josephine

If you had to remove one state from the contiguous union, it would be Iowa. 

You’re standing in a rusty hotel room, which, according to Hotch, is the best they could do to accommodate you. And Spencer. He’s one room over. Your feet vibrate against the rug. You tell yourself it’s the thought of him, one wall over — thinking, sitting, reading, whatever he’s doing — and not some rare kind of bacteria you’re going to catch from the stink of this place.

Hotch sent you and Reid here for a death row interview. One of the inmates, having spent the past seventeen years as a self-proclaimed monk, decided he was done with silence. He answered the bureau’s request for an interview in a letter addressed to Hotch’s desk, written in red ink. It’s your first prison interview — you usually wear the bad guys down before they’re locked away forever — but Spencer has done one or two, he said. You think it might be more.

You’d never been to Iowa, never had a case here. You’re not great with time off, even worse with real vacations. You don’t look out your window for fear the corn fields have gotten closer since you last peeked through the curtains. You swear you can see twenty miles out; the flatness makes it easy to mistake the horizon for something that never, ever ends. 

You’re picking at the skin of your fingernails, toes curled as they still rest but resist against the carpet, when there’s a knock at your door. You don’t check, because you’re not really fearful. It might make you a shitty FBI agent, but you doubt anyone is tracking you down in Iowa. (Iowa. It gets worse each time you think it.)

“Hi,” Spencer says, lips pulled flat. Flat. You think of fields. Corn. Emptiness. Your stomach churns then lurches when you think of your own bed in your own home in a state that has real hills and mountains and trees. 

“Hi.” 

“Thought you might want to look over the file before tomorrow?” He frames it like a question, and you offer a soft smile at his hesitancy before opening the door to let him in. He turns his body to the left to avoid making contact with you as he accepts the invitation and walks on through.

Your bed is still made, your suitcase resting on top of it. He scrunches his nose before recovering.

“I’m not a germaphobe, like someone we both know,” you mock.

“Maybe you should be.” You laugh. You’ve been his teammate for three years now, and it still gets you when he decides he can lighten up and make a joke.

He looks around, still awkward in the yellow tint of the hotel lamp, then decides to sit in the desk chair in the corner.

“You look so ominous,” you say, shaking your head as you pull the file out of the nightstand. 

“Why is your casefile in there?”

“Where do you keep yours?”

“I never put it away.”

“Checks out,” you say, raising your eyebrows and sitting criss-crossed on the edge of your bed, facing him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Gary Foster,” you read off the top of the page, ignoring his bait. “Killed twenty-three women in his basement. His wife never knew.”

“Or claims she didn’t know,” Spencer corrects. 

“You think she did?”

He shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter what I think.”

You glance up at him to find him staring intently at the file in his hands. He’s gripping onto it like it’s all he knows. You store your observations away in your head under a tab titled Perhaps Ask Later. 

You’ve gone over this file a dozen times. It’s virtually seared into your memory. Still, you let him tack off the rest of the information to you, compile the intensive profile Hotch gave you into a bullet point list. 

“He’s gonna focus on me,” you say once he reaches a lull in speech.

“Because you’re a woman?” he confirms. You nod. “Maybe.”

You tap the file a few times with your fingers as a yawn creeps up your throat, threatening to escape. Spencer seems to get the hint before you even let it out. 

“We’ve got a long day tomorrow,” he says before standing. He takes a step forward before turning around and tucking the chair back into the desk. You smile at the politeness. “See you tomorrow?”

“Is that a question?” you tease as you lead him to the door. “I promise I won’t jump out of the window.”

“There’s not much out there.”

“No, there isn’t.” He fumbles with the key for the door across the hall. You wait for him to open it before you start to close yours, the way you would after driving a friend at home. “Night.”

“Night,” he says, though the latter half of the word is muffled by the shut of the door. 

The room is barren again. You open the curtains now that it’s nearing total darkness outside.

It takes six more hours for you to drift off into sleep.

– 

Your hand is immediately on your temple when you awake, rubbing at the budding headache you know will consume you once you get up. This is the punishment you get for allowing yourself only three hours of sleep.

The sunlight hits your bed in fluttering intervals of perfect warmth and scorching heat. This time, when the hindmost rolls around, you force yourself up and place your feet on the ground. You hold your tongue to refrain from releasing a long string of fucks and shits and realize your hand is still refusing to move from its spot rubbing circles in your face. When you make your way to the bathroom, you realize the bed is so hard you’ve left no indent. 

The sting of the shower is pelting, boiling enough that it feels purifying. After a night spent in sheets you’re sure dozens have sweat through, it’s more than welcome. The heat is the perfect substrate for the anticipatory dread of today’s interview. Speaking to monsters as if there’s a hint of human behind the stitching has never pulled at you in the right way. 

If anything, it’s slowly pulled you apart.

The outlet in your bathroom is broken so you’re forced to dry your hair sitting on the carpet of the room, right next to that window that stares out into nowhere. You feel itchy just sitting on it. You swear the fibers are pressing into your skin, merging with your skin. 

The file is open on the floor in front of you, and you use your thumb to wipe the water falling from your damp hair. The pages already begin to curdle like the feeling in your stomach. 

You put your hair in a ponytail, then worry it’s too sexual — because you’ve absorbed the profile and you know what earns a check on this guys list —- so you take it down and let it rest on your shoulders again. Your knees crack when you stand up and your hip tenses up like it might, too, when you slip your legs into your pants. 

There’s a knock on your door and you mutter fuck as you balance your time between finishing the rest of the buttons on your blouse and stumbling to the door.

“I need a couple minutes,” you say, before you say hello. You leave the door open as you retreat farther into the room. “You can wait in here.”

You squeeze your feet into your heels — half a size too small, and in your head you call the saleslady who insisted on that being necessary for this brand a word that would make your grandmother sour — and peripherally watch him step into the room, hands stuffed in his pockets. 

“You ready?” he asks. You can feel his eyes on your unmade bed. 

“Mhm.” You glance in the square mirror facing the bed and smooth out your clothes. 

“I mean for the interview,” he says after clearing his throat.

“My answer remains.”

“Cool.” He says it in the way that feels fraudulent, but is really just the way he speaks, you’ve come to realize.

“Are you ready?” you ask back, muffled by the file placed between your teeth as you fumble around your desk for your car keys and room card. You make eye contact with him as you head for the door.

“Don’t really have much of a choice, do I?”

“Stand up straight,” you say, holding the door open for him as you both step into the hallway.

“What?” he mutters. He does it anyway.

“He’s gonna zero in on you if you seem to lack confidence.”

“Right.”

It’s silence between you two in the hallway, the elevator, the lobby, and until you’re pulling out of the parking lot. There’s overgrown wheatgrass in the field to your left and plowed corn crop to your right. The furrows stretch on until the curve of the earth swallows them up.

The sky is dull, slate-colored, and bears striking resemblance to something that could wipe you clean. Grain silos whir by every couple of minutes. These people really own a lot of fucking land. Every few miles, a new one, along with a rusting tractor or collapsing barn or crop that looks about ready to dry up and blow away. It gets predictable after mile seven. 

The prison doesn’t appear so much as it settles into your vision. It’s low to the ground, sprawling, gray. A scar pressed into the ground. 

You feel like Spencer the way you’ve completely memorized the profile. You flash your badge at the gate, sign some kind of form and drive into a parking lot that feels as far from the prison as your hotel was.

Spencer lingers in the car two seconds after you get out. He’s nervous, and he’s trying not to show it. You don’t want to mention it, but you need to be on the same page, so you don’t stop your lips from unfurling.

“You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“The anxious math,” you say. “You’re calculating the probability of saying the wrong thing before we even walk in.”

“That’s-” He seems to think better than arguing and redirects his sentence. “That’s not entirely inaccurate.”

You give him one of those closed lip smiles. “He’ll spot it in five seconds. He feeds on nerves like that. First, he’ll comment on your hands, because you fidget when you’re trying not to.”

“You sound like Hotch.”

You scoff out a half-laugh and choose to ignore the comment otherwise. “And he’ll ask how long you’ve known me. If we’re sleeping together. He won’t say it like that, of course. He’ll be crude. He wants to gauge what version of you shows up when you’re off-balance.”

“Why would that knock me off balance?” he asks. The hesitancy has stolen his tone again.

