I 🖤 Spencer Reid

Of course, sneaking out at 6 a.m. had been its own mission. It took you twenty minutes to escape Spencer’s sleepy, koala-like grip. He kept murmuring thank-yous against your skin, kisses trailing from your collarbones to your jaw, like punctuation marks of affection. It had taken everything in you not to crawl back into bed with him.

Now, back in the briefing room, you had even more reason to catch this unsub.

"I got it." Spencer’s voice broke through the silence.

His head snapped up, and the words came pouring out of him like a dam breaking. Facts, patterns, dates, connections. The rest of the team, who had been working in silence, immediately turned their attention to him, hanging onto every word.

“Okay. Morgan and Reid—I want you with me,” Hotch announced the moment Spencer finished unraveling the unsub’s pattern.

Garcia’s fingers flew across her keyboard, sending the coordinates to their phones in a flurry of clicks. This was one of those rare, high-stakes cases where even she had to join them in the field. “Location’s live on your devices,” she said, her usual bubbly tone subdued. Hotch gave her a curt nod of thanks before striding toward the door, Morgan right behind him.

Spencer, however, seemed miles away as he snatched his brown coat from the back of his chair. His mind was already elsewhere, locked onto the unsub. Then, just before following the others, he turned to you.

You were still standing by the board, capping the dry-erase marker and watching him with a soft, worried smile. He seemed exhausted.

“Be careful,” you murmured, voice barely above a whisper.

He blinked, as if snapping back into himself for just a second, and mumbled, “I’ll be okay. I’ll see you later.”

His fingers caught your chin, thumb beneath your jaw, index curled gently under your bottom lip. Time stuttered. His kiss was fleeting, achingly tender, and then his lips brushed yours again as he whispered, "I love you," like it was the simplest truth in the world. And then he was gone, the door swinging shut behind him.

Silence.

Absolute, suffocating silence.

A pin drop would’ve echoed like a gunshot.

“Oh. my. god.” Garcia’s shriek could’ve shattered glass.

Your fingers flew to your lips, still tingling from the ghost of his kiss. The rest of the team was frozen, Rossi’s eyebrows had nearly disappeared into his hairline, JJ’s mouth was slightly open, and Emily looked like she was torn between laughing and demanding an immediate explanation.But you barely registered any of it.

Because Spencer had just said I love you. For the first time.And he’d done it in front of everyone.

Garcia was already flailing her hands, rapid-fire questions spilling out of her“Since when? How did I not know? Oh my god, the touching, the lingering looks, the—!”

But all you could hear was the echo of his voice, playing over and over in your mind like a broken record.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Your face burned. Your heart threatened to beat out of your chest.

You didn’t even notice Emily waving her hand in front of your face until her voice cut through the haze. “Earth to lovergirl,” she teased, grinning.

Blinking, you turned toward the team, all of them staring at you with varying degrees of shock, amusement, and sheer anticipation.

“What?” you managed, voice still breathless.

“That’s all you have to say?” JJ asked, plopping onto the edge of the desk in disbelief. She grabbed a Cheeto from an open bag, crunching loudly. Garcia was still gaping at you, hands pressed dramatically over her mouth. Behind her colorful glasses, her eyes were massive. Rossi sipped his coffee slowly, clearly judging the entire situation.

“Huh?” you repeated dumbly.

Emily’s smirk softened just a fraction. “You okay?”

You stared at her, still dazed, before muttering, “He said ‘I love you.’”

Another beat of silence. Garcia gasped. “That was his first time saying it?” Her hands flew away from her mouth, gripping the sides of her head like she might explode.And then chaos. Again.

“Oh my god—”

“Since when—”

“Wait, wait, wait—that was the first—”

You spent what felt like hours fielding an avalanche of questions, barely able to catch your breath between them. At first, you tried to dodge them, played dumb, gave vague smiles, busied yourself with the files on the table, but it was pointless. Garcia saw straight through you, pinning you with a look that practically screamed, You’re not getting out of this, sweetheart.

So you caved. “Six months,” you said quietly. There was a loud collective gasp. Garcia clutched her chest like she’d been personally betrayed. ( She was. ) “Six?! Six whole months? And you didn’t say anything?”

You winced. “We were trying to be subtle.”

“You failed!” she cried, throwing her hands up.

Emily laughed. “Okay, next—who made the first move?”

You hesitated, cheeks burning. “He did.” Another round of dramatic gasps echoed around the room. Even Rossi raised his brows, murmuring, “Didn’t peg him for the bold one.”

“He’s… not. Not usually,” you admitted with a smile you couldn’t quite suppress. “But with me… I guess he was.”

And on it went, question after question, as if they were making up for six months of missed gossip in a single sitting. It was messy, chaotic, borderline embarrassing, but it was also kind of nice. Being known. Being happy. Then came the final question.

JJ’s voice was quieter than the others, softer. “Do you love him too?”

You froze.For a moment, the whole room seemed to hold its breath. Even Garcia stopped typing. You looked at JJ, then down at your hands, then back up again. And nodded.

Garcia screeched, practically launching herself out of her chair. “I knew it!” she howled.

Emily beamed, her smile so wide it crinkled the corners of her eyes, and even Rossi let out a low chuckle, shaking his head like a proud uncle.You were a little overwhelmed, okay, maybe a lot, but underneath the chaos, you also felt a sheer amount of happiness that you've never felt before.

Hotch interrupted the moment by calling Garcia. “Unsub’s in custody. We’re on our way back. Everyone’s okay.”

Your breath left you in a rush. Spencer was okay. Your heart, though, it hadn’t quite gotten the message. It was still thundering in your chest, hammering against your ribs with every second that ticked by.

The others must’ve noticed the way you kept glancing at the door, because JJ finally nudged you gently toward it. “Go wait. We’ll clean up.”

You opened your mouth to protest, but Garcia waved a dismissive hand. “Honey, please. You’ve got heart-eyes so intense it’s blinding. Go stand dramatically in the doorway like you’re in a movie or something. We’ve got this.”And so you did.

You found yourself hovering in the doorway of the conference room, a half-hearted folder in your hands, pretending to sort through paperwork as you stared through the glass. Watching. Waiting.

Then you heard it, the sound of the SUV pulling up outside. Every head in the room snapped up like it was choreographed. Honestly, for a team of professional FBI agents, they acted like a bunch of high schoolers most of the time.

You glanced back over your shoulder. Sure enough, all of them were watching you, wide-eyed and waiting like you were the final act in a romantic drama. You rolled your eyes with a half-smile, dropped the stack of files onto the table and walked out of the conference room.

As you left, you heard Emily mutter, “Garcia, don’t follow her.”You didn’t wait to hear the response.

The moment you reached the main hallway of the precinct, the doors opened and there he was.

Spencer stepped inside, his curls slightly mussed, cheeks flushed from the cold, and as soon as his eyes found yours, he smiled. That gentle, crooked smile that always made you smile.You barely registered Derek behind him, hand gripping the cuffed unsub and throwing you a confused look when you didn’t even acknowledge him. Even Hotch glanced over in surprise as you made a beeline for Spencer.

“Hey—wait, what—?” Spencer managed, eyes widening as you grabbed his arm and all but dragged him down the corridor.

You shoved open the nearest empty office, tugged him inside, and closed the door firmly behind you, leaning back against it.

“Did you mean it?” you asked, your voice urgent, breath a little uneven.

Spencer blinked. “Mean what?”

You stared at him in stunned disbelief. “You’re kidding.”

“What?” he said again, completely baffled. “What did I do? Did Morgan tell you about what happened in the field? I know I wasn’t supposed to go near the unsub without backup, but I swear, I had it under control—”He started to ramble, hands gesturing as he pouted in that way he did when he was simultaneously nervous and a little too proud of himself. “He had a weapon, but I de-escalated him. You would’ve been proud.”

“You did what?” you interrupted, your mind now juggling two emotional crises.

Spencer blinked again. “Wait—so Morgan didn’t tell you?”

“No,” you muttered, your voice flat with disbelief. You shook your head slowly, trying to process it all. The nerves, the kiss, the I love you, and the fact that Spencer genuinely hadn’t realized what he’d done.

Spencer’s expression shifted from confusion to concern in a heartbeat. “Hey,” he said softly, stepping closer, his hand reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. “Did I do something wrong?”

His voice was careful, gentle, and far too kind for how scrambled your brain felt. “Can you tell me what it is?” he added, tilting your chin up just enough so your eyes met his.

Your mouth opened slightly, but the words were stuck. How could he not know? How could he be looking at you like that, all wide eyes and soft brows and pouty lips, and not know?

“Spencer,” you said finally, his name sharp on your tongue.

“Yes?” he replied immediately, those puppy-dog eyes locking onto yours like he was bracing for impact.

“You kissed me.”

His brows pulled together. “I’m—I’m sorry?” he said, clearly confused.

If you weren’t so worked up, you might have laughed at his face. But your heart was hammering, and your nerves were tangled in knots.

“You did it in front of everyone,” you clarified. And then you said it , softly, barely above a whisper. “And then you said—”

“I love you.” His voice cut in before you could finish.You watched as the memory clearly snapped back into place. Realization washed over his face, followed immediately by a bright, burning blush that crept up his neck and across his cheeks.

“Mhmm,” you hummed, nodding slowly, your teeth sinking into your lower lip as you studied his reaction.

Spencer rubbed the back of his neck, eyes wide, flustered in a way that only made you want to kiss him senseless. “Oh,” he breathed, glancing away for a second before meeting your eyes again. 

“Yeah… oh.” you repeated. Both of you stayed silent for a second.

“I did mean it,” he stammered out.

A smile tugged at your lips, finally. After an hour and a half of bouncing knees, chewed lips, the words you’d been dying to hear had finally landed.

“I love you,” Spencer repeated, a little firmer this time, like he needed to hear it aloud again to make it real. Like maybe saying it twice would help his brain catch up to his heart.The warmth that bloomed inside you was instant. You weren’t sure you’d ever felt this happy in your entire life.

Then, of course, Spencer kept talking.

“Did I say it too soon? I’m not sure. On average, men say it around three to three and a half months into a relationship, while women usually wait closer to four months,” he rambled, already blushing furiously, eyes darting anywhere but your face. “And I know we’ve been dating for six months, so technically it took me twice as long, which isn’t statistically ideal, but honestly I almost said it on our first date, which definitely wouldn’t have been optimal and—”

He was spiraling. Fast.

So you did the only thing that would shut him up. You stepped forward, gently grabbed his face in both hands, and said, soft but certain: “I love you too, Spencer.”

He stared. Just stared, like he was trying to memorize this exact moment, burn it into his brain with all its warmth and disbelief and wonder. You watched his expression shift, first stunned, then relieved, then something so bright and boyish it made your heart lurch.You’d never seen him so happy before.

Well, once. That first time you kissed him. He’d looked a little like this, dazed and blissed out. But now he looked like his whole world had just clicked into place.

“Yeah?” he breathed, voice shaky with excitement, his grin stretching so wide it practically crinkled his entire face.

“Yeah.” You laughed through the word, nodding, the emotion bubbling up in your chest and spilling into every part of you. Your smile was a mirror of his.

Spencer let out a breathy laugh and pulled you into him, arms wrapping tightly around your waist as if he couldn’t stand the idea of space between you anymore. You buried your face into the crook of his neck, grinning against his skin.

“This is real, right?” he asked into your hair, voice muffled. “I’m not dreaming? Because sometimes I do dream about you saying that and then I wake up and it’s just—”

You cut him off with a kiss to the warm skin of his throat.“It’s definitely real,” you mumbled against him.

Spencer let out a shaky breath and held you tighter. You stayed like that, wrapped up in each other, both of you grinning like idiots. It felt absurdly, wonderfully perfect. Then you muttered into his neck, “You do know you outed our relationship to everyone, right?”

Spencer’s arms stiffened around you just slightly. “Yeah. Totally. I knew that. I did it on purpose,” he lied, too quickly, voice pitched a little too high.

You giggled and pulled back, hands still resting on either side of his neck. “You’re a terrible liar, Dr. Reid.”

He didn’t even bother to defend himself, just gave you an adorable, crooked grin and leaned in to peck your lips. “Yeah, I am,” he mumbled, brushing his nose against yours.

You kissed him back, just once, then poked a finger into the center of his chest. “Also, we’re going to talk about your little superhero stunt at home.”

Spencer blinked. “Right,” he echoed, suddenly very aware of his earlier reckless attempt to talk the unsub down without backup. “Are you mad?”

“I’m not not mad,” you replied, giving him a look. “But I love you, so I’m saving the full lecture for later.”

He winced slightly, then smiled. “Fair.”

You let your fingers drift through the curls on his forehead, brushing them back gently. “Well,” you sighed, “for now, we have to go out there… into the land of chaos and gossip.”

Realization dawned slowly on Spencer’s face. His eyes widened. “Oh no. Garcia definitely filled Morgan in already.”

“And Rossi’s probably already told Hotch,” you added grimly.

“And JJ and Emily—”

“—were there when it happened,” you finished.

You both stood there in mutual silence for a moment, dread creeping in. Spencer cleared his throat. “Maybe we could… go out the window?”

You laughed, smacking his chest lightly. “Nice try, genius.”

He gave a helpless little shrug. “I had to try.”

Taking a deep breath, you grabbed the handle of the door behind you. “Ready?” you asked.

“Absolutely not,” Spencer said without hesitation.

You squeezed his hand anyway. “Come on, lover boy.”

To say that the conference room was chaos would’ve been an understatement.Garcia let out a sound that could only be described as a squeal-gasp hybrid, immediately launching into a breathless barrage of questions that involved timelines and pet names. Morgan clapped Spencer on the back so hard he nearly stumbled, muttering something about “my boy finally growing up.” JJ just smirked from the corner, quietly sipping her coffee.Hotch had walked by at one point, muttered something that suspiciously sounded like “About time,” and kept moving without missing a beat.

The jet ride was somehow worse.

You’d sat next to Spencer, hoping for a quiet, post-case decompression. Instead, you were subjected to Garcia and Morgan playing twenty questions from across the aisle. Rossi, pretending to read, chuckled behind his wine glass the entire time. At one point, you tried to rest your head on Spencer’s shoulder, and he’d blushed so hard you thought he might combust.

You weren’t sure if he was embarrassed from the attention or just overwhelmed from finally saying what he’d been keeping in for months. Probably both.

But the days that followed? Even worse.

Because the teasing never stopped. Emily sent you heart emojis during briefings. Morgan kept calling Spencer lover boy, which you regretted giving him the vocabulary for. Garcia had created a mood board on her computer and refused to delete it. Even Hotch raised an eyebrow when you asked to share a rental car with Spencer.

But through it all, Spencer stayed by your side. Every awkward joke, every embarrassing comment, every not-so-subtle glance,he never flinched. If anything, he leaned into it. He held your hand in the bullpen and he kissed your cheek at the end of the day. It was domestic chaos.

That hesitation breaks you. You launch forward, arms circling him, pressing your face into his shoulder, the fabric of his shirt rough against your skin. He lets out a sound that is neither sigh nor sob, just a release of something held too long, and then he’s clutching you back, fingers tangled in your shirt, pulling you in like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he lets go.

Neither of you speak at first. Words feel too thin for the swell of what crashes between you. You breathe him in, the smell of his skin, his hair, the faint trace of cold air that clings to him. His lips press against the crown of your head in a frantic pattern, as if trying to anchor himself with the shape of you.

“I thought about this,” he whispers at last, voice hoarse, as if it hasn’t been used in days. “Every night. I thought if I could just hold on long enough, I’d get back to you.” His hands tighten at your waist, almost shaking. “But nothing came close to this. Not even in my head.”

Your throat burns. You shift just enough to look at him, your palms framing his face, and he leans into your touch with a desperation that steals your breath. His eyes are wet, red at the edges, but burning with something rawer, deeper. He presses his forehead to yours, and the quiet stretches again, heavy but alive now, filled with heartbeats and the fragile miracle of him being here, with you.

When he kisses you it’s not careful. It’s messy, clashing, a collision of hunger and grief and need. Your hands clutch at him, trying to pull him closer when he’s already pressed against you. His breath hitches, breaking against your mouth, and you taste salt, taste him, taste the months of absence unravelling into something feverish and unstoppable.

The kiss deepens, and with it comes a hunger that has been caged for too long. Spencer’s mouth moves over yours with a rough insistence, almost clumsy in its urgency, but it only makes your chest ache harder, because it’s him, it’s real, it’s everything you’ve missed.

You tug at his jacket, fingers fumbling, frustrated by the barrier of fabric. He catches your hands for only a second, as though he might slow you, but then he lets go, ripping the jacket off with a jerky motion, tossing it to the floor.

Your shirt is next, his fingers catching on the hem, pulling it upward, and you lift your arms without breaking the kiss. The shirt lands somewhere behind the couch, forgotten.

His hands are everywhere, clutching your waist, sliding up your back, pulling you closer until there is no space left to close. You tug at his shirt, desperate, the fabric refusing to move fast enough, and he breaks away only long enough to strip it over his head before crashing back into you.

You rise from the couch together, clinging, stumbling, his lips never straying far from yours. It’s messy, hurried, the kind of collision born from months of longing sharpened into something raw. He pushes you against the hallway wall, one hand braced beside your head, the other sliding against the heat of your skin.

You gasp into his mouth and he drinks it in, lips tracing down to your jaw, your throat, biting harder than he ever has before.

You let out a sound you didn’t mean to, raw and sharp, and his grip tightens at your hip as if that sound alone could undo him.

He kisses like a man starved, like someone trying to reclaim not just your body but every day he spent without it, without you. Your back thuds against the bedroom door, and with a frantic twist he pushes it open, guiding you through without letting you go.

There’s no neatness to it, no grace, only the heat of stripping away months of separation with each layer shed. His mouth finds yours again and again, desperate, as though kissing you is the only way to prove he’s free, that he’s home.

By the time you reach the bed, shoes, clothes, pieces of both of you are scattered in a trail across the floor, the apartment marked by your reunion.

He pushes you back onto the mattress, breath ragged, eyes dark and alive in a way you haven’t seen in months. He hovers there for just a moment, staring down at you, his chest heaving, and you see it—how close he is to breaking, how much he needs this, how much he needs you.

He hovers above you, chest heaving, lips hovering close but not touching. His gaze roves over your skin like he’s already imagining what he’ll leave behind, the bruises, the marks, the evidence. When he dips his head, his teeth catch at your throat, sharp enough to sting, and you gasp, your wrists tightening instinctively in the sheets. He pulls back just enough for you to see the faint curl at his mouth.

“You’re mine,” he says suddenly, voice rough, almost broken, not even directed at you so much as dragged out of him, like a truth he’s been chewing on in the dark for too long. His gaze moves over you, fevered, frantic. “I need—everyone needs to see. To know. You’re mine.”

The words send a shiver through you, not frightening, but sharp and real. His lips fall to your neck, biting down hard again making you gasp, as he groans against your skin like the sound fuels him. He lifts his head again, hair falling into his eyes, and you see the shift, the raw edge of something claiming him as much as it claims you.

He pulls back from your throat, breathing hard, lips swollen, the faintest trace of your skin already reddening where his teeth caught you. His hand cradles your jaw, almost tender, but his eyes are wild, restless, flicking over you like he can’t stop imagining what he wants to do.

“I can’t stop at this,” he says, his voice low, frayed, as though it costs him to admit it. “Not tonight. I need more. I need to put my mark everywhere, I need to claim you in every way I’ve thought about.” His thumb strokes your cheek, the touch at odds with the desperation in his words. “Please. Tell me I can. Tell me I can take what I need.”

You can feel the tremor in him, the way he’s holding himself back, the way restraint is shredding at the edges. He presses his forehead against yours, his breath uneven, muttering again, softer this time, almost broken. “I won’t unless you let me. Say yes. Say I can have you like that.”

“Say I can bite you, bruise you, mark every inch until no one could ever mistake who you belong to. I need to hear you say it.”

