#cozytober

Spencer and Elle's anniversaries are interrupted by work more often than not. The ones that aren't used to consist of slow mornings and ignored alarms. That was before they had a third person crawling into their bed at every opportunity.

Even on the busiest days, Spencer never skips getting Elle a bouquet of her favorite flowers.

The newest one, still bright and full of life, stands by her side as she removes one last pit from a cherry.

The bouquet was there when she woke up, along with a card that you drew on and Spencer wrote in. Counting scribbles that contain no more than five letters from the Latin alphabet, you wrote in it, too.

The cherry is added to a bowl full of its kind, a few away from overflowing. She rinses off her hands, staining water with red until it turns pink and eventually runs clear.

She doesn't hear you run into the kitchen, with hair freshly done by Spencer. You glom onto her leg, mumbling a greeting into her knee. She dries her hands off and lifts you to sit on her hip.

"Do you know what we're gonna do today, peanut?" She adjusts your sweater.

"What?"

"We," Elle moves you to sit on the kitchen counter, "are going to bake a cake."

"Why?" You find the whisk she laid out and trace over its wires, one by one.

"Because, today it's been five years since your dad and I got married. And we're gonna make a cake to celebrate." Cupboards behind you open and shut as she collects ingredients, placing them down beside you.

"You're married?"

She laughs at the question, making you giggle on instinct. "Yes, sweetie, we're very married."

The whisk is exchanged for her hand, warmer than yours, still slightly damp. Her wedding ring doesn't move enough to provide your hands with satisfying stimulation. But it is pretty to look at.

Spencer finally joins you in the kitchen, dressed in black plaid pants and a button-up underneath a navy cardigan. He plants one kiss on Elle's shoulder blade and another on her head. The smell of her shampoo lingers in his nose. "Did you preheat the oven?"

"To three hundred and fifty degrees."

Spencer reaches between you two for the sieve and flour. Elle fills a measuring cup with sugar, handing it to you. Most of it lands in the mixing bowl, that's good enough for her.

Spencer passes her the now sifted flour, praying you won't create a dust cloud with it.

They silently divide the work between them. He cracks eggs, she adds cinnamon. Their elbows and heads never bump, their movements flow as if they were rehearsed.

Your questioning of Elle's addition of salt leads to Spencer explaining every following ingredient. He talks about the creation of butter for well over five minutes; he isn't interrupted once.

Most of what he says is ununderstood by you. The voice behind the words matters more than the words themselves.

"Why don't we own an electric mixer?" Spencer asks rhetorically. His fingers are already turning red from mixing for less than a minute.

Elle motions for him to let her take over and he happily complies. He stays close enough for their shoulders to touch, supposedly to guard you from the floor (being able to smell Elle's perfume is a plus).

You play with the buttons on his cardigan. Plastic stretches through cotton over and over again. Spencer sniffles on occasion.

"There we go, it's all mixed and ready for baking." Elle says, holding the whisk up so smooth ropes of batter drip from it.

While you help Spencer pour the batter into a greased pan, Elle licks the remainder off of the whisk. It's worth the disappointed look on Spencer's face.

To avoid giving you any ideas that could lead to salmonella, he blocks her from your view until the spoon clatters against the sink.

Elle slides the pan into the oven, closing it with a clap. Spencer gets to work cleaning the flour and sugar that escaped onto the counter.

"Can I help?" You look up at him hopefully.

"Uh—"

"Why don't you come with me and help me order pizza?" Elle diverts your attention.

Spencer mouths a 'Thank you' to her when you follow her out. Not even you could make spreading flour, instead of gathering it, endearing.

His shoulders eventually slump in satisfaction at the counter's sheen. A smile is brought to his face at the sound of you and Elle giggling from afar. He rolls down his sleeves and follows his favorite voices into the living room.

Elle on the floor and you on the coffee table is how he finds you. A photo album is open on the table — their wedding album. Names and wedding date engraved on its cover.

"Is that you?" you marvel at a photo.

"Mm-hmm, that's me less than an hour before I married your dad."

