RosesNoMore

She angled her body to mirror his, bringing one foot up onto the couch. "Okay. That's not ominous at all."

"It's not ominous. It's neurobiology, actually." He spoke faster now he'd cleared the threshold. "Specifically the neurochemistry of prolonged arousal and its relationship to orgasmic intensity. There's a substantial body of research. Admittedly some of it more anecdotal than empirical, but the underlying mechanisms are well-documented, involving dopamine accumulation, oxytocin receptor sensitisation, and the role of the sympathetic nervous system in..."

"Spence" She squeezed his hand. "English."

He blinked. A flush crept up from his collar, and she watched it travel up his throat and along the underside of his jaw. Even after six months, that blush did something to her.

"Have you heard of edging?" He said. The word hung between them.

"Go on."

"I want to try edging you."

His posture shifted, shoulders squaring as he slipped into what she secretly called his Lecture Mode. But his thumb kept moving back and forth over her knuckles, and that small motion undercut the clinical delivery.

"When sexual arousal is sustained over an extended period without allowing orgasmic release, the body continues producing dopamine and norepinephrine without the prolactin surge that typically follows climax. Prolactin is what creates the refractory period - it's essentially a neurochemical brake. By delaying that brake, you're essentially building up a reservoir of excitatory neurotransmitters. The result, anecdotally and in the limited studies available, is a significantly more intense orgasm when release is finally permitted."

He paused for breath. She said nothing. His thumb stopped moving.

"I'm explaining it badly."

"No, you're not." She turned her hand over in his, palm to palm. "You're explaining it like you explain everything. Thoroughly."

One corner of his mouth twitched.

Warmth spread through her chest. She tucked that away for later examination. "Okay. Tell me the rest."

"The rest?"

"Spence, you've got that look. The one you get when you're eighty percent of the way through a dissertation and someone interrupts you. There's more."

His blush deepened, and she watched him regroup. She watched the way his free hand came up to push hair behind his ear, a nervous gesture that never stopped being endearing. "I'd like to incorporate elements of sensory deprivation. A blindfold. And..." He swallowed. "Maybe some restraints. Gentle ones. Nothing extreme. Soft cuffs, or even just silk scarves. Something that won't leave marks, and we'd establish a safeword beforehand, obviously, and I'd check in constantly, and nothing happens without your explicit consent at every stage..."

"Spencer."

"...and I know this might seem like it's coming out of nowhere, but I've been thinking about it for weeks, and I did the research, and I think - I think it could be good. For you. For us. But only if you want it. If you don't, we never speak of it again. I'm perfectly happy with..."

"Spencer."

He stopped. He looked at her, his honey-brown eyes wide and earnest.

"Breathe."

He breathed.

"I have follow-up questions," she said. "But the first answer is yes."

"Wait. Really?"

"I'm curious. And I trust you." She tugged his hand, pulling him slightly off-balance, and he caught himself on the back of the couch. Their faces were close now. "But you're going to have to walk me through the rules. Your research had rules, I assume."

His smile broke loose - not the polite one he gave colleagues, but the real one, the one that lit up his whole face. "Several. Would you like them enumerated?"

"I would like you to kiss me first. Then enumerate."

He did.

------

The bedroom was warm, lit only by the lamp on her nightstand. Amber light pooled across the duvet, catching the edges of things - the brass bedframe, the books next to her bed, the dark purple silk scarf folded neat and precise beside the pillow.

Spencer stood at the foot of the bed, rolling his sleeves up.

She watched him from her seat on the mattress edge, legs dangling, heels bumping the box spring. He had the same expression he got when approaching a complex geographical profile - furrowed brow, internal calculations running. But his hands were gentle as they finished cuffing each sleeve at the elbow, and when his eyes lifted to hers, calculation gave way to something softer.

"The safeword," he said, "is 'red.' Standard traffic light system. 'Yellow' means pause, check in, adjust. 'Green' means continue. If at any point you cannot speak - and you should always be able to speak, I'm not going to gag you, that's not part of this - but if for any reason you find yourself unable to verbalise, snapping your fingers three times will serve the same function."

"Three snaps. Got it."

"Say the safeword for me."

"Red."

"And the caution signal?"

"Yellow. Spence, I'm not going to forget."

"I know." He moved around the bed, mattress dipping as he sat beside her. The proximity brought his scent with him - coffee, old books, the sandalwood soap she'd bought him last month. "But hearing you say it matters. It matters to me."

She turned her head. His face was close enough that she could count his eyelashes if she wanted to. "Then I'll say it again. Red. Red means stop. Yellow means pause. And if I can't talk, I snap." She demonstrated. Three sharp clicks of her fingers. "See?"

"Thank you." The words came out a little rough.

"Your turn," she said. "Research. Sensory deprivation. Explain."

The shift into Lecture Mode was immediate, she could almost see the gears engage. But this time there was an undercurrent of something else. Anticipation, maybe. Or the particular focus he reserved for things he considered important.

"The neurological principle is straightforward. The human brain processes an enormous amount of sensory information at any given moment - visual stimuli, auditory input, tactile sensation, proprioceptive feedback. By removing some of those inputs, we force the brain to reallocate its processing resources. When you can't see, your brain amplifies what remains. Touch becomes more acute. Sound becomes more vivid. Every sensation is heightened because there's less competing data."

He reached for the blindfold - a simple sleep mask she kept in her bedside drawer, dark grey, elasticated - and held it between his hands like an offering.

"It's not just about intensity, though. It's about trust. Surrender. Removing sight means you have to rely on me to guide the experience. That's a vulnerable position. I don't take that lightly."

She looked at the blindfold. Then at him. "I know you don't."

"The restraints serve a similar function. By limiting movement, we eliminate the impulse to control, to direct, to participate actively. Not because you're passive, but because your role shifts. You receive. You feel. You exist entirely in your body without having to manage it."

His voice had dropped slightly, the pace slowing. She'd heard him lecture hundreds of times by now, at conferences, on video calls, over dinner when he got excited about some obscure fact. But this was different. This was intimate. This was for her alone.

"What if I want to touch you?"

"Then you tell me. And I remove the restraints. This isn't..." He paused, searching for words. "This isn't a BDSM power exchange in the formal sense. I'm not your dominant. I'm not going to deny you comfort or connection or anything you genuinely want. The denial is temporary. Controlled. It serves a purpose. The second it stops serving you, it stops."

"And if I want to come? Before you're done?"

"Then you come." No hesitation. "You tell me, and I get you there. The edging only works if you're genuinely invested in it. If it tips over into frustration or discomfort, we stop. I want this to be good for you. Only good."

Something in her chest loosened. She hadn't even realised it was tight.

"Okay," she said. "I'm ready."

"One more thing." His hand found hers again. "I need you to talk to me. Throughout. I need to know where you are - how close, how you're feeling, what's working. The science is useful, but your feedback is essential. I can't read your mind, and I won't guess. Not with this."

"I can do that."

"And if you can't do that - if it becomes too much to articulate - I need you to tell me that too. Just say 'I can't.' Or snap. Whichever comes first."

She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. "Spencer. I know. I trust you. I'm ready."

His exhale was long and unsteady. "Okay," he said, and it came out almost reverent. "Okay. Lie back for me."

---

She lay back, letting her head sink into the pillow. It was cool against her skin, a welcome contrast to the warmth that lingered in her cheeks. Above her, the ceiling was bathed in soft amber light, shadows stretching across the familiar crack in the plaster.

Then the blindfold settled over her eyes.

The world went dark. Not black, the lamplight  filtered through the silk as a diffuse orange glow. But dark enough. She had a sudden, disorienting awareness of her own body in space, the way her arms lay at her sides, the flex of her ankles, the rise and fall of her chest.

"Tell me what you're feeling."

Spencer's voice came from somewhere to her left. Without visual input, she couldn't pinpoint him precisely.

"Floaty," she said. "Aware of my breathing. The sheets are cool."

"Good. I'm going to take your left wrist now. Same as we discussed."

His fingers found her - warm, dry, slightly calloused from all that pen-and-paper work he refused to give up. He guided her arm gently upward, toward the headboard, and she felt silk wrap around her wrist, the careful loop, the knot that was snug but not tight. Two fingers slipped between the restraint and her skin, testing the gap.

"Too loose? Too tight?"

"Good. It's good."

"Flex your fingers for me."

She did. The silk held, but there was no pinch, no restriction of circulation. She'd seen him practice the knot three times that afternoon, tongue caught between his teeth, murmuring about pressure points and nerve pathways.

"Right wrist now."

The process repeated. When both arms were secured, she gave an experimental tug. The restraints held, but the give was generous - she could twist her wrists, curl her fingers, find comfortable positions. Enough to feel contained without feeling trapped.

"How does it feel?"

"Secure." She searched for a better word. "Safe. Like a weighted blanket."

She heard his smile. "That's the oxytocin. Physical restraint can trigger a parasympathetic response when administered in a context of trust. Your brain interprets the pressure as a hug."

"You're lecturing me while I'm tied to the bed."

"Force of habit."

"I didn't say stop."

A soft laugh. The mattress dipped, and she felt his weight shift beside her. Then nothing. Silence. The absence of contact became its own sensation - a prickling awareness of where he wasn't touching her.

"Spencer?"

"I'm here. I'm looking at you."

Heat rose to her face. She was suddenly intensely conscious of her own body - the thin cotton of her tank top, the shorts she'd worn to bed, the way her hair was fanned across the pillow. She couldn't see him seeing her. That was the point. That was the whole point. But the vulnerability of it struck her all at once, a wave of self-consciousness that tightened her shoulders.

"Talk to me." His voice was soft. "Where did you just go?"

"Self-conscious."

"About what?"

"Being... looked at. Not knowing what you're seeing."

"I'm seeing the woman I love." No hesitation. No self-consciousness of his own. "I'm seeing her trust me enough to do this. I'm seeing how beautiful she looks in this light, with her hair spread out like that, and I'm thinking I should have told her that before I took her sight away, because now she doesn't know, and I want her to know."

The tightness in her shoulders eased. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Keep going. I want to hear it."

So he did. His voice became a current she could float on, telling her how the lamplight caught the curve of her neck, how her breathing had changed when he mentioned the oxytocin, how he could see her pulse in the hollow of her throat and it was faster now, wasn't it, and that was his doing, and he liked that. He liked it very much.

His fingers brushed her collarbone.

Her whole body jerked. The touch was featherlight, barely there, but without sight to dilute it, the sensation bloomed across her skin like a drop of ink in water.

"That's the neural amplification I mentioned." He traced the line of her clavicle, slow, deliberate. "Your skin has approximately four million tactile receptors. Without visual processing competing for bandwidth, your somatosensory cortex dedicates more resources to each one. Every touch is..."

"Spence."

"...I know. I'm talking too much." His laugh was soft, self-deprecating. "Tell me if you want me to stop. Tell me if you want me to be quiet. I can be quiet."

"No." The word came out faster than she intended. "Don't stop. I like it. I like hearing you. Just..." She swallowed. "Maybe touch me somewhere that isn't my collarbone."

"Where?"

"You're the one with the research."

Another laugh, warmer this time. "Fair point." His fingers left her collarbone, trailing down. They skimmed the neckline of her tank top, tracing the edge of the cotton where it met her skin. "Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to remove your clothes. Slowly. You won't know what I'm going to touch next, or when, or how. That's the point. The anticipation..." His fingers dipped beneath the strap of her tank top. "...is part of the neurochemistry. Dopamine isn't just released at the moment of pleasure. It spikes during the anticipation of pleasure. The wanting is as powerful as the having."

Her breathing had gone shallow. "More science."

"Always more science." He eased the strap down over her shoulder. The fabric dragged against her skin, and she felt every thread. "Lift your hips for me."

She did. The shorts came off, then the underwear beneath. His hands - both of them now - skimmed up her legs, from ankle to knee to thigh, and she felt herself open to him, felt the cool air of the bedroom on skin that was suddenly very bare.

"The tank top," he murmured. "I'm going to take it off now. But I'll need to..." He paused. "I should have done this before the restraints. I'm going to undo them temporarily. Once for each wrist. Then I'm putting them back on. Is that okay?"

"Green."

"Good. Left wrist first."

She felt the silk loosen, his fingers guiding her arm free. He worked the tank top up and over her shoulder, her head, then paused. "Other wrist." The process repeated. The tank top vanished somewhere, she heard the soft whisper of it landing on the floor. And then her wrists were being guided back into the restraints, the silk snugging into place, and she was naked.

Completely naked.

The awareness of it swept through her like a fever. She was spread out on his bed, arms bound, eyes blindfolded, and she could feel him looking at her. The weight of his gaze was a physical thing, a pressure on her skin.

"Beautiful." His voice had changed. The lecture cadence was gone, replaced by something rawer. "You're so beautiful. I wish you could see yourself. Maybe next time. Next time I'll get a mirror. But tonight..." His hand settled on her stomach, palm flat, fingers spread. "Tonight you're just going to feel."

She arched into the touch. His palm slid up, over her ribs, the underside of her breast, and she made a sound she didn't recognise. A small, desperate noise that came from somewhere deep in her chest.

"That's it." His thumb found her nipple, circled once, feather-light. "Is this good?"

"Green. Very green. Don't stop."

"I won't." His other hand found her other breast, and he worked both nipples in slow, asynchronous circles. The dual sensation was maddening. She couldn't track both at once, couldn't predict the rhythm. One would tighten to a peak while the other was still soft, and then he'd switch, and the pleasure zigzagged through her nervous system like lightning.

Minutes passed. Maybe longer. She lost track of time the way she always did with him, but this was different. Deeper. The blindfold created a pocket of timelessness. There was only the dark, and his hands, and the sound of her own breathing.

"Spence..."

"I'm here."

"I'm..." She licked her lips. "I'm getting close. Not yet. But. Soon."

"Thank you." His hands stilled immediately, and she almost sobbed at the loss. "That's perfect. That's exactly what I need. How close? On a scale of one to ten?"

"Six. No, seven. Seven and climbing."

"Then we pause here." He shifted on the bed, and she felt his weight settle beside her hip. "Breathe with me. In..." He inhaled audibly. "Out." She followed, matching his pace. Her pulse slowed. The urgency receded from a roar to a murmur.

"Back to a three," she reported. "Maybe four."

"Good." He kissed her shoulder. "You're doing so well. I'm going to start again now."

His hand slid down her stomach, lower this time. Fingers brushed through her pubic hair, then lower still, and when he touched her clit she whimpered. It was barely a touch - just the pad of his middle finger, resting there, not moving.

"Tell me what you feel."

"Pressure. Warmth. Your finger."

"What else?"

"I want you to move it. Please."

"Since you asked nicely." He moved. Slow, lazy circles that sent ripples of sensation through her pelvis. Her hips began to roll, chasing his rhythm, and he matched her pace and then exceeded it, building the pressure incrementally. His other hand found her breast again, thumb working her nipple in counterpoint, and the combined sensation was like a chord struck inside her body.

Her thighs tensed. Her breathing went ragged. "Close. Eight. Eight and a half."

He stopped.

She groaned, a frustrated sound that bordered on anger. Her hips bucked once against empty air. "Spencer."

"I know." His voice was impossibly calm. "I know. Breathe."

"I don't want to breathe. I want..."

"What do you want?"

"You. Your fingers. Inside me."

A beat of silence. Then: "Okay. But we're going to build again from the bottom. Start at a one."

"You're torturing me."

"No." He kissed her hip, then her stomach, then the inside of her thigh. "I'm building something. Trust the process."

His finger slid inside her. One. Just one. He crooked it forward, finding the spot behind her pubic bone that made her back arch off the mattress. The pressure was exquisite. Not enough to tip her over, but enough to remind her body what it was reaching for. He began to thrust, slow and shallow, and his thumb found her clit with just enough pressure to keep her hovering.

"Talk to me."

"Four," she managed. "No, five. That's... that's really good."

