#greenaway!reader

“Spencer!” you shriek, cutting him off before he can finish a statement like that at six in the morning.

He smirks. “I was just providing data.”

You pinch his side. “Provide less.”

He laughs again, sleepy and warm, and grins like he’s proud of getting you flustered.

You kiss him again. It’s easier now that the part where you pretend not to want to stay has worn off. You just want to stay, and you let yourself.

When you finally peel out of bed, it’s with mutual groaning and the kind of reluctant separation that would be disgusting if it were anyone else. He presses a quick kiss between your shoulder blades as you swing your legs over the side of the mattress; you pretend it doesn’t make your chest do something stupid.

By the time you’re dressed and make your way out of the bedroom, Spencer’s apartment smells like coffee and toast. He’s in the kitchen in a button down and slacks, tie draped around his neck, reading something in the newspaper with a little furrow between his brows. There’s a mug waiting for you — your mug, chipped on one side, living here now without discussion.

You snag a piece of toast off his plate, bite into it, and lean your hip against the counter while he wrestles with his tie. It’s a new one — navy with small, neat polka dots.

“Come here,” you say, setting your mug down.

He steps closer automatically when you hook two fingers in his belt and tug him in. You untie the knot and redo it, straightening it with careful precision. He watches your face like you’re doing something much more interesting than fixing his tie.

“What?” you ask.

“Nothing,” he says. “I just… like you here.”

You roll your eyes because the alternative is something mushy, but then you lean in anyway and let your lips find his.

The kiss is soft and familiar and still somehow manages to make your knees a little shaky. He tastes like coffee and toothpaste and home, which is a terrifying thought you refuse to examine this early in the day.

He breaks away first, forehead resting against yours. “We should go.”

“Yeah,” you say, not moving.

A beat passes, then another long kiss. Eventually you both laugh, step back at the same time, and pretend you’re ready for reality to hit.

You grab your jacket and badge off the hook, he grabs his satchel and keys, and you walk out the door together.

—

By the time you pull into the Quantico lot, the radio is off and his hand is resting, casual and warm, on your thigh. You let it stay there until you’re close enough to see the building, then you nudge it away and give him a look that says later.

He gives you one back that says I know.

The practiced routine kicks in — you get out and head inside first, he waits three-and-a-half minutes before doing the same.

Spencer barely makes it to his desk before Rossi appears beside him like a well-dressed shadow.

“Ready to go?” Rossi asks, coffee in hand, already halfway turned toward the bullpen doors.

They’re headed to the academy building across campus, today’s guest lecturers for a criminology training. Spencer always pretends he’s indifferent to that sort of thing, but the second he’s in front of a whiteboard, he lights up.

Spencer blinks, then nods. “Yes. I just need—”

“Your notes are in your bag,” Rossi says. “You sent me five drafts already. Come on, kid, the cadets await.”

Spencer glances in your direction automatically. You lift your eyes just long enough to catch his and tip your chin, a small, private acknowledgment no one else would notice.

He smiles — barely there, but there — and then heads out with Rossi. You watch them go, then drag your focus back to the report in front of you.

You get maybe three minutes of peace.

“Greenawaaay,” Garcia sings, appearing at the edge of your peripheral vision like a colorful mirage.

You don’t look up yet. “If this is about your whipped cream experimentation with Kevin, I already told you I’m not certified in exorcisms.”

“It’s not about the whipped cream,” she says. “It’s much more important than the whipped cream. Which should tell you the stakes here are astronomical.”

You sigh, close the file, and finally turn. JJ and Prentiss are hovering behind her with matching she-already-recruited-us-but-we-don’t-know-what-for expressions. Morgan leans against the nearest desk, arms folded, clearly already in on whatever this is.

“What did you do?” you ask.

“Me?” Garcia bats her lashes. “Nothing. But we’re about to make history. Come on.” She jerks her head toward the hallway. “Top secret meeting in my office.”

You narrow your eyes. “I’m on the clock, Garcia. I have work to do.”

“As do I,” she says. “This is… related to work. Trust me.”

You should say no. You should go back to your paperwork. Instead, curiosity wins and you slide out of your chair.

Garcia herds the four of you down to her lair like a cheerful, bedazzled sheepdog. The door closes behind you with a heavy thud, the lights of her monitors bathing the room in neon. On the far wall, there’s a corkboard you don’t remember seeing before.

At the top, in big, bold letters outlined with glittery tape, it says:

OPERATION MYSTERY GIRL - O.M.G.

Garcia plants herself in front of the board, hands on hips. “Welcome, my beloved profilers and communications liaison, to the inaugural briefing of O.M.G.!”

JJ presses her lips together, clearly trying not to laugh. Morgan isn’t even pretending to not be thrilled. Prentiss looks like she’s just been handed front-row tickets to a train wreck.

“Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is,” you say.

“This,” Garcia announces, pointing dramatically at the corkboard, “is a fully serious, very important investigation into the case of Dr. Spencer Reid’s mysterious secret girlfriend.”

You blink. “You’re kidding.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” She gestures dramatically to the board again. It’s already populated with printed photos, sticky notes, and colored yarn connecting pins like you’re standing in front of a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream.

At the bottom is a sheet of paper featuring a stick figure of a woman with a giant question mark over her face. Around it: headings that read EVIDENCE SO FAR, POTENTIAL OCCUPATIONS, and VIBES in Garcia’s handwriting.

You step closer despite yourself.

Under EVIDENCE:

Suspiciously happy like all the time

Volunteering for less overtime than usual

New clothes??!!

His aura just screams I’M IN LURVVV

“Some of this is actually pretty accurate,” Prentiss says, leaning in.

“I’ve been monitoring his behavior for weeks,” Garcia says proudly. “The data doesn’t lie. Our boy genius is smitten, and he is hiding her from us.”

Morgan shakes his head. “He’s definitely hiding something. We’ve been saying that for a while. And at O’Keefe’s the other week, he didn’t exactly deny it. He just said ‘no comment,’ which means there’s definitely a girl.”

“He has a right to privacy,” you point out, mostly because you’re trying not to gnaw through your own tongue.

“Absolutely,” Garcia says. “He has the right to privacy, and I have the right to gossip with my friends about our other friend. Both things can be true.”

Prentiss snorts.

Garcia taps the POTENTIAL OCCUPATIONS column, where there are several options listed already:

Kindergarten teacher

Librarian

Baker

Social worker

“Seriously? You think he’s dating a kindergarten teacher? A librarian?” you ask.

JJ lifts a shoulder. “He does like to read.”

“And he’s good with kids,” Morgan adds. “Makes sense he’d go for someone sweet and gentle like that."

“It’s probably someone outside the FBI,” Prentiss proposes. “Normal job. Normal hours. No guns.”

“She definitely wears super cute colorful cardigans,” Garcia adds, already scribbling it down under VIBES. “And I’d venture to guess that she bakes cupcakes when she’s stressed. Smells like vanilla!”

“Vanilla,” you echo, deadpan.

JJ tilts her head. “You don’t think he’d be into someone like that?”

You shrug like it’s theoretical, like your heart isn’t doing something unpleasant in your chest. “He might be, I don’t know. But I think he needs someone who can actually handle the job. The hours. The… everything. This kind of life isn’t exactly gentle.”

“Exactly,” Garcia says. “Which is why she’s gotta be gentle. She provides a counterbalance. Yin and yang, crime and cupcakes. It’s poetic.”

She writes CUPCAKES under VIBES.

Morgan points his pen at the pinned drawing of the stick figure woman. “Come on, Greenaway. You spend a lot of time with him. Help us out.”

“I do not spend a lot of time with him,” you deny automatically.

Four pairs of eyes look at you.

You lift your hands. “Fine. I spend an appropriate amount of professional time with him. Not my fault Hotch pairs us together a lot.”

“Point is, you know him. So, from a purely hypothetical standpoint,” JJ says, “what kind of person do you think he’d be happy with?”

You stare at the board for a moment, at the fake girl they’ve built out of cardigans and vanilla extract. Then you pick up a pen.

“Someone smart,” you say. “He’d need that. Someone who doesn’t treat him like a walking encyclopedia but also doesn’t get lost or zone out when he goes off on a tangent. Someone who doesn’t flinch when things get ugly,” you continue. “You all know what this job does. You don’t get to just… opt out of the darkness. If you’re with him, you’re in all of it.”

You tap the pen against the board, then force your tone lighter. “And yeah, okay, probably someone nice.”

Garcia grins, scribbling down NICE under VIBES and functionally ignoring the rest of what you said. “See? This is why I invited you. You have insight!”

Morgan grins. “So we’re in agreement. She’s smart, sweet, likes kids, bakes.”

“And probably has no idea how lucky she is,” JJ adds.

You swallow back the instinctive no, she definitely knows she’s lucky and say instead, “Can I go back to work now, or are we building a composite sketch?”

Garcia swats the air. “This is just Phase One, my fine furry friend. We will reconvene later. In the meantime, I expect you all to investigate.”

You roll your eyes, but there’s no real bite in it. “Great. Can’t wait to see what Phase Two has in store.”

As you step back, your gaze catches on the stick figure again. On the glitter, the stickers, the ridiculous heading — O.M.G.

According to the board, Reid’s mystery girl should be someone who wears cardigans. Smells like sugar. Teaches kindergarten.

Definitely not someone like you.

You shove that thought down where it belongs, under seven layers of scar tissue and denial, and head back to the bullpen like nothing in here touched you at all.

—

The rest of the morning unfolds like any other day at the BAU, if you ignore the fact that one of your coworkers has unknowingly built a conspiracy wall about you.

You try to ignore it.

You work a consult. You write up a report on last week’s case. You argue with a detective over the phone until he backs down, and when you hang up, Morgan’s watching you like: damn, remind me to never piss you off.

“You good?” he asks.

“Peachy,” you say, tossing the file onto your desk. “Please tell me Garcia found a new hobby in the last hour.”

He grins. “Not a chance. She’s real committed to this one.”

You roll your eyes and open your email.

There’s a subject line from Garcia that reads: “O.M.G. – Phase Two Meeting Tomorrow - Agenda Enclosed!” with three heart emojis.

You don’t open it. You’re not that masochistic.

Around noon, your phone buzzes against your desk. You assume it’s another follow-up from Garcia and flip it over, already cringing. Instead, it’s Spencer.

Spencer: Cadets have already asked 3 questions that make me concerned for the future of law enforcement.

You huff out a quiet laugh before you can stop it, shoulders loosening.

You type back under the desk.

You: important news from the home front: i am currently the unsub in an unsanctioned profiling experiment being conducted out of garcia’s lair

There’s a long enough pause that you can imagine him reading it twice, brow furrowed.

Spencer: …What?

You: penelope has formed a task force

You: codename: operation mystery girl

You: acronym: O.M.G.

You: there’s glitter. so much glitter

You: and specific instructions not to tell you about it. oops

This time, his reply is almost immediate.

Spencer: Why can’t I know?

You: because you’ve been “suspiciously happy” so they’ve decided that gives them grounds to reverse-engineer your love life

You: they’re profiling your “type.” your mystery girl.

Another beat. You can practically feel him flushing through the screen.

Spencer: What have they concluded so far?

You: that you’re dating a bubbly, perfect kindergarten teacher who smells like vanilla

There’s a full minute of silence this time. You picture him in some Academy auditorium, phone in his hand under the desk while Rossi lectures about offender typologies.

Finally:

Spencer: I don’t even like vanilla that much.

You laugh under your breath and stare at that for a second, heat curling low in your stomach for absolutely no good reason as his second text comes through.

Spencer: I prefer more complex flavors.

You roll your eyes at your phone, because of course he somehow made that sound unintentionally sweet and slightly filthy without even trying.

You: stop flirting with me during class

You: you’re supposed to be educating the next generation of the fbi

As if on cue, Hotch’s door opens and he steps out into the bullpen, scanning the room. You turn your phone face-down on your desk.

By late afternoon, O.M.G. has evolved. Every so often you catch someone making a note — Garcia walking by while scribbling on a sticky, JJ whispering something in her ear, Prentiss and Morgan analyzing Spencer’s desk from a distance.

It’s fine. It’s all stupid and harmless and fine.

Your phone buzzes again around four while you’re in the hall heading back from the bathroom.

Spencer: Wrapping up here, should be back soon. Any further developments on the O.M.G. front?

You glance down the hall towards Garcia’s office. The door is closed, a faint glow spilling out from beneath it like a witch’s cave.

You: more of the same

You: i’ll fill you in tonight

You hesitate, then tack on one more message before you can talk yourself out of it:

You: miss you

It’s reckless and feels entirely too honest, but your thumb hits send anyway.

The reply comes before you’ve even locked your phone.

Spencer: I miss you too. See you soon.

You swallow, looking around like the words might be visible in the air, but no one’s looking at you. No one has a clue.

Yet.

—

By the time you make it to Spencer’s apartment after work, your brain feels like it’s humming inside your skull.

You kick the door shut with your heel, toe your shoes off in the entryway, shrug out of your jacket and scarf and hang them on the hook you’ve claimed as your own. Spencer drops his satchel by the couch and heads for the kitchen.

“Dinner,” he calls, opening the fridge. “Option A: leftover lo mein. Option B: grilled cheese. Option C: both.”

“C,” you pick.

He smiles faintly and pulls out the takeout container. It’s all so normal — him moving around the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, you leaning your hip against the cabinets as you watch him. This is your life now: FBI agent by day, domestic lovergirl by night.

You watch him butter bread and portion out noodles like he’s solving a complex equation. He glances up.

“You said you’d fill me in,” he reminds you. “On O.M.G.”

You snort. “Right. Your fan club.”

He raises his eyebrows. You sigh and attempt to pick the least sharp version of the recap you’ve been brewing in your head all day.

“Garcia built a case board,” you say. “There are doodles and glitter tape and stickers. She has lists pinned to it for ‘Evidence So Far,’ ‘Potential Occupations,’ and ‘Vibes.’”

He blinks once. “…Vibes.”

“Vibes,” you confirm. “And according to our coworkers, apparently the ‘vibe’ is that you’re secretly dating a kindergarten teacher slash librarian slash cupcake baker who smells like vanilla and wears colorful cardigans and definitely doesn’t carry a gun or have years of trauma to work through in therapy.”

He pauses in the act of flipping a sandwich. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” You pick at a chip in the countertop.

“And what did you contribute to the investigation?” he asks.

You shrug like it doesn’t matter. “That whoever you’re with would have to be smart. And able to handle the job. And not treat you like you’re made of glass. Clearly, my influence was minimal.”

The grilled cheese sizzles. The lo mein goes in the microwave. Silence fills in around it, heavy and familiar.

You eat on the couch, plate balanced on your knees, a National Geographic documentary playing low on the TV.

You make jokes at first. You tell him about Prentiss and Morgan’s intense study of his desk for “data collection” and Garcia’s email subject lines. Spencer laughs in all the right places. He looks at you more than he looks at the screen.

But by the time the plates are empty, the jokes have dried up.

You stack the dishes and take them to the sink, rinsing them off like the hot water might scald the thoughts out of your head. When you look up, he’s still on the couch, watching you with that careful focus of his.

“What?” you ask.

“You’re doing that thing,” he says.

“Please specify which thing,” you say. “I have a lot of things.”

“The thing where you brush something hurtful off like it’s funny but then go really quiet and your shoulders get all tense.” He pats the cushion next to him. “Come here.”

“I’m fine,” you say automatically.

“I never said you weren’t.” His voice stays soft, but there’s a thread of seriousness underneath it. “I said to come here.”

You sigh and drop onto the couch beside him with more force than necessary. He shifts closer, thigh warm against yours. His hand finds the back of the couch behind your shoulders, not quite touching you yet.

“So,” he says. “What’s bothering you? And don’t say ‘nothing,’ because we both know that’s not true.”

“It’s stupid,” you grumble, staring at the coffee table.

He gently lifts your chin with his finger. “Okay. Tell me anyway.”

