#gideon!reader

The heels made their way back into your bag just around the same corner and into the depths of your closet on campus. They followed you move after move, apartment after apartment, just in case you needed them; your mom always said it was good to have a reliable pair of simple heels on hand, just in case. Your uncle always preferred to stick to the same three pairs of shoes. These ones know my feet, he would say. You have a closet full of shoes - way too many pairs of overworn sneakers, boots for any occasion, a ratty pair of flats when the occasion requires something a little more formal - and you never understood what he meant by that sentiment more than after that date.

The last time you wore heels - real ones, with the small, skinny stiletto, the ones that take some effort - you were nineteen. They have existed in the depths of many closets in many apartments since.

It makes sense. It’s always made sense. You’ve always preferred the ground to be steady underneath your feet, at least as much as you could guarantee.

So, when you walk into the Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico on your first day, 7:45 AM exactly, you show up in loafers. Dark ones with a slight platform underneath them - not a heel, too stable, too easy - sturdy, dependable, clean, ones that only slightly give off your heel with every other step. Ones that could know your feet if you gave them the chance to. You step out of the elevator on the sixth floor, across the small hallway bank, and through the glass doors with your gaze focused low, silently scanning the other footwear choices you see to plan ahead for how likely it is that you can get away with a more casual choice in the future. Or how likely it is, god help you, that you’ll need to fish out the fucking heels.

It’s cool and white and bright, brighter than you expected. You remember your uncle’s complaints about the sulphurous yellow overheads and wonder if he was still here when they evidently changed the lighting.

“Dr. Gideon.” You’re broken out of your thought and your eyes draw to the source of who just called your name, but not before a brief flicker of another musing - I wonder when someone last said the name “Gideon” in here - crosses your mind. It’s Aaron Hotchner, Hotch, and it’s a face you haven’t seen in a long while - the only familiar face you’re expecting to see, the only familiar name you’re expecting to hear. He’s visibly older since the last time you saw him - unsurprising, it’s been a number of years - and something in your chest tightens at the sight. A reminder of how things used to be and an indicator of how they are now. “Welcome in. Come up to my office.”

You pull your bag - black, worn with patina on the straps, nearly hanging on for dear life - tighter over your shoulder and walk across the bullpen, along the side and up the small ramp, pointedly ignoring the eyes you could feel flicker up to you at the mention of your name. When you step into his office, you shut the door behind you. Always assume a closed-door conversation unless you’re told otherwise, you hear from a voice in your head. You have a feeling you’ll be hearing that voice more now, and it’s fine - you’re not sure you’re even remembering it right anymore, anyway, so it’s not quite as cutting.

“Hotch,” you greet, professional and not too warm, not too familiar. “Good to see you.”

He’s standing to the side of his desk with a demeanor that you’d expect from the Unit Chief of the BAU, a demeanor distinctly different than the off-the-clock one you remember from years ago.

A sliver of that version breaks through, and it almost seems out of place - his face softens and he gives you a smile, fond and small but undeniable. “It’s good to see you. I won’t undermine your first day by welcoming you with a hug in front of the team.”

You laugh, surprised, and drop your head - it’s the first sense of calm, however fleeting, you’ve felt about this entire situation in days. “I appreciate it,” you say, relaxing just a notch. “I’m already mentally preparing for the name preceding me out there.”

“You’ve earned your place here,” he says, retreating to behind his desk and back into the work persona he almost seems more comfortable in. “Don’t doubt that, and don’t let anyone make you feel otherwise.” He nods at the window overlooking the bullpen. “Nobody out there wants to see you fail. You may see some familiar faces, and they’ll certainly want to see you thrive.”

“You’re the only familiar face, to be honest,” you say ruefully, thumbing at one of the straps of your bag and glancing down at his desk. “I knew names. Not faces.”

And it was intentional. Your uncle would always tell you stories about the team, the cases over the years, the different agents that came and went through these very doors, and never once did you see a photo. It was your preference - it was more fun to craft a story in your head, to imagine what these profilers looked like, to profile them yourself based on the details you had, and never once check to see if you were right. But you know Hotch. You’ve known him for years - nearly a decade of seeing him at your uncle’s house, from a freshly minted BAU agent to becoming the Unit Chief, and seeing all of the pressure from that reality melting away with a scotch in his hand in Jason’s second armchair. He would ask where you were thinking of going to college and offer a letter of recommendation, what you were thinking of studying and be entirely unsurprised by your answer of forensic psychology, what you thought of a case long closed and share a look with your uncle across their glasses that you learned to read as she’s like you. And that notice, that connection, used to make you brim with pride.

Now, it’s tinged with a sour taste that you’d rather not look at all too closely.

“Well, familiar names, then,” he amends, grabbing a file from his desk. “At any rate, I’m glad you’re here. I’d give you a rundown, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be anything you haven’t heard before, and I trust you read the paperwork sent to you ahead of time.” You did. Of course you did. You’re an academic at heart; there’s not a single line of a single paper that comes your way that you don’t read, and read again, and read a third time for subtext. “I just wanted to greet you first before the welcoming committee does.” He looks up again with another smile, humorous but fainter this time, one so slight it wouldn’t register as such to anyone who didn’t know him. “Go get settled in; your desk is roughly in the middle with what seems to now have a small plant on it.” You turn and look through the glass to see a succulent sitting in the center of a desk roughly in the middle and a woman in a pink dress and - god damn it - heels that are at least three inches high scurrying away.

With a raised eyebrow and an amused twitch of a smile, you turn back to Hotch. “Welcoming committee?”

He exhales something that someone might argue could almost be a laugh. “Something like that. Don’t be alarmed if you have a basket or twelve on your desk by the end of the day.” You let out a breath of a laugh of your own and turn to the door; your hand just gets to the handle when he says your name and you turn around. “You’re here for a reason. You probably recognized your vetting process was a bit expedited, but that doesn’t make you any less qualified for the job. I knew what I was doing when I prioritized your application. You’re also not the first person to receive an exemption from some of the requirements.” And when he looks up at you, there’s that Unit Chief demeanor, the one you anticipated, the one you’re sure you’ll see nearly exclusively after today. “Don’t make me regret it.”

You nod once with a tight-lipped smile and push down on the handle. “I won’t.”

“He’d be proud if he knew you were here.”

And there it is. You’re halfway out the door, turned away, when he says it, and you pause. You falter for just a fraction of a second before schooling it back - a tick of the jaw, a blink, a swallow, and an exhale - and responding drier than you mean to before walking back out into the white of the bullpen. “Yeah. If he knew.”

݁⋆⭒˚.⋆

“Did I hear Hotch right earlier? We’ve got a Gideon back in the house?”

You’re sitting at your desk for no more than two minutes, the succulent with its accompanying Welcome, new agent and friend! note pushed gently to the side, when you look up to find the source of the voice.

You don’t bristle - it’s not something you like to do if you can help it, and you can help it, you have plenty of experience helping it - you just give a smile that you hope isn’t as forced as it feels and stand as you reply, “You heard right. Nice to meet you.” And you extend your hand, giving your name, title and all.

The man whistles low and shakes your hand - strong, firm. “Another doctor. I might be outnumbered one day.” He drops his hand and flashes a smile, warm and welcoming. “Derek Morgan. Brains, but not that kind. Just brawn, mostly.”

“Don’t flirt with the new girl,” a new voice says, and you turn to see a woman with dark hair and a wry smile walking over. You glance down - black booties with a tall heel. Shoe analysis sample subject two - results unclear - leaning towards a negative outcome. “Don’t mind him. He can’t help it.”

“I’m not flirting,” Morgan argues, and you’re really not all that convinced. “Don’t mind her. Ninety percent of what comes out of her mouth is giving me shit.”

The woman, who’s fully made her way over to your desk now and is leaning her hip against it, exhales a laugh with a smirk. “The other ten percent is invaluable life advice. I’ve heard it’s confusing to tell which is which,” she replies drily. She extends her hand to you. “Emily Prentiss. Welcome to the team. Don’t report him to HR - that’s just how he sounds.”

You laugh and shake her hand, mentally noting the two names you remember and trying not to let it show. “Noted. I won’t cause a scene on day one.”

“Don’t write it off so early,” Morgan says, grinning. “The morning is young.”

“The morning is about to get started,” you hear, and the three of you turn your attention to see Hotch standing outside his office. “We’ve got a case. Remote consult for now, but we’ll see how it progresses. Conference room in five.”

Prentiss sighs audibly and gives you a look, equal parts sympathetic and intrigued. “So much for a slow start.” She pushes off the desk and nods behind her. “C’mon, Gideon. Let’s get you a coffee before you’re thrown to the wolves.”

݁⋆⭒˚.⋆

Three minutes later, with a coffee that serves only as a means for caffeine in your hand, you and Prentiss walk into the conference room - large glass windows, a roundtable in the center, a display screen on the far wall - and see a new face sitting - blonde hair, kind eyes, and small kitten heels.

You briefly, painfully, think to yourself that you’re going to need to request desk duty, lest you twist your ankle on the field.

“You must be the new agent,” she says, smiling, standing and leaning just enough to offer her hand. “Jennifer Jareau. Everyone calls me JJ.”

You go through the motions - same introduction, same handshake - and when you say Gideon, something brief flashes in her eyes. You remember her name. You know she is - was, apparently, if she’s sitting here with files in front of her - the team’s media liaison that worked with Jason for several years, and that she’s relatively young, probably only a few years older than you. You know she, like the others you already met this morning, is on the long list of folks who were left behind, left to wonder.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” she says, warmly, and you can tell she actually means it. “Welcome to the team. If you need anything, genuinely anything, let me know. It can be a lot, and a lot of questions can seem like they’re not worth asking when they actually are.”

Your lips twitch up in shy amusement before you can help it. “Is it worth asking if I need to wear heels to the office? Because nobody needs to see that, but the women here are three-for-three so far, so the odds seem against me.”

She laughs, bright and surprised, and shakes her head as she sits back down. “Absolutely not. I’m used to running around in these things,” she wiggles her foot back and forth, “but there’s really no dress code here besides looking put together in whatever way that means to you. Hotch wears suits and dress shoes daily. Prentiss wears a blazer or a tee, depending on the day. Morgan wears henleys so tight they may cut off his circulation.”

“I haven’t heard any complaints,” Morgan replies, striding into the conference room. He glances down at your shoes. “You could wear orthotic slip-ons and be fine. If you can run in ‘em, you can wear ‘em.”

You sigh in relief, audibly, and sit in a chair on the other side of the table. “You both just removed sixty percent of my stress for the day.”

“If that’s all it takes,” Prentiss says, sitting next to you, “you’ll be just fine.”

Hotch and the woman from earlier - the one you assume left the succulent and promptly scurried away - walk in, with him settling in at the head of the table and her spotting you and pausing just past the doorway.

“Hello, hello,” she starts, and from the tone in her voice coupled with her outfit, you feel pretty confident that you know who she is immediately. “You must be Gideon.” She says your first name, like it’s a critical piece she meant to say out loud, and hurries to drop her things on the table by the screen. “You’re a doctor. I’m telling you information you already know about yourself - it’s part of my whole thing - I’m the only one who knew exactly who was coming besides Hotch, background checks and all that, and I am so excited you’re here.”

“And you must be Garcia, I assume,” you say, smiling gently, tentatively. “I’ve heard you have enough information to be scary but enough personality to negate it.” You pause, and your face falters slightly. “Sorry. That was- that was supposed to be a joke, but in a complimentary way. Like-” you cut yourself off and sigh and visibly deflate an inch in your chair. “Nevermind.”

And in response, Garcia just laughs while she walks over to your chair. “That is extremely complimentary, and I knew exactly what you meant, and I’m thrilled my legacy expands beyond these spectacularly spooky walls.” She leans down and hugs you from the side of your chair, and you physically freeze for half a second before reaching back up and returning it in perhaps the most awkward hugging position you’ve ever been in. “Again, so happy you’re here. The more, the merrier, and we need more merry in this place.” She lets go and backs up, seemingly unfazed by the awkward angle, before click-clacking her way back over to the screen.

“Let’s get started,” Hotch says, and you’re grateful for what seems to be the end of the first-day introductions. You never were good at, or fond of, icebreaker pleasantries. “Has anybody seen-”

“The kid’s been in the file room for thirty full minutes looking for something,” a new voice says, but it’s familiar. You could place it, you think, if you thought about it hard enough. “I just buzzed down to him; he’ll be up in a few, but he can catch up. Always does.” The voice walks in and when you both look at each other at the same time, something in you falters. Because of course you could place that voice. But it’s a voice you haven’t heard in years - at least fifteen, you think - and it’s a face you, quite frankly, didn’t prepare yourself to see.

Because last you heard, David Rossi retired. Evidently, that was short-lived. Evidently, one of the earliest ghosts from your uncle’s life in the BAU has come back to haunt the place once again.

He looks at you and says your name like you’re the last person he expected to see. Not disappointed, not glad, just- unexpected. Hesitant, uncharacteristically so. Like he also thought that the last time he saw you - still a child, still listening to stories about how the BAU was founded from two of the very founders like you were hearing superhero stories before bedtime - was the last time he would ever see you. “It’s been a while.”

You exhale a near-laugh that doesn’t reach your eyes. “Something like that.”

The hesitance evidently passes as quickly as it came, and he gives you that nod of acknowledgement you remember all too well before sitting. “Welcome to the team. This room could deeply benefit from some good old-fashioned nepotism knowledge transfer.”

And you know it’s not even meant as a slight, coming from him, as much as it may sound like one. You know Rossi - you at least used to. It’s a compliment wrapped in his dry tone, a kind acknowledgement in fewer words and more deniable language. You give him the same nod back and turn your attention to the folder that’s been placed in front of you.

Hotch pulls the room back to focus. “It looks like you’ve all met Dr. Gideon already. She’s joining us from Georgetown and the DC field office with a specialized focus on criminal psychology and scene analysis - MO, signature, the works.” He looks at you and nods once, which you return, before turning his attention back to the room. “Garcia, you can begin.”

And she does, and for maybe four minutes, you fall into the comfort of analysis. Problem scoping. The beginnings of falling into the work, into the unanswered questions, that you’ve always loved.

