cleaning up bottles with you on new years day.

Because both you and Spencer are compulsive overachievers, it’s been hard to ignore each other. He saves a kids life every other week and your quick wit has taken you to the (very near) top of the DC law food chain. He picks up a newspaper, you’re smiling arm in arm with the district attorney. You turn on the TV, he’s up there declaring national manhunts. It’s hard to avoid each other, but you have both tried so, very hard.

So hard, in fact, that when Spencer is lying in a jail cell, waiting for any sign of life to shine through the bars, he is not even thinking about you. He’s thinking about his mom. His job. His future. His very recent past. But not you. And even though he doesn’t realize it in the moment, it’s a blessing. He should’ve taken the moment to be grateful.

When Emily comes up to his cell, he hops up and all the thoughts stuck in his head rush out in word vomit. Why isn’t she in the office? How is the office? How’s his mom? And once he learns that everything else is perfectly fine, he remembers that he, alone, is fucked.

And Emily’s very good at that soft voice, that everything will be okay voice, but she doesn’t know that. Not really. Spencer knows that she doesn’t and he swallows himself in self pity, saying, “I don’t even have a lawyer.”

“About that…” Emily says before a beat can pass. “I, um…I made a call…”

Spencer tilts his head at her.

“I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”

You’re eating lunch when you get the call. You have a sandwich held in your mouth as you scribble notes on a legal pad which you promptly cross out.

“Miss [y/l/n]?” your receptionist announces herself at the door.

You drop your sandwich, “Hey,” you smile. “Yes?”

“You have an Emily Prentiss on the line for you. Do you want me to patch her through?”

Your smile drops, you can’t help it. Your heart sinks to the very bottom of your stomach and you have to clear your throat, remind yourself to breathe.

“No,” you shake your head. “No,” you stand to your feet. “No, thank you. I’ll answer her in here.”

You close your office door behind her. You close the blinds. You stare at the blinking light on the phone for what feels like hours. You take a seat at your desk, you stare some more. Then you pick up the phone.

“This is [y/n].”

“Hi, [y/n]. It’s Emily Prentiss.”

“Emily…” you breathe out. “Hey.”

“Do you have a moment to talk?”

You sigh, “Is…is this about Spencer?”

Emily pauses, just for a moment, but she knows it’s best to be honest, “It is.”

“Is he dead?” It seems blunt. But, to you, it sounds like a fair and natural question.

Emily clears her throat, “He’s in jail.”

Maybe she expected a gasp. A soft cry. But all you do is close your eyes and draw in a deep breath. You say, “Okay.”

“Now, I understand if you decline. I do. But I have to ask…are you available to come to Quantico for a legal consult with me? Just me?”

You stare at the ceiling, grinding your teeth so hard that you think your jaw may crack under the pressure. And in the span of just two hours, you tell her yes. You reschedule your afternoon meeting. You walk through a metal detector and pat down in Quantico. Yet, you’re not truly in your body until you step on the elevator. You feel yourself rising through the building and the familiarity of it hits you like lightening. You think, not now. You cannot break down now.

Later.

You stand and look over at Spencer’s empty desk, only for a moment and then you tear yourself away. You knock on Emily’s open door and she immediately stands when you sees you, “[y/n], hi,” she moves around her desk, “Hi, thanks for coming.”

You give her a hug, and she holds on for longer than she means to. She looks you in the eye and asks, “How are you?”

“I’m okay. How are you?”

She sighs, walking back to her desk as you close the door. “We’ve been better.”

You take a seat across from her, look around the office, and now you smile, “I like you in here, chief.”

She chuckles, “I assume you heard about Hotch?”

You nod, “I did…only courthouse rumblings.”

“Yeah, well, uh, team’s been good,” she rummages around her desk. “Pushing through. I see you’ve climbed the ladder in recent years.”

You shrug, smirking, “All bribes.”

She laughs, “Oh, c’mon, we both know that’s not true. You’re the best of the best. I wouldn’t have called you if you weren’t.”

And when she sees the light go out in your eyes, reminded by the reality of the situation, she does nothing but set the file in front of you. You exhale quickly out of your nose and you stare at Spencer’s name etched along the edge. You pick it up and place it in your lap, ducking your head to read it. His mugshots nearly make you gasp, but you stifle it. You put your finger to your lips and you try. You try so hard not react. Not in front of Emily, even though she can read you anyway.

You read the entire file. Front to back. Your eyes flick off of the last word and you slam the manilla folder closed. You look up at Emily, her looking at you, waiting for you, so patiently. You open your mouth, and she prepares herself for whatever you could say. Anything. Everything. She’s prepared.

You breath out, “He was high?”

She was not prepared for that.

She shakes her head, “He was drugged. The guy we’re after is notorious for using drugs to incapacitate his victims.”

You nod, “And let me guess. The bureau won’t help with his legal defense?”

She shakes her head, “He broke protocol.”

You roll your eyes, “Stupid…”

“[y/n],” she calls to you.

You look up at her, raising your eyebrows.

“I understand if you don’t wanna be involved. I know defense isn’t your normal side of the bench. But I meant it when I said you’re the best of the best. When I didn’t know who else to call, I called you. That doesn’t mean you have to agree to this.”

You look out the window and your eyes fall on Spencer’s desk once again. It is empty like he has not been there for weeks, lifeless. You turn back to Emily, “Where are they holding him?”

In the dead of night, you burst into the law library in town. It was pouring rain outside and when the receptionist saw you drenched and leaving muddy footprints behind you, she asked, “You need any help, hon?”

“No, thank you,” you called, but you did not stop moving. You marched over to the torts section, you knew it all by heart. You swiped your fingers over every author, noting the alphabet in your head and you were slightly enraged to find that the book you needed was missing. You groaned and checked again. Then again and again. You sighed. You looked around the dimly lit library and it was almost instant. You saw his table, you saw the book, and then you saw him.

And before you really knew what you were doing, you were walking up to him and he was so entranced in reading that he didn’t even look up at you.

“How much longer are you gonna be?” you asked him. And then he looked at you. You thought, oh wow he’s pretty, but you were on a mission here.

“I’m-I’m sorry?”

“With the book. How much longer do you think you’ll be?”

“Uh…I probably have…about a hundred pages left so…five, six minutes maybe?”

You furrowed your eyebrows at him, “Are you fucking with me?”

He couldn’t help but laugh, an awkward laugh, an uncomfortable laugh, but mainly an oh fuck a pretty girl is talking to me laugh. “No. No. You can…sit and watch, I swear. Time me if you want.”

You looked at him, arms crossed. You checked your watch and nodded, taking a seat, “Fine. Five minutes. Go.”

He gave you a small smile and then went back to it. You watched him trace his fingertip down the page, flick to the next one and down he traced again. You were curious. But irritated. But intrigued? You checked your watch with one minute to go and he went, “Okay, done,” and slid the book across the table.

You caught it in your palm, and looked up at him, “You are so full of shit.”

“What?”

“There’s no way you just read all of that in five minutes. There’s no way.”

“But there is a way because I did.”

“No you didn’t.”

He laughed, “I can recite it all to you right now. Front to back.”

“Where are you?” he seemed confused by this question so you continued, “Hm? George Washington? UDC?”

“Quantico.”

“Oh, you are so full of shit!” you went to grab the book and leave but he wasn’t ready for you to go.

“No, no, wait. Seriously. Look at my badge,” he pulled it right out of his bag. “I just got it today.”

You took a look, and when it wasn’t clear enough, you stepped closer, held it in your hands.

Spencer Reid. Behavioral Analysis Unit.

You handed it back to him, “Never met a twelve year old fed.”

“Twenty-three,” he corrected you. “And, uh…I get that a lot.”

“And what does a twenty-three year old fed need with a first year law book?”

He shrugged, “Just light reading.”

You rolled your eyes and he could just tell that you wanted to smile and so he smiled so big at you, hoping it would rub off.

“Book’s all yours,” he said. “I’ll find another.”

No smile.

“A-a-and if you’d like to…I-I don’t know…stay out of the rain, I’d…like it if you’d…maybe sit and read with me?”

You bit down on your lip and you hesitated, looked around as you weighed your options. Then, you took a seat. He grinned over at you as you flipped the book open and it was there.

Small, but a smile.

Back in holding, Spencer sits. He waits. He digs his nails into the bandage on his hand and his knee won’t stop bouncing. The same thoughts rush through his head, but every so often they are cut off by images of you. Every you. Every season. The last time he saw you. His breath catches so tightly in his chest that he actually hunches over in pain, squeezes his fist. His eyes keep darting towards the door, anxious, quick, hoping you’ll come. Hoping you won’t.

What gives it away is your heels. They’re fast and they’re loud, a rapid click-clack-click-clack on the floor. He sits up straight, holds his hands in his lap, forces his leg to stop shaking. Emily walks in first, and in behind her comes you. Picture perfect, dolled up, professional you. Your eyes connect and it should make him nauseous. Instead, his body relaxes. You’re the one that’s nauseous.

“Well,” Emily says to cut the tension. “I know this is an legal meeting so I’ll just give you two some privacy.” And she gets the hell out of there.

You step to the side as the door closes behind her. You set your brief case down on the table and have a seat. As the two of you sit in silence, Spencer feels that you’re judging him. Scolding him, staring him down. But all you’re thinking about is how much his hair has grown, from his head and from his face and underneath it all, he is still him.

You clear your throat, look away, “I’m obligated to remind you that everything you share here is kept confidential by attorney-client privilege.”

“I didnt use,” he spits out.

You pause, your eyes cutting up to him. He is staring into your soul. He wants you to hear him.

“I didn’t,” he shakes his head. “I wouldnt. I swear.”

You have to let that simmer in the air for a moment. You have to swallow it like a large pill, let it force its way down your throat and into your stomach. Through your bloodstream.

“I believe you,” you say. “Tell me what happened.”

“I-I…I did not kill her.”

You nod, “…okay. What else.”

“I-I…don’t remember anything else.”

“Well that…doesn’t help me here. It doesn’t matter if you say you didn’t kill her and you know that. What matters is evidence. The facts of the case.”

“I’m telling you I don’t remember anything, [y/n]. If I did, I would tell you but the entire thing is a-a blur.”

“And I’m telling you I can’t do anything with that.”

“Just… tell me what you really want to say.”

You consider it.

“I’m not here to judge you,” you tell him. “I’m here to build you a legal defense.”

“Whatever’s going through your head, I can take it,” he huffs. “Tell me.”

You purse your lips at him. You shake your head. But he insists. He peers into your eyes in waiting. Begging.

You inhale and with a hefty wave of breath, you shout, “Going to Mexico? Not telling anyone where you are? Smuggling experimental drugs across the border? Are you serious?”

He nods. He takes the blows as they land.

“Do you even comprehend the shit hole that you’ve dug for yourself? I mean, honestly, you-you should go to prison for at least,” you pinch your fingers. “A little bit because it should be a crime to be this stupid with an IQ that high,” and you punctuate it all with a sigh of relief.

Spencer sniffles, “Feel better?”

“No,” you say instantly. And you say this next part very clearly, “Because I can’t promise you that you won’t go to prison.”

The reason that you and Spencer worked so well together, you think - you thought - is that there was a certain amount of independence. After your meeting in the library, after all the pulling he did to sweep you off your feet, you decided that yes, you could do this. You could have a boyfriend who traveled for work. You could handle not seeing him for days or weeks on end. Just in your second year of law school, you thought: I will never have time to miss him. I will drown in school work and textbooks until he returns. It will not phase me. It will not change me.

Then you kind of fell in love with him. And suddenly you always, always had time to miss him.

“Hey,” you found yourself smiling when he called. On the other side of the country, it was only nine but you were in DC still studying at midnight.

“Hey, honey,” Spencer cooed. “I knew you’d be awake.”

“Like I could sleep at a time like this? No, thank you, this is all nighter territory.”

“Sorry I won’t be there the day of your exam.”

“Don’t worry about it. They need you out there more than I do.”

“I know, I know, I’d just slow you down,” he laughed.

“Oh yeah, definitely,” you nodded. “But…I miss you…wish you were here to slow me down.”

“Soon.”

“I know.”

“And, y’know, if we just moved into together, it could be even sooner.”

“Ooh, yeah, and we could get a plant too and watch it die a slow death because no one’s ever home.”

He cackled, quieted down as he whispered, “Just…try to actually get some sleep, okay? You can’t pass your exam if you’re exhausted. And make sure you have a good breakfast. A real breakfast, not coffee and some pop tarts. At least toaster strudels, okay? And afterwards, take yourself out for lunch or-or take someone with you. But don’t sit and think about it and drive yourself crazy. You’re gonna do great. You always do.”

You nodded, stifling a soft laugh, “Yes, doctor. Anything else?”

He shrugs to himself, “Just that I miss you. I can’t wait to see you.”

You grinned, “Soon.”

When your alarm went off at seven in the morning, you checked your phone to see that Spencer had woken himself up, three hours behind, to send you a message.

Two words: Toaster strudels!!!!

And over the next few days, you were truly too busy to miss him. You took your exam at ten o’clock on the dot and you took his advice, you went out to lunch. You thought about the exam only a little bit, to run through it with your friends before you started day drinking, and then there was nothing to do but wait. Keep yourself busy.

As soon as the jet lifted off, Spencer called you. Your phone was buried at the bottom of your bag, which was swinging against your hip as you walked across campus. You didn’t realize it was ringing until the very last second and by the time you pulled it out, he had already left you a voicemail.

As you waded through the crowd to see your posted exam score, you held the phone to your ear and listened.

“Hey! Hey, [y/n], we’re, uh, on the way back now. Safe and sound. I should be there by this afternoon. Uh, let me know if you get your exam results, okay? I’m so excited to see you. Call me when you can.”

Posted on the wall was the glare of your future, staring you in the face, chewing into your soul and you dropped the phone back in your bag.

When Spencer landed and still hadn’t heard from you, he slowly came to expect bad news. He bought you flowers on the way home, he called you, he texted multiple times to tell you he’d be coming over. He walked up to his apartment solely to drop off his things and before he could get to the door, he stopped in his tracks.

You stood up quickly, your face breaking out into a wide smile. Your hands shook and all you could say was, “I passed! I-I passed!”

And in an instant, he dropped everything except your flowers and ran to you, engulfing you in a big, tight hug. “Of course you did!” he shouted. “Oh, god [y/n], of course you did! Here…” he released you so he could rush to unlock the door.

“And I didn’t just pass, babe. I passed with flying fucking colors!” You let yourself into his apartment, still rambling while he dragged his things inside. He stood in awe as you paced around the living room, throwing your hands in the air. “Do you know what this means? I could be a real lawyer any day now!”

You looked at him, huffing and puffing with this toothless, wide smile that sat in your cheekbones. So happy and pretty that he forgot how to talk. “T-These are for you,” he stuttered, walking over to you with a bright bouquet of flowers.

Your eyes darted to the flowers, but only for a moment and then back to Spencer, and he was looking at you with so much love that you felt it in the pit of your stomach. You held eye contact with him as you took hold of the flowers, your fingers overlapping for a split second. And in one swift motion, you pulled him in by the back of his neck and dropped the flowers on the couch. It stunned him, sure, but it was instinct for him to grab onto your hips and kiss you. That is, after all, exactly what you wanted him to do.

You stood of the tip of your toes, took hold of his face and balled your fist in his hair. He grunted against your lips, held onto you tight as you dragged him into his bedroom.