Your pulse hammers in your throat, every nerve alight with the force of his need, the way he’s teetering on the edge of breaking. You tilt your head back, giving him more of your throat, your voice unsteady but sure.

“Yes,” you whisper, then stronger. “Yes, Spencer. Do it. Mark me. Take what you need.”

The sound he makes is almost guttural, a ragged exhale that shudders through his whole body. For a heartbeat he closes his eyes, as though those words alone are enough to undo him. When they open again, they’re darker, hungrier, the last tether of restraint snapping.

“Thank you,” he breathes, but it comes out more like a vow than gratitude. His hands clutch at your wrists, dragging them up over your head, holding them pinned for a moment before he pushes off the bed. He crosses to the closet with a suddenness that makes your chest tighten, rummaging until he pulls out coils of rope.

The sight of it makes your pulse race, a fresh wave of heat pooling low in your body. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t need to. You know what he wants, what he needs, and you give it to him without a word, lifting your wrists in silent permission.

He ties you with shaking hands, not from hesitation but from too much urgency coiled inside him, the knots rough and fast. The rope bites into your skin just enough to remind you of its presence, firm and unyielding. He secures your arms above your head, then moves down to catch your ankles.

He binds your ankles to the bedframe with a grip that feels deliberate, almost punishing, his fingers rough as they finish the last knot. When he leans back, breath uneven, eyes dragging across your restrained body, he looks possessed by the sight. His tongue flicks across his bottom lip. “Perfect,” he breathes, and this time it’s not for him. “All mine.”

He steps back, only barely. The distance does nothing to temper the heat in his gaze. He rakes a hand through his hair, jaw clenched, and looks at you like he’s already undone. “Don’t move,” he says. It lands somewhere between a command and a confession. “Not until I’m finished. Not until every part of you shows who you belong to.”

Then he’s over you again, heavy and intent, and the first bite lands just below your throat, sharp enough to steal your breath. His mouth lingers there, lips sealing around the mark as if tasting your pulse, sucking until the skin burns red beneath him. He moves lower, teeth dragging along your collarbone, your shoulder, every scrape carving a deeper ache into you. Each mark is a vow. Each bruise a warning.

His mouth finds your chest, heat pouring from him as he latches on. One hand covers a breast with unyielding pressure, kneading in a way that’s far from tender. His teeth graze the other, catching on soft flesh before sinking in, hard enough to rip a cry from your throat. The sting floods you, bright and immediate, but his tongue is there right after, soothing, circling, claiming.

The ropes hold you open, nothing to do but feel. Your body arches instinctively, seeking more, every nerve sparking beneath his mouth, his hands. You moan, loud and needy, hips jerking against restraints you can’t escape. Slick gathers fast, thick and unbearable, a throbbing heat that pulses harder when you feel him grind into your thigh, the rigid press of his cock leaving no doubt he’s just as lost in it as you are.

“Fuck,” he groans into your skin, teeth closing over the curve of your breast, sucking deep. “You sound so good like this. Strung up. Taking everything.” He tweaks your nipple between two fingers, sharp and sudden, making you gasp. Your sound fuels him. His hips press harder, chasing friction, desperate and rough against your thigh.

You writhe. There’s no other word for it. The sound of the sheets beneath you grows louder, the bed creaking as your body strains to meet him. Every drag of his mouth, every scrape of his teeth, sends a deeper ache flooding between your legs, wetness spilling onto your skin. You can feel it, slick and hot, and so can he.

His mouth stays at your chest like he’s starving, unable to leave it. He palms one breast roughly, fingers digging into flesh, thumb sweeping across your nipple until it’s aching. The other, he takes between his lips, biting down slow and deep. The pressure borders on cruel, but you welcome it. You crave it. The sharpness of pain, the heat that follows, the flick of his tongue that feels too soft, too tender, against the mark he’s just made.

He does it again, slower this time, dragging the moment out. His lips close over the bruise and suck until your back lifts from the mattress. The ropes dig into your skin, holding you down even as your body tries to rise to meet him.

You’re unravelling under him. Every time he switches sides, every time his mouth leaves one breast swollen and flushed to claim the other, the ache in your core deepens. Your nipples throb, hypersensitive, and the contrast between the warm wet of his mouth and the sharp edge of his teeth makes your breath catch in your throat.

When he slaps the side of your breast, the sound startles you. You cry out. He does it again, harder this time, and the sting only tightens the clench of your cunt. You’re soaked. You know it. He knows it. His cock ruts against your thigh with increasing urgency, a smear of wet heat left in its wake.

He won’t stop. Can’t. He’s biting you like you’re his to devour, like he’s carving himself into your skin. You welcome every one of them. Your body sings for it, trembles for it, bound and stretched and shaking from how badly you want more.

When he finally lifts his head, his chest heaves. His lips are swollen, damp, flushed. His breath comes in harsh pulls, and his eyes— His eyes burn. They drag over you slowly, taking in every bruise, every flush of red he’s left blooming across your chest. One hand stays on your breast, thumb circling lazily around your nipple, the rhythm a cruel tease that leaves you gasping.

He spreads his fingers wide, pressing against the warm skin, then moves lower, trailing them over every raised mark as though counting them. His touch is slow, almost reverent in its precision, but there’s nothing gentle in the way his jaw tightens. Something animal scratches just under the surface.

His thumb presses into a fresh bruise and your whole body flinches. He watches you twitch. Watches your lips part. Watches how the ropes strain as you try to move. A breath escapes him, half-whisper, half-growl.

“Look at you.” His voice is ragged. “Everywhere I touch, I leave something behind.” His thumb finds another mark and presses into the tender skin until your eyes water. “Everyone will know you’re mine.”

Your thighs tremble at his words. The ache inside you pulses deeper, more urgent, wetness dripping down to the sheets. Your breasts are swollen, flushed and marked and aching, and still, he hasn’t had enough. His hands linger, squeezing, shaping, then letting go only to watch them bounce back, blemished and beautiful under his gaze.

He leans forward. His breath ghosts over your skin. Then his mouth drops lower.

He kisses down your stomach, soft at first. Lingered touches. Almost gentle. Then his teeth return, scraping lightly along your belly, nipping the soft flesh just above your navel. You twitch under him, wrists pulling at the rope, hips tilting toward his mouth.

But he only chuckles, low and pleased. “Can’t even keep still,” he murmurs, voice thick with heat. “That’s why I have to tie you down.” His mouth finds a spot just above your hip and bites down hard enough to leave your legs shaking. “So I can take my time.”

He kneels between your legs, gaze dropping to the wet, glistening heat between them. His breath catches, and he exhales hard through his nose, visibly straining against the urge to take you.

His hand slides between your thighs. Not to give, just to tease. Fingers barely brush your folds, light enough that you question if it happened at all. Your hips jerk, searching for contact, but his other hand presses you flat. Holds you still. Keeps you trapped beneath his weight and will.

And then his mouth finds your inner thigh. Hot. Heavy. He bites. Sharp. Unapologetic. You cry out again, louder, and his tongue is already there, soothing, tasting, sealing the bruise into you with heat and breath and want.

He doesn’t stop. Not yet. There are still so many places left to mark. When he pulls back, he doesn’t rush. He lingers, watching the shape of the bruise rise beneath his lips, admiring the flush of red turning purple at the centre. It’s only when your breath catches that he lowers his head again, this time to a fresh patch of skin further down your thigh, teeth dragging slow before biting in with purpose. Another mark. Another place that belongs to him.

His hand drifts closer, fingers tracing the inside of your thigh, so close to your centre it makes your whole body tighten. The contact is featherlight, maddening, a whisper of touch that barely grazes your slick folds. Instinct takes over. Your hips rise from the mattress, seeking more, but the ropes around your ankles hold firm, taut and unforgiving, stealing the freedom to chase what you need. He watches the movement, the desperation, with a glint in his eyes that borders on cruel satisfaction.

His thumb circles your clit with no pressure at all, just a ghost passing over already sensitive skin, a tease that sends a fresh rush of slick down your thighs. He bites the opposite leg hard, the sharp pain flaring bright, the bruise left behind darker than the rest. Your thighs are shaking, trembling from strain and ache, from pleasure denied and the heat spreading like fire under your skin.

Still, he doesn't touch you properly. Not yet. He switches between slow drags of his mouth across your inner thighs and maddening strokes of his fingers that stay just out of reach. A rhythm with no pattern, meant only to tease, to unravel. Your cunt aches, wet and empty, fluttering with need. Every brush of his fingers makes your breath catch, every scrape of his teeth forces another sound from your throat.

He pulls back to look at you. Your thighs flushed, covered in his mouth, his bite. Your chest rising too fast, body tense and shaking, skin shining with sweat and arousal. His hand rests just above your cunt, fingers damp with the proof of your need, and he stares at the way your body pulses for more. His cock jerks against his stomach, twitching with restraint he’s struggling to hold onto. He wants you wrecked. Wants you undone. Wants it slow enough to last.

“All mine,” he says again, quieter now, like it’s sacred. His thumb grazes your slick folds, barely a touch, but enough to make you whine—a raw, needy sound that slips out before you can swallow it.

Your wrists twist against the rope. You arch again, chest heaving, hips rolling upward as if you can summon more from him by sheer will. His mouth presses another hot kiss to the inside of your thigh, tongue sliding lazily over a bruise, but it's not enough. It’s not what you need. You need his fingers, his mouth, his cock, anything solid and deep and real.

“Spencer,” you breathe. It’s barely a sound, more broken air than voice. “Please. I’ve been so good for you. Please… touch me.”

The words fall quiet, like you’re afraid they’ll break the spell between you, but they land hard. You see it immediately—the way his eyes darken, the tension that coils tighter in his shoulders, the hand between your thighs suddenly going still.

“You’ve been perfect,” he replies, low and rough, the edge of restraint fraying in his voice. His thumb brushes you again, this time with the lightest hint of pressure. “So fucking good for me.”

He lifts his head. Locks eyes with you. And what you see there makes your breath hitch. Hunger, yes, but more than that. Possession. Worship. Obsession. He moves then, slow and sure, pressing the pad of his thumb against your clit and circling just right—firm and steady and overwhelming.

You cry out, loud and sudden, your body jolting at the pressure. It crashes into you all at once, every inch of you already strung tight and ready to snap. The heat that floods through you is blinding. Your moan echoes between the walls and his chest shudders in response, like the sound alone is enough to unravel him.

His fingers slide through your slick, dragging slow and deep between your folds, parting you with reverent precision. He finds the spot that makes your hips jump and circles it again, then again, each time slower, more deliberate, as if memorizing what makes you fall apart.

His mouth returns to your thigh, dragging his teeth across bruised skin with lazy ownership. Another nip, then a kiss, and all the while his fingers never stop, the rhythm building until you’re gasping, thighs trembling, your entire body tuned to the movement of his hand.

“That’s it,” he rasps against your skin, grinding slowly against your leg as he watches you fall apart. “So good for me. Just like this. Letting me take my time.”

The ropes, the marks, the control—it's a language spoken in sensation, in shared rhythm. Every part of you answers without hesitation. You give it freely, without holding back. All of you.

He leans down again, kisses your thigh where the bruise is deepest, and then his fingers curl inside you.

You gasp. Your back arches. He moves slow at first, dragging his fingers through your slick heat, curling them with a precision that feels devastating. He finds that spot inside you and presses, slow and firm, then pulls back just enough to do it again. And again. Until your body trembles with every stroke.

His other hand finds your hip, fingers digging in hard, nails dragging downward until red marks bloom in their wake. The pressure, the scratch, the way his fingers stretch you—all of it crashes together, making your breath come in broken pieces.

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. The sound of your moans, the wet glide of his fingers, the way your cunt clenches greedily around him—it’s all the answer he needs. He watches your body move under him, every reaction winding that hunger inside him tighter. His mouth is parted. His breath ragged.

You’re soaking his hand, slick coating his fingers and palm, dripping onto the sheets beneath you. And still, he doesn’t stop. Each curl of his fingers comes with purpose, pushing deeper, stroking with precision. Your moans build, tangled with the sound of your thighs slapping faintly against his wrist, the bed groaning beneath you.

Then, without warning, his mouth is there.

Your thighs tremble, muscles locking and releasing in broken rhythm as the wave pulls tighter. You’re not breathing so much as gasping, shallow and frantic, every part of you tightening around the heat he’s pouring into your body. Spencer’s tongue moves with maddening focus, a controlled chaos in the way he circles, flicks, then presses—flat, heavy, devastating. Each stroke hits a little different, a little deeper, never giving your body time to settle. There’s no mercy in the rhythm. Only hunger.

His fingers curl again, perfectly timed with the flattening of his tongue, and your whole body arches like you’ve been struck. You cry out—loud, sudden, a crack in the still air—and he groans against you, the vibration humming straight through your cunt. He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t flinch. Just keeps going, lips sealed to your clit, dragging sounds from you that feel primal, unfamiliar, ripped from someplace deeper than speech.

The ropes creak with your every struggle, your wrists aching now, bound tight against the headboard, but the ache is nothing compared to the pleasure clawing its way up your spine. You’re soaked. Drenched. Every glide of his fingers spreads it wider, makes it filthier, your slick coating his hand, his wrist, dripping down between your cheeks.

His palm presses harder into the bruises at your thigh, thumb digging in near the edge of the newest mark, and the pain sharpens everything. Your pussy clenches violently around his fingers, and he moans again, louder, desperate. He shifts just enough to keep control, his weight keeping you pinned, his mouth never leaving you. He’s relentless. Intent. Like he’s memorizing how to destroy you with precision.

You’re gone. No shape to your thoughts, just fire. You buck helplessly against him, thighs shaking, back arched, sobbing his name in pieces. You can’t hold still. You can’t get free. And you don’t want to.

His fingers curl again, angled so perfectly you feel the stars behind your eyes scatter. He presses. Holds. The pads of his fingers dragging along that raw, electric spot deep inside you while his tongue circles once, twice, then flicks so fast your breath stops in your chest.

The world shatters.

You don’t mean to scream, but it rips out of you anyway. Your whole body locks, hips lifted off the bed in a trembling arc, wrists straining against the ropes, back bowing so violently the air leaves your lungs. The orgasm hits like a crash, all heat and white-noise, everything tightening in on itself before bursting open.

He groans into you, sucking harder, fingers still fucking you through it, keeping you high, keeping you wrung out. The pressure is too much, and not enough, and somehow still building even as you’re falling apart around him. Your thighs tremble uncontrollably, shaking under his hands, every inch of you soaked, fluttering, raw.

“Look at you,” he rasps, voice hoarse, lips slick with you as he lifts his head for just a breath. His fingers don’t stop. “So fucking pretty when you cum. So loud for me.”

You can’t speak. Your chest is rising too fast, skin flushed and shining, tears caught at the corners of your eyes from the sheer intensity. He watches the way you fall apart, breathes it in like it’s the only thing keeping him steady, his cock grinding against the mattress now, chasing relief but never leaving you.

And then he’s back on you, tongue dragging over your clit again. You scream, the sound strangled and wrecked. It’s too much. Too sharp. Your body jerks violently, another aftershock rolling through you, slick pulsing around his fingers. He fucks you through it, hand steady, tongue ruthless, holding you down with the weight of his mouth and the press of his palm into the bruises he made.

Your entire body convulses, twitching under his grip. You can’t stop shaking. You don’t even want to.

“Don’t stop,” you sob, and it barely sounds like words, just breath and ache. “Spencer, please don’t stop.”

He groans again, his cock dragging against the mattress with unrelenting need, and he pulls his fingers free only to press them against your clit in slow, slippery circles. The sound of it is obscene—slick, wet, greedy—and he watches every reaction like it’s sacred.

“You’re mine,” he says low, voice frayed, wild around the edges. “No one else gets to see you like this. No one else gets to hear you beg like that.”

You nod frantically, tears slipping free now, throat raw from moaning, from gasping his name. You’re gone. All reason burned out of you, left only with the feeling of his mouth, his fingers, the truth of what he’s done to your body.

He leans in again, tongue parting your folds as he groans deep, dragging it through the mess he’s made of you, tasting you like he’s addicted to it. His fingers return, thrusting in deep, curling again, thumb circling your clit without pause.

Your second orgasm rises faster. Meaner. Brutal in the way it builds, the way it owns you. You scream again, breath breaking apart as your body seizes under him, the ropes keeping you bound as your legs shake, vision blurring, every nerve alight with fire.

You don’t know how long it lasts. Time has dissolved. There’s only the heat, the wet, the stretch, the grip of his hand on your thigh. The marks he left burn hotter now, a map of where he’s touched, a living memory of his mouth and teeth.

You fall back into the bed, wrecked, trembling, pulse hammering through every limb. His hand slows. His mouth softens. Gentle now. Worshipful. His fingers slip free, and the loss makes your body twitch, over-sensitive, raw and swollen.

He lifts his head, gaze meeting yours, and the look he gives you isn’t smug. It’s reverent. Hungry still. But so full of awe you feel the burn behind your eyes again.

“I could do that forever,” he says, and his voice is a wreck, deep and trembling, as if he’s the one who’s been undone.

And still, he hasn't even fucked you yet.

His eyes never leave yours. Dark. Burning. Intent. You see it—the precise moment something inside him shifts. The second he makes the choice to ruin you.

A low growl rumbles from his chest, vibrating through your skin, sinking deep into your core. Then he doubles down. His tongue sharpens to a ruthless flick, relentless against your clit, while his fingers curl harder, pressing again and again against that devastating spot inside you. Perfect. Unforgiving. Expert.

The pressure on your thigh increases until it becomes a vice, his palm locking you down, giving you no escape. You're spread open, pinned to the bed, every inch of sensation forced deep into your body until you can’t separate pleasure from pain. Your back bows in one sharp motion, a cry caught high in your throat, trembling there as the first shockwave hits.

It doesn’t wash over you. It explodes.

White-hot pleasure erupts through every nerve, a burn so total it’s blinding. You jerk hard against the restraints, thighs spasming, mouth open in a wordless scream that finally tears loose as your climax crashes through you. Raw. Shattering. He stays locked to you through it, mouth never leaving your clit, tongue gentling only slightly, soothing and tasting while his fingers stay deep inside, coaxing each final pulse from your cunt. Drawing it out. Refusing to let you fall.

It borders on pain, the way he keeps going, and still, you want it. You give it. Body trembling, twitching, too far gone to speak.

When your limbs finally collapse, you melt into the bed, nothing but heat and sweat and aftershocks. The ropes keep you upright, wrists strained above your head, legs parted. You’re limp and wrecked, every inch of your skin aching. Your chest heaves. Bruises throb. Sweat clings to every curve.

Spencer lifts his head slowly. His lips are wet with you, chin glistening. He looks at you like a man starved.

Then, without a word, he slides his fingers out. The sound is slick, obscene in the hush of the room, and you feel every drop of it. He holds them up for just a second, watching the way your body jerks, then brings them to his mouth and sucks them clean. He groans low, slow, deep in his throat like he’s tasting something holy. Like he’s been waiting his whole life for it.

The sight alone sends another flicker of heat through your body, weak but real, a ghost of pleasure echoing in your still-throbbing core.

He moves quickly after that, his own need finally overtaking him. There’s urgency in every part of him now. He fumbles with the rope at your ankles, hands shaking, movements clumsy with desperation. The knot resists him at first, but he rips it loose, dragging the binding free. Blood rushes back into your legs, sharp and tingling, pain blooming as nerves reawaken.

He doesn’t touch your wrists. Doesn’t free your arms. He leaves them stretched above you, tied tight to the headboard, the rope biting into your skin as your chest rises and falls in shallow, uneven gasps.

And he just looks at you for a breath. Long enough to make your skin prickle. His eyes are darker than before. His body tense. His cock flushed and leaking against his stomach.

He's not finished.

Not even close.