“You fluster easily.”

“Do I?”

“Mhm. You blink three times, touch your collar, and then deflect with statistics. You did it the first time I challenged you during a case.”

He tuts then holds the door of the prison open for you. “You’re profiling me.”

“Of course I am,” you say, then turn your head over your shoulder, waiting for him to walk back up beside you again. He’s close behind you, so close you can almost feel his breath on you. It makes you feel warm. “So will he.”

You greet two more guards inside before shaking hands with the warden. He thanks you for coming with that grim look on his face that everyone in this field seems to have permanently etched into the creases of their skin. The prison is colder inside than it has any right to be, as if the concrete has learned to hold onto every winter it’s ever survived. 

“Still nervous?” you whisper to Spencer. 

He smiles, shakes his head no. 

Good, you mouth.

You pretend not to notice his eyes fixate for a beat longer than necessary on your lips. You lick them in response. When he meets your eyes again, you pretend not to notice that something undecipherable is hidden behind his lids, too. 

—

Foster smiles when you walk in. He doesn’t look at Spencer. You let Spencer pull your chair out for you, which immediately catches the guy’s attention. You think of still water, use it as a guide for being calm.

“Well,” Foster says. He hasn’t dropped the smile from his face. “They sent a good-looking one.”

“We, the FBI, are really grateful you chose to cooperate with us,” you say. “You know, in your final days.”

“Hm.” He turns to Spencer, finally. “She yours?”

You don’t look at him, and you will him to ignore him, to start asking him the standard questions. What’s your name? What year were you born? 

“She’s her own,” he says instead. It comes out even and flat. 

“You hesitated,” Foster says. His smile shows his teeth, now. “I suppose that’s not a crime.”

“No,” you agree. You open your file and lay a picture of his mugshot on the table. You can tell he was expecting photos of one of the women whose life he stole away. “But murder is.”

Spencer clears his throat and nudges your ankle with the tip of his shoe. You give him no reaction, but the next time you reach for the file, you let your fingertips brush against his wrist. 

—

“That wasn’t awful,” Spencer says when you step out, though he says it like he’s releasing one big breath born out of a collection of accumulated air trapped in his lungs. 

Foster did say something crude. You’d prefer not to repeat it, mostly because you’re not sure if Spencer was blushing or if he was just hot. 

The prison was freezing, you remind yourself. Then you shove the thought back down. 

“It wasn’t great,” you say. “I wish I’d pushed him further about—”

“Stop,” he says. His hand is on your bicep now. “Don’t overthink it, you did great.”

“Okay,” you say. “Don’t profile me, now.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

The walk back to the car leaves you sticky and hot. You note, aimlessly, that Iowa gets hot enough if you let it — if you stay long enough to let it swelter.

“Our flight’s not till the morning,” you groan, slamming the car door shut.

“Not a fan of Iowa?”

“In how many languages do you know how to say fuck no?”

“Twelve," he says. His eyes flit to the ceiling. “No, fourteen.” 

“Ridiculous.” 

—

You crash as soon as you get back to your hotel room. You sleep for what feels like two hours but you know is way longer than that, and when you finally peel your eyes open you’re sweating. You’re clinging to your sheets, and you consider yourself bed-ridden as you roll over and check your phone. Hotch has sent you three messages asking for updates. Your stomach twinges with guilt for not answering, though you figure he probably moved on and texted Spencer.

Spencer.

You feel bad. You had ditched him, retreating to your hotel room the second you guys got back. You wonder what he did, if he got food, though there’s not much to do in Iowa. In fact, there’s nothing to do in Iowa. 

You slip out of your clothes and take a quick rinse-off in the shower. Your hair is still wet when you adorn yourself in a gray t-shirt and sleep shorts and creep over across the hall. Your fist raps against the door three times, then twice more for good measure. 

“Hi?”

“Hi,” you say, inviting yourself in as you push past him. It’s identical to yours, but everything’s on the opposite side. “Nice room.”

“Much nicer than yours.”

“Oh, for sure.” You clap your hands together, then flop down on the bed. “So, whatcha been up to?”

He nods his head at a book on the nightstand. You stretch over and pick it up. The History of Iowa’s Small Towns.

“Little on the nose, isn’t it, doctor?”

“It’s interesting.”

“Your mind amazes me,” you whisper, then place it back on the nightstand.

“Have you eaten?” he asks.

“I’m not really hungry,” you say. When he quirks his eyebrow, you add: “Really, I can’t eat for, like, at least two hours after I wake up.”

“You were asleep?”

You nod. “Couldn’t last night. You didn’t think I just ditched you, did you?”

He shrugs. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

You place a hand over your heart. “Well, doctor, I’m just plain offended.”

He smiles, real, genuine. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How’d you mean it?” you ask. You move up on the bed, as if it’s your own, making space for him to sit next to you. 

He sighs, like he really doesn’t want to indulge in this conversation, but his lips pry open and you know he will. “Morgan always says I ramble too much.”

You shrug. “What’s much, anyway?”

“Well, if you’re not hungry,” he starts, lifting himself off the bed and over to the mini fridge, “are you thirsty?”

“My, my.” You smile, teeth and all. “I didn’t know you drank on the job.”

“Not technically on the job anymore, am I?” He holds up a little bottle. “It’s not exactly a martini, but it’s all I’ve got unless you want lukewarm ginger ale.”

You accept the bottle with mock ceremony and open it the second it’s in your hands. “Guess federal per diems only cover motel whiskey. Honestly, this is probably the classiest thing happening in Iowa tonight.”

He laughs softly, twisting open his own cap. “From what I’ve read, and seen, that’s a low bar.”

You raise yours. “To meeting the bar.”

He tilts his head, scrunches his nose. “To stepping over the bar with minimal effort.”

You both take a sip. It’s terrible. You make a face.

He sees it and raises an eyebrow. “Too refined for hotel whiskey?”

“Just surprised it didn’t come with a warning label,” you say, setting the bottle down on the nightstand. “Or a tetanus shot.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, taking another sip of his. “I’m sure the Iowa Department of Health is on it.”

You nod solemnly. “They’re probably just as fast as the Wi-Fi.”

That gets a small smile from him. He sits on the edge of the bed, a little closer than before, but still careful. He’s always so careful.

There’s a lull, full of quiet until the nighttime air-conditioning kicks on and you’re too tired to pretend anything really matters for a while.

“You ever drink from the mini bar before? Like, during a case?” you ask eventually.

“Only when I expect to be stranded somewhere like this.”

“Smart,” you say. 

He glances at you, amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Can’t profile your way out of a cornfield without it.”

You hum in agreement. “I’m not sure if that’s depressing.”

He shrugs, taking another sip. “Probably.” His hand falls to his side, dangerously close to your thigh.

You accept another one. And then another one. You’re sure he’s going shot for shot with you, but you can’t really tell because your head is full and everything’s hazy and suddenly this bed is so, so comfortable. 

You lie back, legs still dangling off the edge, and stare up at the popcorn ceiling like it might reveal state secrets. “Did you know Iowa had one of the highest populations of covered bridges?”

Spencer blinks. “Iowa doesn’t.”

You squint. “It doesn’t?”

“No,” he says, amused. “That’s Madison County. Which is in Iowa. But it’s a specific — actually, nevermind. I’m not sure either of us are in a state for nuance.”

You wag a lazy finger at the ceiling. “I knew that.”

“Sure,” he says, and leans back beside you with a soft thud, hands crossed over his stomach. “Next you’ll tell me Iowa invented jazz.”

“It didn’t?” You cant your head to the side, a smile playing at your lips. 

“God, no.”

You sigh dramatically. “And here I thought this trip was educational.”

He turns his head just slightly toward you. His breath is hot, hotter than it was earlier, and his words are all slurred. You think you might sound the same but don’t keep yourself in line long enough to actually check. “You’ve learned a lot. For example, you’ve learned not to trust the minibar.”

“And that your idea of a good time is reading municipal histories.”

“I sensed you were captivated.”

You pull an arm over your face. “Do you always get this cocky after drinking?”

He tilts his head like he’s genuinely thinking about it. “I think I just feel safe knowing I’m not the only one embarrassing myself.”

You haul a leg up to bend into the bed with you and nudge him with your knee. “You’re not embarrassing. You’re weird. Like, in the good way.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, but you can hear the smile in his voice when he finally says: “Thanks. You’re weird too.”