"Good. Stay there." He added a second finger, stretching her, and she felt her body adjust to accommodate him. The fullness was a relief and a new kind of torment. He fucked her with his fingers, patient and methodical, and when she hit seven and a half he stopped again.

"Goddammit, Spence."

He laughed, genuinely laughed, and the sound of it made her laugh too even through the frustration. "I'm sorry. I'm not sorry, but I'm also sorry." He kissed the crease of her thigh.

"That's number three," he said. "How does it feel?"

"Torturous. Perfect. I hate you."

"You don't hate me."

"No. I don't hate you."

He waited until her breathing slowed, until the tension in her body began to ease.

"Three? Or still high?"

"Three. Maybe three and a half."

"Good. I'm going to use my mouth now."

Her whole body tightened in anticipation. "Okay. Yes. Green."

His tongue touched her clit.

It was barely anything, just the tip, a single point of wet heat. But after the build-up, after the denial, after everything, it hit her like a freight train. She cried out, hips jerking, and he pressed a forearm across her pelvis to hold her steady. His tongue traced a slow line from her entrance to her clit, then back down, then up again, painting her with saliva.

The sensation was too much and not enough at the same time. She heard herself making sounds - small, desperate, animal sounds - and she couldn't stop them. His tongue was relentless, dragging her up toward the edge with terrible precision.

"Close. Nine. Nine and a half. Spence, I'm going to..."

He stopped.

The whimper that escaped her was almost a sob. Her body was shaking. Her thighs were slick with her own wetness. She could feel her pulse in her clit, a hot insistent throb that demanded satisfaction and received none.

"Breathe," he said. "You're doing so well. You're incredible. Just breathe."

"Spencer." His name came out broken. "How many more?"

"A few. Can you give me a few more?"

She swallowed. Her throat was dry. "Yes. Green. I can."

"Thank you." He kissed her knee, her thigh, her hip. "Thank you for trusting me."

He gave her a full minute to come down, stroking her stomach and murmuring praise. When her breathing steadied, he shifted again on the mattress.

"I'm going to use both now. Fingers and mouth. It's going to be intense. I need you to tell me when you're at seven. Not eight. Seven. Can you do that?"

"Y-yes. Seven. Got it."

"Good girl."

The words hit her somewhere primal. Before she could process them, his fingers were inside her again - two this time, crooking forward - and his mouth was on her clit, and the combined sensation was so overwhelming that she nearly screamed. He sucked, gently at first, then with more pressure, and his fingers kept a steady rhythm against that spot inside her that made her vision do strange things.

"Seven. Seven. Seven..."

He stopped.

Her whole body was shaking now, fine tremors that ran from her shoulders to her calves. Sweat beaded at her hairline. The blindfold was damp with it. "I can't," she gasped. "I can't do that again. That was..."

"You can." His voice was steady, certain. "You're doing it. You're doing it right now. Three more. Can you give me three more?"

Three. Three more edges. The number felt insurmountable. But his hand was on her stomach, warm and grounding, and his voice was her anchor in the dark.

"Three," she agreed. "Three more."

The next one came from his fingers alone, three this time, thrusting deep while his thumb circled her clit. She rode it to eight and called warning, and he withdrew, and the comedown was almost worse than the denial, her body so primed for release that the absence of touch felt like grief.

Then tongue and fingers together again, pulling her up faster this time, and she barely managed to gasp "seven" before he stopped.

Then another pause. Another descent. Her mind was going strange at the edges, time dissolving into a series of peaks and valleys, and she wasn't sure if she was speaking out loud or only in her head, wasn't sure where her body ended and the bed began.

"Last one," Spencer said, and she heard the hum of the vibrator before she felt it.

Her legs tried to close on instinct. He'd never used it on her before. It was hers, a small bullet-shaped thing she kept in her nightstand, that she only ever brought out when Spencer was away on a case. The buzz filled the quiet room like a purr.

"Lowest setting first," he said. "Just the toy. Nothing else. I want you to tell me what it feels like."

The silicone touched her clit.

If his tongue had been a freight train, this was electricity. The vibration radiated outward, into her labia, her pubic bone, the root of her clit where it branched deep into her pelvis. She hadn't known a sensation could be so localised and so diffuse at the same time.

"Talk to me."

"It's..." She struggled for words. "It buzzes. I can feel it in my teeth. My bones. Everywhere. It's unrelenting."

"Good. Close your eyes. No, wait..." He laughed at himself. "You can't close them. Forget I said that. Focus on the sensation. Where exactly do you feel it?"

"Everywhere. No - front. The front of my clit. The tip. But also deeper. Inside."

"That's the internal clitoral structure. The external glans is only about ten percent of the total organ. The rest extends internally, wrapping around the vaginal canal." The clinical description was undercut by the way his voice had gone rough. "I'm going to turn it up now. And I'm adding fingers."

The buzz intensified. Two fingers slid inside her, and she was suddenly full in both directions, the vibration from above, the pressure from within. Her hips began to move of their own accord, grinding into his hand.

"Close. Seven. Eight."

"Not yet. Hold it. Just a little longer."

"I can't..."

"You can." His fingers crooked, finding her g-spot, and the vibrator jumped to the next setting. She heard herself make a noise that wasn't a word, wasn't even a moan - something guttural and desperate that came from the base of her throat.

A third finger stretched her open. The vibrator kicked up again. The dual stimulation was so intense it bordered on pain, but it wasn't pain, it was something beyond language, a pressure building at the base of her spine like a wave preparing to crest.

He worked her with the vibrator, his other hand still inside her, still pressing against her g-spot. She was babbling now, words that weren't quite words, prayers and pleas all tangled together. Her thighs were trembling, her stomach clenching, her hands white-knuckled around the restraints.

"I'm going to... I'm so close, I'm going to..."

He stopped.

She wailed.

He watched her fight it. Watched the battle between her body's need to climax and her mind's determination to hold on, and felt a surge of something fierce. Pride. Adoration. Awe.

Then her voice cracked. "I can't. I can't anymore. I need... Spencer, I need to come. Please. Please let me come."

Everything stopped.

Then his hand was on her cheek, his thumb wiping sweat from her temple. "Okay. Okay, sweetheart. You're done. You did it. You were perfect."

"Please." She was crying now, tears soaking into the blindfold. "I need - I need you inside me. I want to see you. I want..."

"I know what you need. Hold still."

He slipped the blindfold from her eyes. The lamp was blinding after so long in the dark, and she squinted against it, her vision swimming. She blinked, her eyes glassy and wet, her face flushed and beautiful. Spencer's face materialised above her, his hair disheveled, eyes dark with concern and desire and something that looked a lot like awe.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi." Her voice was wrecked.

"I'm going to undo the restraints now." He reached for her left wrist, working the knot with steady fingers. "How are you feeling? Talk to me."

"Desperate. Empty. I need you inside me. Now."

"Working on it." The left wrist came free, then the right. He brought her hands down to her sides, massaging each wrist in turn, checking the skin. "Any numbness? Tingling?"

"Spence, I swear to God..."

"Circulation first." But he was smiling. "Then orgasm. Those are the priorities."

Her wrists were fine. Her whole body was fine, if you defined fine as vibrating at a frequency that might shatter glass. She grabbed his shirt in both fists and pulled him down, kissing him hard. He tasted like her, and the realisation made her moan into his mouth.

She touched his chest. "I want to see you. All of you. Take your clothes off."

He obeyed with a speed that would have been comical under other circumstances. Shirt over his head, pants shoved down, boxers kicked somewhere into the corner. His erection sprang free, thick, heavy and already leaking, and the sight of it made her mouth water.

"Look at you," she breathed. "Look what you did to yourself. You've been hard this whole time."

"Ignored it." He settled between her legs, fingers tracing the length of her thighs. "This isn't about me. It's about you."

"It's about us. I want you to feel good too."

His eyes found hers. "Believe me. I'm about to feel very, very good."

He reached for the cushion he'd prepared earlier - a firm throw pillow from her couch. Sliding it beneath her hips, he tilted her pelvis upward, creating the angle he needed. She reached between them, wrapping her hand around him. He was hot and hard and so sensitive that he flinched at her touch. She guided him to her entrance, and the first press of him against her made them both gasp.

"Ready?" His voice cracked on the word.

"Green. So green. Please."

He pushed inside.

The sensation was overwhelming. Her body, after all the denial, was exquisitely sensitive, every ridge of him, every vein felt magnified. She was so wet, so ready, her walls clenching around him the moment he entered. He slid in to the hilt in one long, smooth stroke, and the fullness of it made her cry out.

He groaned, his forehead dropping to hers. "You feel incredible."

"You do too. Please. Move. Please."

He moved.

The rhythm was precise. He'd mapped her body over the past months, cataloged every response, every trigger, every spot that made her gasp. He knew exactly where her g-spot was, exactly what angle would hit it with each thrust, exactly how much pressure would push her closer without pushing her over.

"Oh God. Oh God, yes."

Not yet. Not yet. Spencer shuddered above her. "You feel... I can't... give me a second. I need a second or this is going to be over very quickly."

She clenched around him deliberately, and he groaned. "You're not helping."

"Sorry." She wasn't sorry at all.

He took a breath, steadied himself. Then he lifted her leg, hooking it over his shoulder, and the new angle shifted everything. He was deeper now, pressing directly against her g-spot, and when he started to move again - slow, deep thrusts that dragged against every sensitive place inside her - the pleasure was so sharp it almost hurt.

"The vibrator." He fumbled beside her hip, finding where he'd dropped it. "Highest setting now. Are you ready?"

"Yes. Yes. Do it."

The buzz filled the room. He pressed the silicone against her clit, and her back arched off the mattress. The dual stimulation of his cock driving into her g-spot and the vibrator humming against her clit was more than she'd ever experienced. More than she'd known was possible.

She screamed.

It was a raw, broken sound. Not pain, but pleasure so intense it bordered on agony. Her eyes went wide, her mouth dropping open, her whole body convulsing around him.

"Look at me." His voice was strained. "I want to see your eyes when you come."

She opened her eyes (when had she closed them?) and met his gaze. His pupils were blown wide, his expression fierce and tender and completely focused on her. He thrust harder, faster, the rhythm building toward something catastrophic.

The pleasure was accumulating. Not building, that word wasn't strong enough. This was something else. Every edge she'd endured, every peak she'd climbed and then fallen from, was still inside her somewhere, and now they were all rising at once, a symphony of sensation that was too much and not enough and...

"Spence, I don't... it's too much...I can't..."

"Yes, you can." He thrust harder, the vibrator steady on her clit, his cock hitting her g-spot with each stroke. "Look at me. You can. I've got you. Come for me. Let go. I've got you."

Something broke.

The orgasm didn't build. It detonated.

She came with a cry that was almost a roar, her back arching off the mattress, her nails raking down his arms. The pleasure was so immense it stopped being pleasure and became something else entirely. An out-of-body experience where she was just sensation, just light, just release. Her walls clamped around him harder than he'd ever felt, and he felt a rush of liquid, hot and sudden, as she gushed around his cock. The sensation sent him over the edge. He came with a groan that was torn from somewhere deep, his own release pulsing inside her as she continued to convulse around him.

Her vision - she'd tell him later - went white. Pure, blinding white, like staring into the sun.

She was still trembling, still gasping, when the world finally faded back in.

The first thing she registered was his voice.

"...got you. I've got you. You're okay. You're amazing. You're so amazing." The words were murmured soft and steady against her hair. She was being held, she realised. Cradled against his chest. His arms were wrapped around her, his body curved around hers.

"Spencer?"

"I'm here. I'm right here."

He held her close, fingers combing slowly through her hair, murmuring how amazing she was. Then, reluctantly, he let go. She was acutely aware of the loss that followed, of the cool air hitting her overheated skin.

Then his weight left the bed entirely.

She blinked, her vision slowly clearing.

A warm washcloth pressed against her inner thigh, and she realised he was cleaning her.

"Hold still," he said. "I'm almost done."

He finished cleaning her with gentle, careful strokes, then tossed the washcloth aside. When he lay down beside her, she turned into him, her body curling against his like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He turned his head, pressing a kiss to her palm. "How do you feel?"

"Like I've been turned inside out. In the best possible way. That was incredible. I didn't know it could be like that."

His smile was so bright it almost hurt to look at. "The research was accurate."

She laughed weakly. "Did you just cite your research right now?"

"Force of habit." He kissed her forehead. "Stay here. I'm getting you water."

He was gone again. She heard the kitchen faucet, the clink of a glass, his bare feet on the hardwood. When he returned, he helped her sit up - her arms were still shaky - and held the glass to her lips.

"Small sips. You lost a lot of fluid."

"I'm aware." She drank, and the water was cold and perfect. "Did I really...?"

"You did. It was..." He set the glass aside, pulling her against his chest. "I don't have words. And I always have words."

She curled into him, boneless and spent. His arms came around her, one hand threading into her hair, the other rubbing slow circles on her back. His heartbeat was steady under her ear, a counterpoint to her own still-racing pulse.

They lay in silence for a while, the lamp still lit on the dresser, the city humming outside. Her body was humming too. A pleasant, exhausted thrum that seemed to vibrate in her bones.

"I can't feel my legs," she said.

He laughed. "That's probably temporary."

"It better had be. I have things to do tomorrow."

"What things?"

She thought about it. "Absolutely nothing. I have absolutely nothing to do tomorrow."

"Good. Then we can stay in bed all day."

"Deal."

He pulled the covers up around them, tucking the edges around her shoulders. She closed her eyes, listening to his heartbeat, steady and familiar. Her anchor. Her home.

"Was it worth it?" he asked quietly. "All the stopping and starting? Were the edges worth the destination?"

"Spence." She tilted her head to look at him. "I saw God."

He burst out laughing, and she felt the vibration of it through his chest. "That's a new one."

"I'm serious. I transcended. I left my body and visited another plane of existence."

"Should I be jealous?"

"No. You should be proud." She settled against him again, her eyes growing heavy. "You did research. And then you applied it. Very thoroughly."

"That's what I do." He kissed the top of her head. "Sleep. I've got you."

She was already halfway there, floating in the warm dark of his arms. The last thing she felt before sleep claimed her was his lips against her hair, and the soft murmur of his voice saying something she was too far gone to hear.

“We?” you echoed, setting the book aside. “Spencer, you know I’m a terrible cook. And risotto is an hour-long, elbow-grease, constant-stirring kind of situation.”

“Exactly,” he said brightly. “It’s the culinary equivalent of an FBI stakeout. I thought you’d enjoy the teamwork.”

You stared at him. “You planned a date night that involves fifteen minutes of zesting?”

He shrugged. “The recipe says the aromatics really come out if you’re patient.”

“You’re lucky I love you.”

He grinned and extended a hand to pull you off the couch. “Come on. I already started getting out the ingredients.”

—

Twenty minutes later, you were in full prep mode: barefoot, stirring lazily while Spencer hummed Debussy and lined up lemons like surgical tools. He measured everything with the precision of a neurosurgeon while you chopped shallots by feel, refusing to follow any of the instructions he kept reading aloud.

“The recipe says to use only the outermost zest,” he said.

“It also says to stir clockwise, which is insane. I’m winging it.”

“Winging it? While making something as delicate as risotto?!” he asked, clearly a little horrified.

“You knew what you signed up for.”

He passed you a glass of white wine. “True.”

You argued over whether the wine should go into the pot or your mouths first. He poured a little into the rice; you poured more into your glass. And somewhere in the middle of Spencer’s incessant reading of the recipe instructions, you managed to flick a bit of zest in his direction. It landed on his lower cheek.

“You’ve been tagged,” you said.

Spencer narrowed his eyes. “That’s food-grade sabotage.”

He stepped closer as you reached up to brush it away. Your fingertips grazed the soft skin beneath his cheekbone, and for a moment, everything else faded.

His eyes caught yours.

“Think you missed it,” he said quietly.

