathetic, but he is past the point of caring now.

His fingers tremble slightly as they graze his shaft; the last remnants of self-control, of logic, crumbling at the hands of his own disgusting needs. Keeping his eyes shut tight, he lets that need overwhelm him — pent up over months, and finally set free in what may just be the most pitiful way possible.

He pictures you. What he saw in that dream, and then some. Your eyes, your lips, your body; what he would do to you, if you were in that room with him right now. All of the ways in which he would ruin you, avenge his own dignity, his self-respect — all things which you have taken from him, losses which your absence only amplifies.

He wonders what it would be like to fuck you. Actually fuck you. Not just in a dream, but in reality. He wants to— no, needs to, for reasons he cannot even pretend to understand. It is inexplicable; it's something he should not even be able to conceive, and yet he is thinking about it constantly. Obsessively.

Spencer does not know when this obsession arose. He does not know when this shift took place and lust took a hold of him — because that is what this is about now. It's no longer about the guilt he felt, he doesn't care about absolving himself of it anymore, he just wants you. Behind bars, or on your knees. He doesn't care which. He wants to have you, to beat you at your stupid game, and to fuck you the way he does in his dreams until— until—

His hips buck up into his hands, sputtering pathetically as he finishes. The euphoric daze lasts for but a moment before his head clears and he realises, to his disgust, what he has just done, and it makes him sick.

Forcing himself out of that bed, he rushes into the bathroom. He sets the shower pressure to high and the water to cold, and he stands under the harsh spray for as long as he can bear to, leaning against the wall like it's the only thing keeping him upright, until the chill finally beats out the heat still raging inside of him.

There is something wrong with Spencer Reid. Something that has been building over these five months, and something, he is beginning to fear, that will never go away.

It is Friday, day four of their investigation, and they feel no closer to finding whoever is responsible for these murders than they had been when they first stepped foot onto these frozen grounds. The BAU have solved far worse cases, and in far less time, so what is so different about this one? Could it be the snow? The below freezing temperatures? The audience of students and faculty watching their every move?

Whatever it is, the team ought to push it to the back of their minds, else they risk this case spiralling well out of their control.

They are gathered around the table in the study room, ping-ponging ideas back and forth, bouncing them off of the walls as though they may find a breakthrough in their echo. And it's not like they have nothing; they have information, and plenty of it, they just cannot do anything with it. 

They heard word yesterday of a list. A list detailing the names of men who were deemed 'red flags.' Men who have a history of aggressive or predatory behaviour. Men whom the women on campus should go out of their way to avoid. Coincidentally, each man who has fallen victim to this unsub were named on that very list and, at last, the BAU thought they had a break in the case.

With no time to waste, they began questioning students about this alleged list, but their responses had brought the team nothing but disappointment. Nobody wanted to talk about it. The boys only wished to complain about how it ruined the social lives of those named, and the girls jumped to defend it with everything they had — but no one, not a soul, could give them the name of the individual who started the list to begin with.

Nobody had anything of substance to say about this list, not even when they were told that the unsub was likely using it as a hitlist, and the BAU were left, once again, with nothing.

"I can see why the girls don't want to point fingers," Emily says. She's sitting directly across from Spencer, tapping her pen against the table. "This list seems to be the only thing that helps them feel safe here."

"Yes, but it is also getting people killed," Hotch counters. His tone is gentle, non-accusatory. He isn't trying to discredit the girls' desire to keep themselves safe, but he is right: people are dying.

"People who were publicly deemed scum of the earth," Penelope mutters. The phone speakers crackle with a slight static as she speaks. "I might be playing devil's advocate here, but with the amount of misconduct allegations against these guys, I—"

"Garcia," he warns.

"Sorry."

"She does have a point," JJ says. "Obviously these men may not deserve to be killed, but it does seem like we're looking at a vigilante here."

"A female one, too, by the looks of it," Morgan muses, flicking through his file, "one who drugs her victims, humiliates them, and strangles them — probably because she gets off on watching it. She's a freak."

"And she has continued to operate despite our presence on campus," Hotch adds.

Rossi nods. "She's overconfident."

"Dedicated to her cause," Emily says.

"And she isn't going to stop," Spencer finishes, "not until we catch her."

"So we think she's going all-or-nothing?" Garcia asks.

"It looks that way," JJ sighs.

Her lack of enthusiasm is felt by the whole team. There's a heaviness in the air, one that refuses to go away no matter how much they sit here brainstorming. 

Before they can begin throwing around the same theories yet again, Spencer speaks up with something new.

"I think she may be enjoying this," he suggests, "running circles around us."

"The same way she enjoys watching her victims asphyxiate," Rossi chimes in, picking up on his train of thought immediately, "it gives her a sense of control."

Nodding, Spencer leans forward and rests his elbows on the table. "Yes, that explains why she would—" he cuts himself off as a slight frown crosses his face, and then he asks, "what if it's more than that?"

"More than control?"

"What if she's just a sadist?"

"We rarely see overlap between vigilantism and the dark tetrad," Hotch says, pinching the bridge of his nose, "especially in women."

His tone, although it isn't harsh, shoots down Spencer's suggestion with a precision that leaves little room for argument.

"You're right," Spencer says, "but I was— no, never mind."

Morgan shakes his head. "Reid, if you have any thoughts, you're better off sharing them. We could use that brain of yours right now."

"I don't know," he mutters, leaning back with a sigh. "I just feel as though we're missing something, and I— I don't know what it is, so…I'm just trying to fill the gaps with whatever I can, I guess."

Uncertainty is not a trait that Spencer often displays, and it causes Morgan to raise an eyebrow.

"What time did you get back to the hotel last night?" he asks.

"One forty-three."

"Reid," he sighs, "you're no use to anyone if you aren't sleeping, man."

"I am sleeping, I just— It's this case," he says, "it feels like the answer is right in front of me, but my brain just won't—" he huffs and rubs his eyes, "sorry."

"It's alright," Morgan says. He gives Spencer's leg a light kick under the table. "Hey, why don't you go drop in on your girlfriend when she gets here? See if she has any information for us?"

Spencer finds himself nodding before he has even realised what was said. "My— my what?" he turns to Morgan, frowning as his face begins to flush. "Miss— Miss Lovelace is not my—"

"Are you sure about that?" he asks. "You've been drooling over her since we got here."

"I have not—"

"You kinda have," JJ says.

Spencer sputters in disbelief and shakes his head. "I've been talking to her!"

"Yeah," Rossi flashes him a teasing smirk, "a lot."

"I think it's cute," Emily adds.

"It's— it's not like…that," Spencer insists, "I'm just investigating—"

"Right, because reciting poetry to her counts as investigating, does it?" Morgan asks.

"That was just—"

Garcia's static-ridden voice cuts him off with a high-pitched squeal. "He's been reciting poetry to her?"

"In French," Emily says, unable to suppress her grin.

"Ooh, I didn't know you were such a romantic, Spence!"

"I'm not a—"

This discussion, if you can call it that, continues on for some time. With each comment thrown his way, Spencer feels his face grow hotter and hotter until he's convinced he may genuinely be the first human to experience true spontaneous combustion — and, even then, the team do not stop tormenting him.

.⋆♱❦

"A list?"

"Have you heard about it?"

Spencer is leaning over the front desk, eyeing you with a poorly concealed eagerness that reads almost as desperation — and it may well be.

You sit back in your chair and press down on your pen until you hear it click. "Is this to do with your case?" you ask.

Spencer purses his lips into a smile, as though he knows you have information — or suspects it of you, at least. He really hopes that he is right in thinking you may be of some help because, at this point, you seem to be the only rational person on this campus, the only person willing to give the BAU anything to work with at all, and he really does not want to traipse around the university asking the same students the same questions, again, only to be met with the same infuriating non-answers.

"There is a list, I think, going around naming and shaming some men who haven't exactly been…chivalrous," you say, "is that the list you're talking about?"

Your words ignite a spark of hope in his chest, and he inches closer, nodding. "Do you know who started it?"

"Nope," you say with a simple shrug. It seems to be all you have to say but, upon seeing the way Spencer promptly begins falling into despair, you add: "People think it was some sorority girl who started it, but I doubt it was any one person in particular."

Spencer frowns. "You think it was a collaborative effort?"

"Absolutely. The guys on that list range from jocks to astrophysics students — I didn't even know we had an astrophysics course. It's a communal thing, it has to be."

"You've seen it?" he asks.

"Everyone has."

He nods slowly, mulling over your words before returning to his initial point. "But it has so have originated somewhere."

"Well, yes, but—" you stop yourself short, seemingly stricken by a horrific thought. "Wait, the people who have been killed, were they all—"

"On the list," he says.

"…shit."

Spencer feels a pang of guilt as he watches your expression change from disbelief to a grave kind of acceptance. He doesn't want to be talking about this, not with you.

"I'm sorry," he says, and he means it, "but are you sure you don't know who started this list?"

Solemnly, you shake your head, "I have no idea," you say. "But…do you think the person who started it is the one responsible for all of this? I would have thought it'd be more likely that someone saw it and decided to appropriate it for their own…agenda."

"That is the most likely possibility, yes," he says, "however we still think it is best to find whoever started the list, in case they have any information we could use."

"I suppose you best start knocking on sorority doors, then."

"Yes," he mutters, donning an ironic smile, "it does seem that is our next course of action."

Seeing his blatant lack of enthusiasm, you raise an eyebrow. "What? You aren't a fan of sorority girls?" you ask. "Cheerleaders not your type?"

"It's not— It's not that, I'm just—" Spencer stammers, shaking your head as your lips curl into a smile. "We've spoken to plenty of the young women on this campus, and none of them seem particularly interested in helping us. I'm—" he sighs. "I'm worried they may think this unsub is doing them a favour."

His suggestion causes your smile to fade. "You think they're protecting a serial killer?"

"I— I didn't mean—"

"Surely they're just protecting the list that is designed to protect them, no?"

"Yes, of course," he says quickly. "I know they are just trying to protect themselves; I meant nothing against them, I just— it's hard not to feel…frustrated when we're making no progress. It feels like we're running in circles, playing…I don't know, cat and mouse with an unsub who just won't—"

It isn't until the words are leaving his mouth does he realise how whiny he sounds.