“Weird and drunk.” You repeat the word drunk a few more times, drawing out a different syllable each time. “Spencer?” 

“Hm?”

“Don’t let me fall asleep here.”

“You say that like I have any control over you,” he murmurs. Your breath catches. Neither of you move.

You peek at him from under your arm. “Are you flirting with me?”

“What?” 

“Whatever. Then don’t speak with that— that tone. Or I’ll start to think you’re flirting with me.”

“I’m not really flirting with you.”

You let the arm drop, but not to the mattress; it finds its way to the sleeve of his shirt, playing with the fabric. “Not really or not yet?”

“That depends,” he says, voice dropped low to a whisper. “Would yet be a problem?”

You roll onto your elbow, looming over him. “Guess we’ll have to find out.”

It lands like a match.

“What are you doing?” he asks. Your lips are the closest they’ve ever been.

“I don’t know.” Your eyes move to where his hand has started to creep onto your thigh. “What are you doing?”

He moves first, but only barely. His head tilts up, lips parting like he’s about to ask a question. 

He gets his answer in the shape of your lips.

Your hand finds the edge of his jaw, fingers skimming up the side of his face. He’s warm. Still flushed from the whiskey or maybe just from you.

You’re kissing, you think. You. Spencer. Kissing. It should make you pull back. You work with him. This is strictly forbidden — that should definitely make you pull back.

But then his fingers press into your hips, grounding you, and you shift, and you’re straddling him before you’ve thought it through. It’s automatic, desperate, like the tension finally cracked open and all that’s left is the pull.

“Still not on the job?” you murmur between kisses, breath brushing his lips.

He shakes his head. “Not even a little.”

He starts to kiss you deeper, like he wants to memorize it. You wonder if he is. Your hands move up under his shirt, and his breath slips, just for a second. Just long enough to make you smile into his mouth.

There’s nothing quiet about any of this. Just heat. And want. And finally.

You roll your hips once as a test. When he tightens his grip on you, you have half the mind to do it again, and again, and again. 

Suddenly, all you can think of are your clothes on the ground and him inside you. 

“Fuck,” he mutters. You release his lips from yours.

“Fuck?”

“Shh,” he hushes, trying to silence you, but you’re already laughing.

“Oh my god, Dr. Spencer Reid, esteemed supervisory special agent, holder of three PhDs, just said fuck.” You whisper the last part, hand clutching at your chest.  

“Will you please resume what we were just doing?”

“My fucking pleasure.”

“Jesus,” he squeezes out. Your hands remove themselves from where they were resting under his shirt and head to the waist of his pants. You watch his chest rise a little quicker, fall with a little more readiness. His hands release your hips and come up to grip your wrists. “I say fuck one time and I’ll never hear the end of it.” 

“Maybe we can put it in another context.” You unhook your legs from their desired place around his hips and scooch yourself down his body. Your fingers, which were just barely, ever so delicately toying with his waistband, curl into both the cotton of his pants and his boxers and tug down at once. He helps you, hips coming off the bed just enough for you to drop them both to his ankles. 

He’s already hard, and your mouth is already hollow, already anticipating something to fill a long-lasting void. You say his name, but it sounds off, because your mouth is already imagining itself wrapped around something far less innocent than words.

His hand comes up to your face, brushing your cheekbone, and the feeling is too soft to name but impossible to ignore. You feel as though all the heat in the room has gotten sucked between your legs, and it pools low, desire biting at the edges of restraint.

“You don’t have to,” he says, watching you spit in your hand. You roll your eyes before wrapping the newly wet hand around him. 

“I’m going to. Just stay like that.” 

You stroke him softly, just a few times before spitting on the tip and working it back down. He whispers your name like its wax, made to melt. You’re not thinking and your voice is velvet when you ask him how long it’s been since he’s been touched like this, the way he deserves to be. Too long, comes his response, and you vow to yourself to show him what he’s been missing.

The next time you bring your lips up to release more spit, you reach down and kiss it. Just the tip, and just ever-so-slightly. You’re not sure he noticed at first, so you do it again, this time more pronounced, and then he’s removing his hand from your face and bringing it up to your hair. His grip is firm enough to anchor, not enough to command. 

When you open your lips more, he tightens his grip. When you make your way down, syrup-slick and mouth dripping of sin, he coils his want at the nape of your neck and pulls. You moan around him, which earns you another tug. 

“That feels good,” he whispers. “So fucking good.”

You’re drunk enough that the praise feels more than trembling and temporary. You take it for more than it probably is and pick up your pace.

He lasts not a minute longer before he’s guiding you off of him, and you couch as you come up for air. 

“I don’t want to finish yet,” he mumbles.

“No?”

“No.” He pulls you up off the ground, one hand on your wrist and the other still in your hair. “Wanna take care of you too. Do you want that? Yeah? Lie down for me.”

You do as you're told, nodding along the way, agreeing fervently and with little free will. You’re drooling, enough that it slips past your lips. He brings his index finger up to your face, collecting it on the pad of his finger and pushing it back into your mouth. Instinctively, you suck. He groans, low, a noise you never would have expected to hear from him, and it makes you shut your legs, thighs rubbing together slightly as you try to fight the feeling festering around your limbs.

He kneels before you, the same way you had with him. “Is this what you want?” You nod. “No, use your words.” He pries your legs open, blows between them. 

Your back is coming up off the bed, enough for him to bring a hand up and grab your waist again. “Yes.”

He wastes little time attaching his mouth to you, tongue everywhere, while his fingers leave bruises in your side. One of your hands is gripping the sheets so hard you can feel your fingernails digging into your palm even through it. This can’t be real, you think, because nothing real feels this good. And this feels so, so good. 

You feel fucked out and he hasn’t even put anything inside of you. It’s just his tongue swiping against you, swirling around your clit, sucking your clit, kissing your clit. You can’t think. At some time you stop being aware of what he’s doing and just let him do it.

His hand leaves your hip and you feel it pulse, throbbing at the loss of harsh connection. Then, he forces your fist to open, to release the white fabric, and he locks your fingers together. It feels intimate, more intimate than his mouth on you, and if you were sober you might have shrugged him away. But you’re not. You’re drunk. Very drunk. So instead you hold his hand harder.

His free hand is trailing along your thigh, and when you glance down at him his eyes are closed, and he looks content, satisfied, and you’re not sure you ever want to unfold from this position. He uses his other hand to trail up and down your thigh before his errant fingers find their way farther up your legs. 

When he slips two inside you, both at once, no warning, you mewl.

He detaches his mouth from you, like he wants to focus solely on finger fucking you. When you glance down at him again, he gives you a perfunctory smile before focusing back at the task he’s chosen to take up. He’s practically gift-wrapping your orgasm. 

“Right there,” you choke out when his fingers curl at the exact right moment in the exact right spot. You don’t announce that you’re coming, but Spencer is a genius. You’re sure he can figure it out. Everything comes undone in waves, the way seafoam spits back into the sand before dissipating, carrying itself back out into a vaster part of the water. 

“Good job,” he says. He kisses you. You can taste your slick on his lips.

“Spencer.”

“You’ve said that already.” You’d laugh if you weren’t so unraveled. “I’m gonna fuck you now, okay?”

“Mhm.”

“What did we say about using our words?”

“To… use them?”

“You’re so smart,” he says, and you can hear him breathing in the way that means he’s trying not to laugh as he presses scattered kisses across your cheek, jaw, lips. “Can you speak up and show me how smart you are?”

“I want you to fuck me.”

“Knew you had it in you.” One of his hands is pressed into the mattress next to your head, and the other is absent from your body. When you finally open your eyes, you look down to see him lining himself up with you.

There’s a pinch in your throat as you feel him ease himself inside, slowly, deliberately, like he’s scared you might crumble and break beneath him. You won’t, which you assure him by using one hand to grab onto his bicep and the other to rest on his hip, guiding him all the way inside of you. 

"I got so mad, earlier," he says. "When he was talking about you like that."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," he whispers. "Don't fucking apologize."

The heat is back, swirling in your stomach, rushing up your chest like every vein you have has replaced blood with feverish fire. Spencer throws more gasoline on it when he slides almost all the way out, then pushes himself back in. You’re quiet, and even the air around you seems to have hushed itself. 