“Okay, okay, okay, just-“ he stuttered as you tore off his shirt. His head got caught, the two of you burst into laughter, and you gave him a kiss as soon as the shirt hit the floor. You swiped his books off of his bed and laid yourself down, pulling him on top of you. When your pants got suffocating, you flipped him over so you could take them off. Your boobs hung in his face as you grabbed a condom from the nightstand and he ran his hands all over your body. Even when he could hardly breathe because you were rolling the condom onto him, he caressed your thighs and his nails rolled on your skin.

You giggled, going, “Stop, that tickles.”

He said, “Sorry,” and tickled you again, laughing as your body squirmed around and you chuckled into a kiss with him.

You were usually a lot softer with him. No rush. But the adrenaline in your body had you bouncing on his cock so quickly that you wondered if the whole bed might cave in. You kept looking at Spencer to make sure he was enjoying himself he was enjoying himself. His head was hanging off the bed, hanging loose from his neck and his mouth was wide open, releasing some of the loudest moans you’ve ever heard from him. When he realized he was getting close, he would grab your hips real tight, you’d stop and after a few breaths, he’d let you go. He’d let you get right back to it.

Afterwards, you collapsed beside him and tucked yourself in the crook of his arm, your hand on his heaving chest. You kissed him softly and he moaned, “Mm…” rubbing your back. “I love when you get a good grade.”

You cackled and threw your head back, tracing his bottom lip with your fingertip, “I love when you’re home.”

“Oh!” he suddenly shouted. “Speaking of, we have dinner reservations on our anniversary at seven. I’ll probably get called out before then but I will be back in time. I promise.”

“And if you’re not?”

“Then I’m a bad boy. A very bad boy,” he grinned, leaning into you as you laughed.

You held his face, gave him a kiss and nodded, “It’s a date.”

And he did eventually get called out again just over a week before your reservation. You have a very vivid memory of kissing him goodbye the day he left. He was himself. He was happy, and towards the end of the week, he called overly cocky saying that this case would be wrapped up soon. That he’d be home with a night to spare.

He lied.

People know you here. When you speak with the distric attorney on Spencer’s case, he knows you. He knows Spencer. And that should make it easy to negotiate here, but it unfortunately makes it that much harder. Luckily, you’re as stubborn as you are determined and with a bit of sparkle, you can get Spencer down to two to five years in federal prison.

That is, until new evidence arises. In that moment, all the oxygen and arguing and fight you’ve given goes out the window. Emily trails up beside you when you return, saying, “I just got the news. What now?”

“Now,” you sigh. “We tell Spencer.”

And as soon as you walk into the room, he is rising to his feet, staring at you. His eyes scan over your features and he goes, “That’s not a good face. What happened?”

“I…” you start. “Was able to talk Martinez down to involuntary manslaughter.”

“Manny Martinez?” he interrupts you.

“Yes,” you enunciate. “And he offered two to five years.”

Emily glances at Spencer, and asks you, “A deal? Well, that could mean they know they have a weak case?”

“Maybe,” you shrug. “But they could also just be in a rush to close this with minimal publicity.”

Looking to Spencer, you owe him the truth, “But they found the murder weapon in the desert. About an hour ago. The blood and prints are yours.”

The words knock the air out of him like a strong punch to the chest. You can see his eyes zone out, stuck on the floor as he sits himself down and tries to breathe. Emily is spinning gears in her head but you cannot stop watching him.

“Okay, so, where do we go from here?” she asks you.

“Well, the two to five quickly came off the table. Now, it’s five to ten at minimum.” Still, you watch Spencer. He can’t stand to look at you.

“And this is the only way he can avoid trial?”

You purse your lips and nod, shrugging, “Plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter, write a statement to the bureau. That’d be the end of it. Any other course of action will require presenting evidence to a jury.”

When Spencer finally decides to lift his head and speak, he looks you dead in the eye and asks, “Do you think I should take it?”

Your face visibly softens and you shrug, “Beats twenty-five to life. Which they will sentence if you’re found guilty, and with this evidence…it’s likely…”

He looks at Emily and when he cannot take the look of pity in her eyes for one more second, he asks you, specifically, “May I speak to you alone, [y/n]?”

You glance at Emily and nod, “Sure.”

The door closes and Spencer, comfortable enough to let his guard down, suddenly stands from the chair, hiding his face in his hands. He paces around the small room and pulls at the root of his hair. It’s very unlike him but in this moment, he says, “Fuck.”

“Yes,” is all you can add. “What do you want to do here, Spencer?”

“I-I-I don’t know. You’re my lawyer, can’t you just tell me what I should do? Tell me what to do.”

“I can’t do that. I’m not the one facing prison here. You have two options, okay? If you want to take your chances in court, I will be there. I will bring every weapon in my arsenal to defend you, but I can’t guarantee that the outcome will be better than five to ten.”

He shakes his head, “The team will crack the case. They will. They’ll catch Scratch and they’ll clear my name.”

“Oh, my…when?” you raise your voice. You don’t mean to. “This month? This year? This decade? Who knows? W-who knows how long you could be locked up before they catch a break?”

He sniffles, one single tear falling down his cheek as his head falls in defeat, “What…what do I do, [y/n]?” he cries. “Just tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do.”

And against ever fiber of your being, you instinctively cross the room and engulf him in a hug. He sobs into your neck and holds your waist in tight in his arms, breaks down when you run your hand through his hair.

He’s hurting but this helps. This helps a lot.

“Hey!” you answered Spencer’s phone with a joyous greeting. “Hi, Diana. Hi! It’s [y/n], how are you?”

And while she was beyond excited to talk to you, she rambled about her son. How he hadn’t called her in close to a week. How she missed the sound of his voice. “It just isn’t like him,” she said. “It just isn’t like Spencer. He calls me. He calls me everyday. Is he okay?”

“Yeah,” you lied as you stood over him in bed. “Yeah, he’s okay. He’s, uh, he’s…”

He waved you off, silently ordering you to hang up and leave him alone. He rolled over onto his side and hid his face under the blankets. He wanted to make sure he was as avoidant as possible.

“He’s just…tired. But I know he…he’d love to speak with you…”

He did not move. And he had not moved since returning home from Tobias Hankel. He just hadn’t. You weren’t sure if he ever would. But as you continued to talk on the phone, the sound of your voice going, “Yeah, yeah,” grating his nerves, he hopped out of bed and went straight for the bathroom. The door slammed, it locked and you just hoped Diana didn’t hear it.

“Yeah,” you told her. “Yeah, he’s busy right now. Y’know, case paperwork and such. I can have him call you back?”

Then there’s a thud. Loud. It shakes the floor of the entire apartment and your breath catches in your throat.

“Yes, of course. I will have him call you,” you stared at the bathroom door. “I promise. Okay. Alright, bye.”

You rushed to the bathroom, immediately trying to open the door but it was locked. You wiggled the knob, you pounded on it, calling, “Spencer? Spencer?”

You found the key on top of the sill, with your hands trembling as you shoved it into the lock. When the door swung open, it stopped against something. Something heavy, something big. So you pushed and shoved enough that you could poke your head in and when you did, you screamed. You shrieked at the top of your lungs. The thing blocking the door, the thing laid out on the floor.

It was Spencer.

Spencer is due to appear in court this morning. You’re going to vomit.

You arrive promptly with thirty minutes to spare and you spend that time trying to find your client. Though you do not see his face, you notice him standing at the phone, dressed to impress in a sharp suit. His hand bandaged in the least disgusting way possible.

“Mom,” he says into the reciever. “I want you know that I’m safe and I have a great lawyer.”

You cross your arms over your chest, stand firm behind him and proudly eavesdrop.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it’s actually, um…[y/n]. Yeah, no. No, we’re not back together, she just…she’s a great lawyer. The best.”

And he goes looking for you, at the mention of your name, he starts scanning the room, like he can feel you somewhere. Somewhere. He turns around to find you leaning against the wall. He smiles. He can’t help it. Neither can you. You throw up a small wave and he waves back.

He speaks into the phone, telling Diana, “She says hi.”

The judge comes into the courtroom and almost immediately, she looks ready to leave. You weren’t nervous before, you don’t think Spencer was all that much either. But now, shit is getting real. Shit is getting very real.

“Miss [y/l/n],” she says to you. “Your client is a federal agent?”

You rise to your feet, nodding, “That’s correct, your honor.” You both notice Spencer still sitting and you whisper through your teeth, “Stand the hell up,” and he stands the hell up.

“Some very serious offenses brought against you today,” she tells him.

“Yes, your honor,” he nods.

“Miss [y/l/n], does your client wish to enter a plea at this time?”

You nod, “He does.”

“And how do you plead, Agent Reid?”

Spencer looks her in the eye and proclaims, “Not guilty.” You hope nobody sees you roll your eyes.

“Mhm,” the judge nods. “And as to bail?”

“The people oppose bail and request remand, your honor,” the district attorney responds, now standing.

“Remand?” you repeat. “Your honor, my client does not present a flight risk.”

“He’ll be staying with you, I suppose?” he fires back and you can’t help but cut your eyes at him.

“Good one, Manny.”

“Your honor,” he continues. “The defendant fled the scene in Mexico…”

“Those were extenuating circumstances,” you interrupt. “He was drugged against his will.”

“And failed to inform the FBI of his international travel, effectively breaking protocol.”

“With the intent to return home and care for his mother, who struggles with schizophrenia and alzheimer’s and lives with him full time. He is her sole caretaker, in addition to his career as a highly decorated member of the BAU.”

“And as a member of the BAU, he has connections all over the world that could prove highly useful if he chose to flee.”

“Agent Reid is more than willing to surrend both his professional and personal passports if it pleases the court.”

“Again, he has the connections to both recieve a counterfeit passport and evade arrest.”

“Your honor, all Agent Reid wants to do is stay here and clear his good name.”

“He should’ve thought about his good name before sneaking across the border.”

You glare at Martinez and look back to the judge, “I can provide sincere and respected character witness to the court today. All highly decorated members of FBI, willing to speak on Agent Reid’s behalf.”

“Miss [y/l/n], I am not particularly inclined to hear character witnesses at the moment,” the judge tells you.

“Then we can abide by a curfew, court ordered restrictions…”

“Too little, too late for that, Miss [y/l/n],” she silences you. “If past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior, and I do believe that it is…then your client does present a flight risk…” and with one, dramatic pauses, she says, “Bail is denied. The defendant will be remanded to federal custody pending trial.”

The gavel lands and that’s it.

Spencer is put in handcuffs, in front of his entire team, in front of his family. In front of you. And all he can do is look at you. Eyes wide and terrified, looking at you.

“I’m so sorry,” you tell him. “I’m so sorry, I’ll come see you as soon as I can.”

He believes you. He has to believe you.

Standing there in shame, the feeling in your gut quickly turns to anger and you march out of the courtroom, pass the team and into the hallway. You see the district attorney walking towards his office and chase him down.

“A flight risk?” you catch his attention and he turns around. “Really, Manny?”

He shrugs, “Judge Frost agreed.”

“Yeah, judges tend to do that when things are taken out of context.”

“Hey, the facts were clear as day. Don’t be mad at me because your boyfriend might go to prison, okay? That’s on him.” And with that, he walks away. You want to throw something at the back of his head.

You want to burn the whole building down.

Instead, you run. You run off to an empty corridor, where you are well aware no one will find you. You pace up and down the floor, your chest heaving, your hands on your hips.

“[y/n]?” Emily calls from behind you. When you cannot get out of your own head, she repeats, “[y/n]?”

“Why did you call me?” You shout as you turn to her. “Why did you bring me into this? Why? Why?” you sob and you put your face in your hands, sliding down the wall in a dramatic breakdown.

Emily immediately rushes to you, bending down to hold you in her arms. “You did everything that you could,” she tells you. “You did your best.”

“I’m always doing my best!” you whine. “I’m always, always doing my best for him and it’s not enough! It’s never enough!”

There’s too much for Emily to unpack there, so she shuts her mouth and she holds you.

The day that you graduated law school, Spencer stayed by your side the entire time. And that was good. That was good because you could be sure that he wasn’t shooting up and you could relax. He looked good that day. Not perfect. Not clean. But good. He dressed up, he could walk in a straight line and he was so, unbelievably proud of you.

He handed you flowers the moment the commencement was over. He took all the pictures so you could have the memories forever. He hung on your arm like a trophy boyfriend because, that day, he was a trophy boyfriend and he could not have been happier.

“Surprise!” was shouted at you as soon as you stepped into your apartment. Adorned with balloons and family and friends, you were overwhelmed and nearly dropped your degree. You turned to Spencer and he dropped his shoulders bashfully, too shy to outright accept all the credit. And still, you took him in a firey kiss, you gave him all the credit.

As you walked around, having something to eat, thanking everyone for coming, talking about your plans for the future, Spencer came up to you and said, “I’m going to grab the cake, okay, honey? I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Oh, okay, baby, thank you,” you smiled and gave him a kiss.

He didn’t come back for an hour.

And when he did come back, he overcompensated by putting the cake down in front of you and going, “Sorry! Sorry about that. Traffic was crazy,” and placing a big, sloppy kiss on your cheek.

Right then, you knew.

He was bouncing off the walls, extroverted, enthusiastic, eating cake that other people had cut into and not able to get enough of it. Grabbing onto your waist and kissing your neck in front of a crowd, dozing off when he actually sat, flicking himself in the neck to keep himself awake.

And you knew.

By the end of the night, when everyone had cleared out and Spencer was missing, you stepped around the quiet apartment and found him passed out in your bed. You put two fingers on his neck, made sure he was alive, and you slept on the couch.

You woke up early even though he slept like a rock until closer to noon. You sat on the couch until he decided to get out of bed and come looking for you.

“Hey,” he smiled, his voice hoarse. “Hey, what are you doing out here?”

You could hardly stand to look at him. You hands were bound in front of your lips, your eyes focused on the coffee table. It wasn’t until that second that he looked down and noticed the collection on the table. Needles. A little vial.

“How…” you cleared your throat. “How long have you been hiding this in my apartment?”

“I…” he spit out. “I…that’s old. It’s old. I forgot it was even here.”

You choked out a gust of air and couldn’t help but laugh, “You are so full of shit.”

“[y/n]…”

“No!” you shouted, rising to your feet. “Tell me what’s so fucking good about this shit that you needed to shoot up during my graduation party?”

“I…I didn’t…I was just excited. I was excited for you.”

“No, you were fucking loaded.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Stop.”

“I wasn’t.”

“No, stop! Stop treating me like I’m fucking stupid! I mean, fuck, Spencer! After all the therapy and meetings and outpatient rehabs, you do this? Really?”

“I didn’t.”

“And what’s worse is that you lie. You lie about everything. You’re lying right and you don’t care!”

“[y/n]…”

“You don’t care. You don’t care. I’m the one who shot narcan up your fucking nose so you wouldn’t OD on my bathroom floor. I’m the one who couldn’t have one fucking night to myself and you, dont, care!”

You let out a quick huff and he simmered in the silence of your anger.

“I…I can’t do this anymore…” you said softly.

He stared at you, shaking in his own skin, “W-what? You can’t do what?”

You released a slow sigh, “I can’t…be with a drug addict.”

“I…am not…”

“You are. You are, Spencer, and you need help. You need more than I can give you.” And before he can retaliate, you set a box of his things on the table. Some books, some clothes with blood on the sleeves, some records.