"Sorry," he mutters, shaking his head. "You shouldn't have to listen to me complain, it isn't polite of me."

"It's okay," you say, offering him a small, reassuring smile. "You're allowed to complain as much as you like."

"No," he mirrors your smile, hoping his tiredness doesn't show through it, "I have my team to complain to. How's your, um, paper coming along?"

"How's your investigation coming along?" you counter, raising an eyebrow.

Spencer huffs, but his smile widens into something more genuine. "Touche," he mutters. He breathes in, as though he is about to say more, but then he bites his cheek. He pauses for a moment, debating if he should voice his next thought, if he will come across as creepy rather than endearing, but then he decides to bite the bullet. "I actually read Paradise Rot this morning. Myrna let me borrow a copy, and I—"

The poor timing of the BAU should be studied, he thinks, because as soon as he starts speaking, Emily Prentiss appears at his side.

"We need you in the study room," she says, keeping her voice low, "it's urgent."

And just like that, any hope of having an actual conversation with you is extinguished before it even has a chance to burn at all, like it was never even there to begin with.

The smile that was starting to creep up your face at the mention of the book promptly vanishes and is replaced by a concerned frown as Emily begins walking away. Once again, Spencer is forced to apologise to you before scurrying away to tend to more urgent matters, even though he would much rather stay with you and continue nurturing this nascent connection, praying to God that you feel it, too.

.⋆♱❦

He stays behind again that night — on account of the non-existent progress he and his team have made in this investigation, and nothing more. Because what good is sleep, if he is to wake up to the news of another murder? The only way to stop this unsub is getting ahead of her, and it should not be that hard of a task. He's a profiler, for God's sake, he should be able to profile an unsub, no matter how much trouble they give him.

But profiling this woman is fast turning into an impossible task, because Spencer feels as though he is perpetually thirty steps behind wherever she is.

There is more to this case, there has to be. He can feel it; a flaw in their working profile, a gap in their theory, but he cannot put words to it. Maybe there's something in the water here, something preventing him from thinking as he usually would.

As the clock inches closer and closer to midnight, he can feel the unsub slipping away. She likely isn't going to make her escape just yet, but Spencer knows there isn't much time until she decides to disappear. That is, of course, assuming she is rational, which she may well not be — he does not know.

The BAU had received news of another body during your earlier conversation, which was why Emily had been so quick to pull him away from you. The man was killed in an identical fashion to the previous four victims: drugged, pantsed, and strangled. Consistency is usually something they value in investigations like this; it lends itself to predictability, and that is often the key to catching an unsub. And this unsub is predictable. They know her MO, they know who she targets — they have a list of names, what more could they want? But that list of names is miles long, and they cannot be there to protect every man that happens to be on it. It isn't feasible. 

Spencer now finds himself wishing this unsub wasn't so consistent. If there were some variation in her ritual, a mistake of some kind, they may be able to use it to their advantage and track her down at last.

Ritual. Is that what this is? Could that be the driving force behind these murders?

The team are set on the idea of the unsub being a vigilante, a woman with a strong sense of justice determined to enact vengeance on bad men. All of their points are valid, he isn't denying that, and yet Spencer still isn't sold on the idea — which wouldn't be so bad, if he could explain why. But what he feels is just that: a feeling. 

It's as though his heart is trying to tell him something that his brain cannot, or will not, hear. Or perhaps it's the reverse. Either way, it doesn't matter. Either way, he's still stuck here, pouring over crime scene photographs as if the answer to this case is hidden amongst them somewhere, as if he may see it if he just strains his eyes for long enough. But his efforts are in vain. There is nothing there.

There is, however, a quiet knock on the door barely a few minutes after the clock strikes twelve. The door opens a second later, and you pop your head into the study room. You greet him with a small smile but, upon seeing his dejected expression, that smile morphs into a slight frown.

"Can I get you anything?" you ask.

Spencer shakes his head. "I'm alright, thank you."

His face must say the complete opposite, because you do not look convinced by his words at all. "You sure?" you try again, tilting your head to the side. "How about coffee?"

Pursing his lips, Spencer's gaze falls back to the photographs and he lets out a sigh. "Coffee would be nice," he admits.

You flash him one last perfect smile before disappearing without another word. A few minutes later, you return with two cups of coffee — one for you, and one for him. Spencer feels a little lighter as you walk back into the room, and he gratefully accepts your caffeinated blessing.

"Thank you."

Cradling your own cup, you lean your hip against the table and say, "I take it you're not having much luck in here."

Spencer's lips pull into a self-conscious smile at your observation. He must look as bad as he feels. "Not really, no."

"Is there…" your gaze strays to the photographs laid out on the table, and something about you shifts upon seeing the images of the bodies. Grimacing, you quickly look away and clear your throat. "Anything I can do?"

"Oh— sorry," Spencer sets his coffee down and rushes to collect the photographs. He gathers them into a neat pile and sets them, face-down, on the table before continuing. "But no, unless you know any femme fatales that happen to be terrorising this university, I don't think there is anything you can do."

"Yeah, I can't help you there, I'm afraid," you say, donning a sympathetic frown as you bring your cup to your lips, but then you pause. "So it's certain, then, that you're looking for a woman?"

"The evidence points that way, yes," he says. "We issued a warning to campus security today, as well as to all of the male students but…I'm not sure how effective it will be. College students aren't exactly known for their, um, abstinence."

"Yeah, they're just—" you cut yourself off with a slight shake of your head, as though dismissing your own thoughts. "Nothing is going to stop a frat boy from sleeping around," you say, "not even a serial killer."

"Apparently not," Spencer sighs. 

As he takes a sip of his coffee, you turn your attention towards the board on the other side of the room, and he watches as your gaze comes to rest on the photographs they have displayed of the victims — the last photos that were taken before their deaths. Five of them. All male. All graduate students. All on that list. 

There's an intensity to your expression. A thoughtfulness, almost, one that he cannot quite get a read on, not until you speak.

"I don't know how you deal with this," you say, shifting so you're sitting on the table rather than leaning against it. Your hand reaches for your necklace, and you roll the bottom of the silver cross between your forefinger and thumb.

"You build up a tolerance," Spencer says. "It's an emotionally taxing job, I'll never try to downplay that, but you learn to compartmentalise pretty quickly."

"That's the filing cabinet thing, right?" you ask. "You stuff part of your life into a drawer and forget about it until it's relevant?"

Spencer nods. "That's one analogy, yes. And that isn't to say that these cases don't…affect us, still — we've just developed the tools needed to process it all. Things can, and do, slip through the cracks on occasion, though."

"Yeah, I can imagine."

"Sorry," he blurts out, shaking his head, "I told you I would stop complaining, and—"

"And I told you it's okay," you reassure him, meeting his gaze with a smile. "You do one hell of a job, doctor. I'd be more concerned if you didn't have anything to complain about."

Spencer hums as he drums his fingers thoughtfully against the sides of his coffee cup. "I just wish I could see what we're missing," he sighs, "I've been here for hours, and—"

"Have you considered that might be the problem?"

Spencer averts his gaze, hanging his head in shame like a scolded child.

"You should sleep," you add.

"I'm not sure I should be taking any advice from you," he mutters, suppressing a small smirk.

His little jab has you rolling your eyes. "Hey, I sleep. 11AM to 4PM, daily."

"On average, adults need between eight and ten hours of sleep per night— or, in your case, per day in order to—"

"And how much sleep are you getting, doc?"

Spencer doesn't respond to that. He can't, not without admitting to sleeping less than you do — that would make him a hypocrite. Again, he averts his gaze, but his silence is just as much of an admission as his words would have been.

"I think you should go back to the hotel," you say.

"It won't do anything," he argues, softly, as he leans back in his chair. "If I try to sleep, I will just lie awake all night thinking about this case. I'm better off here."

"Then what do you plan to do here?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "No offense, doctor, but—"

"Spencer."

"Pardon?"

"You can just—" he clears his throat, feeling his cheeks begin to grow hot. "You can just call me Spencer."

You nod slowly, and he watches your lips curl into a smile. "Well, Spencer, it doesn't seem like you're getting anywhere like this, so what is it? What do you need?"

He sits with your question for a few moments, turning it over in his mind. What does he need? A new brain, perhaps? One that can actually think clearly enough to work this case? 

What tools does he have at his disposal here? What can help him process the thoughts whirring around, inaccessible, in his subconscious? How can he bring them to the surface?

He can feel your eyes on him, watching him patiently as he furrows his brows, deep in thought. You don't try to rush him, or push him in any direction, you just wait.

Until, at last, he speaks.

"Do you have a chess board?"

His question seems to take you by surprise, but only for a moment, and then you're nodding. "Indeed, I do. Give me one minute."

Abandoning your coffee, you leave the study room once more and return a moment later with a rectangular box tucked under your arm. Setting it down on the table, you lift the lid to reveal an old, and clearly well-loved, chess set.

"I'm going to hazard a guess," you murmur as you unpack the box's contents, "and say you're a chess prodigy?"

When Spencer doesn't answer, you glance over at him. The smug little smile on his face speaks for him, and you let out a dramatic sigh.

"There goes any chance of me winning. At least go easy on me?"

"No can do," he says.

"That isn't very good sportsmanship, Spencer."

"I never said I was a good sport, Love."

You shoot him a playful glare as you begin setting up the chess board, carefully placing each piece so they are perfectly aligned with one another. Spencer was right, you are obsessed with detail — more so than he had initially speculated, actually. He watches the way your hands move, the way you will pick up a piece and put it back down in almost the exact same spot with barely a millimetre’s difference, the way your fingers hover, uncertain, as though you are resisting the urge to do it again even though it is already perfect. Even though it does not matter at all. But it matters to you, evidently, so Spencer does not speak on it. He just watches, silently, and with poorly concealed fondness. It's endearing. Cute, even.

"I'm not bad at chess," you make a point to clarify as you take a seat next to him.

"I'll be the judge of that," he says, scooting closer.

"You sound as though you have an ego problem— wait," as Spencer reaches out to make the first move, you place your hand on top of his and guide it, gently, away from the chess board.

Spencer freezes up as soon as you touch him. Your hand is cold against his, but the contact in itself is enough to send a wave of heat rushing through him. He stares down at your hand and, in just a matter of seconds, the heat reaches his face, staining his cheeks all shades of red.