You chew the inside of your cheek, throat tight. You’ve been replaying it all day — the board, the stick figure, the list of traits that are a complete juxtaposition to your entire personality.

“I…” You trail off and try another angle. “The team loves you. They just want you to be happy. It’s sweet, honestly. A massive overstep and an insane invasion of privacy, but still sweet. I understand their curiosity.”

“But,” he prompts gently.

You exhale, sharp. “But… they built you a perfect imaginary ideal girlfriend, and she’s nothing like me.”

He’s quiet. You push on before you can lose your nerve.

“Like, not even a little bit,” you say. “She’s soft and gentle and bakes when she’s stressed and doesn’t know what a glock looks like. She smells like vanilla.” The word tastes bitter on your tongue. “And the thing is, Morgan and Garcia and JJ and Prentiss know you. Like, really well. They’re your best friends. So if that’s the woman who pops into their heads when they think about who’d be good for you—” You break off.

When you look up, his eyes are still on you, open and steady.

“When they eventually find out it’s me,” you go on, forcing the words out, “they’re going to look at you like you’ve lost your mind. Like you traded in a cupcake for… I don’t know. A Molotov cocktail or something.”

“You don’t honestly think,” he says, “that they sat there and consciously decided, ‘Reid should be with someone who is the total opposite of Greenaway.’”

“No,” you say. “I think they didn’t think of me at all.”

The words hang there, more naked than you meant them to be.

He goes very still.

“Not that I wanted them to think of me and figure it out, but still.” You stare resolutely at the coffee table. “And, like, I get it. I’ve spent a long time cultivating a vibe that says ‘do not perceive me unless you want to get bit.’ I don’t exactly radiate ‘nurturing life partner’ energy. It would almost be funny if it didn’t feel like—” You motion helplessly at some vague point in front of you. “Like confirmation,” you say. “That I’m wrong for you. That when they do eventually find out, they’re going to wonder how badly you hit your head.”

There’s a prickling behind your eyes. You blink hard, once, twice. It doesn’t help much.

“And I hate that it’s getting to me,” you say. “I don’t care what people think. That’s, like, my whole thing. I have built an entire personality around not giving a shit. But I…” You flex your hands, fingers curling against your knees. “I care what they think of you. And of you with me. And apparently that’s enough to scramble my brain, because now I’m sitting here wishing I could be some fucking vanilla-cupcake-librarian for you because you deserve someone that sweet and soft and kind, but that’s— that’s not who I am. I don’t know how to be that girl. And I am so fucking tired of being the wrong kind of girl in every room.”

There’s a long moment where the only sound is the TV and your own breathing, too loud in your ears.

Then Spencer moves.

He reaches over, gently pries your hand away from your knee, and laces his fingers through yours. His palm is warm. His grip is firm without being possessive.

“Look at me,” he says.

You do. It feels like standing on the edge of a roof and choosing, deliberately, not to step back.

“You’re right, they do know me,” he says. “But they don’t know what it feels like to be in my apartment at three in the morning when my brain won’t shut off and you stay up with me just so I’m not alone. They don’t know what it’s like to sit in a car with you at a crime scene and have you make the darkest possible joke at exactly the right moment. They don’t know how it feels when I start spiraling and you say, very firmly, ‘Reid, eat something,’ and shove a granola bar into my hand.”

You start to object. “That happened, like, one time.”

“It was three times,” he says. His thumb strokes along the side of your hand absentmindedly.

“They’re still a bit stuck on the version of me that existed before… a lot of things. Before Tobias Hankel. Before Gideon left. Before losing people changed the way I look at everything. They still see the kid who needed to be protected from himself.”

“Sometimes you still are that kid,” you say softly.

“Sometimes,” he agrees. “But I’m also a man who knows what he wants. Who he wants.” His eyes are steady on yours. “And it’s you. It’s been you for a long time.”

Your throat tightens.

“They want me to have someone gentle,” he says. “And I get why. But gentle doesn’t necessarily have to mean cupcakes and vanilla and kindergarten.” He tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. “You’re gentle with me in all the ways that matter. You know when to challenge me and when to just… be here.”

“So you’re saying you don’t want a cupcake,” you say slowly.

“I’m saying I don’t want to be handled,” he corrects. “I don’t want to be someone’s fragile project. I don’t need to be saved from my own life by a nice woman in a cardigan.”

He leans in a little, eyes not leaving yours.

“I chose you,” he says. “Not because I’m convinced you’re secretly soft underneath it all and one day you’ll transform into their idea of what my life should look like. I chose you, completely as you are. Sharp and stubborn and infuriating and the only person who’s ever told me to shut up not because you didn’t care what I had to say, but because you wanted to kiss me so badly you couldn’t wait."

Heat flickers under your skin at that memory. Your eyes sting again. You blink hard.

“They love me,” he says with a nod. “You’re right. But they also love you. They trust you with their lives. They’ve seen you bleed for this team. Do you really think that when they find out I’m with someone who understands all of that, who gets it down to the bone, they’re going to… what? Stage an intervention? Tell me I should hold out for someone better?”

You look away, jaw tight.

“If I didn’t want you,” he says, voice even, “I wouldn’t be with you. If I thought you were wrong for me, I wouldn’t let you into this part of my life.” He squeezes your hand. It’s grounding, the pressure. “I’m not going to look at Garcia’s corkboard and suddenly decide I made a mistake. I’m in this because I want to be.”

You swallow, hard. A traitorous tear finally escapes despite your best efforts; you swipe it away with the heel of your hand before it can go rogue.

“This is so embarrassing,” you mutter. “I’m mad at a fucking bulletin board.”

He smiles, small and fond. “You’re not mad at the board.”

He shifts closer, finally letting his arm drop around your shoulders, pulling you in until you’re halfway in his lap.

“I just don’t want to be the wrong choice,” you whisper.

“You’re not,” he says. No hesitation. “You’re the right one. And if that conflicts with our friends’ wild imaginations, then that’s their problem to solve. Not ours.”

You swallow, breathing uneven. He’s so close you can count his eyelashes. You let your head tip against his shoulder as his thumb draws idle circles on the back of your hand.

“Okay,” you say eventually, almost too quiet to hear. “But if they look at me like I’m a bad idea when they eventually find out, you’re in charge of reminding them I’m not.”

“I can do that,” he promises.

You stay like that for a while — documentary murmuring in the background, the universe shrunk down to the circumference of his arm around you and the steady rise and fall of his chest. At some point, he turns his head and presses a kiss into your hair.

“You know Garcia’s going to put glittery heart stickers around my face if she ever adds me to that board,” you mumble against him.

“I know,” he says. “And I’m so keeping it if she does.”

You pinch his side. He yelps, then laughs, then presses another kiss into your hair.

Let them have their glitter for now, you think to yourself. Let them build their wrong profile. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re here, and he’s here, and you’re choosing each other.

—

Rossi’s email hits your inbox on Thursday morning, wedged between a case update and a training memo.

BAU Pasta Night at Villa Rossi: Saturday. 6pm. Mandatory attendance.

You read it twice. There’s something about dinner at Rossi’s that feels less like an invitation and more like a command.

Your phone buzzes with a text five minutes later.

Spencer: Did you see Rossi’s email?

You stare at the screen longer than you need to, then type back:

You: yep

You: guess we’re having pasta this weekend

Once Saturday night hits, Garcia is on Spencer before he can even take his coat off in Rossi’s foyer.

“REID,” she announces, planting herself in front of him with the kind of intensity she usually reserves for hacking and cross-referencing. “You came alone.”

Spencer’s mouth opens. Closes. “Hi, Garcia.”

Morgan appears behind her with a glass of wine, already grinning. “No plus-one, man? C’mon.”

Emily lifts her eyebrows in amusement. JJ’s smile is softer, more sympathetic than nosy.

You keep your face blank and slip past them toward the kitchen, waving awkwardly to Hotch as you pass by the living room, because if you have to stand there and listen to this, you will commit a felony.

Rossi intercepts you with a dish towel over his shoulder and a look that says I got you, kid.

“If you’re looking for a way to escape Penelope’s witch hunt, go ahead into the cellar downstairs and pick out another bottle of red,” he says mercifully. “Barolo or Chianti preferably, but it’s your choice."

“Yes, sir,” you say sarcastically, and take the out.

The basement is cooler, quieter. You let yourself breathe for a minute, fingers trailing over labels, pretending you’re here for the tannins.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Spencer is doing his best impression of a man who is not currently being cornered by three BAU agents and one extremely glitter-motivated tech analyst.

Garcia doesn’t even bother easing in.

“Okay,” she says, clasping her hands. “We have respected your privacy for—”

Morgan coughs. “We have attempted to respect your privacy.”

Garcia glares at him, then refocuses on Spencer. “—for a completely appropriate amount of time. But I simply cannot wait any longer. In my heart of hearts I know you’re seeing someone, and I’m DYING to know who she is.”

Spencer rubs the back of his neck. “This is, uh… really none of your business.”

Emily leans against the counter, entertained. “You’re surrounded by profilers, Reid. Being in other people’s business is kind of what we do best.”

JJ steps in a little. “Look, Spence, you don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,” she says, and she means it even though Garcia’s threatening her with dagger eyes. “But we’re your friends. We notice when something changes, and we just want the chance to be happy for you.”

Spencer’s ears go pink. “I—I know. It’s just— It’s private.”

Garcia’s eyes widen theatrically. “So she IS real! Private means real!”

Morgan tilts his head. “C’mon, fess up. You seeing someone, pretty boy?”

Spencer hesitates for an awkward beat, running through the options in his head. He supposes that confirming the existence of a significant other isn’t the worst idea in the world, considering they’ve already pretty much figured it out, and it’s not like he has to tell them who the “mystery girl” is. That’s a boundary line he can draw and stick to. Plus, maybe they’ll chill out on O.M.G. and leave you some room to breathe if they at least have a few nuggets of information to hold them over for a bit.

“Yes,” he admits finally. “I’m…seeing someone.”

Garcia makes a sound like she’s about to ascend. “OHHH MY GOD. I KNEW IT.”

“So,” Emily says. “How long has it been?”

Spencer exhales. “A… while. Things started slow, so it’s somewhat hard to quantify.”

As if he doesn’t know the exact amount of time down to the minute that’s passed since you first kissed him in Ohio.

Morgan’s cheeky grin softens as he claps Spencer’s shoulder. “I’m happy for you, man,” he says.

Spencer nods and looks down, like he doesn’t know what to do with that. JJ’s expression brightens in a way that’s genuinely excited for him.

“Well,” Garcia says, leaning in like she’s about to jump into full-on detective mode. “Tell us about her! I want to know everything.”

Spencer’s eyes flick up. “I—”

“Not actually everything. We’re not asking for her social security number,” JJ clarifies. “Not even her name. Just…are you happy? Is it going well?”

Spencer nods, the corner of his mouth tipping up despite himself. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “It’s…good. Really, really good.”

Garcia’s voice turns unexpectedly soft. “Is she good to you?”

Spencer doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

Emily taps her fingernail against the counter. “What sorts of things do you two do? Do you go out? Stay in?”

“Both,” Spencer says. “We do, uh, normal things.”

Garcia squints. “Define ‘normal,’ because your normal includes reading hundred-year-old Russian novels for fun.”

He gives a small, helpless shrug. “We… we go on walks. Run errands. Go out to eat. There’s this little Italian restaurant in Georgetown she really likes. But… we also stay in a lot. We cook together sometimes. Talk. Read. Watch movies.”

“What kind of movies?” JJ probes.

Spencer thinks of you engrossed by a classic horror film or picking apart some terrible romcom with surgical cruelty, pointing out every dumb decision while somehow still being fully invested. He does not say that out loud.

“Uh, anything, really,” he says instead. “She made me watch Pulp Fiction recently, and I showed her a documentary about black holes last weekend. She… likes indulging my interests.”

Emily’s eyes flicker with satisfaction at that. JJ files it away. Garcia is practically vibrating.

Morgan jumps in next. “So, you planning on bringing her to one of these things eventually?”

Spencer’s throat bobs. “…Eventually.”

“In the meantime, I need more. What does she like?” Garcia presses. “What’s her favorite—food, music, whatever. Give us something, Reid! One harmless little detail.”

Spencer’s brain scrambles for something that feels safe. Something that won’t point to you. Something small.

“She… she has a bit of a sweet tooth,” he admits. “Brownies, cake, cookies… you know. But she hates warm fruit. Something to do with the texture. We went to a diner once where the waitress gave us free slices of pie, and she picked out all the fruit and just ate the crust and ice cream.”

Emily laughs. “That’s unhinged.”

Garcia clutches her heart. “Oh, a woman with a quirk! I just know I'm going to adore her already.”

Spencer’s eyes flick toward the cellar door for the briefest of seconds — instinctively, as if his gaze is trained on you like a magnet — before looking back at his nosy friends with his signature awkward, tight-lipped smile.

“Yeah,” he says. “I have a feeling you will.”

—

When you come back upstairs with a bottle of Barolo, the evening has already moved into that easy, warm groove: plates clinking, voices overlapping, Rossi refilling wine glasses.

You laugh at something JJ says. You argue with Emily about her taste in horror movies. Spencer watches you like he’s trying to memorize your face. As if he hasn’t already committed every inch of it to memory.

By the time the pasta plates are cleared and Rossi heads into the kitchen to grab dessert, you’ve almost forgotten about O.M.G. entirely. The team has, mercifully, taken it easier on Spencer after the conversation you missed while seeking refuge in the wine cellar.

Whatever he said to shut them up, it must’ve worked, you think to yourself.

Rossi returns to the dining room and sets a slice of apple pie in front of you. “Made from scratch,” he boasts.

You eye it. The apples are glossy and soft. Wrong texture. Wrong temperature. But the crust looks deliciously sugary and flaky and you’re not about to insult Rossi in his own home mansion, so you manage a polite “Thank you” and pick up your fork.

Across the table, Spencer freezes.

Not a subtle freeze — no. It’s a full, wide-eyed, deer-in-headlights freeze.

He clears his throat too loud. Knocks his fork against his plate. His foot finds your ankle under the table with a series of frantic little nudges.

You glance up, confused, eyes clearly asking what the heck is your problem.

He’s staring at your plate like it’s an unpinned grenade.

His mouth opens. Closes. He tries again, smaller, more desperate: “Uh—”

What? you mouth, eyebrows raised.

His eyes flick back and forth — pie, you, pie, you — like he’s trying to telepathically beam a message directly into your skull. But there is, unfortunately, no universal signal for if you eat your pie like a feral raccoon our coworkers are 100% going to figure out our secret so please just be normal this one time, so you just stare at him blankly.

Weirdo.

You gently kick his foot away — more confused than annoyed — and turn back to your plate.

And then you do what you always do.

You begin to push the warm apples to one side of the dish with the edge of your fork, methodically separating fruit from crust like you’re field-stripping a firearm.

Spencer’s face goes beet red in anxious anticipation, but the room doesn’t go silent all at once.

It’s staggered. Like a line of well-spaced dominos, toppling one after another in perfect succession.

Garcia notices first. Her whole face lights up, brows practically shooting up to her hairline. A strangled noise catches in her throat, and her hand clamps over her mouth like she’s trying to keep herself from screaming.

JJ freezes mid-bite, fork suspended, eyes wide and snapping to Spencer.

Morgan’s grin falters into disbelief. “No way,” he says, like he’s arguing with reality.

Emily’s jaw goes slack. “Oh,” she breathes. Then her eyes sharpen, bright with dawning glee. “Ohhh.”

You look up at the sudden weirdness and find four faces locked on your plate like you’ve just confessed to arson.

“What,” you ask carefully, “is happening. Why are you all staring at my pie.”

Morgan points his fork at your dish and turns to Spencer. “Reid,” he says, voice pitched with amusement, “didn’t you literally just tell us your girl does that? That she won’t eat warm fruit?”

Spencer shuts his eyes for a second — brief, pained — like he’s watching himself die in third person. When he opens them, he looks straight at you.

Pure apology. Pure guilt.

He winces. “I… I didn’t know there was going to be pie.”