The air shifted. Something unspoken and familiar threaded between you, slow and deliberate. The kitchen wasn’t quiet — the stove was still bubbling — but it felt like the world had narrowed to this: you, him, the warmth between your bodies and the lemon-scented air.

He moved first, turning the burner down to low heat. One step, then another, until your back hit the counter and his hands found your hips.

“This feels like a dangerous way to cook,” you murmured, breath hitching.

“Who said we’re still cooking?”

His mouth met yours before you could answer — slow at first, exploratory. Then hungrier.

You reached up, fingers threading through his hair as he deepened the kiss. The countertop pressed into your back, cool against your overheated skin, and Spencer’s body curved in close, bracketing you in with careful hands and a hunger that was anything but cautious.

He tasted like citrus and something warmer underneath, and his mouth moved like he was trying to memorize you. His hands slid beneath the hem of your top, reverent and warm, fingers spreading across your waist like he couldn’t get enough of touching you.

“Can I…?” he murmured, already kissing along your jaw as he tugged at your shirt.

“Yes,” you whispered. “All of it.”

Clothes came off piece by piece. Your shirt first, then his, then the rest of your clothes. He stepped between your legs and lifted you onto the counter with ease, his hands never leaving your body. Your thighs parted for him instinctively, knees hooking around his hips, and he settled there like he belonged.

“You’re so soft here,” he said quietly, brushing his fingers just beneath your breasts. “Every time I touch you, I forget how to think.”

“Lucky for you, I like the rare occasions when you forget things.”

He smiled and bent to mouth at your collarbone. “Dinner can wait.”

“Mhm. Until much later,” you breathed, tugging him even closer by the waistband of his pants. “Much, much later.”

Then he dropped to his knees.

Spencer looked up at you like you were a miracle. Like he had all the time in the world. His hands curled beneath your thighs and pulled you to the edge of the counter, his thumbs brushing soft, dizzying circles into your skin. You were already wet, aching, trembling — and he hadn’t even touched you yet.

“God, look at you,” he murmured. “You’re already dripping.”

“Spence—”

“I know.” His voice was low, coaxing. “I’ve got you.”

And he did.

His mouth met you slow and steady, the first broad lick making you shudder. He sucked your clit into his mouth, tongue working in slow, hypnotic patterns that made your spine arch and your hands fight for purchase in his hair. He didn’t rush. He never rushed. He devoured you like he was studying the effect of every single flick and swirl, listening for the change in your breathing, waiting for the exact sound you made when he—

“Oh—fuck, right there, don’t stop,” you whined.

He groaned into you, the vibration ricocheting through your whole body. One hand tightened on your hip while the other slipped lower — fingers teasing at your entrance, then easing inside, slick and perfect and deep.

“Spence,” you gasped. “You’re gonna make me come.”

“That’s the idea,” he murmured, voice wrecked and smug. “Come for me, sweetheart. I want to feel it.”

That was all you needed to hear. You came hard, clenching around his fingers, thighs shaking against his shoulders, your breath catching on his name like a prayer. He worked you through it and didn’t stop until you tugged at his hair, until you were too sensitive to bear it, until you gasped his name again.

When he stood, his face was flushed, mouth slick, eyes blown wide with want. You pulled him in and kissed him — messy, grateful, open-mouthed, tasting yourself on his tongue.

“Need you,” you said against his lips. “Now.”

He helped you unbutton his pants, pulling them down just enough, and you reached for his cock the second you could. It was already hard and leaking, flushed red at the tip, thick in your palm.

“Jesus,” you whispered, stroking him once. “All this, just from going down on me?”

He moaned, twitching into your grip. “You have no idea.”

You stroked again, a little firmer, thumb circling the head. “I think I do.”

He cursed softly, pulling your hand away and nudging your thighs apart. “Need to be inside you.” He pressed himself forward teasingly against your entrance, dragging the tip of his cock through the mess he’d made of you.

“Let me see you,” he said. “Look at me.”

You did. Eyes locked, he slid into you in one long, slow thrust, filling you so deeply it stole the breath from your lungs.

“Oh my god,” you whispered, clinging to his shoulders.

“Shit, you’re so tight—so warm.” His head dropped forward, forehead resting against yours. “You always take me so perfectly, angel.”

He stayed there for a beat — buried to the hilt, breathing hard, like he was trying to keep himself from losing control too soon. You curled your legs around his waist and rocked your hips, coaxing him into motion.

“Move,” you whispered. “Please. I need you to move.”

He did — Spencer always did exactly as you asked, especially when it came to this.

The first few thrusts were slow, exploratory. Deep. He rolled his hips like he wanted to find every new angle that could make you fall apart, and god, did he find them. He gripped your hips tighter, anchoring you to the edge of the counter, and started to fuck you in a rhythm that was steady and filthy and simultaneously so fucking tender it made your chest ache.

You felt every inch of him — every drag, every push — and you moaned into the open space between you as he pulled back almost entirely before sliding in again, harder this time.

“You feel so good like this,” he groaned. “Like you were made for me.”

His lips brushed yours between words — a soft kiss, then a firmer one, then a pause where you just breathed each other in. You could feel him everywhere. The stretch. The weight. The press of his body into yours, solid and overwhelming in the best way possible.

You slid a hand between you and traced your fingers across his chest, over the rapid beat of his heart. “You always fuck me like you love me.”

He stilled for a moment — just to get a good look at you — and then his mouth was on yours, kissing you like a promise, like that was the answer.

“I do,” he murmured into the kiss. “I love you so much.”

Then he thrust into you harder, deeper, making you cry out. His rhythm picked up — more urgent now, more desperate, hips snapping forward in a way that made you clutch at him, panting into his neck.

“Tell me what you need,” he rasped, voice cracking with restraint.

“You,” you gasped. “Just like this. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

He groaned — a raw, helpless sound — and adjusted his angle, shifting his hips just enough to brush something deep inside you that made your whole body jolt.

“Oh god—fuck. Spencer, I—”

“Right there?”

“Right there.”

His hand slid between you, thumb circling your clit with maddening precision, the pressure just right, the rhythm relentless. Pleasure climbed fast and hot, coiling tight in your belly, stealing your breath.

Spencer kissed you deeply then pulled back to watch the way your expression was twisting. “That’s it, angel. Good girl. Let me feel you come on my cock.”

Your climax crashed through you harder than the last, raw and overwhelming, your body tightening around him in waves you couldn’t stop. You were still coming when he groaned and fucked into you deeper, faster, chasing his own high through the pulse of yours.

“Fuck, you’re still coming, aren’t you?”

You were. Still trembling, still squeezing around him when his rhythm broke. You managed a nod in response.

“Come with me then,” he gasped, fucking you through it. “Please, sweetheart—oh, fuck.”

And you did.

Your orgasms crested over each other like lightning striking twice — sharp and hot and completely blinding. You held his face in your hands and kissed him as you both fell, his hips grinding into you, cock pulsing deep inside as he came with a groan that sounded like surrender.

And when it was over, you stayed like that — wrapped around each other, shaking and breathless, his chest heaving against yours.

—

Somewhere during the haze of afterglow, the pan on the stove let out a loud, angry hiss.

Spencer’s eyes flew open. “The risotto!”

You burst into laughter, still wrapped around him. “Oh no.”

He gently lowered you off the counter, half-dressed and glowing, and the two of you stumbled over each other trying to get to the stove. He grabbed a spoon and stirred furiously while you added a splash of broth, then another.

Miraculously, the rice hadn’t burned. Browned a little — okay, maybe a lot — but not beyond saving.

“I think we stirred just enough before we got distracted,” he said, a little breathless, still flushed from everything that just happened.

You leaned against the counter beside him, giggling. “Are you saying we successfully had kitchen counter sex without totally ruining dinner?”

He grinned, nodding. “We’re a statistical anomaly.”

Spencer helped clean you up before you both redressed in scattered pieces of clothing, keeping close watch on the pot and on each other. Spencer stayed barefoot in his dress pants, and you pulled on his button-down, which hung past your hips and still smelled like him.

He stirred the rice while you read aloud from the recipe, skipping half the steps and adding your own commentary.

“‘Let simmer on medium-low until the remaining liquid is absorbed,’” you said, voice exaggerated. “Or until one of us gets impatient and turns up the heat.”

“Do not mess with the starch development, woman.”

You laughed, stealing a spoonful when his back was turned.

—

When it was finally done, you both sat on the floor with the pan between you, backs against the cabinets, legs tangled, sharing bites straight from the wooden spoon. The risotto was shockingly good despite the way it had nearly burned — creamy and bright, with just the right amount of lemon.

“I hate that you were right about this,” you mumbled around a mouthful.

“Victory tastes like Meyer citrus,” he said smugly.

You nudged his shoulder. “You’re ridiculous.”

He wiped a bit of risotto from the corner of your mouth with his thumb, then kissed the same spot. “Maybe,” he said. “But you’re still here.”

You leaned your head against his shoulder, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breath.

“I’d cook with you again,” you said quietly. “Even if you do read recipe blogs like crime scene notes.”

“That’s the highest praise you’ve ever given me.”

He rested his cheek against your hair. Around you, the kitchen smelled like butter and lemons and wine and something warmer you couldn’t quite name. The dishes could wait. The future could wait.

Tonight, you had warmth, and starch and citrus, and even better — each other.

ᝰ.ᐟ

masterlist

“We have to be extra quiet,” he whispers. “This hotel has particularly thin walls.”

“Then don’t make me laugh,” you respond, immediately giggling again when he starts dotting your face all over with kisses — the tip of your nose, your cheekbone, your hairline, the corner of your mouth.

It’s a practiced routine by now: Spencer’s tie loosens, your shirt buttons surrender, and he lifts you into his arms before laying you down on the crisp hotel sheets that suddenly feel way too formal for the way he’s looking at you.

Kisses trail down your throat, careful where he knows you’re ticklish. When you gasp his name, it’s too loud and you slap a hand over your mouth, scandalized by yourself. He makes a dying-man noise, eyes bright with something fond and feral. “I said to stay quiet,” he teases, then presses two fingers to your lips. “I can help with that, you know.”

You go lightheaded at the implication and take them in, a slow, ridiculous suck that frays his composure. “You’re impossible,” he whispers adoringly. “Perfect, but impossible.”

He withdraws his fingers and continues his descent down your body, his mouth finding you quickly, almost too gently at first. You fist the sheets, then his hair, then the headboard behind you when it’s too much and not enough all at once, and he just… stays. Keeps going. Lifts his head only to breathe out praise before dipping back between your thighs, intent and unhurried.

When you start to pull away from how good it is, he keeps you steady, soft grip at your hip, humming like a promise against you. The sound vibrates straight through your bones. He slides two fingers inside, careful, and you come apart against him within moments. It’s not loud — you swear it isn’t — but you feel him chuckle against you when you clamp a hand over your mouth again, just in case.

“Hi,” you breathe when the room finally puts itself back together.

He kisses your knee, your thigh, the edge of your stomach. “Hi.” He’s flushed and undone and, quite possibly, the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

You pull him up your body and kiss him with what’s left of your composure, feel the hard line of him against your hip. You thumb his belt open and he goes very still, checking your eyes the way he always does. You nod. Yes. Always yes.

“Look at me,” he whispers, fitting between your thighs. One hand cradles your jaw; the other laces your fingers above the pillow. The first push steals your breath and he hushes you with a kiss you feel all the way down your spine.

“God,” he mouths against your cheek, and you hook your leg over his hip in answer. He shifts an inch, angling your knee exactly where he wants it with his palm and groans into your throat. You both shush each other, laughing helplessly into a kiss like teenagers.

It crests fast because it’s him and because the night is short and because the way you feel about each other has never been a subtle thing. You fall apart around him with his name in your mouth and his hand tight around your fingers. Spencer follows a heartbeat later, lips and teeth against the curve of your neck to keep from waking the whole floor. He stays inside you for a long second that feels like forever, then eases out and gathers you close, leaving an open-mouthed kiss at your jaw.

“So stealthy,” you whisper with a giggle.

—

Morning puts both of you back in suits at the local precinct. In the conference room, you and Spencer review the crime scene map with straight faces like you weren’t just memorizing every inch of each other’s skin in a hotel bed six hours ago.

The team watches from across the room, smirks barely contained.

JJ sips her coffee. “They really think they’re subtle, don’t they?”

Emily doesn’t look up from her tablet. “I spotted Reid sneaking back into his room at 5am.”

Morgan shakes his head, grinning. “She was wearing a cardigan that looked suspiciously like one from Pretty Boy’s collection when I saw her in the lobby this morning. And he keeps tugging his collar up to hide whatever the hell she left on his neck last night.”

Hotch caps his pen, the corner of his mouth almost curling. “As long as it doesn’t affect their work,” he says mildly, “we can be happy for them.”

“Happy for who?” you ask, appearing with a stack of witness forms, all wide-eyed innocence.

“For the local PD,” Emily covers smoothly. “They finally fixed their copy machine.” You shrug and get back to work.

JJ leans in. “Do we tell them we know?” she whispers.

“Absolutely not,” Emily says. “The illusion is half the fun.”

Morgan grins. “Ten bucks says they get married and still try to cover it up.”

Hotch cuts in: “Stop gambling on your coworkers.”

Spencer re-appears with two coffees, setting one down in front of you, and you thank him without looking. He reaches to untwist your lanyard, and both of you freeze for a half-second — muscle memory betraying you — then step apart in perfect sync.

Across the room, JJ and Emily trade a look, and Morgan’s grin widens.

Profilers know a tell when they see one — and they also know when to leave it be. Not secret so much as quiet, and for now, that’s enough.

ᝰ.ᐟ

PSA: likes do very little for promoting posts on tumblr! if you'd like to support a fic, please reblog!

He learns you the way he learns everything else: with relentless, obsessive devotion. But where his mind usually files away data for analysis, here he archives only for the sake of remembering. He catalogues the tremor in your thighs before you crest, the way your fingers twist and release the sheets in a rhythm only he can decipher, the soft, broken sound of his name falling from your lips like a confession he never expected to hear. He knows the exact flutter of your lashes that precedes a gasp, the precise arch of your spine that means he has found the angle that makes your mind go blissfully, beautifully blank.

He has memorized the delicate geography of your pleasure with cartographic precision: the spot behind your ear that makes you shiver, the hollow of your throat where he can feel your pulse racing, a frantic bird against his tongue, the dip at the base of your spine that makes you arch into him like a bow drawn taut. Every sound you make—the soft, breathy whimpers, the broken, desperate moans, the way your breath catches and stutters when he whispers your name against your collarbone—is a data point in the vast, intimate library he keeps of you.

But this is not cold analysis. There is no detachment here. This is worship, documented not in notebooks or files, but in the language of his hands, the reverent press of his lips, the quiet, trembling whispers he leaves against your skin like benedictions. When he moves inside you, it is with the patience of someone who has waited his whole life to be this close to another person. He watches you with those wide, dark eyes—eyes that have seen the worst of humanity—and in them, you see only wonder. Only you.

Until one night, a small, incidental variable is introduced.

It happens in the space between one breath and the next—a moment so fleeting, so unremarkable in its origin, that neither of you could have predicted the seismic shift it would cause. You are lost in the overwhelming sensation of him, the sharp, building tension coiling low in your own gut, when he reaches for your hips. The movement is meant to pull you closer, to deepen the connection, to anchor himself in the dizzying warmth of you. But his grip—usually so measured, so deliberately gentle—is unconsciously firmer than he intended.

His fingers bite into the soft flesh of your hips as he guides your rhythm, a subtle but undeniable directive in his hold. There is a quiet authority in the way he moves you, a flicker of something primal that slips past his usual careful restraint—a crack in the veneer of his control that he didn't even know was there. It is not cruel. It is not demanding in the way he fears. It is simply certain. A wordless claim, an unthinking possession, a momentary forgetting of his own carefully constructed rules.