"I'll play on one condition," you say. Your voice encourages him to meet your gaze, and you smile as you lean forward to speak in a quiet, smug tone. "If I win, you have to kiss me."

Spencer is absolutely certain that he has misheard you.

"…what?" his flush worsens as your smile grows wider, all but confirming what he heard. "That— that's—"

"But I won't win though, right?"

You aren't smiling, you're smirking. Teasing him, and quite blatantly so.

Spencer's mouth moves soundlessly. He can't get his words out, not when you're looking at him like that. Not when you're clearly enjoying making him so flustered.

"Oh, come on," you say, pouting.

Everything Spencer wishes to say in response to your absurd request gets caught in his throat. It's as though he has lost his filter entirely, and every panicked, disjointed thought he has is trying to force its way out of him all at once. But there are too many of them, and they pile up until he feels himself begin to choke.

Shaking his head, he takes a deep breath and finally manages to say something. "That— that wouldn't be appropriate. I'm a fed— federal agent, I can't—"

"And?" you ask. "I'm not a witness, or a suspect, or…whatever else," you pause to wait for a response, but he is unable to give one.

Nothing you said is wrong. There are no rules prohibiting what you are suggesting, but that does not matter. Spencer can't agree to such a thing. He can't agree to…kiss you, that would be ridiculous. 

…or can he?

There's no one here. The library is empty, no one is going to walk in. He could, if he wanted to, kiss you. It wouldn't affect the investigation, it's just a kiss. 

Before he can come to a decision, you're pulling your hand away. "Hey, if you're scared of losing, then you can play by yourself," you say, leaning back with a shrug, "it makes no odds to me—"

"Fine."

That's the only word he can manage to say. Thankfully, it's the right one.

You raise an eyebrow, biting back a smirk. "Fine?"

"Fine," he repeats, this time with a little more certainty.

You watch him for a moment, analysing him, and probably counting the different shades of red you can see on his face before nodding slowly. "Say it," you tell him. "Say you agree to my terms."

"I…" Spencer's throat runs dry, and he swallows hard as he reaches for his coffee. "I agree to your terms."

You cock your head to the side. "Which are..?"

"If I lose," he says, "I kiss you."

The smile that appears on your face has his stomach in knots. 

"Okay. Your move."

And so, with Spencer still flustered to all hell, the game begins. Fortunately, it does not take long for him to find his rhythm and, as he moves his pieces expertly across the board, the cogs in his mind finally begins to turn, allowing those long-trapped thoughts to come loose and begin taking shape. 

You had not been lying when you said you aren't bad at chess. Each of your moves is well thought-out; you don't rush to attack, even when he gives you room to; and you manage to keep up with him pretty well despite the disparity between your abilities. You are, all things considered, decent. But decent is not enough to beat Spencer Reid, even when the game is far from his main focus.

He has to make a conscious effort to not look at your face — it would be far too distracting. Instead, his attention remains mostly on your hands, and the precision with which you move your pieces, as the fog that has been plaguing him for days begins to lift. By diverting part of his focus to the chess board, it takes some of the pressure off of his mind, allowing him to decompress whilst ensuring that the case remains the centre of his attention. And it works. For the first time in what feels like years, Spencer can think.

"Can I ask a question?" you ask, breaking the silence.

"Of course."

"This guy— girl, even…she's supposedly working off of that list, right?"

"We believe so, yes," he says.

"So…" you purse your lips, gaze flicking across the board as you ponder your next move. "What would happen if she reached the end of it?"

Lifting his head, Spencer looks at you curiously. "Are you asking if I think she would stop?"

You shrug. "I guess so. I know it's a long list, but—"

"There are some serial killers who are strictly mission oriented. More often than not, this category of unsub will stop killing, for one reason or another, once their mission has been completed. This could be because they no longer feel the need to kill and, if they haven't been caught, decide to move on with their lives; but more commonly this is because they do not live beyond the end of their mission. They will often die, intentionally, at the hands of law enforcement, and— I'm rambling, sorry."

"It's okay," you say, finally moving one of your pieces. "I asked."

Spencer nods, and his attention momentarily returns to the chessboard. It takes him less than a second to think before making his move. "To answer your question: no, I don't think this unsub would stop if she were to reach the end of her list."

"Why not?"

"Assuming she is mission orientated, she is likely targeting young men who have hurt, be it physically or emotionally, young women. But that, I think, is far too broad of a demographic to effectively target. If what she wants is to eliminate every bad man from the equation, then one arbitrary list isn't going to be enough to satisfy her, especially not once she has a taste for murder."

The two of you are dancing around each other on the chess board. You're playing cautiously, always sure to ascertain Spencer's current goal before making any major moves. You're learning his playstyle, and you're learning it fast. Spencer, on the other hand, is still trying to determine what kind of player you are, but you are giving him very little information to work with.

"Which is why I think that this may not be about the list at all. At least, not entirely," he continues. "If this were solely about the list, she wouldn't be wasting any time on her kills, and she definitely wouldn't go through the trouble of drugging them, or staging their clothes, or even choking them."

"She would just kill them as fast as she could," you say, nodding along, "and get out as soon as possible."

"But she isn't doing that," he shifts in his seat, tapping his fingers against the table as he studies the chess board, "and that tells me that this is just as much about the ritual as it is about the kills themselves, if not more so. I think that the list is providing her with easy access to the type of men she wants to target, but I don't think it's as important to her as we have been making it out to be. Nor do I think she's a vigilante — not in the traditional sense, at least."

He steals one of your pieces and sets it aside before abruptly rising from his chair. You watch, with a slight frown, as he walks a lap around the table, and you shake your head in amusement. Just as you reach out to make your next move, Spencer speaks up again.

"I think she's compulsive," he says.

Your hand stills. It hovers, uncertain, above your chosen chess piece.

"Compulsive?" you repeat, sounding confused.

"I don't think there's any other explanation for why she is insisting on sticking to her ritual at a time like this."

He's starting to pace now, oblivious to the way you're watching him move around the room with his cane. Your hand still lingers above the chess board, abandoned in favour of listening to him speak.

"The university is on high-alert— the FBI are on campus, and yet we have observed no changes in her behaviour," he continues, "because I don't think she can change. I think she needs to kill these men in this specific fashion, and that need outweighs the risk of getting caught, which is why she has continued killing despite the threat of exposure."

"So…" looking back at the game in front of you, you make your move, stealing one of his pieces. "It's like an addiction?"

"That is the general consensus among psychologists, yes. Serial killers are widely considered the most dangerous type of addict, with murder being their drug of choice. It's all in the risk, and the adrenaline, and the catharsis, but—" he turns, meeting your gaze from across the room. "Our unsub is likely addicted to the act of killing, I don't doubt that, but this," he gestures to the board, to the words drugging, asphyxiation, and humiliation written in big, bold handwriting, "this is ritual— it's compulsion. She night be able to resist the urge to kill, but when she does kill it needs to be in this specific manner. She can't do it any other way."

A slight frown crosses your expression as Spencer returns briefly to make his move. "Why not?"

"If my theory is correct, then she is likely stuck in a loop, a— a repetitive way of thinking that results in a specific behavioural cycle," he says. He's beginning to gesture wildly with his hands as he speaks. "It's a defining trait in those with obsessive-compulsive disorder—"

"OCD doesn't make people murderers," you say.

"Of course it doesn't. There is obviously something else at play here, something pushing her to cause harm, and— and in such cases, those obsessive-compulsive tendencies will often show up within a person's crimes. I'm certain that is what we are seeing here."

Pursing your lips, you turn your gaze back to the chess board as Spencer continues.

"I think we're looking at an unsub who chooses to murder, but is required by compulsion to go about it a certain way. If that is the case, then it is possible that she feels compelled to replicate her first kill, and will continue to replicate it until the compulsion stops, until she—"

Spencer's pacing comes to an abrupt end as he stares, frozen, at the crime scene board. He blinks hard before looking back at the photographs which are still face-down on the table. He flicks through them in his mind and, at last, begins to see what it is he has been missing this entire time.

"What?" you ask.

"…that's it," he whispers.

"What is?"

"This," he rushes over to the board and uses his cane to point to the photograph of the first victim, tapping the tip against the image as though what he is thinking should be obvious, "wasn't her first kill."

Immediately, you frown. "But—"

"It's her first kill here, on this campus, but it isn't her first kill. It can't be. I—I won't show you the photographs, but this murder is too sophisticated, too specific, to be her first time. It can't be the origin of the compulsion."

"So you're saying—"

"She knows what she's doing," he says, "because she has done it before."

"…shit."

"She isn't overconfident because she's on a mission," he mutters, scoffing at his own foolishness as he circles back to you to make his move, "she's overconfident because she has experience, and she knows she isn't going to get caught as long as we treat this like a new case."

"So, there are other men out there who have been…" your fingers hover over a chess piece as you gaze at the board, "…you know."

"Strangled? Absolutely. Likely drugged, too," he says. "I suppose it may be possible that the staging of the pants is a new addition I—I can't recall seeing any cases that are an exact match to what we are seeing here…"

You make your move as Spencer continues speaking, and he hardly notices; the game is nearing its end, but it is the last thing on his mind right now.

"But, if she's intelligent," he continues, growing increasingly agitated as he talks, "then it might be the case that she has pushed herself to adjust her ritual. It wouldn't be pleasant for her, but it would prevent us from immediately connecting these murders to any existing cases, and— and—"

"Spencer," you say gently.

"Sorry," he quickly shakes his head, forcing himself to slow down. "Sorry, I'm just— I've been stuck on this for days."

"I know," you say, gesturing to the board, "but it's your move."

"Right," taking a deep breath, he returns to the chess board. "I think…if she is trying to adjust her ritual to throw us off, then that may be why her kills have had such a short cooling-off period," he says, keeping his tone steady as he picks up his piece and quickly sets it back down. "It isn't giving her the release she needs, because she is resisting a major compulsion, or— or perhaps substituting it for something else.'"

"But, if she's gotten away with it in the past, won't she just disappear again once she realises you're on to her?" you ask. Your hand comes up to touch your necklace as you study the state of the game in front of you with a pronounced frown.