Four minutes of comfort, it seems, is all you’ve been allotted.

The door creaks open and another agent - the kid, you presume, mentioned earlier - hurries into the conference room, murmuring a small apology as he finds an open seat across the table from you. The first thing you notice is how young he looks, Rossi’s nickname really wasn’t kidding; he’s got an almost boyish face with brown hair that looks like a hand’s been run through it too many times. As he folds himself into the seat, shoving a weathered messenger bag under his chair and dropping a pile of files and books onto the table in front of him as silently as possible, you also notice how uncharacteristically non-FBI he looks. It’s not the height that gives you pause; it’s the almost apologetic nature with which he seems to shuffle through the room, his long limbs seemingly just along for the ride. You wonder if he’s new, too; maybe another recent hire still fumbling his way around the department, finding his footing, learning how to carry himself. He crosses one leg over the other and grabs the pertinent file for the case, and you clock the scuffed Converse he’s wearing. A twitch of a smile starts on your face, and you make a mental note to wear your own tomorrow; at least you won’t be alone in it. He catches your eye and gives you a small, almost awkward smile, and you’re sure the one you return is nearly identical.

The initial case brief rolls on for a short while longer, fifteen minutes at most, and it’s mostly preliminary guiding questions and observations, notes and suggestions the team can pass along to the requesting field office before any call is made on officially pulling you all in beyond a consult. The team, you realize quickly, truly does function as a unit; everyone clearly has their specialties and is clearly here for a reason, and the reasons blend well together, even on a surface-level consult case like this. You can’t help but note Converse-guy’s deep knowledge of geographic profiling, and you make another mental note to ask him to give you a rundown of the basics at some point; geography, or the analysis of such, has never been your strong suit.

At the end of the brief, the team starts to file out with no further action for now and the guidance to spend the morning finishing up paperwork from last week’s cases. You and Converse-guy are standing, you tossing your things back into your bag and him nudging his files and books into a manageable stack to carry.

“Gideon,” Hotch says, and you can’t help but notice the almost sharp silence that comes from across the table, the shuffling of the stack pausing immediately. “You can take the opportunity to get mandatory trainings out of the way today. This might be the last slow morning you see for a while.”

You nod. “Noted,” you say, and you tug your bag over your shoulder. You open your mouth to introduce yourself to Converse-guy, figuring you might as well get the whole yeah, Gideon, you heard it right, yeah, Jason’s my uncle, I know, BAU founder, hard to find anyone in this department who hasn’t heard the name even in passing like it seems you must have, out of the way, but he pulls a file from his pile and darts over to Hotch, showing a page of something and murmuring questions. You tell yourself you’ll find him later and make your way out of the conference room, back to your desk, coffee in your hand gone lukewarm already.

݁⋆⭒˚.⋆

Most of the first day passes quickly and painlessly, all things considered. You take your badge photo and finish your trainings just before lunch, which you eat at your desk with a single headphone in; Garcia pulls you into her “lair” in the early afternoon to show you what she can do for you, which, the answer is pretty much anything; Morgan and Prentiss pull you over to review a report they’re writing up and give you a rundown; you avoid eye contact with Rossi, which is not all that hard to do when he’s clearly letting you have it; JJ invites you for a walk and asks about you - where you grew up, your time in the field office and what you did before that, your aversion to heels - and tells you about her life in return, mostly her son Henry; Hotch checks in on you precisely once and murmurs a one-word acknowledgement before going back into his office; and you try and fail to almost introduce yourself to Converse-guy three times. He’s barely been at his desk all day, and when he is and you tell yourself to get up in two minutes and go say hello like a normal new coworker, he ends up on a phone call, or heading to the breakroom for another coffee with a frequency that seems genuinely concerning, or running files in and out of the bullpen. You’d think he was avoiding you if you knew each other already.

The day winds down, eventually. Most of the team has dispersed and gone home for the day, with Morgan, Prentiss, and JJ filtering out and tossing goodbyes your way. Garcia’s down the hall, she told you earlier she’ll be here until you leave in case you need anything, which is a kindness you weren’t expecting but also aren’t arguing. Hotch is in his office, behind a closed door, the sign of a man who doesn’t need a goodbye at the end of the day and doesn’t leave until the work is done. You’re at your desk, filling out your firearms qualification paperwork to get it on the schedule.

Rossi’s the next to leave, and you look up at the sound of him leaving his office before you can help it. You meet each other’s eyes and give each other a single nod, an acknowledgement of a day completed. It’s all he does before looking ahead and keeping his stride, and you look back at your desk, silently grateful.

It is, unfortunately, a short-lived feeling of gratitude.

You hear it when you’re signing your own name at the bottom of the last form, and you have to pause after writing the e because it genuinely stops you in your tracks.

“Night, Reid. Don’t stay here too late.”

Reid.

There’s only one person left in the bullpen besides you and Rossi. Converse-guy.

“You say that every night,” Reid replies, and the sound of his voice lands differently now that you know who’s speaking.

“And I’ll keep saying it until it sticks, kid.” Rossi walks out the glass doors, and you finally bring your pen back to paper, at least for long enough to finish signing your name, the slight disconnect in ink in the cursive of your last name staring back at you like a taunt.

Spencer Reid. You feel like a complete moron for not putting two and two together yourself. He froze when Hotch said your name. His geographic profiling knowledge is something you heard about for years and then, today, witnessed firsthand. He’s visibly young and clearly bright, and you already know he’s two years older than you. Earlier, you’d have thought he was avoiding you if you knew each other already, except you do know each other already, in a way, so he was avoiding you.

You can’t blame him. If you knew it was him earlier, you’d have almost introduced yourself zero times instead of three.

You finish signing and dating each paper and slide them into the folder. You had planned to hand them into Hotch before leaving for the day, but now you can’t imagine spending another second in here today beyond what’s absolutely necessary. The forms can wait. Getting the hell out of here cannot.

The scrape of your chair against the floor as you stand is louder than you intended and you don’t look over to see if he’s noticed. It’s not of interest to you. Nothing about him is. You grab your bag, drop your coffee cup in the small trash can adjacent to your desk, and head towards the bullpen doors.

You make it. You really almost make it.

“Hey.”

You could keep walking. You’re one step from the door, your hand almost at the handle; you could just take the last step and act like you didn’t even hear.

Your body pauses before you make the conscious decision for it to. When you turn, you see Reid spun around in his desk chair, legs crossed in it, facing you. Before you can stop the thought, you wonder how he can even fold his limbs in to fit like that. His hair looks more unruly, and he’s a bit more rumpled, than before; the natural progression of a long day at work that you’re less than pleased you’re still here to see.

He says your name. Just your first name. “You’re–” he pauses, visibly considering whether to continue and if so, how. “You’re his niece.”

His. He can’t even say your last name, or your uncle’s first. You’re not sure you’d want to hear it, anyway.

You nod, twice, and adjust the strap of your bag on your shoulder, failing to think about your reply before it’s out. “You’re his prodigy.”

It lands. You watch it land. If it were anyone else, you’d probably feel bad about it. “That’s-” he pauses, starting too quickly, which you already know is, apparently, his natural state. He’s quieter when he continues. “That’s not exactly accurate.”

“Accurate enough,” you reply with a shrug. You should turn around and leave. “You heard my name and avoided me all day.”

Reid winces at that, almost embarrassed. Good, you think, before you can help it. “I didn’t know what to say to you.”

You take a breath and just look at him for a few quick seconds. He looks nervous, uncomfortable, and curious all at once. You almost wish you cared. You tug your bag tighter again, just to have something to do with your hands. “I didn’t say I minded. Now that I know.”

Now that you know who he is. He shifts in his chair, the discomfort now further manifesting physically, and looks down at his hands in his lap. “Okay.”

You take a beat, standing there, before nodding once and turning back around. The door’s open and you’re halfway out when he adds on, seemingly unable to leave it at that.

“He talked about you a lot.”

The hand you have on the door handle tightens and your jaw ticks before you can stop it. You’re glad you’re facing the elevator. He talked about you a lot. Jason talked about you a lot to his team. Of course he did. He told you he did. He couldn’t stop telling you how proud he was of you, how much of himself he saw in you, how glad he was to tell his team about “the Gideon that would really make the name for the family”. You would’ve asked for details, years ago. You have no interest in details now. You have even less interest in details from Spencer Reid, of all people.

“He talked about you too,” you start, voice even. “He talked about a lot of people.” You, once again, see the clean exit ramp, and you, once again, don’t take it. “I guess that didn’t exactly guarantee a goodbye for anyone but you.”

Without waiting for a reply you don’t want to hear, you make your way out of the doorway, the door falling shut behind you and the elevator waiting ahead. You push the down button and wait impatiently for it to come, to take you away from a first day that went about as far from what you expected as it could have.

You didn’t think you’d have to be reminded, at work, of who your uncle chose instead of you. You didn’t think you’d ever have to put a face to who actually got a goodbye through a letter left in Jason’s cabin. 

You decide, as the elevator doors close in front of you, that you’re giving yourself the day to ruminate on it. Spencer Reid has exactly today to infiltrate your thoughts. Tomorrow you’ll show up, and he’ll just be a coworker whose name carries baggage you’re not checking, and you’ll keep to yourself, and you’ll be just fine.

You’re good at being just fine.

༘⋆

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You walk through the clear doors to an office you haven’t been in for over 8 years. It hasn’t changed much, if at all. You remember the days you dreamed of working here, the nights you skipped parties to study human behavior, the times you ditched friends to attend lectures or seminars for subjects well above your education level at the time. The times you snuck into those same seminars when you couldn’t afford the fees.

Maybe that dream still has a chance to come true.

As a child, it had started as a fascination with what your father did for work. Then, it was a way to get close to him - something to talk about with him. The older you got, the more distant you realized he was, and the more you clung to the one connection the two of you had.

You were the love child of what was practically a one night stand after what apparently had been a harrowing divorce. It was only somewhat comforting that he wasn’t any more of a father to your half brother, Stephen, than he was to you. Stephen at least had a present mother in his life though. You wouldn’t say you and your older brother were close by any means but you would bet you knew more about him than Jason Gideon did.

None of that matters right now though. You shake your head from your reminiscing, taking the stairs to your dad’s office. You knock and are met with silence. Slowly, you open the door to peek your head in only to find it empty. As you are about to turn around, a timid voice speaks up.

“He’s in the conference room, can I, uh, help you… Miss…?”

You turn to find a rather gangly man staring at you, his brown hair slicked back behind his ears. Your heart beat picks up a moment when met with someone so attractive before your eyes zoom in on the labeled coffee mug and you give an internal sigh to yourself.

“The conference room, you said? Hm, he must have lost track of time… thank you, Dr. Reid”.

You turn, ignoring the man who you logically knew you had no reason to dislike (and would probably get along quite well with) but were unable to not feel envious of. He’d only been in your father’s life for three years and already he had spent more time with the man than you ever had.

Meanwhile, Spencer cocked his head, wondering how in the world you knew his name and just who you were.

Then he realized he was letting a stranger, albeit an incredibly attractive one that he very much wanted to talk to, wander around the BAU, one who was looking for his mentor. Hurriedly, he trailed after you, realizing he hadn’t even gotten your name, too caught up in the color of your eyes. You reached the conference room before him and he can only stand awkwardly behind you, shrugging his shoulders at his teammates confused looks.

Only Hotch seems to know who you are, and Spencer catches a tinge of worry in his expression. It doesn’t take long to determine what’s caused the rare emotion when Gideon walks back in, file in hand.

“There you are! We were supposed to meet 20 minutes ago. I swear, one year I will buy you a watch with an alarm built in that you won’t be able to turn off on your own.” Your voice breaks the silence, and Spencer can somehow tell you’re trying to come off as teasing although your voice falls flat.

He watches as Gideon looks up, and his brow furrows.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing here?”

You feel as Spencer moves from behind you, going to stand between who you assume to be Derek and Elle. You try not to notice the quizzical expression on his face, or how only Agent Hotchner seems to know who you are.

“Today… it’s Thursday. The 4th. You took a half day off, remember?”

The team looks at each other and Spencer sees Hotch wince slightly. It appears you catch the facial expressions as your eyes narrow. You open your mouth but Gideon speaks first, cutting you off.

“Well, I’m sorry but we just got this case - I’ll have to reschedule. I am sorry sweetheart”.

You sputter a moment, your mouth opening and closing.

“Re- reschedule? We can’t reschedule. Do you seriously not even remember what today is?”

Gideon sighs, closing the file and is almost patronizing as he repeats that the team has a case. You straighten your shoulders, counting to ten in your head before speaking in a calm voice.

“Is it a hostage situation? Is it the first 24 hour period of a child missing?”

Gideon pauses, before indicating that it’s not. You continue, “Then statistically speaking, your team can afford for you to leave for 12 hours. Not even 12 hours. Whatever you miss I’m sure you can catch up on while on the plane.”

Gideon attempts to place an arm on your shoulder but you shrug him off.

“… you never even requested the time off, did you?”

Gideon sighs again, muttering out a strained “sweetheart, please”.

Briefly, you wonder what the team thinks about Gideon calling someone sweetheart. You don’t know the thought is going through Spencer’s brain - you seemed a bit too young for him to be dating you, and as far as he knew, Gideon only had a son.

You scoff at your father, resisting the urge to roll your eyes. You had hoped, just this once, that he wouldn’t let you down. You should have known better. Turning your gaze to the team you plaster on the fakest smile, approaching Derek with your hand out.

“I’m sorry, it was incredibly rude of me to come in and immediately talk to my father without introducing myself. I assume none of you even know I existed based on your expressions just now. Minus you, of course, Agent Hotchner - it’s nice to see you again, I hope Haley is doing well.”

Hotch gives a small smile, nodding his head towards you but focused on watching the way Gideon deflates behind you.

You state each team members name in turn, shaking their hands and introducing yourself. You wave at Spencer, and he wonders if you know he doesn’t like handshakes or if he has done something to you that he’s unaware of. He finds himself hoping it’s the first but also wishing you didn’t know, so he’d have the opportunity to hold your hand. Once introductions are done, you turn away from the team and find your father still staring at you hopelessly.

“Look, I’m sorry but we’ll reschedule, I promise, okay kiddo?”