When he finds a rhythm, he takes advantage of it. Fucks you a little harder, just enough that you can’t close your mouth, can’t quiet yourself even when you try. You’re trying to tread carefully, but you don’t have it in you to not tip your chin up and search for a kiss. You move your other hand to wrap around his forearm, the one right next to your head, and you can’t stop yourself from digging your nails into the skin when he gives you one particularly hard thrust.

“Do that again,” you whisper.

“This?” he asks, though it’s more of a mock. He does it again, this time a little slower. You feel like crying, because you have no other outlet for what exactly it is you’re currently feeling. When he does it again you have no choice but to squeeze your eyes shut. He kisses you again, idly, like you’ve got all the time in the world. You’re not sure you have more than five minutes in you before you pass out. “You feel so good.”

“Needed you.”

“Yeah?” he says. Your words seem to have made him snap his hips against yours a little harder. 

He uses one of his hands to grab under your thigh, then pushes your leg up. You let out a broken moan you don’t even register as your own until he stretches you farther apart and you do it again. You’d be embarrassed if you weren’t clawing at an indescribable edge. You feel ripe. Nothing holy is coming for you. You arch your back like it might. 

"Mine." He says it while looking down at you. He says it with his chest. He says it like it's an absolute.

You bring your hand to the back of his neck and make him kiss you. Once for the thrill, twice just to feel the burn of it really settle in. 

Then you come. And everything else does, too. It’s unraveling. Not fingers but friction, not skin but static, not breath but flood. The room is slipping sideways, hips first, mouth second. you forget your name or maybe you give it away. There's no shape to anything, to the sting between your legs, only pulse — wet, reckless, existing in the hollows of your thighs. When he bends down and lets out a sound that sounds suspiciously like your name, your teeth catch on his shoulder like a warning. He doesn’t flinch. You bite down harder.

Nothing makes sense for a while except the sound of the air-conditioner. 

Spencer says something. Then again. Then, he taps your cheek twice, says your name until you come to.

“Hm?”

“You okay?”

“‘m okay. Are you okay?”

He laughs. It’s quiet and hoarse and still warm. “Yes ma’am.”

“Hmmmm.”

“Hmm what?’

“I like that. We’ll use that ‘nother time.” You let out a heavy sigh as he chuckles. He slips out of you and you suck in a breath that catches in the pockets of your teeth, cold and shocking against the roof of your mouth.

“Sorry.” You shake your head and hope it conveys that he has nothing to apologize for. He rolls over next to you. “You should pee.”

“Pee schmee.”

“I think I’m gonna retract my previous statements about your high level of intelligence now.” You smack him with your hand and laugh, hearty and probably too loud.

“I’m still drunk,” you say after a few more moments of silence.

“I think that’s how that whole drinking thing works, yeah.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.” His answer comes quicker than you were expecting.

“Okay. Me neither. Just checking.” You blow hair out of your face, and when that doesn’t work you bring a palm up and use the strength of four fingers to wipe it away from the sweat gathering in satin sheets across your skin. “I hate this room.”

“Me too.”

“I don’t hate you,” you whisper.

“Well,” he whispers back. “I don’t hate you either.”

“Do you wanna maybe… I don’t know. Not be on the job tomorrow morning?”

It might just be the alcohol, but his expression is soft and lush, like when dawn’s light shudders through early morning fog. 

Spencer’s breath on your neck is hot and partly wet, a well-received pacification as you continue jerking lightly against his hips. He has one hand on your waist, rubbing soothing circles with the pad of his left thumb. The other rests on your throat, not gripping, just lingering. He uses the hand on your waist to tap lightly to remind you to roll over and off him. 

When your head nuzzles into the pillow next to his own, you just stare. It’s a justified sight; you think briefly that the laws of unrequited love are probably older than the laws of marriage. 

“You staying the night?” you ask, voice soft. You try to hide the longing within it, the disappointment should he say no. And he probably will say no — rule number one: no staying the night when avoidable. 

Spencer’s nose scrunches, fingers reaching up to brush a few strands of hair from his face. His fingers twitch and you think, just for a moment, that he might reach out and brush your hair, too. 

“I shouldn’t.”

“Yeah,” you agree, turning your gaze to the ceiling, sucking your bottom lip between previously gnashing teeth. 

Rule number two: no kissing outside of sex. It’s fine when he’s inside of you, you guys established. Not when you’re laying in bed, sweaty and breathing hard and outside of the haze caused by a mutual chase for relief.

You anticipate the weight beside you lifting, the cold air rushing into the bed, the pit in your stomach stretching and widening until you think it might swallow her whole.

What comes in lieu is Spencer’s hand resting on your waist. You almost protest — what about our rules? 

Instead, you slip your tongue back behind your teeth and watch the fan circle, circle.

Rule number three: no lying. 

When you wake three hours later, Spencer is gone. 

✶ 

There are four dead women in Texas — strangled, asphyxiated. You know it will be a long case; the marks adorning the women’s bodies and the lack of posing them speak to a textbook sadist. The bodies stuffed in the forest, that total destruction of evidence, indicate an intelligent one. You breathe in a sigh as you watch Spencer’s fingers flip through the pages of his tan file.

“Guess we’re heading to Texarkana,” Morgan says beside you.

Your stomach turns. This job never gets easier.

What does, though, are Spencer’s eyes on you. The softness rushes through you the same way it did when you first shook hands, but it’s grown more comfortable. Steadier.

The turbulence isn’t bad, but it’s enough to jolt Spencer’s coffee, sending a few drops onto the file spread across his lap. He curses softly — which still sounds wrong coming from him — blotting at the papers with a napkin. Across the aisle, you watch him out of the corner of your eye, a faint smirk tugging at your lips.

“Careful, Spence,” Morgan teases from the row behind, leaning forward. “We don’t need you short-circuiting before we even land.”

Spencer mutters something about the statistical improbability of turbulence causing major spills, but you try your hardest to tune it out. You shift your focus back to the folder in your hands and work yourself to think. To work. It’s what you’re here for. You’re not here for Spencer.

Still, his idle hands fidgeting with the dirty napkin tug at your very carefully placed focus. You think of the unsub, instead. He’s precise, methodical, angry. You can feel it in the patterns carved into the victims' skin, in the sheer rage of the injuries.

JJ’s voice cuts through the hum of the engines as she adjusts herself in the leather couch across from where you’re sitting. “Victimology suggests a personal vendetta. Both women have ties to the same gym, but nothing beyond that yet.”

“So we’re looking at someone in the orbit of their personal lives,” Rossi says, flipping through his own file.

“Or someone who thinks they are,” Hotch replies from his seat at the front, voice grim as always. 

You lean back, head against the headrest. Your fingers tighten around the folder. It’s not the first time you’ve flown into a city chasing a ghost, and it won’t be the last.

You glance up. Spencer’s eyes meet yours for a fraction longer than necessary.

It’s not a comfort you allow yourself to acknowledge often, but here, in the warmth of the plane, it feels as inevitable as the sunrise. Something constant, even when you’re on your way to prevent something that’s already unraveling. 

✶ 

Their rooms are right next to each other, and you watch Spencer disappear behind the door without sparing you a glance. Your feet itch to walk over, but it’s late, and everyone’s all tired, and nothing that bears any resemblance to normal feels moral when you have dead bodies on your hands. You tuck one leg beneath you and lay the contents of the file across your bed, organized in a way only you can tell. 

Right before you turn out the light, you hear a knock breaking through the barrier of the wall behind you.

You smile, raise a knuckle to the space above your headboard, and knock back.

✶ 

The precinct is quiet now, save for the faint buzz of dated fluorescent lights and the occasional shuffle of an officer passing by. The case is closed. The unsub — calm, articulate and utterly devoid of remorse — is in custody. His confession was delivered with an eerie precision that still crawls under your skin.

You stand by the evidence board, absently peeling tape from the corners of a photo. The faces of the victims stare back at you, lives now reduced to a few lines of text and grainy images. You pick up an eraser before exhaling slowly, fingers stilling as you hear footsteps behind you. 

Spencer appears at your side, a cup of coffee in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. He offers the latter without a word, eyes soft in a way that you've come to understand means he sees more than he lets on.