"Yes," he says, turning away from you to continue his pacing. "Which is why we need to find her as soon as possible. I'll have to call Garcia and ask her to search for any open cases with a similar—"

"Checkmate."

Spencer almost does not hear you over the sound of his own voice, and then he spins around so fast he almost loses his balance. His mouth remains open, but no words come out as his bewildered, almost offended gaze comes to rest on the chess board. It's a chaotic mess, but you won.

He blinks repeatedly, unable to believe what he is seeing. He put you in a terrible spot, he was sure of it. His victory was guaranteed, so how did you—

Did the case really distract him to the point where he left himself open to attack? Was he really that careless? That blind?

Momentarily forgetting his breakthrough, Spencer takes an uncertain step forward and asks, in an impossibly quiet voice, only one thing.

"…what?"

All you do in response is shrug, veiling your smugness under your usual calm expression. "I told you I wasn't bad."

"No," Spencer shakes his head so fast it feels as though it may fall clean off. "No, I was— I was distracted. The— the case, I was—"

"Mhm," you nod, allowing yourself a small smile. "And you solved it. That's the bigger victory, right?"

"Yeah— yeah, um…" Spencer's lips form a tight line as he tries to re-centre himself. It's just one chess game, it doesn't matter, not when he might finally be able to find this unsub. "I need to go," he says quickly.

"Yes," you say, standing up, "you do. Go tell your team, and maybe take a nap whilst you're at it."

"I will."

With that, Spencer turns away and heads for the door as you begin gathering the discarded chess pieces. His footsteps are brisk, hurried, fuelled by an adrenaline that has vanquished his previous exhaustion and left him feeling energised and determined — like himself again. This is it. This is the breakthrough he needed. All he has to do now is go back to the hotel and call Garcia, and then—

He stops just as his hand finds the door handle. Glancing back over his shoulder, he watches silently as you clean up. You're organising the chess pieces by type before you put them away. Releasing the door handle, he allows his legs to carry him back towards the table, back towards you. 

He approaches you from behind, and he places a gentle hand on your arm to encourage you to turn around. And then his lips are on yours, and he is kissing you, just like he promised he would. 

It isn't rough. He could never be rough, not with you. It's clumsy, maybe, and unpractised, but the feeling behind it is undeniable. He is kissing you with intent, as a means of conveying all that he is too awkward, too afraid, to speak aloud as he pushes you, gently, against the table. The backs of your thighs meet the wood, and you instinctively reach a hand behind you to steady yourself only to be met with the clatter of chess pieces as you knock over the remains of your game. 

The sound startles him slightly, and he pulls back, breaking the kiss. You gaze up at him, wide-eyed as a flush creeps into your cheeks. It's subtle, but he sees it, and the effect it has on him is astounding. It's enough to make him weak, weaker than he already was. So, taking your face into his painfully tender hands, he kisses you again.

This time, you're prepared. Your hands come to rest on his neck as you pull him close, returning his affections with a fervour that leaves him dizzy and aching. Aching for more. More of you. Your lips seem to fit together perfectly, and you fall into a rhythm that comes to you almost as naturally as breathing does. The feeling of your hands on his skin is almost too much for Spencer to handle. He knows you can feel his heart pounding, feel the blood rushing under his skin as you press your thumb ever so gently against his adam's apple. The pressure is barely noticeable, and you probably aren't even aware that you're doing it, but Spencer feels it. And it is enough to drive him positively insane.

So, he pulls away. Because he has to. Because he isn't sure he can trust himself to let this continue. But God, does he want to. He wants to stay here, with you, and forget all about everything else — the case, the team, he would abandon them all in a heartbeat, if he could, even if it were just for the night. But he can't.

Instead, he leans in close. Close enough for your noses to touch, and nothing more, even as you tilt your head up to invite him back in. His fingers tremble slightly against the flushed skin of your cheeks as he gazes down at you with a look almost akin to reverence — and maybe it is. Maybe he reveres you, maybe you're the most perfect thing he has ever laid eyes on, maybe he should kiss you again. Just one more time. 

His nose brushes against yours as he plays with the idea of giving in, but he doesn't. He, as he always does, has more urgent matters to attend to. His right hand slips from your face down to the base of your neck, and he catches the chain of your necklace between his fingers. He adjusts it, carefully, so the chain is straight and the cross sits perfectly between your collarbones.

"Thank you, Love."

His words come out in a soft, gentle whisper, and he takes a step back from you. He reiterates, rather sheepishly, that he has to go, and you wave him away with a smile he will never, ever forget.

Leaving that study room, Spencer feels lighter than air. He floats all the way back to the hotel, grinning to himself even as he prepares to wake the team and inform them of his theory.

When this is over, he thinks, he is going to ask you out on a date.

.⋆♱❦

Saturday begins with the discovery of a sixth body. The BAU, who have spent all night on the phone with Garcia researching cases until they were sure their brains were going to melt, arrive at the scene at the harsh, dark hour of six in the morning. Fresh snow is piling up on the streets and, by the time they make it to the front door of the victim's home, not one of them can feel their feet.

Not even Spencer, who is wearing four pairs of mismatched socks, is safe from the cold numbing his extremities. His trousers are soaked almost to his shins from wading through the snow. He can feel ice-cold water running down the backs of his legs and into his shoes as he steps into the building.

"Michael Trevor," Emily sighs, following close behind him, "as far as we're aware, his name wasn't on the list."

"The timing is different, too," Rossi mutters. He's standing, awkwardly, in the middle of the living room, and he too is soaked from his knees down. "None of the other victims were killed this early in the morning. Our girl's gone way off script."

As he speaks, a police officer emerges from the bedroom looking about as exhausted as the team feel. "His roommate called it in as soon as he woke up," he says before gesturing to the bedroom, "the vic's in there, if you wanna take a look. Poor kid."

One by one, the BAU filter into the bedroom. The corpse on the bed is staged in the exact same way as the previous victims: strangled and humiliated — and the toxicology report will undoubtedly come back positive for Rohypnol.

"Same thing, again," Morgan says, "you're right about this being a ritual, Reid."

"But why target someone who isn't on the list?" JJ asks. "He can't be a victim of opportunity, because she would have had to knock on his door in the dead of night. She must have known he lived here."

"And he let her in," Hotch says, crossing his arms, "despite knowing there's a female serial killer on the loose. He must have known her, or at least recognised her."

Rossi shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. "But why the sudden change in behaviour?"

Morgan shrugs. "Maybe we spooked her, or something."

Spencer is about to turn away from the body when he notices something. There's a chain around the victim's neck. A silver one. It doesn't mean anything by itself, but the way it is positioned is enough to give him pause. The chain is straightened out, the clasp is positioned at the nape of his neck, and the polished cross pendant rests perfectly between his collarbones. A necklace wouldn't sit like that naturally, it would have gotten tangled in the struggle. The unsub must have adjusted it after he was killed, but why? And the pendant—

Spencer knows what it is like to be shot. He knows of the pain. He can still feel it searing through his leg, ripping apart his muscles with unbridled ferocity, when he closes his eyes to go to sleep. He knows the shock that follows after the bullet makes contact, the way the brain will rapidly send out signals to block the pain. He knows the confusion that occurs as the conscious mind tries to make sense of what is happening to the body.

He does not feel as though he has been shot, but he is experiencing all of the symptoms. 

"Spence?" JJ asks. "You okay?"

He doesn't answer her. He turns, instead, to the police officer standing in the doorway. "That—" he clears his throat, trying to keep his voice steady. 

He is jumping to conclusions, he's sure. It's just a coincidence. He is going to keep telling himself that until, by some miracle, it becomes reality.

"That necklace that the victim is wearing," he says, "did the roommate confirm it was his?"

Please, say yes. Please, say this isn't what he thinks it is. What he knows it is.

"Oh, that?" the officer shrugs. "He said he's never seen it before, assumed it was new."

Something nasty nestles in the pit of Spencer's stomach. It makes his whole body thrum with a nauseating kind of adrenaline. He can feel himself begin to sweat, despite the cold.

"What's the significance of the necklace?" Morgan asks.

His throat feels tight.

"Wait," Emily says, "there was a case Garcia sent me, in Vermont, where the unsub was suspected of leaving necklaces on their victims. Crucifixes, like that one."

He can't breathe.

"And in Maine," JJ adds, "there were bodies found there that matched that signature, too."

He knew he was missing something. Something right in front of him.

You were right in front of him.

"There have been bodies found across all of New England in the last decade," Hotch says, "most of them were reported as isolated incidents. Nobody thought them connected until they were submitted to ViCAP, and—"

"…fuck."

How could he not see it?

The team turn to him, wide-eyed, and watch as he begins raking his fingers through his hair. Clearly, something is wrong. They're waiting for him to tell them — but how can he? How can he confess to being so stupid? 

He knew about those cases. About the connection between them. About the necklaces. He knew about you, he just couldn't see it— no, he didn't want to. He didn't want to suspect you. He wrote his suspicion off as intrigue, as interest, as a dumb crush, but he knew. He must have known, because this revelation has not surprised him. He isn't shocked. He isn't in a state of disbelief. He just feels sick.

Spencer had been hoping for a variation in the ritual, for something to point him in the right direction, and you gave it to him. You made sure he would never doubt the identity of this unsub again. 

Killing so close to home had been a huge risk, and you had left the necklaces out of your ritual in order to throw them off — Spencer had been right about that. You needed time before they linked these murders to the trail of corpses that you had previously left in your wake, time to plan your escape. 

Everything that Spencer said last night was right. The ritual, the compulsion, the prior experience— he was right about all of it.

But you had heard everything.

He had told you everything. He gave you your own profile. He handed it to you on a silver fucking platter. He let you get away.

Everything he felt for you sinks to his stomach, and it rots. He can feel it burning a hole inside of him, chewing away at his insides and leaving a gaping hole in its wake. 

The BAU talk a lot about worst-case scenarios. A key part of every investigation is assessing risk, and understanding what exactly could go wrong. Not once have they had to cite anything like this, because nobody is stupid enough to do anything like this. Nobody on this team is dense enough to give out case details, to brainstorm with a member of the public. Nobody on this goddamn team is stupid enough to kiss a fucking serial killer.