“You can’t reschedule. This is an event. But don’t worry, dad, I shouldn’t have expected you to actually show up when you have missed every other life event. I’ll see myself out”.

You give the team a tight smile before turning on your heel to leave. Gideon grabs your elbow, and tries to talk to you in a low voice, as if the team hasn’t heard everything else you two have said. You don’t let him finish the conversation in private, your expression turning to utter shock.

You throw your arm out, pointing directly at Spencer as you speak clearly,

“He isn’t your child but you went to his third PhD graduation. If I remember correctly, you even took him out for a dinner afterwards. I am your legitimate daughter and you have missed my high school graduation, college graduation AND the one for my Masters. Why in the world did I ever think getting a single doctorate would measure up?”

“I’ll make it up to you when I get back,” Gideon tries to say.

Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Hotch trying to usher the team out, as if he knows the conversation isn’t going to end well but you hold up your hand, shaking your head and halting their stilted movements.

“Don’t bother, Agent Gideon. By the time you get back, I’ll be out of this city and not even this team will be able to find me. I hope your case at least ends well”.

Once more your head turns to the team and you give them a stiff nod before you make your way out the door.

Spencer expects Gideon to go after you, feels like he himself should go after you and apologize for - well he doesn’t know what to apologize for but he’s sure there is something. Instead, Spencer watches you leave and Gideon turn to the round table, clearing his throat and giving the team a look that warns them not to say anything.

Only Spencer notices you stop outside Gideons office, removing something from your key ring and leaving it on the floor in front of his office door. Only Spencer notices you look back at the table and shake your head when you meet his eyes, your expression sorrowful before you straighten yourself up and walk away.

Spencer wonders if he’ll ever see you again. He doesn’t know how to explain his sadness when he realizes he probably never will.

“but you’re scared she will change her mind?” morgan reached over, grabbing the piece of paper from reid’s desk and analysing it.

spencer let out a frustrated groan, dropping his phone against the table and resting his forehead against the cool wood.

“reid, i don’t think she would change her mind man. i was watching you all night, she seemed to really dig you.”

without moving his head, spencer fixed his stare onto derek, side eyeing him.

“you think so?” he mumbled out, barely audible as he face was practically smushed against the desk.

“yeah i know so. so stop being so scared and just call her, invite her out.”

morgan gave the dark haired man a pat on the back before leaving him to do the thing he was dreading.

spencer picked his phone back up, your number still on screen just waiting to be rung. he exhaled, pressing his soft lips into a hard line before his thumb brushed over the call button.

it began to ring and spencer could swear his stomach dropped.

“hello?” your voice cracked through his phone, the familiarity of it relieving some of the pent up anxiety he was feeling.

“hey- y/n? it’s reid- spencer reid.” he mumbled out.

“oh! hey spence” your voice seemed more chipper after you realised who was calling you. “i’ve been waiting for your call.”

spencer was so lucky that you could not see the blush that spread across his face, he lifted a finger up, pulling at the collar of his shirt.

was it warm in here? damn.

“mm i was just calling- i wanted to know if you’d like to see a movie with me?”

spencer had interrogated hotch the other day while working a case, quizzing the older man about the things you enjoyed and what you didn’t like. he wouldn’t have dared go to gideon, so hotch was the next best option.

and through doing so he found out your love for going to the cinema.

“i love the movies!” you exclaimed, maybe a little too enthusiastic but spencer didn’t mind, a smile spread across his face.

you cleared your throat before continuing, “i would love to see a movie with you, spencer.”

“great-how does tomorrow night sound?” spencer chewed at his bottom lip, awaiting your answer.

“mhm that sounds good, how about i meet you outside your office at 7?”

“i-i’ll see you then.”

“see you, bye spencer.” and with that you hung up.

spencer placed the phone down on his desk, swivelling around in his chair. from across the room, derek was stood in conversation with penelope. spencer caught his glance, giving the older male a thumbs up.

“that’s my boy!” morgan yelled, causing a few sets of eyes to glance in his direction from his sudden outburst.

~

you stood outside the bureau, leaning against the cool brick wall. it was 6:58pm, and the sun was just setting.

usually you weren’t too concerned about what you’d wear out, or on a date even. but tonight you were a little nervous, and it took you almost two hours just to pick something.

you had decided on a black mid length pencil skirt, paired with an off the shoulder sweetheart blouse. you had only realised once you had left the house, that it wasn’t exactly the most weather permitting outfit, as it was late autumn, but you’d be indoors soon anyway so it wasn’t too bad.

you stared at the doors to the building, subconsciously playing with the strap on your purse.

seven o’ clock rolled around, and exactly as planned spencer reid strolled out of the building.

the dark eyed male had his signature pair of glasses resting upon his nose, his hair was combed back behind his ears, a few loose strands hung just over his eyes. he immediately spotted you, his stern facial expression softening as he shuffled over to you.

your breath hitched as you took in his appearance. his outfit didn’t much differ from what he wore at the birthday dinner, but seemed more casual. the shirt he wore wasn’t fully buttoned, his tie was hung looser but he still adorned a black suit jacket.

“hi” you mumbled out, feeling a blush creep onto your cheeks. luckily for you, the dimming light managed he conceal it, mostly.

“i hope you haven’t been waiting here long, ready to get going?” he quizzed, coming to a stop before you.

you looked up to the man who towered over you, and nodded. he lead you to his car and you both got in, spencer starting the ignition and driving off to the theatre.

the drive wasn’t too long, you were making small talk with him as he drove, asking about his day and such.

“they’re playing a screening of attack of the clones, i wasn’t sure if you liked star wars but i got us tickets.” he mumbled out, fingers drumming against the steering wheel as he pulled up to the theatre.

your hands rested on your lap as you stared out of the window, glancing over to spencer.

“that sounds great, i like star wars.” you smiled, making his stomach do metaphorical backflips.

you and spencer got out of the car, walking side by side into the cinema.

“i’m going to- to get the tickets. would you like to pick out a snack?”

you nodded walking towards the concession stand. you spent a few minutes scanning the items, a puzzled expression reaching your features. spencer returned to you, the tickets in his hand.

“made a choice?”

“would you share gummy bears with me?”

“would that make you happy?” he mused, watching as a small smile crept onto your face.

you nodded, chewing your bottom lip.

he let out a small chuckle. “then yes, i will.”

spencer walked over to the cashier, and ordered a medium popcorn, two sodas and of course not forgetting the packet of gummy bears.

the two of you walked into the screening room, spencer glanced down at the tickets as you walked up the steps. he lead you to two seats in the back row.

once you sat down to his left, he passed you your soda which you accepted gratefully.

there was only two other couples sat when the commercials starting rolling.

“have you seen this before?” you whispered to spencer.

“mhm, it’s one of my favourites.” he whispered back, leaning closer to you. you tensed up when you felt his hot breath against your neck.

the opening credits started to play and you both settled into your seats, spencer and you both laying your arms on your respective arm rests, he held onto the bucket of popcorn in his free hand.

throughout the film spencer’s gaze would fall on you, as you stared straight ahead at the screen the flickering colours from the film illuminating your, in his opinion, perfect features.

he grew nervous, almost dropping the popcorn, you turned to him and let out a low giggle. “here let me take it.” you mumbled in a hushed tone, reaching for the popcorn which he passed off onto you, your fingers brushing his for a moment.

that small touch was enough to drive him crazy. inhaling sharply, spencer directed his vision onto the screen. he flexed his left hand, before cautiously placing it on top of yours.

you felt your face heat up, you took the opportunity to quickly interlock your fingers with his, giving them a small squeeze.

he turned to you, his face met with your wide eyes, softly staring back at him, a longing expression washing over your features.

spencer felt his heartbeat quicken, he could barely hold it together any longer. he swiftly pressed his lips against yours, kissing you feverishly. you melted into the kiss, letting go of his hand and trailing yours up to cup his cheek.

he deepened the kiss, his palm traveling to your hip as best as he could in the seated position.

when you both pulled away, you gasped for air, your chest rising and falling rapidly. his hair was now slightly disheveled, his glasses steamed up and his lips a few shades pinker.

spencer’s cheeks were stained a crimson, his mind as foggy as his glasses. you pressed another small peck to his lips before resting your head on his shoulder.

“we’re about to miss the best bit.” you mused, your face warm.

This was not the first time you had seen him. Nor was it the second, or even the third. And at this point, you started to think maybe it wasn’t just a coincidence that he continued to pop up in your life. The first time, you had been at the library. You were there looking for a book that piqued your interest while taking inventory at your part time job at the bookstore down the street. As you scanned the shelves searching for the title, you rounded the corner and to your surprise slammed right into the slender, yet solid, mass of another person just on the other side of the aisle. 

“Oh, my apologies..” You didn’t look up as you spoke, instead deciding to fixate on the pair of black converse sat parallel to your own feet as you collected your frazzled thoughts.  “I was so focused, I wasn’t looking where I was going and-” 

“No, no you’re fine, it’s my fault for lingering so close to the corner..” His voice was soft, almost melodic in tone. “Are you okay? You took quite the hit there.” He quipped, slightly sarcastically as he let out a soft scoff-like chuckle. 

You nodded, finally glancing up and pulling your eyes away from the twists and turns of his laces, yet still avoiding eye-contact. “I’m fine.. Thanks. Excuse me.” 

As you move to walk past him, that’s when your eyes fail you. Just before your shoulders brush, in that split second, your eyes make contact with the most mesmerizing chocolate brown orbs you’d ever seen. He was staring back at you, his eyes emanating concern while his expression was pulled into a tight-lipped smile. You gave a polite nod as you made your way further down the aisle and refocused on your objective, continuing your search. That was the first time you saw him. 

“Dad, it's been six months.. I’m not saying you need to rush it, but... Don’t you think it’s time to get back out there?” You smiled softly as you heard the hard sigh on the other end of the phone. 

“They don’t want me back out on the field yet. Besides, I’m perfectly content here at the academy giving lectures instead. Plus I have plenty of downtime to spend bird watching.” There was sincerity in his tone, sure. But that wasn’t the whole truth. You knew he missed being out there in the field. Helping catch the bad guys, saving the victims. That was who Jason Gideon was. It had been six months and three days since the accident that put him out of work with the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Six months and three days since the bomb that killed six of your dad’s agents; which resulted in him taking medical leave, staying out of the field, and only being consulted by the team when they needed an extra opinion. He hadn’t talked much about the team since that day. You knew at least two agents remained from his former team— one of whom you had met before, years ago. Aaron Hotchner. Most of the team called him Hotch for short. From what you could gather of the limited information your dad gave you these days, it seemed that they had put Hotch in an interim unit chief position while your dad recovered. Beyond that, you didn’t know much about the BAU anymore.  

“If you say so, dad. Sure, it’s nice to be able to have you over for dinner more. I’m just saying, you’ve been with the BAU for over 30 years. It’s a part of you at this point. You can only stay away so long before it starts to eat at you.” His silence on the other end, proved he knew you were right. “Just promise you’ll think about it? Consider talking to the director soon?” He hummed in agreement before responding. 

“I’ll think about it. Now I gotta go. I have a lecture in the morning, and I’m going to be telling them about my experience with the footpath killer.” You chuckled to yourself. 

“Cause that one never gets old...” Your tone dripped with sarcasm. “I’ll talk to you later, dad. I love you.” Even though you couldn’t see each other, you could hear the smile in his voice. 

“I love you too honey. Talk to you again soon. We’ll do dinner together this weekend at your apartment.” 

“Only if you’re cooking! Bye dad.” You said with a grin before ending the call.

The second time, you were on your way to work when you decided you might as well get some coffee to get you through the eight hour shift ahead of you. The jingle of the bell rang in your ears as you swung the door open and that's when you saw him, standing at the counter, fidgeting with his hands as the barista took his order. You froze in your tracks as you watched him finish his transaction, completing his order and smiling softly at the barista as he handed her his card. You glanced down at your watch and realized that you were already behind schedule as it was, and any potential (and inevitably awkward) social interaction would just delay you even further. So with that, before he could turn around, you spun on your heels and walked right back out the door, settling your mind on the mediocre breakroom coffee that awaited you at the shop. That was the second time you had seen him.  

The third encounter, you had just finished ordering at your favorite Thai restaurant, thankful they were still open after your long closing shift at the bookstore. Exhausted and hungry, you were ready to get your food and get home. You smiled at the waiter as she took your menu and moved to the next table. But that smile quickly dropped as the man at the table behind you spoke his order. 

“I think I’ll have the same thing she’s having. Yeah, thank you so much.” You glanced behind you, to see those same brown eyes meeting yours, gleaming in recognition and smiling softly back at you. A low chuckle emitted from your chest as he gave you a small wave and you fully turned to look at him. He acknowledged you. There was no backing out of this one. You might as well embrace it.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t library boy! Ya know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were following me.” 

His mouth fell open as he looked at you. “Following you? No, I‐ You know, statistically it’s pretty common to run into the same person more than once, especially if you live in the same city, more common than you’d think actually, and given the population size of this city the probability of us running into each other is roughly 1 in‐”

“Relax Einstein, I was just joking.” You let out another chuckle as you watched his face relax. “I’m y/n. What do they call you, brainiac?”

“I’m Do‐… Spencer. You can call me Spencer.”

last call | ☆

But that’s the problem. It’s not the fact that you’re playing Scrabble with an FBI agent because you’re using his apartment as a safehouse while his team tries to catch your stalker ex-boyfriend who might want to kill you. 

It’s the fact that Spencer Reid stuck his neck out for you for absolutely no reason—again—and now you can’t seem to think straight. 

It’s ridiculous. You’re ridiculous. 

There are much bigger things at stake here—namely your life. You’ve been looking over your shoulder every minute since you were forced into hiding. There is absolutely no reason for that to not be your primary focus. Instead, you’re playing Scrabble with Spencer and thinking about what it would feel like to kiss him. 

His lips are soft. His skin, too. His hazel eyes dart back and forth across the tile rack, likely putting together a whole dictionary of words he can make from his letters. He hasn’t taken the usual care to straighten his hair for the past few days of isolation, so his natural curls are starting to show more. 