You accept the water, twisting the cap open but not drinking. You say nothing about how he remembers that you don’t drink coffee past mid-afternoon. “We don’t leave till morning. You should go back to the hotel. You’ve been running on fumes.”

Spencer tilts his head just enough that no one should notice — you shouldn’t notice — and a faint smile plays at his lips. “Funny. I was just about to say the same to you.”

“Right.” You gesture with a nod of your head toward the now-empty chairs around the conference table. “Feels strange, doesn’t it? The quiet, after everything.”

Spencer nods, gaze drifting to the board. “Yeah. It always does.” His voice at the edge of his sentence lifts up and you wait for him to continue. He licks his lips and it puts an idea in your head that shouldn’t be there. Still, it persists. “You don’t have to feel so guilty about the ones we didn’t save, I hope you know. There’s nothing you could have done differently.”

You want to deflect, to make some dry comment and move on, but his eyes hold you there.

“I’m fine,” you say eventually. It sounds hollow even to your own ears.

Spencer shifts on his feet and inches closer, just close enough that anyone abruptly walking in wouldn’t force you to jump away. “I will head back to the hotel,” he says finally. “But only if you come with me.”

Like a dog, you trail behind him, tossing the eraser back on the table and ignoring how it rolls backwards until it clatters with a quiet clap on the ground. 

✶ 

“Missed this,” Spencer murmurs, hand lazily running up your leg. He’s kneeled before you, hands on each of your thighs, pushing, spreading.

“This?” you prod. He blows softly between your legs, and you can feel him waiting for you to react. You oblige, fluttering your eyelids, falling backward on the mattress until the sterile, off-white duvet catches you. 

“You know what I mean,” he whispers, parting your legs further like a peace offering.

You’re not sure you do. 

Still, you tilt your head back and use a white-knuckle grip to grab at his hair and convey the things you can’t bring yourself to say by way of word.

✶ 

“Have you noticed you use present tense when speaking about the victims?” you ask once they’ve finished.

He pauses, gaze locking with yours. “Sometimes I… I feel like if we speak as if they’re still ours, still here, we can convince ourselves it’s true. It makes this all a little easier.”

His voice is soft, almost breaking in speech, and his meaning hangs between the two of you, undeniable.

“I can’t stop thinking about the timeline,” you say. “There’s something off. If the suspect left the second location at 8:15, they wouldn’t have made it across town in time to—”

✶ 

You guys go without a case for a month, which should feel like a good thing. It is a good thing. The less bodies out there the better.

You’re nursing a scotch at the bar — you don’t even like scotch, you just felt the need for something strong — and ignore the burning in your lower stomach, the ache between your legs. You sit and sip until the leather stool breathes enough courage into you for you to get up and walk out. 

It’s been a month without the feeling of him rolling into you, writhing beneath him, legs twisting, hips turning, only one name chosen to slip past your lips — all reasons why you don’t even make it to Spencer’s bedroom when you show up at his door unexpectedly.

“How’d you find your way here?” he asks, two fingers rubbing circles on your clit. 

“The b-bar,” you say, hands clutching at his biceps. “Was there, but I left,” you add in a hazy rush.

“Good girl,” he says, then rewards you by slipping two fingers inside. 

It takes him two more minutes before he’s pulling his belt off, slipping himself inside of you, and says: “I needed this.” 

(You don’t get caught up on how he said this. You definitely don’t pretend he said you as you were coming.)

You clear his throat when you both finish, shifting away and pulling a blanket over yourself like you’re trying to make yourself smaller on the opposite end of the couch. You get like this some of the time. Distant. Afraid. 

The space between him and you feels wide, even though you can still feel the phantom weight of Spencer against your skin; the wetness of his saliva still resides on your lower lip, sticky and welcome as honey. 

“I should go,” you say finally, tight.

Spencer doesn’t look at you, doesn’t move. “If you want.”

You flinch, but recover quick enough to grab your clothes off the floor. The silence between you stretches, unbearably so. You press your palms into your thighs, digging your nails into your skin, grounding yourself against the ache clawing its way up your throat.

When you stand you smooth down your clothes with trembling hands. 

“I…” you start, but the words die in your throat. You think you could write an empty book full of things unsaid. 

When he finally looks up, his eyes meeting yours, raw and unguarded, neither of you speak. You wait for him to say your name, to place an open palm on the cushion next to his and ask you to stay. Instead, there’s an untraceable, undefinable look in his eyes that you can’t distinguish from indifference. 

So you turn, footsteps deafening as you walk away. Spencer doesn’t call after you. He stays rooted as the door swings shut.  

The scent of him clings to your clothes like decay settling over a room harboring a dead body.

✶ 

You guys get over it within four days, like you always do. 

You’re both on top of the covers, shoes off but shields up, watching some nothing-show flicker across the TV screen like it has something to say. It doesn’t. Neither do you. Not at first.

Spencer’s got his fingers folded under his chin like he’s solving the world again. You wonder if you’re the problem this time.

“You always do that,” you say, voice low like a dare.

He doesn’t look at you. “Do what.”

“That thing. Where you think so loud I can hear the math happening.”

His mouth tilts, barely. “Sorry. Didn’t realize thinking was disruptive.”

“It is,” you shoot back. “When I’m trying not to.”

That gets his attention. His eyes flick over, sharp and unreadable in a way that makes you want to say something reckless.

“You could always leave,” he says, not unkindly, but with some kind of challenge stitched into it.

You shift onto your side, face to his, a breath apart now. “If I wanted to leave, I wouldn’t be stealing half your pillow.”

He doesn’t answer for a beat. Maybe two. Then: “You always do that.”

You raise a brow. “What.”

“Make it sound like we’re not one wrong breath from kissing.”

There's silence after that. But not the safe kind.

You smirk — because it’s easier than feeling things. “Guess we’re both good at pretending.”

He swallows. Says nothing. The space between you gets smaller in that strange, invisible way where bodies don’t move but everything else does.

On the TV, the fake people keep laughing. You wonder what it’d take to join them.

✶ 

You don’t have a TV in your room, so when the two of you finally catch your breath again, the room is filled with nothing but static silence. The kind that creeps in under the door and settles on your chest like it paid for the room.

You’re sitting up, knees drawn to your chest like armor, picking at the seam of your old blanket like it wronged you. Like if you unravel enough knots, you’ll find the part of yourself that didn’t start caring. Spencer’s still lying back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling like it has answers you don’t. Like it ever did.

“You weren’t supposed to stay,” you say, tone razor-light. Like it’s nothing. Like it doesn’t matter. Like he doesn’t matter. Except it does, and he does, and the air between you feels like it’s holding its breath.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. “Didn’t realize you were keeping score.”

You snort. “I’m not. I’m keeping boundaries.”

Your voice is too steady. You hate that it’s too steady. It betrays nothing, and that’s the problem.

“Oh, right. The imaginary fence around your feelings.” He says it flat, like a fact, but there’s that flicker — barely a crack — in his voice, and it lands heavier than he thinks it does.

You turn, slow, eyes sharp. “Don't psychoanalyze me just because you're losing your grip on casual.”

His jaw tightens. You watch it happen. Watch him go from soft to steel in half a second. “You think this is me losing grip?” He’s not loud. That’s the thing. He never needs to be.

You don’t answer. You pull the blanket tighter, even though you’re not cold. Your hands won’t stop moving — tucking, smoothing, anything to keep from reaching for him.

“You said no spending the night,” you murmur. “You said that. You’re the one who made that rule, not me.”

You’re trying not to sound like a little kid pointing fingers, pointing out a broken rule, but it’s there, the crack in your throat. You feel it more than you hear it.

“I did. And then you fell asleep on my arm and I—” he exhales, bitter-soft, “—didn’t feel like being alone. Sue me.”

It’s the first time he’s sounded tired. Not work-tired. Not jet-lag-tired. Real-tired.

“You should’ve left.” It comes out too fast, too loud. You regret it instantly. You want to shove the words back in your mouth and stitch your lips shut. You want to rewind five seconds and say please stay instead.

He sits up now, finally, finally meeting your eyes. “Say what you mean.”

The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s crowded. With everything you’ve left unsaid since the first night, the third night, the one where he kissed your wrist like it meant something.

You clench your jaw. Mean is dangerous. Mean is everything you’re trying not to be.

Once you start meaning things, it stops being safe.