Hotch asks him a question that he cannot hear over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. A perpetual rumble drowning out the rest of the world, the concerns of his team, until all he is left with is you. 

Slowly, he takes a deep breath, as though it may lessen the blow of what he is about to say. The words clog his throat — apologies and excuses and 'I didn't know's — and he feels himself choke on them, on the guilt that is ravaging his body, but he forces himself to speak all the same, not caring for how shaky his voice is, or how pathetic he sounds. Because pathetic is exactly what he is, and he does not deserve to be seen as anything more. 

And so, Spencer Reid closes his eyes, and he begins his first confession.

taglist: @ivynotreally @rebelok @idcalol @reidswife-x @siriuslyval03 @fefa-la-printcessa @thecrimsonfog @caterppillar @legendaryrebelpersona @angelb0t @gilwm

.⋆♱❦

The BAU first arrive on that college campus on a Tuesday in 2009. 

It is two weeks before winter break is due to commence but, even so, a decent amount of the student population has already returned home for the holidays. Usually, Spencer would air a complaint or two about the 'younger generation's disregard for education,' but he chooses to keep his thoughts to himself today. The students here have more than enough reason to flee campus, and Spencer would not blame them if they chose never to return.

Amherst College is suffocating under the snow. Their feet leave deep wells in it with every step they take. Six sets of footprints mapping out their every move. Spencer almost slips twice as they approach the campus library. Both times he hears Morgan snicker behind him. The cold air bites at his cheeks, his nose, just about anything it can. He keeps his scarf pulled up around his mouth, breathing into the fabric to create a pocket of warm air. 

Generally speaking, the vast majority of people consider themselves to be good people. It's somewhat of a flaw in the human condition, belief in one's own goodness. It can lead people to do terrible things, and it arms them with a myriad of excuses if they are ever subjected to scrutiny — because nobody wants to think of themselves as bad. Spencer himself is no exception.

It is often what makes unsubs…well, unsubs. Spencer has worked many cases in his relatively short time at the BAU, and a good number of the serial killers he has interacted with have had one thing in common: aside from their bloodlust, they believe wholeheartedly that what they are doing is right — they wouldn't be doing it otherwise. People have an inherent bias towards their own cause, unsubs especially; they would much prefer to delude themselves into believing they are good than accept the reality that they are not. This reality, more often than not, is a crushing one.

This is not true in every case, of course. Antisocial personalities, for example, feel little remorse for the harm that they cause. Be it due to genetic predisposition or environmental factors, unsubs with ASPD lack any regard for the well-being of others, and they are often aware of this. In such cases, that reality that they are a bad person may in fact be a freeing one, for they may no longer feel the need to pretend to be something they are not.

The most important step in building a profile, Spencer would argue, is establishing what kind of person the unsub is. Are they the kind of person who maintains a belief in their own goodness, even as they are causing harm? Or do they know that they are bad, and they simply do not care? It is a distinction that must be made early on, because it will alter the trajectory of the profile entirely — the behaviour of a sociopathic unsub will differ massively from that of a 'typical' unsub, even when they are doing all that they can to blend in. 

The Behavioural Analysis Unit never fail to recognise these behavioural differences, as long as they understand what, and who, they are looking for.

It is 6:46PM when you walk through those library doors, gloveless hands cradling a cup of coffee like it's the only thing keeping you warm. And it probably is; you aren't dressed for the winter, and certainly not for the snow. You're wearing a dress — black, with intricate lace detailing — under a knitted shawl. The dress stops just shy of your ankles, and the layered fabric sways with each step you take. The light catches on the fast-melting snowflakes that stick to your clothes and it looks, from where he is standing, as though you are covered in glitter. It's mesmerising, almost. You flow into the room like poetry given life.

Nobody else notices your arrival for they are too busy discussing the case: three male graduate students have been found dead in their respective apartments. The cause of death in each case was asphyxiation, though that was somewhat obvious from the severe bruising on their necks. Bruising that, upon second glance, seemed to match the size and shape of their belts, which were missing from the scenes. The men were also found with their pants pulled down to their ankles and, as hard as they had tried to keep the details of these murders contained, word of the 'pantser' has been spreading like wildfire across the university.

The toxicology report found Rohypnol in their systems. This, paired with the use of the belt rather than their own hands, lead Spencer to conclude that the unsub is likely not strong enough to overpower their victims physically. He had just shared this with the team, and was about to propose his additional theory that the victims may be closeted gay men, when you walked in.

He watches the way your casual demeanour falters upon seeing the small gathering of FBI agents in the middle of the library. Your gaze flicks to the crime scene board, then to the files spread out across their table and then, finally, you look him in the eye. You blink twice, confusion creeping into your otherwise neutral expression, and redirect your attention to the front desk where the librarian, Myrna, is sitting. Upon noticing your presence, she perks up instantly and breathes out a dramatic sigh of relief.

"There you are!" 

Rising from her seat, she circles around her desk and rushes to greet you. Her wrinkled hands come to rest on your arms, and she shakes her head in disapproval. "Oh dear, aren't you cold?" she asks, tugging at the hem of your shawl. "This is no weather for dresses, Love. Where is your coat?"

In the face of her concern, a small smile graces your lips. You speak quietly, telling her you're fine, before glancing at the team of agents once more. Following your gaze, Myrna's eyebrows shoot up.

"Ah, right! These kind souls are with the FBI," she explains. "They're here to…put an end to this terrible mess."

You nod slowly and, before you can say anything further, Myrna is leading you over to the team.

"There are agents…" she narrows her eyes, squinting up at Hotch, "…Hitchcock?"

"Hotchner," he says. "SSA Aaron Hotchner."

"SSA David Rossi."

"SSA Derek Morgan."

"SSA Emily Prentiss."

"SSA Jennifer Jareau."

There's a lull after JJ introduces herself, a silence that stretches out far longer than it should — in fact, it shouldn't be there at all. Derek gives Spencer's arm a nudge, jolting him out of his stupor.

"I'm, um, Spencer— I'm Doctor Spencer Reid," he says. The words tumble out of his mouth in such a haphazard manner it's almost humiliating, and he's sure he's disgraced himself in front of you already, but you do not appear phased at all by his rushed introduction.

At your side, Myrna nods. "That's what I said," she says, not caring to hide the smirk that appears on her face as she glances at Spencer. She then gestures to you, using both hands to convey her pride as though she is presenting a hard-won trophy. "And this is our lovely nightshift librarian, Miss Lovelace."

You clear your throat and don a polite, practiced smile. "Please," you say, "just call me Love."

Hotch greets you with an approving nod. "Myrna has spoken rather highly of you," he says, "I hope our presence won't interfere with your work."

"Oh, no," you shake your head, "you do whatever you need to do, don't worry about me."

With another nod front Hotch, you and Myrna turn and head back to the front desk, passing the rest of the BAU on your way.

"Lovelace…"

Spencer does not realise he has spoken out loud until you stop to look back at him over your shoulder, confused. His stomach drops, and he immediately begins stumbling over his words once again.

"I— I was just— I didn't mean to—" he takes a breath, trying to slow down before he makes a complete fool of himself. "Your name, it's…unique, is all. It reminds me of, um, Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace. She was a mathematician, and Charles Babbage called her the Enchantress of Number. I'm— I'm sorry, I'm rambling…"

"She was the daughter of Lord Byron, too," you say.

Your response, however simple, immediately takes a weight off Spencer's shoulders. He feels himself relax, and his lips begin to curl with a poorly suppressed smile. 

"You aren't the first to make that connection," you add. "Myrna convinced herself I was the long-lost grandchild of old George but, obviously, I am not — though I have been told we share some similarities."

Spencer's gaze drops briefly to your neck, where he counts four different necklaces, each of varying length and colour: a black velvet choker; a short string of pearls; a silver cross necklace; and another longer, silver chain with a green crystal pendant — moldavite, if he isn't mistaken.

"Are you also considered mad, bad, and dangerous to know?"

He has no idea what he was trying to achieve with that question. A joke, maybe? An astonishingly rude joke made at the expense of a woman he met a mere thirty seconds ago? God, what is wrong with him?

Your eyes widen a fraction, and his body immediately ignites with panic.

"I am so sorry. I-I didn't mean—"

And then you laugh. It's short, quickly silenced as you bring a hand to your mouth, but it's still a laugh.

Shaking your head, you wave away his apology. "No. No, it was funny," you say, trying to reassure him as his face flushes red with embarrassment. "Fortunately, I don't think I'm considered mad, bad, and dangerous to know — at least I hope I'm not. I meant it in more of a…creative sense."

Spencer blinks hard, regaining his composure quickly as he realises he hasn't offended you. "Do you write poetry?" he asks.

"I tend to prefer prose," you admit. "I do read a lot of poetry, though."

Spencer nods, probably seeming way too enthusiastic. "And is Byron your favourite poet?"

"Oh, not by a long shot. That isn't to say he wasn't talented. A little overrated, maybe, but not bad," you drum your fingers against the sides of your coffee cup as you speak, and your impressive array of rings glimmer in the light. "My favourite poet is Baudelaire."

Baudelaire. Now that is something Spencer can work with. He responds without missing a beat.

"De mon esprit humilié, faire ton lit en ton domaine…"

A look of surprise shatters your carefully neutral surprise. Your eyes widen, and your gaze quickly flicks across his face, and then his clothes, as though you are seeing him for the first time. A self-conscious void opens in the pit of his stomach as you take in the long brown hair, a result of too many cancelled barber's appointments; and the cane in his right hand that he has been using to support his injured knee ever since he was shot; and the revolver holstered at his waist, half-obscured by his brown suit jacket. Goosebumps rush up his arms, and he barely manages to fight the urge to shudder under your scrutiny.

"…infâme à qui je suis lié comme le forçat à la chaîne."

You finish the stanza for him, quietly, before looking up at him once more. Your lips quirk into a smile unlike the one you had put on previously; this is genuine, bordering almost on a smirk, and it makes Spencer's throat run dry. The heat rushing to his cheeks is immediate but, instead of shying away, he returns your smile in kind.

"I wasn't expecting an FBI agent to be so well-versed in the realm of French poetry," you muse. Something about you has shifted almost imperceptibly, but Spencer can see it. There's a spark in your eye, an interest which you are not trying to hide.