You like it this way, you realize—the curls and the glasses over the straight hair and contacts. He still wears button-ups and trousers and dress shoes, dressed like he’s still on the job because he is still on the job, but it feels like you’re starting to get a different side of him than everyone else.

These feelings are even more dangerous here. You and Spencer were on equal ground back in the safe house, but now you’re in his apartment—his home base. Your only image of Spencer Reid for most of your life has been the golden child with the perfect life who has more of your father’s love than you do. 

Since this case started, he’s proven you wrong time and time again. And now you have the chance to learn just what makes him tick. You even promised yourself to be as nice as possible because he was doing you such a huge favor. That was a step in the right direction. Right?

But honestly, you’re surprised your dad even allowed it. On such short notice, though, it’s probably the best option. Spencer guarded Lila Archer in her own house, so this can’t be too different. 

You bite the inside of your cheek as you try to push that name out of your head. You don’t even know why she keeps popping up. You blame Elle for telling you about it in the first place—you could’ve happily lived the rest of your life without knowing Spencer Reid made out with a famous actress. 

Ugh. Why does it bother you this much? Why does it bother you at all? 

“You’ve gotta be coming up with a really good word,” Spencer says. 

You blink a few times as those thoughts dissipate like smoke, then look over at him. 

“What?” 

“You’ve been quiet for a long time,” he says, gesturing at the board with his head. “I either stumped you or you’re coming up with a really good word.” 

You sigh. More like you’ve been mentally torturing yourself over the most confusing feelings you’ve had since high school. Instead of ruining everything and saying it, though, you just push your tiles together on your holder and purse your lips. You’ve barely glanced at them since Spencer took his turn. 

“I wouldn’t blame you,” Spencer continues. “Not to brag, but I’ve won every Scrabble game I’ve ever played.”

“I bet it’s pretty easy when you’ve literally memorized the dictionary,” you say absently. 

“There’s actually only 472,814 words in the unabridged version of the Merriam Webster International Dictionary,” he says. “I know far more words than that.”

You raise an eyebrow as you look back up at him. “You know the exact number?”

“Of course.”

“What, did you count while you were reading it?”

He shrugs. “It happens automatically. I can tell you the word count of every book I’ve ever read.”

“War and Peace?” 

“587,287.”

“Les Mis?” 

“512,887.”

“Anna Karenina.” 

“349,736.”

He gives you every number without faltering, without even blinking. You just shake your head. 

“You’re insane. Has anyone ever told you that?” 

You see Spencer’s eyes gleam out of your peripherals. “You have.”

You huff and look back at your tiles. “There’s no way I’m gonna win.” 

“You don’t know that.”

You huff again and finally place down your letters, turning END into TENDER. You finally look up at him fully. “Is there any chance for me to win?”

Spencer bites back a smile. “No.”

He’s right, obviously. He beats you without even trying and demands another round. You accept on the condition that he makes you popcorn. 

“Okay,” Spencer says as he stands, “but you can’t look at my tiles.”

“Even if I did, you would still beat me,” you say.

“It’s about the principle,” Spencer insists on his way to the kitchen. “You don’t cheat at Scrabble.”

You hum. “Elle said you cheat at cards on the plane all the time.”

The cabinet shuts a little too abruptly, making you flinch. He tears the plastic off and crumples it up in his hand before he speaks again. 

“It sounds like you and Elle have gotten pretty close.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” You resist the urge to look at his tiles as you divide them up. “She was just… really nice to me. At the time I needed it the most.”

Spencer goes silent again. Your throat feels too dry. 

“You helped too. In— in a different way.” You pick at your cuticles, desperately in need of a trim. “I appreciate both of you more than you know.”

“I think I have some idea,” Spencer says. The microwave beeps then starts up. He comes back over a few seconds later and looks at you. “Did you look at my letters?” 

“You’re the FBI profiler,” you say. “You tell me.” 

He looks you up and down—narrows his eyes just slightly—then nods, apparently satisfied. 

“You didn’t,” he says, and he starts setting his tiles on the rack. 

“You got that just from looking at me?” you ask. 

“Of course not,” he says. “You’re so loud handling the tiles that you couldn’t hide cheating even if you wanted to. I got it the second I walked away.” 

You huff yet again. He really seems to bring it out of you. “Why does the rest of the team ever play cards with you if you’re like this?” 

Spencer shrugs. “We take so many flights. Losing to me is more interesting than doing nothing.” He smiles inwardly, and you unconsciously do the same. “Besides, they should expect me to count cards. I’m from Vegas.” 

You shake your head. “You’re impossible.” 

“At least we’re making progress from insane,” he says. 

You lose again. And again. The popcorn makes up for it, at least—you don’t admit that it is, in fact, better than the safehouse popcorn. 

After the fourth round of Spencer Reid Scrabble domination, you call it quits. You’ve been losing for six hours straight and you can’t take it anymore. You think you’ve exhausted your whole vocabulary, honestly. 

“What should we play instead?” he asks. “I’ve got a beautiful chess board here.”

“I am absolutely not playing chess against you,” you say affirmatively. 

“Could that have anything to do with you not knowing how to play?”

You scoff. “Of course not.”

“I can teach you,” Spencer says, his eyes lighting up. “I’d love to teach you!”

“Oh, no,” you shake your head. “I couldn’t ask you to waste your time like that.”

“How could I possibly be wasting my time?” he marvels. “We literally have nothing else to do.” 

There’s a part of you resistant to any kind of change, even something as small as learning a new game like chess. If you try something new and you’re not immediately good at it, you usually end up dropping it—it saves you from the shame of naivety, of asking for help or admitting you don’t know something or being painfully human. 

With Spencer, it turns into a whole new type of vulnerability. He forces anyone around him to either humble themselves before his endless amounts of knowledge, or admonish him for his intelligence in the hopes it boosts their own. It’s pretty obvious what most people choose. 

You’re trying to be better than everyone else around Spencer, though. The realization you had this morning, that you’d never deserve someone like him no matter what kind of person you tried to be, shook you more than you care to admit. 

It’s easy to hate Spencer. It’s harder to realize you like him. It’s terrifying to admit you want him to like you back. 

“...Fine,” you eventually say. “But you’re not allowed to make fun of me for how bad I am.” 

He’s already shaking his head. “Of course not. I’d never make fun of someone for wanting to learn something new.” 

Your lips quirk despite yourself. “You’d make a good teacher.”

Spencer smiles at that too. It’s a sweet, boyish thing—the sort of look that makes you forget he’s an FBI agent, that he’s seen horrors you could never imagine. How anyone stays as kind as him after all he’s been through, you don’t know. 

“You think?” 

“Definitely,” you nod. “Having everything you’ve ever read on call definitely helps, but you’ve got a curious spirit. You’d do well with high schoolers.” 

“I’ve never done well with high schoolers,” Spencer says wryly. “I graduated at 12. Part of the reason I buried myself in books was because I got bullied every waking moment.” 

You bite your lip. Case in point on how he ended up so kind. 

“I’m so sorry.” 

He shrugs and he starts off to find his chess set. 

“It’s just how life is.” His apartment is so small that you can still hear him talking as he rummages through his things. “I have two doctorate degrees with a third in progress, and I make the world a better place every day. I don’t think a single person who bullied me can say that.” 

“And that just means you can forget it all?” 

“Never,” he admits. “But it helps.” 

Spencer finds his chess board a few seconds later. He’s a very messy genius that somehow knows the exact position of everything. You haven’t dared to touch most anything since you’ve gotten here out of fear of ruining his orderly disorder. 

You stay silent as he sets the board up, explaining each piece’s name and function to you. You at least know the names, but not much else. It doesn’t bode well for a potential victory, but you’ve already given up on that possibility. 

He assigns you the white pieces and your first game goes at snail speed as Spencer explains practically every single move to you. You didn’t really plan to listen, honestly, but you can’t help it. 

Over your weeks of joint isolation, you’ve learned you adore his voice. He has a specific lilt when he’s explaining something—it’s the perfect teacher voice. 

Besides, there’s something so intimate about someone who knows practically everything taking the time to teach you about something, and being so gentle the entire time. 

Spencer never makes you feel stupid or slow when you ask him to clarify something—in fact, his eyes light up when you ask questions. He commends you every time you make a smart move without his help. You like it a little more than you should. 

You sigh, pushing that thought out of your head as you move your rook. You glance up at Spencer when you do, expecting him to tell you how bad of a move it was, but he nods instead. 

“Good move.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah,” he says. “You’re already getting better, already learning how to read the board.” 

“I don’t think there’s much reading going on,” you say. “You’re going easy on me.” 

“I would never go easy on you.” 

“You’re totally going easy on me.” Spencer smiles the slightest bit as he breaks, and you grin at the sight. “I knew it.” 

“It’s just to help you learn,” he insists. “I wouldn’t be a very good teacher if I was just showing off the whole time.” His eyes flick up to you. “You don’t spend every class telling your students how much smarter you are than them, do you?” 

You chuckle. “No. I think some of those kids are smarter than me, though. I’ve written a couple of rec letters for some of them, and I won’t be surprised if they get into some Ivys.” 

“I hope you don’t take it lightly,” he says. “I asked my favorite teachers for letters of recommendation. I bet those kids are too.” 

Your smile grows more sentimental. Your students are what’s gotten you through the last couple of years—past the reminders of some of your worst mistakes, past your slip into alcoholism that nearly got you kicked out of your student teaching program, past your idle insistence on ruining your life in the name of hating your father and everything he stands for. 

Your science teachers are the ones that saved you in high school, after all. If you’re able to pay it forward and save even one kid like you, then it all will have been worth it. 

“Thank you,” you say softly. “That’s been one of the hardest parts about all this, honestly. Being away from my students.” You glance away with a sigh. “I keep worrying about them—about the whole school. That somehow I’ll drag them into this mess.” 

“You don’t need to,” Spencer promises. “The whole BAU is on this. They won’t let anything happen to you, and they certainly won’t let anything happen to your school.” 

“...Thank you,” you repeat. “I know you’re probably tired of reassuring me.” 

“Why do you think of me like that?” he asks. You weren’t expecting the question, and you look up to see his wholly earnest gaze, his creased brows. He’s hurt. 

For a moment, you don’t know what to say. You manage to stammer out a, “what do you mean?” 

“Every time I do something nice for you, or say something nice, you’re always surprised by it,” he says. “You always say that I probably hate doing it, or I wish I didn’t have to. You think of me as someone who just barely tolerates you, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.” 

Spencer’s rambling by now. You let him. 

“You— you’re incredible, and you don’t even realize it. You’re smart and passionate and witty and caring, but you never see it because you think everyone must hate you as much as you hate yourself.” He shakes his head. “Or you try to make them hate you once they start seeing the real you, because you think it’s only a matter of time until you disappoint them.” 

“That might work with other people, but it’s not gonna work with me.” Spencer meets your eyes and you feel like he can see right through you. You fight the urge to shift beneath his gaze. “You can’t make me stop caring about you. You can try, but it’s not going to work. Understand?” 

You’re reminded with big, neon flashing lights that Spencer is an FBI profiler who could probably write the book on the daddy issues you both share. It’s pretty hard to fool someone who’s been through it all before. 

“Who gave you all this nerve?” you mumble instead, because you’re not used to someone laying your whole playbook out in front of you. Why’d you have to catch feelings for the smartest guy on the planet? 

“Your dad,” he says. “And the hundreds of books I’ve read on human psychology.” 

That gets a faint laugh out of you. You suddenly feel very warm, your throat impossibly dry. 

“I’m going to get some water,” you say as you stand up. “Do you want any?” 

“Please,” he nods. At least you didn’t make anything awkward between you and Spencer—he just spouts what anyone else would consider a declaration of love on the daily. 

Love in relation to Spencer. Now that’s an unwelcome thought. The cold fridge air hits your face when you open it and helps it disappear a bit. 

“Where are your cups?” you call. 

“The cabinet next to the fridge.” 

“Thanks.” You glance back as you start filling them. “You’re not cheating, are you?” 

“How could I possibly cheat at chess?” 

“You can’t say that when I know you know all the possible ways to do it,” you say. 

“Of course I do,” Spencer agrees, “but there’s no point in cheating if I’m not trying to win. I’m just trying to teach you.” 

“Just wanted to make sure,” you chuckle. A red light blinks back at you as you start filling the water container up again. “Your Brita filter needs to be replaced.”

Spencer huffs. “I’ve been meaning to get a new one. I’ll put it on our grocery list if we’re in here long enough to need another delivery.”

“Do you think we will be?” you ask casually. You don’t want him to know your exact thoughts on being stuck here with him for longer than the safehouse. At least that place was twice the size of Spencer’s apartment. 

“...I don’t know,” he admits. 

“C’mon,” you say. You put the Brita back in the fridge and start walking back to the living room. Spencer accepts his glass with a quiet thank you as you sit back down across from him. “You’ve already been on one stalking case— I bet you’ve read about a whole lot more. What are my odds?” 

“Well, we have a suspect,” he says. “That already puts us in better territory than most stalking cases.” 

You take a sip of water, hydrating your dry throat. “Do you think it’s Mike?” 

Spencer looks at you, obviously taking immense care with his word selection. He probably can’t share every intimate detail of the investigation, but it’s more than that—he doesn’t want to upset you.

“I think he’s our best shot right now,” he says. “And I think he’s a coward of a man going up against the brightest, bravest people I know. If he is the one doing this to you, he doesn’t stand a chance.”  

Your throat is dry again. It feels like cottonmouth. You move your pawn without thinking too much about the move—you just have to do something. It’s too easy to forget about your true circumstances when you’re with Spencer. 

Spencer watches you for another few seconds, fully aware of what you’re doing. (He’s too good to forget his assignment over any sort of feelings for you, but a sick part of you wonders.) Mercifully, he doesn’t comment on it, just moves his own piece to capture the pawn you just used.  

“You didn’t have to do that.”

He shrugs. “You said you didn’t want me going easy on you.”

“So that means you were going easy?”

“I was helping you learn,” he says. “I think you’ve learned enough now.” 

“Fatal mistake,” you say wryly. “You never stop learning.” 

Spencer chuckles, and the air settles back into something mostly comfortable. You play the rest of the game in silence. 

-

Night comes quicker than you imagine.