“I mean,” you start, voice quieter now, threadbare, “that I can’t keep waking up next to you and pretending it’s not ruining me a little.”

You don’t look at him when you say it. You look at your hands. The blanket. The space between your knees. Anything but his face.

And there it is. Your little apocalypse, out loud.

Spencer blinks, slow. Like he’s trying to rewind it, parse it, file it under Things To Analyze Later. But he just nods.

“Okay,” he says. “Then I’ll go.”

The words fall like bricks. No heat. No argument. Just resignation, folded neatly like one of his pressed work shirts.

He stands, grabs his coat from the chair, movements stiff like they’re too careful. Like if he moves too fast, he’ll shatter. You don’t stop him.

But you don’t look away, either. You make yourself watch. Like penance.

The door clicks behind him like punctuation. Not a period. Not quite. Maybe a semicolon.

And you lie back, staring at the ceiling, waiting for it to explain how you got here.

It doesn’t.

✶ 

The chill of mid-November isn’t much to speak of in Tallahassee, but the air feels heavy nonetheless. It’s bone dry and still in the cramped precinct, but you’re used to this — the unrelenting silence that builds until it threatens to rupture. The walls are yellowed with age, the lights too bright for such a small space. It smells faintly of burnt coffee and paper left too long in damp drawers. 

You stand at the center of it all, the evidence spread across the table in front of you, photographs and crime scene reports arranged with surgical precision. Hotch’s doing. 

You’re deliberate in your movements, every action honed to keep your mind focused on the case rather than the ache lodged under your ribs.

“Two couples, three weeks,” Hotch begins, more a reiteration to himself than anything.“No apparent connection between the victims beyond the methodology. He’s escalating.”

“Look at the posing,” Spencer says, coming around from the other side of the table to slightly rearrange the photos. “It’s too deliberate. Too symmetrical. This isn’t just about killing. It’s like he’s… creating something. A tableau, maybe.”

Rossi shakes his head. “Could just be obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Order for order’s sake.” Spencer hums in distant deliberation as he sets up a geographical profile on the room’s opposing board. 

You’re not so sure Rossi’s right, but seniority rules. You turn your attention back to the board, adding another photo to the cluster.

Across the room, Spencer hovers near the whiteboard, arms crossed. You’ve barely spoken since you all arrived. You feel the weight of him pulling at your attention despite yourself. You feel too aware of how fragile everything feels.

✶ 

Later that evening, Spencer finds you in one of the precinct’s side offices. The room is dimly lit, the blinds half-drawn, casting striped shadows across the desk where you sit, scrolling through files on your laptop. You feel him hesitating in the doorway.

“You’re avoiding me,” Spencer says.

“You’re not exactly making yourself easy to approach,” you say without looking up, voice flat.

Later that evening, Spencer finds you in one of the precinct’s side offices. The room is dimly lit, the blinds half-drawn, casting striped shadows across the desk where you sit, scrolling through files on your laptop. The screen’s glow makes your face look washed out, otherworldly. Like something pulled from a memory instead of a moment. You feel him hesitating in the doorway.

“You’re avoiding me,” Spencer says.

“You’re not exactly making yourself easy to approach,” you say without looking up, voice flat.

“I wasn’t trying to make it hard,” he says finally, stepping inside like the floor might give out. “I just didn’t want to make it worse.”

You click your pen twice, too fast, like the notes you’re absentmindedly writing matter more than what he’s saying. It doesn’t. But you need something to touch, something to do. “Well,” you mutter, “congrats on that front.”

His breath catches. Just a little. Enough to register.

He walks further in, careful steps over scuffed linoleum, until he’s standing across from you. Not close, not far. Neutral territory. “I didn’t mean to stay that night. Or the time before that. I mean — I meant to leave. I just…”

He trails off. Looks away. Picks at a hangnail like it might distract him from how vulnerable he sounds. “It didn’t feel like a rule anymore. It felt like a punishment.”

You stop scrolling. Not because of what he said — though that hits somewhere low and raw — but because you’re tired. Tired of parsing every glance, every touch, every maybe.

“Then maybe we shouldn’t have made rules at all,” you say. “Maybe we should’ve just let this thing crash and burn from the beginning instead of dragging it out like a slow-motion car wreck.”

Spencer leans against the edge of the desk. His hands hover near yours but don’t touch. Like he’s asking without asking.

“I don’t want it to crash,” he says. Quiet. Steady. “I just didn’t know how to keep it from doing that without breaking something else in the process.”

You finally look up. Meet his eyes. They’re soft and stormy and apologizing in ways his words haven’t gotten to yet.

“You hurt me,” you say. It’s not meant to be an accusation, nor a weapon. Just the truth.

“I know,” he says, and he means it. “I hurt myself, too.”

You blink. Slow. The words don’t fix anything, but they peel the edge off the tension.

“So what now?” you ask.

Spencer shrugs, but it’s the careful kind. The kind that doesn’t want to shake the fragile thing between you. “I stay. Or I go. Your call.”

You scan his face like you’re trying to read a foreign language you only half-remember. But the burn’s still there. Under your ribs. In your throat. 

“I can’t keep doing this,” you say, softer now, but not gentler. “It’s always almost. Always something you almost say, or almost feel, or almost admit.”

He looks down at the floor like it might offer him a script. It doesn’t.

“I didn’t come here to fight,” he says.

“You didn’t come here to fix anything either.”

That one lands. You see it in the way his hands stiffen at his sides, in the way he doesn’t argue.

You glance back at your notes. Eyes unfocused.. “You should go,” you whisper. 

He lingers like he might say something. Might reach out. 

This time, he leaves without closing the door. 

✶ 

Your feet carry you past your own room and straight to Spencer’s once you step into the hotel. It feels like second nature, the way your hand reaches for something you can’t have but can’t get enough of. 

You guys don’t do this — fuck during cases. It’s always after. It has to be after, or else what are they doing? Trading in humanity for a fire that’s always sure to cease once the moment passes?

He doesn’t answer at the first knock, so you just knock harder. It’s a threat: open up or let everyone see me standing here at your door. Spencer chooses the former.

“May I help you?” Spencer says, and it’s a half-joke, but you hear the hesitancy. His eyes dart around the hallway like this is a trap.

“Actually, I was thinking I could help you.” 

There’s a brief moment where a spark filters through his eyes. It’s gone just before you can decipher whether it’s real or not. In its replacement, the door cracks open not even an inch, maybe a centimeter. 

You take it for what she wants it to be. You step in and kiss him hard, rough, like you want to bite him. You almost do. Spencer breathes back into you, hands still at your sides before coming up to pull you in closer.

He pushes your back against the door in what you take to be a feeble attempt at reclaiming power. Instead of letting him have it, you pull his sweatpants and boxers down in one go, kissing as you descend down his body.

“I’m sorry,” you say, then place a kiss above his navel. “I’m sorry.” Another below it. “I’m so sorry.” 

Spencer sucks in a breath after the placement of the next.

✶ 

“Tell me you don’t want me,” Spencer whispers, so low you almost lose it in the sound of your meshed bodies. You’re on top of him, rolling your hips against his like you might die without this — without him.

“What?”

“Tell me you don’t want me,” he repeats, nails digging into your skin. 

Your stomach turns. It feels brittle and hard as you roll the thought of it around your mouth. You distance yourself when you let the words escape you, so far out of your own body you barely notice Spencer coming beneath you.

✶ 

Spencer winds up being right about the story aspect of the case. The killer had dropped out of college years prior, ditching his creative writing major for a subordinate position in his dad’s construction company. The need for a creative outlet came out in a less than favorable way.

You pat his shoulder on the plane, tell him he did a good job. He squeezes your shoulder before choosing the seat across from you. You glance around. No one saw. 

There’s a fluttering in your stomach you don’t want to call butterflies, so you think of them as dull, brown moths.

✶ 

December bleeds slowly as it reaches the end of the month, and Strauss approves a winter break of some sort. One week off, but they have to do a certain amount of file work while at home. Everyone takes what they can get.  

Morgan speaks with pride about the trip he’s taking to New York City — of the liquor and the women. Emily raises an eyebrow and jokes that he’s just looking for trouble. Spencer, predictably, launches into a tangent about holiday traditions around the world, but no one interrupts him. You’ve noticed the others think it’s endearing when he rambles.