You're impressed. He has impressed you.

And it's making him feel weirdly giddy.

"Well," he begins, trying to measure his words so they don't spill out too fast, "it was my mother who actually—"

"Reid."

Hotch's voice cuts him off, and suddenly Spencer is back in reality. He can feel the team's eyes on him, and he lowers his head.

"Sorry," he mumbles. First to Hotch, and then to you. "Sorry."

Still smiling, you gesture for him to rejoin the team. "It's okay," you say, "I'll be at the front desk all night, if you need me."

He nods, trying to find the balance between healthy interest and blatant overenthusiasm. He hopes he hits the mark.

With that, you turn and walk away, leaving Spencer pink-cheeked and painfully aware of the not-so-subtle whispering of the team behind him.

.⋆♱❦

It's Wednesday when you next cross paths with Spencer Reid. You're sitting at the front desk, gaze flicking aimlessly between the cluttered screen of your laptop and the even messier book lying, practically ironed open, to your left. Its poor spine is cracked in several places; the pages are violently dog-eared; colour-coded tabs stick out at all angles, from all sides; and there are hand-written notes crammed into every available inch of free space. Thankfully, Myrna has yet to see this victim of yours; she'd probably fire you. It's the physical manifestation of a librarian's worst nightmare, you're sure. 

Less than an hour has passed since your shift began, but your mind is already beginning to fill with that dull, unfocused static that usually only appears late into the night. When it's 4am and you're here, alone, with nothing to do but take inventory and consider knocking on the doors of every student and professor that has yet to return their overdue books. You're tired, and that in turn is making you irritable — which is absolutely not what you want to be right now. You have barely slept on account of the FBI agents snooping around campus, sticking their noses where they don't belong, and yet you still put on your best smile whenever you see them, because that is what's expected of you. You're the well-mannered nightshift librarian, and you aren't going to give them any reason to suspect you may be anything else.

The BAU cannot know of the effect their presence is having on you. They cannot know of the pressure you're under, not unless you want this entire thing to blow up in your face. If you're to make it out of this, which you will, then it is imperative that you grin and bear it, and continue on as though everything's fine.

And everything is fine — why wouldn't it be? Those agents have moved their work into a study room on the other side of the library, so it isn't as though they're watching your every move. In truth, you hardly see them at all.

So, you rub your eyes, silencing all thoughts of the BAU, and re-centre yourself. There's nothing wrong. No reason for stress, or anxiety, or whatever bullshit has you unable to focus. You know what you are doing, and you know that you are fine.

You scoot a little closer to your laptop, sizing it up as you prepare to conquer this paper you're supposed to be writing. You crack your knuckles, telling yourself that this is it, but no sooner have you started typing does someone walk past the front desk. They continue on for some three paces or so before coming to a halt, and then they back up, retracing their steps until they are standing right in front of you. Raising your head, you put on a small smile as your eyes come to rest on Spencer Reid.

"Everything okay?" you ask.

Spencer nods. "Yes. Everything's fine— well, aside from the serial murderer on the loose— but that's not what I'm…" Raising a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, he sighs. "Sorry."

"It's alright," you say, keeping your tone as light as it will go. You watch as Spencer glances briefly at your book, and you hand it to him without second thought. "Long day?"

He hums in confirmation as he takes the book from you, and he scans the front and back covers in less than a second. "Paradise Rot," he murmurs, "I haven't read this."

"It's a new release," you say, "I'm writing a paper on it—"

You purse your lips, watching helplessly as Spencer begins flicking through the book. His gaze flits across each page impossibly fast, far too fast for him to actually be reading any of it, but you still feel weirdly exposed — as though he's reading your diary. 

As his eyes come to rest on the folded corner of a page, you speak up again. "It's a mess, I know. I promise I'm not so…brutish with every book I read."

"Oh," Spencer quickly shakes his head. "I'm not judging you at all. I'm not one to dictate what others do with their personal property," he offers you a small, reassuring smile and moves to hand the book back to you, but then he pauses. "You can tell a lot about a person from how they treat their books, though." 

You raise an eyebrow, begging a silent question.

Spencer spares the book one last thoughtful glance before returning it to you. "You have a deep respect for literature, for one. A kind of passion that leads you to…breaking spines and—"

"Right."

"I'm serious!" he says. "Just as you are serious about your love of books. You're meticulous: your tabs are colour-coded; your notes aren't scrawled haphazardly across the page, they're neat and uniform; and they are written in two different formulas of ink, meaning you have read the book at least twice. You're an academic through and through, and a perfectionist, and…you can be obsessive when it comes to detail."

Seeing the way your frown at his observation, Spencer smiles.

"In your notes," he explains, "the dots on your 'j's and 'i's are consistently placed quite low, almost touching the stem."

"And that means that I am…obsessed with detail?" you ask, eyeing him sceptically. "Is this the magic you use to catch killers, doctor?"

"Handwriting analysis can be used in profiling, yes. It is far from the only tool at our disposal, but it has proven useful in a number of cases."

"I'll take your word for it," you say as you open the book once more. Damn it, he really was right about your handwriting: the dots are weirdly close to the stems.

Part of you is tempted to ask what else he can discern about you just from reading your notes, what other aspects of your personality shows in your handwriting, but you bite your tongue. You know better than to push him to analyse you any further; he's a profiler, for Christ's sake. It's best if he doesn't put any more thought into what kind of person you are — he's shy, so he likely won't ask any damning questions unless prompted.

"Are you religious?"

Never mind.

The question catches you slightly off guard, and you frown as you meet his gaze. "Not really," you say. "Why?"

"Oh, I was just curious, because of your necklace."

Spencer's gaze drops to the silver chain around your neck, and he homes in on the crucifix that rests against your skin. Your hand moves on its own, reaching up to touch the pendant subconsciously.

"You're wearing an entirely different set of jewellery compared to yesterday," he continues, "but that cross necklace is the only thing that you haven't changed. I'm not trying to pry, or anything. I was just wondering if there was any significance to it— you don't have to answer, if it's too…"

Out of all the things Spencer could choose to wonder about, he just has to pick that necklace.

You press your lips together, pretending to mull his question over as you buy yourself just a moment of time to weigh this out before you respond. Your rational self knows that this doesn't mean anything, that Spencer really is just curious, but the paranoid part of you — the one that's been keeping you on edge all day — is telling you that he knows, that he took one glance at your handwriting, and at the necklace, and figured you out immediately, somehow. But he can't have. It isn't possible. There's no way he could be making that kind of connection, not when you haven't even left any necklaces at the—

"I just think it's pretty," you say with a shrug, keeping your tone casual as you stuff your anxiety back into its box. "I'm somewhat of a…revolving door of jewellery, but this is the exception. It's a staple piece, I suppose."

Spencer nods slowly. "I see. It is a pretty necklace, so I see why you…choose to wear it so often."

He seems to realise halfway through his sentence that it looks as though he has been, and is still, staring at your chest. He coughs and quickly reverts his gaze back to your face.

"I have a few, uh, staple pieces of my own, actually," he continues. "I have this— this purple scarf that I wear every day in winter—"

"There you are, pretty boy."

Agent Morgan appears at Spencer's side and slings an arm around his shoulder. He almost jumps out of his skin.

"I hate to interrupt your conversation, Miss Love, I'm sure it's super interesting," Morgan says, flashing you a smirk as he playfully ruffles Spencer's hair, "but Doctor Reid here has an investigation that he needs to attend to." Turning to Spencer, Morgan quietly says, "we have Garcia on the line, she's got news."

"I'm coming," Spencer says. He sounds almost disappointed, you note, before Morgan promptly begins hauling him away.

Glancing back over his shoulder, Spencer offers you an apologetic smile. Your lips curl automatically in response as you watch him walk away. 

For such a light, graceful expression, it feels impossibly heavy. It falls from you face as soon as Spencer is out of sight, and you close your eyes. 

.⋆♱❦

Thursday. You're just arriving at the library, windswept and covered in snow. There's a dull burning in your fingers from the cold, and you're doing your best to smooth out your hair when the BAU come rushing out of the study room. They move as a unit, talking amongst themselves in hushed tones as they make for the exit, footsteps falling in almost perfect sync.

You don't know how it happens, be it lack of spatial awareness or the fact that you can barely hear over the sound of your own heart, but you walk right into Spencer Reid. Or maybe he walks into you. It does not matter, because he immediately begins bombarding you with apologies, oblivious to the fact that the collision caused him to drop his cane.

"I'm so sorry, I wasn't— are you okay? Did I—"

"I'm fine," you say, shaking your head as you bend down to pick up his cane. When you next allow him to see your face, you're smiling. Small, polite, and practiced. You return the cane to him, and only then do you note his grave expression. "…are you okay?"

Spencer purses his lips tight, as though he's stopping himself from speaking without thinking first. Before he can say anything, however, Agent Hotchner calls out for him. 

"Sorry," he repeats.

And then he's gone, and you are left standing there, clothes sodden and dripping with melted snow. And you know exactlywhere it is he's going. 

You feel a hand on your arm, and you turn to see Myrna. She's wearing that same grave expression that you had seen with Spencer, and she pulls you aside as she whispers. "there's been another murder."

Instinctively, you widen your eyes and contort your mouth into a surprised 'o' shape, the same way you have done the previous three times Myrna has had to deliver this awful news to you. Full of faux devastation, you shake your head as she gives your arm a comforting squeeze and, without another word, you help her finish her shift in silence.

And then she is gone, too, leaving you with nothing to do but wait.

Although you may be full of virtues, patience is far from your strong suit. It always has been. Of all the games in the word, waiting games have got to be your least favourite.

In the two hours that pass following the BAU's abrupt departure, you are unable to focus on your work. The words on your laptop screen no longer make sense to you, nor do the words in any of the books that are piled up behind waiting to be organised. Restless though you may be, you cannot bring yourself to leave the front desk. You can't wander off and busy yourself with other work, what if the agents return?

You feel as though you are trapped in limbo, awaiting your verdict like a criminal in court — guilty, or not guilty.

There's a thrumming in your veins. You can feel it circulating under your skin, a deadly cocktail of adrenaline and anxiety. There's a certain thrill in not knowing where you will be tomorrow. Will you spend the day in bed, basking in your victory? Or in a jail cell, kicking yourself under harsh fluorescent lights?