He started to cry. You knew these were real tears because when he merely wanted to get his way, they would start flowing instantly. Here, they came on slow, rolling down his pale face. “[y/n]…”

“No.” You said sternly, avoiding eye contact. “You need to leave. Leave.”

“B-b-but I-I’m better,” he tried to touch you and you flinched. “I-I can get better. I can do that.”

“Not here. Not with me. Please leave.”

“B-but…” he cried. “But I don’t wanna leave. I wanna be with you. I need to be with you. Please. P-please, [y/n].”

You shook your head, quickly wiped away your tears. “I don’t want you here. Please leave.” You held the door open for him and put his box on the porch. “Please.”

“[y/n], please don’t do this,” he tried to shut the door but you held your own. “Please, please, I’ll go to a meeting right now. You can come with me. I’ll get better. I can get better.”

“Spencer…please. Go.”

“No.”

“Please,” you begged. “Leave.”

“No. No, I’m not leaving you.”

And so, because you had to, you absolutely had to, you pushed him out. He fought, never to hurt you, but he dug his feet in the ground and tried to push your hands away. “N-no, [y/n], please. Please. Please don’t do this.”

Spencer was never that strong before the dilaudid. But when he was on it, he was weak. He was slow and even with all his strength, he could not stop you from throwing him out and slamming the door in his face. You locked it quickly, pressed your palms to the wood to keep it closed up tight as he knocked lightly.

You could hear him sobbing, “[y/n]…please…[y/n]…” and his voice cracked. You heard him slide down the door and sniffling, “[y/n]…”

There was a moment where you thought to open the door. To take it all back. To change your mind. Tears were running into your mouth and you ground your teeth together to stifle your cries. Instead, you stood up straight, you took a deep breath. You went into your room, closed the door and turned the TV up loud.

Spencer still lives in his same apartment. So as you go up the stairs, hundreds of memories come flooding back to you at a hundred miles per minute. It makes you so dizzy that you nearly trip, fall down the stairs. Run.

But you make it to his door and knock, greeted by a younger woman who gives you a bright smile, “Hi.”

“Hi,” you wave to her. “Cassie?”

“Yes?”

“Hi, I’m [y/n]. I’m-I’m a friend of Spencer’s. Is Diana here?”

“She is.”

“Is she up for a visitor?”

You let yourself in, stepping in to find that the apartment has not changed much. Same couch, same chairs, same coffee pot in the kitchen. Diana is sat near the window reading a book, picking at her nails anxiously. When she looks up and sees you, she stops and her entire face lights up like you’ve come back from the dead.

“[y/n], hi!” she greets you. She stands from her chair and rushes towards you with open arms. You let her hug you tight, her hand in your hair, your head on her shoulder and you want to cry. “Hi, honey, how are you?”

“Oh, I’m okay…” you shrug. “Can we talk?”

Her eyes go wide. Scared. “This is about Spencer. About that awful mess he’s in.”

“Yes,” you nod.

“Well, please, come, sit. Do you want some tea? Cassie makes a great cup.”

“Sure. Yes, please,” you smile as you sit across from her.

“Y’know, when I heard what happened to Spencer. I-I couldn’t believe it…my baby boy, in a jail cell,” she shakes her head. “But then he tells me that you were his lawyer and I could,” she exhales. “Breathe. You, such a smart and fierce young woman. There’s no one I’d trust more.”

A single tear rolls down your cheek and you shake your head, breaking eye contact with her.

“Oh. Oh, no, no, honey, what’s wrong?”

“Sorry…” you whimper. You wipe your face and huff, “Ugh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“For what? For what, honey?” she takes hold of your hands.

“I-I couldn’t…I didn’t…” you sob. “I…Spencer pleaded not guilty, but the judge ruled him a flight risk. S-so, he’s…in federal prison. Pending trial.”

You can see the shock spread across her face and it makes you sick to your fucking stomach. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I tried.”

“Hey, you don’t apologize,” she squeezes your hands. Tight, tight, tight, tight. “You don’t apologize, you hear me? I know you did everything in your power. And if you couldn’t do it, then no one else could.”

You choke out another sob and she rubs your arm, cooing “Oh…oh…” and when Cassie sets a mug in front of you, Diana orders, “Here. Here, [y/n], please, have some tea. Calm down, sweetie.”

While you take sip, hiccuping against the glass, she changes the subject entirely. The rest of the visit spirals into a nice chat, mainly about you. What you’re up to these days. And as you fill her in, her eyes light up in pride, in almost disbelief. The last thing she says to you is, “Oh, I do wish you and Spencer could’ve worked things out. You are just…so special, [y/n]. Such a special, gifted girl. You made him so happy.”

She hugs you before you leave and you stroll beside Cassie to the front door. “Um…” you whisper to Cassie. “Is she normally this lucid?”

She purses her lips, “There are good days. There are bad ones.”

You nod.

“That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen her recognize anyone, though.”

For an extended amount of time after your first breakup, you thought Spencer was dead.

After you kicked him out of your apartment, there was radio silence. Scary radio silence. And you had visions in your head of him laid out with a needle in his arm and too much dilaudid in his veins and vomit in his mouth. Or, perhaps, he ran in front of a bullet in the field and no one thought anything of it. For months, you were so sure he was dead.

When you saw him on the news a year later, only then, you could breathe. You visibly and loudly sighed in relief just seeing his face, hearing his voice. More than grateful he was alive, you were grateful to see him healthy. Very clearly clean. Weight back in his face, light back in his eyes. You had almost forgotten what it looked like on him. It wasn’t until then that you knew you’d made the right decision.

You wouldn’t see him again for another two years. Save for a few local newpapers articles, the radio silence continued. You had moved to a larger apartment, close to the courthouse where you were still clawing your way to the top. Somehow, someway, Spencer found this new apartment. It was a conscious decision to do so.

He knocked on your door and you, not expecting company, catiously checked the peephole. You dropped from your tippy toes, sucked in a breath and opened the door. “Spencer? What…what are you doing here?”

“I’m…I’m sorry to drop by like this…” he stuttered, sucking back tears. “I am. I’m sorry. I…Emily…died.”

Your eyes went wide and you visibly stepped back. “What?”

“Y-yeah, she, um, she was murdered. Bled out in the ambulance and I…” he descended into a fit of cries and you just stood in the doorway, watching him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I-I don’t mean to be a stalker. I don’t mean to barge in on you. I-I-I-I was just scared of what I might do if I was alone and n-no one else understands why I’m so scared to be alone and-and I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

You stood there in shock for a long time. The only thing that cut the tension was a sound from the TV, a strange sound that caught Spencer off guard. He peeked inside your apartment, sniffling, “What are you doing in here?”

“Uh…um, I’m playing Wii Sports?” you told him, holding up the remote dangling from your wrist. “…I have two remotes if-if you wanna play. It always makes me feel better.”

He tilted his head at you, furrowing his eyebrows.

“Oh, c’mon!” you shouted in front of the TV, swinging your remote through the air. “Put your back into it!”

“I am!” Spencer yelled, taking another swing that just barely hit the digital tennis ball.

“No, you’re not!” you swung and scored a point, Spencer feeling especially defeated by the cheer of the crowd. “You’re losing, is what you’re doing.”

“I give up,” he takes off his remote. “This game is rigged.”

“Is it?” you smirk. “Or are you just a sore loser? Not used to it?”

“Uh, yeah. Duh.”

You laughed and it poured a blanket of warmth over him that he had not felt in a long time. “You hungry?” you asked him.

“Starving.”

So you ordered a pizza and you got so caught up in speaking with him that you barely heard the knock on the door. When you set a slice down in front of him, he instantly picked it up and shoves it in his mouth, his eyes rolling back in ecstasy. He noticed you watching him and chuckled, wiping his mouth, “What?”

“Nothing…”you smiled. “Nothing, it’s just you’re…eating so good, you…you look good.”

He smiled at you. Not a big smile, not a proud smile, but a soft smile. A thank-you-I-did-it-for-you smile. “Thank you. I feel good.”

“Good,” you nodded. “That’s good.”

And the two of you ate in silence with the TV on to keep the peace. By the end of the night, his head was resting in your lap and his knees were tucked against his chest. He rubbed his thumb on your knee lightly and said, “I can go. If you want me to, I can go.”

“Yeah…” you whispered, your fingertip tracing his ear, your hand running through his hair, “Yeah, it’s getting late.”

He breathed you in one last time and sat himself up. He looked at you and you looked at him and if he stared at you any longer, it would’ve torn him apart. Instead, he hopped up from the couch and escorted himself to the door, you following close behind him.

“Thank you,” he told you. “For letting me stay. For feeding me. For taking care of me.”

“For kicking your ass at Wii Sports?”

“Yes,” he laughed. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” you nodded.

“Okay,” he huffed. “So…”

“So…” you shrugged.

He reached out to give you a hug and before you knew what you were doing, you wrapped your arms around his shoulders and kissed him. That is, after all, exactly what he wanted you to do.

His arms locked around your waist and you moaned softly under your breath, sticking your tongue down his throat, drowning in the familiar taste of him. He pushed his body into yours, boldly nudging you towards the couch until you fell back and he could fall on top of you. Right where he was meant to be.

You’re uncomfortable in the prison. Milburn isn’t exactly known for it’s favorable accommodations and the last thing you want to do is appear prissy, but fuck, it’s gross. It’s crowded. It smells. You think: this must be killing Spencer.

He sits down across from you and he looks tired. Tired, but relieved to see you.

“Oof,” you exclaim. “You’re so lucky you look good in blue or else this would be really shitty for you.”

He snickers, shakes his head, “That was actually my exact thought.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “JJ says you’ve been by to see my mom?”

“I have. She’s doing okay, she seemed okay. We spoke for a long time. It was good to see her.”

“I bet she was excited to see you.”

“She was, it was sweet. I…I don’t wanna sound insensitive here, but, if she has an alzheimer’s diagnosis why does the memory of us breaking up just… linger?”

He wants to cackle but he stifles it, “Tell me about it. Every so often, I get an earful about how I should’ve done more to keep you around.”

“Oh. You…you didn’t tell her that I…”

“No,” he says quickly. “No, I didn’t.”

And just like that, a moment that was lighthearted and comfortable becomes unbearable. You clear your throat, “Well, I didn’t just come by to visit, I have news. It’s not great.”

“Okay, what is it?”

You sigh, “Your trial is postponed. I can’t say how long, but I will be the first to know and you’ll be the second.”

“Postponed?” he mimicked. “W-why? Why?”

You shrug, “They didn’t say. But it could be anything, I mean, higher profile cases, judge schedules, anything.”

He ducks his head down, breathing hard through his nose to prevent himself from crying.

“Hey…” you coo. “Hey, I’m going to figure this out. Don’t worry.”

“I know,” he nods. He looks up at you, “I know you’re trying. Thank you for trying.”

You nod, break a toothless smile, “Always.”

When Spencer wasn’t on drugs, you two managed to stay together for a whole four years. This was twice as long as you made it the first time around and not once did you worry that he had relapsed. You spent a lot of time worried that he might. You spent a lot of time keeping an extra close eye on him, watching for any of the signs, overly cautious. For a reason.

And Spencer was patient with this. He worked so hard to regain your trust because he knew how badly he had fucked up before. How different he’d become, how much he’d hurt you. He could not bear to ever put you through that again. And he never did. He was consistent, he was loving and he was sober.

On your third anniversary, he flew back into town late but he came straight to you. You had not officially moved in with him, but you had a drawer and a toothbrush and you could walk to work from his apartment. He woke you up from your peaceful slumber in his bed just to present you with your gift.

“C’mon, c’mon, I’ve been waiting so long to give it to you,” he cut the lamp on and you groaned, rolling onto your stomach. “Noooo, noooo, c’mon, my love. Look.”

You rolled back over and he was holding up a gold charm bracelet that immediately caught your eye. It woke you up entirely.

“I know you’re not a big jewelry girl,” he whispered, placing the bracelet on your wrist. “But this, uh, has a little charm of your birthstone and one with your birth flower. And, I don’t know, I thought it’d be nice to have on while you’re arguing in court, y’know? Wave it around a bit. Persuade the judge and jury.”

He fixed the clasp and you admired the gold against your skin, tracing it with your finger softly. You grinned, your eyes flickering up to him. “Wave it around…” you teased. “Like this?” and you motioned for him to come closer with your finger. The charms rang lightly and Spencer smirked at you.

“See, it’s just so compulsive, I can’t help but obey you,” he crawled on top of you, his voice mixing in with your laughter. “You’ll never lose a case again.”

And ironically, you went an absurd amount of time without losing a case after that. The bracelet was, in every sense of the word, your good luck charm. Your wrist came to feel naked without it and the ring of the metal gave you a special kind of confidence that couldn’t be replaced or replicated.

The day that Spencer got shot and nearly died, you were due to argue what would’ve been your tenth successful case in a row. You were on such a roll. A streak that no one around you had seen before and they were all eager to see how it progressed.

But as you approached the courtroom doors, your phone buzzed in your hand and you answered without much thought. You kept your brisk pace, speaking with a normalcy that JJ tried her best to match. Your heels were fast, click-clack, click-clack, click-clack, until the information ran through your ears and into your brain and then there was click-clack, click-clack, click…and you stood in the middle of the hallway. Stuck.

Your bottom lip trembled, at the thought of Spencer in critical condition. At the thought of him dying. Dying, dead, without you. You looked back at the courtroom and zoned back into JJ’s voice. You took one step towards the door, stopped and turned around.

Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack.

Contrary to the belief of the BAU, Spencer is not your only client. You have to remind yourself of this as well. Despite a pile of work that you slowly chip away at, you find yourself running back to the details of Spencer’s file. Over and over, as if something new will stand out. It’s happened to you before. You think, it could happen again. It has to happen again. It doesn’t seem like it will.

“Hey, [y/n]?” you coworker calls, knocking on your office door.

“Hey!” you pip.

“Wanna grab lunch? My treat.”

“Lunch? It’s already lunch?” you check the clock and gasp, “Holy shit.”

She laughs, “You work too hard. What do ya’ say?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. I, uh, thought you had to meet a client at Milburn this afternoon, though? The armed robbery guy.”

“Ah, no. Whole prison’s on lockdown. Something about a bad batch of heroin or meth or whatever they pass around in there, I don’t know. Attorneys are still allowed in but I’m not walking into that. I mean, can you imagine?”

It all pours out of her like a joke. Like a comedy of epic proportions that you are meant to laugh along with. But you can’t. You think about Spencer and you just can’t.

“[y/n]?” she calls, pulling you back into reality. “You alright?”

“Yeah!” you overcompensate. “Yes. Sorry. I’m ready. Let’s go.”

You grab your purse and swing it over your shoulder, following her out of your office and reminding yourself to breathe.

“You’re sure?” you questioned the doctor. “You’re positive?”

He released a hearty laugh and nodded, “Yes. He is fully recovered. No swelling, no tenderness, he’s cleared to work and resume any physical activity.”

“Any physical activity?” Spencer asked. You blushed and put your hand to your cheek.

“Yes, that’s right,” the doctor confirmed. “I must say, Spencer, this is quite impressive progress with such a severe injury.”

“I couldn’t have done it all without [y/n],” Spencer beamed, holding onto your hand. “She’s been amazing. She oversaw all my treatment and physical therapy. Slapped me aside my head when I was stubborn. It’s all thanks to her.”