The blunt head of his cock drags through the wetness he’s already wrung from your body, slick and eager. That first push punches the breath from your lungs. The stretch is sharp, unforgiving, pleasure and ache twisted so tightly together they become the same thing. You cry out his name, your voice wrecked with need, and your back lifts from the bed in one violent jolt. His breath stutters against your neck, a broken sound torn from somewhere deep as he sinks deeper, inch by inch. The pace falters, messy and aching with how much he wants this, how long he’s gone without it.

When he finally bottoms out, buried deep inside you, everything stills. His body trembles, muscles locked, and he presses his forehead to your shoulder, damp curls clinging to skin already slick with sweat. His chest rises and falls against yours, every breath a struggle. The fullness is overwhelming, dizzying, your cunt fluttering around him like it knows nothing else, like it refuses to let him go. It steals your breath. Your vision blurs. Your nerves scream for more.

Then his teeth sink into your shoulder. Not soft. Not restrained. They hit deep, sharp enough to make you cry out again, the sting a perfect contrast to the molten stretch of him inside you. The bite tethers him to you, grounds him even as it sets your body alight. The sound he makes against your skin is not human. It’s guttural, something primal, raw with possession and relief.

When he starts to move, it’s messy and frantic. Control forgotten. He pulls out just far enough to slam back in, the force of it shoving you up the mattress. Every thrust tears a new sound from your throat. Each collision feels like a promise kept too late. It’s all hunger now. The pace builds fast, erratic, your sweat-slick bodies meeting with sharp, breathless rhythm. His teeth scrape your skin again. His mouth hovers close, always moving, always claiming.

The relief is blinding. Each push is a purge. Each thrust feels like his body is pleading for something it never thought it would have again. He is everywhere. Bruising you. Stretching you. Filling you in a way that feels endless. You feel it in your lungs. In your ribs. In the places where his hands grip you, tight enough to leave reminders.

He doesn’t stop. His hips keep pounding into you with growing desperation, but his head lifts from your shoulder. His eyes meet yours. Wide. Glazed with something darker than lust. They rake down your body, slow and consuming, cataloguing the wreckage he’s made. You watch him take it in.

His gaze catches first on the bite. The mark he left. A purple crescent already blooming on your shoulder, skin broken where his teeth sank deep. He growls, low and wrecked, something torn from his chest that rumbles between you like a warning. His thumb brushes across the mark, rough, unyielding. It’s not gentle. It presses into the sore flesh until you flinch, until the pain sharpens and your cunt clenches tight around him.

He groans, loud and guttural, and drops his forehead against yours.

Then his hips slam forward, one sharp thrust that knocks the air from your lungs. He watches your skin, watches the bruise darken beneath his thumb, blooming like a flower fed on pain and possession. His eyes stay locked there, drinking it in.

His gaze drifts lower, tracing the constellation of bruises along your hips, each one formed by the grip of his hands. They’re vivid now. Red and rising. His fingers tighten again, locking you to the bed as his rhythm stutters into something even more ragged.

He shifts his weight, covering you, pressing more of himself over your trembling body. His mouth finds your collarbone. Tongue hot and deliberate, tracing the bruise he left there, a silent act of devotion. His mouth is savage and soft all at once, as if every press of his tongue is an apology he’ll never speak aloud.

He’s losing rhythm. Losing the shape of control. Every thrust is harder. Deeper. Wrecked.

"Every mark. Every single one. I want you to see them tomorrow and remember how this cock felt. I want you to ache with it."

His voice breaks something open in you. The words sink beneath your skin like another bruise forming from the inside. He’s unravelling in real time, undone by the sight of your body covered in the evidence of him. Your slick clings to him. His chest is heaving. And still he moves, chasing something more.

He finds your throat again, mouth dragging up to the curve where your shoulder meets your neck, and sinks his teeth in hard. The bite is brutal. He doesn’t ease up. Doesn’t pull away. Just holds it there, pressing deeper until your skin throbs under his teeth, until you cry out again, too wrecked to think.

The thrusts come fast now, his hips slamming into yours, punishing and desperate. Sweat drips from his temple onto your chest. The sound of skin meeting skin fills the room, wet and raw and rhythmic.

He fucks you like he’s trying to stay inside you. Like leaving your body would destroy him. Like being buried in you is the only thing that keeps him breathing.

You’re shaking. Jerking with every bite, every sharp press of his cock as it hits deep again and again. Your body can’t keep up. The edge rushes toward you and you have no defense. You’re gone. Owned. Every inch of you claimed.

His fingers dig into your hips with bruising force, grinding you into the mattress. He’s using your body like a lifeline, chasing his own destruction.

"You see what you do to me?" His voice is ragged against your ear, breath searing across your damp skin. "You make me a fucking animal. Look at your skin. Every mark."

His hand slides from your hip, wide palm dragging over your side until it finds one of the fresh bruises on your ribs. He presses down, hard enough to make you gasp, the pain sharp and immediate.

"You feel that? That's me. That's going to be there for days. You'll feel me every time you breathe."

A broken moan slips from your throat. You don’t recognize it. You don’t care. The stretch, the sting, the filthy sound of your bodies colliding—it’s all too much.

"Spencer..." His name falls from your lips, breathless and hoarse, lost against the damp of his shoulder.

"Say my name again."

His voice drops lower. Commanding. Shaken. He shifts his angle and suddenly the head of his cock drags across something electric inside you. Your whole body tightens. You cry out, voice cracking.

"I want to hear it. I want you to forget every other name when I'm inside you."

"Sp—Spencer," you gasp, nearly choking on it as he slams into that same spot again. The pleasure spikes hard, sharp as a blade, and your body jerks under him.

"That's it." His voice tears apart, words strangled, barely coherent. "God, the sounds you make. The way your cunt just... clenches around me. Like it's trying to keep me here. You trying to keep me here?"

You nod, but it's a mess of a motion. Your body says it for you. The way it grips him. The way you pulse around him. You want him to stay. You want him inside you until the bruises fade, until every mark is gone, and even then you’ll want him again.

And he knows it.

He feels it in every shudder of your body, every moan ripped from your lungs, every bruise painting your skin like a brand of devotion.

He’s not stopping. Not until he’s left you with nothing untouched. Not until you carry him everywhere.

Not until you cum again, choking on his name.

His mouth finds the fresh bite on your shoulder, tongue laving over the swollen skin, slow and heavy. His teeth press down again, not enough to break skin, but promising more. A deeper ache blooms beneath the surface. The bite and the stretch hit at once, sharp and searing, your cunt clenching around the thick, relentless drag of his cock.

His free hand twists into your hair. He doesn’t tug. Just holds you steady, guiding your head until you’re forced to look at him. His eyes are almost black now, pupils wide and blown, hunger spilling from the thin rim of color that remains.

"Look at me. Look at me when I'm fucking you. I want to see it. I want to see everything I'm doing to you behind those eyes."

You meet his gaze and it’s like falling into something too big, too fierce. He looks ruined by need, eaten alive by it, and yet he still wants more. There’s fury in it. Possession. Heat that borders on madness. It should scare you. Maybe it does. But your body answers before your mind can. Your pussy tightens around him, fluttering in a surrender that has nothing to do with control.

"Fuck, you're perfect," he breathes, awestruck and unraveling. "Taking every inch. Letting me ruin you. Letting me mark this perfect skin."

His thrusts lose any last trace of rhythm, hips snapping forward in a ragged, punishing pace that drives the bed into the wall with every slam. The sound is obscene—wet, fast, relentless—and the slick echo of your bodies meeting fills the room like a second heartbeat.

His forehead presses to yours. The air between you is ragged, breath shared, mouths brushing but not kissing. Each exhale from him fans hot across your lips.

"You like this, don't you?" he whispers, his voice low and wrecked. "You like feeling me claim you. You like knowing you're going to be sore tomorrow, that you're going to feel me for days. That you're mine."

You can’t find words. Everything in you is unraveling, stretched too thin. All you can do is nod, frantic and helpless, your body rising to meet each desperate thrust, a full-bodied yes that screams through the silence.

He groans, deep and savage, the sound of a man unspooling.

"Yeah," he grunts. "Yeah, you do. My good girl. My perfect, ruined girl. All mine."

His hand trails from your hair down to your stomach, slick with sweat. He doesn't pause. Fingers find your clit and press, thumb circling rough and fast, the friction too much. Perfect. Agonizing. It sends a jolt straight through you, pleasure flooding back in full force, raw and biting.

Your stomach coils, the tension building again, high and tight and brutal. You’re balancing on the edge of something you won’t survive intact. The pressure of his cock inside you, the sharp ache of the bruises, the brutal grind of his thumb—it’s all too much, and yet not enough.

His eyes drop. He watches you beneath him, your body straining against the rope, your arms drawn taut. The sight seems to tear something open inside him. His expression fractures, pure need spilling across his face.

"Need more," he growls, the words nearly swallowed by the force of his breath. "Need to be deeper. Need to feel all of you."

His hands find your knees, curling around the backs with a grip that shakes. He lifts and folds you in half, your legs pressed back toward your chest, thighs trembling under the strain.

The change is instant. His cock sinks in deeper, heavier, a stretch so sharp it robs the air from your lungs. The groan that tears from him sounds like it's pulled from the base of his spine.

He fucks into you harder, deeper, the angle forcing him to hit a spot that makes your eyes roll back, that makes your whole body seize around him. You sob, soundless at first, then full-throated, throat tearing raw as he drives into the heart of you with every thrust.

Your wrists strain against the ropes. Fingers curl uselessly. There’s nothing you can do but take it.

His gaze locks on the slick slide of his cock inside you, watching himself disappear again and again, hips rolling with merciless intent. His jaw clenches, eyes wild. Then he drags his gaze upward, slow and hungry, over your belly to your chest.

The sight of your tits, pressed tight together by the bend of your body, stops him. The bruises darkening there pull a noise from his throat. Something rough. Possessive.

His thumbs stroke your thighs as they tremble in his grip, calloused skin dragging over oversensitive flesh.

"Look at you," he breathes. His voice catches. "Fuck, look what you let me do to you."

He stares at the purpling marks on your chest, vivid and blooming, the teeth-shaped bruises he left there hours ago.

"My marks. Right there. On display for me."

He thrusts harder, a deliberate push that punches a cry from your lungs.

"You're so fucking beautiful like this. Tied up and bent in half for my cock. Taking me so deep. Your pretty tits pressed together, wearing my bruises. You were made for this."

His words are a filthy, hypnotic chant, weaving through the haze of your pleasure. His grip on your legs tightens, his fingers digging in, and you know without a doubt that by morning, there will be ten perfect matching bruises on the side of your thighs.

The pleasure is a live wire, sparking through your veins with every deep, grinding thrust. He finds a rhythm that is both punishing and exquisitely precise, each movement calculated to drag the swollen, sensitive head of his cock over that perfect, blinding spot inside you. The world narrows to the feel of his hands on your skin, the sight of his intense, focused expression, the sound of his ragged breathing, and the overwhelming, stretching fullness that is both a claiming and a completion.

You are moaning openly now, a continuous, broken stream of sound that is half his name, half meaningless pleas. Every part of you is singing, straining, coiling tighter and tighter toward a shattering peak.

You can feel the tension coiling in his own body, the way his thrusts are becoming less controlled, more frantic, the way his fingers tremble where they grip your flesh. The air is thick with the scent of sex and sweat, charged with the imminent, explosive release you are both racing toward. He is holding on by a thread, his own control fraying as he watches you come utterly apart beneath him, poised to follow you over the edge into oblivion.

The thread of his control, stretched so taut and thin, finally snaps. It isn't a gentle unravelling but a violent, seismic break. A raw, guttural shout is torn from his chest, a sound of pure, unadulterated release that seems to shake the very walls of the room. His hips stutter, losing all rhythm, becoming a series of shallow, frantic jerks as he buries himself to the hilt inside you and lets go.

You feel it the moment he cums. A hot, pulsing rush deep within you, the first thick jet of his release hitting your deepest walls. It triggers your own undoing. The coil of pleasure that had been wound to an impossible tightness in your core suddenly, violently, unravels. Your orgasm doesn't crest; it detonates. A white-hot shockwave of pure sensation erupts from where you are joined, radiating outward in a paralyzing rush.

It seizes every muscle in your body at once. Your back arches off the bed as far as the ropes and his weight will allow, a silent, breathless scream caught in your throat. Your cunt clenches around him in a rapid, rhythmic series of spasms, milking his cock for every last drop of his release, each pulse wringing a broken groan from his lips.

The pleasure is all-consuming, a tidal wave that drowns out every other thought, every other sense. It’s a full-body convulsion of ecstasy that leaves you trembling, boneless, and utterly wrecked. Your vision whites out at the edges, the world dissolving into a haze of sensation—the hot, wet feel of him pulsing inside you, the brutal, perfect stretch of him, the aftershocks of your own climax that feel like smaller, echoing earthquakes shaking you apart.

He collapses over you, his full weight a heavy, welcome anchor that pins you to the mattress. His forehead presses into the sweat-damp pillow beside your head, his entire body shuddering through the last waves of his climax. His breath comes in ragged, shattered gasps against your ear, each one a hot, humid puff of air. You can feel the frantic, slowing hammer of his heart where his chest is crushed against yours.

For a long, timeless moment, neither of you moves. The only sounds are the ragged symphony of your breathing and the wet, soft sound of his cock still nestled deep inside you, spent and softening.

The air is thick and heavy with the scent of sex, a primal, musky perfume that hangs over you both like a blanket.

Slowly, carefully, his grip on your legs loosens. His hands, which had been vise-like, now stroke down the backs of your thighs with a tenderness that feels shocking after the previous brutality.

He gently guides your legs down, unwinding your body from its contorted position. A soft, involuntary whimper escapes you as your muscles protest the movement, the shift causing him to slip almost out before he settles his weight again, keeping himself sheathed within you. The feeling of him, still inside you in the quiet aftermath, is profoundly intimate. It’s a possessive, grounding presence, a physical tether to the storm that has just passed.

His body is a warm, heavy blanket atop yours, and you can feel the fine tremors that still occasionally wrack his frame. One of his hands comes up, his fingers clumsy with exhaustion, to gently work at the knot binding one of your wrists. The rope falls away, and your arm drops to the mattress with a leaden thud, the blood rushing back in a painful, prickling wave of sensation. He repeats the process with your other wrist, his movements slow and deliberate, his touch surprisingly gentle on the abraded skin.

With your hands finally free, you don't move them. You simply let them lie limp at your sides, every ounce of your energy utterly spent. He doesn't pull out. He remains nestled within the warm, clenching aftermath of your body, his softening cock a quiet reminder of the connection you still share. He shifts his weight slightly, just enough to take the bulk of it off you, but he keeps his hips pressed flush against yours, refusing to break the contact.

His lips find your shoulder, not in a bite, but in a soft, lingering kiss placed directly over the darkest of the bruises. It’s an apology and an absolution all at once. His breath begins to even out, his shuddering subsiding into a deep, contented stillness.

The frantic, desperate energy that had consumed him is gone, replaced by a heavy, sated lethargy that sinks into both of your bones. You are both adrift in the silent, hazy aftermath, bound together not by rope, but by something far more profound and exhausting.

The silence in the wake of your shared climax is profound, broken only by the ragged, slowing cadence of your breaths. The weight of him is a sanctuary, his skin slick and warm against yours. For a long time, neither of you moves, lost in the hazy, saturated stillness. Then, a sound breaks from him—a ragged, shuddering sigh that is more felt than heard. It’s a sound that carries the weight of three months of hell.

His face is still buried in the crook of your neck, but you feel the first hot, wet drop against your skin. Then another. A quiet, broken sob wracks his frame, a tremor that goes straight through your soul. His arms, which had been holding you with possessive strength, now cling to you with a desperate, almost fearful vulnerability.

“I dreamed of this,” he whispers, his voice cracked and raw, muffled against your skin. “Every single night on that thin cot. I’d close my eyes and it was this. Your scent, your warmth, the way it felt just to hold you...” His sentence fractures into another quiet sob, his body trembling with the force of emotions too long suppressed. “I thought I’d never get it back. I was scared they’d stolen it forever.”

Your own eyes well up, tears tracking silently down your temples and into your hair. Your hands, now free, come up to cradle his head, your fingers threading through his damp curls. You hold him as he shakes, as three months of fear, anger, and brutal isolation finally find their release against your skin. You don’t shush him. You just hold him, letting him pour out the poison of that place into the safety of your embrace.

“I’m here,” you murmur, your lips moving against his temple. “You’re home. You’re in our bed. They didn’t steal anything, Spencer. You fought your way back to me. You’re here.” You repeat it like a mantra, a soft litany against the nightmare of his memory.

He lifts his head finally, his eyes red-rimmed and glassy, his beautiful face blotchy with tears. He looks utterly shattered, and more beautiful than you have ever seen him. He frames your face with his hands, his thumbs stroking your cheeks with a reverence that makes your heart ache.

“You were my only thought,” he confesses, his voice hoarse. “The only clean thing in that entire fucking place. Your voice on the phone. Your letters. The promise you made me… that you’d be here. That we’d have this.” His gaze sweeps over your face, drinking in every detail as if committing it to memory all over again. “I clung to it. It was the only thing that kept the walls from closing in.”

“I meant every word,” you whisper, pulling his mouth down to yours in a kiss that is nothing like the frantic, hungry ones from before. This kiss is soft, slow, and deep, a sealing of a promise finally kept. It’s a kiss full of three months of missed mornings and lonely nights, of fears unspoken and a hope that refused to die. It tastes of salt tears and shared breath and a love that has been tempered in fire.

“I’m never leaving this bed,” he murmurs, a ghost of his old humour touching his voice, though it’s thick with emotion.

You smile, a real, true smile that feels like the first one in months. “Good. You’re not allowed to.”

The room is quiet, heavy with the weight of everything that just happened. You both lie tangled together, sweat-slick, trembling, bodies still pulsing with the remnants of the intensity you shared. Spencer’s chest presses against yours, his arms wrapped around you almost desperately, holding you close, but neither of you moves. Words feel too heavy, too fragile, and for a long moment, there is nothing but breath, heartbeat, and the silent acknowledgement of what passed.

Your faces are so close that you can feel each other’s warmth radiating in waves, the brush of skin over skin grounding you, tethering you in a reality that feels almost unreal after the intensity of what happened. Spencer burrows his face into the crook of your neck, inhaling the scent of your hair, of your skin, as if memorizing it again, imprinting it on himself in case the world ever tries to take it from him. You shiver in response, and he tightens his hold, a low hum vibrating through him, the sound of someone who is both exhausted and terrified of letting go.

You lie there entwined, listening to the steady, strong beat of his heart under your ear—a sound you had feared you might never hear this close again. The frantic energy is gone, replaced by a deep, thrumming contentment, a peace that settles into your very bones. The bruises will ache tomorrow. The memories will sometimes surface. But in this moment, there is only this: his breath in your hair, his skin against yours, the profound rightness of being whole again.

He lifts his head just enough to look over your body, taking in the swell of your breasts, the marks along your thighs, the fingerprints left from where he held you down. Every new mark, every darkening bruise, every faint trace of his hands on your skin sets off a fire of protectiveness inside him. He needs to tend to you. He needs to make sure you’re okay.

“I need to… I need to take care of you,” he murmurs, voice thick and rough, almost shaking. His hands brush your hair from your face, sliding down your shoulder to cup it, gentle now where moments ago they were urgent and demanding. He presses a soft kiss over the largest bite mark, lingering, as if the pressure of his lips can soothe both the pain and the memory of it.

Slowly, carefully, he shifts, guiding you upright against his chest. His hands are everywhere at once, steadying you, touching lightly, memorizing where he needs to be gentle. “Come with me,” he whispers, voice low, almost reverent. “We should… get cleaned up. I should treat those bite wounds.”

He doesn’t rush the movement, simply guides you with a hand at the small of your back, his other hand finding yours, lacing your fingers together as he leads you from the warmth of the bed into the cool, tiled silence of the bathroom.