You’re quiet, but do your best to not seem unhappy. You sit beside Spencer in the round table room as the team winds down. Your elbows bump occasionally, but neither of you moves to shift away. 

As goodbyes are exchanged, Spencer lingers. His steps are measured, slow, as they both head toward the exit. The cold air waits for them outside, visible through the frosted glass of the door. He hesitates, hand stilling on the strap of his bag.

“You’ve got plans?” she asks, breaking the quiet between them.

He shrugs.

“Come on, share,” you say, but you’re not sure why you’re prying. Not sure you want the answer.

“I’m going to Las Vegas,” he says, then swallows hard. “I’m visiting my mother.”

You make a noise akin to ah, nodding. It’s a good thing, truly. You’ve only met his mom once but instantly loved her, the way she complimented your taste in literature and the smell of your perfume. 

“Tell her I say hi?” 

He nods. “What about you?” 

“Just me and eggnog,” you reply, your tone light, though it falters slightly at the end. “Maybe a movie marathon if I get through the paperwork.”

Spencer laughs gently, the sound brief but warm, like a candle flickering. He shifts on his feet, his eyes tracing the edge of the door before finding yours again.

“Well,” he says, volume dipping into something quieter, more deliberate. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Yeah,” you reply, but you don’t move. The door feels like an end, more final than it should. It’s just a week, you tell yourself, and wills it to comfort you.

Spencer turns toward it, pulling it open just enough to let the cold seep in. She steps halfway through before pausing. He glances back over his shoulder, the light catching in his eyes, and he looks at you like he wants to say something else but thinks better of it.

“I’ll see you,” he repeats..

“Yeah.”.

And then he’s gone, the door swinging shut behind him. You stand there a moment longer before exhaling and pulling your scarf tighter around your neck, then stepping into the cold.

The wind stings your cheeks, but you hardly notice. Something about his words linger loosely long after you’ve begun the drive home.

✶ 

When you rustle around your sheets that night, tossing and turning, you can only find refuge in the movement of your own wrist against you, fingers slipping in and out, in and out. 

“I see you,” you whisper to the empty room. 

When you shut your eyes, you do. Brown hair, hazel eyes and all.

✶ 

There’s a knock at your door. Three short, then one after a beat — like whoever’s on the other side changed their mind halfway through.

You open it and there he is, shoulders dusted in snow like some ghost from a poem. Collar turned up, curls damp, cheeks pink from wind or nerves or both. You blink once, slow, like your brain needs a second to load him.

“I thought you had a flight,” you say, not moving.

“I missed it,” Spencer replies, like that explains anything. Like that doesn’t set your pulse lurching.

You lean against the frame. Not letting him in. Not sending him away either. “Accidentally?”

He huffs a laugh, breath clouding between you. “Only in the sense that I bought the ticket knowing I wouldn’t get on the plane.”

You glance past him — at the streetlight flickering like it’s shivering, at the snow piling quiet and soft on the railing. The air smells like cold metal and unfinished conversations.

“You came all this way just to stand on my porch and be cryptic?” you ask, but your voice gives too much away. It’s not teasing. It’s something slower, more dangerous. Want, laced in denial.

“My mom’s not doing well. I was kidding myself. She—” He looks down, then up again, eyes impossibly warm under all that winter. “She called and told me not to come.

You shift. Bare feet cold on the tile. The heat behind you spilling into the threshold, painting his skin gold.

“Spence—” you start, but the sentence falls apart in your mouth. He’s looking at you like you’re a solution he just solved too late.

“I’m not asking to come in—” 

“Come in,” you say, swinging the door open perhaps a little too fast. 

He brushes past you but pauses when you’re just an inch apart. He pulls his purple scarf off his shoulders, apologizes softly when snow falls to your floor, melting instantly against the heat.

You tell him it’s fine, lifting a hand to his cheek. Then, quieter: “You’re freezing.”

He smiles, small and wrecked. “Yeah.”

You don’t move, but the distance is shrinking anyway, second by second, breath by breath.

“I missed you,” he says, like it’s the first true thing he’s said in weeks. Maybe months.

And something in you thaws, just slightly. Not much, but enough to say enough to say I know and mean it.

When he kisses you, it feels like he means it.

✶ 

He doesn’t stay the night under the guise of paperwork. You know what he really means. He doesn’t text the next day, or the day after that, and for some reason this whole break feels like a complete waste if you’re not with him. 

On the sixth day, you snap. Your chest is burning, hot and cold all at once. You pick up your phone and type a message to him, fingers trembling.

Are you even thinking about me at all? 

The reply comes swiftly: You know I am. After twelve seconds, he clarifies he’s having dinner with a couple friends from college who are in town. You don’t have the dignity to ignore it. 

He picks up on the second to last ring. 

“I’m at a restaurant.”

“I know.” You didn’t have any words planned. So, you say: “Tell me what you were thinking about.”

“I’m in public.” 

“You’re in the bathroom,” you correct. The running sink — which you know is on to hush the sound of your call — audible on the other end of the phone proves your point.

“I was thinking about…” his voice trails off. You can hear him fight it. You will him to lose. “That first time. After that case in—”

“Alabama,” you finish, then slip a hand under the waistband of your yoga pants.

It dissolves into hushed whispers, soft moans, and a slick mess between your thighs. Your back is lifting off the cushion, head pressing hard into the arm of the couch. 

“Tell me you love me,” you hear, and don’t register it’s you saying it until silence lolls on the other side of the phone. “Tell me,” you repeat, destined to what you hadn’t meant to say, dropping your volume to a whisper.

He says your name like a warning he’s not sure he wants to call.

“It’s not commitment, Spence,” you plead. “I won’t hold it over your head.”

A few more beats of silence, and you glance at the phone resting atop your knee to see if he had hung up. He hadn’t. You contemplate hanging up yourself. 

“I love you.” The words come like the burst of flowers in mid-April. You wave between believing him and recognizing that part of his job is lying. Your fingers roll quicker inside of yourself all the same. 

When he repeats it a second time, you come with tears pooling in the dips of your collarbones.

✶ 

Spencer doesn’t text or call you when he gets back home. That familiar pit slides itself open in your gut. You’re not owed anything, you know this. The pit storms down self-poisoning pellets regardless. 

When you see him in the office, Spencer’s some kind of distant, eyes glossed over, devoid of anything you would be able to pick apart. You’re left to analyze the sudden shutout instead. 

It wouldn’t be odd to swing by and catch him by the coffee station, you are friends after all. Still, your arrangement leaves you paranoid and anxious and unsure of how to conduct yourself. 

It’s outside the bathroom where you catch him three hours later, shaking his slightly damp hands as you walk by.

“Hey,” you say, a little too rushed, and you refrain from wincing. “How was your vacation?” It sounds fake even with all you practiced under your breath sitting at your desk, so you compensate by trying hard to not let it show on your face.

“It was good,” comes Spencer’s reply, before he slides past you and steps in the direction of the bullpen. 

“Just good?” you ask. Spencer eyes a person rounding the hallway and into the space you’re both occupying, and you follow his line of sight. 

“Mhm.”

“Okay,” you say with a nod, then grab his forearm to drag him farther away from the restroom and into the stairwell. There’s minimal protest on his end, likely to save face, but you take it anyway. 

Once you’re inside, you drop your voice to a whisper. “Why didn’t you say anything, call when you got back?”

“I got busy.”

“That’s- that’s a lie,” you huff out. “Please. Please answer.”

He gnaws on your lip like it's a final meal. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not an answer,” you breathe out, on the brink of exasperated laughter. You drop his shoulders as you soften your tone and add: “Don’t be sorry.”

“This is killing me,” he whispers back. “It’s killing me. I—” He cuts himself off, brows furrowing in what looks like distress. “I’m always thinking about you.”

That’s not what he wanted to say, you realize. That’s not what he was going to say. The thought of the alternative words leaving his mouth curdles in your stomach, rises in the form of bile to your throat. 

Someone walks into the stairwell and carelessly pushes past you. You fix your posture while Spencer ducks his head and uses the distraction to walk away. Your mouth opens to say something, but you trade it in for silence. You’re not sure what you’re fighting for. 

You walk into the bathroom and throw up the contents of your stomach into the shiny white bowl. It feels like honey on its way up.