Your head falls back, your fingers fisting in the sheets as the sensation ripples through you like a stone dropped into still water. A sound escapes your lips—not the soft, breathy whimpers he knows so well, but something deeper, hungrier, a sound that seems to surprise even you. Your hips roll against his grip, not pulling away, but pressing into it, chasing the delicious pressure of his hands, the unexpected thrill of being held so firmly.

Spencer's entire body goes rigid.

His mind, which has been blissfully quiet—a rare and precious thing, that silence, the only silence he has ever truly craved—suddenly snaps back to hyper-focus like a rubber band pulled taut and released. His hands on your hips freeze, his movements ceasing entirely as if someone has pressed pause on the world. The heat between you lingers, suspended, but the air in the room changes, thickens with the weight of his sudden, sharp awareness.

His eyes, dark and glazed with passion just a heartbeat ago, now sharpen with an almost forensic intensity as they search your face. He is reading you the way he reads a crime scene—every micro-expression, every flutter of your lashes, every shallow, uneven breath. The flush on your cheeks. The parted swell of your lips. The way your chest rises and falls in quick, uneven pants. He catalogues it all, his brilliant mind racing through a thousand calculations in the span of a single, suspended second.

But this is not a crime scene. You are not a victim. And the evidence he is gathering is not of trauma, but of something far more complicated.

He sees it now—the way your pupils are blown wide, dark and wanting. The way your body is still pressed against his, not recoiling, but seeking. The way your hips shifted against his grip, chasing the pressure of his fingers. The way that sound—that raw, desperate, beautiful sound—still seems to echo in the space between you.

He blinks. Once. Twice. The gears in his mind are audibly turning, cross-referencing, running a rapid-fire comparative analysis against every single data point he has ever collected on you.

"That," he breathes, his voice a little unsteady, still rough around the edges from the pleasure you had been building together. His throat works as he swallows, trying to recalibrate. "That was... new."

You feel a blush creep up your neck, spreading across your chest like warm honey. Embarrassment mingles with the lingering aftershocks of pleasure, leaving you warm and flustered beneath his intense, searching gaze. His eyes have not left your face—they are fixed on you with the kind of focused attention he usually reserves for cold cases and impossible puzzles.

"What was?" you ask, though you already know. You can still feel the echo of that sound in your own throat, the way it had surprised even you.

"That sound," he insists, his brow furrowed in genuine, scientific confusion. There is no accusation in his tone, only the desperate, almost frantic need of a man who has encountered an anomaly he cannot immediately explain. "You've never made that sound before. I would have remembered."

He says it with such certainty, such unshakeable confidence, that there is no room for argument. And you know he is right—of course he is right. He has filed them all away: every gasp, every sigh, every broken moan that has ever fallen from your lips, neatly organized in the vast, intimate library he keeps of you. Your pleasure is his favourite area of study, his most cherished collection. He knows the precise pitch of your breathy whimpers, the way your voice cracks when he hits that perfect spot, the shuddering exhalation you make when you finally let go, the soft, almost surprised laugh that sometimes escapes you in the quiet aftermath. He knows them all, has committed them to memory like verses of poetry he never wants to forget, like the lines of a book he could recite in his sleep.

And this—this low, guttural hum, this sound of startled surrender that seemed to rise from somewhere deep in your chest, raw and unfiltered and utterly unguarded—is entirely unprecedented.

His brow furrows deeper, and you can practically see the wheels turning behind his eyes. He is running diagnostics. He is comparing this new sound against the archive, searching for a match, finding none. The absence of precedent is clearly troubling him—not because he dislikes the sound, but because he did not predict it. Because it suggests that there are still corners of you he has not yet mapped, still responses he has not yet learned to anticipate.

And for a man who has built his entire identity around knowing, around understanding, around being prepared for every variable—that is a deeply unsettling thought.

He looks down at his hands, still gripping your hips, and for a moment, something flickers across his face. Surprise. Uncertainty. His thumbs trace soothing circles over the very spots where his fingers had pressed too hard, a silent apology in the gentleness of the gesture. The contrast is striking—the firm grip that had sparked this entire revelation, now softened into something almost penitent.

"Did I hurt you?" he asks, his voice softer now, the analytical sharpness giving way to a thread of genuine concern. It is the voice he uses when he is afraid he has made a mistake, when the fear of causing you pain overrides every other impulse in his body.

You shake your head, still breathless, still riding the lingering waves of sensation. "No. It was... it was good. Different. But good."

His eyes search yours for a long, suspended moment, weighing your words against the data of your flushed cheeks, your still-racing pulse, the way your chest rises and falls in quick, uneven breaths. He is reading every micro-expression, every subtle shift in your features, looking for any sign that you are hiding discomfort behind a brave smile.

But all he finds is truth.

His hands are still on your hips, but they have gone still now, frozen in place like a man who has suddenly realized he is holding something infinitely precious and infinitely fragile. He stares at you, and you can see the war raging behind his eyes—the part of him that wants to retreat into the safety of what he knows, and the part of him that is undeniably, irresistibly curious about what else he might discover if he lets himself be surprised.

You can almost hear the whir of his thoughts, the rapid-fire cross-referencing of variables, the way he's deconstructing the last ten seconds with the same forensic precision he'd use to crack an unsub's pattern. He replays the moment in his head, frame by frame, searching for the anomaly. The change in angle? No. The increase in pace? Unlikely. It was the pressure—the feeling of being anchored, of being taken. His fingers had dug into the soft flesh of your hips, and somewhere in that unconscious assertion of control, he had unlocked something he hadn't even known was there.

You watch him work through it, fascinated despite yourself. There is something almost unbearably endearing about the way he approaches your pleasure like it is the most important research project of his life—because, in a way, it is. His lips move silently, forming words he is not quite speaking aloud, testing hypotheses against the evidence of your flushed skin and ragged breaths.

You can see the moment he isolates the key factor—the pressure of his grip, the unconscious assertion of his own wanting, the way he had held you not like something precious to be protected, but like something his to keep.

There, you think, watching his eyes sharpen with recognition. He found it.

"Pressure," he says aloud, testing the word, letting it settle in the air between you. "The variable is pressure. Not just physical pressure, but—" He pauses, searching for the right terminology, his brow furrowing deeper. "The pressure of... of intention. Of certainty." He looks at you, his gaze searching, almost vulnerable. 

And then, a second later, something shifts.

A slow, predatory smile—something you have never seen before—curves his lips. It is not the soft, boyish smile he gives you over morning coffee, nor the awkward, self-deprecating grin he wears when he's rambling about something obscure. It is not the gentle, wondering expression he wears when he watches you sleep, or the shy, almost surprised smile that appears when you tell him you love him.

This is different.

This is the smile of a man who has just found the solution to a complex equation, who sees the answer laid out before him and cannot wait to test his theory. There is a spark in his eyes, a glint of something almost primal, and it sends a shiver down your spine that has nothing to do with the cold. It is the smile of someone who has spent his entire life in his own head, analysing and overthinking, and has suddenly discovered that his body has its own intelligence—and that intelligence knows exactly what it wants.

"Okay," he says, his voice dropping an octave. It is lower, rougher, stripped of its usual academic cadence. The careful enunciation is gone, replaced by something rawer, more immediate. He leans down, his lips brushing the shell of your ear, his breath hot against your skin, and you feel the words more than you hear them. "Let's run this experiment again."

He doesn't ask permission. There is no hesitant pause, no gentle inquiry of "Is this okay?" The question has already been answered—by your gasp, by the way your body arched into his grip, by the sound you made that he is now determined to recreate. 

He simply repeats the motion, but this time with intention. This time with purpose.

His hand roams your hip, his fingers splaying across the curve of your waist, spanning the soft flesh with an ownership that makes your breath catch. 

His grip is firm and unyielding as he pulls you down to grind on him, controlling the rhythm with a confidence that feels almost foreign on him.

The air leaves your lungs in a sharp exhale, morphing into that same, low, surrendering hum. The sound vibrates through your chest, your throat, spilling out of you like you have no choice in the matter, like your body has decided to speak a language your mind has never learned. Your fingers clutch at his shoulders, nails digging into him, anchoring yourself to him as the world tilts dangerously off its axis.

Spencer's eyes darken at the sound. His jaw tightens, a muscle feathering in his cheek. He lets out a shuddering breath, and for a moment, his composure wavers—the scientist eclipsed by the man, the observer becoming the participant. His carefully constructed walls, built brick by brick over a lifetime of feeling too much and being too much, crumble in the space of a single heartbeat.

"There it is," he breathes, his voice rough with something like wonder. "That's the variable."

He does it again, adjusting the angle of his hips, the pressure of his fingers, testing the boundaries of this new discovery. His thumb presses into the hollow of your hip bone, a small, deliberate point of contact that sends a jolt of sensation through your entire body. He watches your face with rapt attention, cataloguing every micro-expression, every flutter of your lashes, every hitch in your breathing. His eyes are dark, focused, alight with the particular intensity of a man who has found something he did not know he was searching for.

He is no longer simply making love to you; he is studying you, learning you anew, rewriting the data he thought he had memorized. The archive he has built of your pleasure—once so carefully curated, so lovingly preserved—is now being expanded, updated, transformed by this new variable he has discovered. And he is thrilled by it. You can see it in the way his lips part slightly, the way his brow furrows with concentration, the way his breathing has quickened to match the pace of his thoughts.

His free hand comes up to cup your jaw, tilting your face toward his. His thumb traces the curve of your lower lip, feather-light, almost reverent—a stark contrast to the firm grip of his other hand on your hip. The duality of him, the gentle and the commanding, the scholar and the man, exists in perfect balance in this moment.

He does it again, adjusting the angle of his hips, the pressure of his fingers, testing the boundaries of this new discovery. His thumb presses into the hollow of your hip bone, and he watches your face with rapt attention, cataloging every micro-expression, every flutter of your lashes, every hitch in your breathing. He is no longer simply making love to you; he is studying you, learning you anew, rewriting the data he thought he had memorized.

"This is fascinating," he murmurs, half to himself, half to you. "I've spent years analyzing behavioral patterns, but I never considered..." He trails off, his grip tightening fractionally as he pulls you into another thrust. "...how much variation exists in a single reaction."

You can barely form a response, your thoughts scattering like leaves in a storm. But you manage a breathless, "Spencer..."

He pauses, his eyes snapping to yours. The analytical sharpness softens, just slightly, replaced by something warmer. "Too much?" he asks, his thumb tracing a soothing circle on your hip. "Do you want me to stop?"

It is such a Spencer question—so careful, so considerate, even now. Even when he is on the verge of unraveling something new about you, he still needs to know that you are with him, that you are not just an experiment.

You shake your head, your voice barely a whisper. "No. Don't stop."

His smile returns, softer now, but no less determined. "Good," he says, and there is a thread of relief in his voice, a quiet gratitude that you are willing to let him explore this with you. "Because I'm not done with this hypothesis yet."

And then he proves it, testing the variable again and again, mapping the contours of your pleasure with the same devotion he once reserved for the most complex of cases. He is not just learning about you—he is learning about himself, about the parts of him he has kept carefully contained. And in the quiet, sacred space of your shared bedroom, he discovers that sometimes the most important discoveries are not found in books, but in the trembling surrender of the person who trusts you enough to let you take control.

Damn it. Now you want to cry again, not tears of sadness, no– but in pure joyful emotion. You had married a man who noticed even the slightest change of your eyes or or an off breath. 

“I’m more than okay,” you manage to whisper but it comes out more like a choked out wobbly breath. “I just– the way you're looking at me. The way you looked at me. I’ve never felt so much love.”

Spencer leans down to press his forehead against yours as the elevator steadily climbed to the hotel's top floor, the warmth of him flooding your system. 

“I love you,” he whispers firmly. “With everything I am, with every breath I take. I’m so happy you’re my wife. I know you know but I need to tell you it again and again. I can’t stop saying it. I’ll always look at you like this because you’re my love. Every chamber of my heart beats in unison for you.” 

Just before you could fully burst into tears at the sweetest words you had ever heard and wash off all the makeup that you had spent hours applying this morning, the elevator beeped and opened revealing a long, elegantly styled hallway.

“Cmon, angel,” Spencer murmured softly, his breath caressing your ear. “I want to show you our honeymoon suite,” He tugs on your hand and you giggle at the way he practically drags you down the hallway like an overeager puppy, stumbling beside him. 

When you make it to the door at the end of the hallways, Spencer suddenly stops to face you. You open your mouth to speak and then—

“Whoa,” you gasp as he picks you up, his lean but strong arms sliding under your back and your knees to form the classic bridal style hold. “Baby what are you doing?” you giggle into his shoulder, filled with elation. You’re pretty sure you know what he's doing, you just want him to say it. 

Spencer smiles down at you and it feels like the warmth of ten thousand suns shining down on you, and healing every emotional wound that ever hurt you. 

“I am carrying my very beautiful bride across the threshold of our honeymoon suite, and then I am going to spend the entire night worshipping her.”

You immediately turn that familiar pretty shade of pink that Spencer loves, still not used to hearing him talk like this—even after all this time together. 

“You look impossibly pretty like this,” he smiles as his gaze traces the features on your face. “You don’t even know how much.”

Before you can respond with a doubtful quip disguised by humour, he maneuvers you in his arms so he can push the hotel room door open.

Your breath catches.

“Holy shit.”

His eyes fill with pride and you can feel his spine straightening. The room was absolutely gorgeous. The room was lit, not harshly bright, yet light enough so you could see everything. The large windows had the curtains pulled back to reveal the glistening lights of the city. In the center of the room was a king bed, draped with silk sheets and piled with fluffiest pillows you had ever seen. The sheets were covered with rose petals scattered about, and at the foot of the bed sat a basket filled with champagne and other things you couldn’t make out. 

“I called a week ago and asked them to set all this up. Penelope helped me find your wedding pinterest board and I wanted to make tonight special, especially since you planned the wedding so beautifully,” he smiles at your wide eyed expression as he puts you down from the bridal carry and kneels down to remove each one of your beautiful but painful heels that had been pinching your toes for hours. “You do so so much, and I'm not the most creatively inclined but I wanted to do this for you. I know I’m about to show you how much I love you physically but I  wanted to show you a different way too. I…I hope you like it.” 

This. This is why you married him, you thought as he removed each heel— pressing a kiss to each knee through your dress. Not for his incredible profiling skills, not for his astonishingly high iq of 187, not for his tall stature, or his beautifully sculpted face, or his brown doe eyes or his pretty pink lips or his messy brown locks but this. How much he cared. How he remembered the details, like you offhandedly mentioning your pinterest board. How he didn’t mind sleeping with a nightlight on during storms because he knew you got scared. Every single note filled with a fun fact a day left in your lunch. How he would listen to you ramble on and on about your favorite shows that other boys might laugh and call too girly, but he made a detailed chart with you on whether Jess or Logan was Rory's soulmate in Gilmore Girls. You married him for him. For the way he loved you in a way you thought was only possible in fairytales. 

“Spencer,” you breathe out shakily as his eyes lock onto yours, looking impossibly soft. “I don’t even know how to describe how I’m feeling right now. I love you. I love you so so so much. I can’t believe you asked Penelope for my pinterest board. I can’t believe you even remembered me mentioning it. You don’t know how much this means to me.”

“Of course I did…I love you,” he smiles gently as he tugs you closer, his hand wrapping round your waist. “I’m going to be doing things like this for you forever. It’s the least I could do. You are the most incredible girl in the entire universe,”. He smirks as he leans his forehead down to touch your own. “And that's saying a lot because the universe is actively expanding and actually the rate at which it’s expanding is accelerating which means—”

“Wait,”. He suddenly stops and takes a breath. “I’ll tell you about galactic redshift later because I’m getting too distracted by how you look in this dress,” His lips slightly turn up as his voice lowers. “And how much I want to see it on the floor.” 

You can feel your face heat up for like the ten thousandth time today and you groan, pushing a strand of hair back behind your ear.