The light he flicks on is soft, not the harsh overhead glare, and it casts the room in a gentle, forgiving glow. He turns on the shower, testing the water with his hand until it steams, a cloud of warmth billowing into the room.

He steps in first, never letting go of your hand, and guides you under the spray with him. The water is a perfect, blissful heat that cascades over your shoulders, washing away the sweat and the lingering evidence of your passion. He reaches for a washcloth and a bar of soap, the simple, clean scent of it filling the air. He works up a rich lather, his movements slow and deliberate.

“Turn for me,” he murmurs, his voice a soft vibration in the steamy space.

You obey, presenting your back to him. His touch is exquisite, a world away from the frantic grasping of before. The soft, sudsy cloth glides over your skin, over the slope of your shoulders, down the length of your spine. He is meticulously careful, avoiding the darker bruises, skirting the tender bite marks with a reverence that makes your throat tight. He washes your arms, his fingers gently massaging the muscles, paying special attention to your wrists, where the rope had held you fast. He doesn’t scrub, he anoints, each pass of the cloth a silent apology, a promise of care.

He turns you back to face him, his eyes dark and soft in the mist. The washcloth moves over your collarbones, over the swell of your breasts, and you watch his face, the absolute concentration there, the deep focus he applies to this simple, loving task. He washes every part of you with the same tender attention, kneeling to run the cloth down your legs, his touch firm and soothing on your tired muscles. He is worshipping you, not with words, but with action, washing away not just the physical remnants of the night, but the ghost of his own desperation.

When he is finished with you, he quickly, almost efficiently, soaps himself. It’s not rushed, but it lacks the ceremonial care he gave you. This is a practicality. His focus remains entirely on you, even as he rinses the suds from his own skin.

He turns off the water and reaches for a large, fluffy towel, wrapping you in it before he even considers one for himself. He pats you dry with the same infinite care, blotting the water from your skin, his touch lingering on the now-clean marks he left behind. He leads you, swaddled in warmth, back to the bedroom and sits you gently on the edge of the bed.

“Stay right here,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to your forehead before crossing and retrieving a small, white first aid kit.

He kneels on the floor before you, opening the kit with a quiet click. His hands are sure and steady as he selects an antiseptic ointment. “This might sting a little,” he says, his voice low, his eyes flicking up to yours for permission. You nod, and his touch is feather-light as he dabs the cool cream onto the bite mark on your shoulder where the skin had broken.

His brow is furrowed in concentration, his full attention on minimizing any discomfort. He follows the ointment with a small adhesive bandage, smoothing the edges down with the pad of his thumb.

He does the same for the other small breaks he's made to your skin, his movements methodical and gentle. Once the bandages are in place, he takes a bottle of aloe vera lotion, pouring a generous amount into his palm. He warms it between his hands before taking one of your wrists.

He begins to massage the lotion into your skin, his thumbs working in slow, circular motions over the faint red marks left by the rope. The lotion is cool and soothing, but his touch is what truly heals, a constant, gentle pressure that seems to seep into your very bones, easing the memory of strain. He spends a long time on each wrist, not stopping until the skin has absorbed every drop and feels supple and new under his fingers.

He looks up at you, his task complete, his eyes searching yours. The atmosphere is so soft, so sweet, it feels sacred. He has taken the violence of his need and transformed it, through this meticulous care, into something profoundly loving. He has tended to every mark, not to erase them, but to honour them, and to honour you.

The first aid kit is set aside, its purpose fulfilled. For a long moment, Spencer remains on his knees before you, his hands resting gently on your thighs, his head bowed as if in quiet reverence. The only sound is the soft, steady rhythm of your shared breathing in the hushed room. Then, he lifts his gaze to yours, and the look in his eyes—full of a weary, overwhelming love—makes your heart stutter.

Without a word, he rises and guides you back, shifting you both until you are nestled deep within the pillows, the soft comforter pulled up to your waists. He doesn’t simply lie beside you; he gathers you into him, moulding your body to his as if trying to erase any possible space between you. One arm curls beneath your neck, his hand cradling your head, while the other wraps around your waist, his palm splayed possessively against the small of your back. Your leg hooks over his hip, and you bury your face in the warm, familiar hollow of his throat, breathing in the clean scent of soap and the essential, unique scent that is simply him.

You lie like that for what feels like an eternity, simply soaking each other in. The frantic, desperate energy of before has been utterly spent, washed away and bandaged over, leaving behind a profound, bone-deep calm. His fingers trace idle, lazy patterns on your skin—over your shoulder, down your arm, across the bandage on your collarbone—each touch a silent reaffirmation of his presence, his reality.

“I kept my promise,” he whispers into your hair, his voice a low, drowsy rumble you feel more than hear. “I endured. I held on. For this. For you.” His hand stills, pressing firmly against your back, holding you even closer. “It was the only thing that made sense in there. The thought of coming back to this. To you. Right here.”

You tilt your head up, your nose brushing against his jaw. “And I kept mine,” you answer softly. “I never let go. Not for a second.” You press a soft, lingering kiss to the pulse point at the base of his throat, feeling the strong, steady beat of his heart against your lips. “You’re home now. Really home. And I’m never letting you go again.”

A shuddering breath escapes him, and he shifts to look down at you, his eyes glistening in the dim light. The intelligence, the quickness that usually lives there is softened by exhaustion and emotion, leaving only a raw, tender honesty. “Promise me,” he says, his voice thick. “Promise me we never have to be apart like that again. Promise me that every night from now on, I get to fall asleep just like this. With you in my arms.”

Tears well in your own eyes, but they are tears of relief, of a happiness so fierce it aches. You bring a hand up to cup his cheek, your thumb stroking the arch of his cheekbone. “I promise,” you vow, your voice unwavering. “Every single night. No matter what. You’re stuck with me, Spencer Reid.”

A real, genuine smile—the first one you’ve seen in three long months—touches his lips. It’s a little wobbly, and it doesn’t erase the shadows under his eyes, but it is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. He dips his head, capturing your mouth in a kiss that is achingly sweet and impossibly soft. It’s not a kiss of hunger, but of belonging. A seal on the promise you’ve just made.

He breaks the kiss and simply rests his forehead against yours, his eyes closed. “Then I’m home,” he breathes out, the words a sigh of ultimate contentment. “I’m finally home.”

Spencer meets Derek’s gaze through the reflection of the mirror he’s standing in front of, smirking at him with his eyebrows raised in amusement.

“I just–” Spencer pauses, swallowing nervously. “I don’t do well in front of big crowds.”

Derek steps up behind him, patting Spencer on the shoulder.

“Pretty boy, when you’re up there and you see her, I promise you no one else in that room will matter in that moment. You won’t even notice any of us are there.”

Spencer gives him a tight-lipped smile, looking down at his polished black dress shoes.

You’d tried to convince him to wear his Converse because you knew that’s what he’d be most comfortable in, but Spencer wanted to impress you wholly. Not that he really needed to, but he silently vowed and was insistent on looking his absolute best for you.

A knock on the door interrupts his small internal meltdown. Derek opens it only to reveal JJ and Aaron on the other side.

Aaron looks at Spencer with a fond smile to which Spencer returns.

“You ready?” Aaron asks, and Spencer purses his lips before slowly nodding.

“You’re not getting cold feet, are you?” Aaron teases, raising an eyebrow.

Spencer’s eyebrows nearly shoot up to the top of his forehead. “Oh, no, that’s not it at all. She’s literally my dream woman. I can’t believe she even wants to spend the rest of her life with me,” he half-jokes the last part.

“You’re a catch, pretty boy. You two bring out the best in each other and I really don’t think there’s another person on this Earth that’s more perfect for you than she is,” Derek tries to reassure him.

“Thanks, Morgan.”

“He’s right, Spencer,” Aaron agrees.

Spencer shifts his gaze to JJ.

“How is she?” He asks, mainly because not seeing you for the past nearly twenty four hours has been driving him absolutely insane, but he also wants to make sure you’re not getting cold feet. For his own peace of mind, he reasons.

JJ shoots him a bright smile.

“She’s glowing, Spence. She’s ready to walk down the aisle.”

Hearing those words immediately puts him at ease. He takes a deep breath in, exhaling slowly before he looks at the three before him, nodding subtly.

The next few minutes is a complete blur to him—walking down the aisle himself, hearing the beautiful string instruments being played, the groomsmen and bridesmaids walking down the aisle followed by the flower girls—and then you appear at the very end.

Then all time stands completely still as his eyes rake over you a million and one times. Your wedding dress fits you beautifully, your makeup done to enhance your stunning features, and you’re wearing the most radiant smile on your lips that makes him fall in love with you even more, as if that’s possible. You seem so close yet so far away as you walk towards him with you on your dad’s arm.

And it’s then that Spencer realizes Derek was completely right. All of the other people in the room didn’t matter at that very moment. It’s just you and him, ready to avow to each other that you want to spend the rest of your lives with one another.

All he sees is you. His beautiful bride, wife-to-be, future mother of his children.

When he looks at you, he sees his whole life ahead of him.

Spencer was rarely a crier, especially in front of other people. But he can’t help get teary eyed with the way you look at him. With the thought that he gets to spend the rest of his life with you.

You reach the end of the aisle and he steps down to hold his arm out for you to take. Your dad gives you a kiss on the cheek before handing you over to Spencer, giving him a pat on the shoulder with a reassuring squeeze.

Spencer’s eyes shift to you as he leads you back up the steps and you face each other.

“You look absolutely breathtaking, angel,” he whispers to you.

That shy look that he loves so much takes over your features.

“You look very handsome yourself, Spence.”

The rest of the ceremony becomes a blur, citing your vows to each other before slipping on each other’s wedding rings.

I now pronounce you as husband and wife.

You may now kiss your bride.

The six words that Spencer was dying to hear. He grabs your face gently and dips you, kissing you with so much passion that it steals the air from your lungs.

The cheers erupt from everyone before you, which pulls you both smack dab in the middle of reality once again.

You both pull apart from each other completely breathless, grinning from ear to ear.

You both walk back down the aisle together, kissing one more time at the end before you exit the doors. You’re both breathless and laughing as you make your way into a small room attached to the venue, taking in the moment for yourselves.

“We’re married,” you gush, draping your arms around his shoulders as you rest your forehead against his.

“We’re married, baby,” he says, wrapping his arms around you. He gives you a loving squeeze, leaning down to kiss you softly.

Spencer relishes the quiet, charged moment between you two, pecking your lips a few more times before holding you close to him.

“You look ethereal, my love,” he whispers, leaning back slightly to give you another look. “The things you make me want to do…” he trails off, and you raise an eyebrow.

“And what would that entail, Mr. Reid?”

“Worshipping you.”

It’s such a simple answer, and yet those words steal the air from your lungs.

“You have no idea what you do to me,” he breathes.

You’re about to answer him before a knock on the door interrupts you.

“Mr. and Mrs. Reid? We’re all set up to take photos whenever you’re good to go,” your photographer calls through the door.

Spencer looks down at you with a heart melting smile.

“You ready?”

You look up at him with the same smile that’s had him smitten since the day he first met you.

You grin like a fool in love (because really, who are you kidding? you so are).

You’d experienced the most perfect day of your life yesterday surrounded by everyone you love, and the most unforgettable night spent with your man. The smile he wore all night shined brighter than any sunny days you’ve ever seen, and you made yourself a promise to etch the image in your mind forever.  

You stretch slowly in his arms, taking in your surroundings. 

Two empty glasses of champagne on your bedside table, one with your lipstick print on it, sits next to your phone with a plethora of unread text messages from the girl’s group chat at the BAU. 

Your eyes catch on to your white heels and wedding dress strewn across the floor haphazardly, with his dress shoes and tux to match. 

Your matching lacy set that Penelope insisted you get for your wedding night isn’t too far from your dress. 

The way Spencer’s hungry eyes scanned you when he slowly slid your dress off of your body, only to find you in the pretty lingerie, did something absolutely unspeakable to him. 

Something deeply carnal had unfurled low in your belly at the sight of him as he fell to his knees in front of you, hands traveling slowly and deliberately down your body, kissing you below your navel and the apex of your thighs. 

Marveling at you. 

Worshipping you. 

His hazel eyes glowed in the soft light that emanated from the lamp in the corner of the hotel room, so expressive and full of love. 

You still feel the press and drag of his lips on your skin. His tongue everywhere that made your back arch and toes curl in pure bliss. His sweet whispered words as he made love to you for the first time as his wife. 

How he got rougher toward the third round as you kept begging for him to not stop. 

A kiss to your shoulder brings you back to reality. 

Spencer stirs, lips trailing from your shoulder to your collarbone. You softly laugh as you turn and run your fingers through his curls, revealing his handsome sleepy face. 

“Good morning, my angel,” he rasps, voice thick with sleep. 

“Good morning my handsome husband.” 

He grins widely at that, burying his face into your neck as he pulls you closer into him. 

“My wife,” he murmurs, pressing his lips to your skin once again. “I can’t believe you’re all mine.” 

He lifts his head again, moving down to kiss your forehead. 

“Well believe it, Mr. Reid. You’ve got me for eternity,” your voice goes soft around the edges, and you know you’re looking at him with pure adoration. 

“I love the sound of that.” 

His hand slides down your bare body, and goosebumps raise on your skin at his touch. 

He sports a shit-eating grin because he knows just how much his touch alone affects you. 

“What was on your mind a few minutes ago? Your breathing increased quite rapidly.” 

You glare at him with fake unamusement. Ever the profiler. 

“Are you profiling your wife now?” You tease, bringing your face closer to his. 

He hums, hand sliding lower—close to where you want him. 

“It’s in our nature at this point,” he defends. 

“What do you think I was thinking about?” 

“I have a few ideas,” he quips, and you raise an eyebrow. 

You falter for a second as his fingers brush your mound, and you shiver. 

“Well you are a genius.” 

He huffs a laugh and leans in to kiss you softly as his fingers brush over your slick folds. Your legs fall open for him, and he grins against your lips before he slides his middle finger through your slit, bringing it back up to circle your sensitive clit. 

You gasp against his lips, but his mouth chases yours and kisses you deeply. Urgently. Your hands curl into his hair, tugging gently as your hips start to writhe with need. 

“I think,” he parts his lips from yours, voice sounding wrecked, “that you were having flashbacks about last night.” 

“Maybe I was.” 

“I was too.” 

“Spence,” you gasp as he slowly adds one finger into you, shortly followed by another. 

“My beautiful wife,” he whispers, switching positions so he’s now on top of you. 

Your gaze meets his, eyebrows threaded together, jaw slack at the feeling of his fingers working in and out of you expertly. 

Your fingertips trace down his back, one hand trailing around his front until you brush the wiry hairs above his stiff length. 

“I need you,” you breathe. And it might be a tad bit selfish considering all of the work he put in last night, but he doesn’t see it that way. 

He wants to please his wife over and over and over again at every opportunity he can possibly get. 

So that’s what he does. 

“Need me to what, angel?” He smirks, his fingers slowly sliding out of you as his other hand covers yours around the base of his cock.

He slowly moves your hand up his silky flesh. His eyes fall closed and he hisses at the sensation, shakily exhaling before opening his eyes back up to look at you. 

You’re both a trembling, wanting mess at this point, that same carnal desire wrapping herself around you both as she sinks her claws into your flesh. 

Your heart is pounding against your ribcage, and you almost want to laugh at how ridiculous it is that you still get like this with him. A trembling, needy mess with a hint of nervousness and enough yearning to last a lifetime.  

And you also hope that very specific feeling never goes away. 

With that feeling also sparks a hint of boldness, and you do with that what you can muster. 

“I need you to fuck your wife into this mattress, Dr. Reid.”

His eyes darken as soon as the word “Doctor” slips past your lips. Your bold choice of words hit home for him too, but something about you calling him by his title sends him soaring over the edge every single time. 

He groans at that, head hanging between his shoulder blades as he guides himself toward you, pushing into you slowly at first. He slides his hands up your arms, pinning your wrists above your head. 

He’s got that look of control and determination in his eyes. It makes the rumbling flame low in your belly spread into a full-fledged forest fire. 

You gasp as he reaches the hilt, and he’s hot and heavy in you. You’re breathless, and Spencer gives you a moment to collect yourself. 

It’s not long before the sweet words from last night that still hung in the atmosphere quickly dissipate, swapped out with far more intense vows of pleasure. 

It’s a side of Spencer you only ever got to see in the bedroom, but you love that it’s reserved for you and only you all the same. 

With his words, he picks up the pace of his hips significantly, practically pistoning in and out of you. 

A string of curses and whines flies past your lips, head tossed back against the pillows. He releases your wrists and your hands immediately fly to slide down his back, nails unintentionally scratching his skin. You wrap your legs around his waist, and it isn’t long before you completely succumb to the feeling of him once more. 

“Spencer—oh god oh god oh god,” you cry. He moves his hands to hold your hips down, fingers digging into your flesh. He leans down to kiss you, love and desperation tightly packed into the moment. It’s almost like a gut punch with the realization of how much love this man truly pours into you. 

His lips separate from yours, moving close to your ear as he rasps his next words. 

“You have me completely at your mercy, my beautiful wife. Especially when you say my name like that.” 

“I love you Spencer,” you say, looking into his eyes as he thrusts into you relentlessly. He sits up for a beat, bringing your ankles over his shoulders. The new angle nearly has you seeing stars, and you’re pretty sure the whole floor of this hotel knows exactly what you two are doing… for the fourth time in the last ten hours. 

He pauses for a second. You look at him with confusion before he kisses you again, and you completely melt into the mattress beneath you. 

“I love you too, angel. So fucking much.” 

He thrusts into you a few more times, reaching down to rub your clit to send you over the edge. 

That’s it, my pretty girl. So good. So fucking good. Look at you, my sweet angel.

It’s then that you completely unravel for him, his words having you at his mercy. Your breathless pleas encourage him to come too, and he follows suit not long after. 

You’re panting as his thrusts eventually slow and he slowly pulls out of you. You hiss at the loss of contact, trying to catch your breath. He pulls you into his side, kissing the crown of your head as he traces light patterns on your skin. He brings your left hand up to his line of sight, admiring the pair of rings that adorn your ring finger. He leans up to press his lips against your rings, and you can’t help the absolute love-struck girlish smile that spreads across your lips. 

You bask in the peaceful bliss of your little “day-after-I-do” bubble, enjoying the time you have with him away from the chaos of your daily lives. 

Until it’s shortly interrupted with the shrill ringtone from your phone that makes you both jump. 

You groan and pick it up, seeing Penelope’s bright smile in her contact picture flash across the screen. 

“Hey Pen,” you answer, shifting in Spencer’s arms. 

“Hiya gorgeous, are you both still wanting to have breakfast with us all? JJ, Emily and I have been trying to text you but I figured I’d just call.” 

“Oh, sorry about that. I was, uh, a little busy.” 

Spencer hums in amusement at your words, lips peppering your shoulder with kisses. 

Penelope chuckles on the other end of the line. 

“Guess that little white number I told you to get was worth it after all, huh?” 

Your body heats at her words. “You have no idea.” 

She laughs at that, and Spencer’s hand starts to trace your body again. He leans his head down to kiss your chest, playfully nipping at one of your breasts. You try to swat him away, but his mouth is already closing around a nipple. You inhale sharply and push him off gently. You glare at him, but he just smiles foolishly before innocently shrugging at you. 

“Give us like thirty minutes to freshen up, and we’ll meet you all down for breakfast.” 

“Sounds good, sweets. I’ll see you lovebirds soon!” 

She hangs up before you can say anything else, and you groan as you toss your phone back on the nightstand. 

“You know you have to behave yourself in front of everyone, right? I know they’re our friends, but we also work with them, Spencer,” you half-laugh-half-chastise him. 

“You’re so hard to resist though, Mrs. Reid.” 

You fawn over your new last name. 

“At least try. For me.” 