You break for lunch after a few games of chess, and the conversation slowly gets back to normal. Spencer insists he can cook for you, but you decide you want to avoid the fire alarm going off on the first day. Instead, he claims a barstool and talks nonstop about everything and everything. 

He tells you who invented various kitchen utensils and devices. He explains everything you could possibly want to know about a refrigerator. He lets you know all the dangers of undercooking chicken, and you let him know you are not going to overcook it into rubber to make him happy. 

Eventually, when you’re both sitting at his kitchen bar eating, Spencer’s phone rings. He flips open his phone and presses it to his ear. 

“Spencer Reid.” His eyes flit over to you. “Hey, Gideon.” 

Your breath lodges in your throat. Every time your dad calls, it’s been an update in the case. Could it already be over? 

“Yes, she’s sitting next to me.” Spencer nods and looks at you. “I’m putting it on speaker.” 

You nod and he holds the phone in between the two of you. “You’re on speaker now, Gideon.” 

He says your name and you edge closer, practically hanging off your seat. 

“I’m here, Dad,” you say. “Do you have good news for us?” 

“I have news,” he clarifies, and your heart sinks. You didn’t realize how high your hopes had risen in such little time. “Hotch and Morgan didn’t get anything from Terrence Stevens. He claims his son hasn’t spoken to him in a decade, and Garcia’s dug up some records that corroborate it.” 

“What about Mike?” you ask. “I know Age— Elle and JJ were going to find him.” 

“They’re working on it,” your dad says. “That’s all I can tell you.” 

Your fork clatters against your plate as you haphazardly drop it and wrap your arms around your midsection. All of a sudden, it’s very cold in Spencer’s apartment. 

“So things don’t look good,” you translate. You try to keep your voice from shaking. 

“We’re making progress on everything,” he corrects. “Garcia is tracking him on all fronts, and from what we can tell, he’s nowhere near the two of you. You’re perfectly safe.” 

Somehow, that doesn’t make you feel any better. You’re too comfortable here with Spencer, to be able to forget the threat on your life constantly looming over you. You don’t know whether that says more about him or you. 

“I’m gonna shower,” you say to Spencer. “Let me know if there are any other crazy updates.”

“Yeah,” he says faintly. He hits another button on the phone and holds it back up to his ear. “It’s just me again, Gideon.” 

You scrape your leftovers into a tupperware container and put it in the fridge—and think about the newfound knowledge that the first electric refrigerator for domestic use was invented in 1913 by Fred Wolf, but ancient Iranians used what was called a yakhchāl centuries before that. Another side effect of your joint isolation is that your repertoire of fun facts has grown significantly bigger, courtesy of Spencer. 

You hear him talking on the phone distantly in the background—when you look up, you see he’s watching you. He takes the phone away from his ear for a moment. 

“There are towels in the linen closet,” he says. “Use whichever ones you like.”

You nod with a slight smile. “Thank you.” 

He mirrors the motion and goes back to talking with your father. When you walk past him, though, he catches your hand. You stop in your tracks to stare at him with slightly wide eyes, but he just squeezes your hand. It’s surprisingly comforting. 

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” Spencer says. It sounds like a vow coming from him. 

You nod shakily and squeeze back. 

“Thank you,” you repeat, words little more than a whisper. You let go and hurry off, your face burning. You can’t bring yourself to say it, but you hope he knows you believe him.  

You take a much colder shower than necessary. 

-

“Are you still there, Spencer?” 

He blinks a few times as he watches you walk off, then nods to no one in particular. 

“Yeah,” he says. “She’s going to take a shower.” 

“How is she doing?”

“Good,” Spencer says. “A-as good as she can be, in the circumstances.” 

He’s painfully aware of what Gideon’s probably thinking. Their last conversation about you didn’t go too well, and Spencer was very careful to not admit to anything—but knowing Gideon, it doesn’t matter. There’s very little you can hide from a profiler like him. 

“Good,” he echoes. “Nothing else matters if we can’t keep her safe.”

“I agree,” Spencer says. That much, at least, he doesn’t have to hide. He can’t even if he wants to—it’s far too obvious. “How are things on your end?”

“Elle and JJ went to Stevens’ address, and no one was home except for his very confused girlfriend. They searched the house and brought her in for questioning, but got nowhere.”

He has a girlfriend and he’s still tormenting you like this. Spencer is not a violent person, but he’s found himself wishing all kinds of awful things on Michael Stevens since he first heard his name. 

“They need to talk to more people,” Spencer says. “Any relatives around the area, or— or any friends or coworkers or acquaintances. This is our biggest lead, they should—”

“Stay the night?” Gideon guesses. “They’re checking into a hotel right now.”

“…Good,” he says. The sooner you get your life back, the better. 

“How are you doing?” Spencer asks after a beat of silence. “I know it can’t be easy leading this case.”

“I’m fine,” Gideon says, but Spencer isn’t sure how true it is. “It’s a weight off my shoulders knowing she’s safe with you.”

Just another reminder of the huge responsibility Spencer’s undertaken, and how much of a mess it’s become—there was probably some poorly-written romance novel out there with the exact same plot as Spencer’s life right now. 

He shakes his head to get rid of those thoughts. Now’s not the time. It’s never the time, actually—he needs to get that through his head. Just because you’re becoming friends doesn’t mean you see him like that. 

“Anything I can do to help,” Spencer says. He’s been going back and forth on Gideon since all this started, torn between his feelings for you and his loyalty to your father. He doesn’t know how he got himself caught up in something so complicated. 

“Everything is still quiet on your end?” he asks. 

Spencer nods, then remembers he’s on the phone. 

“Yes,” he says. “We haven’t even argued once.”

“Just don’t get too friendly.”

His face flushes, and he is very glad he’s on the phone. 

“Of course, sir.”

“I’ll call you back the second I know more,” Gideon says. He almost sounds pleased—apparently even a seasoned agent like Jason Gideon isn’t immune to thinly veiled, fatherly threats. “Have an uneventful night.”

“You too,” Spencer says, and then he hangs up. He takes a deep breath as he looks over at his bathroom door, the shower still running. He hopes you’re doing okay. 

Honestly, you’re handling this pretty well considering everything you’re going through. The unflinching veneer you’ve insisted on has been slowly chipped away at since the first day of this case, and Spencer’s doing all he can to help you replace it with something softer. 

He’s not just doing it because he likes you, even though that’s playing a factor in most of his erratic decisions of late. He genuinely cares about you, and he sees far too much of himself in you to ignore it—the parts that he’s been working on for years. He didn’t have to go through it alone, and he won’t let you go through it alone either. 

Spencer didn’t lie to your dad—everything doesn’t feel like a fight anymore. If anything, your numerous games of Scrabble were a peace offering. It’s all progress. 

He hears the shower turn off and he clears his throat as he stands up from the barstool. He decides to busy himself with cleaning up the kitchen—he’s read that it’s common in successful relationships to divide chores up like this. 

Any kind of relationship, he tells himself, including friendship—including bodyguard and protectee. It’s all perfectly normal. 

Spencer frowns. The thought of him as a bodyguard is still a little absurd. He still doesn’t really know why he got trusted with Lila, but it all did work out in the end. He just hopes it doesn’t come to that. 

Spencer doesn’t really want to think about what he would do if he ends up face to face with the man who’s been terrorizing you for months. 

-

“Spencer?” 

He starts, blinking a few times as he looks up from his array of DVDs at the sound of your voice. You’re leaning against the wall, clad in sweatpants and your usual GMU hoodie, and you give him the slightest smile. Even still, butterflies erupt in his chest. 

“There you are,” you say. “You were completely zoned out. Not really what you want from your FBI bodyguard.” 

He feels himself flush. “I was fully aware of my surroundings.” 

“Sure,” you say, but there’s a playful lilt to it. You wander over and sit down on the couch beside him. Spencer hopes you don’t sense the way his breath hitches for the barest second. “What are we watching?” 

“One of Garcia’s movies,” he sighs. “We did promise her to go through them. I just don’t know where to start. They’re all so… her.”

You laugh and pick up one of the DVDs—Legally Blonde—leaning over him to reach it. It’s almost comical how he has to make a conscious effort not to react any time you do literally anything around him these days. At least you’re not a profiler who can pick up on every miniscule action—it only makes him wonder if he was this obvious about Elle and JJ. 

“I watched Legally Blonde every night for a month my first year of college,” you muse. “I considered a pre-law track because of Elle Woods.” 

“Do you regret not going down that path?” he asks. 

“God, no,” you chuckle. “I would be the worst lawyer in the world. Teaching is one of the only things in my life that has felt right.”

“I don’t know,” Spencer says. “I think you’d make a decent lawyer. You’re pretty good at arguing.” 

 “I’m good at arguing when it doesn’t matter,” you say wryly. “All I’ve done these past few weeks is make your job harder. It’s why I’m so surprised you’re letting me stay here.” 

“It was the best choice for your safety,” he says.

“But I’m sure they could’ve found other places,” you say. “I wasn’t lying when I said I would sleep in a conference room. That’s preferable to going back to my apartment.” 

He shrugs. “We started this case together. We might as well end it together too.” 

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said since I met you,” you say with a smile. 

You smile again, and Spencer is reminded of the day Gideon assigned him to guard you. That was really the beginning of the end. 

Spencer fell for you the moment you smiled at him. He’s a fool to think anything different. 

You get through Legally Blonde with no problems. Spencer can’t help himself from spewing legal facts or going on about the accuracy of the court scenes, but surprisingly, you don’t seem to mind. It’s night and day compared to your first movie night. 

You make it through a few more movies on Garcia’s list before Spencer starts yawning. 

“Wow,” you say with a laugh. “All that info dumping tire you out?”

“It’s 1 in the morning,” Spencer defends. “We shouldn’t be up this late anyway. It’s going to mess with your circadian rhythm.”

You stare at him, and then you laugh. 

“There’s nothing funny about disrupting your sleep schedule,” Spencer says. 

“It’s not that,” you say wryly. “You just said the exact same thing when I was drinking my sorrows away in the safe house.”

Spencer remembers. He brought you down from the edge of a panic attack, you shared a bed, you buried the hatchet. Mostly. 

Of course Spencer remembers. He remembers everything. He’s more shocked that you do. 

“It was true then, and it’s true now.” 

“I had bigger problems then, and I have bigger problems now,” you say wryly, but you still stand up. “How are we getting through the night, then?”

Spencer frowns. “By sleeping?”

“I mean where.” You cross your arms, shifting in place. “I’m fine with taking the couch, as long as—”

“You’re not taking the couch,” he says almost immediately. The thought is absurd to him, especially when it’s already worked once. “We’ve already shared a bed once and it went perfectly fine.”

“I— I know.” You sigh as you scratch the back of your neck. “It’s just— you’re already doing me a huge favor by letting me stay here. I don’t want to impose more.”

“You’re not imposing,” Spencer promises. “Honestly, it’s safer for you. If anything does happen, I’ll be there to protect you.”

You stare at him for a second, then you nod a few times. 

“Okay,” you say. “Okay. Yeah. That makes sense.”

Of course it does, he wants to say. I always make sense. Somehow, he manages to bite his tongue. 

Spencer triple checks the locks on the door and windows while you go through your nightly routine. He would never forgive himself if something happened to you in general, but especially in his own apartment. He’s done enough geographical profiles to know he’s got the advantage on his home turf. 

He’s smoothing out the window drapes in his room when he hears your footsteps, and he turns around to see you standing there, spine just as rigid as when you first stepped into his apartment.

“You don’t have to feel uncomfortable here,” Spencer says. “I’m not lying about anything. You’re not imposing in any way, and I am genuinely okay with sharing a bed.”

Your lips twitch momentarily. “How do you always know exactly what I’m thinking?”

“I’m a profiler,” he says. “It’s my job.”

“Right,” you say. You graciously don’t state the more obvious reason. 

There’s another beat of silence before you both get in bed, careful to leave a significant amount of space between you. Spencer is more thankful than ever that he upgraded from a twin last year. 

He removes his glasses and turns the lamp off, leaving him keenly aware of your presence. You have the usual pillow barrier, but it might as well not be there with how crazy Spencer drives himself every time he’s this close to you. He would tell anyone else acting like this to get it together, but he’s apparently his own exception. 

“Good night,” Spencer says. He doesn’t speak louder than a whisper, worried of ruining the unspoken sanctity of darkness. 

“Good night,” you echo, so softly that Spencer aches. "And thank you. For everything."

"...Don't mention it," he murmurs.

There are so many things he wants to say to you, so many parts of his soul he thinks he could bare to you—but he can’t. He’s still not even fully sure you like him, not sure if you’re just tired of arguing and placating him. 

Spencer pushes all of that out of his mind with a long, shaky exhale. None of it matters, not when their unsub is still active. 

“You’re in here for your safety,” Spencer says. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“That you’ve somehow managed to catch my stalker already and my life gets to go back to normal.” You tilt your head to look over at him from where you’re laid out on the couch. “Don’t you miss the outdoors?” 

“I could happily stay inside for months with nothing but books to keep me company,” Spencer says. “It’s just an added bonus that you’re here.” 

“How sweet of you,” you hum. A beat passes before you admit, “I guess it’s a bonus that you’re here too. I would be going crazy on my own.”

Spencer smiles, his eyes flicking up from the page for a second to meet yours. “I’m glad I can help.”

It turns out that things go rather smoothly when you’re not trying to argue with Spencer. A day and a half has passed since you took refuge in Spencer’s apartment together, and it’s sunshine and rainbows compared to the way you treated him the first time around. 

You can’t help it. Fighting with him used to feel good, righteous—it was only fair seeing as he replaced you in your father’s life. But then he just had to go and treat you with unconditional kindness and vow to keep you safe no matter what, and your cold heart had to go and melt. 

It’s a dilemma you’ve been ignoring for the past week, but the noise is getting too loud for you to keep paying no mind.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you’re not going to keep trying. You’re most definitely going to keep trying. It’s kinda what you do. 

You sigh as you look back at the ceiling fan. It makes you dizzy every time, the blades blurring as they spin round and round and round, but it’s better than being bored. It’s the only thing keeping you from death by heat stroke, seeing as Spencer has the worst AC in the world and you can’t even open the windows. 