✶ 

“Two victims in the last week,” JJ says, passing them all a file before resting on the beige leather couch of the jet. “Both found in their homes, no signs of forced entry, and no evidence of sexual assault or robbery.” She sighs. “Just... gone.”

“They’re being strangled,” Spencer says. “But not with hands… some sort of ligature?”

JJ nods. “The medical examiner says it’s likely something soft, like a scarf or a tie.”

Hotch leans forward, voice calm and direct. “What do we know about the victims?”

“They’re all married women,” Spencer says, voice low as he flips through the beige file. “Late thirties to early forties, no kids, and their spouses were out of town when the murders occurred. The killer left no note, no message.” He glances up. “Like JJ said, it’s like he just wanted them gone.”

Spencer’s shoulders stiffen almost imperceptibly, but you catch it.

“Could be someone they knew,” Morgan says, his tone contemplative. “If there’s no sign of a break-in, they let the killer in willingly. Someone they trusted.”

“Someone they trusted but didn’t suspect,” you murmur. 

Spencer glances down at you, and your eyes meet for the briefest moment before he looks away. 

✶ 

Your hotel room stays dark. The file lay unopened on your desk. There’s a mini fridge you stare at, like even the presence of unsipped alcohol might just do the trick. You hate that he’s letting this impact your job, which doesn’t stop you from doing so. 

With your back against the mattress, you raise a fist, then knock against the yellow wall. 

No one knocks back.

✶ 

Emily cracks the case — a woman, she realizes, when it all feels too much like jealousy. The unsub, a thirty-something woman named Victoria Ackers, doesn’t put up much of a fight when Morgan kicks down her front door.

“It should’ve been me,” Victoria wails when you put her in cuffs. “How come they got to be loved, and I didn’t?”

You rarely sympathize with the people you lock up. This isn’t an exception.

Still, you place Victoria in loose cuffs, and when it comes to closing the door of the cop car, you close it softly.

✶ 

You go home alone and wait until three. Spencer doesn’t come.

When you finally lie in bed, it feels like a grave. 

✶ 

You’re running on three weeks of sleep deprivation when you decide to approach him. It’s long after work is supposed to be over, and the only person left in the office beside them is Hotch, who can barely be seen through the pile of paperwork adorning his desk. 

Spencer has concerned himself in an online debate forum on the overuse of arguing against the cosmological argument in atheist literature to notice you slipping into his view, pulling Morgan’s chair around to sit in it.

“Hey,” you speak first. You wait for him to invite you into a conversation.

“Hi,” he says, moving his mouse away from his hand. 

“I figured we should…”

“Talk?” Spencer guesses.

“Talk, yeah.” You bite your lip. 

“I didn’t mean to shut you out.”

“But you did.” The words have little bite in them. 

“I’m—”

“You don’t have to say it.”

“I want to.” A beat passes. You allow it. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” you say after several long seconds. You surprise yourself with the sureness behind the meaning of it.

“What do you have to be sorry for?”

You don't respond. You watch his shoulders drop. “Oh.”

“It’s okay,” you assure. “This… isn’t how it’s supposed to be.” Your eyes stall a moment too long on the team photo atop his desk, the only photo he has up. Like it’s instinctive, Spencer fiddles with a file on his desk.

“So… it’s just over.” 

You don’t have anything to say — he hadn’t posed it as a question. You’re not sure where you’re going when you stand, but you stand regardless. You pause as you shove things in your bag back at your desk. “I was lying, by the way,” you say. “In Tallahassee, when I said I didn’t want you.” 

You could stick around to see what Spencer has in response, but you don’t. It’ll hurt at the same rate, whatever it is. 

✶ 

It felt like finality, so you go to bed early. It isn’t an easy feat, and it feels nothing like winning. 

With your eyes shut, sleeping but not dreaming, you aren’t expecting the pounding sound that’s coming from your door, the intensity of it to jolt you awake. Too delirious from a lingering state of hypnagogia, you swing the door open without checking to see who it is first. Spencer stands there, soaked through his long-sleeved shirt. You weren’t even aware it was raining.

It happens fast, Spencer’s lips against yours. He kisses you the way you had kissed him back in Tallahassee, rough and cleaving you open like a god that doesn’t belong. You don’t have to work hard to meet the same level of desire. 

“What are you doing?” you get out between kisses, stepping backward as you head to your room with Spencer still pulled close to you.

“Please don’t ask any questions right now.”

So you don’t. Instead, you let him strip you of your clothes, soothe your surprised body with a palm on the small of your back as he leads you to lie on the bed. 

“You’re freezing,” you mention. A droplet of water cascades down his hair and lands on your cheekbone, then another on your shoulder until your whole body seems wet.

“It’s raining.”

“I gathered.”

You’re wet somewhere else, too, you think, as he dips his hand between your legs and leaves feather-light touches against your core.

“Please,” you whisper.

“Please what?”

“Touch me.”

“I am touching you, honey.” He’s teasing you, you know. He wants you to beg. It’s so rare he gets you at his mercy. In moments like these, you can tell he savors it. Relishes in it.

Instead of responding, you grab at his wrist, forcing his fingers inside of yourself. Spencer lets out something akin to a moan even though it's not him on the receiving end. 

You think he likes you like this, wide open for him. Your lips are parted, like you’re one big portal Spencer can slide into, move his tongue against, curl his fingers in. He takes the opportunity, pushes his pointer and middle into your mouth and lets you clamp around them. You suck, causing him to instinctively up the pace of his other hand like it’s a reward.

“Thought we weren’t gonna show up anymore,” he says. He curls his fingers to reach that one spot he knows makes your pupils blow. You push back the thought that he might’ve found that spot on other women, too. Worse, the thought that someone might’ve taught him where it is. “But you let me in. So what happened to that, hm?”

You mumble something incoherent around his fingers, so he pulls them out and grabs you by the chin instead. “Go ahead.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t what?”

“Keep you out.”

You want him to kiss you then, but don't know if that’s too intimate. You opt for bucking your hips against his hand instead. It takes another calculated curl of his fingers before you tighten around them, legs shutting tight as you ride it out. 

“I wanna do something for you,” you say. Your breathing is slow again but your legs are still shaking a little. Spencer grabs the opportunity to spread them.

“Yeah? You’re sweet.” He pulls you farther up the bed, spreads your legs and slots himself inside of you. There’s a gasp at the connection, though you’re unsure which one of you it comes from. It might’ve been simultaneous.

You watch his eyes gloss over as he allows himself this one moment of selfishness, fucking you harder. You hold him by the face and feel your authority dissipate. The whole ordeal is shrewd and loud and messy, and a drop of sweat collects at the top of your spine and slithers its way down. It feels like a raw kind of heaven; like you’re pulling apart.

Pleasure is a tight coil in the bottom of your stomach, in the tips of your fingertips, in the curling of your toes — some invisible lyre strung with vibrating wire, sticky with the friction of nearness.

When you come, you’re crying. You glance down. Spencer looks impassioned, too, so you kiss him to hush you both. 

When his lips leave yours, pull from yours, you feel the absence as acutely as the touch itself. The tender ache threads like grating twine through your chest. He leans his forehead against yours, breath mingling, shallow and uneven.

The silence between you is its own language, so you don’t speak. You don’t trust yourself to. You focus on the curve of his jaw, the faint quiver in his lips, the way his eyelashes cling together with sweat — or maybe unfallen tears. 

He pulls away first, his hands slipping from your grasp. He sits up, turning his back, shoulders tense in the way they always are after release proves itself to be fleeting. For a moment, you want to reach out, to pull him back into the bed, but the weight in his posture tells you it won’t matter.

“I wasn’t lying, though,” Spencer whispers, back turned to you as he sits at the edge of the bed, “when I said I loved you.”

Your gaze settles on the curve of his spine, the way it rises and falls with each uneven breath. Your hands twitch against the rumpled sheets, caught in the futile instinct to reach for him. You curl your fingers into fists, nails biting into your palms. Your throat tightens, swallows the air before it can reach your lungs. The dim light catches on the slope of his shoulder, illuminating a vulnerability you’re not sure you’re meant to see.

Emboldened by newfound fulfillment of self-interest, you crawl toward the edge of the bed where he sits and kiss his back. 

In a few moments, Spencer will leave. You know this. This time is different, though.