You smiled, bashful and sweet, though you felt a weird, painful knot in your stomach. “Well, that’s quite a spectacular lady you’ve got there.”

“I think so, too,” Spencer grinned and kissed your cheek.

Immediately after Spencer was shot, followed by a long hospital stay, months of physical therapy and doctor’s visits, you lost your streak. You lost your glimmer. You lost that aura of shock and awe that you once so proudly carried. Though you kept it hidden from Spencer, you were one, giant ball of anxiety. All the time. It wrecked your brain, scrambled into a big pile of goo until you were having panic attacks in the courthouse bathroom.

Days later, you finally brought home a winning case. The adrenaline of a successful verdict rushed through your veins and you raced up the stairs to tell Spencer. You unlocked the door to his apartment and burst inside, stopping dead in your tracks when you saw him. He had cleaned, cooked and set up the dining room table with a meal for two.

“Hi, baby!” he exclaimed. “How was your closing statement?”

“Uhh, good. The judge ruled in our favor…” you spoke slowly, setting your things down.

“Really?” he smiled. “Of course! Of course they did. Baby, I’m so proud of you,” he held your face in his hands and gave you a kiss.

“Thank you,” you smiled. “What’s all this?”

“Oh, well,” he lead you into the dining room. “I made us a roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. It should be good, I followed the recipe exactly. And, uh, some sparkling cider and I got you some lilies from the florist down the street and-and I even went to that store to get you a bath bomb even though all the smells give me a headache.” He was quite proud of himself.

“You went to Lush? No way.”

“Way! I thought we could take a bath together. Or you can take one by yourself, if you want. I got some candles, too.”

“Spencer, this is so sweet. What the fuck?” you wrapped your arms around him and the thought pinged in your head, “Ohhh. Oh, you wanna have sex with me.”

His face immediately turned bright red, “W-what? What? Sex? No. Ew…gross…”

You cackled and put your hands on his waist, “You got the go ahead from your doctor and it’s been driving you crazy. Admit it.”

“It has not been driving me crazy. I-I…have…been thinking about it quite a bit. But that’s not why I did this. I just wanted to thank you. Wanted to do something for you.”

“Mhm, keep talking,” you nuzzled your nose into his. “You’re almost there.”

He giggled and took hold of your hands, “C’mon, c’monnnn, I worked really hard on this dinner. Can you sit down and eat with me and then, maybe, after…”

You kissed the tip of his nose and took a seat at the table, “Definitely after,” you smirked at him.

He grinned and sat right next to you. And he watched you the entire time that you tried your food. It was delicious, you made sure to tell him that. You made sure to praise him, tell him that you loved him. He was already overrun with joy, but when you suggested a nice bath, he all but jumped out of his seat.

“The dishes!” you laughed.

He scurried back to the table, picked up your plates and dropped them in the sink. As he ran to the bathroom, he grabbed onto your wrist and dragged you along. He turned the water on, let it heat to just the right temperature and left it running. You undressed each other from head to toe and despite the sensuality of it all, you couldn’t stop giggling.

Sat in the tub, he cradled your back against his chest and he said, “Y’know…this bath bomb actually doesn’t freak me out as much as I thought it would.”

You laughed, “It smells really good, right?”

“Yeah! And the colors are cool.”

“I told you!”

Spencer got out of the bath first and he held out a towel for you to wrap yourself in. He wrapped his arms around your waist as you looked at yourselves in the mirror. He caressed your hair, whispering, “You’re so beautiful.”

You smiled, “Thank you. So are you.”

He kissed your shoulder, resting his chin in the crook of your neck, “I love you.”

“Eh,” you shrugged. “You’re alright, I guess.”

Your laughter overlapped with one another’s and you quickly corrected yourself, “I love you, honey,” with a kiss to his temple.

He turned his head and looked at you, his lips pressed against your ear, “Hey.”

You turned to him, “Hey.”

“We should get married.”

Your jaw dropped and you took a step back, “Are…are you just saying that because I’m naked and wet?”

He chuckled, “No,” he pulled you close, chest to chest, “No, no. I mean it. I mean, I don’t have a ring and I’m in no condition to get down on one knee but you deserve that, you deserve everything and I want to give that to you. I love you. So much. And I never, ever want to experience life without you again. I want you to be my wife, I want to be your husband. I want that. Don’t you want that?”

You let out a dry laugh, furrowing your eyebrows at him. You take his face in your hands, gripping tight on boths sides of his jaw and smush your lips into his. You undo the towel from around your chest and it falls to the floor, leaving every inch of your body open to Spencer’s touch.

“Mm…” he moans sharply when you break the kiss, giggling when you drag him to his bedroom by the hem of his towel.

The two of you landed on the bed with a thud, Spencer on top, tangling his body in yours, kissing your neck. Kissing your chest. Making his way to the apex of your thighs where he spread your legs and buried his face in between them.

Your breath caught in your throat but you released it all with a guttural moan, your arms limp around your head. The thing about Spencer, and that beautiful, talented mouth of his, is how gentle he was. His tongue was never rough, never hard flushed against you, but light and soft, hitting all the spots that made your body twitch. He could make you come so easily. And if you’d let him, he’d do it again and again and again.

But you took hold of his shoulders, you brought his face to yours and tangled your hands in his soaking wet hair and that is how you stayed the entire time that he fucked you. Close to him, bonded to him, staring into his eyes. You legs wrapped tight around his waist. Your body weakened underneath, became consumed by him and you swear, you have never come so hard in your life.

After his own orgasm, Spencer’s eyes focused in on you and you were crying. Not sobbing, just silent tears.

“Oh god, oh my god, [y/n]? What happened?” he panicked. “Are you okay? Did I-did I hurt you?”

“No,” you shook your head. “No, no. I…that was…it was just very good for me.”

“Oh…” he sighed. “Oh,” he gave you a kiss. “For me, too.”

He laid at your side and held you in his arms, rubbing your back, squeezing you tight.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you, Spencer.”

You managed to fall asleep in his arms, but not for very long. All through the night, you shuddered awake like your skeleton was trying to crawl out of your skin. When your eyes popped open as the sun was starting to rise, you couldn’t take it anymore.

You emptied your drawer. You packed all your clothes. You put your toothbrush in a ziplock. And for the rest of the morning, you sat at the dining room table with a pen and paper. Every thought that rushed through your head sounded trite. Cliche. Dumb. So you kept it short and sweet and wrote:

I love you. I LOVE YOU. But I can’t. I’m sorry. Don’t hate me.

Aside from the shitty note, it was the perfect goodbye.

Spencer doesn’t want to see you right now. He doesn’t want to see anyone right now but especially not you. When the guard notifies him of his lawyers arrival, he’s confused. A bit irritated. But he has no choice but to let them haul him off.

They let him into the meeting room, where at first, you are sitting but when you see him, you stand to your feet. Your eyes scan all over his beaten and bruised face and you order the guards, “Cuffs. Off. Please.” And they’re off Spencer’s wrists just like that.

The guards leave the room and you are still staring at him. Now you are touching his face. Now you are whimpering, “What…what happened?”

You can see him soften a little bit, only a little bit, and then he is shrugging your hand off of him. He’s never done that before and it kind of hurts.

“You shouldn’t be here, [y/n].”

“What happened? Who did this to you?”

“[y/n.]…” he’s stern, but he quickly changes his tone. “You need to go. Please. I don’t feel like talking right now.”

You huff, “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

He shakes his head, “I’m just not in the mood to talk. I don’t think anyone needs to be around me right now.”

“Well, too bad. I’m here, you look like someone took a walk on your face, and I want you to talk to me.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“What are you getting into in here? Huh?” you scold him, waving your hands around. “Didn’t everyone tell you to shut up and lay low? You didn’t listen, did you?”

Your charm bracelet catches his eye and he cannot stop tracking it, “…You don’t know anything anout anything.”

“I think-“

“No, you know what I think?” he snaps. “I think you ended our relationship in a twelve word note and now you’re here for what? For what, [y/n]?”

“Okay, lower your voice.”

“Seriously? Your obligation is done. You fought the good fight. Let me rot. It what you would’ve done anyway.”

“Oh, fuck you. Do you know why I left you a note, Spencer? It’s because I really sucked at breaking up with you. You have one little meltdown and suddenly, it’s me. Suddenly, I’m the answer to all your problems. Well, I’m not. I never was. I’m just one of the many melodramatic problems that you have and I needed to be released before it just happened over and over and over again.”

“Melodrama- okay…” he turns around and bangs on the door, signaling the guards to get him the hell out of here.

“Spencer!”

“We’re done.”

“Will you just- talk to me,” you beg.

The door swings open and you instantly clamp up, attempting to appear calm and collected. You watch Spencer leave the room and you want to scream. You want to shout at him from the top of your lungs but you don’t. You think, if I can just get outside. If I can just cross the parking lot. If I just get to my car, I can scream.

You never make it.

By the time Diana is able to visit Spencer, by the time Spencer gets in contact with Emily, rambling and screaming into the phone like he’s just witnessed a murder, nearly a full night has passed. Emily meets Spencer in the moonlit prison and it takes her an entire minute to get him calm enough to talk, to explain thoroughly. The memories of Mexico that come flooding back, the woman who drugged him.

“Has anyone checked on my mom?” he shouts. “Can someone please check on my mom?”

“Spencer,” Emily calls to him. “We did.”

“And?”

“And, she’s fine. Apparently, Cassie was unable to come in and they sent another nurse in her place. But, um…”

Spencer leans forward in his seat, “What? What?”

“Cassie said this was delivered to your apartment,” she digs through her bag. “No name, no address. Just a knock at the door.”

And she holds up your gold charm bracelet, sealed in an evidence bag, “Do you recognize it?”

Author’s note:

Inspired by me finishing Better Call Saul and being torn apart by Jimmy and Kim. Also added Saul Goodman to my list of Old Men I’m Obsessed With 😭 Anyways stream the Breaking Bad universe on Netflix! Thanks 4 reading!! <3

"Come on, pretty boy," Morgan says, though his heart isn't truly in it, "I thought you knew better." 

Spencer shakes his head. You and Spencer had very separate hotel rooms and no sensual touching occurred, but he loves how happy this running joke makes you, so he stays quiet. 

"He knows everything," you say, backtracking, "That's why he's gonna make me a cup of coffee. He knows exactly how I like it." 

He leaves to make you a cup of coffee, but he was heading that way anyway for his own. He's thinking to himself that coffee is a bad idea and that he wishes he was better at saying no to you when you follow him in, your arms already open as you close the two or three steps to his chest and hug him over the shoulders. 

"You didn't say anything when you left," you worry, your embrace overwhelming, sweet and soft and with a loving squeeze to round it off. "I wasn't being bossy, was I?" 

You can be, but not this time. "Shut up, you know I'll make you a cup of coffee whenever you want it." 

"That so?" you ask. 

There's an excess energy you haven't managed to kick today racing through you. He can see the restlessness in your smile, no matter how glitzy. 

"Are you okay?" he asks. 

Spencer's poorly kept secret is that he's obsessed with you. You dote on him, you tease him, you torture him, but Spencer wants all of it and more. He likes being the centre of your attention, loves how your fond flirtation has changed to plain affection, and he would do anything you asked him to if it meant you were gonna kiss his cheek at the end. He thinks you're beautiful and electric and a thousand yards out of his league, and he thinks you're the nicest woman they ever made under all your bravado because not once have you encouraged that line of thought —you like him for him. You don't want him to change. You don't need anything from him he can't give to you. 

His simple question transforms you, your glossy lips perking immediately into a smile. "Why wouldn't I be okay?" 

"You seem tense. I've never given a massage before, but I can actually try," he offers. 

Your hand cups his cheek, your voice aglow with a saccharine quality, "You're lovely, that's why. Maybe I'll take you up on it later–" 

"It's not like–" 

You'd been attempting a sweet thank you, and Spencer was brushing it off, but somewhere in the middle of it you'd gone up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Spencer —idiot, uncoordinated, inexperienced, is going to hate himself later Spencer— turned away from your touch to argue with you, directing your lips against his. 

Soft, sticky, pretty lips pressed to his. 

You set back on your heels quickly. Your eyes are wide, beautiful but flared in shock, a sheepishness tugging your brows together as you say, "I'm so sorry." 

"It's my fault," he says quickly, braceleting your wrist in his hand, "I'm sorry–" 

You both lean back in for a second kiss at the same time. Spencer's head angled down and your chin tipped ever so slightly upward, you close your eyes as he closes his, completely silent. It's not often you're quiet. Spencer doesn't mean to, but he kisses too hard, too much, forcing your hand from his cheek as he grabs you either side of the head to keep you in his reach. 

Your breath comes out in a huff that lights his nerve endings on fire, the barest hint of your voice tacked to it like a sigh of relief, like you're taking the edge off in the circle of his arms. Spencer's hand slides behind your head to hook you in, your lips parting at the seam from the pressure. You feel the heat of him and respond with vigour, your hand a nagging demand at the small of his back, pulling him closer, closer, as his other hand trails down your arm. 

Your elbow bumps the coffee mugs, it really is his fault, and you spring away from him like you think you've been caught. Smiling, a kid with her hand in the cookie jar, you throw your gaze around the room to check you're still alone before stepping forward to laugh against his mouth. 

That's a good sound. A great reaction. You have more patience than Spencer, dotting kisses thick with lip gloss up into his top lip, your mouth just open enough for him to feel faint. 

"It was really an accident," he says between shorter, kinder kisses. 

"I know," you murmur, words smushed. You steal a last rather frantic one before you stop, breathing funny, hands smoothing down the hair you'd mussed initially with sorry tenderness. "Was that okay?" 

He puts his hand on your hip, refusing to gratify what feels like a silly question with a response when you can't not know he's been wanting to kiss you for weeks. Maybe months. "Are you sure you're fine?" 

"Thank you." Another loop. You point at his book, fingertip hitting a creamy page with a small thud. "Is this any good?" 

"I think you'd really like it, it feels like that last book I borrowed from you, and you loved that. They're very similar. I can lend it to you when I'm done." 

"Don't rush it for my sake."

Spencer gives you a private smile. "I won't. Just because you could watch a movie at two times speed doesn't mean you should." 

Your returning smile isn't half as nice. No shared lightness, no bright eyes. You're feeling awkward and unhappy —you really like Spencer. Like, you think you could be happy together for a long long time sort of like. He's charming and sweet and no one is ever as kind to him as he deserves, which is why you're trying to be kind now by putting distance between you.

You'll be brash forever. You can't change that, and Spencer doesn't need the stress of dealing with you, not on top of everything else. 

His smile fades as yours does. Quiet, without fuss, he scoots back on the picnic blanket, putting you knee to knee. The subtle muscle of his arm presses to yours and his hand wraps gently around your wrist as he dips his head down, his cheek touching briefly to your shoulder. 

"I know it's nice, but if the heat is getting to you we should go inside," he says, his fingers sliding across your palm to slot between your own. He squeezes your hand. "Heat stroke isn't obvious at first. Do you feel woozy?"

You stare at your twined fingers. He surprises you again, being this soft with you, and being uncharacteristically forward. Or maybe not uncharacteristic at all; Spencer won't let something like timidity stop him from comforting someone that needs it. 

"Spence," you murmur, closing your eyes, face angled down. 

"What?" 

"I'm sorry if I… If I've been messing you around. But I don't think this is a good idea." 

"What's not a good idea?" 