Something in you goes cold and then hot at the exact same moment you catch up to what’s going on.

For half a second, your brain offers you the classic Greenaway solution: vanish. Run and never look back. You can practically feel the panic trying to crawl up your throat, because this is what you were dreading — the second everyone knows, they get to have opinions. They get to look at you and Spencer like a math problem and decide you don’t add up.

Except… they’re not at all looking at you like you’re wrong for him.

You scan the room. Garcia’s smiling so big it looks painful. JJ’s gaze is warm, not sharp. Emily looks like she just won a bet she never told anyone she made. And Morgan is staring like he can’t believe you got one over on him, but there’s no anger in it — just that big-brother okay, show me you’re serious energy. The only person in the room who looks horrified is Spencer, who’s clearly just trying to cope with the fact he accidentally revealed your relationship in maybe the stupidest way possible.

You take a breath, feel your pulse in your throat, and then — because you’re not going to let all of your control over this situation be ripped out of your hands — you say:

“Congrats everyone, you cracked the code. Yes. Reid and I are together.”

Garcia explodes.

“MYSTERY GIRL IS YOU,” she shrieks, half out of her chair. “It’s been you this ENTIRE time. Oh my GOD. I made a board! I made assumptions! I said cupcakes and cardigans when in reality, Mystery Girl was right in front of me in boots and a leather jacket and—”

“Garcia,” Hotch warns.

JJ’s earnest expression is the first thing that cuts through the chaos. “This makes so much sense,” she says.

“Yeah,” Emily agrees. “The second you say it out loud, it’s like— of course. How did we miss that?”

Morgan sits back, still staring between you and Spencer like he’s recalibrating. Then he lets out a laugh — half disbelief, half delight. “Man,” he chuckles, shaking his head, “I thought you were cuddled up with a librarian or something. Meanwhile you’re out here dating the most terrifying Greenaway sister,” he says, then winks at you like he’s trying to make sure you know he means it as a compliment.

You lift your chin. “Say that again and I’ll throw this pie at you.”

Morgan grins, hands up. “See? Exactly what I mean.”

Rossi sips his wine with a chuckle. “About time you bozos figured it out.”

Garcia whirls on him. “You KNEW?!”

Rossi’s mouth quirks. “What can I say, I’m good at my job.”

Hotch sets his fork down with the resigned patience of a man who has filled out a lot of paperwork on this exact subject already. “I’ve also been aware for some time,” he says evenly.

Garcia makes a noise that sounds like she’s dying. “BOTH of you knew?!”

Spencer clears his throat, still pink, still looking like he wants to apologize to you in six different languages. His eyes don’t leave your face.

Garcia’s hands clap together like she’s calling court to order. “O.M.G. never stood for Operation Mystery Girl,” she announces, breathless with triumph. “It stood for OH MY GREENAWAY all along.”

JJ’s gaze meets yours. “For what it’s worth,” she says, "I'm really happy that Mystery Girl is you.”

Emily lifts her glass in a small toast. “Me as well,” she adds. “This is good. This is really, really good.”

Morgan’s grin softens into something fond and protective. “As long as you’re both happy and nobody’s getting hurt,” he says, “I’m happy for you. Both of you.”

Garcia’s voice goes thick, emotional, and she tries to bulldoze right through it with dramatics. “I’m so happy,” she declares. “I’m also a bit devastated I wasn’t included in the secret circle of knowing earlier, but mostly I’m happy because you two are…” She gestures wildly. “You’re you. And it’s perfect.”

Something in your chest steadies instead of cracks.

“Okay,” you say, exhaling. “Cool. Great. Everybody get it out of their system?”

Garcia points at your pie plate, still half-disassembled. “Not even close. I’m sorry,” she gasps, “but I can’t get over that THIS is what did it.”

You deadpan. “My beef with pie is never-ending.”

Rossi claps once, satisfied. “Alright. Now that the children have finished screaming, eat your dang dessert.”

Laughter rolls around the room again, warmer now, less sharp.

Under the table, Spencer’s shoe nudges yours.

You nudge back.

And when you finally escape an hour later, the night air is cold and quiet, and Spencer grips the steering wheel like he’s trying to drive his guilt into the pavement.

You watch him from the passenger seat, heart weirdly calm.

He doesn’t say much on the drive. Neither do you. The secret is out, the world didn’t end, and for now, that’s enough.

—

Back at Spencer’s apartment, the quiet hits you like a soft wall.

No Garcia shrieking. No Morgan cackling. Just the click of the lock, the hush of the hallway outside, and Spencer standing there with his keys still in his hand.

“You okay?” you ask, toeing your shoes off.

Spencer exhales — sharp, like he’s been holding it since the pie incident — and sets his keys down with exaggerated care. Then he turns to you, eyes wide in that way they get when he’s trying not to catastrophize and failing.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

You blink. “You don’t need to be.”

He shakes his head. “But I am. I’m so sorry. For all of it. For telling them the fruit thing. I didn’t realize I was outing us. I—I didn’t know there was going to be pie.”

“I gathered that,” you say.

He steps closer, hands hovering at his sides like he wants to touch you but doesn’t want to assume it’d be welcome.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he continues, words tumbling now that the gate’s open. “It was stupid. I thought giving them a hyper-specific detail would give them something to fixate on and shut them up, and that one seemed harmless enough, but then I saw the pie and I—” He swallows. “I really did try to warn you.”

“You did,” you say, leaning back against the wall. “You were practically doing Morse code against my ankle.”

“I panicked,” he admits, cheeks flushing. “And then it all happened so fast and you looked—” He stops, eyes flicking over your face like he’s searching for hurt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I know you hate being… perceived.”

He takes one more step. You can feel his warmth now, close enough that it seeps into you.

“I keep thinking about the other day,” he says quietly. “How scared you were for them to find out.” His throat bobs. “And then I was the one who—who basically handed them our secret on a silver platter.”

You tilt your head. “On a pie platter, actually.”

He looks pained. “Please don’t make jokes right now.”

“Spencer,” you say seriously. “I’m not mad at you.”

He lets out a breath, but it’s not quite relief yet. He’s still braced for impact.

“And I’m not mad that they know,” you add, watching him closely. “I mean, I’m a little embarrassed that my downfall was pie of all things, but—”

His mouth finally lifts, small and uncertain.

“But,” you repeat, “it’s okay. I’m fine, really.”

You push off the wall and close the space remaining between you, because you’re tired of him hovering at the edge of you and want him to feel how not-mad you are.

His hands find your waist the second you’re close enough, careful at first, then firmer when you lean in like you belong there.

“Are you sure?” he whispers.

You nod. “I’m sure.”

“Because you could—” He swallows. “You could decide this is too much. Too exposed. And I wouldn’t blame you, but I’d…” His voice cracks just slightly. “I’d miss you.”

Something in your chest goes tight and hot.

You slide your hands up his arms, feel the muscle under his sleeves, the faint tremor he’s trying his best to hide. You clasp your fingers behind his neck and pull him down until his forehead nearly brushes yours.

“I’m not going anywhere,” you murmur.

His eyes flutter shut for half a second, like the words physically steady him.

“You’re not?”

“No,” you say, and you let yourself mean it. “I told you, I’m not mad. I’m not running. The worst thing that happened tonight is that our coworkers found out I have psychopathic dessert habits.”

He huffs a laugh.

“Besides,” you add, because you can’t help it, “you looked kinda hot when you were trying to telepathically get me to eat my pie like a normal person.”

His eyes open, startled. “I— what?”

“You did,” you insist, deadly serious. “Somehow, panic is a good look on you. Big fan.”

His cheeks go pink, but now it’s in a good way.

“You’re unbelievable,” he murmurs, shaking his head like he’s trying to hide the smile.

“And you,” you say, sliding your thumbs along his jaw, “are catastrophizing.”

“I know,” he admits. “I just… I care about you.”

The words hang there, heavy and honest and dangerously close to a bigger truth, but you don’t let it scare you. Not tonight.

You kiss him instead.

It’s slow at first — soft, testing — like you’re proving something to him with your mouth: I’m here. I’m fine. Then it deepens, because Spencer never stays soft for long once you give him permission. His hands tighten at your waist, pulling you in until there’s no space left to misunderstand.

His mouth is warm, familiar, and still somehow new every time. You feel him exhale against you, a quiet sound that sinks into your skin.

When you pull back, he looks at you again and cups your cheek like you’re something precious.

“I’m glad you’re okay with this,” he says.

“I’m okay,” you say, and kiss the corner of his mouth. “I’m… actually kind of relieved.”

His brow furrows. “Relieved?”

You roll your eyes, because you refuse to be poetic about it. “Yeah. It’s out, and they didn’t—” You falter, just a flicker. “They didn’t look at you like you were making a mistake.”

His expression softens.

“No,” he agrees. “They didn’t. I told you they wouldn’t.”

You nod once. “And you were right. So, I’m good.”

“Good,” he echoes, but his thumb keeps stroking your cheek like he doesn’t want to let the moment go.

Your gaze drops to his mouth again. His eyes follow it, and his breathing changes — subtle, but you know him by heart now.

You smirk and lean in closer until your lips are brushing with every breath. “And hey, now that the team knows, we don’t have to pretend we’re not together every second of the day anymore,” you tease.

His voice goes a little rough. “We still shouldn’t, uh, do anything at work, you know.”

“Obviously,” you say, like you’re offended he even suggested it. “But we’re not at work right now, are we?”

He shudders softly as his hands slide from your waist to your lower back, drawing you closer like he’s been waiting all night to do this without consequence.

“No,” he murmurs. “We’re not.”

You kiss him again, deeper this time. He gives in completely, following your lead with that sweet, earnest hunger that always makes you feel a little wicked and a little adored at the same time.

When you finally break apart, you’re both breathing differently. He rests his forehead against yours, eyes half-lidded.

“I’m still sorry,” he whispers.

“Don’t be,” you say. “It’ll make a good story someday.”

His throat works. His hands tighten on you like he needs the confirmation in his bones.

You press your mouth to his once more, slow and sure, just to make the point stick.

“Case closed,” you murmur against his lips.

Spencer’s smile turns soft and helpless. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Mystery solved.”

ᝰ.ᐟ

→ next part

this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️

If you zoom in very closely, you can (almost) make out the name I gave her (in my head she's her own character but that's mainly because our personalities are so different lol)

(I attempted to capture the photos referenced in limited exposure)

happy valentine's day everyone, go read a spencer reid fic to celebrate like I am lol

Morgan is leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped tight enough that his knuckles have gone pale. He looks like he’s aged ten years since this morning. 

“He woke up once,” he says quietly. “Couple seconds. Doctor said that’s good.”

You nod without looking away from Spencer. “Good.”

“He’s gonna be okay.”

You try to hum some sort of acknowledgement, some half-hearted agreement you don’t entirely mean because at this point you can’t really know if that’s true, but no sound comes out. Instead, you reach for Spencer’s hand.

His fingers are warm. The plastic hospital bracelet brushes your wrist when you thread your fingers through his, and you feel almost burned by it. Spencer is supposed to have ink smudged on his hands and paper cuts from case files and maybe chalk dust from a man impromptu lecture no one asked him to give. He is not supposed to look fragile under a hospital blanket.

Morgan studies your face for a second, then stands.

“I’m gonna grab some coffee,” he says.

You don’t point out the fact that he already has a half-full coffee cup in his hand. You just nod.

At the door, he pauses. “He was asking about you earlier. Before they brought him here.”

Your grip tightens around Spencer’s hand.

“Just thought you should know,” he says.

Then he leaves, and the room gets even quieter.

You sit there with Spencer’s hand in yours and stare at his face until the anger sharpens again, because anger is a much easier emotion for you to deal with than fear. 

“You absolute idiot,” you whisper.

He doesn’t answer.

—

You had been with Rossi and Emily when you found out.

The day had already felt a bit off-kilter since it started. Anthrax in a park in Annapolis. Dead civilians, sick children, hypermasculine military personnel taking over the BAU and breathing down everyone’s necks. Dr. Kimura from the CDC explained the intensity of this strain in a voice so calm it made the information hard to process. The team had swallowed Cipro in a lame attempt at some sense of control, then scattered across the Washington metropolitan area trying to build a profile before the unsub executed another attack.

You went with Reid and Dr. Kimura to the hospital earlier. You noticed the way his inflection turned clinical as he talked about infection rates and symptom onset, the way his eyes stayed focused on the numbers in the patients’ charts because if he let himself see them as people for too long, he’d feel all of it. You saw the way his focus faltered around Abby, a young woman who just wanted to go on a bike ride around the park and was now experiencing aphasia and severe respiratory distress as she tried to stay alive long enough for a cure to be found. You desperately wanted to touch the back of Spencer’s wrist as you walked beside him in the hallway, but you chose not to, because you were surrounded on all sides by sick people and your relationship did not belong in the middle of it.

You regretted that choice later.

Of all the stupid things to regret, that was the one your brain kept returning to. The touch you hadn’t taken. The two seconds of warmth you’d decided could wait.

By early afternoon, you and Emily were with Rossi following a lead away from the rest of the team, chasing down information on Dr. Lawrence Nichols, a disgraced military scientist who’d been downgraded to working on the flu. Emily was having a tough time with the casual deception a case like this required, so you were talking with her beside the parked SUV when Rossi got a call from Hotch. You watched him out of the corner of your eye as his expression changed and his gaze flicked quickly toward you before it shifted away again.

It was small. Practically nothing. A slight narrowing of his eyes. An almost imperceptible shift.

But still, your stomach went cold.

“What?” you asked.

Rossi lifted one finger, still listening to Hotch on the other end.

Your voice came out sharper. “Rossi.”

He lowered the phone. “Morgan and Reid went to check out Nichols’ house.”

You waited.

Rossi’s jaw tightened. “Nichols is dead. The house is contaminated with anthrax.”

For a second, your hearing went thin, and the whole street seemed to drop underwater. Emily shifted beside you. A car passed behind the SUV, tires hissing against pavement, and all of it reached you half a second late. Emily said something, but you didn’t catch it. Your eyes were fixed on Rossi because you knew there was more coming. You’ve been around the block enough times to know that people always pause before saying the worst part out loud, as if a few seconds of silence can soften the impact of devastation.

“Reid discovered the body and the exposure site inside,” Rossi said. “He sealed himself in before Morgan could enter.”

All at once, heat rushed up the back of your neck. Your hand went tight around the car door handle you hadn’t realized you were holding. Somewhere at the edge of your vision, Emily went still.

“Is he in decontamination protocol now? Or is he already at the hospital?” 

Rossi didn’t answer fast enough, which was an answer in itself.

You turned away from both of them and walked three steps before bending forward, hands braced on your knees as you searched for breath.

Emily approached cautiously.

“I’m fine,” you snapped automatically.

“That’s not what I asked. I said Hotch wants to talk to you.”

You straightened slowly, smoothed your hands down your blazer, and took the phone from her.

“Tell me exactly what’s going on,” you said too fast as soon as you got the phone up to your ear.

Hotch did. He gave you all the facts he had: Nichols had been dead for days. There was anthrax spilled in the lab and the AC was blasting it through the house. Definitely a homicide, and whoever killed Nichols was likely responsible for the recent attacks. Reid had gone inside and accidentally stumbled upon the scene, shutting Morgan out before he could follow him inside. Kimura and the CDC team were on their way with protective equipment and a decon shower, but Reid was refusing to leave, instead insisting on working the profile from inside since he was already exposed. 

Already exposed.

“What do you mean, he’s refusing to leave? You’re his boss, Hotch. Make him leave.”

Hotch’s voice stayed even, but there was strain under it. “He believes there may be an antidote or identifying information on the partner inside the house. He’s continuing to work the scene until one or both of those things are located.”

You pinched the skin between your brows. “Get him on this call for me.”

Emily turned fully toward you then. Rossi was watching with the careful stillness of someone standing near a live wire. Hotch said nothing.

You swallowed hard. “Hotch, transfer me to Reid’s phone, now. I think we all know he won’t answer if I call him myself, and I need to talk some sense into him.”