“Say all of this goes perfectly,” you say. “Mike is the one behind it all, Elle and JJ book him, he goes to jail forever and I never have to worry about it again. What’s the next step?” 

“Well, that’s already a very long process,” Spencer says. “Once the unsub is arrested, they have to go through the entire legal system before they’re sentenced.”

“I know about due process,” you say wryly. “I’m talking about the next step for me.” 

“Oh,” Spencer says. You hear him shut his book. “We’ll take you back to the BAU, you’d have to talk to a few people and sign some papers, but after that, you’re off the hook. Of course, since Gideon’s your dad, you’ll probably have to deal with a bit more pomp and circumstance. And if the press gets a hold of this—”

“Ugh,” you interrupt, grimacing at the thought. “Don’t say the news is gonna be reaching out to me.” 

“It is an interesting story,” Spencer says. You tilt your head to glare at him and he clears his throat. “Objectively, I mean.” 

“I don’t want to talk to any of them,” you say. You’ve given quotes before to some of the local education beat reporters, but going on air to millions of people about your intensely personal experience dealing with a stalker is a lot different than being the ‘media friendly teacher’ for your tiny hometown paper. 

“And you don’t have to.” Spencer frowns then closes his book. “Actually, it’s better if you don’t. A disproportionate amount of female journalists, especially news anchors and reporters, are victims of stalking. It wouldn’t be a good idea to broadcast your image to millions of people right after we arrest your stalker.”

“Great.” Your voice only barely shakes. “Would you happen to know how I can get all my information permanently scrubbed off the Internet?” 

“It’s a pretty difficult process,” he says. “Your information is everywhere. Websites, emails, messenger pages, data brokers—”

“I get it,” you interrupt, maybe a bit too sharp. It just feels like every time you manage to forget the true danger of your circumstances for even a moment, reality comes crashing back in. “I was just joking.” 

“Okay,” Spencer says. “But there’s a reason people say that things live on the Internet forever.”

You let out a ragged sigh as you turn back to face the ceiling. You get dizzy almost immediately. 

It’s not that you think you might get stalked again. It’s just… you’ve always been distantly aware of the truly sick crimes your father solved every day. He’s an FBI agent, a specialized profiler that you pull out for the nightmare cases no one else can solve.

Logically, that means that there are victims. Innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time. They go to court, they tell their story to the news, they become activists for a better world. 

It didn’t feel real to you for a long time, though. It was where your father disappeared off to, and you never saw your father.

Now, you’re hyperaware of the world your father has devoted his life to fixing. Now you know exactly how much danger your father put himself in every day—knowing he had a daughter and a wife at home. 

Maybe he kept you at arms length for this very reason; to ensure you stayed out of the public eye. Maybe he truly thought this was the only way to protect you. 

It just makes things more complicated, though. Now, the sympathy and the guilt and the fear is all mixed up with the hatred in one big, confusing ball of emotions. Everyone else in the whole world would consider your father a hero—what kind of person are you that you only care about yourself? 

You let out another heavy sigh. You’re so tired of the complications any close proximity to your father seems to bring. 

“Are you okay?” Spencer asks. 

“Just peachy.” 

“If you’re worried about the press, I’m almost certain JJ would help you deal with them. She’s our communications liaison, and she’s really good at her job.”

“I’m not,” you say. You’re only partially lying. 

“Okay,” he says. He only partially believes you. “I was only asking because that’s the fourth time you’ve sighed like that.” 

“When there’s nothing else to do but sigh, I sigh.”

“There’s plenty of things to do here.” 

“I don’t want to play more board games, and I don’t want to watch more movies.” 

“How do you feel about painting?” 

You stare at him. “You paint?”

“Amateurly,” he says. 

“You are not allowed to call yourself an amateur at anything,” you respond pointedly. 

“If you saw anything I’ve ever painted, you would disagree,” Spencer says sheepishly. “It’s honestly kind of embarrassing.” 

“Then why would you bring it up willingly?” 

He shrugs. “Because I thought you might enjoy doing it. That’s all that really matters.” 

Embarrassingly, you feel your cheeks heat. You want to hope he can’t tell, but you know it’s fruitless. Spencer notices absolutely everything, for better or for worse. 

“Fine,” you say as you stand up, because you’re still going to try to hide it. “Where are your art supplies?” 

Everywhere, it turns out. You help Spencer gather materials, scattered everywhere from his desk drawers to his closet. The only reason he manages to find anything is because of his eidetic memory. 

There aren’t very many clear surfaces in his living room on account of the messy genius thing. You say you’re fine with using the breakfast bar, but Spencer insists on dragging a dormant card table out of the depths of his closet for you. You almost feel bad making him do it given his stick arms, but you end up fighting a smile the entire time. 

You used to hate when he did things for you—but it turns out the constant reminders of how he actually liked helping you out were finally starting to sink in. 

There’s more clutter than anything with all the materials laid out on this tiny card table. He has all acrylic paints, which you would be happy or sad about if you knew more about painting. You divide things up evenly while Spencer digs around in the drawers. Eventually, he takes out a stack of DVDs, all different editions of Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting. Your eyebrows rise. 

“You’re serious about this.”

“Not really,” he admits. “JJ bought me them for my birthday last year. I was doing some spring cleaning when I found them again and decided to give it a shot.” 

“I’m guessing you liked it?” 

Spencer smiles, toothy with the corners of his eyes crinkling up, and you feel the corners of your lips quirking at the sight. It’s almost instantaneous these days, your happiness mirroring his own. 

“Surprisingly, yeah.” He puts the DVD into the player and takes his spot on the couch beside you. The card table is just small enough that your shoulders nearly touch, and you make it very clear that it doesn’t affect you in any way. Spencer has to hit a few buttons on the remote before he gets the right one, but he eventually gets through the loading screen and into the actual video. 

“A lot of people are surprised any time I’m interested in anything that’s not just straight science,” he continues. Both of you work together to put all the colors on your paper plate makeshift palette as he talks. “But I have degrees in psychology and sociology. I’m working on a philosophy degree. The sciences and the humanities aren’t opposites, or rivals—they need each other. I’m a better scientist because I understand the thought processes behind any one decision being made. A good profiler knows the science and the psychology behind an unsub, not one or the other.”

“That’s impressive,” you say. “Men who aren’t half as smart as you have a difficult time admitting they don’t know everything. You do it on a daily basis.” 

Spencer shrugs. “When I’m solving cases with the BAU, every action could be life or death. It doesn’t help anyone to hold up the process because of a misplaced ego.” 

“I don’t think your ego is misplaced,” you admit. “You basically do know everything.” 

He smiles, a small thing at the corner of his mouth. “You said it, not me.”

You laugh and his smile grows. You continue for the next few minutes in silence as you lay the foundation of your paintings, looking up every so often to see what the expert is doing. Neither of them look like much of anything, but Spencer’s is still better.

“What drew you to painting?” you ask. “It doesn’t seem like your usual hobby.”

“It’s not,” he agrees. Spencer mixes a bit of white into steel blue to make a more appealing sky as he thinks. “It’s not hyperbole to say my brain is always running. Pretty slowly, actually, because our brains only process information at ten bits per second, but still relevant. I’m constantly thinking, night and day, 24 hours, seven days a week. About the number of active serial killers in Virginia and population in South Korea, and what percentage of the country is stalked every year, and the population of Korea again because four babies are born every second, so it’s definitely gone up in that time, and—” 

He meets your eyes and he stops talking. A beat passes, then muted panic sets in—you start forward, eyes wide with a hand raised in an apology you’re convinced is too late. 

“You don’t need to stop,” you say. “I— if you’re stopping on my account, you don’t need to.”

Spencer’s eyes widen an equal amount. “You’re sure?” 

“Of course,” you say. “We’re in your apartment. I don’t have any right to dictate what you do.” 

“Of course you do,” Spencer says. “You’re not a guest. For the time being, you’re living here. That means you can treat it like your own home, and you can treat me like a roommate. Including asking me to stop if I’m doing something that annoys you.”

Your face heats yet again, and you shift in your seat as you try to think of the right thing to say. It’s a bit hard to focus with him sitting so close to you, close enough that you feel the heat radiating from his skin. He’s an appropriate distance away despite the proximity, but his knee brushes yours every once in a while, when he adjusts his spot on the couch. 

You’re hyperaware of every touching atom between the two of you. You doubt it’s even crossed Spencer’s mind. 

“Well, I like it,” you finally say, emphasized with an overcorrected brush stroke “I mean, I— I don’t mind it. It’s cool. Learning new things is cool.” 

You cringe inwardly. That’s the best you can come up with?

Spencer apparently thinks the exact same thing, but in the wrong direction—that you’re struggling for the right lie to placate him.

“You don’t have to feel bad about it.” 

“I don’t!” you exclaim, huffing a frustrated sigh at your inability to properly express your thoughts. “I don’t feel bad because I’m not annoyed. I genuinely like listening to you talk. It’s interesting. A- and you have a nice voice.” 

You go silent after, your mind telling you it’s well past the time to stop rambling. You hold your breath as you continue painting. There’s a line you’ve been trying very hard not to cross, and it feels like you just went sprinting across it. 

“Are you okay?” Spencer asks. “Did you hit your head?” 

“When would I have had time to hit my head?” you ask. “We’ve spent every second together for, like, a month.” 

“It’s actually only been three weeks, two days, twelve hours, and thirty-four minutes,” he corrects. “And in that time, you’ve slept in a different room and used the bathroom at different times. And we spent a decent amount of time apart when we went back to the office.” 

“Do you have exact numbers for all those?” 

“Of course I do.” Spencer’s brows scrunch ever so slightly, like he’s solving a particularly difficult equation in his head. “I held back because I didn’t think you would care.” 

“From now on, you don’t have to hold back,” you say. “If we’re talking, and you know a fun fact that I might be interested in, or— or even if I’m not interested in it, you can say it. I don’t want you to hold back on my account.” 

Spencer tilts his head to look at you, and he smiles. There’s a genuine spark of happiness in his eyes that causes fireworks to explode inside you. You try to be as casual about it as possible—logically, a certain amount of tenderness is expected between two people that have spent this much time in close proximity. It’s not a sign of deeper feelings. Even more logically, you’re taking the path of least resistance by reducing arguments. That’s how Spencer would see it, anyways.

“Thank you,” Spencer finally says. It’s mostly normal, but there’s a new lightness to the words. Shame bites at you, making your own smile waver—your comments made him hide parts of himself. “What I was saying earlier was that my brain gets a little quieter when I’m painting. It’s nice.” 

“I’m glad you found some sort of escape,” you say. “And I’m sorry it took me so long.” 

Bob Ross explains how to paint the snow onto your trees. A beat passes as you both follow along—your shaky brush strokes are messier than Spencer’s adept hand. A credit to your point that he will never truly be an amateur at anything. 

“And I’m— I’m sorry for how I treated you in the past.” You bite your lip as you try to clean up the edges of your pine tree. The paint is still wet, so it smears more than anything—you go from decent lines to blurred lines. “I had no right to take my anger at my dad out on you. You were nothing but kind to me. I should’ve been an adult about it.” 

Spencer doesn’t say anything for a while. You glance over at him to see his brows furrowed yet again, this time as if deep in thought. His trees are perfectly dusted with snow. 

“You said something a while ago.” You blink when he suddenly speaks, and look back over at him. “You gave up on attending an Ivy League school so you could live closer to your father, and get the chance to see him more.” 

You don’t know why you’re surprised he remembers. Spencer remembers everything. 

“Yeah.” 

“Where did you get into?”

You sigh. You can’t remember the last time you talked about this. It’s just another one of your poor decisions made in a moment of teenage rebellion. 

“Columbia.”

Spencer’s eyebrows rise. “And you went to George Mason instead?”

“Yeah,” you say. “It’s not all about my dad. I couldn’t afford Columbia, and George Mason gave me a full ride.” 

He looks at you for a good, long moment. You doubted you would get away with the lie for long, but you did think it would last a little longer than five seconds. 

“You graduated four years ago,” he says. “You graduated a year early, so three years before that, you were applying to universities. Seven years ago, entry level FBI agents were making around $40,000. Triple that for how much Gideon was making then. Your mother is a psychologist, putting her around $90,000. That’s more than enough to pay around $35,000 a year for tuition and still live very comfortably.”

You hum, because you’re not going to fact check him. You don’t really feel like having this conversation, though—you were having a perfectly fine time breaching the surface level of kindness. Leave it to Spencer to bring it up, though. 

“They didn’t want to pay for my college,” you say, “and I didn’t want to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. I’d never pay that off teaching.”  

“That’s not it.” A beat passes. “Why did you refuse their help?” 

Some miniscule part of you starts panicking. He’s a prodder, a very accurate prodder aided by professional level profiling and his five degrees (with a sixth in progress, you can hear him add.) 

“Because I was a stupid teenager.” 

“Yeah,” he says. “So stupid that you got into Columbia.” 

You scoff, then pick up the remote to pause the DVD. You’re done trying to make your painting look good. You twist the remote in your hand for a moment, feeling the weight of the plastic. You feel his eyes on you all the while. 

“They were so proud of me for getting into an Ivy,” you recall. “I’d been driving myself crazy applying to colleges, but that acceptance letter made it all feel worth it. They basically paraded me around every social event they got invited to to brag. “You shake your head with a wry chuckle. “For once, when my dad said he would take off work to spend some time with me, he actually did. He got a week off when another senior agent could cover him, and we just spent it together and talked. Lunch dates, dinner parties, movie nights—it was one of the best weeks of my life.” 

“Of course, my mother insisted on throwing a graduation party to celebrate,” you say with a slight smile. “I didn’t complain, but I was already starting to have doubts. Every single person they introduced me to in the Ivy League academia circle was just… the exact opposite of the kind of person I wanted to be.” 

You sigh again, attempting to roll out some of the tension in your shoulders. It doesn’t work. “The party was nice enough. My mom threw it for the sake of establishing me as a name to look out for, a name to remember, but it was a fine time. Dad pulled me aside halfway through the party. He told me he was proud of me. He was so sorry for everything he missed, but he was so proud of the woman I was becoming. He swore I would love Columbia, cross his heart and hope to die.” 