“You can’t keep saying these things,” you pout and he quickly leans down to press a quick peck to your lips. “I can’t help blushing. I think I have a chronic blushing problem.”

He laughs as he picks you and gently sets you amongst the flower petals on the silky bedspread, putting the basket on the floor before tossing his suit jacket aside. 

“Chronic implies that it's long lasting which in this case I think is ideal,” he kisses your forehead in between words as he sits beside you on the bed. “You look too cute blushing— I don’t ever want it to go away.” 

You giggle until his lips brush yours and every other thought melts from your mind. He kisses you so gently at first, like you’re porcelain on the verge of shattering. One of his hands reaches up to cup your face, while the other one settles on your waist—contentedly drawing little circles into the fabric of your wedding dress with his thumb. You sigh against his mouth as every nerve ending in your body seems to spark to life all at once. 

At your sigh, his breath hitches and his tongue slowly slips into your mouth at the given opportunity. The hand that was against your cheek slides to cup the back of your head as he gently lowers you to lay back against the pillows. Your hair splays out, and he raises up from your lips to stare down at you adoringly. 

“My beautiful wife,” he breathes out as his eyes trace your every feature. He lowers his lips to barely brush against yours once more. “My gorgeous, gorgeous girl.”

Before tears of emotion could fall from your eyes, he's kissing you again, and you can feel how much of himself he’s putting into it. He’s kissing you like your lips are what will save him from an incurable disease. Your wedding dress is twisted and flowing around the both of you, and his hands slide under you to fiddle with the delicate buttons on the back. 

He raises his head once again and smiles at you, and everything that is outside of the little bubble the two of you created disappears.

“Can I take this dress off baby?” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead. 

“Yes please.”

“Your wish is my command,” he winks and you giggle, amazed at the way he can turn everything from serious and deeply intimate to funny, and yet still make the silliest of things romantic. “Sit up a little for me, angel.”

You obey him and his soft voice without question. His long fingers begin to attempt to unhook each button. Keyword… attempt. 

He huffs with a slight pout as his nimble fingers fail to get a grasp on even the first button. 

“I have an IQ of 187 and yet these buttons seem to require one even higher. Why are they so tiny? I mean they're beautiful… but Vera Wang certainly doesn't design with efficiency in mind.” 

“You should send them a letter.”

“Haha… very funny,” he pouts again as he finally manages to unhook the first one. “I have half a mind to.”

Suddenly his face brightens and his eyes get that twinkling look again.

“I have an idea,” he grins as he leans down towards the buttons. “Kisses for good luck.”

You smile and start to giggle again until you feel the press of his lips to each button through your dress. The butterflies come to life in your stomach again and begin to fly in dizzyingly fast circles. 

“There we go,” he murmurs as his lips brush each button and somehow…they unbutton as he tries his hand at it once more. “Told you. Kisses are good luck. Scientifically proven now.”

“You don’t believe in luck,” you whisper as his fingers unhook the last of the buttons.

“I do when it comes to you,” he breathes out as he gently pulls the sleeves of your dress down your arms, and lays you down to pull it off the rest of your body. 

Damn, you’re blushing again. And you don’t think it will ever go away as long as Spencer is alive to make you feel this way. 

Once the dress is all the way off, you hear Spencer's breath catch, and you look up at him shyly through your eyelashes. You were in wedding lingerie, that this morning your bridesmaids giggled and complimented as they helped you dress. The lingerie was white and lacy, delicate edges against your skin. 

“You,” he leans down to kiss you between each word. “Are..” Kiss. “So…” Kiss.” Pretty…” Another kiss. 

“Do you like it?” you murmur, stealing another kiss as he lifts his head once more. “I wanted to look pretty and special for tonight.”

“Like it?” he blinks like he doesn’t understand what you’re saying. “Angel…like is too insignificant a word for how I feel about you in this. Like… is used for saying you like a drink or dessert. Like…is a widely disproportionate word for how I feel about you. I feel like love is even too small to describe it.”

He exhales and leans down to kiss the lace of the bralettes edge, murmuring sweet things that you could barely make out. 

“Hey,” you murmur as you reach for the buttons on his white dress shirt. “I can’t be the only one half naked.”

He grins as he raises his head, and now it's your turn to fumble with buttons.  

“Here,”  he whispers, as his larger hands cover your shaky ones and begin to help undo the buttons on his shirt. Once he reaches the end, he shrugs off the shirt and tosses it on the floor, not caring where it lands. 

You let out a soft breath as he lets you gaze upon his chest. He was so handsome, so pretty. He wasn’t built with bulging muscles or a wide chest. Instead, he was built especially for you. He was lean yet defined, strong without being crushing.  

You didn’t have any words so you said the only thing that really mattered. 

“I love you, Spencer Reid.”

He leans down, and right before his lips meet your own you catch the mist that begins to cloud his eyes. 

“I love you,” he murmurs as he kisses your lips and then begins trailing his own lips down your neck. 

“I love you,” he repeats again as his lips latch onto that special spot on your neck, the one he's studied thoroughly and knows it’ll make you squirm. Your hips slightly arch to meet his as he sucks and gently bites at the skin, marking you as his own. You can feel the length of him, a not so subtle hardness pressing against you. 

You let out a whiny whimper and you can feel his smile spread across his lips as he keeps kissing his way down to your lace covered breasts. 

He kisses all around the lace edge and then reaches both hands up to cup them, marveling in how they fit within his palms. 

You whine again as he gently squeezes and begins to knead them, the sensation shooting down between your legs. 

“These are so pretty,” he mutters in a low voice as he stares at them. “So perfect for me, look at how they fit in my hands.” 

“Oh…god,” you let out in a breathy little moan, the feeling and the sight of him playing with your breasts causing the damp patch on your panties to grow even damper.

“Mm-mm,” he tuts gently. “I don’t think a deity is making you feel like this right now baby.” He grins as you let out another soft little whimper. “Who’s making you feel this way right now? Cmon…you can say it.” 

“Spencer!” you cry out as he rolls his hips against yours while he continues playing with your breasts, the friction causing a delicious pleasure to flood your senses. 

“Thats it angel,” he whispers against your lips with each slow roll of his hips. “Good job… I knew you could do it.” 

The praise he lavishes you with goes straight to your core, while he simultaneously reaches around to unhook the lacy bra, this time his fingers not fumbling at all. As it falls off he stares once again for a moment, before lowering his head to attach his lips around one peak while his hand paid attention to the other breast so it wasn’t neglected. He gently sucks and laves his tongue over it causing an exorbitant amount of high pitched noises to leave your lips. 

He detaches for a moment to gaze up into your eyes. 

“Is this good, angel? Do you want me to keep going or do you want something else?”

“It's so good,” you manage to choke out as he rolls your nipple between his fingers. “But can…can you use your mouth and fingers on me?” 

Of course, your cheeks pinken again and he grins. 

“Where do you want them baby?”

“You know where.”

“Uh-uh” he shakes his head, trying to hide the slight smirk that begins to form across his face. “I need you to say it. Do you think you can do that, huh? Tell me where you want my fingers and mouth. I need to know exactly.” 

“I want them…down there,” you manage to squeak out. 

He sighs as he shakes his head again.

“You’re going to have to be a lot more specific, beautiful girl,” he crawls down the length of your body. “‘Down there…,’” he leans down, his breath ghosting above your knee, “could be anywhere.”

He presses a kiss to your kneecap and then the side of it as you pout.

“Did you mean down here?”

“No…”

He grins and brushes a kiss to your inner thigh. 

“Then did you mean right here?”

“Spencer!” you whine again, looking down at him petulantly. 

“Tell me where, angel. Use your words,” he whispers looking up at you with soft eyes this time. “You can say it, it’s just me. I’m your husband. Don’t be embarrassed.”

You inhale softly, swayed by the love in his tone and the truth of his statement. 

“Can you use your fingers and your mouth…” your eyes duck down as your voice gets incrementally lower with every word that escapes your lips, “on my…on my pussy?”

Your voice comes out in the softest shyest whisper on the last word, but he still smiles gently.

“Of course baby,” murmurs and inches up a little bit to play with the little lace bow at the top of the edge of your panties. “Good girl, I’m so so proud of you for saying it.”

He presses a kiss to the bow, his lips skimming the lace and his fingers brushing over the wet patch that was increasingly becoming wetter. 

“You’re already so wet for me,” he says in a low tone, with a hint of pride. He begins to slowly inch the panties down your thighs and legs, like he was unveiling the most precious treasure in the world. “Look at you…” he breathes out, “so pretty and perfect. My wife. Made just for me.” 

You let out a breathy little gasp as his long fingers part your folds. He lowers his head so that his warm breath ghosts against your clit, and you whimper as you helplessly squirm. As you looked down upon his head between your legs— his hair fell in front of his forehead making him look even more handsome in the low lighting. 

He swipes his thumb against your aching clit, making you cry out as he relieves some of the tension. Your hips jump and he laughs softly and then... 

“Oh—” you gasp as his head finally lowers and he flicks his tongue against your clit, his hands gently holding your hips down in place. “Spencer I— ah!”

He continued licking at your clit, and then gently sucked at it, raising a high pitched sob from your throat. You could feel him alternate between flicking his tongue and suckling, the combination leaving you squirming and whimpering under his touch. 

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more pleasurable, he gently slipped a finger inside of you, moving it very slowly at first, and then finding a comfortable pace after he felt your walls adjust around him.

“Spencer it feels—” your words were cut off by the moan that you couldn’t help.

“Yeah baby, I know…it feels so good, I know,” he murmurs as he looks up then leans back down to suckle at your clit again. “You don’t have to say it, just let me keep taking care of you.” 

He continues to pump his fingers in you, adding a second one— then a third when he feels you’re ready. You could hear the obscene sound of your wetness as he licks and moves his fingers in and out, curling them until he hits that spot inside you. That spot that he knows will send you to the highest of heavens.

“Spence…mm..” you whimper. “M’close.”

He doubles down his efforts, but what sends hurtling over the edge of your orgasm was his whispered ‘I love you’ against your clit.

You shake and tremble through the waves of pleasure as he continues between your legs, licking and sucking as you ride out your orgasm.

When you finally lay panting, he presses one last quick kiss to your clit, the sensitivity making your hips slightly buck again and a soft whimper to leave your mouth. He makes his way back up to look into your eyes. 

“Hey,” he breathes out. “Are you okay?”. His eyes search your own. “You did so well, looked so beautiful.” 

“I’m good,” you whisper shakily, looking into his adoring gaze. “I…wow.”

He smiles gently and begins covering your forehead and cheeks in soft pecks.

“Do you want a hug?” he says softly, looking back up into your eyes. 

“Yes please,”  you whisper, wanting so desperately to be in his arms before he enters you again. 

He lights up, and pulls you into a hug, his lips brushing the top of your head. 

“I love you so much,” he hums out, rubbing your lower back. 

“I love you too,” you whisper back into his bare chest. 

He holds you tight for another minute, whispering soft ‘I love yous’ ever so often.

“I’m ready,” you whisper against his chest and he knows exactly what you mean. 

He kisses your forehead and sits up, beginning to slide his boxers off. You watch in soft adoration as they fall to the floor, and his pretty cock comes into view. You’ve never thought a cock could be thought of as pretty, but Spencer has proven you wrong time and time again.

You reach out to wrap your hand around it, but he gently catches your wrist in his own hand and holds it away.  

You begin to speak but he gently shakes his head, hair falling into his eyes.

“I want to make love to you now,” he breathes out as he eases you back onto the bed. “I want to be inside you and if you…touch me now…I might not last.”

When you're laying flat against the pillows again, his hands come up to hold onto yours beside your head. His eyes lock onto yours and you can feel all the love he has for you in his gaze. The emotion builds and builds in the silence until a lump forms in your throat and suddenly your eyes are stinging.

“Hey…hey,” he exhales, pressing his nose to yours, as you feel a drop of water make its way down your cheek. “Don’t cry, angel. I love you so so much. I’m right here. We’re married now,”. He swallows and now you can see that he’s on the verge of tears too. “You’re…You’re my wife now.”

He quickly swipes at his eyes before reaching back down to interlock your fingers again. He kisses each salty tear away with the aching tenderness that makes your heart squeeze. 

“I love you so much,” you breathe out as he reaches down to position the tip of himself against your entrance. 

“Love you back…my perfect girl…my wife,” he murmurs, kissing your forehead gently, then sweetly pecking your nose. “Ready, baby?” 

You nod, unable to speak, because if you do you might start crying again. 

He gives you the most gentle, the most impossibly sweet smile before he begins to sink into you. You squeeze his hands tight as he presses deeper slowly, taking his time to savor the first moment you are connected as husband and wife.  

You gasp as he goes as deep as he can go, his cock kissing the most inner parts of you. His forehead pressed against yours, and his eyes were closed. This was it. You felt every emotion spiral through you, both of your souls swirling and dancing around each other, connecting in the most intimate of ways. 

“God…” he breathes out, his voice trembling. “I love you with everything I am. You feel so good around me. You’re a perfect fit, like always. I don’t–...I can’t—,” he chokes out, taking another breath before continuing, “Every part of me belongs to every part of you.”

A tear rolls down your cheek, one that you both don’t bother brushing away. 

“I’m your girl forever,” you say shakily. “I want to be like this always. I never… I never want to be without you, Spencer,” You reach up to wrap your arms around his neck, drawing him closer, his chest, pressing against your own. “You’re my other half.” 

He swallows back the lump in his own throat, his Adam's apple bobbing, before he smiles softly and kisses your forehead.

“Us forever,” he whispers into your ear, then draws back to lock eyes with you, as he begins to thrust slowly. “It’s you and me.”

You gasped as his cock brushed against the most innermost part of you again and again. Every part of you was connected to every part of him. Each slow stroke sent sensations throughout your whole body— echoing into your bones. You clutched at his shoulders, fingers digging into his bare skin as he made love to you.

“That’s it, angel,” he whispers into your ear. “You’re doing so well. There you go,”. He looked at you with the kind of reverence one would show a religious landmark. You were the temple that he worshiped at. 

His thrusts remained slow but deep as he looked into your eyes— hitting that spot deep within you that made your whole body tense and clench around you. 

“Is that it?” he murmurs, reaching down to rub slow circles on your clit in tandem with his purposeful strokes. He smirks as you let out a high-pitched ‘ah’—hoisting your legs around his waist to pull him in deeper. “Yeah… that’s it.” 

"You don’t have to be so smug about it,” you manage to choke out between high pitched gasps. “I-oh,” your voice dissolves into the prettiest moan Spencer has ever heard. 

Spencer's breath hitched—any confident remark he was about to fire off gone as he felt your walls clench tightly around him again. He gazes at you like you were a miracle that he was somehow lucky enough to stumble into because, to him, you were. 

Spencer?” you whimper into his shoulder, as he adjusts your hips so he can hit that glorious spot each time. 

“Yeah, baby?”

“Harder…please.” 

Spencer's breath stutters at your whine, and you can hear the soft inhale he takes in your ear before he nods, adjusting his weight above you and starts to firmly thrust into you. The sound of the headboard rattling against the wall above you was almost erotic in its own way— knowing that Spencer was putting that much effort into bringing your pleasure that a whole king sized bed could shake. 

“You’re so good,” he breathes out as you clutch and cling to him, sensing you nearing the edge. “You’re my wife…my perfect girl.”

He keeps circling your clit, building you up through a steady rhythm instead of quickly trying to get you to your peak. As your body started to tense and tighten, he pressed kisses all over your cheeks and face, light brushes that were so light they felt like a feather caressing your face. 

“Baby, I’m close,” you whimper as your hips lift, chasing the friction of his hand as he thrusted. 

“I know,” he breathed out, kissing your collarbone. “You’re doing so well. Let me take care of you, I’m gonna get you there.” 

As he murmured sweet nothings in your ear, the waves of pleasure grew and grew until they reached their crest— and you shattered around him with a broken moan. 