He kisses your forehead. “Anything for you.”

He sits up and stretches, and you gasp in horror as your eyes land on the red scratch marks that travel all the way down his back. 

“What?” he asks, turning his head to look at you. 

“I’m so sorry, Spence. Your back,” you whisper, trailing your fingertips over the red marks. 

He tosses you a smirk. “Just means I did something right.” 

You roll your eyes, tossing the sheets away from you before playfully throwing them his way. He heartily laughs at that, catching the sheets before flopping back down on the bed next to you, scooping you up into his arms. 

You both wish at this moment that you could just stay in bed all day and order room service. You know you’ll have to face the impending doom—better known as the relentless teasing you know your friends have fired up for the both of you—sooner rather than later. 

Even though your little bubble with just you and him being wrapped up in one another was short-lived and you have to face reality once again, you have comfort in knowing that you’re going out into the world as Spencer Reid’s wife. 

As a sickeningly, maddingly, ardently in love married couple. 

As Mr. and Mrs. Reid. 

Distantly, somewhere in the back of your frazzled and half-mush brain, you wonder if his jaw is sore – if he's really enjoying it as much as his humping and moaning seem to be giving away. Does he really get this much pleasure out of something as simple as eating you out?

But it's not that simple, no– not to Spencer.

For Spencer, it's the concept of your pleasure, the show you unawaredly put on: the hitches in your breath each time he puts his tongue on your clit again, the low moan when he sucks, the breathy please as you beg him to go faster. The way your hips circle and stutter beneath the hold his arms have on them, it's the way you sigh his name – low and dreamy as your back arches of the sheets when he makes you cum.

Spencer enjoys it all – craves it all, always. He's barely even lucid at this point. Your slick a most sweet elixir, throwing him deeper and deeper into a lust-filled haze till he's mindlessly rutting into the mattress and moaning into your core.

He wants to taste you again, taste your sweet liquor as you cum for him, again.

How can he not when your so pretty like this? taste as addictive as you do? make him feel half-insane as you moan out his name and grind your hips down onto his tongue – greedily asking for more, always wanting more, just as he so desperately does. You're the same as him, you want more, more, more – and he'll always so oh, so eagerly provide.

Your thighs are wet and sticky and Spencer seems to revel gleefully in the fact – he's made them like this, he's why your cunt is wet with slick, why your face is covered in tears and few smudges of mascara.

Spencer's mouth is hot on your pussy as he continues his work. He plunges two long and slender fingers inside of your, hooking them up as he moves them in-and-out, all the while sucking on your swollen clit.

"fuck," your back bows off the mattress. You're already so close – was close the moment he put his tongue on you again not even a second after your last orgasm.

"Spencer, please–" you don't know what you plea for – don't know if it's for mercy or for damnation. You're not sure if you should pull his head closer by the hand in his hair, or move away to stave off your orgasm. You're not sure you can handle more, even if you want it, you can't guarantee that another orgasm won't break you. But it doesn't matter, Spencer's movements are relentless, and either way he'll get you there – he needs to make you cum. Your hand in his hair remains neutral.

The coil in your stomach tightens, and you can already feel the familiar sweet, honeyed sensation fill you up. Warmth moving through your nerves and seeping deep into your bones. Your eyes are already closed, eyes sightlessly moving around beneath your lids as if caught in a restless dream — and you almost feel like you are in one: some feverish, psychosomatic sex dream.

Spencer efforts double, almost like he can notice the proximity of your orgasm, telepathically able to predict when the sensation is about to flood you even before you've been made aware yourself. His hips grind down harder against the mattress as he, seemingly unaware, tries to make himself cum to the sweet sounds of your pleasure.

His fingers move deeper, motions precise. The pads of his fingers nudge that soft spot deep in your cervix, and your legs are clamping closed, only held open by his bobbing head.

"Spencer!" you moan, "too much, fuck– please, honey, please," soft words bubble from your lips, your brain too pleasure-frazzled to form any other, more coherent requests.

Spencer's fingers continue their movements, his tongue moves up and down your cunt, before he rips out his fingers to stuff his face right in the centre of you to get a good taste, his nose brushing against your clit as he does so. You reward him with a cry, and he gifts you back his own moans. His sounds pressed deep into your cunt, making vibrations reverberate from your core to your chest, wrecking your body tremors as they flow through you.

He sucks and sucks, drinking your juices like a man depraved and dying of thirst. Spencer's always been an eager lover.

The coil begs to snap, stretched far too taught. His tongue plunges deep inside you, tasting along the spongy walls of your cunt.

All it takes is one simple movement from Spencer. His thumb circles your clit once, twice, his nose nudges your clit closer to his thumb – and you're screaming.

"Spencer!" you cry out as your back arches off the mattress completely. Your hips still held down by Spencer's strong arms intertwined around them, holding you hostage to his pleasure.

Moan after moan releases from your throat, mindlessly spoken words mixing in the middle: some please, some Spencers, a few cuss words in the bundle.

Despite the intensity you feel, the electricity that increases second by second, your hips act on a mind of their own. As every alarm in your friend brain goes off, telling you to stop the stimulation before you go insane, your hips yet continue to move, jerky circles following Spencer's still ongoing torment.

And Spencer's doesn't deprive you of any pleasure – his tongue still rapidly laps at your juices. The movements of his thumb on your clit are gentle, however. Slow, deliberate and soft circles.

Spencer doesn't fully slow down though, and before you can consider pulling him away with your weakened grip on his hair, Spencer's movements stutter. His body wracks with tremors, the movements of his mouth on you spasmodic. His hips thrash against the sheets. Spencer's movements are sporadic and shaky as his own cum erupts through his aching, hard cock.

Spencer's eyes roll far back into his skull, and you lean your head down to watch as his back bows while he whimpers and mewls against your pussy as he ruins the fabric of his boxers.

His hips continue to jerk, and he lays some soft, open-mouthed kisses on you as he rides out the high of a most divine feeling.

When his hips still, and sounds come back into focus, Spencer's hands loosen on you as he begins his ascent up your body, too eager to share the sweet taste of you on your tongue.

"mhmm," he hums against your pubic mound, laying a wet kiss as his handa move up to caress your body.

"you made me cum, pretty girl," he whispers against your stomach, you feel the curve of his lips around every word. "fuck, your sweet cunt and pretty sounds made me cum," another kiss laid higher up, "made me feel so good,"

You hum back in reply, unable to fully form a sentence yet.

"Didn't even need to try," he murmurs, and it's true. Spencer can cum from just looking at you, from your soft sounds and breathy whimpers. It's happened before, and it almost happened tonight when you moaned out his name all dreamy and dainty as he made you cum that first time.

"You sounded so pretty, too," his words carry on as his kisses move higher. He lays a wet kiss on your sternum, quickly darting out his tongue to lick a drop of sweat of your skin.

His big hands move all over you, from your hip to around your waist, then up to caress your chest, thumbs running over your nipples, before Spencer decides to taste them instead.

His hands wrap around your waist, pulling you closer as he settles himself between your legs.

His takes one breast into his mouth, sucking at the plump skin, head bobbing as he kisses and licks at your chest. His tongue swipes over your nipple, once, twice, three, five times till your hoarse voice whimpers out your pleasure – much to his satisfaction. He moves to repeat the same movements on the other breast.

Once he's satisfied, he releases you with a pop, the sound obscene and loud, contrasting your soft pants.

"Did you feel good, baby?" he speaks the words now against the side of your neck. You nod in response, your jaw softly meeting the side of his face as you do. Spencer chuckles at the contact, and moves out of the cervix of your neck to properly look at you instead.

His brown eyes meet yours. This close, you can make each individual flick of gold in his eyes, each green strand the decorates the brown.

"Tell me," he requests, soft and gentle. He kisses you tenderly on the lips. "tell me how good it felt,"

"So good, Spence," you reply, voice rough with use, whilst you wrap your hands around his neck, one burrowing into his soft curls. His eyes flutter as your nails lightly scrape his skull, and he feels a low buzz at the contact.

"Good," he kisses you again, satiated and satisfied with your answer.

It seems to you like Spencer's gotten his fill, for now. He's only made you cum, what? 5 or 6 times?

He kisses you softly, and you hope that Spencer's settling to rest with you.

He kisses you slow and soft, humming gently against your lips. He lays one kiss on your temple, another on your forehead, and one on each of your closed eyelids as you begin to settle and relax against the pillows, your brain wandering off as you lose time between each kiss and the next; your brain dozes off for half-seconds as the atmosphere quiets.

so calm....so quiet

Your grip on Spencer loosens, the entrancing, post-euphoria haze thickens and stretches time as sounds around you mute and an exhausted smile settles across your face as you give into that weightless feeling and finally rest.

—

Spencer's hands wander downwards, yet again, his fingers settling on your clit as he aligs his once more hard cock with your entrance.

Liked reading this? >> Give this a go

A/N — some late night Spencer thoughts. Been wanting to right for dr. pretty boy for a while now.

+ experimenting with shorter fics now, hopefully I'll write more like this? also it's not properly edited if u can't tell ⊙⁠﹏⁠⊙

Feedback is always wanted & appreciated!

The door doesn’t slam.

Spencer never slams doors.

But it closes a little too firmly, a little too carefully controlled, and that’s how you know.

You look up from where you’re curled on the couch, the soft glow of the TV painting the room in low light. For a second, he just stands there with his hand still on the handle, shoulders slightly hunched like he hasn’t quite made it all the way back yet.

“Hey,” you say softly.

His head lifts at your voice. The tension in his face shifts, not gone, just… tucked away. Filed under something neater.

“Hi.”

It’s automatic, the way he crosses the room to you. Like muscle memory. Like you’re part of the routine he trusts. He leans down, presses a quick kiss to your lips—gentle, familiar—but it’s over before it can settle into anything.

Too quick.

“Case ran long,” he adds, already pulling back, already halfway somewhere else in his head. “I’m—uh—I’m gonna shower.”

“Spence—”

But he’s already moving.

You watch him disappear down the hallway, the quiet click of the bathroom door following a second later. Then the rush of water.

And just like that, the apartment feels… off.

You frown slightly, staring at the space he left behind. The way he didn’t linger. Didn’t ramble. Didn’t even really look at you beyond that quick, checking-in glance.

Something’s wrong.

Not catastrophically wrong. You know what that looks like. You’ve seen it before.

This is quieter than that. He’s wound too tight.

You mute the TV, the silence settling in around you, filled only by the distant sound of running water. Your mind runs through possibilities—bad case, lack of sleep, something that stuck with him longer than usual.

Probably all of the above.

You push yourself off the couch, padding down the hallway. The bathroom door is still closed, steam already curling faintly from beneath it. You hover there for a second, considering knocking.

You don’t.

Instead, you lean your shoulder against the wall, arms crossing loosely as you wait.

The water runs longer than usual.

When it finally shuts off, there’s a pause. A long one. Like he’s just standing there, gathering himself, piecing something back together before he has to step out and be a person again.

Your chest tightens a little.

The door opens a minute later, and Spencer steps out, hair damp, t-shirt clinging slightly where it hasn’t fully dried him off. He looks… better, technically.

Cleaner. Still not okay.

He blinks when he sees you there. “Oh—hi. I didn’t—uh—realize you were—”

“Waiting?” you offer.

He gives a small, sheepish nod, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to disappear like that.”

“It’s okay,” you say, but your eyes narrow just a little, studying him. “You just got back. You’re allowed to be weird for at least, like, an hour.”

That earns you the faintest hint of a smile. It flickers across his mouth, brief but real. “Only an hour?”

“Mhm. After that I start charging you for emotional distance.”

A quiet huff of laughter leaves him, softer than usual, but it’s something. Still, he shifts his weight like he doesn’t quite know where to go next. Like standing still might let something catch up to him.

You tilt your head slightly, softer now. “Hey… are you okay?”

Spencer doesn’t answer right away.

His gaze drops somewhere between you, unfocused, like he’s flipping through thoughts too fast to grab just one. You can almost see the calculations, the quiet sorting, the way he tries to find the most accurate answer instead of the easiest one.

A few seconds pass before he exhales.

“I—” He stops, presses his lips together, tries again. “I will be.”

It’s honest. Not reassuring, not entirely comforting, but real. And you’ve learned that’s what matters with him.

You nod, stepping a little closer, your hand brushing lightly against his arm. “Okay. ‘Will be’ is acceptable.”

His shoulders loosen a fraction at that. Not fully. Just enough to breathe a little easier.

“I think I just…” He rubs at the back of his neck again, damp curls catching between his fingers. “I should probably sleep. Reset a little.”

“Yeah,” you murmur. “That sounds like a good plan.”

There’s another pause, smaller this time. Hesitant.

Then, quieter—almost careful—“Will you… come with me?”

It’s not a big question. Not really. You’ve done this countless times before. Fallen asleep together, limbs tangled, his breathing evening out beside you.

But there’s something different in the way he asks it now.

Less routine. More… needing.

Your expression softens instantly. “Of course.”

Something in him settles at that. Not all the way, but enough that the sharpest edges dull.

“Okay,” he says, almost to himself.

He shifts, gesturing faintly down the hall like he’s not entirely sure how to transition from standing here to actually moving. You don’t wait for him to figure it out. You slip past him, bumping your shoulder lightly into his as you go.

“C’mon, genius,” you tease gently. “Doctor’s orders. Bed.”

A quiet breath of amusement escapes him, and this time the smile lingers just a little longer.

He follows you.

The bedroom feels softer somehow. Dimmer. Safer.

You tug the blankets back and climb in first, settling into your usual spot without thinking. Spencer hovers for half a second before joining you, movements slower, more deliberate, like he’s still shaking off the outside world piece by piece.

The mattress dips under his weight. There’s that same brief hesitation. Then he shifts closer.

Not dramatic. Not even fully intentional, maybe. Just instinct. His arm slides around you, tucking you in against his side, his hand resting warm and steady at your waist.

You hum softly, adjusting so you fit better against him, your cheek brushing his shoulder.

For a moment, neither of you say anything.

You can feel it, though. The tension still coiled in him. Quieter now, but not gone. His fingers flex slightly against your side, like he doesn’t quite know how to let go of everything yet.

Your gaze flicks upward.

He’s staring at the ceiling. Wide awake.

Yeah. No. Not happening.

A small smile tugs at your mouth.

“You’re terrible at this,” you murmur.

Spencer blinks, glancing down at you. “At what?”

“Sleeping.”

“I just laid down,” he protests mildly.

“Mhm. And you’re already thinking too loud.”

His lips twitch faintly. “I don’t—think loudly.”

“You do when you’re trying not to.”

That earns you a slightly more real look. A little more present.

Good. But you have another idea.

You shift suddenly, twisting out of his hold just enough to grab one of the pillows from behind you.

Spencer frowns, confused. “What are you—”

You hit him.

Not hard. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to surprise.

The pillow makes a soft whump against his arm.

He stares at you. You stare back.

“…Did you just—” he starts.

You hit him again. That does it.

“Okay,” Spencer says slowly, pushing himself up onto one elbow, eyes narrowing just a fraction. “I see what’s happening.”

“Do you?” you grin, already backing up on your knees across the bed.

“I was under the impression we were going to sleep.”

“Revised plan.”

He watches you for a second longer. Then, something shifts.

It’s subtle, but you catch it. The way the tension in his shoulders loosens, replaced by something lighter. Sharper. Awake in a different way.

“You know,” he says, reaching for a pillow of his own, “there are several strategic disadvantages to your current position.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. For one—”

You don’t let him finish. You swing the pillow, aiming for his chest.

This time, he’s ready for it. And just like that, the room changes.

Laughter breaks through the quiet, sudden and bright, as Spencer catches the pillow and immediately retaliates. The first hit he lands is clumsy, glancing off your side, but the second—

“Hey!” you laugh, scrambling away as he moves forward.

The bed dips and shifts under both of you, turning the whole thing into unstable territory. You grab another pillow, swinging wildly, barely dodging his reach as he tries to corner you.

“You started this,” he reminds you, breath already a little uneven—but lighter now, threaded with something almost playful.

“And you’re losing,” you shoot back.

“I am not losing.”

“You absolutely are—”

Your sentence dissolves into laughter as he lunges, catching the edge of your pillow mid-swing and using it to yank you forward. You barely twist out of it in time, scrambling off the bed entirely with a soft thud of your feet hitting the floor.

“Oh, that’s cheating!” you accuse, already darting backward.

Spencer sits up fast, pushing his hair out of his face, eyes brighter now—really bright, the kind that only shows up when he’s fully, genuinely in something.

“That’s not cheating,” he argues, grabbing his pillow and sliding off the bed after you. “That’s adaptation.”

“You’re literally making up rules—”

“You didn’t establish any rules!”

You laugh again, breathless, backing toward the door as he advances. There’s something delightfully unfair about him like this—long limbs, quick reflexes, a surprising amount of coordination when he’s not overthinking every step.

“You’re supposed to be bad at this!” you protest.

“That seems like an assumption you made without evidence.”

“You trip over air, Spencer!”

“I trip when I’m thinking,” he corrects, already closing the distance, pillow raised like a very soft weapon. “I’m not thinking right now.”

“Oh, that’s terrifying—”

You dart sideways just as he swings, the pillow grazing your arm instead of landing square. You laugh, breathless, circling back toward the bed like it’s home base, except he’s already anticipating that, cutting you off with a step that’s just a little too quick.

Unfair.

“You’re taking this too seriously!” you accuse with a laugh, backing up until the mattress bumps into the backs of your legs.

“I take all competitive activities seriously.”

“This is not a competitive—Spencer!”

He lunges.

You try to dodge, really you do, but he catches your wrist mid-retreat, momentum carrying both of you forward. The mattress dips hard as you fall back onto it, a surprised laugh punching out of you as he follows, one knee landing on the bed beside your hip, the other sinking into the blankets for balance.

The pillows are forgotten somewhere in the chaos.

You twist beneath him, still laughing, trying to shove him off, but he’s already got you—hands catching your wrists, pinning them lightly above your head as he leans over you, hair falling into his eyes, glasses slightly crooked.

“Got you,” he says, a little breathless, a little triumphant.

“You cheated,” you counter immediately, though the words dissolve into another laugh.

“I adapted,” he corrects again, but there’s a smile tugging at his mouth now—real, unguarded, lingering.

You both go still for a second.

Not fully. Your chests are still rising and falling too fast, breaths mingling in the small space between you. But the movement slows. The laughter fades into something softer, quieter, like the room is catching up with you.

Spencer doesn’t let go of your wrists right away.

His gaze flickers over your face, like he’s remembering where he is. Who he’s with. The shift happens again, subtle but unmistakable, the playful edge softening into something warmer. Something heavier.

“Hi,” you murmur, softer now.

His lips twitch faintly. “Hi.”

“I missed you,” you say softly. 

“I missed you too,” he says, and it lands softer than everything else—like something he didn’t realize he was holding onto until it slipped out.

Your chest tightens in that quiet, familiar way.

You don’t rush it. You just… shift.

One of your wrists twists gently in his grasp, and he lets it go immediately—of course he does, there’s no resistance, no hesitation. Spencer has never been someone who holds on when you pull away.

But you’re not pulling away.

Your freed hand slides up, fingers curling lightly into the fabric of his shirt, and you tug him down.

The kiss meets him halfway.

It’s warm and intentional. Your lips brushing his first, testing, and then settling when he exhales softly against you like something in him just… gives. He melts.

His grip loosens on your other wrist, not dropping it entirely at first, just easing—like he’s making sure you don’t want to move again. When you don’t, when your fingers tighten slightly in his shirt instead, he lets go completely.

His hand slides down, slow and careful, tracing the line of your arm before settling at your side.

The kiss deepens—not dramatically, not all at once. It builds. Soft turns into something warmer, something that lingers a second longer each time your lips meet. His breathing shifts, uneven at the edges, like he’s still catching up to the moment.

Like he didn’t expect this. Like he needed it anyway.