Thankfully, the answer comes sooner rather than later. The doors open shortly after 9PM, and the BAU come milling in. They move slower this time, as though they are being weighed down by something as heavy as it is invisible. 

They pay you no mind as they pass by your desk, too deep in discussion to stop and say hello. You're grateful for that, you suppose, because it allows you to listen in on their conversation. They are throwing around words like 'vendetta' and 'hit list.' Words that, really, should rouse some kind of panic within you, but they don't.

The BAU are on the right track, kind of, and you feel a strange sense of pride in knowing that.

.⋆♱❦

It is a little after midnight when Spencer finds you around the back of the building, huddled in the smoke shelter. He would have frightened you if you hadn't been subjected to the sound of his footsteps wading through the snow for the last thirty seconds or so, and you take another drag of your cigarette before giving him your attention. Constellations of snowflakes adorn his hair, and his face is half-obscured by a thick purple scarf — presumably the 'staple piece' he had spoken of. 

There's a tiredness about him that was not present a few hours prior, and you push your brows into a small, concerned frown. "I thought you had left already."

Spencer pulls his scarf down and smiles. It's a cute, slightly awkward gesture that causes his lips to disappear almost completely. In the low light, you notice he has dimples. For a moment, it feels almost as though there is a hand on your throat, preventing you from breathing normally, but it vanishes as soon as it appears.

"Yeah, the uh—" he clears his throat. "The team went back to the hotel an hour ago to get some rest."

"And you didn't go with them?"

He shakes his head, and a few snowflakes fall from his hair as he steps into the smoke shelter. "I didn't go with them, no," he says, "I likely wouldn't have been able to sleep, if I had. Sometimes I find it easier to think when I'm alone, and I thought…"

As Spencer's voice trails off, your frown deepens. "Is the case giving you trouble?"

His silence speaks well enough for him, equal parts frustrated and exhausted. The BAU must have hit a roadblock of some kind. You bring your cigarette to your lips as your free hand reaches for your necklace. You press the cold silver of the crucifix into your thumb, watching as Spencer stares out at the falling snow.

"I don't consider myself religious," you say, repeating yesterday’s sentiment, "not really. But my father was. We wear—wore matching crosses."

"Oh?" Spencer turns to you fully as curiosity quickly replaces his quiet frustration. "Were the two of you close?"

Pursing your lips, you let your gaze drop to the floor for a moment, as though you are deep in thought, before responding with a vague shrug. "Our relationship was neither here nor there," you say.

The words come to you as easily as breathing does. They are rehearsed, refined over and over again to the point where they have become second nature. But your answer does not satisfy Spencer's curiosity, and he raises an eyebrow in a silent request for you to elaborate.

"He could be a little mean, but—"

You almost choke on your own counter point. It lodges in your throat, resisting your attempt to follow your usual path; he could be a little mean, but he was a decent guy, that is what you say. What you have always said. You could try and force the words out, but they would surely resist, and you would be left to stumble over them like an engine that won't start — and nobody wants to be seen like that.

"He was mean, period," you say, donning an ironic smile. "It isn't something I dwell on; I don't see much of a point."

"But you still wear the cross," Spencer observes.

"I still wear the cross," you admit.

The silence that follows your words leaves a great deal open to interpretation, but that's probably for the best. Spencer can make his own assumptions about you, draw his own conclusions. You aren't going to point him in one direction or another — the less he knows, the better.

"Mais je poursuis en vain le Dieu qui se retire; l'irrésistible Nuit établit son empire, noire, humide, funeste et pleine de frissons."

You cannot suppress the scoff that escapes you as he speaks. Shaking your head, you lean back against the wall of the smoke shelter before meeting his gaze with a smirk. "That's an obscure one," you say, "do you come pre-installed with Baudelaire quotes, or have you been doing some reading in the hopes of impressing me?"

Spencer shrugs. "I have an eidetic memory," he says. The proud smile creeping up his face clashes with his otherwise nonchalant act. It's adorable.

"An eidetic memory," you repeat. "So you are, in effect, pre-installed with quotes."

"And I was trying to impress you," he confesses.

You feel your smirk widen, but it isn't a conscious move on your part. You're genuinely smiling.

"Consider me impressed."

He isn't going to forget this. The rest of his team might, in due time, but he won't. Not with an eidetic memory.

He isn't going to forget you, no matter how badly he may end up wanting to. 

You have to fight to get a handle on your smile. Your heart is starting to pound against your ribs, anxious and excited. Forcing yourself to look away, you take another drag of your cigarette, hoping the nicotine will do something to calm you down.

"How much gossip, on average, would you say you overhear each week?" Spencer asks.

You stare at him blankly. "Pardon?"

"I would assume that being a librarian, you may be privy to certain…discussions," he continues, "ones that students may not wish to have with the FBI?"

"Doctor Reid," you tilt your head to the side, narrowing your eyes, "are you asking if I have any hot goss about your case?"

"Yes," he says plainly. "Do you?"

To Spencer's disappointment, you shake your head. "Anyone who visits the library after dark is usually about as antisocial as I am. They're there to cram, not gossip."

Spencer frowns. "You consider yourself antisocial?"

"…yes?" you say, raising an eyebrow. "You don't?"

"I can't say I got that impression from you, no."

"That's because you've only seen my work persona," you declare. "I sleep all day and sit behind a desk all night. The only person I speak to regularly is Myrna, and that's only because she fusses over me like I don't know what — I love her, though." With a sigh, you stub your cigarette out before it burns too close to your fingers. "If I were more…socially inclined — and diurnal, more importantly — I would be working the dayshift alongside her. But alas, I am bound to the nightshift."

Spencer's brows, still stuck in that frown, twitch slightly as you speak. He opens his mouth, but then shuts it again promptly before he says anything without thinking. After a few seconds, he comes out with: "You're naturally nocturnal?"

"Delayed sleep phase syndrome," you say, nodding. "I'm also prone to headaches because I have sensitive eyes."

"Sensitive eyes that are likely a result of a lack of light exposure," he mutters. He doesn't sound judgemental, just a little concerned. Then, in a more curious tone, he asks, "how did you manage in education?"

You shrug. "I tried to attend classes for a while, but it was a lost cause. I ended up teaching myself all of the material and came out at the top of my class," you explain with a small, slightly smug smile. "University was much the same, both undergrad and postgrad: sleep through lectures, miss every social event, and blow my classmate's grades right out of the water."

"How humble," he murmurs, "and now you're content with being a librarian for the foreseeable future?"

"I wouldn't be opposed to it, no," you say. "I think, in an ideal world, I would be a teacher— university-level, though, not school-level; I'm not dealing with kids. I'd preach about literature, naturally, and my classes would exclusively be held in the afternoon."

Spencer nods along with your fantasy before asking, "you don't like kids?"

"You do?"

Your disgust must come through in your voice, because Spencer immediately narrows his eyes. 

"I don't hate kids," you add quickly, "not by any means. I would love my own kids, for sure, but other people's…I don't have the patience, especially not if there's thirty of them crammed into a classroom, with their grubby little hands and their…" you shake your head. "I don't hate kids."

"I believe you."

"You like kids, though," you say, eyeing him with a smirk, "and now you're judging me for disagreeing—"

"I am doing no such thing!"

Spencer's voice comes out an octave higher than what you're used to hearing, and you have to fight the urge to laugh as you shake your head.

"I know, doc. I'm kidding," you say. "I'm assuming there are kids in your future, then?"

"Ideally, yes," Spencer says, nodding. "I would have to find a…partner first, but— yes, I do want kids."

Your gaze drops to his hands, and a smirk plays on your lips as you watch him fidget. "Well, that can't be too hard," you muse.

The fidgeting ceases at your comment. Instead, he slips his hands into his pockets. "You don't have to be sarcastic," he mutters.

"I wasn't being sarcastic," you say, redirecting your focus to his face. He doesn't appear to be convinced, so you add: "I thought that hot, nerdy guys were all the rage these days, no?"

It takes a moment for Spencer to process what you have just said to him, and what it means. When he eventually does, his entire body jolts as though he's been shocked. Even in the dark, you can see the subtle changes in his skin tone as he flushes a violent shade of red.

"I— I, um—"

You watch for a moment as he stammers helplessly before pushing yourself away from the wall. Grinning, you step back out into the snow. "I should get back to work," you say. "You know where to find me."

Spencer stares after you, wide-eyed, as you walk away. He's still stunned, poor thing, too stunned to even say goodbye. You wait until there's a good few metres between you before you stop and turn back to him.

"You were wrong, by the way," you say.

"Pardon?"

"The necklace," you explain, still smiling as snowflakes circle around you like falling stars. You can't feel your feet, but you don't care. "I don't wear it to…poursuis le Dieu qui se retire. It isn't some vain attempt to reconnect with my father."

Spencer steps closer, until the smoke shelter is barely shielding him from the weather, and frowns. "Then what is it?"

You step back, feet sinking into the crisp snow as you call out, "I told you; I just think it's pretty."

taglist: @ivynotreally @rebelok @idcalol @reidswife-x @siriuslyval03 @fefa-la-printcessa @thecrimsonfog @caterppillar @legendaryrebelpersona @angelb0t

You much prefer to sleep through the daylight hours. It's a habit you have had since you were a kid; your father, as well as your social and educational obligations, tried their damnedest to train it out of you, but they were ultimately unsuccessful. There is, perhaps, some metaphor hidden in your insistence on hiding from the light, but you just chalk it up to a personal preference — and an unconventional circadian rhythm. The dark is where you feel most at peace and, no longer tied to any daytime responsibilities, you have made it your home.

Which is why you are so confused when you feel the unwelcome caress of sunlight against your cheek. It crawls up your face, dousing you in its warmth, and it stings, even through your eyelids.

Grumbling, you drape an arm over your eyes, shielding yourself from the light as your mind moves at a sluggish pace, pushing through the sleepy fog to remember where you are and how you got there. Something is weighing you down, pressing your body into the soft plush of the…

…mattress?

Your eyes snap open before you can stop them, and you wince as they fight to adjust to the harsh light that is spilling through the gap in the hotel curtains. With about as much grace as a college boy stumbling home after his first frat party, your face contorts in discomfort as a low, unfamiliar groan rumbles in the back of your throat. 