“He’s working.”

“Hotch. Please.”

The silence that followed was very, very loaded.

Then Hotch said, “Give me a minute.”

You lowered the phone a little and stared at nothing for a second. Your chest felt too tight, your blood too loud, every part of your body braced for impact. Emily came to stand beside you, but she didn’t try to touch you, and you appreciated that more than you could say.

“He’s going to do everything he can to find the cure and track down the unsub and get out of there,” she said.

“I know.”

“He’s Reid. If there’s something in that house to find, he’ll find it.”

“I know.”

And you did know. That was the problem. You knew him so well there was no room to be surprised. Spencer would knowingly stay in a room full of anthrax because people were dying and he had a chance to stop it. He would put his lungs and brain and life on the line to prevent the person responsible for the prior attacks and Nichols’ death from taking any more lives. You’d expect nothing less from Spencer Reid, and right now, you hated him for it.

A muffled voice came through the phone before you could fully catch your breath.

When you lifted it back to your ear, you heard movement first. Then Spencer.

“Hi.”

He sounded too normal.

You gripped the phone so hard your fingers hurt. “Do not hi me right now, Spencer Reid.”

A tiny pause. Then, softer, “Okay.”

“Are you symptomatic?”

“Not really.”

“Spencer,” you said.

“I’m okay right now,” he said, before you could ask again. “Kimura’s team is coming in soon. We’re currently in a limited window where I’m still useful and the scene is still viable.”

“Oh, goodie. Well, as long as you’re useful, everything’s just fine then,” you bit out.

“Sweetheart,” he said softly, “you know what I mean.”

Emily looked away. Rossi did too, like they were granting you privacy by pretending not to hear the sharpness in your voice.

Spencer was quiet for a second. You pictured him inside Nichols’ house, phone held close, hair falling in his face. You pictured powder on the floor, sealed doors. You pictured him alone in there.

“I found a second workspace,” he said. “There’s a bunch of notebooks filled with different handwriting, so it definitely doesn’t belong to Nichols. Whoever this desk belongs to is probably our unsub.”

You wanted to scream.

Instead, you leaned your forehead against the SUV door and forced yourself to breathe through your nose. “You need to go to the hospital.”

“I will.”

“Now, Spence.”

He paused. “I’ll go as soon as I can.”

Your throat tightened. 

“You do realize you’re a person too, right?” you asked. “Not just a brain with a badge and a duty to uphold.”

Despite everything, you heard the faintest breath of a laugh. “I’m aware.”

“Great. Then act like it.”

“I am acting like it,” he said, and there it was, his signature stubbornness. “Leaving now wouldn’t make me safer in any meaningful way if we still can’t identify the unsub and still don’t have an antidote for the strain. If I can figure it out from in here, there’s a chance we can save the patients at the hospital, and me.”

You pressed your free hand over your eyes.

“Don’t do that,” you said.

“Do what?”

“Make sense.”

His quiet inhale caught slightly. Maybe from the anthrax, or maybe from you. It was hard to tell.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“But you’re still staying.”

“For now,” he said.

You sighed softly and rubbed your temple with your free hand. “You’re so frustrating.”

“I know.”

“And arrogant.”

“I can be, on occasion.”

“And so ungodly, unbelievably stupid.”

“Well, technically, I’m quantifiably a genius, although I don’t believe—”

“Spencer.”

“I know you’re angry with me,” he said quietly.

“You have no idea how much.”

“Well, I think I have some idea. I know you.”

“No, you really don’t.” You looked down at your boots. “Because if you did, you’d be walking out of that house right now.”

His voice went softer. “If I thought walking out was the thing most likely to get me back to you, I would. I promise you, I would.”

That took every bit of air out of you.

Spencer didn’t rush to fill the silence. He just let the words sit there, awful and sincere and completely unfair.

Then he said, “I’m not trying to scare you.”

“Well, you’re doing a damn good job for someone who isn’t trying,” you replied. You blinked hard, furious at your body for even considering tears when rage was so much more useful.

“Listen to me,” you said. “Find what you need to find, and then you get the hell out. No extra detours or noble self-sacrificing bullshit. Got it?”

“I’ll be careful,” he said.

There was more noise on his end now. Another voice. Hotch, maybe, through the sealed door closing him inside. 

“I have to go,” Spencer said, pausing before he added: “I love you.”

You dug your fingernails into your palm.

“Don’t say it like that,” you whispered.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re only saying it in case it’s the last thing I hear from you.”

He took a shaky breath. “I’m saying it because it’s true,” he said firmly. “And because I want to say it. That’s all, okay? I love you.”

You swallowed, and when you spoke again, your voice was steadier than you felt. “I love you too. Stop being a hero and get back to me.”

“I will.”

The line clicked dead a second later.

You kept the phone against your ear long after there was nothing left to hear.

—

The next time Spencer let himself think about you, really think about you, he was sitting on the floor with poison in the air and sweat cooling at the back of his neck.

By then, his body had started showing signs of distress. The cough had come first, small enough that he tried to classify it as irritation from the environment, from dust, from the pollen in the garden outside. Then came the ache behind his eyes, the heat under his skin, the faint tremor in his hand that he could ignore if he kept it busy, if he kept turning pages, pulling drawers open, reading notes, forcing pieces of Dr. Nichols’ life into order.

He was aware of each symptom with miserable precision. He knew exactly what they meant. He also knew the unsub was still out there with a larger attack planned, so his personal awareness changed nothing. His body could be evidence later. Right now, he had work to do.

Still, there came a point when he had to step back and admit how serious things had gotten.

Garcia’s voice shook through the phone when he asked her to record a message for his mother. She tried to be brave about it. He could hear the effort it took, could picture her sitting at her desk with all that color and joy around her while despair leaked through anyway. 

He recorded his message to Diana as steadily as he could.

He said all the things a son should say when he’s trying very hard to say goodbye without sounding like he’s saying goodbye. He kept his voice gentle. He tried not to cough in the middle of it. He nearly failed once, clearing his throat to get the urge to pass. When he finished, Garcia was silent for a few seconds.

“Okay,” she said finally, and he could hear the tears in her voice. “Okay, I got it.”

Spencer swallowed. He was covered in a sheen of sweat. His throat hurt. Everything hurt, actually, in a diffuse, widespread way he disliked for its lack of specificity. “Garcia?”

“Yeah, boy wonder?”

He closed his eyes.

He had been trying not to ask. He had been trying to tell himself that the message to his mother was already indulgent enough, that he did not have the right to take more time away from the case for something that served no immediate operational purpose. But the thought of you never getting to hear his voice again if this went badly kept pressing against the inside of his ribs until it became impossible to ignore.

“Can you, uh, record one more message for me?”

Garcia inhaled sharply.

“Oh,” she whispered, understanding immediately. “Of course. Yeah, of course I can.”

Spencer opened his eyes and looked around the room. Papers were spread across the floor in front of him, Dr. Nichols’ handwriting scrawled across margins and folders and binders. Somewhere outside, people were moving around in protective suits, building a perimeter, preparing to come in as soon as they could. Out in the field somewhere, you were trying to work despite your fury and fear. He knew that with the same certainty he knew his own name, the same certainty with which he could recite the periodic table in order by atomic number. You were angry because you were scared. You were scared because you loved him. That thought — that you loved him — probably should have brought some comfort; instead, it made his chest ache worse than the cough did.

“Ready whenever you are,” Garcia said, softly enough that it almost didn’t sound like her.

Spencer tried to take a breath deep enough to steady himself. It caught halfway down. He turned aside, coughed hard into his elbow, and waited for the room to stop tilting.

Then he looked down at his hands, at the pale dust along his cuffs, at the pulse ticking too fast beneath his skin, and began.

“Hi,” he said simply, because every other possible opening sounded wrong — either too formal, or too casual, or too final. He let out a breath that was almost a laugh and tried again. “You’re going to hate this. I know that. You’re probably already furious with me, and you’ve got every right to be, so if this message makes you even more furious, I’m sorry.

“I just need you to know that I wasn’t trying to be a martyr. I know you’ll think that’s what it was, some ‘noble self-sacrificing bullshit’ like you called it earlier, but that’s not what this is for me.” He paused, eyes stinging. “I keep thinking if I find the right thing fast enough, if I can connect the dots, then maybe we can stop the next attack and everyone at the hospital would have a chance. Maybe I would, too.

“And I keep thinking about you. I don’t know if that helps or makes it worse, but I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I thought about you being mad at me, and about the way you must’ve been rolling your eyes when we were on the phone earlier, and about your apartment, and the coffee you pretend to like when I make it too sweet, and the way you look at me when you think I’m not paying attention.”

A cough broke through him. He bent forward, eyes squeezed shut, one hand braced against the floor. It took too long to stop. When he lifted the phone again, his voice had gone hoarse around the edges.

“I wanted more time with you,” he said. “I wanted more ordinary days. That’s— that’s what I keep coming back to, which is strange, because technically, ordinary days are the least remarkable kind, but I think those are the ones I’ll miss the most. You at my desk stealing pens, and you pretending not to smile when I say something you think is ridiculous, and you falling asleep before the end of a movie and denying it in the morning. 

“And if you’re hearing this, I know you’re going to want to do the thing where you decide this proves some terrible theory you’ve always had about what happens when you let people matter too much, but…”

His eyes burned. Because of the fever, maybe. Heartbreak, definitely.

“Don’t do that. Please, please don’t do that. Don’t let this be the reason you shut everyone out. I know it took a lot for you to let me in, and I know asking this is unfair, and I hate that I can’t say it to you in person, but I need you to keep letting people love you. You have to let them stay.”

He coughed again, violent enough this time to make his whole chest seize. 

“The team loves you,” he said. “You know that. Garcia will smother you with affection and care packages. Morgan will check on you constantly and won’t even pretend to act cool about it. JJ will know when you’re lying about being fine before you can finish a sentence, so don’t try. Emily will sit beside you casually and pretend she isn’t worried, because she knows you hate being handled.” A faint, broken smile pulled at his mouth. “Rossi will feed you, so get ready to eat a lot of pasta. Hotch will give you space and somehow still make sure you’re never truly alone.”

He swallowed hard.

“And Elle… Call her. Please. She was there once when you needed her. Let her be there for you again.”

The words felt intrusive, maybe, as if he was reaching into parts of your life he had no right to touch. But if this was all he got, if this recording became the last shape his love ever took, he needed it to be honest.

“I don’t want you to be alone,” he said, voice breaking. “I don’t want you to decide that losing me means you were right to keep the door locked. I can’t bear it, so please, do this for me.”

He pressed his thumb into the crease of his palm until the tremor in it settled.

“I love you. I know you know that. I know I say it all the time now, probably too much, and if I get out of here you can complain about that for the rest of our lives and I won’t argue with you. But if I don’t,” he said, forcing himself through it, “then I need you to know that loving you was never something I regretted. Not for one second. And being loved by you was… it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

A sound came suddenly from outside the room. Movement. Voices. The heavy plastic rustle of protective equipment. He looked up and saw shapes gathering beyond the doorway, bright orange suits and face shields and Dr. Kimura’s focused eyes as her team entered the house.

He looked back down at the phone. There was so much more he wanted to say. There would always be so much more. That was the terrible thing about loving you — no matter what he said, it could never be enough to cover it.

“I have to go,” he said. “I’m going to try very hard to make sure you never have to hear this.”

Then, quieter:

“I love you. I really, really love you. Keep letting people in, okay?”

Garcia made a tiny broken sound through the phone, then cut the recording and the call before he could hear her cry.

—

The day stitched together in pieces after that.

Rossi and Emily kept you updated as information moved through the team, and Morgan called whenever there was a concrete update on what was going on in the house. Garcia called once too, telling you they had a name now — Chad Brown — and that Reid had been right about Nichols not working alone. There was a protégé. A student. A man with knowledge and access and ideology and rage.

You remember standing with your arms folded so tightly across your chest that your shoulders started to ache. You remember Emily offering you water and you pretending not to hear her. You remember Rossi telling you to sit down, not as an order, but in that low, paternal way of his that made you want to be even more difficult on principle. You remember staring at your phone until your eyes burned, as if your fear could force Spencer’s name to appear on the screen.

Mostly, you remember waiting.

When Hotch finally called, his voice was steady. They had Brown. The attack on the Metro had been stopped. Reid and Kimura’s team found what they needed. Reid was out of the house and had been decontaminated. Paramedics had transported him to the hospital where the treatment was being prepared, and Kimura was hopeful, and they would know more soon. 

“Is he conscious?” you asked.

“Last we heard, yes,” Hotch said, and the words scraped through you. “Morgan is on the way to Walter Reed now to see what’s going on.”

You wanted to ask if Spencer had asked for you, but you didn’t. It felt too naked, somehow. Too pathetic. So you just said, “I’m on my way,” and Hotch didn’t waste anyone’s time pretending he could stop you.

Garcia found you before you made it out of the building.

She looked wrecked. Her mascara had smudged at the corners, and she had one hand wrapped around a cup of coffee she clearly hadn’t touched. She stopped in front of you like she wanted to hug you, then thought better of it, although it looked like that decision pained her immensely.

“He really, really loves you,” she said quietly.

The words were so abrupt, so earnest, that for a second you could only stare at her.

“I know,” you said.

Garcia nodded too fast. “I know you know. I just—” Her mouth trembled, and she pressed it together. “I just needed to make sure. I wanted you to hear it.”

Something about her face made your chest tighten. There was more to it — something she wasn’t saying, something she was holding back. You could see it in the way she looked at you, nervous and guilty and gentle all at once.

But Penelope Garcia, for all her usual glitter and gossip and inability to mind her own business, could keep a secret when it really mattered.

So you let her.

You just reached for her hand, squeezed once, and pushed through the doors to the parking lot.

—

Now, as you sit in an ungodly stiff chair next to his hospital bed, Spencer’s fingers move against yours.

It’s small. Barely anything. An involuntary twitch, maybe. But it’s enough of a movement to assume it could mean something bigger if you’re desperate enough, and apparently you are, because you go still so suddenly Morgan looks up from the cup of red Jell-O he’s been eating with a plastic spoon.

“Reid?” Morgan says.

Spencer’s brow furrows.

For a second, nothing happens. Then his eyes open slowly, heavy and unfocused at first. He blinks up at the ceiling like he’s trying very hard to decipher what type of room the ceiling belongs to.

Morgan moves, relief breaking over his face. “Hey, kid.”

Spencer’s gaze shifts toward him. It takes effort. Everything about his movements right now looks like it takes effort.

His voice comes out rough. “Are you eating Jell-O?”

Morgan cracks a wide grin. “Man, you almost die from a bioweapon and this is what you wake up concerned about?”

Spencer blinks slowly. “Is there any more Jell-O?”

Your laugh escapes before you can stop it. It’s small and wet and humiliating, and Spencer’s eyes move immediately toward the sound.

The drowsy confusion in his face shifts, turning into something so relieved and so sorry that all the air you just got back leaves you again.

“Hi,” he says.

You swallow. “Hi.”

Morgan looks between the two of you for half a second, then pushes himself out of his chair. “I’m gonna go tell Dr. Kimura that Sleeping Beauty here is awake,” he says. “And apparently find more Jell-O.”

Spencer’s mouth twitches faintly. “Green, if they have it.”

“You’re lucky I’m pretty much obligated to be nice to you right now,” Morgan tells him sarcastically, but his hand lands on Spencer’s shoulder for a second before he leaves, firm and warm and full of things he’ll probably never say out loud.

Then the door closes behind him and the room is quiet again, but it isn’t the same quiet as before, because Spencer’s awake now. His eyes are open. His fingers are caught between yours, weak but there, his thumb making the smallest attempt to move against your skin.

There’s too many feelings to parse through. Relief, first. Relief so enormous it can barely fit inside your body, but somehow it does, pressing against the anger and terror and frustration you also feel, against all the miserable little aftershocks of the day. 

For a moment, you just look at him.