“Spencer!” you cried as your body trembled and he held you so close it almost hurt but you didn’t care. 

“Let go baby,” He whispered as he continued with slow strokes as you rode out your orgasm. “I’m right here. I’ve got you. We have this forever.” 

You pant softly as you come down, him still thrusting gently trying not to overstimulate you as he reaches his own peak. 

“Fuck— baby,” he gasped out as you felt him tense then spill into you. “I love you.”

As you both catch your breath together, you look up into his eyes, a post orgasmic haze hovering around the both of you. Your hand lifts, trembling a bit, and you push the soft curls back from where they were hanging over his forehead into his eyes so you could have a clearer view. 

“You okay?” he whispers, studying every inch of your face to make sure there was no lingering soreness. “I went a little harder towards the end there. Was that okay?”

You smile because this was Spencer. Soft and sweet and yours. Always checking in and returning his gentle self after taking control and giving you the most pleasurable sensations you’ve ever felt in your life.

“Spencer,” you breathe out, pulling his head closer to yours to steal a kiss in between words. “That was amazing. Best wedding night ever.”

He presses another peck to your lips, then raises his head to look into your eyes with a silly smile forming on his lips. 

“Best wedding night ever?” he laughs, poking the tip of your nose. “This was your only wedding night ever.”

You giggle as you reach up to poke his nose back. 

“Yeah, but in my imagination if I had ever had any other wedding nights, this would be the best.” 

He caught your wrist before you could poke his nose again, and a slow smirk spread over his face before kissing your forehead over and over again. 

“I guess we just have to get married over and over to each other so we can have more wedding nights and do a comparison of all of them,” he smiles as you begin to giggle again, warmth from the sounds of your laugh spreading throughout your chest. “That way I can run a statistical analysis.” 

“Only you would suggest analyzing our wedding night for science,” you smile as he continues pressing kisses to your cheeks and forehead. 

He smiles as he leaves one more peck on your nose, before rolling off you and standing up.

“Where are you going?” you pout, the warmth that had been present only seconds ago now gone cold.

He smiles as he reaches down to stroke your hair.

“I am going to get something to clean you up,” he whispers, “and then…we’re going to order so much room service.”

You perked up immediately. 

“Room service? Can we get whatever we want?”

He laughs as he comes back with a warm washcloth, sitting beside you on the bed again. 

“Whatever we want, angel,” he says softly as he leans down to gently clean you between your thighs. His touch was so soft, wiping away whatever remained and soothing any lingering soreness. 

After he finished and quickly disposed of the washcloth, he lay back beside you and you immediately found yourself back in his arms— like you were two opposite ends of a magnet. 

“I love you,” he murmured against your forehead. “My lovely, perfect wife.”

You looked up from your cocoon in his arms, and met his eyes, overflowing with adoration.

“I love you too,” you whisper back, eyes fluttering as you tried to force yourself to keep them open— not wanting this night to end quicker than it had to.

“Hey,” Spencer breathed against your forehead, brushing a strand of hair out of your eyes, “you can go to sleep…I’ll be here. I’ll always be here. We have tomorrow like this, then our honeymoon… then forever.”

Your stomach flipped again at the mention of forever, as his breath warmed your ear. You were plastered to him, like you were an extension of his body. 

“Don’t let go,” is the only thing you come up with to whisper back, because if you tried to say more you might start crying from emotion like earlier. 

He immediately shakes his head, like even the notion was absurd.

“Never ever” he whispered back with one final sleepy kiss to your forehead.

You fall asleep mid mumble of ‘I love you’, and he just smiled against your forehead, squeezing even tighter. 

You didn’t have to finish the sentence. He already knew. You had forever to say it again, anyways. 

****

The first time you ask to stay over happens six months and eleven days into your relationship.

Not that Spencer is counting.

Except he is. Because Spencer counts everything.

Birthdays. Train schedules. Statistical probabilities. The number of days since your first date. The number of times you've laughed so hard you snorted and immediately denied it happened. The number of mornings he's woken up smiling because he remembered you exist.

Six months and eleven days. One hundred ninety-four days. Four thousand six hundred fifty-six hours.

Not counting leap years. Not counting daylight savings. Not counting the fact that he should probably stop doing that.

The point is:

You've been together long enough that this shouldn't feel like a milestone anymore.

And yet, somehow, it does.

Dinner had ended two hours ago. Neither of you noticed.

The television glows softly across the living room, playing something neither of you are actually watching.

Your legs are draped over his lap. One of your hands rests absentmindedly against his arm.

The contact should be distracting. Usually it is. Tonight it just makes him aware of how much he has to lose.

Spencer glances down. Your fingers are tracing lazy patterns against his sleeve. Comfortable. Thoughtless.

The kind of touch that comes from feeling safe with someone.

His chest tightens. Because you trust him. And he isn't entirely sure you've been given all the information required to make that decision.

The thought has been growing louder for weeks. Months, maybe.

Every time he leaves your apartment at one in the morning. Every time you yawn and ask if he's sure he doesn't want to stay. Every time he invents another excuse.

Early meeting. Paperwork. Consultation. Jet lag. Laundry.

He once claimed he needed to reorganize his bookshelf. His bookshelf. As if that couldn't wait until morning.

The worst part is that you never question it. Never push. Never make him feel guilty.

You simply smile and kiss him goodbye.

And somehow that makes it worse. Because eventually you're going to realize something is wrong.

You aren't a profiler. But you're observant.

And six months is a long time to avoid sleeping beside someone.

Especially when you spend almost every other waking hour together.

Spencer has known this conversation was coming. He's just been hoping he'd find a way around it first.

A solution. An explanation. Some magical arrangement where you never discover the parts of him he keeps hidden.

Unfortunately, reality remains stubbornly opposed to that plan.

Beside him, you glance toward the clock. Then toward him. Then back toward the clock.

And Spencer immediately knows.

The realization hits with all the subtlety of a freight train.

His stomach drops. Not because he doesn't want you to stay.

That's the problem. He wants you to stay so much it hurts.

He wants to wake up beside you. He wants sleepy morning conversations and tangled blankets and your toothbrush next to his. He wants every ordinary thing.

Every stupid little domestic thing.

He wants you here.

Which means he wants you close enough to see what happens when the lights go out. And that thought makes ice slide down his spine.

"Could I stay tonight?"

There it is.

The question lands gently. Softly. Almost casually, like you're asking if he wants another cup of coffee.

Spencer's heart immediately attempts escape. His pulse stumbles. His thoughts scatter.

And for one horrifying second all he can think is:

Not yet. Please not yet.

The reaction lasts less than a second.

Unfortunately, less than a second is more than enough time for you to notice.

"Spence?"

His gaze snaps toward you. Too fast. "What?"

You squint.

"You looked terrified."

No. No, he didn't. Probably.

Maybe.

Statistically speaking, facial expressions can occur in as little as one-fifteenth of a second, and human beings are remarkably skilled at detecting emotional changes.

That is not helping.

"Did I?"

You smile. Gentle. Concerned. And suddenly Spencer realizes he is profiling you.

Searching for signs. 

Confusion. Hurt. Doubt.

The same way he profiles witnesses. The same way he profiles suspects. The same way he profiles everyone except himself.

Because if he profiles himself, he has to admit the truth.

He's scared.

Not of you.

Of what happens after.

Of waking up gasping for air.

Of shouting a dead woman's name.

Of flinching away from hands that aren't actually hurting him.

Of seeing concern in your eyes.

Or worse.

Pity.

The nightmares aren't as frequent as they used to be. Most nights are fine. But all it takes is one.

One bad dream. One glimpse behind the curtain. One moment where you stop seeing Spencer Reid, accomplished FBI profiler and professor, and start seeing all the fractures underneath.

And Spencer isn't sure he can survive watching your opinion of him change.

Because he's spent six months falling hopelessly in love with you.

And somehow that makes honesty feel more terrifying than it ever has before.

"Spence?" you ask again.

The concern in your voice pulls him back into the room. Back to the couch. Back to your hand resting against his arm.

Back to the fact that you're looking at him like you've noticed something is wrong.

Because you have. Of course you have. You always do.

Spencer blinks. "What?"

You study him for a second. The way only people who know you well can. Not looking. Studying.

"You went somewhere."

His stomach sinks. Fantastic.

He's been dating you long enough that you've started noticing the signs.

The distant look. The silence. The way his gaze unfocuses when he's trapped inside his own head.

He should probably be touched by that. Instead, he's mostly horrified.

Because if you've learned how to recognize that look, what else have you learned?

What else have you noticed?

How many excuses have sounded exactly like excuses?

How many times have you watched him leave at midnight and wondered why?

The thought makes something twist painfully in his chest.

You deserve an answer. You deserved one months ago.

The problem is that every possible version of this conversation feels catastrophic.

Tell her.

The thought arrives immediately. Simple. Direct.

Tell her the truth.

Spencer swallows.

The truth is complicated. The truth is ugly. The truth includes things he doesn't like thinking about, let alone saying out loud.

The truth includes memories he keeps carefully boxed away.

And once those boxes are opened, he can't guarantee he'll get them closed again.

His gaze drops to your hand. 

Your fingers have stopped their movements, but your touch stays. Patient. Waiting.

God. He loves you.

The realization crashes through him with enough force to steal his breath.

Not that it's new.

He's known for a while now. Maybe since month three. Maybe before that.

But sometimes it still sneaks up on him.

The sheer magnitude of it. The impossible fact that someone this kind exists. That someone this wonderful chose him.

Which makes the next thought infinitely worse.

Because if he loves you, then eventually he has to trust you.

And trust requires honesty.

He knows that. Intellectually, he understands it perfectly.

Trust requires vulnerability. Vulnerability creates intimacy. Intimacy strengthens relationships.

There are studies. Thousands of studies.

He could probably cite several.

Unfortunately, knowing something and doing it are entirely different things.

Especially when the vulnerability in question involves admitting that sometimes he wakes up convinced he's dying. 

Sometimes he wakes up hearing gunshots that aren't there.

Sometimes he dreams about prison.

About Maeve.

About Hankel.

About blood.

About loss.

About all the ghosts that still follow him around when he's asleep.

And maybe that's the part he hates most.

Not that those things happened. That they still have power. Years later. Decades later in some cases.

He's supposed to be smarter than this. He's supposed to be stronger than this.

A ridiculous thought. An irrational thought.

One he'd immediately challenge if it came from anyone else.

Trauma doesn't work that way. Healing doesn't work that way.

He knows that. He teaches that. He tells victims that.

And yet somehow he's still holding himself to a different standard.

Because hypocrisy is apparently one of the many gifts trauma leaves behind.

"Spencer." Your voice is softer this time. Closer.

He realizes you've shifted toward him. Your hand covering his now. Warm.

His throat tightens. Because this is what he's afraid of losing.

Not the relationship. Not technically.

You.

Your hand in his. Your smile. The way you say his name.

The way you've slowly become his favorite part of every day.

He can survive heartbreak. People survive heartbreak all the time.

What terrifies him is watching disappointment replace affection in your eyes. 

Watching you realize he's more damaged than you thought. 

Watching you decide loving him is harder than it's worth.

The fear settles heavy in his stomach. Familiar and old.

The same fear that kept him from telling Maeve things.

The same fear that kept him isolated for years.

The same fear that whispers if people see everything, they'll leave.

You squeeze his hand. Just once. "I'm not trying to pressure you."

The words immediately make him feel worse.

Because of course you're not. You've never pressured him.

You would leave right now if he asked.

Smile. Kiss him goodnight. Tell him you'll see him tomorrow. No questions asked.

The realization hurts. Because suddenly he sees this moment from the outside.

Six months.

Six months of you respecting every boundary he never actually explained.

Six months of patience.

Six months of trust.

And all you've done is ask if you can stay.

A completely normal question.

A question that shouldn't feel like standing at the edge of a cliff.

Spencer exhales slowly.

He can do this. He should do this.

No.

More than that.

He's tired.

Tired of calculating escape routes. Tired of leaving when he wants to stay. Tired of pretending there's nothing behind the curtain. 

Tired of carrying pieces of himself alone.

The thought surprises him.

Because somewhere beneath the fear is something else.

Something quieter.

A hope he doesn't quite know what to do with.

Maybe you're not going to leave.

Maybe you've spent six months proving exactly that.

Maybe every terrible scenario his brain keeps producing is wrong.

Maybe.

Your thumb brushes across his knuckles. The movement is small. Barely noticeable.

It feels enormous.

And for the first time all evening, Spencer realizes there might not be a version of tonight where he avoids it.

The thought should terrify him.

Instead it feels strangely inevitable.

Like reaching the last page of a chapter he's been putting off reading.

You tilt your head slightly. "What's wrong?"

“Nothing is wrong,” he admits quietly. “I'm just…”

The words trail off. Because he doesn't know how to finish that sentence.

I'm scared.

The truth is embarrassingly simple.

Not scared of you. Not scared of commitment. Not scared of sharing his space or waking up beside someone or any of the things people usually mean when they talk about relationships.

He's scared of sleeping. Scared of what sleep sometimes turns him into.

Scared of what you might see.

You wait. Patiently.

Never rushing him. Never filling the silence.

Spencer has spent enough time around people to know how rare that is.

Most people become uncomfortable with silence after four seconds.

You've been sitting in it for nearly thirty.

Just giving him room.

His chest aches. "I'm not very good at this."

A small smile touches your mouth. "Talking?"

"Being vulnerable."

The smile fades. Not because you've taken offense. Because you understand that's different.

Much different.

Your thumb brushes over his knuckles again. "I know."

The answer catches him off guard.

His brows draw together. "You do?"

You huff a quiet laugh. "Spencer." The fondness in your voice makes something twist painfully in his chest. "I adore you."

His heart immediately forgets how to function.

You continue before he can short-circuit entirely. "But you don't exactly make vulnerability easy."

Mortification arrives instantly.

Because you're right.

He's spent six months carefully revealing pieces of himself while hiding entire sections of the map.

You've told him stories about childhood embarrassments and college disasters and family arguments and insecurities.

Meanwhile he's been treating emotional intimacy like a classified government document.

The realization is uncomfortable.

Accurate. But uncomfortable.

You squeeze his hand. "That's okay." Your voice softens. "You don't have to tell me things before you're ready."

And there it is.

The escape route. The opening. The easy way out.

You aren't demanding answers. You aren't pushing. You aren't asking questions.

You are giving him permission to avoid this conversation.

And for a split second Spencer wants to take it.

Because leaving would be easy. Smiling would be easy. Changing the subject would be easy.

He could kiss you. Tell you he'd love for you to stay. Pretend everything is fine.

Hope for the best.

The problem is that hope isn't a strategy. And eventually the nightmare would come.

Eventually he'd wake up gasping for air. Or shouting. Or reaching for a gun that isn't there.

Eventually you'd see anyway. And then he'd have to explain it afterward.

The thought makes him feel sick.

No. You deserve better than that.

You deserve honesty.

Even if he's terrible at it.

Especially because he's terrible at it.

Spencer stares at your intertwined hands. At the way your fingers fit between his. At the simple, ordinary intimacy of it.

Then he takes a breath.

“Sometimes I have nightmares.”

The words settle into the space between you. Small. Simple.

Terrifying.

Because Spencer has spent months avoiding a conversation that begins with exactly those three words.

You blink. "Oh."

Not alarmed. Not frightened. Just surprised.

The reaction catches him off guard.

Because somehow he'd prepared for worse. Prepared for concern. Prepared for questions.

Prepared for that subtle shift people get when they realize someone is carrying more baggage than they expected.

Instead, you just look at him. Waiting. Listening.

Giving him room.

His chest tightens.

You squeeze his hand gently. “Okay."

The word is soft. Easy. As if he's told you he gets headaches. As if nightmares aren't the thing that's been haunting him for years.

As if this doesn't feel like peeling his ribs open and handing you his heart.

You tilt your head. "Can I ask about what?"