Spencer’s been watching you this whole time, a steady presence at your side. You swallow the lump in your throat. Sharing a bed felt less vulnerable than this. 

“That was when I told him I wasn’t going to Columbia. I was staying local and going to George Mason.” You wring your hands together. It hits you that the last time you talked about this was… 

Of course. (God, what are the odds?) You shake those thoughts away and continue. 

“I didn’t want to go to an Ivy League and become another pretentious academic snob. I wanted to be a public school teacher and help kids like me, and it felt like the best way to do that was to go to a large public college. Of course,” you tilt your head, “I wanted to be closer to my dad too. The week of unfettered attention he gave me was everything I’d been deprived of for years, and I wanted more.”

“That couldn’t have been easy.” Spencer’s voice is the only level thing about any of this. He feels like a third party you’re pleading your case to—that you weren’t just a spoiled kid who threw away the life-changing chances she stumbled upon. “Opening up to your father like that. I bet he felt more like a stranger.”

You nod, a bit numb. “A stranger I was determined to please, but only kept messing up with.”

“What did he say?” Spencer asks. 

“He was… upset. He tried to hide it, but for a profiler, he wasn’t very good at hiding his emotions around me.” You sit back against the couch and take a deep breath, then let it out. “I noticed, obviously. We were interrupted before we could have a true argument, but things just… weren’t the same after that. I told my dad I wanted to be in his life more, and he was upset. That’s the heart of it.”

“I’m sure that’s not what he meant,” Spencer says quietly. 

“I’m sure it is,” you retort. “I know it’s difficult balancing this job. I’m proof enough of that. But if he wasn’t going to be able to love his child more than his job, then my parents never should have had me.” 

He says your name, a bit stronger than before. You know Spencer thinks you’re a flight risk, and this isn’t really helping your case. It’s the truth. 

“You shouldn’t talk about yourself like that.” 

“I think that’s the least of our problems, Spence. Don’t you?” 

“You say that about all your problems.”

You shrug. “Maybe that’s telling you something, then.” 

“You don’t seem upset about where you ended up,” Spencer says, an attempt at bringing the conversation back into safer territory.

“I’m not,” you say, and you’re not lying. You genuinely believe teaching is what you were put on this planet to do, and you much prefer helping everyday kids find their potential than be another resource to a rich kid who will never worry about anything in their life. 

“There’s clearly something still weighing on you, though.” 

“More of your profiling?” 

“I’ve only really been around you when something is weighing on you,” Spencer says. “It’s easy for me to tell.” 

Naturally. He notices and remembers every single thing you do and say. He probably already knows you better than you know yourself—or at least he’ll try to convince you of it. 

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about that night since it happened,” you say. “I think a part of him thought if he could be a good dad for a week, then he wouldn’t have to be a dad at all for a majority of the year. I would go off to Columbia, and he’d see me on holidays and a few days every break and he’d get all the bragging rights of a successful daughter without the burden of raising one. He could pull off the balancing act of being an incredible agent and a loving father. Well,” you tilt your head, “he wouldn’t have to admit that he didn’t want to do the balancing act.” You pause. “That he regretted having me.” 

Spencer, to your surprise, doesn’t say anything. He’s still looking at you, brows furrowed in concern and dark doe eyes breaking your resolve, but he doesn’t say anything. When he does, it’s a lot simpler than you were expecting. 

“I’m so sorry.” 

You trail your brush through a few different colors, lazily mixing them to give yourself something to do. 

“You don’t have to be,” you say casually. “I’m past blaming you for all my issues.” 

“I’m not apologizing,” he says. “I’m commiserating.” 

You let out a dry laugh, but he continues. 

“I know what it’s like to feel as if you’re never enough. Half the reason I have all these degrees is because I was convinced if I read enough, if I studied enough, I could figure out how to cure my mom.” He shakes his head. “I had to put her in a psychiatric hospital when I was eighteen because I couldn’t keep taking care of her. I felt so, so guilty about it that I put everything I had into my studies. I wrote letters to her every day. Even now, there’s always a part of me that wonders if I just worked a little harder, if I could have figured it all out.” 

You feel his gaze on you, and you force yourself to meet it. It’s the least you can do. 

“I know what it’s like to feel as if you’re never enough,” he repeats. “But you are. And so am I. But if you keep going on like this, wondering about what could have been or digging up the past or telling yourself that it might be better if you were never even born, then you will never allow yourself to be happy. Suffering isn’t noble. You deserve so much more than being miserable for all eternity because you think it’s all you’re worth.”

“Any idea how to stop being so miserable?” you ask lightly. 

“I’m not a licensed therapist,” he says. 

“That hasn’t stopped you before.” 

Spencer sighs. He allows silence to pass for another few seconds before he answers. 

“When all of this is over, I think you should have a conversation with your dad.” 

You groan, and Spencer holds up his hand. 

“I mean it,” he says. “You need to tell him everything you’ve told me. It might seem obvious to you, but maybe Gideon hasn’t thought about it from your perspective.” 

“He’s a profiler,” you say wryly. “Shouldn’t that be the one thing he’s good at?” 

“He spends more time in the minds of criminals than his own,” Spencer says softly. “I think he just needs a nudge in the right direction.” 

“So your advice is to talk to my dad,” you say. 

“And all the other nice things I said,” Spencer responds. You huff a laugh and shake your head. 

“You’re getting better at making jokes.” 

“I’ve always been hilarious,” he says. “I have multiple joke books memorized.” 

“Just because you know how the chicken crossed the road doesn’t mean you’re funny.” 

“That’s not fair!” Spencer complains. “The team laughs at my jokes all the time. Well— sometimes they’re laughing at me, but that doesn’t matter.” 

“Don’t worry,” you muse. “When we’re out of this, I’ll make sure they all know not to mess with you.” 

“And how are you going to pull that off?” 

You shrug. “You were scared of me when you first met me. I’m sure I can leverage that into some mutual respect.”

“I was not scared of you.”

“Really?” you ask wryly. “I remember the stairwell like it was yesterday.”

“And I remember the second time we were in the stairwell,” he says. 

“When I was seconds away from a breakdown?” 

“When I helped you,” he says. “And when I very clearly wasn’t scared of you.” 

You smile despite yourself. “Do you want my help or not?” 

“I’m just saying I don’t think I’ll need it,” he says. “And I was not scared of you.” 

“You were.” You clear your throat and imitate his stammered cadence from the second time you met. “‘I don’t really want to annoy you while we’re stuck together in an undisclosed location. I don’t know what you’re capable of.’”

Spencer frowns. “Are you trying to imitate me?” 

“Not trying,” you remark, “succeeding.” 

“That’s ridiculous! That does not sound like me at all!” 

“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.” 

“Now you sound like Morgan.” 

You smile as you pick the remote back up and turn Bob Ross on again. Spencer accepts the change of subject with another shake of his head, and he cleans off his paint brush as you move to the foreground. You have to add in a tiny little house, and you’ve already messed up the perspective. 

Spencer’s words have time to settle over you as you paint, though. He’s always so kind to you—so honest in a way that tends to make you feel much, much better than before. You don’t know how he does it; how he’s lived such an unforgiving life, and yet he’s able to forgive you for everything. 

“Thank you,” you say in the silence. “...For the talk. It helps. It always helps.” 

You sense his smile in his words. He lightly knocks his knee into yours, an acknowledgement of your words before he speaks. 

“I’ll always be there for you,” he says. “For— for as long as you’ll have me.” 

It warms you from the inside out, from head to toe. You wonder if his coworkers know he’s so casually romantic. You wonder if Spencer knows

You continue painting side by side, shoulders brushing or knees touching or eyes meeting every so often with the soothing voice of Bob Ross guiding you through it all. 

You’re going to get through this, and you’re going to have Spencer by your side. 

The thought makes you smile uncontrollably. 

-

Later, Spencer is going through some of his records to figure out a good soundtrack for the night while you rifle through his kitchen. Your paintings are drying on the coffee table, and it’s very obvious which one is Spencer’s and which one is yours. You’re craving something sweet, but unfortunately you’re locked inside, leaving you no choice but to bake. 

“Where is your stand mixer?” you call, deep in the depths of his kitchen cabinets. 

“I don’t have one.”

“You don’t have one?” you repeat incredulously. “Do you have a hand mixer, at least?” 

He shakes his head. “I don’t bake. It would be an inefficient use of my limited kitchen space to have tools I don’t use.” 

“Great,” you sigh. “If I get tired of mixing, I’m making you do it.” 

“Why would I be better than you if I don’t bake?” 

“It’s not about being better,” you say, “it’s about making it up to me.” 

“Well, what are you making?” 

“Chocolate chip cookies,” you say. “I don’t have my cookbook with me, and you don’t have any—” 

“I know five different chocolate chip cookie recipes,” Spencer interrupts. “I could write them down for you if you want.” 

You bite back a small smile. That’s such a Spencer thing to say—he doesn’t bake, but he has multiple recipes memorized, probably from reading them once years ago. A memory like that had to be a burden—but what you wouldn’t give to remember your lesson plans after writing them the first time. 

You stand up from your squatted position on the floor, digging through his corner cabinet, to look at him in the living room. “I was just going to use the one on the back of the chocolate chip bag.” 

“Make that four that I know,” he says sheepishly. This time, your smile escapes. 

“Write down your favorite one, and I’ll make it.” 

Spencer’s eyes light up. “Really?” 

“‘Course,” you say. “Assuming you’ve got all the ingredients around here.” 

“I have all-purpose flour, baking soda, salt, butter, sugar, brown sugar, and three eggs,” he counts off. “And one fourth of a bag of chocolate chips, which should be around 3 ounces.”

“That’ll get you pretty much anywhere,” you say. “What do I have to pre-heat the oven to?” 

“375.” 

You do just that, then you pause and look back at Spencer with a smile. 

“How would you like to help me make them instead?” 

His eyes widen a bit. “Me?” 

“Who else is there?” 

“I just said I don’t bake.” 

You shrug. “Chocolate chip cookies are easy. You’ve already got the recipe down, which is half the battle. Besides, baking is a science. It can’t be that hard for someone like you.” 

“...Fine,” Spencer says. “But only because you’re asking me.” 

You smile. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” 

You put him to work grabbing the rest of the ingredients as you find a big enough bowl to mix everything in. There’s barely enough space for the two of you in his tiny kitchen, but you make it work. 

“Make sure you take the butter out now,” you say. “It has to be soft to cream it together with the sugar. 

Spencer nods, and you feel him glance at you. “Do you bake a lot?” 

You shrug. “On occasion. I lived in a house with four other girls my last year of college, and I ended up baking whenever I was stressed.” You smile at the memory. “We had a lot of pastries during finals season.” 

“Baking is good for stress relief,” Spencer agrees. “It reduces cortisol, which is the stress hormone. It falls under the realm of ‘mindful meditation.’” He tilts his head. “It also positively impacts your sleep schedule. Maybe I should have been asking you to make cookies every night.” 

You huff a laugh. “Just hand me the baking soda, pretty boy.” 

He smiles as he holds it out, and your fingers brush when you take it from him. “That’s Morgan’s thing, you know. Calling me pretty boy.” 

“Seeing as I also have eyes, he doesn’t get to claim it.” 

You see his smile grow out of your peripherals. “You really think I’m pretty?” 

“Like I said,” you bite back your own growing smile, “I have eyes.” 

“I think you’re pretty too,” Spencer says, and your heart skips a beat. You end up spilling a bit of flour on the counter, and you know it’s fruitless to hope he doesn’t notice. “I have since I met you.” 

“That’s a little concerning,” you say. “Seeing as I was yelling at both you and my dad nonstop the first two times we met.” 

Spencer frowns. “I’ve been told I have a thing for women who are mean to me.” 

“Really?” you laugh. “Who else?” 

“...Elle,” he admits. “And JJ, for a while. My feelings only stuck around for a few months with each of them, but…” Spencer sighs. “It was pretty obvious to the whole BAU.”

You think back to Elle’s words, that they were making bets on you and Spencer based off of what happened with Lila Archer. How she didn’t finish her sentence at the end of your conversation, but you were pretty sure she was going to say Reid’s pretty easy to like.

It’s true. You came in expecting to hate Spencer Reid for the rest of your life, and here you are three weeks later baking cookies together in his kitchen. No wonder he’s such a good agent. 

“I can’t imagine what it’s like being surrounded by profilers,” you say. “It’s probably impossible to hide any kind of secret.” 

“You’re better off not even trying,” he agrees. “But because I’m the baby of the team, they tease me about everything—especially Morgan.” Spencer chuckles and shakes his head. “He bugged me about asking Elle out every single day for two months straight last year.”

“Did you break?” 

“No,” he says. “But only because I realized I didn’t actually have romantic feelings for her; I was idolizing her more than anything. We had a really good talk after a rough case and figured everything out. Things have been normal since then.”

“And JJ?” 

“We went to a Redskins game together, she brought Garcia with her, and absolutely nothing else happened.” He tilts his head. “Gideon was the one who gave me the tickets, actually. He encouraged me to ask her to go with me.” 

“Wow,” you say. “My dad has been more involved with your dating life than mine.” 

Spencer is silent for a second, but he still hands you the softened butter when he notices you looking at it. Eventually, he speaks. 

“Do you know that they talk about us, too?” 

You nearly drop the butter right onto the counter. You clear your throat as you recover and start creaming them together with a spatula. It’s been a while since you’ve done this by hand, but you’ll make do. 

“Elle mentioned something about it,” you say casually. “I mostly took it as a joke.” 

“It probably was,” he says after a moment. “Like I said, they enjoy teasing me. Unfortunately, you’re included by extension.” 

“It’s fine,” you say. At least you have something to focus on for the next five minutes. “It doesn’t bother me.” 

“Good,” Spencer says. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” 

“You don’t,” you say immediately. “Far from it, Spencer. You’re the reason I’ve gotten through all this.” 

“...Good,” he repeats. “Anything I can do to help.” 

You smile inwardly. He knows everything, and yet you don’t think he knows half of how much he’s helped you. 

You mostly continue on in silence, save for the occasional ask for ingredients that Spencer is closer to. He only has one tray in his entire kitchen, so you’ve resigned yourself to a slower process. 

As you roll the dough into little balls, you glance over at Spencer. 