He looks terrible. Pale, sweaty, hair mussed, lips dry, throat probably raw from coughing and whatever else his body has been through. He also looks alive.

You want to kiss him.

You want to hit him.

You settle for tightening your hold on his hand and saying, very evenly, “I’m so mad at you.”

Spencer closes his eyes for a second.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t,” you say. “You really, truly do not. I possess levels of anger right now that are previously unrecorded in modern psychiatry.”

His mouth curves faintly, but it fades almost immediately. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

Spencer looks at you for a long second. “I’m sorry for what it did to you,” he says. His voice is rough and low, dragged out of a throat that still isn’t ready to cooperate. “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, and I’m sorry that when I did, I couldn’t tell you what you wanted to hear.” He pauses, breathing carefully. “But if I had left before we found what we needed, people could have died.”

You stare at the bed rail.

You know the exact reason behind the choice he made, because you’ve made choices with the same bones. Spencer’s been on the other side of this with you before. Not with anthrax in your lungs, obviously, but in basements and alleys and warehouses and too many places where you put the job before your own safety without a second thought. 

You hate that. You hate him a little for making it impossible to be purely angry.

“I know,” you say, voice quieter now. “I know you’re right. Or close enough to right that I can’t even enjoy being mad at you properly.”

Spencer gives you a weak, exhausted almost-smile. “I’m sorry for that too.”

You look back at him, and the sight of him ruins you all over again.

“You could have died, Spencer,” you manage to say in a hoarse whisper.

His expression changes. The humor disappears, what little there was of it. His fingers tighten around yours with visible effort.

Your voice shakes, and that irritates you enough to make your eyes burn. “I know you. I know you weren’t actually trying to be some self-sacrificing hero, even though you have a very irritating talent for landing there by accident. I know I probably would’ve done the same thing, which is frustrating because it makes my moral high ground very unstable.” You inhale, careful and shaky. “But I was so scared, Spencer. I was so scared I couldn’t pretend to be normal about it.”

He looks at you like that sentence hurts him worse than anything else.

“I thought about that too much,” he says.

You frown. “About what?”

“You. Being scared.” His eyes drift down to your joined hands. “I thought about you being angry, and about you pretending you weren’t afraid because Rossi and Emily were there. I kept thinking…” His brow creases faintly, concentration pulling through the haze. “I kept thinking if I could just find the answer, then maybe I’d get back to you before anyone else could see your fear. I knew you’d hate it if they could.”

You let out a breath that breaks in the middle. Your free hand lifts before you really decide to move, fingers hovering near his face. He watches you do it, quiet and trusting, and that almost makes it worse.

You brush his hair back from his forehead, and his eyes close.

The simple trust of it dismantles you a little. You had spent the whole day imagining him behind sealed doors, breathing poisoned air, making logical arguments while his body betrayed him by degrees. Now he’s here, under your hand, alive and exhausted and still somehow trying to be gentle with you when he’s the one in the hospital bed.

“I love you,” you say. “And I genuinely hate you right now.”

Spencer’s eyes open again, slow and soft. “That seems pretty fair.”

Your laugh comes out wet. You look away, but he squeezes your hand before you can get far.

“I love you too,” he says. “And I know it doesn’t make it better, but I was trying to make sure I could get back to you. That was the point. I know it looked like I was choosing the work over everything else, but I wasn’t. The work was my way out.”

You turn back toward him.

He looks exhausted by the length of his own words, breaths a little uneven, but his eyes stay on yours. 

“I know,” you whisper, because you do. “I know, Spence.”

You lean forward carefully, giving him time to shift away if he needs to, but he doesn’t. He tilts his face up the smallest amount, and you press your mouth to his.

The kiss is soft by necessity. There’s no heat in it, not really — not the kind the two of you are used to. His lips are chapped and warm and careful beneath yours, and for one long, holy second, all you can focus on is that you get to do this again. You get to kiss him in a hospital bed and hate the reason for it, but you still have him here to kiss. You get the fragile press of his mouth, the weak squeeze of his fingers around yours, the proof that his body is still a living thing and not a memory you’ll spend the rest of your life surviving. It isn’t enough to undo the day, but it gives your fear and love somewhere to go. It’s a promise made with whatever energy he has left.

When you pull back, your forehead rests near his temple.

“You scared the hell out of me,” you murmur.

“I know.

“If you ever do that again, I will murder you myself.”

“I know.”

“You’re impossible.”

“I know.”

You pull back enough to glare at him. “Normally you’d argue with at least one of those.”

His tired smile is tiny and perfect. “I’m conserving my energy.”

The door opens after a soft knock, and Dr. Kimura steps in with Morgan hovering behind her, a green Jell-O cup in one hand and a fresh coffee in the other.

“Look who I found,” Morgan says.

Spencer nods at Dr. Kimura before his gaze flicks to the Jell-O. “Is that for me?”

Morgan chuckles. “Yeah, kid, it’s for you.”

You wipe quickly under one eye with your thumb and try to regain whatever dignity you can scrape off the floor.

Kimura checks Spencer over. Vitals, pupils, lungs, cognitive questions he answers with enough impressive precision to make Kimura’s eyebrows lift. Morgan stays near the doorway, and you don’t let go of Spencer’s hand the entire time.

Eventually, the room settles again.

Morgan leaves the Jell-O on the tray and tells Spencer not to be a pain in the ass to you or any of the nurses. Dr. Kimura tells him he’s on the mend but needs a lot of rest, and Spencer nods, probably because he knows you wouldn’t give him a choice anyway.

Once it’s just the two of you alone in the room again, your anger has gone a bit quieter. It’s still there, and knowing you, it’ll probably stay there for a while, tucked stubbornly behind your ribs, ever-present but currently overshadowed by disgusting amounts of relief and love.

Spencer’s eyes are already slipping closed.

“Sleep,” you say.

“Will you stay?”

You sit back and wrap both hands around his. “Yeah, genius, I’ll stay. Obviously.”

The corner of his mouth turns up into a crooked, sleepy smile. “Good.”

It takes less than a minute for him to fall asleep again.

This time, watching him sleep doesn’t feel like waiting for the floor to disappear beneath you. His breathing is still rougher than you’d like, and his face is still too pale, but the monitor keeps a steady rhythm. Alive. Alive. Alive. His fingers are warm under yours, and there’s a green Jell-O cup sitting unopened on the tray because, apparently, even near-death experiences cannot kill Spencer Reid’s bizarre snack preferences. You know he’ll ask for a spoon as soon as he’s awake again and his appetite comes back.

You do not know about the recording.

You do not know that somewhere, locked carefully behind Garcia’s cyberdefenses, there is a version of his voice trying to love you through the worst possible outcome. You do not know that he spent the better part of what might’ve been his last hour on earth trying to make sure you would be okay. 

But maybe it’s better you don’t know.

You don’t need the version of him that said goodbye. You need this one: alive, stubborn, fever-warm, breathing steadily with Jell-O waiting untouched beside him.

His fingers twitch against yours again in sleep.

You keep holding on. You hold on, and you stay. ᝰ.ᐟ

this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️

The room goes silent.

You look very deliberately at the anatomical poster of lungs on the wall instead of at Spencer.

He clears his throat.

“Doctor, would there be,” he asks, in the tone of a man trying very hard to sound like a normal person, “any concern about strain depending on positioning?”

The doctor nods thoughtfully. “Not particularly, but use common sense. If anything causes sharp pain, stop. Otherwise, there’s no medical reason to avoid it.”

You make a soft sound of despair.

The doctor smiles like this is all adorable instead of excruciating, gives you a few more instructions about physical therapy and scar care, and sends you on your way.

By the time Spencer gets you back to the car, your pride is on life support.

He starts the engine. Adjusts the air. Keeps both hands on the wheel.

Does not look at you.

Interesting.

You buckle in slowly, then turn to study his profile. “Are you going to pretend that didn’t just happen all the way home?”

Spencer’s grip on the steering wheel tightens by a fraction. “I’m not pretending anything. I’m driving.”

You glare out the windshield. Traffic inches forward. Somewhere up ahead, somebody leans on their horn.

The silence stretches just long enough to get weird.

Then Spencer says, very carefully, “If I embarrassed you, it wasn’t intentional.”

“You absolutely did embarrass me,” you say. “Just so we’re clear.”

His mouth twitches. “I know. I’m sorry.”

The apology is sincere enough to take the heat out of your irritation.

You shift carefully in your seat, one hand resting near your scar out of habit. Weeks of almosts flicker through your mind before you can stop them: Spencer’s hand lingering at your waist while helping you out of bed. A kiss in the kitchen that got hotter than either of you meant it to and ended with both of you breathing like idiots. Falling asleep beside him and waking up painfully aware of how hard he was against you.

You glance at him again. He catches it this time.

His voice is quieter when he says, “Are you okay?”

You look at the road ahead and answer honestly enough. “Yeah. I’m just never going to recover from hearing you ask my doctor about sex positions.”

That gets a laugh out of him, startled and soft. “It was medically relevant!”

“You’re such a loser.”

The light ahead turns red. Spencer reaches across the console and takes your hand without looking at you. His thumb brushes once over your knuckles, grounding and absentminded and familiar.

Your pulse does something deeply unhelpful.

When he lifts your hand and presses one quick kiss to the back of it before the light changes, you stare at him for a second too long.

—

That night, sleep gets hold of you slowly.

You drift under with the doctor’s voice still somewhere in the back of your mind, absurd and clinical and impossible to scrub out. Resume sexual activity. Including intercourse. No medical reason to avoid it. You hate that those phrases followed you home. You hate even more that Spencer spent the rest of the day being so perfectly normal about them that it somehow made everything worse. He made dinner. He asked if you wanted tea. He kissed your forehead before bed like a gentleman in a nineteenth-century novel and then laid beside you with both hands respectfully to himself, which should have been considerate and instead felt vaguely like psychological warfare.

So when your subconscious finally gives up and takes over, it does so with very little patience.

Now, his mouth is already on yours.

Hot, deep, and unhurried in a way that feels almost cruel, because he knows exactly how long you’ve both been waiting and is taking his time anyway. One of his hands is braced beside your head; the other is sliding slowly up your thigh, deliberate enough to make your whole body tighten around the wanting of it.

You make a helpless sound into his mouth and he swallows it like he’s starving.

There’s nothing careful about him here. No polite restraint. No respectful distance. Just Spencer, warm and solid over you, kissing you like he finally got tired of being good. His mouth drags from yours to your throat, then lower, and the scrape of his breath across your skin sends a sharp pulse of heat through your stomach. His fingers slide higher. Your back arches before you can stop it. He makes that low sound he only ever makes when you catch him off guard, and finally—

You wake up.

Dark room. Racing heart. Sheets tangled around you. Spencer asleep beside you, one arm loose over the blanket, sleeping face looking almost innocent.

Which is offensive, frankly.

You lie there for a second, staring at the ceiling, willing your body to get a grip. You’re hot everywhere and exhausted and painfully aware of the man breathing softly inches away from you.

You shift carefully, trying to settle yourself without making the mattress move too much.

Spencer makes a sleepy sound and rolls slightly toward you.

His hand lands, warm and heavy, at your waist. Not low enough to be indecent, but not innocent enough to help. He blinks awake halfway, hair a mess, eyes barely open behind the smudge of sleep.

“Y’okay?” he murmurs.

You almost laugh. “Mm-hm.”

His thumb strokes once over your side. “But you’re awake.”

“Astute observation, doc.”

He gives a drowsy little hum that might be a laugh, then presses a soft kiss to your shoulder without opening his eyes all the way. “C’mon. Go back to sleep, angel.”

The tenderness of it nearly kills you.

You manage some kind of affirmative sound and lie there stiffly until his breathing evens out again. By the time you finally drift back under, you’re more irritated than sleepy.

Morning does nothing to improve your mood.

By lunch, you are deeply tired of yourself.

Spencer notices, of course. He notices when you answer too quickly, when you mutter at the coffee maker, when you snap at a cabinet door for existing too loudly. He lets the first few things go. Lets the next few go too. By the time the sun sets, you’re in the kitchen tidying absolutely nothing with far more aggression than the task requires when he leans in the doorway and says, very carefully, “Did I do something?”

You don’t look at him. “No.”

Spencer comes a little farther into the room. “You’ve been weird all day.”

You turn and look at him flatly. “That’s rich coming from you.”

His brows draw together. “Me?”

“Yes, you.” You gesture vaguely at his whole irritatingly beautiful existence. “You’ve been acting bizarre since the appointment yesterday.”

Something flickers across his face. 

“Okay,” he says slowly. “So this is about the appointment.”

“Partly.”

Spencer folds his arms. “What’s the other part?”

You glare at him.

He waits.

You hate when he does that. Calm, patient, terrifyingly sure that if he stands there long enough, you’ll crack on your own.

“Nothing,” you mutter.

“That’s definitely not true.”

You exhale sharply through your nose and look away. “You’re just… being annoying.”

“Annoying how?”

You stare at him a moment and suck in a tight breath. “You’re being so polite and respectful that it’s looping back around into driving me insane.” The words come out too fast, almost tripping over one another.

Spencer blinks.

You push on before your pride can stop you. “Ever since the doctor said—” You cut yourself off, grimacing. “You know. Ever since then, you’ve been acting like if you touch me, a panel of experts is going to kick in my front door and revoke your boyfriend privileges. Which makes absolutely no sense, since the doctor essentially gave you permission to act exactly opposite of that.”

To your annoyance, the corner of his mouth twitches.

“This isn’t funny,” you say.

“I know.” He pauses. “It’s a little funny.”

You glare at him until the twitch fades.

Then Spencer sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I’m…” He trails off, visibly searching for the least embarrassing version of his own thoughts. “I’m trying not to make it feel like some sort of… medically approved finish line. Or a milestone we have to hit right away because somebody in a white coat told us we could.” He pauses, gaze softening into something even more earnest. “Sex with you is always a big deal to me, and I— I didn’t want it to feel forced.”

The room goes quieter around the truth of that.

You look at him for a long second, your irritation shifting shape. “That’s… annoyingly sweet. And very thoughtful,” you huff.

Spencer looks wary. “You say that like being sweet and thoughtful is a bad thing.”

“Sometimes it is a bad thing!” you tell him. “Because now you’re acting like a monk.”

His eyebrows go up. “A monk.”

“Yes. A weirdly hot, deeply annoying monk.”

That gets a laugh out of him. He ducks his head once, and the sound of it loosens something in your chest.

Then he looks back up, eyes softer now. “You know I want you. I just…”

“Just what?” you ask.

His jaw flexes. “I don’t trust myself to get this exactly right. I… I want it to be perfect.”

You let that sit for a second.

Of course that’s what this is. He’s been silently tying himself in knots because the first time after all this matters to him enough that he’s terrified of getting it wrong.

As if anything about Spencer touching you has ever felt careless. As if every time he’s ever had you hasn’t felt exactly, devastatingly right.

“Spence,” you say, quieter now. “You have literally never gotten this wrong.”

His eyes flick back to yours.

“You should give yourself a little more credit,” you add.

Something softer moves through his expression at that, but the tension in the room doesn’t entirely loosen. 

“I’m sorry I’ve been on edge all day,” you mumble. “I just… uh, didn’t sleep well. And things were already weird after the appointment, and then you spent all day acting all monastic, and it was annoying.”

Spencer’s mouth twitches. “Monastic.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.” He tilts his head slightly. “But I can see that there’s something else you’re not telling me.”

You narrow your eyes. “Don’t profile me, Reid.”

He gives you a look that says really?

You fold your arms tighter. “Drop it.”

Spencer steps a little closer. “Please, just tell me. Did I do something specific to upset you this morning?”

“No,” you say. “My annoyance started when you were still asleep.”

He blinks. “What does that mean?”

You drag your hand down your face and refuse to look at him. “It means I was already in a bad mood by the time you woke up.”

“Why?”

“Spencer.”

His voice drops. Gentle. Curious. Much too perceptive. “Why?”

You stare at the cabinet over his shoulder like it might save you. It doesn’t.