Your right arm is lost to you. It tingles with a dull static and lies dead under the weight of the man on top of you. His head is resting on your bare chest, almost tucked under your skin, and his wild brown hair tickles your jaw as you try, in vain, to move. You're pinned to the bed — the queen size bed, mind you, which has more than enough room for the two of you to sleep comfortably and away from each other — with only one arm left to your name; Spencer Reid has effectively conquered the rest of your body with his own unconscious form.

As you turn your face away from the light, you begin wracking your brain for any memories of the previous night, for any answer as to what is happening right now. Why are you still in the hotel room? Moreover, why is he still in the hotel room? And why is he on top of you, fast asleep like there's nothing weird about this at all? Like this doesn't go against every rule that Spencer has tried to establish during this sick game of yours? This isn't how this is supposed to go— no, this isn't how it goes, period.

Spencer never sticks around any longer than he has to, and he sure as hell doesn't let himself fall asleep in your presence — you're a serial killer, for Christ's sake. You're non-practicing, sure, but that doesn't negate the threat that your very presence poses to him.

You invite Spencer to a hotel room, he begrudgingly shows up, you have your fun with him, he gets information on another murder, and then he leaves — that's the way this agreement work, the way it has always worked. It doesn't matter whether you want him to stay, Spencer always leaves. He has to, because he would be out of his damn mind if he ever decided to stay, if not out of fear for his own safety, then on the basis of principle. 

Spencer Reid is an FBI agent. He's a man with morals, and no matter how malleable those morals may become, he would never be able to justify spending the night with you — snuggling up to you as though you're boyfriend and fucking girlfriend. 

And yet here he is, head on your chest, sleeping the morning away without as much as a care in the world. Another rule, flouted. Another line, crossed. You wonder how many boundaries remain, how much further you can push this before you are the ones who break. There can't be many.

Your gaze finds the alarm clock on the bedside table, and you squint as you try to make out what it says. Your eyes are stinging — watering, even — but you can just about read the numbers 8:34AM.

Your first thought, selfishly, is of your sleep schedule. 8AM is your bedtime, or near enough, and this one night is going to ruin your perfect routine for at least a week — it's the equivalent of a regular person waking up at 8 o'clock in the evening. 

Your second thought comes a few minutes later, once you have finished cursing yourself for falling asleep. 8AM, whilst bedtime for the nocturnal, is morning for everyone else; for the working members of society, specifically, which Spencer Reid happens to be a proud part of.

It wouldn't be the end of the world if, upon second glance, the alarm clock didn't also read MONDAY in smaller, easily missed letters just below the time.

Shit.

"…Spencer," you mumble, leaning your head back against the pillow.

Nothing. 

"Spencer."

He shifts and, for a moment, you think this may be him waking up. But then you feel his arms tighten around your waist as he nuzzles his face into your chest, and your hopes are crushed. He's comfortable. Too comfortable. You'd think it were cute, if you were anybody else.

Ignoring the way your heart is now pounding against your ribs, you sigh and slip your available hand into his hair. Your fingers weave into the soft, messy strands before you give them a firm pull. It isn't overly forceful, you don't want to hurt him, but it's enough to bring an abrupt end to his slumber.

Spencer grumbles, and the sound reverberates in your chest before he raises his head. You feel his breath fan, hot, against your jaw. He lingers there for a moment, mouth barely an inch from your skin, and then he forces himself up further. He props himself up on his elbows and you think that, surely, he's going to propel himself away from you as soon as he realises the position he's in, but he doesn't. He just looks down at you, face scrunched in confusion, and, for a few seconds, time seems to come to a halt. 

Your gaze flits over his sleep-flushed cheeks before settling on his eyes; he's squinting, and his brows are furrowed as he struggles to orient himself. You've seen him frown before, plenty of times, and usually in frustration, but this is different. He looks oddly…soft. Unguarded, completely. 

The chain you gave him is hanging from his neck even now, and it tangles with yours.

You swallow hard, pushing down the butterflies that are causing a ruckus in your stomach as you speak.

"You're late," you say, keeping your voice low and smooth.

Spencer blinks at you, as though you're speaking one of the few languages he has not grasped. "…late?"

As endearing as his sleep-riddled confusion is, you cannot allow it to continue. He will only blame you all the more for it later.

"For work," you explain calmly. "You're late for work, Spence."

You study his face and the way it changes in the wake of your words. His frown deepens, and the confusion lingers for barely two seconds before his eyes widen in horror. And then he's gone.

He scrambles off of you and practically leaps out of the bed, stumbling over his own feet as he begins the search for his clothes. From your position, lying comfortably among the pillows, you watch as he rushes animatedly around the hotel room, cursing to himself. You don't try to help him, or speak in attempt to calm him down, you just watch, and a smile begins creeping up your face as you do. He moves as though he's been ripped straight from a cartoon — all long, gangly limbs and a comical lack of coordination. It's adorable.

"You think this is funny?" he snaps, shooting you a glare as he locates his trousers.

"A little," you murmur.

"This is your fault."

Your smile widens. Here we go. "Oh? How so?"

"Because you—" he turns to you, covering himself with his bundled-up trousers. His finger is already pointing at you accusingly, but his demeanour shifts as he looks at you — really looks at you — lying in bed, topless, and grinning like a madwoman. His cheeks turn pink, and his mouth contorts in all kinds of shapes as he stammers profusely before finally declaring, "it just is."

Scoffing, you sit up, trying not to wince as your thighs burn with a familiar ache. "I'm not the one who decided on a fourth round," you mutter.

You swear you see him roll his eyes as he turns away. "I'm not the one who decided on a third," he says, "or a second—" he looks back at you over his shoulder, scowling, "or a first!"

"You didn't have to come here."

"You didn't have to invite me."

You lower your head, suppressing a laugh. "Sure…I'm not the one sleeping with a serial killer for a profile though, am I?"

Spencer huffs as he pulls his trousers on. "At least I'm not the serial killer."

"No, of course," you say, smirking, "that you require you having a spine."

"Okay, we're done," he announces, bending down to pick up his shirt. "I'm not engaging with you any further. I need to get to work."

"Mhm," you nod slowly, watching as he fumbles with the buttons of his crumpled shirt. The creases in the fabric are going to bother him all day, you can feel it, but the shirt does its job; it hides the bruises, both old and new, that litter his chest and shoulders. "And what are you going to tell the team, Doc?" you ask, cocking your head to the side.

"I was stuck in traffic."

You raise an eyebrow. "And they'll believe you?"

"Yes," he mutters, pulling on his sweater, "they will."

"Keep telling yourself that."

With that, Spencer huffs and continues getting ready to leave. He doesn't speak another word to you as he steps into his shoes and grabs his bag, seemingly determined to deliver on his promise of not engaging with you. He turns to leave without saying goodbye, and he almost makes it to the door before you call out to him once more.

"Forgetting something?"

He turns, ready to snap at you, but his expression changes upon seeing the phone in your hand. His phone. 

Gritting his teeth, he sighs and marches back over to the bed, hand outstretched as though he expects you to hand it over to him without protest. He stops just shy from the side of the bed and reaches for the phone, and you jerk your hand back, grinning.

"Don't," he warns.

As he leans in to snatch it from you, you strike. Your free hand cups the back of his head, and you pull him into a kiss.

He does not protest. He doesn't try to pull away at all; in fact, he leans into it — into you. He places a hand on the mattress to steady himself as his lips move in time with yours, matching your rhythm effortlessly as his other hand comes to rest on your shoulder. You feel his fingers dance along your skin as he trails his hand down the length of your arm and down, further, until his hand finds yours.

He tries, without breaking the kiss, to wrestle the phone out of your grasp. He seizes it quickly — but only because you let him.

Immediately, he's pulling away from you. He clears his throat as his cheeks flush a faint red, but he doesn't say a word. Before you can attempt to steal it from him, he shoves his phone into his pocket and turns away from you once more paying no mind to your childish pout.

Rolling your eyes, you flop back onto the mattress as you listen to his footsteps recede.

"Same time next week?" you ask.

He doesn't respond, but you already know the answer. You both do.

.⋆♱❦

"There you are! We were starting to worry you'd gotten lost on your way in."

Spencer almost jumps out of his skin at the sound of Emily's voice. Nodding, he gathers the paperwork spread out across his desk and shoves it into a manilla file.

"Yeah," he mutters, clearing his throat. "I was stuck in traffic."

"Traffic?" she repeats, clearly not believing him. There's a smirk playing on her lips. A smug one. "Don't you have traffic patterns memorised for every road into Quantico?"

"There are anomalies, on occasion," he says, "such as today."

"Mhm," Emily nods thoughtfully. "I can't say I saw any traffic on my way here. I suppose I must've missed it."

"Yeah. You must have."

Spencer watches as Emily glances at the file on his desk. He holds his breath, expecting her to ask about it — he'd have to try and write it off as another one of his consults — but, thankfully, she doesn't say anything. 

He isn't usually this reckless. Generally, he avoids doing any research related to you or your case in the office, it's too big of a risk, but sometimes he can't help himself. Sometimes the information you feed him is too interesting, and it lingers in the forefront of his mind like an itch he desperately needs to scratch. Sometimes, like today, he chooses to take that risk and ends up with your files, fragments of a life he is still trying to piece together, strewn across his desk.

It wouldn't be the end of the world, if someone were to catch him like this. They would just chalk it up to Spencer being Spencer: bitter and obsessive, and still butthurt after he fumbled your case last year. No one in their right mind would assume he's been in contact with you. No, the worst that would happen is Hotch giving him another lecture on letting things go, and Spencer would be sent to his counsellor's office for a quick check-in. 

But although Emily doesn't ask about the conspicuous papers, she doesn't walk away yet, either. She's just watching him, patiently, as though she's waiting for him to come clean — to fold and admit that he wasn't actually stuck in traffic this morning. Spencer, however, does not budge. He turns his attention back to his desk, this time picking up a file he is supposed to be working on.

A moment later, he hears Emily sigh. She reaches out to poke his neck, prodding at a bruise he didn't even know he had.

"Tell her I said hi," she teases before returning to her desk, wearing a triumphant smirk.