The question is careful. Not demanding or pushing for answers.

Spencer closes his eyes. Immediately regrets it.

Because the darkness behind his eyelids isn't empty.

It never is.

Maeve's face flashes first. Always Maeve. A ringing phone. A gun. Blood.

Then prison. Concrete walls. Heat. The smell. The feeling of never quite knowing whether he'd survive until morning.

Then Hankel. The cabin. The tape. The needle. The helpless certainty that he was going to die. The struggle that came with surviving.

His eyes remain closed. 

"A lot of things," he says quietly. The words come out rough and painfully inadequate.

Because how do you summarize twenty years of accumulated trauma in two words?

How do you condense grief and violence and fear into something another person can hold?

You don't respond immediately. And Spencer hates that he notices.

Three seconds. Four. Five.

Long enough for panic to start building. Long enough for his brain to begin filling the silence with possibilities.

Too much.

You shouldn't have said anything.

She's uncomfortable.

She's trying to figure out how to respond.

She's realizing this is more complicated than she thought.

The spiral gains momentum frighteningly fast.

Then your thumb brushes over his knuckles. Once. A simple touch physically. But the emotional equivalent of reaching through the fog and turning on a light.

Spencer opens his eyes.

You're still looking at him, eyes full of concern.

The genuine kind. The kind that somehow feels worse.

Because concern means you care. And caring means you can get hurt.

"I don't really know where to start," he admits.

That feels safer. More honest.

Because the truth is he doesn't.

Does he start with the first dead body he saw?

His father leaving?

His mother's illness?

Maeve?

Hankel?

Prison?

Addiction?

The list is so long it feels absurd.

Like reading a résumé nobody should have.

You offer him a small smile.

"Maybe you don't have to start with everything."

The suggestion lands gently. Like you're tossing him a rope. Not dragging him anywhere, just offering something to hold onto.

Spencer stares at you.

You're making this harder.

Not because you're asking questions. Because you're being kind.

If you'd judged him, he could have shut down. If you'd gotten uncomfortable, he could have changed the subject. If you'd pulled away, he would know what to do.

Rejection is familiar territory.

This?

This terrifying patience? This willingness to sit beside him while he figures out how to speak?

He has no defense against it.

His throat tightens. "You know I work violent crimes."

You nod.

"Yeah."

"Some of the nightmares are from cases."

That part is easy. Or… easier.

The socially acceptable trauma. The kind people expect from FBI agents. The kind that doesn't require explaining who he was before.

"The others?" Your voice is barely above a whisper.

Spencer looks away. Toward the television. Toward the darkened window.

Anywhere except your eyes.

Because your eyes make him want to tell the truth. And the truth is terrifying.

His pulse pounds. 

The room suddenly feels too warm. Too small.

Like he's standing on the edge of something.

You deserve honesty.

The thought returns, persistent and unavoidable.

You deserve honesty.

Spencer exhales slowly. Then says the first thing that comes to mind.

"The woman I was in love with was murdered."

The words leave the room silent.

No cushioning. No softening. No profiler language.

Just the truth.

For a moment Spencer can't bring himself to look at you. His pulse pounds against his ribs as the confession settles between you, heavy and permanent. There are some things that can't be taken back once they're spoken aloud. This is one of them.

He's waiting for questions. Waiting for shock. Waiting for that subtle shift he's been dreading for months.

Instead, your fingers tighten around his.

Not enough to hurt. Just enough to remind him you're there.

The gesture nearly undoes him.

Because somehow that's worse. Worse than judgment. Worse than discomfort.

Kindness always has been.

"Her name was Maeve," he says quietly.

The words come before he consciously decides to say them. And suddenly something inside him gives way.

Because for six months he's been carefully managing this. Carefully separating the man you've fallen in love with from the pieces of himself he keeps locked away. He's spent so long making sure the boxes stayed closed that he never considered what might happen if one of them opened.

Now the lid is off.

And once he starts talking, he can't seem to stop.

"We met because I was having migraines and she looked at my MRIs. She was being stalked," he says, staring at your joined hands. "She spent months hiding. We talked on the phone for a long time before we ever met in person."

His throat tightens.

"I spent months trying to keep her safe."

The memory rises immediately. The phone call. The warehouse. The gun.

"Then somebody kidnapped her."

His voice sounds distant. Detached. Like he's reporting a fact instead of reliving the worst day of his life.

"She died in front of me."

The room goes very quiet. Spencer swallows hard.

"Sometimes I still dream about that. I know she's dead. Intellectually, I know exactly what happened. I know there was nothing I could have done differently. I know grief doesn't work that way."

A humorless laugh slips out.

"But dreams don't really care what you know."

His gaze drifts toward the dark television screen.

"Sometimes she's alive. Sometimes we're talking. Sometimes we're finally getting the life we were supposed to have." His jaw tightens. "And then I wake up."

The silence stretches.

You don't interrupt him. You don't rush to reassure him.

You just listen. And maybe that's why the next words come so easily.

"I was kidnapped." The confession falls from his mouth before he can reconsider it. "I was tortured."

Another memory surfaces immediately. A cabin. Chains. A needle. The feeling of absolute certainty that he was going to die.

"It happened more than once. I developed an addiction afterward."

There it is. The one he hates saying out loud. 

Even now. Years later. Even after everything.

His stomach twists.

"I got clean," he says quickly. "I did. A long time ago."

As if you're accusing him. As if you're judging him. As if he needs to defend himself before you've even spoken.

The realization makes him feel ridiculous.

But the words keep coming anyway.

"Then I went to prison."

Your head lifts slightly. The first visible surprise all evening. And immediately Spencer feels panic flare in his chest.

"I was framed," he blurts. "I didn't actually kill anyone. I know that sounds terrible, but I was arrested in Mexico and spent almost three months there and..."

He stops.

Listen to yourself. You sound guilty.

You sound exactly like someone trying to convince another person they're innocent.

Heat floods his face.

"I didn't," he says quietly.

The words feel pathetic the second they leave his mouth.

"I know." The answer comes immediately. Softly. Without hesitation.

Spencer freezes. His gaze finally lifts to yours.

And for the first time all evening he realizes… You haven't pulled away. Not once.

Not when he mentioned Maeve.

Not when he mentioned addiction.

Not when he mentioned prison.

Not now.

Your hand is still wrapped around his. Your body is still angled toward him.

You're still here.

The realization should make him feel better. Instead, it makes his chest ache.

Because now he's painfully aware of how afraid he's been. How long he's carried that fear.

How many nights he's convinced himself that if you saw everything, you'd leave.

"I think I was afraid," he admits quietly.

The words are barely audible.

His gaze drops back to your hands.

"I think I was afraid you'd hear all of this and realize I'm more complicated than you signed up for."

A small, broken laugh escapes him.

"Which is probably the understatement of the century." 

His throat tightens. 

"I didn't want you to see me differently."

And there it is.

Not prison. Not the addiction. Not Maeve.

The real confession.

Spencer stares at the floor, waiting to find out if he was right.

The silence only lasts a few seconds, but it's enough. Enough for his brain to begin constructing worst-case scenarios with the efficiency of a machine built specifically for that purpose. Maybe you're choosing your words carefully. Maybe you're trying to figure out how to let him down gently. Maybe you're realizing this relationship comes with more complications than you expected.

Then your hand squeezes his.

Not hard. Just enough to pull him back into the room.

"Spence." His name sounds impossibly soft in your voice.

He forces himself to look up.

You're already watching him, and what he finds in your expression makes something in his chest ache.

Because it isn't fear.

It isn't pity.

It isn't regret.

It's sadness.

Not for yourself.

For him.

"You don't see me differently?" he asks before he can stop himself.

The question comes out quieter than he intended, vulnerable in a way that immediately makes him regret asking it.

Your brow furrows. "Spencer, you're still you."

The certainty in your voice catches him off guard.

"You're still the man who spent forty minutes explaining the history of fountain pens because I casually mentioned I liked mine. You're still the guy who remembers exactly how I take my coffee. You're still the person who drives across the city when I have a bad day and pretends it wasn't a big deal."

A small smile touches your mouth.

"You having a past doesn't change any of that."

Spencer swallows. "It feels like it should."

The admission slips out before he can stop it.

Your expression softens immediately. "Why?"

He laughs quietly, though there's very little humor in it. "Because most people don't have a list like that."

"Spencer." The fond exasperation in your voice is painfully familiar. "Most people don't spend their days hunting serial killers either."

Despite himself, a tiny huff of laughter escapes him.

You continue before he can argue. "What exactly do you think changed here? Because from where I'm sitting, you're still the same person you were an hour ago. You told me things that happened to you. Horrible things. Traumatic things. But they're things that happened to you."

Your thumb brushes over his knuckles.

"They aren't who you are."

The words hit harder than he expects.

Because that's the distinction he's never been very good at making.

Somewhere along the way, the things that happened and the person they happened to became tangled together.

You seem to notice the thought crossing his face.

"I don't hear prison and think criminal," you say softly. "I hear prison and think that must have been terrifying. I don't hear addiction and think less of you. I think about how hard it must have been to fight your way back from that. And Maeve..." Your voice gentles further. "I just think that's heartbreaking."

Spencer looks away.

The lump in his throat arrives so suddenly it catches him off guard.

Because you aren't dismissing it.

You aren't pretending those things don't matter.

You're acknowledging exactly how much they matter and somehow loving him anyway.

The realization leaves him feeling strangely unsteady. "I spent a few months worrying about telling you."

The confession escapes before he can stop it.

Your eyes widen slightly. "A few months?"

"Probably longer."

A laugh escapes you, soft and disbelieving. "Spencer."

The way you say his name makes his chest ache.

"You really thought I was going to leave because you've been through traumatic things?"

When you phrase it that way, it sounds absurd.

Embarrassingly absurd.

And yet.

"Maybe."

Your expression shifts then. Not disappointment. Not frustration.

Understanding. The kind that sees directly through every defense he's built.

His pulse stumbles. "I didn't want you to think I was broken."

The words come out barely above a whisper.

For a moment neither of you speak.

Then your free hand lifts and gently cups his cheek.

The touch is so unexpected that his breath catches.

"Spencer."

His eyes close briefly.

Just hearing his name spoken like that hurts in the best possible way.

When he opens them again, you're smiling. Small. Certain. Unshakably sincere.

"I don't think you're broken."

His chest tightens.

"Not even a little. I think you're human. I think you've survived things nobody should have to survive. I think you've spent a very long time carrying those things by yourself." Your thumb brushes lightly across his skin. "But when I look at you, I don't see prison. I don't see addiction. I don't see trauma."

Your smile softens.

"I just see Spencer."

Somehow those words hit harder than everything else.

Because you've heard some of the worst parts.

The pieces he's spent months trying to hide.

You've looked directly at them.

And you're still looking at him.

Spencer arrives twenty-three minutes early.

Not because he means to, or because he's particularly eager, or because he spent the entire drive second-guessing whether the navy tie looked better than the burgundy one.

Twenty-three minutes early is simply what happens when Spencer Reid is nervous.

The restaurant isn't busy yet. Early evening sunlight spills through the front windows, painting everything gold and warm. The hostess smiles when he gives his name, leading him to a small table near the window.

"Your date isn't here yet," she says.

The words make his stomach immediately perform a complicated gymnastic routine.

Your date. Right.

He thanks her, sits down, and immediately regrets sitting down.

His tie feels crooked. He adjusts it. Then adjusts it again. Then once more for good measure.

It's probably fine. It was fine the first time.

Spencer knows repeatedly adjusting it only increases the likelihood of making it worse.

That doesn't stop him.

The waiter brings water. Spencer thanks him.

He checks his watch. It's only been three minutes.

Wonderful. At this rate he'll experience approximately six hundred years before you arrive.

He takes a sip of water. Checks the door. Looks away. Checks the door again.

This is ridiculous.

He's thirty-eight years old. He's negotiated with serial killers. He's stared down armed suspects. He's survived situations that should have terrified him far more than a first date.

And yet somehow the prospect of meeting one woman from a dating app has him feeling sixteen.

His fingers tap against the table in an attempt to burn off some nervous energy.

The problem is, he already really likes you.

If he'd only exchanged a few messages with you, maybe this would be easier.

Instead, the two of you have spent weeks talking.

Weeks.

It started innocently enough. A few messages. A conversation about books. A debate about whether pineapple belongs on pizza. A discussion about terrible movie adaptations.

Then suddenly it was two in the morning and he was smiling at his phone like an idiot.

Now he knows your favorite color. Your favorite coffee order. The name of the stuffed animal you had as a child. The fact that you always cry during animal rescue videos but refuse to cry during actual sad movies.

He knows dozens of tiny things. Enough to feel attached. Not enough to know whether you'll look at him and immediately realize he's awkward. Or too old. Or strange. Or all of the above.

His gaze drifts toward the window.

He doesn't want to, but he thinks about the absolute disaster that had been getting ready for tonight.

Spencer has never considered himself particularly fashionable.

He owns clothes. The clothes fit. Most of them are clean. Historically, that's been enough. Apparently not anymore.

His bedroom had looked like a crime scene by the time he'd left.

One involving button-down shirts.

The blue one had been too formal. The green one had felt too casual. The gray one had somehow made him look older, which had immediately been discarded for reasons he absolutely did not want to examine too closely.

Then there had been the sweater debate.

The sweater had lasted nearly twenty minutes. Because sweaters are approachable. But maybe too approachable.

Maybe they made him look like a professor. Which he technically was.

But he didn't want to look like your professor. That thought alone had nearly sent him spiraling.

Perhaps for the first time in his life, Spencer found himself acutely aware of every year he'd lived.

Every line at the corners of his eyes. Every indication that he'd spent decades working impossible hours and carrying impossible things.

He'd stood in front of the mirror staring at himself longer than he cared to admit.

Trying to see what you would see. Trying and failing.

The problem with being a profiler is that he's exceptionally good at analyzing other people.

Himself?

Not so much.

He'd almost texted you.

I don't know what people wear on first dates anymore.

Then he'd spent several minutes staring at the message before deleting it. Because somehow admitting he could discuss quantum mechanics but couldn't choose a shirt felt too embarrassing.

In the end, he'd settled on the navy tie. The white button-down. The charcoal jacket.

Simple. Safe. Reasonable.

Which meant he'd spent the entire drive wondering if he'd made the wrong choice.

And now, sitting at the table, he resists the urge to adjust his tie again. Mostly because he's fairly certain he'll accidentally strangle himself if he keeps touching it.

The restaurant door opens. His eyes lift automatically. His heart skips.

Not you. A middle-aged couple.

Spencer immediately looks away. Then silently wonders if you're doing the same thing.

If you're checking your reflection in the mirror one last time. If you're second-guessing your outfit. If you're nervous too.

The thought settles something warm in his chest.

Because maybe he's not the only one hoping reality lives up to weeks of late-night conversations. Maybe you're just as scared of being disappointed. Maybe you're just as excited. Maybe you're sitting in your car right now trying to gather the courage to walk inside.

That possibility makes him smile.

The restaurant door opens again. Spencer glances up automatically.

And this time, it's you.

For a moment, his brain simply stops working. Because somehow, impossibly, you look even prettier than your pictures.

Your photos had been beautiful. He'd stared at them often enough to know that.

The picture of you holding an iced coffee and squinting into the sun. The one with a dog you'd met at a park. The blurry selfie you'd sent after accidentally staying awake until three in the morning talking to him.

He knows those pictures. But they hadn't prepared him for this.

For the way you move. For your smile. For the warmth in your eyes when they find him across the restaurant. 

For the fact that you're real.

Not a collection of messages on a screen. Not a voice note. Not a photograph.

You.

Actually here.

His heart immediately forgets how it's supposed to function.

You spot him and smile. And Spencer is on his feet before he even realizes he's moving. The chair scrapes softly against the floor. 

Too fast. Definitely too fast.

Normal people don't stand up that quickly. Do they?

His hands immediately become a problem.