You can't make yourself say it. Instead, you rub the back of his hand, more for your own comfort than his, your tongue like a useless lump in your mouth. 

"You're sorry? Are you sure you're okay?" Spencer asks, no heed to the people sitting with you as he lets go of your hand to put his arm behind your shoulder like a shield. 

"I don't want to torture you," you say. 

Your friends love that word. You torture Spencer with your flirting and your easy affection. 

Spencer makes a face, eyes squinting and nose wrinkled. "They're just kidding when they say that. Emily, Morgan, they like making fun of me, it's like, sibling bonding or something. They don't say it because there's actually something to feel sorry about." He lowers his voice, bashful but sincere at once, "If you're torturing me, I guess I'm a masochist." 

You laugh without thinking, a breathless, girlish sound you'd regret if you had the wherewithal. "You're a masochist?" you ask. 

He takes the brim of your borrowed hat and pushes it up to unobstruct the view of your eyes. 

"If that's what it takes," he says. A hint of wryness creeps into his otherwise smooth tone. 

Despite his brave talk and his steady eye contact, his face has started to blush. A rosy hue kisses the tops of his cheeks and his nose, a dusting of pink splodges stark against his paleness. The curve of his lips seems extra tantalising now. He's very, very pretty. 

And he doesn't mind stepping in to take the reins when you're unsure of things. 

"We really should sit in the shade for a bit," he says. "Let's get drinks from the gazebo. Yeah?" 

The world stood still. For what could have only equated to five seconds, the world stood still. 

Five seconds somehow felt like an entire lifetime, where all outside stimuli faded from vision, sounds disappearing before they could hit eardrums. The way his wrists and knee and the rest of his body had ached and throbbed just moments ago slipped away. 

The world stood still. All he could see was you and all he could hear were the words you’d spoken five seconds before that had caused the earth to suddenly stop turning on its axis with the weight of them. 

For five seconds, which felt like five hours, he saw the last fifteen years flash before his eyes. Every subtle glance, every tiny smile; every accidental touch. Every word ever shared between the two of you that he’d catalogued in his brain came spiralling forth, flooding his senses to the point he wasn’t sure he could breathe.

For five seconds it was simply you and him and those words you’d spoken at the worst possible time. But you’d said it. And he heard it. He just had no idea what he was supposed to do with it now. 

There was once a time when hearing those words spoken from your lips to his ears was all he had ever wanted. He’d imagined you saying them to him more times than was healthy, so often in fact there were instances in which he actually managed to convince himself you had said them. 

But you never had. Not until now. 

And now he had no idea how he was supposed to begin processing those words, especially in the situation in which you had finally spoken the one thing he’d always wanted to hear you say. 

He wanted to respond, he wanted to tell you he felt the same, he’d always felt the same. For fifteen long years he’d carried his unrequited feelings for you like a led weight upon his shoulders. They’d dragged him down a little more each day, at this point he found he was almost entirely buried under the burden of his feelings.

And then you’d gone and said that and he didn’t know how he was supposed to respond. 

The words were spinning and turning, ruminating in his brain and he forgot for those five seconds where you were and what was going on around you. He stopped trying to cut through the tape binding his wrists, stopped thinking about getting to his ankle hostler.

He stopped thinking about the crazed unsub standing just three feet away brandishing a gun at the both of you, his sick and twisted game of Truth or Dare coming to an abrupt end with the uttering of those. 

You’d originally thought to do a Friday, but with various friend and family celebrations almost every weekend until the end of the year, it made more sense - and frankly made it more fun - to cancel Spencer’s classes for a day and play hooky a little.

It’s a bright and slightly rainy Thursday morning - random, but purposefully so - in September. Your husband’s alarm goes off and he leans over, pressing a kiss to your temple, before getting up and taking a shower. Every so often, you’d join him in the shower, but not today. Today you get up and head to the kitchen.

You’d loved Spencer’s old apartment, but when the two of you moved in together, especially after the events of his last few somewhat traumatizing years with the BAU, a change felt necessary. The two bedroom, two bath bungalow you two found just outside of Stafford, Virginia was just as charming as Spencer’s old place. Antique, but modern enough to have better security than his old building (he is understandably a stickler for safety). The kitchen features windows looking out into your small backyard, Spencer planted a tree last year and you’re sure it was in order to watch the leaves change as fall arrives. The tips of the leaves are just beginning to yellow, the light rain a perfect background for the day you have planned. You turn on the stove and oven and open the fridge, pulling out a can of pumpkin spice cinnamon rolls and the package of turkey bacon. You begin cooking and you can hear your husband start getting ready and, just as you thought it would, the smell of the food draws him away from his typical morning routine (get dressed, make coffee, grab a granola bar if he remembers to) and brings him to the kitchen.

“Is there a reason,” he asks from the doorway, “that it smells…like, um-“

“Like fall?” you ask, smiling over your shoulder at him as you flip the turkey bacon in the pan. Spencer grins and you turn back to the food.

“Well, yeah,” Spencer says. “You planning a fun day alone?”

You wince a little at the small hint of jealousy you hear in his voice, thrilled that your response is, “No, not alone.”

“Oh,” he replies, a little shocked. “Is someone coming ov-“

“Nope,” you reply cheerfully, grabbing a mitt and pulling the cinnamon rolls out of the oven.

“Wait…wait, what?” Spencer questions, totally not distracted by you bending over like that.

“Come on, lovey,” you tease, turning to face him fully. “Put the pieces together.”

He stares at you for a moment and then looks almost overwhelmingly sad, “Honey, I have three classes today, I can’t-“

“About that,” you cut him off quietly. He arches a brow at you, but you cross to the end of the kitchen island, pulling out Spencer’s university laptop and opening it, clicking to his classes’ dashboard page on the school’s site and turning it around slowly, chewing on your lip just a little nervously.

“Dear Students,” Spencer reads after popping on his glasses. “Classes are cancelled until Monday due to slight illness on my part. Have a great long weekend - be sure to read ahead for Monday!”

There’s a slightly too long silence that makes you just a bit nervous.

“I know it might be a bit of an overstep, but you’ve just seemed so…so burned out lately and-“ you’re cut off as Spencer moves to stand right in front of you.

“You cancelled my classes for me?” he asks, a small smile poking at the corner of his mouth.

“Yes,” you reply.

“So that we could…do what, exactly?” He attempts to keep his smile at bay, but is nearly beaming.

“Well,” you smile, “I thought we could eat some pumpkin spice cinnamon rolls and bacon and, I don’t know, maybe get really cozy on our super comfortable couch and watch Hocus Pocus, Corpse Bride, and Practical Magic? Maybe throw in Crimson Peak if we’re still going strong?”

“Just to clarify, you realized I was burned out and decided to plan a cozy fall movie day to make me feel better?” Spencer asks, almost incredulous, wrapping his arms around your waist.

“That would be it, yes,” you nod, wrapping your arms around his neck.

“Damn,” he mutters quietly, looking down at you.

“What?” you giggle.

“Nothing,” Spencer beams, turning his head and eyeing your lips, “I just definitely married the perfect woman.”

Your laugh is quickly quashed by his lips on yours.

~ I remember Halloween. ~

Usually he would avoid them like the plague, but tonight it was Emily’s birthday and she’d all but demanded he come along with the rest of the team. 

A crowded room full of empty faces. Conversations filled with lies. Another night with all his friends, wondering if they saw through his thinly veiled disguise. 

He clung to the sidelines like the wallflower he was and after a socially acceptable amount of time had passed, he offered his apologies to the birthday girl and said goodbye. 

And that could have been the end of his night. 

Pushing open the front door he sucked in a huge breath of fresh air the second his feet hit the pavement. The air in the club had been stifling, alcohol mixed with perspiration had overwhelmed his fragile senses. 

He felt dirty. He needed to go home and take a long, hot shower. 

But as he turned to head down the street, conveniently Emily had chosen a club just a few blocks from his apartment, he stopped in his tracks when he found a body slumped on the ground. 

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He was an FBI agent and he was also a gentleman and he couldn’t in good conscience leave a woman alone like this. 

No matter how much he wanted to go home.  

He cautiously stepped closer to the woman, who was leaning against a wall, legs drawn up for which a head rested upon. It didn’t take a genius to figure the woman was drunk. 

“Excuse me, miss? Uh, are you ok?” He asked with a frown as he approached. 

Your head snapped backwards, narrowly avoiding slamming into the wall and you looked up at him with large, misty eyes. 

“Hmm? Me? I’m fine.” You nodded, proffering your hands towards him. “Little help? 

Spencer rolled his lip between his teeth, wanting to avoid any more unnecessary contact with strangers tonight but you clearly needed help. 

Somewhat reluctantly he reached out and took hold of your hands, pulling you to your feet with absolutely no help on your part. 

You stumbled a little but managed to correct yourself before Spencer had to intervene. You looked up at him through your lashes, the moonlight overhead reflecting on your irises.

“You’re really pretty.” Your lip quirked into a smile and Spencer’s stomach coiled into knots. 

He’d been thinking the exact same thing about you. 

“Uh, thanks?” He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “Where do you live? I can get you a cab?”

“Oh, you know.” You shrugged, wobbling on your feet. 

“No, no I don’t. We just met, remember?” He was frowning up as your eyes cast up and down the street as if you were searching for your own home. 

“Around here somewhere. I think.” You nodded, but then added, “where are we?” 

Spencer exhaled between parted lips, knowing he couldn’t leave you to fend for yourself. And despite his better judgement, he spoke anyway. 

“I live round the corner, you can crash at my place until you sober up.” 

“You’re going to take me home, pretty boy?” You winked suggestively at him and he couldn’t help the way he felt his crotch stir. 

“Not like that!” He quickly shook his head. “I just…just come with me.” 

It was slightly concerning how easily you followed a complete stranger home. Maybe he’d have to give you a lecture on the dangers of it in the morning. 

But for now, you slung your arm around his waist, something he would normally hate but found he rather enjoyed when you did it, and he led you home. 

***

Spencer slept on the couch and let you take his bed with very little protest from you. He was already awake and reading a book when you emerged wearing nothing but an old t-shirt of his he’d lent you last night. 

You were squinting against the onslaught of light in the room, hand cradling the side of your head. Your eyes landed on him and your eyebrows knitted together. 

“Uh…hi?” You croaked, grimacing in the pain caused simply by speaking. 

“Good morning.” Spencer set his book down and got to his feet but he didn’t come any closer to you. 

“Did we…?” You trailed off hoping he would catch your drift. 

He didn’t. 

“Did we, what?” 

“Sleep together?” 

“What?” He squeaked, his cheeks instantly flushing bright red. “No! You were wasted.” 

“That wouldn’t stop most men.” You shrugged sadly.

“I’m not most men.” He shrugged too. “You were drunk and I didn’t want to just leave you on the street so I let you crash here.” 

“Wow.” You nodded, eyes sparking a little. “Maybe there are some good guys left in the world.” 

“I try.” He shrugged once more. 

“What’s your name? I’m sorry I don’t remember.” You padded a little closer to him. 

“Oh, we didn’t get around to exchanging names. I was too busy trying to stop you bumping into everything I own.” He offered you a tight lipped smile. “I’m Spencer. Spencer Reid.” 

“Y/N.” You stepped closer and when you offered him your hand to shake, he didn’t even think twice about it. 

***

Two

“And I realised I hadn’t had company in…five years? So I thought I better at least crack a window.” He was rambling, god help him he was rambling. 

You leant against the dining table with an ever growing smirk on your lips as he awkwardly spat out words, clearly not noticing your amusement. 

“I guess I should feel privileged?” You cocked your eyebrow at him. “Five years, huh?”

The way in which he said the word company, told you exactly what he meant. Obviously he’d had people around his place, you’d been here not a few months ago yourself. 

But he hadn’t had company. Company of a woman in his bed. And as if to prove this, a blush crept up his neck and onto his cheeks which told you the answer before he spoke. 

“Yeah.” He chewed on his lip, feeling as though he needed to explain himself. “I throw myself into my work. I’m busy, you know? And even when I’m not I, uh…I’m not very good at talking to women, in case that wasn’t abundantly clear. And women don’t tend to gravitate towards me. So yeah, it’s been five years since I…you know.” 

God this was mortifying. 

It was your fifth date and the first time he’d invited you over since he’d helped you out when you were drunk. You’d been for dinner and when he’d suggested you come home with him, his intentions had been clear even if he hadn’t meant them to be. 

“That’s freaking adorable. I really do feel special.” Your smile grew.

“Adorable? Great, just what every man wants to hear from the woman he wants to…” he trailed off. 

“Wants to…what?” You took a step or two closer to him. 

“I think it’s safe to say you know exactly what I mean.” His blush deepened with each step closer you got. 

“For argument's sake, let’s say I don’t.” You were really close to him now, your arms snaking up and around his neck. 

“Come any closer and you’ll likely find out.” He croaked, somehow getting even redder. 

You smirked, pushing your body flush against his and quickly ascertaining just what he meant. 

He was hard, straining against his slacks and his erection pressed against you now, showing you what he was talking about. 

You giggled a little, edging your face closer to his, feeling his breath on your face. Just as you were about to press your lips against his, giving over to the sexual tension between the two of you, you were disturbed by the sound of his phone ringing. 

“Goddamnit.” He growled, pulling back from you and fishing his phone out of his pocket. Garcia. “I’ve gotta take this, I’m so sorry.” 

Spencer had never cared less about serial killers and murders in his life. He just hoped he would have another chance to take you home. 

***

Three 

Spencer grumbled as the ringing of his phone roused him from sleep. He was used to it by now, used to work dragging him from his bed in the middle of the night. So he was surprised to say the least when he saw your name on the screen. 

He panicked for a second as he brought the device to his ear and answered it. 

“Y/N?” He sat up in bed, pulling the duvet up to his chin. 

“Hey, Spence.” You replied. 

It had been almost a month since work had rudely interrupted your alone time and the two of you hadn’t seen each other since. You’d talked mostly through text but Spencer had started to get the impression he’d blown his chance with you. 

“It’s three am, is everything ok?” 

“Yeah, I just…can’t sleep.” You shrugged. “I hope it’s ok that I called.”

“Y/N, believe me when I say you could wake me up from half a world away and I’d be grateful.” 

“Can I…” you sighed shakily. “Can I come over?” 

“Always.” He was quick to reply. 

“Ok.” You nodded to yourself. “I’ll be over soon.” 

“I’ll be waiting.” He smiled, before hanging up the phone. 

***

This time when you came into his home, when you went to kiss him, there was no interruption. In fact there was no intrusion of work calling him all night long. 

It gave him the time he needed to worship every inch of you, to show you what a goddess he thought you until the sun was peeking in through the crack in the curtains. It was without a doubt the best night of Spencer’s life and by the time he was through he never wanted you to leave again. 

A house was just four walls but he now realised his home was wherever you were. 

At some point that night, somewhere in between the sheets, he gave his heart to you. And he never wanted you to give it back. 

***

Four

His apartment had never felt more like a home than when you were in it. But even after the night you’d spent together he still felt nervous asking you over.

Maybe he worried that now you’d had sex you would think it was all he wanted from you which couldn’t be further from the truth. 

But even still, when he picked you up from work on Friday, one of his rare days off, he felt scared to invite you round. 

“So what’s the plan tonight, Doc?” You asked with a bright smile as you slid into the passenger’s seat of his car. 

“Uh, I was thinking we could get take out and watch some movies. At my place. If you’d like that? We can go out though, if you’d prefer. I don’t mind.” He smiled awkwardly at you. 