When you finally speak, it comes out flat with embarrassment. “Because I had a dream about you.”

He goes perfectly still.

You can feel the heat climbing your neck now, which is deeply humiliating and somehow still not enough to stop you from making it worse.

“A very explicit dream,” you add. “And then I woke up next to you, and you were being all sweet and sleepy and impossible, and I’ve spent the entire day trying not to lose my mind while you’ve been walking around like you’ve taken a vow of chastity.”

For one long second, Spencer just stares at you.

“Oh,” he says faintly.

You glare at him. “Yeah. Oh.”

His hand comes up to run through his hair, which should not be as attractive as it is, before taking one slow step closer. “You had a sex dream about me.”

“Please don’t say it like that.”

“How should I say it?”

“Preferably not at all.”

That almost gets a laugh out of him, but his eyes stay fixed on your face. On your mouth.

“And you’ve been angry at me ever since,” he says softly.

“Not angry.” You fold your arms tighter, then immediately regret the defensive posture. “Just… severely inconvenienced by your entire vibe today.”

Spencer huffs a quiet breath. “My vibe.”

“Yes. All of your weird, noble self-restraint bullshit.”

His gaze drops for half a second. When it lifts again, it’s darker. Less careful. “You want me to stop being noble?”

The question lands low in your stomach.

You look at him for one long second, then say, “I want you to stop acting like you have to be afraid of this.”

“That,” he says, voice rougher now, “I can do.”

You tilt your chin up. “Good.”

That does it.

He crosses the space between you and kisses you before either of you says another word, fast and warm and far less careful than he’s been in weeks. You make a startled sound into his mouth and then he’s got one hand cupping the back of your neck, the other sliding around your waist, pulling you into him with a kind of urgency that feels so familiar it almost hurts.

You kiss him back just as hard, because whatever awkward, polite, maddening restraint has been sitting between you since the doctor’s appointment goes up in smoke the second his tongue slides against yours and his grip tightens on your body like he’s finally allowing himself to remember what it feels like to want you out loud.

He backs you into the counter.

Your hips hit the edge, and Spencer catches himself immediately, pulling back just enough to search your face.

“You okay?”

You could laugh at the reflexive question if you weren’t so busy trying to catch your breath.

“Yes,” you say, and then, because his eyes still look full of concern and guilt and about ten other things, you hook a hand into the front of his shirt and drag him back in. “Spence, please.”

That does something to him.

You feel it in the low sound he makes into your mouth, in the way his hands slide over your waist and hips and ass with a greedier kind of certainty now, in the way his body presses against yours until there’s nothing left between you except clothes and frustration.

You’ve missed this. Not just his mouth, not just his hands, but the particular electricity of being wanted by him. The way he’s never casual about it. The way wanting seems to move through his whole body like a current, making him shake just a little when he’s trying too hard to hold still.

You drag your fingers through his hair and he exhales against your lips, rough and wrecked enough to make heat slide lower in your body.

Then his hands are suddenly everywhere — one at your waist, one under your thigh — and before you can fully process it, he’s lifting you.

A startled laugh breaks against his mouth. “Spencer!”

“I know,” he murmurs, sounding like he absolutely does not know anything except that he needs you closer.

You hook your arms around his neck automatically, and he kisses you all the way down the hall, slow one second and hungry the next, like he keeps getting distracted by the fact that this is really happening. By the time he reaches the bed, both of you are breathing harder, the room suddenly too warm, the air charged with all the weeks of not doing this.

He sits on the edge of the mattress with you still in his arms, settling you into his lap like muscle memory.

You straddle him carefully, and for one suspended second, neither of you moves at all.

You can feel how hard he already is beneath you. He can definitely feel how wet you are. The realization lands between you like a match struck in the dark, and both of you go a little quieter with it.

Then Spencer lifts his hands to your face and kisses you again, slower now.

His fingers eventually slip under the hem of your shirt, and your breath catches. He peels the fabric up slowly, reverently, exposing skin inch by inch until he tosses it aside and just… looks at you.

Not at your breasts at first, though he notices those (obviously). Not at the waistband of your pants, though his hands twitch toward it. Instead, his gaze drifts to the scar on your side.

You suck in a sharp breath.

It isn’t that he hasn’t seen it before. He has, in bathroom fluorescents and early-morning light and the thin gray blur before dawn. He’s seen it while helping you change bandages, while handing you clean shirts, while pretending very valiantly not to stare as you step out of the shower.

But this is different.

This is the first time he’s looking at it with his hands already warm on your skin and his mouth pink from kissing you and want written so plainly across his face that you can’t hide from it. This is the first time the scar is here, in this moment, as part of something hungry instead of something clinical.

Some small, stupid muscle deep in your body braces before you can stop it.

Spencer notices, because of course he does.

His expression softens. He lifts one hand and traces the skin near the scar with the backs of his fingers, light enough to make you shiver. Then he bends his head and presses a kiss just above it.

Nothing dramatic or mournful. Just warm mouth, careful breath, and the kind of tenderness that makes your eyes sting before you can stop them.

He feels you react and looks up instantly. “Sorry, should I— Would you rather I didn’t?”

You shake your head too fast. “No, no. It’s not that.”

Spencer waits.

You swallow. “It just feels… different.”

Understanding moves through his face so gently it almost hurts. 

His thumb strokes once over your waist. He nods softly, then he bends again.

This time, he lets his mouth linger. One slow kiss over the scar itself, then another just below it, then one at the curve of your ribs beside it, unhurried and unafraid and so heartbreakingly natural that whatever you’d been bracing for just… dissolves.

Not because he makes it disappear, but because he doesn’t.

Because he folds it into the wanting of you without making it something tragic or fragile or strange. Because he touches it like it belongs exactly where it is: on your body, in his hands, in this moment, as much a part of being wanted as any other inch of your skin.

Your fingers thread into his hair.

“Spencer,” you whisper.

He looks up, and there’s so much raw emotion on his face that your chest goes tight all over again.

“I need you to stop being perfect for, like, one second, or else I’m gonna explode.”

A startled, breathless laugh slips out of him. He ducks his head once, almost shy, then looks back at you with his mouth still curved.

“I’m just being myself,” he says.

You narrow your eyes. “Exactly.”

He laughs, then mouths at your breast over the thin lace of your bra, and all coherent thoughts leave your body.

A broken moan escapes before you can stop it. Spencer groans softly at the sound and does it again, more deliberate this time, his tongue teasing through the fabric until your hips roll against him and he slides one hand around to your ass to help you move.

Your head falls back. The room spins pleasantly.

It’s not enough. Nothing about this feels like enough after waiting this long.

Your hands fumble with the buttons of his shirt, and he helps with shaking fingers, both of you half-laughing at how badly your coordination has abandoned you. By the time the shirt is open and pushed off his shoulders, you’re almost dizzy with relief.

His chest. His skin. His stupidly beautiful body, warm and solid under your hands.

You drag your palms over him, down his chest and stomach, and Spencer sucks in a breath that makes you feel downright vindicated.

“Missed this?” you tease.

He looks at you with pupils blown wide. “You have no idea.”

You hum. “Try me.”

Spencer takes his glasses off and drops them onto the nightstand with a clatter that would’ve made him twitch on any normal day. Then he cups your breasts through your bra with both hands, thumbs brushing over your nipples until they harden further under the lace.

“I’ve been trying,” he says quietly, and his voice has gone rough enough to make your thighs clench. “Every single day.”

Heat flashes through you.

You kiss him before he can see too much of that on your face, grinding down against him with a little more pressure this time. Spencer swears into your mouth and his hands tighten on you immediately.

“That,” he says, breathless, “is not fair.”

You do it again.

“Who said anything about fair?”

His laugh catches halfway to becoming a groan. Then he drags your bra straps down your shoulders before undoing the clasp and easing it off you with a slowness that makes your skin feel tight. The second he sees you bare, his whole face changes to that particular Spencer look, the one that says he’s overwhelmed by wanting and trying very hard to stay in his own body.

He kisses you like that too. Mouth at your throat, your collarbone, your breasts, one hand spanning your back while the other squeezes your ass almost helplessly whenever you make a sound he likes.

You’ve almost forgotten how noisy the two of you are together. How impossible it is not to be when everything feels this good.

“Take these off,” you whisper against his hair, tugging at his belt.

Spencer obeys immediately, getting you both undressed in a rush of hands and fabric and impatient mouths. Shirts first. Then his slacks and boxer briefs, your leggings and panties, one by one, until you’re both bare except for the mismatched socks he forgot to take off and you laugh so hard you nearly ruin the mood.

He looks down, mortified. “Oh no.”

“Keep them on,” you say. “It’s weirdly working for me.”

Then he’s laughing too, and the absurdity of it makes the whole thing sweeter somehow. Less like a medical milestone, and more like what it actually is: the two of you, still completely yourselves, finally getting each other back.

Spencer pushes you back onto the bed and kisses down your stomach and inner thighs with such obvious devotion that by the time his tongue finally drags through your slick cunt, you’re already shaking.

There’s nothing tentative about his mouth once he starts. Careful, yes. Attentive, obviously. But not tentative. He moves like he’s making up for lost time, like he’s learned your body by heart and spent the last two months being denied the chance to prove it.

Your thighs tighten around his head. Your fingers twist in the sheets.

“Spencer,” you gasp.

He groans into you at the sound of his name, the vibration going straight through your body. Then two fingers slide inside you and you practically sob with relief.

The stretch. The fullness. The filthy, perfect drag of his fingers while his mouth works your clit in the same steady rhythm that’s always destroyed you.

You come faster than you want to, sharp and bright and helpless, with both hands in his hair and his name falling out of your mouth like a prayer and a curse and a sob all at once. He works you through it with maddening patience until you’re twitching and trying to squirm away. He catches your hips, holding you open while he gentles, savoring you, listening to every little sound that spills out.

You drag him back up your body the second you can breathe.

Spencer kisses you then, deep and lingering, letting you taste yourself on his tongue. He’s already so wound up that your first touch around his cock makes his whole body tense.

“Jesus,” he breathes.

“Hi,” you murmur, smug and breathless.

He gives you a desperate sort of half-laugh and lets his forehead fall to yours while your hand works him slowly. He’s always been beautiful when he’s close, but this is different. Softer, somehow. More open. He’s not trying to be polished or sexy or anything but exactly what he is: a man very much in love and losing his mind about it.

Your thumb brushes the tip of his cock and his hips jerk.

“Okay,” he says, a little wrecked. “Okay, if you, uh, keep doing that, I’m going to…”

“You’re going to what?”

Spencer looks at you, offended and helpless all at once. “You know what.”

You kiss him to stop being mean, and that’s what undoes him in the end. Your mouth on his, your hand around him, his own body too gone to hold back any longer. He comes with a broken sound against your lips, his forehead pressed hard to yours, one hand gripping your thigh tight enough to leave marks.

Afterward, neither of you goes very far.

He folds down beside you, still breathing hard, and you end up half tangled together in the sheets, your fingers drifting through his hair while his mouth moves lazily over yours, your jaw, your throat. 

The heat doesn’t disappear. It just softens around the edges, turning tender without losing any of its bite. His hand keeps returning to your side in those absent little strokes that aren’t really absent at all, thumb sweeping the skin near your scar like some part of him still needs the reminder that you’re here, warm and real and under his hands. You kiss and kiss and kiss until he’s hardening again between you.

“You okay?” he asks after a few minutes, low and serious again.

You kiss the corner of his mouth. “Very.”

“Any pain?”

“Just from how annoyingly good you are at all of this.”

Spencer closes his eyes and laughs against your shoulder. “That’s not really what I meant.”

“It’s the only answer you’re getting.”

He hums, unconvinced, and shifts up on one elbow to look at you properly. His gaze moves over your face like he’s checking for something only he can see.

“I know you want this,” he says quietly. “I also know abdominal surgery recovery, especially from something like a major gunshot wound, can be deceptive once the surface pain starts easing off. So I need you to be honest with me for a second.” His hand slides slowly over your waist, then lower, skimming your thigh. “Are you actually comfortable enough to keep going, or are you trying to tough your way through it because you’re impatient?”

You reach up and touch his face, letting your fingers trail over his jaw. “I’m not toughing my way through anything.”

Spencer’s eyes stay on yours.

“I’m comfortable,” you say, more clearly this time. “I want this. And if something hurts, I’ll tell you.”

He searches your face for another beat, then nods once, like he’s accepting terms more than asking permission.

“Okay,” he murmurs.

He kisses you once, deep and unsteady, then reaches into the nightstand drawer without taking his eyes off you. You watch him roll a condom on with careful fingers, his focus so intense it nearly makes you laugh.

Spencer settles between your thighs slowly, bracing most of his weight on his forearms, as if the idea of pressing too hard against you is enough to make his whole body tense. One of his hands slides down to your hip, thumb rubbing once, soothing and nervous all at once.

“Still okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” you whisper. “Promise.”

He nods, but you can feel the restraint in him. He kisses you once more, like he needs it, then reaches between you to guide himself into place.

The first nudge against your entrance is so careful it aches in an unexpected way — not physically, but just in how much emotion is packed into his restraint. Spencer’s breath catches. His forehead drops briefly to yours.

“You can stop me,” he says quietly. “At any point. Even if it’s halfway through. I mean it.”

Your fingers tighten on his shoulders. “Spencer.”

“Sorry.” He swallows. “I just need you to know.”

You soften, even through the heat thrumming low in your body. “I know,” you whisper. “Now come here.” 

You take his face in your hands and kiss him softer than any of the other times tonight.

He pushes in slowly, inch by inch, with enough care that you can feel every part of the stretch as it happens. Heat, fullness, pressure — all of it building so gradually your body has time to register each sensation before the next one arrives. You inhale sharply, and Spencer goes still immediately.

“Talk to me,” he says, voice rougher now.

You take a breath. “I’m okay. Just— just give me a second.”

Spencer nods, motionless except for the trembling effort it takes to stay that way. He kisses the corner of your mouth, then your cheek, then the line of your jaw while he waits, his hand stroking slowly up and down your thigh like he’s trying to soothe both of you at once.

When the initial intensity eases and your body finally starts to open around him, you let out a breath you didn’t realize you’d been holding and shift your hips the smallest bit closer.

“More,” you whisper.

Spencer’s eyes search yours. “Yeah?”

You nod. “Yeah.”

Spencer’s eyes close briefly at that, and then he slides in deeper.

It feels like being split open and soothed at the same time. Stretch and heat and relief so intense it’s as if your body is melting around him. 

He still moves carefully, still watches your face for microexpressions. But the restraint loosens enough that each thrust gets a little deeper, a little less tentative, until the two of you find that familiar rhythm that belongs to you and no one else.

Spencer’s mouth stays everywhere. Your throat, your cheek, the corner of your mouth. Every time you make a sound he likes, he kisses you harder. Every time your nails drag down his back, his hips stutter and he loses another inch of control.

You wrap a leg around his waist as best you can and pull him deeper.

Your orgasm builds slowly. It comes from the steady drag of his cock, the angle of it, the way one of his hands slips between your bodies to circle your clit without breaking rhythm. He’s so focused, so wrecked and earnest and needy, that you can feel yourself coming long before it actually hits.

“Spence,” you whine, and it comes out strangled.

His eyes lock on yours. “I know. I know, sweetheart. Come for me, please.”

You break around him with a cry, body clenching hard enough that Spencer shudders and nearly loses it with you. He keeps moving through it, slower now, like he can’t bear to stop just because either of you can barely think.

You drag him down into a kiss, and somewhere in the middle of it, the words come out:

“I love you.”

Before this very moment, you’d always assumed saying those words during sex would feel forced somehow. Cheesy. A little ridiculous.

But… it doesn’t. Right now, nothing else would be honest enough. There’s no other phrase in the English language that encompasses what you’re feeling quite like that one does.

Spencer goes still for half a heartbeat, then his whole face changes.

“I love you too,” he says tenderly. He kisses you once, hard and full and almost aching with how much he means it. “I love you so much.”