You hum faintly against him, and that does something—something visible. His hand tightens just a little at your waist, pulling you closer without thinking, pressing you more firmly into the mattress beneath him.

Grounding. Needing.

When he pulls back, it’s not far. Just enough to breathe, to look at you, curls falling messily into his eyes.

There’s still a trace of that earlier tension in him—but it’s changed now. Softer. Warmer. Redirected into something that hums low under his skin.

“Is this…” he starts, voice quieter, a little rougher now. “Is this your official treatment plan?”

Your lips curve, brushing his again, lighter this time. “Mhm. Very advanced technique.”

He huffs a small breath of laughter, forehead dipping briefly against yours. “Peer-reviewed?”

You laugh. “Extensively.”

Another kiss—shorter, but more certain.

His hand shifts at your waist, thumb brushing absent, slow circles like he’s thinking without meaning to. The rest of him follows in small ways—his weight settling more comfortably over you, one knee adjusting against the mattress, his body fitting closer instead of hovering.

Less distance. Less thinking. More here.

You slide your hand up from his shirt to his jaw, thumb brushing lightly along the edge, and his eyes flicker shut for a second at the contact.

When he kisses you again, there’s less hesitation in it. Still gentle, still Spencer, but steadier now—like he’s chosen this instead of stumbled into it. He sighs when he pulls away, a deep and satisfied sound that makes you smile again.

“Thank you,” he says.

You stare at them. “Funny, I don’t remember agreeing to that.”

Emily, leaning against the edge of a neighboring desk with her arms folded, lifts one shoulder. “That’s because we didn’t ask. We’re telling.”

You grimace and lean back in your chair. “I just got through my first week back, you guys. I’m exhausted.”

Garcia softens. “Exactly. You got through your first week back! We need to celebrate, honey.”

You glance over toward Spencer on instinct, and he’s already looking at you. Garcia follows your line of sight and lights up.

“Oh, good idea. Reid! Tell your girlfriend she should come with us.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “Don’t you dare.”

Spencer, who should most definitely understand the danger he’s in, simply pushes back from his desk and says, very calmly, “I think you should go.”

You blink at him, utterly betrayed. “Et tu, Reid?”

Morgan lets out a bark of laughter from across the room. Emily actually smiles. Garcia clutches her chest.

Spencer, to his credit, has the decency to look a little apologetic. “You made it through your first week back,” he says. “You should celebrate.”

Emily nods toward him like he’s finally said something useful. “See? Even Boy Wonder thinks you need a drink.”

“And fries,” Garcia adds. “And female companionship. And a chance to talk about something other than work or the deeply haunting state of Reid’s current hairstyle.”

You drag a hand down your face. “Why are you all like this?”

“Because,” JJ says, “you’re our friend, and you’re back, and we want to hang out with you.”

Garcia nods emphatically. “Exactly. You survived a gunshot, surgery, physical therapy, what I can only assume is the world’s clingiest boyfriend, and your first week back on the job. You can survive one night of dive bar drinks with the hottest women the FBI has to offer. Women who happen to adore you, I might add.”

You blink at her. “This is emotional terrorism,” you say with a deep sigh.

Garcia beams. “So that’s a yes!”

“It’s not a—” You stop. Exhale. “Fine. One drink.”

JJ smiles immediately. Emily looks pleased in the most annoying way possible. Garcia claps once like a Disney villain.

Emily reaches over and grabs your bag off the floor before you can change your mind. “Great. Let’s go, ladies, before Greenaway remembers she has free will.”

You stand with a huff that’s mostly for show and shrug into your jacket. Spencer is already there by the time you straighten, close enough that nobody else would clock the way his hand brushes your elbow.

“You okay?” he asks quietly.

“No, Brutus.” You give him a look. “You betrayed me.”

Spencer’s expression stays impressively neutral. “I encouraged healthy socialization.”

“You sold me out to a hostile coalition.”

He chuckles softly. “I’ll come pick you up later,” he says. “Whenever you want to leave.”

You glance up at him. “I can just take a cab home, Spence. You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to,” he says. “I want to.”

Garcia is already halfway out of the bullpen. “Greenaway! Move your brooding little booty. We’re leaving.”

You roll your eyes and sling your bag over your shoulder.

Spencer catches your wrist for one brief second, just enough to turn you back toward him.

“Have fun,” he says softly.

Then, before you can say something sarcastic and ruin it, he leans in and presses a quick kiss to your temple.

He steps back like he didn’t just do that in the middle of the office, and you stare at him. 

“What?” he asks.

Morgan passes behind Spencer and lets out a low, entertained whistle.

“Shut up, Morgan,” you and Spencer shout at the same time, still looking at each other.

Morgan just grins wider and keeps walking.

Spencer nods toward the door. “Go. I’ll see you later.”

Emily appears at your side and pushes you out of the bullpen and toward the elevators with an arm around your shoulder. “That was disgusting.”

Garcia grins. “No, it was adorable. Big difference.”

JJ presses the down button and smirks. “I’m suddenly much more interested in our topics of conversation this evening.”

The elevator opens with a ding, and Garcia ushers everyone in with entirely too much enthusiasm. You step in last, turning just in time to catch one more glimpse of Spencer standing by the bullpen doors, hands in his pockets, watching you leave with that soft, wrecked look he never quite manages to hide anymore.

—

The familiarity of O’Keefe’s hits you all at once the second you push through the door.

Warmth. Noise. The sticky smell of beer and fried food. The hum of conversation layered over a game playing on one of the TVs in the corner and music from the jukebox near the bar.

“Oh, thank god,” Garcia sighs, pressing one hand dramatically to her chest as she leads the group towards a booth in the back. “A room full of alcohol and bad decisions. I’m home.”

You exhale through your nose at that and sit down, accepting your fate for the evening.

“Okay,” Garcia says, clapping once as the waitress appears. “We need mozzarella sticks, fries, and something colorful with lots of tequila in it.”

Emily glances at the drink menu. “No tequila for me tonight. Jack and coke, please.”

JJ laughs and hands the menus back in a neat stack. “I’ll just take a beer.”

You look down at your own menu without really reading it. “Whiskey, on the rocks.”

Garcia hands over the menus with a satisfied sigh. “Perfect. We’re off to an excellent start.”

Emily glances at you. “You still have time to fake a migraine and leave, you know.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

The drinks come, and feel your shoulders unclench by accident after your first sip.

You realize this feeling is another thing nobody tells you about getting injured badly enough to disrupt the whole architecture of your life. Everyone focuses on the obvious parts — surgeries, scars, whether you’ll be okay, whether you’ll be normal, whatever that means. What no one really prepares you for is how strange it feels to start participating in your own life again once the worst of it is over. How bizarre it is to sit in a bar on a Friday night, in jeans and boots and lipstick with your girlfriends around a wooden table, and realize the world kept spinning while you were busy focusing on surviving.

There’s also the more humiliating part, which is that you haven’t done this in what feels like forever. Drinking, or hanging out with friends, or just simply sitting still and talking and existing without a doctor asking whether your pain is sharp or dull or a man you love watching your face too closely every time you stand up. The whole thing feels weirdly high stakes for something as stupid and simple as greasy fries and cheap liquor.

Garcia raises her glass. “To Greenaway,” she says, voice softening in a way that makes you self-conscious, “being back at work and a semi-willing participant in girls’ night.”

Emily lifts her glass. “A triumph.”

JJ’s smile is warm when she reaches in with hers too. “To Greenaway.”

You look at all three of them over the rim of your glass. “This is disgusting,” you mutter, which is about as close to thank you as you’re willing to get.

You let your glass clink against theirs anyway.

For a while, the conversation behaves itself. Garcia launches into a story about a disastrous blind date with a man who described himself as “alpha-adjacent,” which makes Emily nearly choke on her drink. JJ talks about Henry’s current refusal to sleep unless one sock is missing, which Garcia insists is “actually very chic of him.” After a waitress drops off the fries and mozzarella sticks, Emily tells a story about a truly alarming hostel she once stayed at in Prague, and before you know it, you’re contributing your own horror story about a motel in Kansas that smelled like mildew and bad choices.

Penelope points at you with a fry. “See? This is nice. You’re socializing,” to which you roll your eyes in response.

By the time you’re halfway through your second whiskey, the room feels warmer, the edges softened just enough that you stop noticing how many people are around you and start noticing smaller things instead. The exact shade of Emily’s lipstick. The glitter worked into Garcia’s eyeliner. The way JJ laughs with her whole face when she actually lets herself. The fact that you’re here at all.

You’re halfway through a story about the world’s most idiotic suspect trying to outrun Morgan during a case in Vermont last year when your phone buzzes against the table.

You look down, and Spencer’s name glows up at you from the screen alongside a text preview:

How’s it going? I hope you’re having fun.

Your mouth twitches before you can stop it.

Emily clocks it instantly. “There it is.”

You look up. “There what is?”

“Your face,” Garcia says, delighted. “You have a face!”

You cock a brow suspiciously. “Everyone has a face, Penelope.”

Emily leans back, arms folded. “No, she means your Spencer face.”

You stare at them. “My what.”

“Your Spencer face! You get this, like, very specific look on your face when you talk to him, or hear other people talking about him, or anytime you even think about him. Sorta smug, sorta soft, very in love. It’s adorable,” Garcia explains.

You pick up your phone and groan, “I hate all of you,” before typing back under the table:

i’m… surviving. no rescue required yet but it’s minute-by-minute

Three dots appear almost immediately.

Glad to hear it. Love you.

“It’s undeniable,” Garcia says, catching your expression. “That is, without a doubt, your Spencer face.”

You slide your phone face-down onto the table. “Say that one more time and I’m leaving.”

Garcia leans both elbows on the table and gives you a look that’s far too bright to be trustworthy. “Okay. So. Since Reid has officially entered the chat—”

“No.”

“—we have questions.”

“Absolutely not.”

Emily lifts a shoulder. “You had to have known this was coming.”

Well, she has a point there.

Garcia starts firing off questions immediately. “How clingy is he? Are you moving in together? Who fell first? Who said I love you first? Did he cry when you said it? Did you cry? Was there background music? Candles? Rose petals? Should I be offended that I wasn’t invited as a witness?”

JJ snorts into her beer.

You put your glass down carefully. “You all need professional help.”

“Don’t worry, I have a therapist on speed dial,” Garcia says. “What I don’t have is information.”

Emily tilts her head. “C’mon, Greenaway. You can’t really expect us not to be curious about our two coworkers who are dating.”

The thing is, they’re not wrong to be curious. The Spencer they know isn’t the same Spencer you know. They know the version of Spencer with brains and facts and a perpetually crooked tie, the one who hides half his personality behind statistics and awkwardness until people make the mistake of thinking that’s all there is to him. But you, by some impossible stroke of luck or an undeserved & pre-determined string of fate, have been granted the privilege of knowing there’s so much more. And somewhere along the line, without asking permission, he stopped feeling like a part of your life and started feeling like the shape of it.

Maybe that’s why this line of questioning makes your skin feel too tight — because they aren’t asking about a silly little coworker crush like they had been at that margarita night Garcia hosted many months ago. Now they’re asking about your actual life. About something real enough that if you look at it directly for too long, the brightness and warmth nearly blinds you.

“You gave him a key to your place, didn’t you?” JJ asks, breaking you out of your trance.

The table goes quiet for half a second.

You look at her. “Who told you that?”

JJ shrugs. “No one had to. When he first came back to work after you got shot, he was so worried about leaving you alone all day, so I went with him to check on you at lunchtime. He let himself into your apartment with a key on his usual keyring, and he looked very comfortable doing it.”

You look down at your drink. “You people are so invasive.”

Garcia points at you triumphantly. “Aha! That’s not a denial!”

You take a long sip of whiskey that does absolutely nothing to save you.

“It was… practical,” you say, which immediately sounds like a lie, even to you. “I gave it to him when I was still stuck at the hospital so he could bring me things from my place. Then he didn’t want me to be alone while I was recovering, and…” You lift one shoulder. “He still has the key.”

Emily’s mouth curves. “Very practical.”

“Shut up.”

“So,” Emily says. “How serious is this thing, really?”

You could dodge. You should dodge. You should say something glib and slippery and let them all chase their own tails around it.

Instead, because your second glass of whiskey is now treacherously empty and because these women have somehow figured out how to disarm you with minimal effort, you hear yourself say, “Um. I guess it’s… pretty serious. Yeah.”

Garcia actually slaps a hand over her heart. “Define pretty, please. Pretty pretty please!”

“God, I don’t know, you guys,” you say with an exasperated sigh. “Serious enough that, yeah, he has a key to my apartment. Enough that I can’t remember the last time I spent more than, like, four hours without talking to him, outside of when we’re asleep. Enough that everyone in this room is apparently allowed to bully me about him.”

JJ leans forward slightly. “Do you see a future with him?”

You look at her, then at the table, then at your empty glass. The honest answer rises before you can kill it.

“Yeah,” you say quietly. “That’s kind of the problem.”

Garcia goes so still you’d think someone muted her with a remote. Emily’s brows lift. JJ just watches you.

You let out a short, humorless laugh. “Not, like, a problem-problem. Not in a bad way. Just… I think he got serious about it before I realized I was letting him get serious, and then I was already in it too, apparently, before I’d even noticed that was happening, and then one day I looked up and he was just…” You stop, irritated by the catch in your own voice. “Everywhere. In every corner of my life.”

You swirl your glass against the table and stare at the condensation gathered on the rim, trying very hard not to think about how exposed you feel right now.

Then, because the alcohol has successfully eliminated your usual filters, you add, “He’s annoyingly good at staying, through pretty much anything. And… I think he’s teaching me how to be good at staying too.”

Garcia makes a strangled noise and beams at you.

“Oh my god,” she whispers. “You are in love-love.”

You roll your eyes. “That’s not exactly breaking news.”

“It’s not,” JJ says gently. “Anyone with eyes can see it nowadays. But it’s still nice to hear you say it out loud.”

You stare at her — at all of them, really: Garcia glowing with vindication and affection, Emily pretending not to be touched, JJ looking so proud it hurts, and another thought arrives uninvited: they love you too. Not in the way Spencer does, obviously — not in the all-consuming, low-voiced, hand-at-your-waist way. But still, in a real way, in a way you don’t think you’ve ever been loved by friends before. In the show-up, drag-you-out, celebrate-your-first-week-back, make-fun-of-you-until-you-stop-deflecting way.

You laugh despite yourself, because what else are you supposed to do with this? These women, this bar, this absurd line of questioning, this life that somehow expanded around you while you were busy trying not to die?

Garcia pulls your focus back to the conversation at hand. “Now I need to know if he’s actually romantic or if this is all just the natural result of extreme pining and good bone structure.”

You bark out a laugh. “Good bone structure?”

“He has, like, a tragic poet jawline, Greenaway. You’ve obviously noticed that.”

You shake your head and reach for another fry. “Yes. Fine. He can be romantic,” you admit.

Garcia leans so far across the table you’re worried she’s about to fall into the mozzarella sticks. “In what way?”

You hesitate, because how do you explain Spencer as a boyfriend? How do you explain that privately he’s still Spencer, still dorky and earnest and too smart for his own good, but also softer than anyone would guess, and sharper too? That he remembers everything you say and acts like that’s normal? That he takes every tiny thing he knows about you into consideration before planning dates? That even the physical things with him somehow feel impossibly specific, like he’s learned your body with the same frightening thoroughness he learns everything else? That he can be so maddeningly practical one second and then look at you like you’ve just hung the moon in the sky with your bare hands the next?

Eventually, you say: “He notices things.”

Emily’s expression shifts first, like she gets exactly how loaded that answer is.

Garcia, predictably, wants more. “Such as?”

“Everything,” you say. “If I’m cold. If I’m tired. If I’m trying to pretend I’m not either of those things. He remembers stupid little things I say and then acts on them weeks later like that’s normal behavior. Like, last week, he bought me this ridiculously expensive brand of coffee beans from a cafe on the other side of the city because I mentioned them once in passing. He keeps my favorite pens stocked at his desk and in his bag because he knows I chew on mine until they stop working.”

JJ’s smile turns genuinely soft. “That’s… really sweet.”

You grimace. “Yeah, well. Don’t encourage him. I can’t handle much more of it and still keep my dignity intact.”

Emily props her chin on her hand. “How bad?”

You look at her. “What does that mean.”

“On a scale from one to ten, how embarrassing is he as a boyfriend?” she asks with a shrug.

“Honestly?” you say. “Pretty bad.”

Garcia crows in triumph. “I knew it.”

You look away. “I mean, I’m sorta embarrassing too.”

That catches all three of them off guard. You feel your face warm and immediately regret opening your mouth. But it’s too late now, so you plow forward.

“I miss him when he’s in the next room,” you mumble. “Which is humiliating and codependent and probably very concerning.”

JJ gives you a look that is somehow both sympathetic and deeply entertained. “That doesn’t sound concerning. It sounds sweet.”

Garcia puts both hands over her heart. “You are so disgustingly gone. I love it.”

You lean back in the booth and look up at the ceiling like maybe some god out there in the universe will mercifully strike you down before this gets any worse.

The strike never comes.

—

At some point after their humiliating interrogation, the conversation drifted. Garcia got louder. JJ got funnier. Emily, somehow, got both meaner and more affectionate at the same time. Somebody put more money in the jukebox. A second basket of fries appeared and disappeared. Then another round showed up, and then maybe another one after that, and after a while, keeping count lost its appeal.

Garcia made a passionate argument about who from the BAU would last the longest in a zombie apocalypse (“Survival isn’t just about brute strength! It’s also about adaptability and vibes!”). JJ reached that dangerous stage of tipsy where everything struck her as deeply, genuinely hilarious, including your comparison between Rossi in reading glasses and the Tootsie Pop owl. Emily had one elbow on the table, chin in hand, and the sort of lazy, amused smile that meant she was enjoying everybody else’s nonsense immensely.

The whole room has

gone pleasantly soft around the edges. Warmer. Louder. The lights above the bar blur into dull gold halos. Every time Garcia laughs, it seemed to set off the whole table half a second later. Your own body has gotten looser too, the good kind of loose — shoulders unclenched, thoughts less guarded, the usual sharp corners of you sanded down just enough.

But beneath all of it, quiet and constant, is the simple thought that if you asked, Spencer would come pick you up in a heartbeat.

You didn’t realize how much you were counting on that until the room tips one degree too warm and the thought of trying to get yourself home without him suddenly felt both very impossible and completely undesirable.

So you text him.

come get me?

And, because he’s Spencer, his reply comes almost immediately.

You got it. On my way.

The fuzziness only intensifies after that, but you’re at least mostly aware of what’s happening around you. Garcia has somehow moved on from zombies to explaining why she could absolutely win a bar fight if motivated by love. JJ is smiling into the rim of her drink. Emily has abandoned subtlety entirely and is now openly enjoying your slow descent into drunken sentimentality, which is rude but expected.

Then O’Keefe’s front door opens, and there he is.

Spencer pauses just inside the bar for half a second, scanning the room. His shoulders ease the second he spots you, that familiar little drop in tension so slight most people would miss it. You don’t. You never do.

He makes his way over, tie gone, coat on, hair a little wind-mussed from the cold outside. He looks tired in that way only he can: wrung out around the eyes but still put together, still handsome even under shitty bar lighting and the accumulated weight of a work week.

He stops beside the table and waves awkwardly to the entire group.

“Hello,” he says.

You tip your face up, far too happy to see him for someone with any pride left. “Hi, baby.”

The entire table goes silent.

Spencer’s brows lift the tiniest amount. Then his mouth softens into that look — that one that always makes your pulse jump.

“Hi,” he says softly, just to you.

Garcia clamps both hands over her mouth. Emily looks delighted. JJ’s expression has gone so calm it circles back around to dangerous.

You point a finger at all three of them. “Don’t.”

“No one said anything,” JJ says, holding both hands up defensively.

Garcia lowers hers from her mouth just enough to whisper, “Yet.”