“Why would I want to go out when I can have you all to myself at your apartment?” You gave him a mischievous look that caused his pants to tighten. 

“You…you really want that?” He swallowed. 

“I really want that.” You giggled, patting his knee and sending a jolt of electricity through his whole body. “Come on then Doc, take me home.” 

***

Take out and movies quickly became a long forgotten memory when you were climbing into his lap on the couch and stealing his attention away from the TV. 

Your knees either side of his thighs, you wrapped your arms around his neck and played with a stand of his curls. 

“You really are deliciously pretty, have I told you that before?” You gently rocked back and forth in his lap, feeling him growing aroused. 

“The night we met, you called me pretty.” A blush spread to his cheeks. 

Was he going to blush every time the two of you started to get intimate?

“Did I?” You laughed. “I can’t say I remember. But you are. Very, very pretty.” 

“And you are beautiful, my love.” He whispered, a gentle smile on his lips. 

He closed the space between you and kissed you, causing you to hum against his lips, whilst continuing to playfully grind down into his lap. 

You didn’t make it to the bedroom, didn’t even remove your clothes. Spencer simply shucked your dress out of the way and moved your panties aside while you moved his slacks just enough for his member to be freed. 

By some stroke of luck the BAU didn’t pull a case all weekend and you didn’t leave the confines of his apartment for two full days. 

You spent a blissful forty eight hours eating junk food, watching movies and having Spencer read to you along with making love in just about every inch of his abode. 

By the time Sunday night rolled around you had to physically drag yourself away from him so you could go back to your own apartment. Spencer was just as reluctant to see you go. 

“It’s not the same here without you.” He spoke as you kissed him in his doorway. “It only feels like home when you’re here.” 

You agreed wholeheartedly. 

You’d fallen head over heels with Spencer in no time at all and being with him in his apartment, you’d never felt more at home. 

Maybe one day you’d be able to share it. But for now you had to leave, despite everything inside of you begging you to stay. 

***

Five

Between both of your busy work schedules, it left little time for the two of you to be together. Every time Spencer was dragged away on a case he missed you more than the last, usually less than a hundred miles from you but feeling like a million.

You spoke on the phone whenever he was away, the shattered light transmitting your voice but being so far away, you sometimes didn’t have a choice. All you wanted was for him to come take you home again. 

After weeks of missing each other, whilst working a local case, he received a phone call from a number he didn’t recognise. He’d been staring at a map pinned to the board in the round table room at Quantico well into the early hours of the morning, when the phone buzzed in his pocket. 

It was your best friend, he’d heard a lot about her but never met her. It had instantly sent up a red flag which was warranted because she went on to tell him you were drunk and refused to go home unless Spencer was the one taking you.

Emily had been extremely gracious and let him go, he thanked her profusely as he’d run out of the door. He drove downtown as quickly as he could to the bar your friend had told him you were at. 

On arrival you had thrown yourself in his arms, giggling wildly and repeating in a slurred voice, you came, I knew you would. Come take me home, Spence.

It wasn’t until the morning that you regretted this decision entirely.

Much like that first morning you found Spencer on his couch and your head throbbed angrily. He looked much less awkward than he had that first time though, if you weren’t mistaken you would think he looked annoyed. 

He stood up and exhaled noisily through his nose and shook his head a little. 

“I was at work.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Right in the middle of trying to catch an unsub who is terrorising DC. You can’t…you can’t have your friends call me when I’m working, Y/N. I shouldn’t just leave my team in the middle of a case to come and pick you up when you’re drunk.” 

“They’re always going to come first, aren’t they?” You surprised him with your words. 

“What? Who?” 

“Serial killers. Your team. I barely see you because you’re always working.” 

“You knew what I did for a living before we started dating. My job is my life.” He shrugged. 

“And there’s no room in that life for someone else.” Your lip quivered slightly. 

“I didn’t say that.” He dropped his arms to his sides. 

“You didn’t need to.” You whispered. “I don’t think this is going to work out, Spencer. I need more from a relationship than you can offer.” 

“No, don’t say that.” He whined. “Please, please don’t say that.” 

“I’m sorry.” You shrugged sadly. “I am crazy about you Spencer, but when I love someone I love them with my entire being, they become my whole world. And I have to be theirs too.” 

“You…you love me?” He gasped slightly, feeling his chest tighten. 

“Of course I do.” You sniffed. 

“I love you too, Y/N. You are my whole world.” He took a few steps towards you but you held your hands up to stop him coming too close.

“No, Spencer. The BAU is your whole world. I’m sorry, I have to go.” You moved past him hurriedly towards the front door. 

“Y/N, please don’t do this.” He tried to reach for you but you slipped by him. “Y/N!” 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” You sobbed as you threw the door open and fled. 

Spencer stared at the closed door, eyes welling with tears. He stumbled a little, before collapsing on the couch. 

The walls of his apartment felt like they were closing in on him, making the already small room feel tinier under the weight of your absence. 

For a while these walls had started to feel like a home. But now you’d left it was nothing but bricks and mortar. 

***

One 

Months passed and you ignored every single one of Spencer’s phone calls. And he felt utterly lost without you. 

He threw himself into his work more so than ever, getting a little more invested in the Lynch case than he needed to. 

When he’d sent up the order for the cops to breach the house, his head hadn’t been clear and as such he hadn’t figured it out until it was too late. 

As the explosion sounded all around him and he flung backwards to the concrete, his mind was still awash with thoughts of you. 

And he’d know when he hit the floor, debris raining down around him. 

He’d known when he’d collapsed after returning to his apartment and started convulsing. 

He’d known when he’d woken up in hospital and you weren’t there by his bedside like he wished you were. 

He’d known when Emily came to visit him, exactly what he needed to do. 

“Hey, how are you feeling?” She smiled sadly at him as she meandered to his bed. 

“Kinda like I got blown up.” He shrugged. “I’m ok, or at least I will be. I, uh, I realised something. Just as the explosion went off and I was sent flying, I realised something.”

There was a calmness about him that Emily didn’t think she’d ever seen on him. He looked at peace, eerily content. 

She took hold of his hand, already knowing exactly what it was he was going to say. 

“You’re leaving the BAU, aren’t you?” She whispered. 

“How’d you know?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. 

“I just do.” She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “You seem like a man who’s come to terms with a really hard decision, but one that you feel lighter for making.” 

“I hate it when you profile me.” He rolled his eyes playfully. 

“It’s not profiling, it’s just knowing my friends.” She chuckled. “So what’s her name?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Don’t even think about lying to me, Reid. For a while you were happier than I’d ever seen you. And then the last few months you’ve been struggling. You met someone and presumably it ended because of the job? Now that’s profiling.” She smirked. 

“One of the many reasons I am not going to miss you guys.” He joked. “Her name is Y/N and you’re spot on. Emily, does it make me a complete idiot for giving up my life’s work for a shot at love?” 

“Not at all.” She was quick to answer. “You’ve been through a tremendous amount of trauma in your life, Spencer. It’s about time you got some sunshine after so many years of black clouds. As long as you think she’s worth it, it’s not stupid at all.” 

“She’s…” he sighed contentedly trying to think of the right way to word it and only coming up with one simple term to describe you. “She’s like coming home.” 

“I’m happy for you.” She gave his hand a final squeeze before letting go. “The doctor said you should be discharged tomorrow. I’ll make sure someone’s here to pick you up.” 

“Thanks Emily. I’ll bring my badge and firearm back once I’m back up on my feet.” 

“No rush. Get some rest.” She smiled as she left the room, already pulling her phone from her pocket and dialling a familiar number. 

Penelope Garcia answered on the second ring. 

“How is he?” She hurried to ask. 

“He’s good, on the mend.” Emily nodded to herself. “I need you to find a number for me Penelope and I need you to not ask me why.” 

***

The following day Spencer was discharged but no one had to come to his room for him. 

He dressed in the clean clothes JJ had dropped by last night and signed his hospital papers just as his phone chimed within an incoming text. 

📱 Emily Prentiss: Your ride is waiting for you out front. Time to go home. 

He frowned at the slightly cryptic message as a nurse came in with a wheelchair to take him downstairs. 

He tried to fight it but he didn’t have the energy and so, despite the fact it made him feel feeble, he allowed her to wheel him out. 

In the elevator, he sent a reply to Emily. 

📲 Any hints as to who I’m looking for?

No sooner had he hit send, a reply came in. 

📱 Emily Prentiss: Nope. All I’ll say is: you’re welcome. 

He didn’t have much time to dwell on it as soon the elevator reached the ground floor and he was being wheeled out into the parking lot. 

It was a good job he was sitting down because when he spotted you standing a little awkwardly by your car, his legs immediately started to tremble. 

You spotted him and offered him a shy wave as the nurse took him over. When they reached you, she helped him out of the chair and handed him his duffel bag but was soon leaving again. 

Spencer regarded you curiously as you toyed with your hands in obvious discomfort. 

“Emily called you.” He smiled apologetically at you. “I’m sorry, I didn’t ask her to.”

“I know, she said you had no idea and that you’d probably kick her ass if you did.” A smile played on your lips. “I can’t imagine you kicking anybody's ass.” 

“No, but I seem to continually getting mine kicked.” He gestured vaguely to his injuries. 

“She told me what happened. Are you ok?” Concern laced your words. 

“I will be.” He nodded. “I really am sorry she dragged you here. I can get a cab.”

“Spencer?” You stepped closer to him, gnawing on your lip. “Did you leave the BAU because of me?” 

“Yes.” He nodded. “I mean also, it was time. I’m getting older and I can’t keep winding up in hospital beds. But ultimately, losing you was worse than losing my job. And it might be too little too late but I am choosing you. If you’ll still have me.” 

You tilted your head to the side a little, reaching out your hands and taking hold of the lapels of his shirt. You took a second to just breathe him in, relish in the moment of being reunited with the only man you’d ever truly loved. 

“Spence, I have done nothing but miss you for months. I never expected you to quit the BAU, I just wanted to know you saw me as a priority. And I see now that you do. I love you and I am also choosing you.” 

“Oh thank god.” He breathed out heavily, chuckling as he did so. “I love you so much.”

With that you drew him closer by his collar and slammed your lips against his. His arms immediately wrapped around you, holding you close and afraid to ever let you go too far again. 

The kiss was tender and loving, all your feelings for one other being spoken silently against each other's lips. 

When you pulled back, he stroked back your hair and he was giving you the kind of smile that could light up the whole damn world.

“So where’d you wanna go, Doc? My place or yours?” 

“How about we go to my place? Only from now on we call it our place?” He knew it was soon, probably way too soon. He could have very well ruined things again before they had a chance to begin. “I tried to be so strong, but you see the cracks. My defence is gone. I want to take you home for good.” 

His house was just four walls. It wasn't a home unless you were there. 

Slowly your lips curled up into a smile, one that reached all the way to your eyes. 

The situation only got worse when I did finally open the door to find him awkwardly pacing around the room. My attention followed him back and forth a couple times before he came to a sudden stop.

“Hi honey,” I offered as gently as I could, “What’s up?”

“Hi,” he replied, still dejected and distant. He didn’t come any closer to me before he began fiddling with his fingers.

After a tense moment of silence, I asked again, more directly, “Are you alright, Spencer?”

“I have something very difficult to discuss with you, and I-I just want to ask for you to be patient with me.”

My heart sunk at the realization that the sense of foreboding was coming from him. The muscles straight up stopped beating, turned to rocks, and tumbled into my stomach.

I shook my head to try to stave off the stupor associated with shock.

“What are you talking about?” I asked because I needed to know just how much my simple suburban life was about to change.

Was he cheating on me? Was he going back to prison? Were their federal agents standing outside, ready to tear our family from our home?

When he finally began to speak, however, it was far from a satisfying explanation.

“I know I’m not always the best husband, and I know I can be absent and that the stress of the job and the kids and the state of the entire world, really, can get in the way of our time together,” he said with an increasing tempo.

“Spencer,” I said as a beg and a warning, “Just say it.”

He held his hands up in surrender as he pleaded back, “Please, just…”

I could feel my pulse in every extremity. My skin burned with blood and my lungs cried out for oxygen.

“I know you, I do,” he assured me before he continued, “and I know this sounds so unbelievably horrible for me to even accuse you of something like this, but…”

Me?

In that terrifying silence, I ran through our lifetime of memories to try to find something I might have done wrong. But no matter how hard I searched, I found nothing that might make him want to leave me like this.

Unless…

And then he said it.

“Are you… cheating on me?”

So quickly, my fear shifted to white-hot rage that came out of my mouth so ungracefully that I nearly knocked the lamp off the bedside table in my confusion.

“What?! No!” I shrieked, “Oh my god, what made you think that?!”

At first, Spencer relaxed. The veracity of my answer had been convincing because it had been true. But Spencer, clearly still concerned that I was somehow an award-worthy actress, continued to wring his hands together throughout his poorly planned confrontation.

“I, um… I found… lingerie. In the laundry,” he said with a tilted timbre. “And I know I’ve never seen it on you before, and I also know it wasn’t new.”

The busy blood in my veins immediately knew to cower. Before it had even struck me how utterly fucked I was, I was practically trembling with concern.

Spencer saw the fear, and instead of realizing it was about what he had no way of knowing, he interpreted it as a different kind of admission.

“So, whose is it?” he asked.

Stepping towards the bed, I motioned for him to take a seat. When he didn’t? I urged him, “Honey, sit down.”

“… Oh,” he muttered before practically collapsing on the bed.

Slightly annoyed by the dramatics, I rolled my eyes and sighed before I explained, “No, not that.”

He didn’t believe me, so I sighed again.

“Spencer, I am not cheating on you.”

That time, he sighed. I let him enjoy the brief reprieve before I threw him headlong into the worst kind of turmoil.

“What you found… isn’t mine,” I stated very clearly.

“But—?”

“It belongs to our daughter.”

The room fell silent. I watched as the realization dawned on him. Slowly, his glazed over eyes began to reflect the harrowing reality.

Then, all at once, his entire world came to a devastating end. Jumping up from his seat on the bed, Spencer grabbed his head and yelled in utter disbelief.

“What?!”

“Spencer, calm down,” I tried.

It didn’t work.

“What do you—she’s only 16! What do you mean it’s her—?!”

I watched from the sidelines as his brain short circuited. He tried to pace, but ended up just trapped in the same spot with flailing arms and wild hair.

Eventually, he settled on the question that had made me so nervous in the first place.

“Where did she even get it from?!”

“I bought it for her,” I said.

The fight left his body immediately. Spencer fell back on the bed and buried his face in his hands with a dramatic groan.

I sighed, again.

I was fully prepared to let him wallow in the grief of his daughter’s childhood, too. But then he had to go and say something silly again.

“Oh my god, I wish you had been cheating on me,” he strained, “That would have been so much easier than this.”

“Spencer!”

“I’m sorry!” he conceded immediately, “I didn’t mean it. I love you, I’m glad you aren’t cheating on me.”

Despite his well-intentioned apology, he remained inconsolable. I thought about giving him a moment to spiral, but I also knew that this was a bandaid that had practically fused into his skin.

At a certain point, it just became necessary for us to discuss it—with or without the dramatics.

“I know this is upsetting for you, but our daughter is almost a grown woman,” I explained to my pitiful husband who continued to make sounds of general protest. “I don’t want her to think of her body as anything less than something worth feeling good about.”