His movements start to falter then, because there’s only so much a man can do after weeks of restraint, one hand between your thighs, your cunt squeezing him on the heels of two orgasms, and an I love you still ringing through his bloodstream.

He comes with his face buried in your neck and your name on his lips, hips rocking once, twice, before he stills and just breathes, shaking a little.

For a long moment, neither of you moves.

Then Spencer lifts his head just enough to look at you.

You look wrecked. He looks worse.

“Hi,” you whisper.

He huffs a disbelieving laugh. “Hi.”

You brush his hair back from his forehead. “You okay?”

Spencer kisses you once more, softer this time. “No,” he says. “I think I might actually be dead.”

“That’d be awfully inconvenient.”

“Very.”

You laugh, and this time it doesn’t hurt.

Later, after the condom is gone and the sheets have been straightened and Spencer has made you get up and pee and drink an entire glass of water, he slides back into bed in just his boxers, warm and familiar and yours.

His fingers drift to your scar again.

Your hand finds his hair. “Spencer.”

There’s so much in his face that for one impossible second, you almost can’t breathe. Love, obviously. Relief. Want that still hasn’t gone anywhere. Something close to awe.

“Yeah?” he asks quietly.

You shake your head. “Nothing.”

His expression says liar with devastating affection.

You lean in and kiss him before he can call you on it.

When you settle back against the pillows, Spencer draws you into him with one arm and tucks the blankets up over you. His hand stays splayed over your waist, warm and grounding.

For a minute, the room goes quiet except for the sound of both of you breathing and the faint hum of the city outside the windows.

Then Spencer laughs under his breath.

You tilt your head enough to look up at him. “What?”

His mouth twitches. “I still can’t believe you had a sex dream about me.”

Heat creeps up your neck all over again, and you bury your face back against his shoulder. “Can we not debrief the most humiliating parts of today now that you’ve benefited from them?”

Spencer’s laugh is warmer this time, low in his chest. “I’m not making fun of you.”

“You absolutely are.”

“I’m really not.” He tips his head down, trying to catch your eye. “I’m just… kind of flattered.”

You groan into his skin. “Please stop saying words.”

His hand slides slowly up and down your back. “You’re the one who told me.”

You lift your head again and narrow your eyes at him. “You pried.”

Spencer looks delighted by that accusation. “I asked one follow-up question.”

You should let it go. You really should. But instead, still dazed and loose-limbed and apparently incapable of self-preservation, you mutter, “It wasn’t even the first time.”

Spencer goes very still.

Slowly, very slowly, he shifts onto one elbow, looking at you now with open fascination. “What do you mean it wasn’t the first time?”

“I mean nothing. Go to sleep.”

His hand tightens at your waist, not enough to trap you, just enough to let you know escape is not on the table. “No, absolutely not. We are not moving on from that.”

You make a muffled sound of regret into his shoulder.

“When was it?”

You wave a hand vaguely. “A… while ago.”

“That’s not quantifiable. How long is ‘a while’?”

“A while, Spencer.”

He waits.

Of course he waits.

You should know by now that Spencer Reid can outlast almost anyone in a standoff, especially when curiosity is involved.

You stare at him, mortified, still a little dazed from the sex, too happy to put up a fight, and sigh.

“Do you remember when I had the flu, and you bribed Garcia with cake pops to get my address so you could check on me?”

His eyebrows lift. “Of course I remember. That was the first time I ever saw your apartment.”

“Right. And do you remember what I said when I first let you inside?”

You watch his face shift into that classically Spencer expression of deep focus as he searches back through his memories.

“Yes,” he confirms after a few moments. “I believe you said, ‘You woke me up from a dream,’ and then I—” He stops. “Oh.”

His expression softens so completely it almost hurts to look at.

“It was that kind of dream?” he asks, sounding genuinely stunned.

You shove your face back into his shoulder. “Yes,” you groan. “I was just getting to the good part when you knocked on the door, actually, so thanks for that.”

His shoulders shake with another laugh. “Wow.”

You glare up at him. “You are enjoying this far too much.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, which would be more convincing if he weren’t smiling like this is the best news he’s heard all week. “It’s just…” He shakes his head a little. “That’s a lot for me to process.”

“You’ll survive.”

He shifts, gentler now, and presses a kiss to your forehead.

“That really was a while ago,” he muses.

You close your eyes and groan again, too tired to fake outrage properly. “Please drop it.”

He smiles against your skin. “In a minute.”

His hand finds yours under the blanket and laces through your fingers.

“If it’s any consolation, I had a crush on you back then too,” he whispers. “I’m sure you already knew that, but just so we’re clear, I did. I nearly passed out when you asked me to brush your hair and sent me into your bedroom to look for your hairbrush.”

You crack one eye open. “You hid it well.”

Spencer huffs a quiet laugh. “I absolutely did not.”

“No,” you admit, sleepier now, letting your fingers curl more tightly around his. “You really, really didn’t.”

That earns a softer smile from him. He brushes his thumb over your knuckles once, the gesture so familiar now it makes your chest ache in the best way.

“I’m glad you let me in,” he says quietly.

The words settle warm and heavy between you. You know he’s referring to you letting him into your apartment that day, but it could mean so much more than that.

You tip your face up just enough to kiss the underside of his jaw. “Yeah,” you murmur. “Me too.”

Spencer answers by drawing you a little closer.

You let him.

And sometime after that, with his hand still wrapped around yours, a dreamless sleep finally finds you.

ᝰ.ᐟ

this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️

blackout | ⚡︎ ❀

⤷ a power outage strands you and reid in the basement records room. his flashlight is useless, your lighter keeps flickering out, and you’re pretty sure you said too much — but somehow, he never makes you regret it.

bullseye | ❀

⤷ you didn’t plan on staying late at the bar, hustling reid at darts, or flirting with him after trivia. you definitely didn’t plan on the coffee waiting on your desk the next morning, either.

gambit | ❀

⤷ spencer pulls out a travel chess set on the jet and offers to teach you. it’s a harmless way to kill time… until you realize how much you like the way he looks at you across the chessboard. // ficlet written for my 2k celebration event!

hot topic | ❀⚡︎ᢉ𐭩

⤷ after an injury in the field, you patch spencer up with a skull-print bandage. he gets a little jealous, you get a little deflective, and a quiet moment passes at 30,000 feet where you both admit more than you mean to.

fever dream | ꩜ ❀

⤷ you don’t get sick. you don’t let coworkers into your apartment. and you definitely don’t have vivid, full-body sex dreams about spencer reid. except today, apparently, you do all three. 18+ MDNI

night watch | ❀ ⚡︎

⤷ ever since he showed up at your apartment (and ever since that fever dream you’re pretending didn’t happen), you’ve avoided being alone with reid. unfortunately, hotch has another plan: assigning the two of you to an overnight stakeout.

liquid courage | ❀

⤷ you never call anyone when you’re drunk — except tonight, you do. margaritas, glitter, and one reckless drunk dial later, you’re in spencer reid’s car at 1am, wearing his coat and trying not to notice how good he smells.

head rush | ❀ ⚡︎

⤷ dayton, ohio. one asshole cop, one concussion, six hours of stay-awake poker, and a kiss that makes you see stars — right up until you slam on the brakes.

lies | ⚡︎

⤷ after ohio, you rebuild your armor and pretend the kiss didn’t happen. two weeks of awkward distance, a charged moment at the gun range, and a stairwell conversation later, you tell spencer the cruelest lie you can think of. it should end there — but then he finds the only evidence that can prove you wrong.

truths | ⚡︎ ❀ ᢉ𐭩

⤷ spencer shows up at your door with irrefutable proof you’ve been lying — to him and to yourself — but that doesn’t stop you from trying to deny it anyway. what follows is a late-night reckoning: small truths, careful boundaries, and the soft kind of honesty you usually run from.

adagio | ❀

⤷ at work, you and spencer try out adagio tempo until a hotel room debrief tests just how slow you can go.

heart eyes | ❀

⤷ spencer tries to focus on the case, but watching you translate grief into gentleness ruins his concentration until morgan snaps him out of it. // ficlet written for my 1k celebration event!

limited exposure | ⚡︎ ❀

⤷ at rossi’s book release party, the team’s playful teasing pushes you and reid’s “not-a-relationship” into a quiet fight, a real apology, and a red-velvet photo booth that develops more than just pictures.

october nights | ❀

⤷ you can’t hide the fact you love autumn from anyone — especially spencer. he gives you all the best parts of the season in a single day: leaves in the park, halloween decorations, classic horror films, and a night that spooks you in a way you hadn’t planned for.

just socks | ⚡︎ ❀

⤷ you buy spencer funny socks because they reminded you of him. which is totally normal. and casual. and definitely not girlfriend behavior. // ficlet written for my 2k celebration event!

scorpio season | ❀

⤷ you’ve never been a fan of birthdays, but celebrating spencer (and reluctantly allowing him to celebrate you too) might just change your mind.

out of the doghouse | ❀

⤷ your neighbor’s shy, sweet dog doesn’t trust men, and she definitely doesn’t trust spencer when he shows up to your place like he belongs there while you’re dogsitting for the weekend. // ficlet written for my 2k celebration event!

raincheck | ❀ ᢉ𐭩

⤷ you finally say yes when spencer asks to take you on a real date, but work interrupts the night before the entrees arrive.

shelter from the storm | ⚡︎ ᢉ𐭩 ꩜

⤷ in the cold aftermath of a fight left unresolved, you & spencer get stranded as a storm rolls in. with the roads underwater and only one vacant room at the motel, you’re left with nowhere else to run but straight into him. 18+, MDNI. sfw/under 18 version

call it what you want | ⚡︎ ❀

⤷ things between you and spencer are perfect, right up until a flirty grad student and a mandatory ethics training force you to decide what, exactly, to call the thing you’ve been pretending doesn’t need a name.

wear & tear | ꩜

⤷ after a brutal week on a case and an evening at o’keefe’s spent hiding your relationship from the team, you and spencer finally get each other alone — and your fishnets do not survive the night. 18+, MDNI.

can’t keep my hands to myself | ❀ ꩜

⤷ spencer can’t keep his hands off of you during a rare day-off movie marathon, so you call him out and turn it into a no-touching bet with paperwork on the line. 18+, MDNI. // ficlet written for my 2k celebration event!

operation mystery girl | ᢉ𐭩 ❀

⤷ when the team realizes spencer has a secret girlfriend, garcia launches a glitter-covered investigation that’s equal parts profiling and meddling. the only problem? their “mystery girl” profile is so wrong it hurts — and then the case cracks wide open, whether you’re ready or not.

something borrowed | ❀

⤷ a very simple, very sweet, very boyfriend-coded gesture from spencer in the BAU bullpen becomes the team’s newest obsession. // ficlet written for my 2k celebration event!

the comet | ❀

⤷ you wake up in spencer’s bed to feather-light fingers tracing your freckles like they’re constellations. // ficlet written for my 2k celebration event!

tethered | ᢉ𐭩

⤷ spencer has spent so long being the one who steadies you, up until an unsub he sees too much of himself in knocks him off-balance. he asks for space but ends up at your door anyway, and you become the tether you didn’t know he needed.

liminal | ⚡︎ ᢉ𐭩

⤷ you’re caught between breaths, between doors marked STAFF ONLY, between the life you had and the one you might not wake up to. spencer waits on the other side, choking on words he should’ve said sooner while a ghost from your past sits beside him in the waiting room.

house rules | ᢉ𐭩 ⚡︎ ❀

⤷ getting shot was dramatic, but recovering is worse. especially now that spencer reid has a key to your apartment and a color-coded plan for your survival.

like real people do | ꩜

⤷ a follow-up doctor’s appointment leaves you with medical clearance, a filthy dream, and a rapidly deteriorating ability to act normal around your boyfriend spencer reid.

nothing serious | ❀

⤷ you agree to girls’ night to celebrate your first week back at work and end up a little too drunk, a little too honest, and very much forced to confront how serious your relationship with spencer has gotten.

you’re all i have to lose | ⚡︎

⤷ after spencer is exposed to anthrax, the hardest part isn’t being afraid. it’s knowing you love him for the same reasons you’re furious with him.

& more, coming soon!

what are greenaway!reader’s vibes .ᐣ.ᐟ

extras

⟢ greenaway!reader pinterest finds

⟢ headcanons 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

⟢ text messages 📱💬 | text messages pt 2

⟢ greenaway!reader fanart by gummy-cat-writes

⟢ apartment moodboard

⟢ hotch & emily’s relationship w/ reader

⟢ spencer said he “notices things” about reader. what does he notice?

⟢ why is greenaway!reader so avoidant/afraid of relationships?

⟢ greenaway!reader’s complex relationship with her sister Elle

⟢ how would greenaway!reader react to spencer going to prison? / part 2

⟢ things spencer has said to greenaway!reader that made reader not want to run

⟢ what did spencer & greenaway!reader each do with their photo booth strips from limited exposure?

⟢ greenaway!reader timeline

⟢ greenaway!reader marathon event

⟢ greenaway!reader’s MySpace page

⟢ greenaway!reader series playlist

⟢ a peek inside greenaway!reader’s camera roll

A deer jumps out of the treeline and freezes in your lane. You brake — hard — and the car skids to a stop. The deer stares, flinches, bolts. Your heart lodges in your throat and hangs there, choking you.

In the middle of the panic, Spencer’s left hand slapped to the dash. Not to your knee to steady you. Not across your chest to hold you back. Not to you at all.

The sound of his palm hitting plastic lands louder than the storm.

“Sorry,” you say, because apologizing for a deer feels easier than touching anything else going on between you. Your voice comes out flatter than you meant it to.

“It’s not your fault,” he answers.

He means the deer. At least you think he does.

You swallow. Your throat tastes stale, like the bad coffee you didn’t finish because the mug smelled like old pennies. You ease your foot off the brake and the car crawls forward again.

—

(48 hours earlier)

You burned out of the precinct on a hunch and didn’t come back for four hours. Your phone went from one bar to no bars and stayed there. You told yourself you’d only be gone twenty minutes. You told yourself if you left a note on the whiteboard or gave the team a heads up, someone would try to talk you out of it, and then you’d have to stand there and defend yourself, and that would slow you down. You told yourself confidential informants bolt the second they smell an entourage. You told yourself, Move. Think later. That trick usually saves you. Sometimes it slices you open.

But you were right. The CI did show. He talked. He gave you something usable.

So you came back with grit on your boots and adrenaline in your chest, already halfway through composing the I told you so in your head.

Spencer was waiting where the asphalt met the chain-link, his lanky silhouette tensed, phone white-knuckle clenched in his hand.

“Where were you?” he asked, stepping out in front of you to block the path from the parking lot to the sheriff’s office.

Not how did it go? Not are you okay? Not even hi.

“Following a lead,” you said.

“The lead Hotch specifically told you was too dangerous to follow alone?” His voice was low and controlled in a way that made the air around you feel thin. “The lead you were supposed to bring me in on tomorrow, with a tactical team in place, in case things went sideways?”

You rolled your shoulders back, irritated at the tone. At the implication. At him, of all people, acting like you couldn’t be trusted with your own job. “I got something we needed,” you said. “The CI might’ve just given us a major break in this case. We don’t get that if I show up with a battalion.”

“I am not a battalion,” Spencer replied, and it came out cracked. You heard the edge of panic under the anger. Then, quieter: “You don’t always have to do everything alone.”

The sentence hit you low, right in the part of your spine that convinced itself long ago that asking for help means showing weakness.

“I can handle myself,” you said. “And I never asked you to worry about me.”

“Yeah, well, I did it anyway,” he snapped, and the snap was so un-Spencer-like that it stunned you into stillness. He let out one small, humorless breath of a laugh and dragged a shaking hand through his hair. “I called you seven times. Seven. Hotch was five minutes from sending Morgan and two sheriff’s units to sweep the city looking for you. Do you—do you understand what it felt like to look up and you were just—” His jaw worked. He swallowed hard. “Gone?”

The word hung there between you — gone.

It wasn’t theatrical, or manipulative. It was just naked.