Spencer, because he is either merciful or trying very hard to be, just asks, “You okay?”

You nod a little too emphatically. “M’great.”

Emily deadpans, “She’s drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” you say, while reaching for Spencer’s hand and missing on the first attempt. “I’m just… friendlier than usual.”

Spencer takes your hand himself and laces your fingers together before you can fumble again. “Of course.”

He says it so gently that it almost makes you emotional, which is very much not helping the situation.

Garcia, meanwhile, has given up all restraint. “She told us things.”

“Penelope,” you warn.

Spencer’s gaze flicks from her to you, faintly alarmed now in the way of a man who knows there are degrees of terror in your mind and that drunken honesty ranks highly among them. “Things like…?”

Emily takes pity on him, sort of. “Nothing classified.”

JJ sets her glass down. “We mostly just confirmed what we already suspected.”

Spencer, still holding your hand, blinks once. “Which is?”

Garcia leans in, beaming. “That you’re absolutely, totally, completely obsessed with each other.”

You look at the tabletop. The wood grain is suddenly fascinating.

“Ah,” he replies with a soft chuckle.

JJ hands you your purse from where you abandoned it at the opposite end of the booth. “Text us tomorrow so we know you’re alive.”

Garcia points at Spencer. “Take care of her, loverboy.”

He nods. “Always.”

You wish, briefly, for the floor to open up and swallow you whole. But instead, Spencer helps you stand with such absurd care it’s almost offensive. His hand settles lightly at your waist as he steers you through the bar, and your body goes willingly.

—

The night air outside is cold enough to bite.

It hits your face sharply but clears none of the pleasant fuzz in your head. The city glows around you in smeared halos of headlights and neon and streetlamp glow, and Spencer guides you toward the curb where his car is parked, one hand still warm at your back.

He opens the passenger door and looks at you with that quiet, attentive expression that makes you feel both cherished and mildly threatened.

“You good?” he asks.

You lean against the car and squint at him. “They interrogated me.”

Spencer’s mouth twitches. “That does sound like them.”

You point at him. “It’s all your fault.”

“My fault?”

“You made me go!”

He waits while you lower yourself into the passenger seat and leans in just enough to buckle you, and the whole thing is so stupidly sweet that you have to look away and pretend the dashboard is wildly interesting. He closes the door once you’re settled and walks around to the driver’s side.

When he gets in, he glances over at you as he starts the engine. “I didn’t make you do anything. I just encouraged a night out with your friends.”

“Still Brutus,” you mutter, which is met by a low chuckle and shake of the head from Spencer.

The rest of the drive home is quiet in a good way. Spencer keeps one hand on the wheel and the other resting open between you, and somewhere around the second red light you lace your fingers through his.

He looks over.

“What did they ask about?”

The questions blur together in your whiskey-soaked brain. “Everything,” you say after thinking for a moment. “They were very nosy and a little deranged.”

You turn your head to look at him properly. His profile is too familiar now — the slope of his nose, the soft concentration in his mouth, the line between his brows that shows up when he’s listening carefully.

“They asked what you’re like as a boyfriend,” you add.

Spencer glances over, faintly amused. “And?”

“And I had to say things.”

His brows lift. “Tragic.”

You nod dramatically. “Exactly. It was.”

By the time he parks outside your building and gets you upstairs, your thoughts have all softened into a single, inconvenient ache.

He helps you out of your coat, sets your purse down on the table, gets you water without asking. You sit on the edge of the bed while he moves around the room, toeing off his shoes, unbuttoning his cuffs, setting his watch on the nightstand.

He’s tired. You can see it in the slope of his shoulders and the care he’s no longer even trying to hide. He’s always gentler with you when he’s exhausted, as if all the extra effort it usually takes to conceal the full force of how much he cares has finally burned off.

You watch him longer than you mean to, and he catches you. 

“What’s up?”

You shake your head. “Nothing.”

Spencer’s expression shifts. He comes over and kneels in front of you, hands resting lightly on your knees.

“What is it?” he asks softly.

And there it is — that awful tenderness. That exact, patient attention that always seems to make honesty feel both easier and much, much worse.

You look at him and find, with some irritation, that the words do not want to come out in anything resembling order.

“They asked…” You stop, frown, start again. “Um. They asked if this is serious.”

Spencer’s face softens so visibly it’s almost unbearable.

“Oh,” he says.

You nod, suddenly more nervous than you were in the bar, which makes no sense because it’s just him. Just Spencer, the man who has a key to your apartment and alphabetizes your spices and picks you up without hesitation and tells you he loves you at least five times a day.

But that’s exactly why it’s so nerve wracking, maybe.

You look down at the front of his shirt instead of his face. “And I told them yes.”

A beat of silence.

Then, quietly: “Okay.”

You let out a breath that sounds more annoyed than relieved. “No, see, that’s not enough.”

Spencer’s left hand moves from your knee up to your chin, guiding your face up just enough that you have to meet his eyes.

“What do you need me to say?” he asks gently.

“I—” You stop. Try again. “I don’t know. Something normal. Or not normal. Just…” You gesture vaguely between the two of you because apparently language has abandoned you. “They asked and I said yes and now I’m in my head about it because we’ve never actually said so out loud in those words, and I know that’s stupid because, like, obviously we’re serious. Duh. We say I love you. You have a key to my freaking apartment and we haven’t spent a night apart by choice in months. I know what this is. But I just—”

You stop again, mortified.

“It’s not stupid,” he says.

You swallow. “It’s not?”

“Not at all.” His thumb brushes once across your cheek. “And yes. We’re serious.”

The simplicity of it makes your throat go tight.

Spencer gives the smallest, softest little playful shrug. “I mean, think about it. You have a key to my apartment too.”

You almost laugh. It comes out sounding too close to a sigh.

Spencer watches your face for a second, then adds, quieter, “I think about it all the time, you know. How serious this is for me. How serious you are to me.” He glances down for half a second, then back up. “But I didn’t know if saying that would make you feel pressured, so I was trying very hard to let you get there however you needed to.”

Something in your chest folds in on itself.

It’s not even the serious part that gets you, not really. You already knew that. It’s the rest of it — the fact that he’s been thinking about it too; the fact that he’s been intentionally careful not to crowd you into saying something before you were ready. It’s so unfairly him that, for a second, all you can do is stare.

You look at him for a little too long, then reach for the front of his shirt and tug. He comes without resistance, mouth brushing yours, soft and warm and patient.

The kiss deepens slowly. His hand slides to your waist and yours goes into his hair, because you like the little sound it pulls from him. You slide your other hand down his chest, mouth skimming his jaw, and in your softest, most shameless voice, you ask, “Are you going to fuck me now, or do I need to make a more persuasive argument?”

Spencer closes his eyes and laughs softly against your cheek. “No, angel, I’m not.”

You blink. “Rude.”

“You’re drunk,” he reminds you softly.

“I’m also charming.”

“You are,” he agrees.

“So—”

“So no.”

You grumble. “You hate joy, Spencer Reid.”

“I love joy,” he insists. “I’m a huge fan of joy. I’m less of a fan of taking advantage of you when you’ve had too much whiskey.”

You squint at him. “What if I said ‘make love’ instead? Does that move the needle at all?”

Spencer actually breaks at that, shoulders shaking with a laugh he tries and fails to suppress.

“No,” he says, still smiling, one hand sliding up to cradle the back of your neck. “It doesn’t.”

You sigh dramatically. “This relationship is so one-sided.”

“That is an absurd statement and you know it,” he says with a laugh, and leans in again — one long, slow kiss that leaves your knees weak and your head warm. When he finally pulls back, he brushes his thumb over your bottom lip. “Try again when you’re sober. I’ll do anything you ask.”

You smirk. “Anything? That’s a very dangerous offer.”

Spencer stands, mouth twisted in an exasperated grin. “Go brush your teeth, silly girl.”

You glare. He waits. You lose and grumble dramatically as you trudge into the bathroom.

Eventually, exhaustion starts to take hold. Spencer helps you out of your clothes, hands you one of his old shirts, gets you under the blankets. He climbs in beside you after turning off the lamp, and the room goes dark around the warm shape of him.

You roll toward him instinctively, your body finding his like a puzzle piece. His arm settles around you as you lay your head on his chest and tangle your legs with his. The two of you fit together too easily now, which is still a bit alarming if you think about it for too long.

For a minute, neither of you says anything.

Then you murmur, already half gone, “You liked when I called you baby.”

Spencer’s chest rises under your cheek with a silent laugh. “Maybe a little.”

You smile into his shirt. “Knew it.”

“You’re not going to start calling me that all the time now, are you?”

“God no. You know how I feel about using pet names.” You tilt your head just enough to look at him in the dark. “But… maybe sometimes.”

Spencer’s hand slides up your back, slow and warm. “I’ll take it.”

His breathing evens out under your ear. Yours follows a second later.

“Sweet dreams,” he whispers sleepily. “Love you.”

Your heart still flutters in that same embarrassing way it did the first time he said those words.

“Love you too,” you whisper back.

Tomorrow, you’ll wake up and remember enough of this to want to throw yourself violently into the Potomac. You’ll remember the bar and the interrogation and the pet name and the failed attempt at seduction and the deeply incriminating declarations of emotional seriousness.

But that’s a problem for tomorrow’s version of you. Tonight, Spencer’s body is warm against yours, his mouth is still soft from kissing you, and the awful, frightening shape of your future no longer feels quite so awful or frightening when it’s lying here breathing beside you.

Serious, you think, right before sleep pulls you under.

Yeah.

That sounds about right.

ᝰ.ᐟ

this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️

The room goes silent.

You look very deliberately at the anatomical poster of lungs on the wall instead of at Spencer.

He clears his throat.

“Doctor, would there be,” he asks, in the tone of a man trying very hard to sound like a normal person, “any concern about strain depending on positioning?”

The doctor nods thoughtfully. “Not particularly, but use common sense. If anything causes sharp pain, stop. Otherwise, there’s no medical reason to avoid it.”

You make a soft sound of despair.

The doctor smiles like this is all adorable instead of excruciating, gives you a few more instructions about physical therapy and scar care, and sends you on your way.

By the time Spencer gets you back to the car, your pride is on life support.

He starts the engine. Adjusts the air. Keeps both hands on the wheel.

Does not look at you.

Interesting.

You buckle in slowly, then turn to study his profile. “Are you going to pretend that didn’t just happen all the way home?”

Spencer’s grip on the steering wheel tightens by a fraction. “I’m not pretending anything. I’m driving.”

You glare out the windshield. Traffic inches forward. Somewhere up ahead, somebody leans on their horn.

The silence stretches just long enough to get weird.

Then Spencer says, very carefully, “If I embarrassed you, it wasn’t intentional.”

“You absolutely did embarrass me,” you say. “Just so we’re clear.”

His mouth twitches. “I know. I’m sorry.”

The apology is sincere enough to take the heat out of your irritation.

You shift carefully in your seat, one hand resting near your scar out of habit. Weeks of almosts flicker through your mind before you can stop them: Spencer’s hand lingering at your waist while helping you out of bed. A kiss in the kitchen that got hotter than either of you meant it to and ended with both of you breathing like idiots. Falling asleep beside him and waking up painfully aware of how hard he was against you.

You glance at him again. He catches it this time.

His voice is quieter when he says, “Are you okay?”

You look at the road ahead and answer honestly enough. “Yeah. I’m just never going to recover from hearing you ask my doctor about sex positions.”

That gets a laugh out of him, startled and soft. “It was medically relevant!”

“You’re such a loser.”

The light ahead turns red. Spencer reaches across the console and takes your hand without looking at you. His thumb brushes once over your knuckles, grounding and absentminded and familiar.

Your pulse does something deeply unhelpful.

When he lifts your hand and presses one quick kiss to the back of it before the light changes, you stare at him for a second too long.

—

That night, sleep gets hold of you slowly.

You drift under with the doctor’s voice still somewhere in the back of your mind, absurd and clinical and impossible to scrub out. Resume sexual activity. Including intercourse. No medical reason to avoid it. You hate that those phrases followed you home. You hate even more that Spencer spent the rest of the day being so perfectly normal about them that it somehow made everything worse. He made dinner. He asked if you wanted tea. He kissed your forehead before bed like a gentleman in a nineteenth-century novel and then laid beside you with both hands respectfully to himself, which should have been considerate and instead felt vaguely like psychological warfare.

So when your subconscious finally gives up and takes over, it does so with very little patience.

Now, his mouth is already on yours.

Hot, deep, and unhurried in a way that feels almost cruel, because he knows exactly how long you’ve both been waiting and is taking his time anyway. One of his hands is braced beside your head; the other is sliding slowly up your thigh, deliberate enough to make your whole body tighten around the wanting of it.

You make a helpless sound into his mouth and he swallows it like he’s starving.

There’s nothing careful about him here. No polite restraint. No respectful distance. Just Spencer, warm and solid over you, kissing you like he finally got tired of being good. His mouth drags from yours to your throat, then lower, and the scrape of his breath across your skin sends a sharp pulse of heat through your stomach. His fingers slide higher. Your back arches before you can stop it. He makes that low sound he only ever makes when you catch him off guard, and finally—

You wake up.

Dark room. Racing heart. Sheets tangled around you. Spencer asleep beside you, one arm loose over the blanket, sleeping face looking almost innocent.

Which is offensive, frankly.

You lie there for a second, staring at the ceiling, willing your body to get a grip. You’re hot everywhere and exhausted and painfully aware of the man breathing softly inches away from you.

You shift carefully, trying to settle yourself without making the mattress move too much.

Spencer makes a sleepy sound and rolls slightly toward you.

His hand lands, warm and heavy, at your waist. Not low enough to be indecent, but not innocent enough to help. He blinks awake halfway, hair a mess, eyes barely open behind the smudge of sleep.

“Y’okay?” he murmurs.

You almost laugh. “Mm-hm.”

His thumb strokes once over your side. “But you’re awake.”

“Astute observation, doc.”

He gives a drowsy little hum that might be a laugh, then presses a soft kiss to your shoulder without opening his eyes all the way. “C’mon. Go back to sleep, angel.”

The tenderness of it nearly kills you.

You manage some kind of affirmative sound and lie there stiffly until his breathing evens out again. By the time you finally drift back under, you’re more irritated than sleepy.

Morning does nothing to improve your mood.

By lunch, you are deeply tired of yourself.

Spencer notices, of course. He notices when you answer too quickly, when you mutter at the coffee maker, when you snap at a cabinet door for existing too loudly. He lets the first few things go. Lets the next few go too. By the time the sun sets, you’re in the kitchen tidying absolutely nothing with far more aggression than the task requires when he leans in the doorway and says, very carefully, “Did I do something?”

You don’t look at him. “No.”

Spencer comes a little farther into the room. “You’ve been weird all day.”

You turn and look at him flatly. “That’s rich coming from you.”

His brows draw together. “Me?”

“Yes, you.” You gesture vaguely at his whole irritatingly beautiful existence. “You’ve been acting bizarre since the appointment yesterday.”

Something flickers across his face. 

“Okay,” he says slowly. “So this is about the appointment.”

“Partly.”

Spencer folds his arms. “What’s the other part?”

You glare at him.

He waits.

You hate when he does that. Calm, patient, terrifyingly sure that if he stands there long enough, you’ll crack on your own.

“Nothing,” you mutter.

“That’s definitely not true.”

You exhale sharply through your nose and look away. “You’re just… being annoying.”

“Annoying how?”

You stare at him a moment and suck in a tight breath. “You’re being so polite and respectful that it’s looping back around into driving me insane.” The words come out too fast, almost tripping over one another.

Spencer blinks.

You push on before your pride can stop you. “Ever since the doctor said—” You cut yourself off, grimacing. “You know. Ever since then, you’ve been acting like if you touch me, a panel of experts is going to kick in my front door and revoke your boyfriend privileges. Which makes absolutely no sense, since the doctor essentially gave you permission to act exactly opposite of that.”

To your annoyance, the corner of his mouth twitches.

“This isn’t funny,” you say.

“I know.” He pauses. “It’s a little funny.”

You glare at him until the twitch fades.

Then Spencer sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I’m…” He trails off, visibly searching for the least embarrassing version of his own thoughts. “I’m trying not to make it feel like some sort of… medically approved finish line. Or a milestone we have to hit right away because somebody in a white coat told us we could.” He pauses, gaze softening into something even more earnest. “Sex with you is always a big deal to me, and I— I didn’t want it to feel forced.”

The room goes quieter around the truth of that.

You look at him for a long second, your irritation shifting shape. “That’s… annoyingly sweet. And very thoughtful,” you huff.

Spencer looks wary. “You say that like being sweet and thoughtful is a bad thing.”

“Sometimes it is a bad thing!” you tell him. “Because now you’re acting like a monk.”

His eyebrows go up. “A monk.”

“Yes. A weirdly hot, deeply annoying monk.”

That gets a laugh out of him. He ducks his head once, and the sound of it loosens something in your chest.

Then he looks back up, eyes softer now. “You know I want you. I just…”

“Just what?” you ask.

His jaw flexes. “I don’t trust myself to get this exactly right. I… I want it to be perfect.”

You let that sit for a second.

Of course that’s what this is. He’s been silently tying himself in knots because the first time after all this matters to him enough that he’s terrified of getting it wrong.

As if anything about Spencer touching you has ever felt careless. As if every time he’s ever had you hasn’t felt exactly, devastatingly right.

“Spence,” you say, quieter now. “You have literally never gotten this wrong.”

His eyes flick back to yours.

“You should give yourself a little more credit,” you add.

Something softer moves through his expression at that, but the tension in the room doesn’t entirely loosen. 

“I’m sorry I’ve been on edge all day,” you mumble. “I just… uh, didn’t sleep well. And things were already weird after the appointment, and then you spent all day acting all monastic, and it was annoying.”

Spencer’s mouth twitches. “Monastic.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.” He tilts his head slightly. “But I can see that there’s something else you’re not telling me.”

You narrow your eyes. “Don’t profile me, Reid.”

He gives you a look that says really?

You fold your arms tighter. “Drop it.”

Spencer steps a little closer. “Please, just tell me. Did I do something specific to upset you this morning?”

“No,” you say. “My annoyance started when you were still asleep.”

He blinks. “What does that mean?”

You drag your hand down your face and refuse to look at him. “It means I was already in a bad mood by the time you woke up.”

“Why?”

“Spencer.”

His voice drops. Gentle. Curious. Much too perceptive. “Why?”

You stare at the cabinet over his shoulder like it might save you. It doesn’t.

When you finally speak, it comes out flat with embarrassment. “Because I had a dream about you.”

He goes perfectly still.

You can feel the heat climbing your neck now, which is deeply humiliating and somehow still not enough to stop you from making it worse.

“A very explicit dream,” you add. “And then I woke up next to you, and you were being all sweet and sleepy and impossible, and I’ve spent the entire day trying not to lose my mind while you’ve been walking around like you’ve taken a vow of chastity.”

For one long second, Spencer just stares at you.

“Oh,” he says faintly.

You glare at him. “Yeah. Oh.”

His hand comes up to run through his hair, which should not be as attractive as it is, before taking one slow step closer. “You had a sex dream about me.”

“Please don’t say it like that.”

“How should I say it?”

“Preferably not at all.”

That almost gets a laugh out of him, but his eyes stay fixed on your face. On your mouth.

“And you’ve been angry at me ever since,” he says softly.

“Not angry.” You fold your arms tighter, then immediately regret the defensive posture. “Just… severely inconvenienced by your entire vibe today.”

Spencer huffs a quiet breath. “My vibe.”

“Yes. All of your weird, noble self-restraint bullshit.”

His gaze drops for half a second. When it lifts again, it’s darker. Less careful. “You want me to stop being noble?”

The question lands low in your stomach.

You look at him for one long second, then say, “I want you to stop acting like you have to be afraid of this.”

“That,” he says, voice rougher now, “I can do.”