Should he wave? Put them in his pockets? No, that's weird.

Cross his arms? That's weirder.

Shake your hand? Absolutely not. Who shakes hands on a date?

For a horrifying second he becomes intensely aware of the existence of his hands.

They're just there. Attached to him. Doing nothing useful.

You reach the table before he figures out a solution.

"Hi." Your smile widens. The sound of your voice in person nearly knocks the air from his lungs.

It's familiar. And completely different. Warmer. Softer. Real.

"Hi." The word comes out slightly strangled.

Fantastic. Great start.

You don't seem to notice. Or if you do, you're kind enough not to mention it.

Spencer swallows. His brain desperately searches for something intelligent to say. 

Something charming. Something worthy of the countless conversations you've already shared. Instead, what comes out is:

"You look really pretty."

The second the words leave his mouth, he wants to die. Not because they're untrue. Because they're painfully, embarrassingly inadequate.

Pretty?

Pretty?

That's the best his vocabulary can do?

He knows over a hundred thousand words. And somehow his brain picked pretty.

But then you smile. A little surprised. A little shy.

And suddenly he doesn't care.

"Thank you," you say softly. "You look handsome."

Handsome.

The word lands somewhere directly in his chest.

Spencer is fairly certain nobody has ever called him handsome and survived the resulting internal catastrophe.

His face grows warm. Very warm. Dangerously warm.

You laugh quietly, the sound laced wtih fondness.

And somehow that's even worse. Or better. Possibly both.

"Can I tell you something?" you ask.

He nods immediately. "Of course."

"I was really nervous."

The confession catches him off guard. "You were?"

"Extremely." You glance down briefly before looking back up at him. "I sat in my car for like ten minutes."

Spencer stares.

Then, despite himself, laughs—bright and startled, relief flooding through him all at once.

"Really?"

"Really." You point at him. "And don't look so smug. You were probably nervous too."

Spencer presses his lips together. "I got here twenty-three minutes early."

The silence lasts approximately one second.

Then you're laughing again.

The sound fills the space between you. Easy. Comfortable. Familiar.

Like the two of you have been having this conversation for years instead of thirty seconds.

And just like that, some of the tension melts away.

Not all of it. His pulse is still racing. His palms are still slightly sweaty.

You're still so beautiful it's actively distracting.

But for the first time since arriving, Spencer feels something stronger than nerves.

Hope.

Because you're smiling at him the same way you smiled through your pictures. The same way you smiled through video calls. The same way you smiled whenever his messages made you laugh.

And as he pulls out your chair for you, he can't stop thinking one thing.

Thank God.

His eyes flicked toward the floor, like he wasn’t sure if he’d be let in. Like he’d shown up prepared to leave again. I didn’t move.

“I brought you soup. And tea. And mini M&Ms. I wasn’t sure what you’d be in the mood for.”

I sighed and stepped aside, and he walked in quietly.

He put the bag down and turned. “I thought I was doing the right thing. Leaving. You deserve so much better than someone like me dragging you down.”

I swallowed. “You don’t get to decide what I deserve, Spencer. That’s up to me.”

His voice cracked. “I know. I just… I thought I was protecting you.”

“I know that’s what you thought, but you weren’t. You were protecting yourself from the idea that someone might love you, even like this.”

He stared at me.

“I do, you know,” I said. “Love you. Even like this. Especially like this.”

He blinked, and the air between us trembled with everything he wasn’t saying. That he hadn’t believed it. That maybe, still, part of him didn’t.

He stayed quiet for a long beat before responding. “What I said to you… that night. Accusing you of wanting to play nurse and fix me — that wasn’t fair. I know you were coming from a good place, because you love me and want me to be okay. I know you don’t see me as a patient. It was wrong of me to say that.” He paused and steadied himself before continuing. “And calling you the woman I’m sleeping with…” He swallowed, jaw tight. “That was cruel. And reductive. And I knew it the second it came out of my mouth.”

I stood still.

“I was angry and ashamed and spiraling,” he said. “But none of that excuses saying something that small about someone I love more than anything.”

My breath caught.

His voice was raw now, stripped down to the bone. “And that’s not how I see you. You’re not a warm body in my bed. You’re… you,” he said. “You’re the person who made my life feel like it was worth living again. Who taught me how to breathe after I forgot how. You’re not even just my girlfriend — you’re my partner. My future. You’re my entire world, honestly. I love you, and I’ve never, ever seen you like that. I can’t take back the fact that I said it, but I’m so unbelievably sorry that I did.”

Tears pricked the backs of my eyes. I swallowed. “I didn’t mean to push you so hard.”

“I know.” He stepped forward, slowly, then added, quietly, “But you were right to push me. I do need help, and I am scared.”

“I know, Spence.” My voice broke, and he reached up instinctively, brushing his thumb along my cheek like muscle memory.

“I don’t want to lose you. I don’t actually think we aren’t ready for this. I don’t actually want to break up,” he said quietly.

“I was never going to let that happen anyways. When you knocked, I was halfway through drafting a text to Penelope asking her to hack your phone’s GPS so I could come confront you, wherever you’ve been hiding.”

He let out a quiet sound almost resembling a laugh and closed the remaining distance between us, pulling me in. We stood in the kitchen, his rain-drenched clothes soaking mine as he held me, his arms around my waist, my face in his shoulder.

“I am so sorry,” he whispered. “I choose you. Even when I’m a mess. Even when I’m not okay.”

“I choose you too,” I whispered back. “Every version.”

”I missed you every second,” he murmured. “JJ and Will’s couch might’ve permanently realigned my spine into an S-shape.”

I huffed out a breath of laughter and buried my face deeper against his skin. “I missed you too. Every single second.”

He pulled back to look at me, eyes soft and finally looking like his own again. Then, tentatively, achingly slowly, he began to lean in. I tangled my fingers in his wet curls, pulled him down the rest of the way, and kissed him, soft and true.

There’s no tidy solution to trauma or grief. No final answer you can circle in ink and get a gold star for. But this was how we found our way back: with honest conversation and rain-soaked embraces.

Later, in bed, skin still warm from where we’d found each other again, he traced numbers and shapes along the bare curves of my body. Fibonacci spirals. Möbius strips. All the patterns that don’t quite make sense until you stand back far enough.

“I’m going to try therapy,” he said quietly. “Not just because you asked, but because I want to. I think I need to.”

I kissed his forehead, his temple, the corner of his mouth. “I’m proud of you.”

He looked at me then — really looked — before speaking again. “And I think I want to spend the rest of my life figuring out how to be with you forever.”

Tears burned, but I smiled. “I’d like that. A lot.”

I let myself imagine our future: slow mornings, stupid arguments, soft reconciliations, nights spent knowing his body better than my own, and all the quiet moments in between. Not perfect, but perfectly ours.

—

3 months later:

Rain fell softly outside, a quiet insistence — not mournful, not loud, just steady. Like something true repeating itself. It sounded the way belonging feels — that was the second thing I thought of when I woke up. The first was Spencer. It was always Spencer. My Spencer.

He was curled beside me, one arm slung over the blanket we shared, hair damp with sweat at the temple, breath slow and even. His limbs were gathered close, body curved toward the center like a sleeping cat in a patch of light — a soft animal. I watched the rise and fall of his shoulders and let the weight of the moment settle.

Today marked one year since the night he called me. That first night after his release, when he asked — quietly, hopefully — if I’d come see him. We hadn’t been anything official then, not in name. But we’d already been something real. Spencer and I had never really settled on a proper anniversary, but that night always made the most sense in my mind. It was the beginning of the life we had now built together.

It had been a few months since the worst of it — the fight and distance that felt like the beginning of the end. Since then, things had softened. Spencer was teaching a little more and traveling with the BAU a little less, and he’d started therapy, quietly but consistently. The weight he carried began to lighten and shift in ways I could feel more than I could see. And every few sessions, I joined him. It was good for us — we’d learned how to argue better. How to step away and come back. How to hurt each other less and heal each other more.

Beside me, I listened to Spencer breathe. I didn’t want to move — not yet. The air was cool, the light was golden, and Spencer — safe and warm and mine — had that expression he only wore in sleep. A kind of innocence, but deeper. Like trust. Like a peace, hard-won.

I felt a soft ache in my thighs, ghosted reminders of last night’s closeness — hands, mouths, bodies. He stirred with a sigh, lashes fluttering, mouth twitching in a sleep-dumb smile. “Hey,” he mumbled in that gravelly morning voice I adored so much.

“Hi.” I shifted closer and pressed a kiss to his cheek. He hummed.

We didn’t say anything else for a while. There was no need. Our legs tangled like instinct, and I tucked my head beneath his chin while his hand found the curve of my waist. The window blurred with rain. A few birds called in the distance. And the world, impossibly, kept going.

His hand slid up beneath the hem of the t-shirt I wore — his t-shirt, the one with FBI Academy across the chest in faded screen print, the same one I’d worn that very first night — fingers dragging slowly along the bare skin of my thigh. A quiet question.

I turned to face him fully, brushing the hair back from his forehead, and nodded.

We didn’t rush. There was no urgency, no script. Just the slow unfurling of touch, of breath, of want. His mouth found mine with reverence, and the heat that bloomed between us was steady and sure.

He undressed me like he was unwrapping something fragile, not because I’d break, but because he wanted to savor it. I did the same. He whispered my name like it was the only word he knew. I kissed the scar on his palm, the one I’d first seen when he was still learning how to sleep with the lights off.

We moved together like we’d done it a hundred times, because we had. But this time felt different — softer, deeper, threaded through with memory and meaning.

He always touched me like he was still a little in awe that he was allowed to. Like every pass of his hands over my skin was both permission and prayer. His hand cradled my hip as he slid inside me, and we both stilled for a moment — just breathing, just being. His forehead rested against mine as we started to move, lazy and deep, like we had all the time in the world. Like we’d made it, finally, to the soft middle of our story.

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and pulled him closer, letting my legs fall open around him. Our bodies moved together like a tide, steady and slow. Every rock of his hips made my breath catch, made my hands grasp for more.

He kept whispering things — my name, yes, but also small, ridiculous things that made me smile or laugh and then moan or gasp. “Still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” and “I miss you even while I’m inside you, like I can never get enough,” and “I think my IQ drops at least twenty points when you do that,” and “I never want this to end.” His voice broke on that last one, and I kissed it back together.

When I came, it was with a soft cry against his shoulder, my hands buried in his hair, my whole body arching up to meet his. He followed seconds later, gasping my name like it was the only word he remembered, burying himself deep as he spilled inside me.

Afterwards, we didn’t move for a while. Our legs tangled, our chests rising together, our skin slick with sweat and love and everything we hadn’t needed to say out loud. He pressed a kiss just under my jaw and I held him tighter, just because I could.

“I love you,” he murmured, eyes closed.

I kissed his shoulder. “And I love you.”

—

After we finally pulled ourselves out of bed and shared a shower, he wrapped a towel around his waist, grabbed a book, and settled back against the headboard. His thumb dragged across the page as he read. I rested my cheek on his shoulder.

Eventually, I asked for a random fact to break up the silence.

“Sloths,” he said immediately without even looking up, “can hold their breath longer than dolphins. Up to forty minutes.”

I snorted. “Liar.”

“It’s true.” He looked over, eyes bright. “They slow their heart rate so much they barely use oxygen.”

“Survival through stillness,” I said quietly.

He nodded. “It’s efficient.”

But I didn’t see it as only efficiency. I thought about stillness as resistance. As hope. As the wild, quiet insistence that you deserve to be here — even if you move slowly, even if it’s hard.

—

The kitchen smelled like citrus and coffee. I wore his Caltech hoodie, sleeves swallowing my hands, and he handed me a mug with both palms like it was something sacred. In a way, it was.

Breakfast was slow. Toast. Fruit. A hard-boiled egg that refused to peel properly. He cursed under his breath and I pretended not to laugh until he caught me holding it in. His expression — affronted and mildly betrayed — made me want to climb onto his lap and kiss him right there at the table with jam still on my fingers.

He refilled my coffee without being asked. I handed him half my toast, and he gave me some of his grapes. We bumped knees under the table.

Later, he leaned against the counter while I sliced apples and tried to sneak one, only to flinch back when I playfully raised the knife in faux-threat.

“You’re ruthless,” he said, half-smiling.

“You tried to steal from the chef,” I replied, laying my weapon down.

He pulled me in by the hips and kissed my temple. “Happy anniversary, by the way.”

I looked up. “You remembered?”

“You know I remember everything,” he teased. “But even if I didn’t, I’d always remember that night.”

—

The rest of the day passed in pieces. Brushing our teeth together. Crosswords on the living room floor. A kiss pressed behind my ear when he thought I was dozing. I noticed him watching me like he still couldn’t believe this was real — that we were.

At one point, he touched my ankle under the blanket on the couch and said, “Do you think we’ll ever mess this up?”

I looked at him for a long time, then shifted until I was leaning against him.

“In some small, human way, maybe. But not in the ways we can’t come back from. We’ll always find our way back to each other, I know that much for certain.”

He leaned his forehead to mine. “You make it easier.”

“You make it worth it.”

He didn’t answer — just cradled my chin between his fingers and kissed me softly, slowly. Like we had time. Like we always would.

—

Later, while he diced carrots and celery and onion with absurd precision for the bolognese sauce we were making for dinner (Rossi’s recipe, of course), I leaned against the counter and watched his hands. And for just a moment, I remembered the version of him I first met — the one who flinched at loud noises and slept facing the door. The one who told me he didn’t need to be fixed, just carried.

He still wasn’t totally okay, but he was healing. And I got to witness it. I got to love him through it.

I stole a carrot from the cutting board, and he swatted my hand.

“You’re not as stealthy as you think.”

“Oh, I’m exactly as stealthy as I think.”

He said my name like it was a full sentence, and I said his back. We grinned at each other like idiots.

Once we finally stopped distracting each other long enough to finish cooking dinner, we ate with our legs touching under the table. He told me about a new academic journal he was reading. I told him about a coworker who made me laugh. He offered to do the dishes, then pulled me along to sit on the counter while he did.

I watched him with a full chest.

This life — soft, boring, beautiful — was one we built together. And it didn’t scare either of us anymore.

—

Dusk settled in cool and forgiving. The rain thinned a bit, so we cracked a window and let the breeze in. I lit a few candles. He curled behind me on the couch, tracing patterns on my back — sometimes spirals, sometimes words, sometimes nothing particular at all.

His voice was low. “Feels like it’s been longer, doesn’t it?”

I nodded. “In the best way.”

“Sometimes I can still picture you in the doorway that night,” he murmured. “The way you looked at me before falling into my arms. I think I knew right then and there that you were it for me.”

I leaned back into him. “I think I knew it, too.”

Outside, the sky darkened into bruised violet and deep indigo. The familiar sound of the calls of wild geese moving in formation echoed through the breeze — sharp and certain. The kind of movement you don’t question.

We didn’t talk about the past. We didn’t need to. It was all there in the shape of him beside me, in the way his body curved towards mine like I was his home.

And when he shifted to grab another blanket, I saw it — the unmistakable shape of a ring box outlined in the pocket of his sweatpants. Not quite hidden, but not flaunted, either. Just there, ready, waiting for the right moment. He didn’t seem to realize I’d noticed it. Just smiled, kissed my temple, and curled around me on the couch again like it was any other night. My heart skipped a beat, and I didn’t say a word. I didn’t need to. But I knew.

Some promises arrive quiet and certain: like rain at the window, like breath in the dark. Like a love real enough to wear on your finger.

Together, we were exactly who we needed to be — soft animals, learning how to love what we loved.

the end.

ᝰ.ᐟ

author’s note: do you guys forgive me for part 12 now? lol. but on the real, I don’t even know what to say for this one. part 13, the end of the soft animal series, now belongs to you 🫶🏼. to anyone who came along this ride with me — I couldn’t be more thankful.

post-reading soft animal manifesto can be found here!