Finally popping up from behind his hands, he returned a bitter laugh.

“Okay, but is she doing it to make herself feel good, or to please some piece of shit asshole quarterback?” he spat.

He didn’t appreciate the way it made me laugh, but I couldn’t help it. It was a ridiculous notion and he deserved to be mocked for it. 

“Spencer, your daughter would not be interested in a quarterback.”

He knew I was right, but in typical Spencer fashion, he refused to admit it.

Instead, he just huffed, “How would I know?!”

But I knew he would, eventually, respond to reason, so I didn’t relent no matter how much he begged me to.

“Sex shouldn’t be a scary thing for a teenage girl! I wanted her to know she can feel comfortable telling me things. Like if she needs condoms or the pill or, heaven forbid—!”

“Oh my god, please stop,” he groaned, “Just, give me a second, please!”

I allowed him the moment because I knew he needed it.

Sure enough, after a couple seconds of reflection and a few deep breaths, Spencer returned to his normal eccentricity. He even managed to chuckle to himself a little bit, although I’m sure he’d still felt his dramatics were justified.

He didn’t protest when I took a seat beside him on the bed. In fact, he was quick to lean on me.

I wrapped my arms around him and tried to stifle my laughter at how downtrodden he’d become. My hand smoothed over his hand and I tried to offer him reassurance that everything would be alright if our daughter grew up.

“Oh, honey, nothing has changed. She’s still our baby girl,” I reminded him.

“I know,” he sighed. Then, through laughter he muttered, “It was just a lot for me to go from thinking you secretly hated me to our daughter wearing lingerie, alright? It’s a lot.”

He buried his face against my shoulder and took another deep breath before he held me back. The simple gesture reminded me just how much he’d probably been through in past hour. Of course, it had all been self-inflicted and based on comical perceptions. But it was a lot, and I always loved the chance to comfort him.

We sat like that for a while. We sat with the knowledge that we’d made it this far. There was something special about this fear, because it meant that we had done at least a few things right.

That didn’t really help assuage any of the fears for the future, however. 

“Is she having sex?” he asked.

I wished I had a better answer.

“I don’t know,” I admitted with an exhausted groan, “My plan didn’t work. She won’t tell me anything.”

“What do we do?”

It was a question I’d spent hours pondering only to end on the same-old, unsatisfying answer.

“I guess we just… wait until she’s ready to tell us about her boyfriend.”

Silently, Spencer lifted his head and turned to me. The foreboding returned with a vengeance, but this time, I was prepared for the question to follow.

“… her what?”

I’d always heard people say that domestic suburban life could be hell on earth. I’d always shrugged it off, convinced that I had figured out the impossible and remained happily in love with my wife and the proud father of a very well-adjusted daughter.

But as I stood in my bedroom, bereft of even the basic will to live while my beautiful, loving wife fixed my tie, I realized that they had been right.

Fatherhood was hell, and my wife was the devil’s favorite accomplice.

On any other occasion, her preening would have me melting between deft fingers. In that moment, however, I felt nothing but disdain at her attention to detail.

Because she was not doing it for my benefit. She was doing it so that my disheveled appearance wouldn’t upset another man. A cruel man who sought to steal away the brightest light of my life.

That night I had to meet my daughter’s very first boyfriend.

“Are you ready?” my wife asked.

“No, you took away my gun,” I replied with the utmost sincerity.

Clever eyes darted up to mine before she laughed. The sound brought me little comfort. I tried to be upset at how she took joy in my suffering, but my lips turned to a pout before a frown.

“Yes, you’re very scary, dear,” she hummed.

Then, without warning, she pressed her lips to mine. Perfectly painted lips felt different but still tasted sweet.

Those damned fingers smoothed over my shoulders until stern muscles relaxed once more.

Eventually they crept up and cupped my jaw. Gently—at first.

So quickly they turned brutal, pressing hard enough on my cheeks to force another pout from tired lips.

“He’s a sweet boy and you’re going to be nice to him, alright?” she warned.

If she hadn’t been squeezing me so tightly, she would’ve seen me smile.

“We’ll see about that,” I deadpanned.

Again, she laughed, and that time, it brought me all the comfort I could ever need.

That darling devil of a woman stole one more kiss before she whispered, “Good enough.”

For a moment, it was. But then the doorbell rang and, despite all her efforts to lift up a heavy heart, it still plummeted to my stomach at the sound.

So quickly, my favorite girls had fled towards the door and left me frozen in the lurch. My hands and feet felt numb as my heart tried to reason with a stubborn mind.

There were some things a father had to eventually face.

My little girl was growing up, and my bad knee probably wouldn’t survive the jump out of a second story window.

There was only one way out of this. I had to go through it all.

I could hear their voices, so full of joy and love that it made me ache at the thought of losing half of it.

But deep down, I knew that I risked losing her regardless of how much I resisted the boy she’d chosen.

So, eventually, I managed to shuffle stubborn feet down the hall and towards the living room.

Somewhat to my surprise, the boy’s presence was hardly noted. In fact, if my wife hadn’t been making such a fuss about the bouquet he’d handed her, I might have even missed him.

We locked eyes from across the room. The poor boy’s muscles seized in an instant. His shoulders crept towards his ears and he lost the battle of keeping his eyes on me.

There was a distant, fleeting feeling at the sight. Something not easily described, which made my palms sweaty.

My eyes almost fell to the floor, too, but they were stopped by the sight of my daughter. Seemingly unaware of my gaze, she’d thrown her arms around the boy the first moment that she could.

Again, my heart ached with a confounding feeling. With narrowed eyes and a fast-beating heart, I struggled to place it.

Thankfully, my wife was quick to interrupt before the two had caught me staring.

Before she called us all to dinner, though, I spotted that same wistful twinkling in her eye. She had simply been better at hiding it than me.

For that same reason, I let her take charge. I sat almost silent, successfully biting my tongue to save my daughter from the embarrassment of my unbridled enthusiasm.

Of course, her pride hadn’t been the only reason that I’d hardly spoken. There had been a couple more selfish desires.

The first was my unwaning concern about any boy who’d so much as looked at my daughter. However unlikely it might have been, I had to be certain that this boy was as harmless as he seemed.

My mind began running a million scenarios of increasing horror. Yet right before the fateful final moment, the theoretical fell flat.

There was, to my relief, almost nothing disconcerting about the boy.

Almost.

There was still… that funny feeling.

“Dr. Reid?”

The sound of a familiar moniker in an unfamiliar place—from an increasingly familiar voice.

“Hm?” I answered the boy.

“I hope it doesn’t sound rude, but I looked you up before I came,” he said with the telltale crackling of a nervous teenage boy.

“I don’t think it’s rude,” I said.

That’s what I would have done, was the unspoken realization.

“Well, that’s a relief,” he laughed.

My wife and daughter stifled a chuckle as they exchanged a secret set of glances that I didn’t understand.

“Your writing is way more advanced than my reading level,” the boy continued, “but I did try to read some of them. Your philosophy papers seemed so…”

He struggled to find the next word. His face twisted between a smile and something similar to a flinch. I recognized the hesitance like a mirror to the past.

“Would… hopeful be the right word?” he asked.

“Yes!” I shouted, to my own surprise.

And that boy’s face lit up like a properly screwed lightbulb from one of my very poorly received philosophy jokes.

I had become so excited by the prospect of being understood—for once—by someone so young and green that I could hardly contain my excitement.

“Which paper did you—?”

I cut myself off when I heard a soft sigh from the boy’s side.

At first, I’d thought that it was my daughter trying to warn me of my first social faux pas of the evening. But I was instead pleasantly surprised to find her contented smile. Although, it was aimed at someone else.

“No, please,” the boy beamed, “I want to hear about all of them.”

I contained the buzzing in my fingertips that tapped against the table. I turned to my wife  for permission, but her slight nod didn’t provide me the confidence to continue.

It wasn’t enough until my daughter blurted out, “Go ahead, dad. I know what I signed up for.”

What confounding words to be uttered so simply. I didn’t dare question them then.

Instead, I answered his question. I spoke at length and about anything he could remember. To my surprise, the conversation wasn’t nearly as one or two sided as I’d expected.

By my daughters third question, I was forced to accept that she really had been listening to me all those years while staring down at her phone.

My wife had been the quietest person at the table. The whole dinner, she just seemed to lean back and admire the scene before her. But behind each sip from her glass, I spotted a cheeky smile that appeared alongside that wistful distance in her eyes.

I decided I would ask her later what she saw.

Later came sooner than expected, however. The summer sun had long since set when an unfamiliar phone dinged.

“Oh, sorry, it’s my mom,” the boy muttered. There was a brief disappointment that seemed to dissipate the moment he read the message. “I should really get going, anyway. I don’t want to take up your whole night with my curiosity.”

“He really would talk forever if you let him,” my daughter said under her breath.

I assumed it had been a comment about me.

I was wrong.

“It’s just not very often I get to ask a philosopher for his thoughts, okay?” he chuckled.

He must’ve felt my dumbstruck staring, however, because he stopped himself. He straightened his back the best he could but his hand still trembled when he reached out to me to shake it.

“It really was nice to meet you, Dr. Reid,” he offered.

I was too frozen by the shock of how many mistaken assumptions I’d made in such a short period of time to respond. I glanced down at his hand and recalled a time where I was adamant that I wouldn’t shake a strangers hand.

That hadn’t been true anymore (thanks to my very supportive wife and therapist), but my daughter still recognized the ghost of hesitance.

One stern look from her made me spring into action.

His hand was warm and softer than mine. The only calluses were caused by a firm grip on a pencil rather than a gun. There was nothing worrisome about the way he tried to follow every instruction manual for handshaking.

He was, as my wife had put it, a sweet boy.

“It was very nice to meet you, too,” I returned. Then, knowing how much it would mean to them both, I smiled as I added, “I look forward to next time.”

Their responses were everything I had predicted, and it was entirely worth whatever germs might have been transferred.

The moment I turned my attention away from them, I watched from the corner of my eye as they excitedly squeezed each others hands until their whole bodies were bouncing.

“I’ll walk you to your car!” my not-so-little girl shouted.

It was less walking and more dragging until he managed to catch up to her.

The sight tugged once more at my heart. That strange feeling crept forward again and I tried to find its name as the front door clicked shut.

My wife swiftly ended the thought, however, by grabbing my hand and taking off towards the stairs.

“Come on!” she half-whispered between her tugging and my stumbling.

“Where are we going?!”

“We’re going to spy on them!” she now fully yelled, “Hurry up!”

In a fit of laughter and with our hands never breaking apart, we did just that. We booked it up to the master bedroom and—with the lights still off—my wife’s clever fingers pried apart the blinds just enough for us to peer through them.

The suburban summer night was almost quiet enough to hear them make their inevitably awkward goodbyes. The soft glow of carefully placed streetlights painted my daughter in an even more beautiful light, and I could tell the boy in front of her appreciated it for everything that it was.

Yet he turned away from her first, with his hand lingering in hers.

Somehow, I knew what would happen before it did. Sure enough, my daughter refused to let go. She used that hesitance to leave and pulled him right back to her and straight into a quick, chaste kiss.

And that was when I realized what that feeling had been. That lurid memory, the subtle glowing of my heart, was the familiarity of it all.

The scene unfolded like a home movie ripped straight from my memory.

In perfect synchrony with that epiphany, my wife released a dreamy sigh.

“Do you remember when that was us?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I laughed, “I do.”

I remembered it all with perfect clarity, despite how far away it had fallen. I dragged the memories back up with the same insistence that my wife had used to bring me to that moment.

I remembered the butterflies in my stomach and the anxiety of knowing that I was madly in love with a woman that was much too good for me. I also remembered how it felt to clamor back into my car and have to drive away from her with the taste of transferred lipgloss on my lips.

As the boy drove away, I felt a wave of relief ushered on by my wife’s comforting embrace.

“I think they’re going to be okay,” she whispered.

“Yeah. Me too,” I agreed.

We’d seen it happen before.

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“Hey sweetheart,” her warm voice crackles over a telephone line, and there’s an ache in Spencer’s chest. It’s one he’s lucky to have, honestly. He’s someone she calls. 

It’s new, the thing they have. He’s not really sure how to operate in romantic spaces, and he’d sort of stumbled into it. She’d been reading at his favorite bookstore, all gathered up adorably in what was usually his favorite spot, and he somehow hadn’t minded. And debating fiction over coffee had turned into hours long phone calls, into nights spent at her apartment that keep him warm even when he leaves. 

“How was your day?” He enquires, shutting his eyes and finally relaxing against the cheap hotel mattress they’d be staying at. She tells him, of course, her sweet voice dripping with affection as she details the course of her day, and he thinks to himself, this is my solace. 

“Are you okay, Spence?” She says warmly, clearly concerned. 

“Mhm,” he muses back. It hurts, actually. To hear her voice and know that he could be with her. In a couple of days he will. He’ll run off the jet and meet her at her place, scooping her up in his arms in a way he’d never pictured himself doing before her. 

“Rough case?”

“No. Well, yes, but it’s not that-“ he sighs inwardly, “I just miss you a lot, I think. I keep thinking about coming home, seeing you. All I can think about, really..”

It’s the first time he’s been clear about it, his affection. She calls him sweetheart, babe sometimes, he meets her with love, honey, things he thinks might make her happy. 

But I miss you is clear.  

So he waits with bated breath to hear her response from miles away. The affection carries through the distance when she speaks. 

She’s actually absurdly easy to want. There’s nights where they watch something, often what he picked, Doctor Who or some other science fiction which would be great if he could focus on anything but her. Her warm disposition ruminating his too-small apartment with a kind of light that follows his every movement. He’d adore her even if she wasn’t, but it’s impossible to ignore how beautiful she is- the kind of pretty that you hardly expect to see in real life. 

“Hey you,” her so-sweet voice is what breaks him out of his daydreaming, and he looks up at her lovely face smiling down at him. Fondness seeps through her tone, and it’s everything he can do not to preen that her first thought at seeing him is one of pleasure. 

“Hey back,” he says, greeting her with a warm grin of his own. “How was your weekend?”

It’s a calculated question. 

She had canceled their weekly movie night. He’d tried not to look too disappointed, like the idea of her next to him on his couch, of her nimble fingers raking through his unkempt hair while something nice, but far less wonderful than his company played in the background wasn’t all that was keeping him going. These days, and he knows it’s likely delusion, that she sometimes seems to gaze back at him with a similar sort of desperation, hooded eyes and tenderness. 

It’s a liminal space, those nights. How can people be two things at once? You cannot be both in love and not. In the low-light of his place, under his blanket- it’s like Schrodinger’s experiment. She can’t love him like a friend and more at the same time- it resists the laws of physics. She is his best friend, a fact he knows as sure as gravity and the elements, and believing anymore than that- it’s asserting an impossibility. 

When they’re alone together, though. It seems like the impossible exists. 

But she’d canceled it, something she hadn’t done for the months they’d been engaging in their little tradition. So there had to be a reason. She sits next to him, her desk next to his. 

She looks a little disheveled, only in an adorable way- but a little like she’s been busy, like her flow is disrupted.

“It was good! I finally went out with that guy Penelope’s been begging me to let her set me up with.”

It’s all that he can do not to freeze up. 

Penelope has been trying to get her to go out with her friend Ben, which Spencer thinks is a stupid name, by the way, and secretly he’d been so, so pleased when she had brushed off the invite. It’s a dangerous thing, hope. He tries not to have too much of it, tries to savor the thought of her, of more for moments of particular vulnerability. It’s treacherous, to want her the way he does. He knows he can’t let himself feel it all the way. 