You tilt your chin up. “Good.”

That does it.

He crosses the space between you and kisses you before either of you says another word, fast and warm and far less careful than he’s been in weeks. You make a startled sound into his mouth and then he’s got one hand cupping the back of your neck, the other sliding around your waist, pulling you into him with a kind of urgency that feels so familiar it almost hurts.

You kiss him back just as hard, because whatever awkward, polite, maddening restraint has been sitting between you since the doctor’s appointment goes up in smoke the second his tongue slides against yours and his grip tightens on your body like he’s finally allowing himself to remember what it feels like to want you out loud.

He backs you into the counter.

Your hips hit the edge, and Spencer catches himself immediately, pulling back just enough to search your face.

“You okay?”

You could laugh at the reflexive question if you weren’t so busy trying to catch your breath.

“Yes,” you say, and then, because his eyes still look full of concern and guilt and about ten other things, you hook a hand into the front of his shirt and drag him back in. “Spence, please.”

That does something to him.

You feel it in the low sound he makes into your mouth, in the way his hands slide over your waist and hips and ass with a greedier kind of certainty now, in the way his body presses against yours until there’s nothing left between you except clothes and frustration.

You’ve missed this. Not just his mouth, not just his hands, but the particular electricity of being wanted by him. The way he’s never casual about it. The way wanting seems to move through his whole body like a current, making him shake just a little when he’s trying too hard to hold still.

You drag your fingers through his hair and he exhales against your lips, rough and wrecked enough to make heat slide lower in your body.

Then his hands are suddenly everywhere — one at your waist, one under your thigh — and before you can fully process it, he’s lifting you.

A startled laugh breaks against his mouth. “Spencer!”

“I know,” he murmurs, sounding like he absolutely does not know anything except that he needs you closer.

You hook your arms around his neck automatically, and he kisses you all the way down the hall, slow one second and hungry the next, like he keeps getting distracted by the fact that this is really happening. By the time he reaches the bed, both of you are breathing harder, the room suddenly too warm, the air charged with all the weeks of not doing this.

He sits on the edge of the mattress with you still in his arms, settling you into his lap like muscle memory.

You straddle him carefully, and for one suspended second, neither of you moves at all.

You can feel how hard he already is beneath you. He can definitely feel how wet you are. The realization lands between you like a match struck in the dark, and both of you go a little quieter with it.

Then Spencer lifts his hands to your face and kisses you again, slower now.

His fingers eventually slip under the hem of your shirt, and your breath catches. He peels the fabric up slowly, reverently, exposing skin inch by inch until he tosses it aside and just… looks at you.

Not at your breasts at first, though he notices those (obviously). Not at the waistband of your pants, though his hands twitch toward it. Instead, his gaze drifts to the scar on your side.

You suck in a sharp breath.

It isn’t that he hasn’t seen it before. He has, in bathroom fluorescents and early-morning light and the thin gray blur before dawn. He’s seen it while helping you change bandages, while handing you clean shirts, while pretending very valiantly not to stare as you step out of the shower.

But this is different.

This is the first time he’s looking at it with his hands already warm on your skin and his mouth pink from kissing you and want written so plainly across his face that you can’t hide from it. This is the first time the scar is here, in this moment, as part of something hungry instead of something clinical.

Some small, stupid muscle deep in your body braces before you can stop it.

Spencer notices, because of course he does.

His expression softens. He lifts one hand and traces the skin near the scar with the backs of his fingers, light enough to make you shiver. Then he bends his head and presses a kiss just above it.

Nothing dramatic or mournful. Just warm mouth, careful breath, and the kind of tenderness that makes your eyes sting before you can stop them.

He feels you react and looks up instantly. “Sorry, should I— Would you rather I didn’t?”

You shake your head too fast. “No, no. It’s not that.”

Spencer waits.

You swallow. “It just feels… different.”

Understanding moves through his face so gently it almost hurts. 

His thumb strokes once over your waist. He nods softly, then he bends again.

This time, he lets his mouth linger. One slow kiss over the scar itself, then another just below it, then one at the curve of your ribs beside it, unhurried and unafraid and so heartbreakingly natural that whatever you’d been bracing for just… dissolves.

Not because he makes it disappear, but because he doesn’t.

Because he folds it into the wanting of you without making it something tragic or fragile or strange. Because he touches it like it belongs exactly where it is: on your body, in his hands, in this moment, as much a part of being wanted as any other inch of your skin.

Your fingers thread into his hair.

“Spencer,” you whisper.

He looks up, and there’s so much raw emotion on his face that your chest goes tight all over again.

“I need you to stop being perfect for, like, one second, or else I’m gonna explode.”

A startled, breathless laugh slips out of him. He ducks his head once, almost shy, then looks back at you with his mouth still curved.

“I’m just being myself,” he says.

You narrow your eyes. “Exactly.”

He laughs, then mouths at your breast over the thin lace of your bra, and all coherent thoughts leave your body.

A broken moan escapes before you can stop it. Spencer groans softly at the sound and does it again, more deliberate this time, his tongue teasing through the fabric until your hips roll against him and he slides one hand around to your ass to help you move.

Your head falls back. The room spins pleasantly.

It’s not enough. Nothing about this feels like enough after waiting this long.

Your hands fumble with the buttons of his shirt, and he helps with shaking fingers, both of you half-laughing at how badly your coordination has abandoned you. By the time the shirt is open and pushed off his shoulders, you’re almost dizzy with relief.

His chest. His skin. His stupidly beautiful body, warm and solid under your hands.

You drag your palms over him, down his chest and stomach, and Spencer sucks in a breath that makes you feel downright vindicated.

“Missed this?” you tease.

He looks at you with pupils blown wide. “You have no idea.”

You hum. “Try me.”

Spencer takes his glasses off and drops them onto the nightstand with a clatter that would’ve made him twitch on any normal day. Then he cups your breasts through your bra with both hands, thumbs brushing over your nipples until they harden further under the lace.

“I’ve been trying,” he says quietly, and his voice has gone rough enough to make your thighs clench. “Every single day.”

Heat flashes through you.

You kiss him before he can see too much of that on your face, grinding down against him with a little more pressure this time. Spencer swears into your mouth and his hands tighten on you immediately.

“That,” he says, breathless, “is not fair.”

You do it again.

“Who said anything about fair?”

His laugh catches halfway to becoming a groan. Then he drags your bra straps down your shoulders before undoing the clasp and easing it off you with a slowness that makes your skin feel tight. The second he sees you bare, his whole face changes to that particular Spencer look, the one that says he’s overwhelmed by wanting and trying very hard to stay in his own body.

He kisses you like that too. Mouth at your throat, your collarbone, your breasts, one hand spanning your back while the other squeezes your ass almost helplessly whenever you make a sound he likes.

You’ve almost forgotten how noisy the two of you are together. How impossible it is not to be when everything feels this good.

“Take these off,” you whisper against his hair, tugging at his belt.

Spencer obeys immediately, getting you both undressed in a rush of hands and fabric and impatient mouths. Shirts first. Then his slacks and boxer briefs, your leggings and panties, one by one, until you’re both bare except for the mismatched socks he forgot to take off and you laugh so hard you nearly ruin the mood.

He looks down, mortified. “Oh no.”

“Keep them on,” you say. “It’s weirdly working for me.”

Then he’s laughing too, and the absurdity of it makes the whole thing sweeter somehow. Less like a medical milestone, and more like what it actually is: the two of you, still completely yourselves, finally getting each other back.

Spencer pushes you back onto the bed and kisses down your stomach and inner thighs with such obvious devotion that by the time his tongue finally drags through your slick cunt, you’re already shaking.

There’s nothing tentative about his mouth once he starts. Careful, yes. Attentive, obviously. But not tentative. He moves like he’s making up for lost time, like he’s learned your body by heart and spent the last two months being denied the chance to prove it.

Your thighs tighten around his head. Your fingers twist in the sheets.

“Spencer,” you gasp.

He groans into you at the sound of his name, the vibration going straight through your body. Then two fingers slide inside you and you practically sob with relief.

The stretch. The fullness. The filthy, perfect drag of his fingers while his mouth works your clit in the same steady rhythm that’s always destroyed you.

You come faster than you want to, sharp and bright and helpless, with both hands in his hair and his name falling out of your mouth like a prayer and a curse and a sob all at once. He works you through it with maddening patience until you’re twitching and trying to squirm away. He catches your hips, holding you open while he gentles, savoring you, listening to every little sound that spills out.

You drag him back up your body the second you can breathe.

Spencer kisses you then, deep and lingering, letting you taste yourself on his tongue. He’s already so wound up that your first touch around his cock makes his whole body tense.

“Jesus,” he breathes.

“Hi,” you murmur, smug and breathless.

He gives you a desperate sort of half-laugh and lets his forehead fall to yours while your hand works him slowly. He’s always been beautiful when he’s close, but this is different. Softer, somehow. More open. He’s not trying to be polished or sexy or anything but exactly what he is: a man very much in love and losing his mind about it.

Your thumb brushes the tip of his cock and his hips jerk.

“Okay,” he says, a little wrecked. “Okay, if you, uh, keep doing that, I’m going to…”

“You’re going to what?”

Spencer looks at you, offended and helpless all at once. “You know what.”

You kiss him to stop being mean, and that’s what undoes him in the end. Your mouth on his, your hand around him, his own body too gone to hold back any longer. He comes with a broken sound against your lips, his forehead pressed hard to yours, one hand gripping your thigh tight enough to leave marks.

Afterward, neither of you goes very far.

He folds down beside you, still breathing hard, and you end up half tangled together in the sheets, your fingers drifting through his hair while his mouth moves lazily over yours, your jaw, your throat. 

The heat doesn’t disappear. It just softens around the edges, turning tender without losing any of its bite. His hand keeps returning to your side in those absent little strokes that aren’t really absent at all, thumb sweeping the skin near your scar like some part of him still needs the reminder that you’re here, warm and real and under his hands. You kiss and kiss and kiss until he’s hardening again between you.

“You okay?” he asks after a few minutes, low and serious again.

You kiss the corner of his mouth. “Very.”

“Any pain?”

“Just from how annoyingly good you are at all of this.”

Spencer closes his eyes and laughs against your shoulder. “That’s not really what I meant.”

“It’s the only answer you’re getting.”

He hums, unconvinced, and shifts up on one elbow to look at you properly. His gaze moves over your face like he’s checking for something only he can see.

“I know you want this,” he says quietly. “I also know abdominal surgery recovery, especially from something like a major gunshot wound, can be deceptive once the surface pain starts easing off. So I need you to be honest with me for a second.” His hand slides slowly over your waist, then lower, skimming your thigh. “Are you actually comfortable enough to keep going, or are you trying to tough your way through it because you’re impatient?”

You reach up and touch his face, letting your fingers trail over his jaw. “I’m not toughing my way through anything.”

Spencer’s eyes stay on yours.

“I’m comfortable,” you say, more clearly this time. “I want this. And if something hurts, I’ll tell you.”

He searches your face for another beat, then nods once, like he’s accepting terms more than asking permission.

“Okay,” he murmurs.

He kisses you once, deep and unsteady, then reaches into the nightstand drawer without taking his eyes off you. You watch him roll a condom on with careful fingers, his focus so intense it nearly makes you laugh.

Spencer settles between your thighs slowly, bracing most of his weight on his forearms, as if the idea of pressing too hard against you is enough to make his whole body tense. One of his hands slides down to your hip, thumb rubbing once, soothing and nervous all at once.

“Still okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” you whisper. “Promise.”

He nods, but you can feel the restraint in him. He kisses you once more, like he needs it, then reaches between you to guide himself into place.

The first nudge against your entrance is so careful it aches in an unexpected way — not physically, but just in how much emotion is packed into his restraint. Spencer’s breath catches. His forehead drops briefly to yours.

“You can stop me,” he says quietly. “At any point. Even if it’s halfway through. I mean it.”

Your fingers tighten on his shoulders. “Spencer.”

“Sorry.” He swallows. “I just need you to know.”

You soften, even through the heat thrumming low in your body. “I know,” you whisper. “Now come here.” 

You take his face in your hands and kiss him softer than any of the other times tonight.

He pushes in slowly, inch by inch, with enough care that you can feel every part of the stretch as it happens. Heat, fullness, pressure — all of it building so gradually your body has time to register each sensation before the next one arrives. You inhale sharply, and Spencer goes still immediately.

“Talk to me,” he says, voice rougher now.

You take a breath. “I’m okay. Just— just give me a second.”

Spencer nods, motionless except for the trembling effort it takes to stay that way. He kisses the corner of your mouth, then your cheek, then the line of your jaw while he waits, his hand stroking slowly up and down your thigh like he’s trying to soothe both of you at once.

When the initial intensity eases and your body finally starts to open around him, you let out a breath you didn’t realize you’d been holding and shift your hips the smallest bit closer.

“More,” you whisper.

Spencer’s eyes search yours. “Yeah?”

You nod. “Yeah.”

Spencer’s eyes close briefly at that, and then he slides in deeper.

It feels like being split open and soothed at the same time. Stretch and heat and relief so intense it’s as if your body is melting around him. 

He still moves carefully, still watches your face for microexpressions. But the restraint loosens enough that each thrust gets a little deeper, a little less tentative, until the two of you find that familiar rhythm that belongs to you and no one else.

Spencer’s mouth stays everywhere. Your throat, your cheek, the corner of your mouth. Every time you make a sound he likes, he kisses you harder. Every time your nails drag down his back, his hips stutter and he loses another inch of control.

You wrap a leg around his waist as best you can and pull him deeper.

Your orgasm builds slowly. It comes from the steady drag of his cock, the angle of it, the way one of his hands slips between your bodies to circle your clit without breaking rhythm. He’s so focused, so wrecked and earnest and needy, that you can feel yourself coming long before it actually hits.

“Spence,” you whine, and it comes out strangled.

His eyes lock on yours. “I know. I know, sweetheart. Come for me, please.”

You break around him with a cry, body clenching hard enough that Spencer shudders and nearly loses it with you. He keeps moving through it, slower now, like he can’t bear to stop just because either of you can barely think.

You drag him down into a kiss, and somewhere in the middle of it, the words come out:

“I love you.”

Before this very moment, you’d always assumed saying those words during sex would feel forced somehow. Cheesy. A little ridiculous.

But… it doesn’t. Right now, nothing else would be honest enough. There’s no other phrase in the English language that encompasses what you’re feeling quite like that one does.

Spencer goes still for half a heartbeat, then his whole face changes.

“I love you too,” he says tenderly. He kisses you once, hard and full and almost aching with how much he means it. “I love you so much.”

His movements start to falter then, because there’s only so much a man can do after weeks of restraint, one hand between your thighs, your cunt squeezing him on the heels of two orgasms, and an I love you still ringing through his bloodstream.

He comes with his face buried in your neck and your name on his lips, hips rocking once, twice, before he stills and just breathes, shaking a little.

For a long moment, neither of you moves.

Then Spencer lifts his head just enough to look at you.

You look wrecked. He looks worse.

“Hi,” you whisper.

He huffs a disbelieving laugh. “Hi.”

You brush his hair back from his forehead. “You okay?”

Spencer kisses you once more, softer this time. “No,” he says. “I think I might actually be dead.”

“That’d be awfully inconvenient.”

“Very.”

You laugh, and this time it doesn’t hurt.

Later, after the condom is gone and the sheets have been straightened and Spencer has made you get up and pee and drink an entire glass of water, he slides back into bed in just his boxers, warm and familiar and yours.

His fingers drift to your scar again.

Your hand finds his hair. “Spencer.”

There’s so much in his face that for one impossible second, you almost can’t breathe. Love, obviously. Relief. Want that still hasn’t gone anywhere. Something close to awe.

“Yeah?” he asks quietly.

You shake your head. “Nothing.”

His expression says liar with devastating affection.

You lean in and kiss him before he can call you on it.

When you settle back against the pillows, Spencer draws you into him with one arm and tucks the blankets up over you. His hand stays splayed over your waist, warm and grounding.

For a minute, the room goes quiet except for the sound of both of you breathing and the faint hum of the city outside the windows.

Then Spencer laughs under his breath.

You tilt your head enough to look up at him. “What?”

His mouth twitches. “I still can’t believe you had a sex dream about me.”

Heat creeps up your neck all over again, and you bury your face back against his shoulder. “Can we not debrief the most humiliating parts of today now that you’ve benefited from them?”

Spencer’s laugh is warmer this time, low in his chest. “I’m not making fun of you.”

“You absolutely are.”

“I’m really not.” He tips his head down, trying to catch your eye. “I’m just… kind of flattered.”

You groan into his skin. “Please stop saying words.”

His hand slides slowly up and down your back. “You’re the one who told me.”

You lift your head again and narrow your eyes at him. “You pried.”

Spencer looks delighted by that accusation. “I asked one follow-up question.”

You should let it go. You really should. But instead, still dazed and loose-limbed and apparently incapable of self-preservation, you mutter, “It wasn’t even the first time.”

Spencer goes very still.

Slowly, very slowly, he shifts onto one elbow, looking at you now with open fascination. “What do you mean it wasn’t the first time?”

“I mean nothing. Go to sleep.”

His hand tightens at your waist, not enough to trap you, just enough to let you know escape is not on the table. “No, absolutely not. We are not moving on from that.”

You make a muffled sound of regret into his shoulder.

“When was it?”

You wave a hand vaguely. “A… while ago.”

“That’s not quantifiable. How long is ‘a while’?”

“A while, Spencer.”

He waits.

Of course he waits.

You should know by now that Spencer Reid can outlast almost anyone in a standoff, especially when curiosity is involved.

You stare at him, mortified, still a little dazed from the sex, too happy to put up a fight, and sigh.

“Do you remember when I had the flu, and you bribed Garcia with cake pops to get my address so you could check on me?”

His eyebrows lift. “Of course I remember. That was the first time I ever saw your apartment.”

“Right. And do you remember what I said when I first let you inside?”

You watch his face shift into that classically Spencer expression of deep focus as he searches back through his memories.

“Yes,” he confirms after a few moments. “I believe you said, ‘You woke me up from a dream,’ and then I—” He stops. “Oh.”

His expression softens so completely it almost hurts to look at.

“It was that kind of dream?” he asks, sounding genuinely stunned.

You shove your face back into his shoulder. “Yes,” you groan. “I was just getting to the good part when you knocked on the door, actually, so thanks for that.”

His shoulders shake with another laugh. “Wow.”

You glare up at him. “You are enjoying this far too much.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, which would be more convincing if he weren’t smiling like this is the best news he’s heard all week. “It’s just…” He shakes his head a little. “That’s a lot for me to process.”

“You’ll survive.”

He shifts, gentler now, and presses a kiss to your forehead.

“That really was a while ago,” he muses.

You close your eyes and groan again, too tired to fake outrage properly. “Please drop it.”

He smiles against your skin. “In a minute.”

His hand finds yours under the blanket and laces through your fingers.

“If it’s any consolation, I had a crush on you back then too,” he whispers. “I’m sure you already knew that, but just so we’re clear, I did. I nearly passed out when you asked me to brush your hair and sent me into your bedroom to look for your hairbrush.”

You crack one eye open. “You hid it well.”

Spencer huffs a quiet laugh. “I absolutely did not.”

“No,” you admit, sleepier now, letting your fingers curl more tightly around his. “You really, really didn’t.”

That earns a softer smile from him. He brushes his thumb over your knuckles once, the gesture so familiar now it makes your chest ache in the best way.

“I’m glad you let me in,” he says quietly.

The words settle warm and heavy between you. You know he’s referring to you letting him into your apartment that day, but it could mean so much more than that.

You tip your face up just enough to kiss the underside of his jaw. “Yeah,” you murmur. “Me too.”

Spencer answers by drawing you a little closer.

You let him.

And sometime after that, with his hand still wrapped around yours, a dreamless sleep finally finds you.

ᝰ.ᐟ

this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️