He sits down behind Elle. His arms slip around her waist, his face pressing into her back, eyes high enough to see the photos.

Five years and his heart still melts when he thinks about it. Seeing her walk to him, having her slip a ring onto his finger that he never removes and never wants to.

"Pretty," you say, dragging out the word.

The breath of Spencer's chuckle tickles Elle's ear, making her nose scrunch up. "Thank you, peanut."

You lower your head closer to the next photo. Spencer in a tuxedo, hair only slightly neater than usual. You can't tell by looking at him that his stomach contained more anxiety than gastric acid. Derek and Hotch are blurry blobs in the background.

His mind goes back to when it was taken.

That nagging voice in his head feels as clear now as it was then. Incessantly whispering that Elle wouldn't show up. Maybe she'd make it to the altar, just to tell him she wouldn't go through with it. She would leave and take his heart with her.

He subconsciously fidgets with the band around his finger. Some scratches have been collected over time. A reminder — that voice was wrong. Elle never left. And, optimistically, she never will.

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He’d always known he had needed some sort of safe space.

And König had managed to create his own, for the most part. No one questioned how the big scary Colonel slept holding a pillow against his chest, the pillow never quite replicating how his little brother had cuddled up to him so many years ago. He journaled, too, using the highlighters and pens his sister had always used in her school notebook, lecturing him on his terrible handwriting that still wasn’t much better.

He would always snatch a second pumpkinseed muffin at the mess hall, the flavor reminding him of his mother’s cooking. Or how his tongue would dart out to barely brush against his thumb pad, using it to get to the second page of a report he was going through in the same way his father had done with his books.

But he still had never managed to fully reach that level of comfort where he felt as if he was in a warm bubble, protected, safe, not in harm’s way, and able to relax.

And maybe it was because König didn’t think he was safe. Not on base. Not at home. Nowhere. He’d watched men be cut through in less than a second, bullets shredding through their bodies and leaving nothing more than rotting corpses and living memories behind. He’d seen it happen to his men before, and he’d done it to other men. There was nowhere that the violence he displayed and observed every day wouldn’t follow him like a shadow, silently judging and whispering in his ear.

He had never felt fully safe before. That was what he believed, and he thought he’d never feel safe again; until he met you.

You, the shy, quiet neighbor who had let him in even when he’d gone to the wrong door, showing up after being gone for almost three months, grumbling German cursed when his key refused to work. You knew the giant next door, it’d be hard not to, with his huge stature, brusque voice, and reserved but respectful nature.

“Hello?”

You’d meekly asked while he’d just gone lumbering in, pushing past you and falling onto the couch in what he thought was his apartment. He didn’t question why you would be in there, not then. Not when his head felt like it was splitting apart at the seams, his glacial blue eyes were watery and drooping, and his body was running out of strength before shutting down.

He wasn’t too worried about what you’d do when he finally passed out. You were nice, having brought him a tray of cookies when he first moved in, a tray he’d promptly devoured in less than an hour as the tiny cookies crumbled in his hands.

You brought him soups sometimes, or leftover dinners, claiming you’d just cooked too much. But König knew someone didn’t consistently cook too much, eventually one learned their lesson, and he knew that you were worried about him. You saw the fatigue in his steps when he came back from month-long disappearances. You never asked him, and he never told.

Truly, he didn’t know how you’d moved him from the couch to the bed. He just registered something soft under his head, his clothes being gently pulled off by uncalloused hands, and a warm rag brushing against the blood that was staining his skin, the now-wet fingers massaging his bruises as he grunted.

A silent plead for you to just get in the bed and let him finally have a warm body to hold while he drifted off.

You must’ve gotten the message because he heard you walk off for a moment, then came the sound of water dripping into the sink, and then you reappeared. You slid into the bed, the bed he realized must’ve been yours, and kicked the blanket up, hitting your pillow to fluff it up.

You pulled the blankets over both of your bodies, and he unconsciously reached, pulling you in, feeling the thin, breathable fabric of your pajamas. It was soft, like you.

When he held your warm body against his that night, he came to two realizations. The first being that, he really could feel safe, and the second being that he needed to do this more often.

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