And logistically- romance is not a reason for a valid reason for him to be panicking the way he is, but all he can think about is the physics. Two opposite things cannot be true at the same time. 

“You know, studies suggest that even now, the majority of couples are meeting in person or through friends over any other medium.” 

It hurts to say. She’s part of a couple, one half a whole that he doesn’t complete. 

“Seriously? I’d have thought it’d changed by now. I guess it’s safer to date someone you know.”

She’d date someone she knew? Is that what she prefers? 

“How did it go?” He hears Emily ask, and this conversation is already the bane of his existence.

“Guys, it really wasn’t a big deal! We got dinner, it was just a little thing.”

Spencer isn’t experienced in dating, but he does know that dinner is a serious date. Coffee is a smaller thing, but dinner-

Dinner means she got pretty for him. Probably picked out a dress for the evening, spent time on a carefully manicured look. Spent hours of her precious, rare, time on him. 

It’s not fair how much he fucking hates this guy. 

“Dinner is not nothing!” Penelope squeals, and he would love to share in her excitement, except it kind of feels like a piece of his heart is being shredded. 

“Dinner means coming up to my place, have coffee, oh look who doesn’t have her hair done-“

Please kill me, he thinks. Please. 

“Oh, that definitely did not happen.”

Thank god. 

Except he can’t miss her flush, how her expression shifts- and he has the sickening feeling he’d be hearing that guy’s name again. 

When they all settle around the table, her doe eyes focused on gruesome images that were the exact antithesis of her spirit, he couldn’t help but feel that even if it hurt, there was finality. 

The cat was out of the box. Two things cannot be true at once, and so only one is- she does not love him, at least not the way he does. 

Ben, is not in fact, going away. 

If he had more willpower or self-preservation, Spencer would keep his distance from her, but the truth of it is that as much as he wants to be the person she turns to, her smile is most of why he can stand his job anymore. 

It’s a Tuesday, and everyone is grumbling about being pulled in early in the morning, but he’s just happy to have a reason to leave the house.

“Spence!” He hears her excited voice carry, the pretty sound picking his ears up at once. “I got you coffee. It’s hazelnut, and it’s like, 90% sugar. You’re gonna love it.”

She beams at him, and he takes it in his hands. Their hands brush, and he tries so hard not to notice how soft her hands are. Her name is on the cup, and an unconsenting fantasy of her name meaning that he’s hers creeps into his mind before he can bat it away.  

But her cup says Ben. 

“Thanks,” he says her name, tries to sound measured and friendly. “Coffee date?”

She preens, and god, if this guy doesn’t get how lucky he is it might be thing thing that actually sends him over the edge after all these years.

“Just a quick thing, we were just in the same place and he bought me a coffee, I’d already gotten yours.”

If there’s two roles he can fill and he doesn’t get to pick, if he’s stuck with friends, he’s gonna be great at it, and he’s gonna be grateful. Because knowing her is a grace in itself, the kind of thing you should could yourself so lucky to have. 

“He sounds like a great guy,” he hears himself say, “I’m glad you’re doing this.”

It’s the right thing to say. He’s sure of it. The thing he’s not sure of is why the smile she offers him doesn’t reach her eyes. 

The next time he notices the cracks in their relationship, it’s when they’re out. She’d suggested this bookstore-cafe kind of thing, and he’d jumped at the thought, all of his favorite things in one afternoon. He’d felt foolish spending so much time picking out his outfit out, wearing the blazer she’d once complimented-he’d actually stuttered so hard in thanks that Morgan laughed for a full minute when she left the room- but she always looked beautiful, and he knows he sometimes pales in comparison. 

“Oh, I love this one!” She thumbs over the spine of a thin book of poetry. She’s wearing a forest green sweater that hugs her frame, and a bracelet hangs on her delicate wrist. He loves looking at her, though he tries to conceal it. His goal of being a supportive friend includes trying not to make it that known how gone for her he is. 

“I don’t read too much poetry,” he admits, “But I’m sure you have excellent taste.” 

Her keen eyes skim through the pages intently, clearly seeking out a specific passage before stopping, gaze alight with recognition. 

Her tone is molasses-sweet when she begins reading, and his heart skips a beat.

“When I say be my lover,” her voice hitches, reverent of the quote and he is reverent of her, “ I don’t mean ‘let’s have an affair. I don’t mean Sleep with me. I don’t mean Be my secret. I want us to go back to that root. I want you to be the one who loves me. I want to be the one who loves you.”

It feels impossible to look away from her, doe eyes practically sparkling in the low light of the shop, and there it is. His heart’s in his throat. Of all the things you could have told Spencer he’d experience, hearing her lovely voice wrap around the words be my lover in hushed tone, in sacred sweetness, would never ever be one he’d guess. 

He’s not sure how he feels about the multiverse theory, but right now, he can feel all the versions of himself pressing right up against him. Can see into lives he doesn’t get to live, lifetimes where his love isn’t a buried, worn-out tattered thing to keep his ever-frigid chest warm. Versions of himself that in this very moment can smile back at her, warm and open and kind, and kiss her perfect smile. 

Because he would be her lover. He would come home to her, spend the rest of his life building a home that she could fit  into. It’d be easy, actually. She’s easy to imagine- nights of laughing in a shared kitchen, evenings where her company is a fine wine, sipped at leisure with the comfort of knowing it’s never going to slip from your grasp. 

“I like that,” he says, voice too vulnerable for his own good, eyes unable to tear from the eye contact. “I really like that.” 

In the root of it, he already is her lover. He is the one who loves her. She’s just not his. 

It comes to a head on a Friday. It’s a few weeks from he book shop, and the air feels heavier between them now. The last handful of Fridays he’s sat with the ghost of what used to be their plans, empty time lingering where in its’ place used to be her company. 

He doesn’t know if she’s been with Ben. He tries not to think about it. 

The sound of her voice lingers in his mind, sweet and bitter in his mind like old lemon candy, the kind his mother would save for special occasions. He’d spend any amount of money he had to hear her lovely voice say those words to him out of the context of a poem. 

At work, they seem almost normal. Like one of them wasn’t desperately in love with the other; like a genius and his lovely, incredibly empathetic, kind best friend. In the field, their actions flow together seamlessly. She is always the first to listen and to understand (and god, isn’t it intoxicating to have someone meet you in understanding) and there is nothing to suspect is off.

But there’s still a cloud lingering. The poem- the soft melody of her voice curling around the words, the request of it all, the way she had sounded so wanting- and then, there’s Ben. 

She doesn’t mention Ben to him, of course, but Penelope does. Penelope, all bows and bright colors and cheeriness keeps bringing the absolute worst news to Spencer with a smile on her face. 

He’s taking her out for drinks! Oh, he’s reading her favorite book, do you know what it is?

This anger isn’t an emotion that he’s familiar with. A roar of possessiveness, the bite of it not tempered at all by rationality. Has he touched her?

It seems almost a tradition at this point when she shakes him out of his jealous storm of thought.

“Spence?” she muses, “You alright?” They’re alone at his desk, everyone having fled for their own evening and weekend plans. This was one of the Fridays that she had agreed to spend with him, and he wonders if he’ll be able to handle the scent of her shampoo so close after such a lapse of the sensation. Will all of his judgement go where he can’t follow?

“Yeah,” he says, tucking his papers into his bag, “I’m excited for tonight.”

His place is actually a short walk from the office. He’d been embarrassed to show her the place at first. It’s all function over fashion, and a bit cramped, but she’d looked at as though it was made of something more, something good. She didn’t even tease him. It had actually been her idea, to start these movie nights. 

Ironic, really. 

The walk was pleasant, the weather a little frigid but still nice, and she looks beautiful under the setting sun. It’s incredible to him, how her lashes catch the light and make her irises look like polished stained glass. His favorite color. Through the looking glass of another life, he sees a version of himself that gathers her up in his arms. In this daydream, she grants him one of her smiles that seems to carry its’ own light, and leans into his body like it’s the only thing that keeps her steady. It’s so clear. On the other side of the veil, he kisses her reddening nose, and keeps her warm himself. 

In the here and now, Her coat is long, and hangs low by her ankles. It’s an elegant thing, like the woman who wears it, and Spencer would be grateful for a lifetime of just looking.They stop in front of his door, some invisible force stopping him from entering. 

She sheds the coat inside his home. It smells like the candle she got him for his birthday, a reminder of her grace. He’s saved a bottle of wine for them, a sweet thing for the sweetest thing he’s known. 

“I’m sorry,” she speaks the warmth of the beverage on her tongue, and it should feel abrupt but it doesn’t.

“What for?” He can’t imagine what she would have to apologize for. 

“I know things have been…off between us,” she says carefully, considering the phrasing of each word. He watches her with a reverence, his hazel eye brimming with affection with nowhere to go. “You’ve been so great through it.”

Her legs are thrown across his own, and she’s dangerously close to sitting in his lap, but not exactly. He’s missed having her this close, the last time she’d been in his orbit was before she’d had reason to be gone. She smells floral. He fights With limited filtering through his already treacherous mind he thinks, He can’t take this from me. I still get her like this. 

“I’m not entirely sure what it is.” 

She slowly shuts her eyes, go for a moment to somewhere he can’t follow. Her cheeks are rosy from the cold. 

“This whole Ben thing.”

“Oh.”

Logically, it always had to come back to this. Someone else had the good fortune to know her like this, to be the person she reads poetry to in deep meaning to. 

He’s been stealing moments from someone who’s not his to take them from. 

“I don’t even know how I wanted you to react.” she murmurs, staring at the rim of her glass. 

“I just want you to be happy” His voice is something low, grit in the sound of it. His hand rests on her thigh. There’s warmth blanketing the room and he wants to kiss her. He wants to kiss her all the time. 

She laughs, but it’s not her normal laugh. It’s tinny and a little bitter. He pushes his luck, and reaches out to brush the side of her face, moving the hair but still holding her face. Her breath smells like strawberry wine and temptation. 

It feels different tonight. Low light and tension that could be sliced with wire. Every part of her is in reach, and something in the air makes all of this talk of relativity, of physics, moot. 

Like maybe he’s not in the only world they don’t end up together. 

Her face is warm and soft under his touch and he loves the sight of her. He’s never touched her like this. Every point of contact feels electric, addicting. 

“What is it? The Ben thing?” He doesn’t know what he’s expecting to hear. What he wants, is for her to tell him that it doesn’t matter anymore, that she picks him-

“I only went out with him the once.”

“What?”

“I told Penelope I was still going because it made her happy and she said I couldn’t keep going to your apartment and reading you poetry and call that romance.”

Romance? 

Wasn’t it romance, though? 

Her eyes widen in something akin to horror. 

“Shit, Spence- I’m sorry, that is so fucked of me to say-“

“You,” he tries to say calmly, “aren’t going out with Ben.”

She blinks. 

“No?”

He has spent so much time living in other lives, existing in the minds of versions of himself he wasn’t lucky enough to be. Drinking coffee imagine a life colored in her presence, falling asleep yearning for the presence of something lighter than what he has to carry. 

He can’t exist in two places. That was the entire basis of the experiment. 

He moves his other hand to hold hers, and somehow she’s shifted to being on top of him, and he looks up at her with unwavering desire. 

Spencer isn’t good at wanting people, but it comes naturally with her. Less of an action and more an urge, a course of motion to which he is at the mercy of. This is what leads him to close the gap between them, and kiss her. It’s 

Her delicate fingers run through his hair, and she can’t be close enough, please, and he could spend the rest of his life kissing her, actually. He probably will spend the rest of his life thinking about the soft sigh he pulls out of her. 

“I want it to be me,” he manages to say through shallow breath, still so close that his lips brush hers every other word, “I want to be the one you pick. I want it to be me.” His hazel eyes seem to shift in the moment, swirling with emotion. 

She brushes a lock of his overgrown hair out of his face. He normally shaves when he sees her, but he’d been so busy that he’d forgotten, and felt embarrassed of it now. That is, until she runs her index finger along the edge of his jawline.

It’s then she leans down and kisses him again, pliant and good, his hands around her waist. He breathes a prayer into her mouth, one that hopes that she never ever comes to her senses about him. 

Your whole body was still tingling from being impossibly close to him moments before. His lips made contact with your cheek before he began peppering your entire face with little pecks, making you giggle at his adorable way to show affection.

When he was convinced that he had kissed every inch of your beautiful face, he slowly got up from the mattress. He took your hand in his to pull you up as well before leading the way to the bathroom. He turned on the shower and waited a few seconds until the water was warm. 

"Are you feeling okay?"

"Yes," you confirmed. "I just want to be close to you."

Spencer kissed your lips and mumbled against them, "I want that too."

Together you entered the shower, relishing the sensation of warm water meeting your skin. Spencer was quick to pull you into his arms as the water enveloped the both of you. He held you tightly against his chest as his palms glided over your back. 

"I love you so much," he whispered into your ear. 

"I love you more," you answered. 

Spencer pulled back to look at you with raised eyebrows, chuckling, "Don't be silly. That's impossible."

With your lips against his you quickly ended this discussion before Spencer began helping you wash your body. You turned around and pressed your back into his chest while he let his hands wander over you. With tender motions he rid you of any remaining stickiness, slowly letting his fingertips brush over sensitive skin. 

When he carefully moved over a particularly sensitive part of your delicate skin, a gasp fell from your lips. Spencer apologized although there was nothing to be forgiven. He took care of you, cleaning your body as if it was some sacred ritual. In a way it was. 

His touches were gentle, making you smile to yourself at the thought that he saw you as the most precious and fragile thing in the world right then. It stood in contrast to the force he displayed a few minutes ago when the both of you had gotten lost inside each other's arms. 

Knowing that Spencer trusted you enough to let you see that side of him made your heart flutter. 

When the both of you were clean, Spencer stepped out of the shower first to wrap you in a fluffy towel. Once again he put his arms around you, sharing his warmth with you before you went back over to the bedroom. He gently pushed you on the mattress and pulled the comforter over your body before finding his place beside you. 

With your head resting on his chest you listened to the slow and steady sounds of his heartbeat. Spencer's palms were brushing over your back, drawing familiar patterns on your skin. 

"Are you tired, my love?"

"Yes," you breathed. 

"That's okay," he whispered as he pushed your body even closer against his. "We can rest for a bit." 

You enjoyed his nearness in comfortable silence as the images from your intimate time together replayed in your mind. It made your skin tingle to know how much pleasure Spencer took in being with you. 

"I am so grateful to have found you," Spencer cooed. "You have no idea what you mean to me."

You hummed in response, too exhausted to actually answer him. You were certain that he knew that you felt the same way about him too. Nobody else got to see your most vulnerable side, you only trusted him to always take care of you like this. 

The thought that he would still be holding you the same way when you'd wake up after your nap let your heart skip a beat. The safety Spencer provided was unlike anything you'd ever experienced and you already couldn't wait to be able to get lost in his honeyed eyes once more. 

Your eyes fluttered open for a moment, longing to see the man you were so desperately in love with. His eyes were closed, making it obvious that you weren't the only one in need of some rest. 

As the harbingers of sleep started to dull your senses, Spencer began reciting his favorite love poem. You were already too far gone to make a remark about his sappy side, so you just listened to his comforting voice as you drifted off to sleep. 

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