#bau! reader

Spencer Reid isn’t a man for sweeping declarations. Largely, he’s a person who is gentle with the world, with others, with you.

The way Spencer Reid loves you is quiet. It’s a low hum in the background of your day-to-day life, never unnoticed but never commanding attention. Never making a fuss.

He doesn’t need to ask if you want breakfast, he just comes through every morning with a plate of toast and a coffee, plopping it on your dressing table while you get ready for work. He started carrying a neck pillow in his go bag after you complained about your neck being sore after sleeping on the jet.

You’d been settling down against him to sleep, when he’d shifted underneath you.

“What’re you doing?” you’d whined, opening only one eye.

“I got you something. After last time,” he'd said holding up the black neck pillow. He'd propped you up, slipping it around your neck before settling you back against his chest.

“You’re too good Spence,” you'd mumbled sleepily, and he'd pressed a light kiss to your forehead.

Obviously you have to be professional in the field. Focused on the job. Focused on the situation at hand and the safety of the team at large. For the most part, he’s good at maintaining the professional atmosphere. Though he’d be lying if he didn’t say that at the first sign of danger, his eyes didn’t flit to you first. That his instinct isn’t always to go to you. That he doesn’t stand as close as he can to you in the field, shoulders almost touching, knowing you're right there soothes any nerves he might have.

A lot of Spencer’s love is related to affection, actually. Small gestures, mostly, he doesn’t go sweeping you up in front of the team but he’s always touching you. He’s been afraid of being clingy his entire life, but with you he just can’t help it. There’s a magnetism, he gravitates towards you without ever even thinking about it. In meetings, you sit side by side, hands brushing together under the table. At home, you sit curled up on the sofa against him. Sometimes, he lies with his head resting in your lap while you watch Dr Who marathons and Russian films he translates for you word-for-word.

Then there’s the small things too: how he smooths down the creases in your jacket when he brushes past you, picks the lint off your clothes, gently dabs his finger to collect an eyelash fallen on your cheek. Always telling you to make a wish, and blow.

Kissing him is second-nature, half the time he doesn’t even think about it. The pecks on the head or cheek while you’re watching a film, on the lips before he hops in the shower, deep longing kisses when you get back to the hotel after not seeing him all day in the field. The kisses that leave you breathless, keening against him, desperate for his touch. The morning breath kisses that leave you both in hysterics, teasingly annointing one another the King/Queen of bad breath.

The biggest, but least noticed aspect of his love, is how unwaveringly honest he is. Honest about things he wouldn’t hesitate to hide from anyone else. He’s always been a little closed off emotionally, hesitant to share the weight he carries and become a burden.

“I’m having a rough time tonight. I’m worried about relapsing,” he says to you, sat on the bed next to you, “I know I won’t. But I want to. I want to really really bad and I don’t know why it’s come out of nowhere and I feel like I’m taking a step back. Like I’m failing.”

“You want to go to a meeting?”

“No. Could you j-just hold me please?”

And so you'd held him in your arms. Pressing gentle kisses to his forehead, telling him how proud you are of him, how far he’s come. Allowing him the silence and space to just be.

Spencer’s love is knowing you. Purposely learning about things you like so he can have a conversation with you about them, ask you about them. Keeping the cupboards stocked with your favourite snacks. Always making sure there’s a glass of water by your bedside when you come back from showering. Annotating passages in books you recommend him that he likes the most.

It’s gentle, really. A litany of tiny things that knit into the background of your everyday life. Some things you don’t even think twice about anymore. Even the ones you don’t, you still feel the love that pours through them. You couldn’t ever forget, really. Because the greatest, gentlest, most subtle way he loves you? It’s in the way he looks at you. Hope for the future lighting up his eyes. And he looks at you every chance he gets.