“Do you want to start on a second batch?” 

His eyebrows rise. “You trust me with it?” 

“You just watched me do everything, and you have an eidetic memory,” you say. “I think you’ll manage.” 

He chuckles a bit, then nods and retrieves a clean bowl. 

“You can’t make fun of me if they’re bad, though,” he adds. 

“I would never,” you drawl. You take a second to push the baking soda, baking powder and salt over to him. “I purposefully halved the recipe so you could make one. Didn’t you notice I was putting in half of all the ingredients?”

“I was a little distracted recounting my dating history to you,” Spencer says wryly, and you laugh. 

“Which you did of your own free will,” you say. “Besides, isn’t this whole case about digging up my dating history?” 

He goes silent at that, and you sigh. Leave it to you to ruin the rapport you’d finally been able to build. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“You don’t have to be,” he says quickly. “I just don’t like thinking about that guy. How he used you and your trust.” 

“Spence,” you sigh.

“I know,” he says. “But it’s not fair that he just got to wake up one day and decide to make your life a living hell.”

You stare at your rows of unevenly shaped dough. Spencer also doesn’t have a cookie scoop.

“No,” you say. “It’s not. But that’s why selfless people like you are here.” 

Spencer smiles, close-lipped but genuinely happy. He reaches over and squeezes your hand. 

“I’m not as selfless as you think.” 

You shake your head. “You are. Every single thing you’ve done since I’ve met you has only been to help me, even though I was making your life hell. You got someone who was intent on hating you to like you in three weeks because you’ve been so nice to me.” You huff a laugh. “It’s like a fairytale where the prince beats the evil queen by being her friend.” 

“In that simile, you would be an evil princess,” he points out. “We’re the same age.” 

“I’m glad you didn’t dispute the evil part,” you say. 

Spencer actually blushes. It’s ridiculously endearing. “You know I didn’t mean that.” 

“Yeah,” you smile. “Besides, you just got cookie dough all over your hands so you could make me feel better. That’s pretty selfless.” 

He looks down at his hands, brows furrowing when he realizes you’re telling the truth. 

“Oh, great,” he sighs. He immediately starts trying to pick the bigger pieces off, grimacing the whole time. You laugh and push the flour over to him, but you use just a bit too much force, and it tips over. 

Sending flour everywhere. 

Including Spencer. 

You don’t even know what to say, at first. Your eyes widen, your jaw drops, and a laugh escapes—you slam a hand over your mouth to cover it. 

The carnage isn’t pretty: the front of Spencer’s plaid button-up is covered in flour. It looks like it snowed on the floorboards. You even managed to hit yourself, because you feel powdery freckles on your cheeks. There’s a pile on the counter streaming out of the flour bag as well. 

Spencer’s eyes are wide as he looks around his mess of a kitchen, mind likely working overtime as he calculates how long it’s going to take to clean up, and what kind of supplies work best for flour, and how to get stains out of your clothing—and then he smiles.

It’s slow, like he’s out of the haze of disbelief on the right side of the bed, but he smiles at you. 

“I’m sorry,” you repeat, but for some reason, you can’t stop laughing. It’s so stupid. You’ve been trying your best to be as nice to Spencer as he is to you, but then you spill some flour and you expect him to— what, snap at you?

Spencer is a problem solver. He doesn’t get caught up in the small things like you do, doesn’t assume the worst of everyone like you do. He’s seen some of humanity’s worst, but he’s also seen some deeply broken people—people that could have turned out different if they had gotten just a little bit more affection. 

He smiles, and laughs to himself. 

“You have little flour freckles.” 

You laugh breathlessly, and Spencer’s eyes gleam. You take a step closer without fully realizing it. 

“Spence,” you say.

He says your name just as softly, and it spreads warmth all through your body. It’s unconscious as you edge ever closer—his eyes flicker down to your lips for a split second. All you have to do is move forward, close your eyes, press your lips to his—

And then Spencer’s phone rings, and it’s like you come back into yourself—you both do. You suck in a sharp breath as you step back, and Spencer looks so unsure, so off-balance it’s almost laughable as he takes his phone out. 

“Hey, Gideon,” he rasps. You feel like you’re vibrating out of your skin. 

You almost kissed him. If the phone didn’t ring, you would have kissed him. Your palms are impossibly clammy. 

It keeps repeating in your mind over and over: if the phone didn’t ring, you would have kissed him. The realization hits like a bucket of freezing cold water. 

“You have good news?” 

Those are about the only words that could have taken over your attention, and you think Spencer knows it by how he emphasizes those words. You turn back around to face him and nod for him to keep going. 

“You’re sure?” he asks, and you faintly hear your father’s voice over the phone. “Yes. She’s standing next to me.” 

Spencer glances over at you, and you pull yourself together with what you hope is a convincing smile. I didn’t just almost kiss you. Unless you wanted to kiss me too, in which case I certainly did, and I would like to do it again. 

Your dad’s tinny voice again—and then Spencer’s eyebrows shoot up. 

“You’re sure?” he asks, fighting a smile. A few more seconds and he’s full on grinning. “That’s great news. I’ll tell her right away.” One more beat. “See you soon.”

Spencer shuts his phone and looks at you. You raise your eyebrows and tilt your head forward. 

“Well?” It comes out breathier than you intend. “What’s got you smiling like that?”

“You’re free,” he says. You’ve never seen him smile this wide. “Elle and JJ found Michael Stevens at a rental under a fake name in the middle of Manassas. They questioned him, and he confessed to stalking you. They found a camera in his room with the same pictures Gideon received, and he had a hard drive full of information about you.” 

Your eyes widen. You dare to smile. “You’re serious?” 

Spencer nods as he says your name. “You’re free. It’s over.” 

“It’s really over?” 

He nods again. It takes another few seconds for it to sink in. It’s over. You don’t have to live your life in fear anymore.

You grin ear to ear and hug Spencer, letting out a cheer as he embraces you. 

“It’s over!” you yell, loud enough for the neighbors to hear. You don’t care. You’re free to take up space again, to stop making yourself as small as possible in the name of your own safety. You cheer again, and Spencer laughs as he pulls you closer. 

You separate enough to look at each other, and he looks at you with such care in his eyes it almost hurts. Spencer has been by your side through this whole nightmare—he’s taken everything you’ve thrown at him with the appropriate level of complaint and thrown back boundless amounts of kindness in return. 

You wouldn’t have survived this on your own, or with a man less kind. Spencer Reid is a very special person. 

For a moment, the world stops as you can do nothing but look at each other—revel in his presence. You know exactly what you want, but—

“You should probably pack,” Spencer says softly. It shatters whatever illusion you’d dreamed up in an instance. “They’ll want to come by tonight.” 

“Right,” you say. It comes out much fainter than you want, but you step away from him. You look down at the mess of flour you made  and open your mouth, but Spencer beats you to it. 

“I’ll clean it,” he says. “I mean it.” 

You nod shakily and take a few more steps back. The more distance you put between the two of you, the more you can think. Eventually, you muster up the strength to turn and leave. 

When you close the door behind you, you want to bash your head against it. 

What is wrong with you? 

You were going to kiss him. If he wanted to kiss you, he would have kissed you. But he didn’t. 

You funnel all your frustration into packing. You’ve kept your clothes confined to one corner in the name of respect—it’s Spencer’s room after all—but you’re being especially rough as you fold them. You’ll have plenty of time to iron back at home. 

You stop just as you shove a folded pile in your duffle bag. Your fingers curl into the fabric as you try to make sense of the thousands of thoughts racing through your mind. 

That’s not what matters. What matters is that the case is over. You’re safe—free. Soon, you’ll be back home, back at work, back to normal. 

Back to being alone. 

That thought stands out from all the others, blaring like a siren. You don’t want to be alone again. 

A knock on the door jolts you out of it. You blink a few dozen times then go and open it. 

Spencer’s standing there, looking uncertain. He starts the same way you did when he sees you, and he clears his throat. 

“I— uh, I need a new shirt,” he says. “This one has flour all over it.” 

“Right,” you say wryly. “What idiot did that to you?”

“It wasn’t an idiot, actually,” Spencer says. “She was a very lovely woman. She made cookies for me.”

You feel your skin heat and glance away. “I made dough.” 

“The oven’s still preheated,” he says. “If you want to finish them, you can. It’s going to take a few hours for Gideon and the team to come by, anyways.” 

“Oh,” you say. “Okay.” 

“You don’t have to pack,” he explains. “Unless you want to be extra prepared, but I— I don’t think you have to be. I doubt your dad will rush you.” 

“Okay,” you repeat. “I’ll… get to unpacking then.” 

You smile, but you feel off-balance. Right now, you’re at the precipice—a romantic prisoner’s dilemma. You can follow through with it, or you can ignore it. If Spencer likes you, you can figure out what the next step is. If Spencer doesn’t like you, then the only way forward is to take this to your grave. You wouldn’t be able to take the humiliation of a rejection. 

Spencer smiles back—it feels just as unsure. “Okay. I’ll start cleaning up.” 

You nod, and he closes the door. You exhale deeply and put the back of your hand against your forehead. You’re burning up, of course. 

God, what is wrong with you? You knew the only answer would be staying quiet. There’s absolutely no logical reason for Spencer Reid to have romantic feelings for you. He’s nice to you because of his job—he cares about you because he’s incredibly good at his job. 

He’s been working his hardest to keep you safe and calm in the face of a nightmare, and he never wavered even when you treated him like shit. The absolute last thing Spencer probably wants right now is an unexpected, unwarranted confession. 

Except it probably wouldn’t be unexpected. He’s probably known this whole time, and he’s just been placating you—the way an adult acts with a child when they talk about their imaginary friend. 

Spencer is a profiler, for Christ’s sake. He just told you that he can’t hide anything from his coworkers—how could you possibly think you could hide something from him?

You have to take this to your grave. 

Then it hits you. You nearly did take it to your grave. This whole time, your life has been in danger no matter where you are. You think back to the pictures your dad showed you that day—how someone had been watching you for months and knew your whole routine, your whole life. 

What are you supposed to do after this? Just go back to life like normal? Be a teacher again and go to the same coffee shop every morning and balance your checkbook and go back to being alone? 

It strikes like lightning once more. You don’t want to be alone again.

You’ve spent your whole life roiling in resentment, believing in the virtue of misery and that you were getting back at your dad by hating yourself more than he ever could. 

Suffering isn’t noble, you recall. The words settle on your tongue uneasily as you mouth them. 

(You have to at least try.)

You ignore the doubt rising in your throat, ignore your heart hammering in your chest as you march to the door. The metal doorknob is cold beneath your heated skin as you twist it, ready to confront Spencer—

But when you open the door, Spencer’s standing there once again, poised to knock. He looks just as shocked as you. 

The argument you prepared dissipates from your mind. You open your mouth and nothing comes out. But this time, you don’t hesitate. You take his head in your hands and kiss him. 

For one terrifying moment, Spencer pulls away. His eyes are wide as saucers, pupils dilated in the dim light of his apartment. Through the impulsive, romance-addled haze of your brain, you worry the cynical voice was right—he was just placating you. 

You barely hear yourself stammering out a mortified apology before he cuts you off with an even more desperate kiss than the first. 

It takes a second for your brain to process: Spencer kisses you back. 

He kisses with surprising force, hands falling to your waist as he guides you back into your room. His room, actually. It’s only been two days, but the line is already blurring in your mind. You shift so he’s against the side of the bed, and push a little closer so he’s forced to sit down. Spencer drags you down with him for the length of one kiss, but he pulls away, breathlessly saying your name. 

“We can’t do this. I— I’m a federal agent.” 

“FBI agents are allowed to date people,” you say wryly. Your arms remain looped around his shoulders, your hands lingering on his back. You can feel his quick heartbeat. 

“I’m supposed to be protecting you,” he says. 

“You did,” you say. “The case is over.” 

Spencer opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. You edge close so you can press your forehead to his. 

“Do you like me?” you ask softly. 

“Yes,” he murmurs. “A lot.” 

“Do you like kissing me?” 

“A lot,” he repeats. 

You close your eyes and kiss him again. Spencer reciprocates, his hands tightening just so around your waist. You pull away after a heated moment and look right at him. 

“Then just keep kissing me, and we’ll figure the rest out later.” 

Spencer doesn’t get to respond. He captures your lips right as you finish, your argument apparently convincing enough in the moment. He practically pulls you onto his lap, and you can feel him hardening against you. You smile into his kisses—it’s nice to know you have that effect on him. 

You guide his hands to the zipper of your jeans, and his hands pause right above. 

“You’re sure—” 

“Yes,” you breathe. You barely get the words out before he’s kissing you again. Maybe it’s stupid and naive and you’ll regret it the second it’s over, but in this moment, you’ve never been more sure of anything. In this moment, you think you’re in love with Spencer Reid, and you think you’re finally free to figure out what that means. 

He unzips your jeans and helps you out of them. The cool air of his bedroom is welcome relief to the aching heat between your thighs. You unbutton Spencer’s flourless shirt then he helps you out of your blouse. You trail a finger across his jawline, then past his throat and down his chest.  He helps you out of your blouse, fumbling with every button as he tries to undo them without breaking the kiss. His slender fingers feather over your skin as he pulls down your bra straps, and he peppers up your shoulder and along your collarbone as you get the rest of it off.  

“You’re sure?” you get the urge to ask. 

Spencer presses his lips to the hollow of your neck, hands lingering on your waist. 

“Yes,” he murmurs. 

“You’re really sure,” you repeat. You cringe inwardly, but you can’t help it. Flat-out rejection would be bad, but you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if he regrets this. 

Spencer pulls away and looks you right in the eye. His messy brown hair is more curly than straight after almost three weeks of not straightening it. His dark eyes are magnetic. His lips are slightly swollen from kissing you so hard. 

“You are the most incredible woman I’ve ever met,” Spencer says. “You’ve gone through so much of your life on your own, and I want nothing more than to put an end to that. If you’ll have me.” 

Your whole face softens. Every part of you has felt so jagged and sharp and flawed for so much of your life, unlovable by anyone who knows what’s good for them. Spencer sees you for who you are. 

You don’t know if anyone ever has. 

“I want that more than anything,” you whisper.