And then he added: “In the middle of a case like this.”

You knew exactly what this meant. This meant six women in four weeks. All in their twenties and thirties, roughly your height, your build, your coloring, all physically capable of fighting back but knocked unconscious before they had the chance. All abducted and killed and horrifically mutilated in the same neighborhood as that warehouse you’d gone to.

“I thought you were hurt,” he went on, steamrolling through his own panic now that it had found a crack. “Or—or worse. We got a call about a body in an alley, in the unsub’s comfort zone, but it was too mutilated for a visual ID, and—”

“You assumed I was dead,” you said for him. “Breaking news: I’m not.”

“That isn’t the point,” he said instantly.

“The point is I did my job and it paid off.” You shifted like you were going to step around him.“If you can’t handle—”

“What I can’t handle is not knowing where you are when we’re hunting a guy who kills women who look exactly like you,” he cut in. “He’s smart, and he’s dangerous, and we don’t have him yet. And I—You’re—” He caught himself on the edge of saying something too raw and too obvious and too big. “You’re too important to me to lose,” he said instead.

It was too intimate. Way, way too intimate. Way more than you could hold in the open air like this. So you did what you always do with things that threaten to rearrange you: you knocked it out of his hands before it could stick.

“I’m not your fucking girlfriend, Spencer.”

You heard the words leave your mouth and couldn’t pull them back. You felt them hit him.

He froze. You watched it happen in real time — the way his face went from heartbreak to self-defense to anger, all in one brutal flicker.

“That’s not—” His voice cracked. He swallowed it down and tried again. “Christ,” he said, finishing the sentence with your name like an angry punctuation mark. “We’re—” He cut himself off and pressed the heel of his hand between his eyes. When he looked at you again, his tone was lower. “Don’t pretend that we’re strangers. At this point, the word girlfriend is just semantics that terrify you, and I’ve been too polite to push you on the labels thing, even though it’s starting to eat at me. Don’t act like you don’t know what you are to me. Don’t act like you don’t know what I am to you.”

Heat rose under your skin so fast it almost made you sway.

He wasn’t done.

“And don’t make it sound like I’m trying to put a leash on you, because you know I’d never want to control you,” he said, softer but somehow more intense. “I just can’t keep doing this thing where you disappear for hours in the middle of a case and I have to stand there pretending I’m fine while my chest feels like it’s being crushed in a vise. I mean, seriously, you do this constantly. Constantly! You show zero regard for your own safety and you don’t seem to care at all what that does to me. I’ve seen what happens when the line between instinct and impulse gets blurry. I watched it happen to Elle. I won’t watch it happen to you.”

You felt your face go hot. Shame and anger and something almost like guilt crackled in you, sparking in every direction at once.

The worst part was, you heard the truth in it. You heard the care, and the fear, and the feeling you won’t let either of you name.

But under all of that, you also heard one unforgivable word: Elle.

“Don’t,” you warned, and your voice didn’t even sound like yours. “You don’t get to compare me following a lead—a lead that got us what we needed, by the way—to what Elle did just because you’re pissed off and scared and your giant genius ego is bruised that I won’t stamp a label on us.”

He flinched. You hated yourself for how good that felt for half a second.

“And you sure as hell don’t get to weaponize my sister’s actions against me like that,” you went on. “You don’t get to use her name to scare me, or guilt me, or punish me.”

“I wasn’t—” He broke off. “That’s not what I was trying to do.”

“Felt like it.”

He exhaled, shaky, losing some of the fight left in him. “Next time, just loop me in,” he said quietly. “Please.”

It would’ve been so easy to say yes. It was sitting on your tongue: Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you because if you’d asked me not to go I would’ve stayed. I didn’t bring you with me because I care about you too much to force you into danger you don’t have to be in. I can’t lose you. I can’t lose you. I can’t lose you.

But the yes was stuck in your throat like a fish bone. You couldn’t get it out without bleeding.

“Yeah, sure. Next time,” you said instead, sarcastic and shitty on purpose, shouldering past him and through the station door before you could hear him answer.

You and Spencer barely spoke for the rest of that day. Or the next. You only talked when it was about the case, and even then it was like you had gloves on.

Then Hotch assigned the two of you to drive hours out of town to interview a key witness the following morning.

That authoritative, meddling bastard.

—

Back in the car, the road narrows around a fallen tree branch. You take it slow. Spencer checks the time, then turns to look out the window again. His profile is all clean lines and tension. You want to lick your thumb and smudge those lines, just to prove you still can.

“The bridge might be dicey,” he says. “The river last crested a few hours ago, but that was before this new storm cell moved in.”

“Mhm.”

He clears his throat. “If the bridge is under water, we’ll cut over across Route 11. Adds twenty minutes.”

“Fine,” you say.

If this were you from three days ago, you’d poke fun at him for carrying an actual paper map like it’s 1979. You’d tell him to hit you with a county road fun fact. You’d let him light up. You always liked watching that happen. You’d pocket it and carry it like a handwarmer.

But this is you today, so you keep both hands on the wheel and keep your mouth shut.

Another mile swallows itself. Pines. A billboard for a fireworks warehouse that probably violates six state laws. A dented mailbox shaped like a trout. The sun dipping below the horizon.

Spencer’s phone buzzes in the half-second when service returns—flash flood warning—then dies back to black. He sets it in the cupholder and clutches the map between his fingers again.

He used to put his hand palm-up on his knee, a quiet invitation you’d take without thinking. You used to lace your fingers with his and rest there like you’d always have this.

You want to tell him you’re sorry about the four hours you disappeared. You want to explain that you didn’t tell him because if he’d asked you not to go you would’ve stayed, and that scared you more than the CI did. You want to tell him you’re sorry for saying “I’m not your fucking girlfriend” and for pretending this thing between you is undefined when there’s barely been a single night in weeks that didn’t end with one of you asleep on the other’s shoulder.

You want to be honest and you want to be kind but you don’t know how to be both at once, so you settle for just being quiet.

Outside, the rain keeps coming. Inside the car, you’re already under water.

—

The witness’s house is the color of wet cardboard and wrapped in a porch that sags. You flash your badges and get ushered into a living room that smells like mothballs.

The job slides over both of you like a uniform you don’t have to think about. You take the chair closest to the witness, angle your body open, let your voice go warm. Spencer hangs back a foot to the left — non-threatening, softened posture, eyes careful. You ask the simple questions; he gently pulls out more details. It’s an old rhythm that fits so well it almost hurts.

Back at the car when you’re done, you barely look at each other.

“Good work,” he says, quiet.

“You too,” you mumble.

You radio the team the broad strokes. They radio back a clipped “Copy, drive safe.”

The rain gets louder as you pull back onto the road. The job is taken care of. Nothing else is.

—

The river you crossed earlier has officially eaten its bank. Two police cruisers block the bridge; a deputy in a poncho waves you down with his flashlight.

“Closed both ways,” he shouts through your cracked window. “Route 11 is washed out, too. County’ll reassess at dawn, try to get things reopened.”

“Any other routes?” Spencer asks.

“Not unless you got a boat. Best bet is to wait the storm out ‘til morning and try again at sunrise.” The deputy jerks his chin toward a side road you hadn’t even noticed through the rain. “Pioneer Motor Lodge is about a quarter mile that way.”

You nod and thank the officer. You do not look at Spencer, and he does not look at you. You just U-turn in slow motion and follow the road to the motel.

—

The Pioneer Motor Lodge looks like the set for a movie titled “Places To Go When Your Life Falls Apart.” Single-story horseshoe, doors that open to the parking lot, soda machines on one side. A clerk sits behind the counter, watching the weather try to peel the world from its edges.

“Two rooms,” you say, and it sounds brisk enough to pass as professional.

“Wish I could help ya there,” the clerk says, sympathetic. “We’ve only got one left. Storm’s filled us up with stranded travelers.”

You feel Spencer tense beside you.

“We’ll take it,” you both say in the same miserable tone. The clerk slides over a key that’s seen better decades and a blue pen. Spencer signs; you swipe your card and pretend not to feel your pulse in your ears.

The walkway is slick. Your room is last on the strip, next to the ice machine and water fountain with an “out of order” sign that looks permanent. When you walk in it’s pitch black, and all you can smell is damp carpet, lemon cleaner, and the faint linger of years-old cigarette smoke.

Spencer finds the light switch, and that’s when you see it:

Only one bed.

Fucking fantastic.

He does a much better job at pretending to be unaffected than you do — while you’re frozen in place, he’s performing a routine sweep of the room the way he does in every hotel — checks the functionality of the smoke detector, makes sure the windows are latched, scans the mattress for bedbugs. You force your feet to work and set down your go-bag, which you miraculously had the forethought to throw into the trunk.

You both go through the motions: unzipping duffels, taking out toiletry cases, finding your pajamas. It’s silent and tense and the air feels like it’s made of pea soup.

After a few minutes, Spencer points his chin at the dilapidated armchair in the corner. “I can sleep—“

“No. That’s stupid,” you cut in, too fast. You don’t know if you mean his chair offer or this whole arrangement or the way your heart is acting like it absorbed caffeine intravenously. “We’re adults. It’s a queen size. It’s fine.”

He nods once, too drained to start another argument. You watch his throat move as he swallows.

“Do you want to shower first?” he asks, neutral, an olive branch disguised as logistics.

You shake your head. “You can go ahead.”

You listen to the water beat the tile, then sputter for a moment when someone flushes a toilet in the room next door. You stand at the window and watch the rain thrash the parking lot like it has a grudge. Your phone coughs out a single bar just long enough to text the team an update before it collapses again.

Spencer emerges in the world’s most modest t-shirt and flannel pajama pants, hair damp, contact case in hand and glasses fogged. He keeps his eyes carefully on the carpet when he says, “All yours.”

You take the fastest shower of your life and still feel like you’re in borrowed skin you don’t know how to wear. When you come back out, he’s sitting on the far side of the bed on top of the covers, watching the weather report on mute.

You sit down on the mattress (as far away from him as 60 inches of width will allow), and your weight dips his side just enough that you both feel the shift. He clicks the TV off. You reach for the bedside lamp. It hums, then gives up, plunging the room into the kind of darkness that feels thick.

“Goodnight,” he says to the ceiling.

“Night,” you say to the wall.

You lie very still. The storm hammers at the windows, the heater rattles, and somewhere under all that is whatever you’re not saying. You wait to see what’ll give first — the power, the storm, or your ability to pretend you don’t want to roll over and ask him for one true thing.

—

You hold out as long as you can.

You lie on your side, facing the wall, hands shoved under the motel pillow because you don’t trust them not to reach for him in your sleep. The rain hammers the windows, steady and mean. You count the seconds between the lightning and thunder.

It doesn’t work. Your thoughts keep circling the same place.

Meanwhile, Spencer is glued to his half of the bed like someone drew a chalk line down the middle of the mattress and ordered him to respect the boundary. His back is to yours, one arm folded under his head. You can hear him not sleeping. His breaths are too measured. You know he only breathes like that when he’s trying not to unravel.

“Spencer?” you whisper.

“Yeah?” he answers, quiet and wrecked and awake. The reply was immediate, like he was just waiting for you to speak first.

Your chest does a dumb little stutter at that.

You’re still staring at the wall when you say, “I can’t sleep.”

“Me neither,” he admits.

Another few beats go by. You realize you’re holding your breath and let it out slowly.

“Can you—” You stop. The words feel huge, like lifting something heavy. “Can you look at me?”

There’s a pause, and then he rolls.

You feel the mattress move under you, the dip of his weight pulling you a fraction closer. You roll to face him, and now there’s maybe eight inches between you. It feels like standing at the edge of a cliff.

His glasses are off. His hair is still a little damp and curling at the ends. The light from the parking lot sneaks in through the curtains and cuts a faint line across his cheekbone. His expression is sad in a way that says I’m barely keeping it together.

“Hey,” he whispers.

You swallow. “Hey.”

You sit in that for a second, just looking at each other in the dark.

Then you say, because if you don’t say it now you’re going to choke on it, “I hurt you.”

He exhales slowly. “Yeah.”

“You hurt me too.”

His eyes flicker. “I know.”

Your pulse is in your throat. You pull in a breath. “You compared me to Elle.”

He flinches; it’s tiny, but you feel it because you’re close enough to, and something bittersweet twists under your ribs at the proof that he still cares what you think of him.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says.

“I know you didn’t mean it like that,” you say. Your voice comes out tight, too sharp. “But you still said it. I’ve told you so many times how much I hate being compared to her. I trusted you enough to tell you that, and you still did it. I can’t—” Your throat closes, just for a heartbeat. You push through it. “You don’t get to hold her over my head like a threat. You don’t get to take one of the worst days of her life and aim it at me because you’re scared.”

He’s very still. You can hear his breathing. You can hear your own.

Then he says, quiet: “You’re right. I shouldn’t have brought her into it. That was wrong.”

You were braced for him to explain himself, defend himself, anything. The simple that was wrong disorients you.

“It wasn’t fair,” he continues quietly. “What happened with Elle was not the same thing as you going after a lead. I wasn’t—” He breaks off, swallows. His voice goes softer. “I wasn’t trying to say you’re like her.”

You breathe out slowly. “Then what were you trying to say?”

“Knowing that you’re walking toward something dangerous and not being allowed to go with you makes me feel like I’m going to throw up,” he says. “And that’s not… rational. I know that. I know what our job is, and I’d never want us to get in the way of it. But it’s like—” He winces at himself. “It feels like the universe has its hands wrapped around my throat and they’re just… holding. Not squeezing yet. Just taunting me, letting me know they could.”

The picture hits you so hard you actually feel it, phantom fingers pressing up under your jaw.

“And I hate it. I hate not being in control of it, and I hate that I’m putting it on you. You’re not responsible for what my nervous system does when I worry about you. That’s on me. But I—” He swallows hard. “When you were gone, I was standing in a parking lot thinking, ‘She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone,’ and then you walked up all smug, and my brain just—” He makes a helpless little motion with his hand. “I said something unfair, and I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to hurt you intentionally. I was just terrified.”

You stare at him in the dark and your chest aches in a tight, unhelpful way. You hate how much you needed to hear that.

“I know you were,” you say quietly.

“Do you?” His voice frays a little. “Because I don’t think you do. I honestly don’t think you can understand how it felt. You were just doing what you always do — you had a lead, you trusted your instincts, you thought you’d be fine. And, to your credit, you were. You weren’t wrong about that.” He takes a breath. “But for four hours, twenty-one minutes, and thirty-seven seconds, I thought you could be dead. I was genuinely terrified that they were going to tell me the mutilated body in the alley was yours.”

“Oh,” you whisper.

He laughs, broken and humorless. “Yeah. Oh.”

You’re quiet for a full, solid beat, letting that sink under your skin and settle.

“I should’ve told you where I was going,” you say finally. The words scrape on the way out, but you say them. “I just—I knew if I told you, you’d ask me not to go, and if you’d asked me not to go, I wouldn’t have gone.” You pause, then add: “No one else holds that power over me.”

Something shifts under his expression, fast and deep and not at all subtle.

“But we needed that CI. I thought putting the case first was… I don’t know. Noble, or something. Professional.” You shake your head against the pillow. “But it wasn’t only that. It was me trying to prove to myself that how much I care about you doesn't have to mess with the job. And I thought if I didn’t tell you, then you couldn’t interfere with me being ‘objective.’”

Spencer swallows. “And how’d that work out for you?”

You let out a weak little breath that’s almost a laugh. “Well, you spent four hours thinking I was dead, so… not great.”

He exhales through his nose.

“And for the record,” you say, quieter, “I know I scare you. I know I run too hot. I know I move first and think later, and that I act like I’m never afraid.” You swallow. “I am afraid. I just… I don’t know how to show it without feeling weak. And I hate feeling weak in front of anyone.”

He nods, eyes locked on you. “I’m not just anyone.”

“No,” you whisper. “You’re not.”

“I know you thought I was mad at you for doing your job, but I wasn’t,” he says. “I just can’t keep being put in situations where I have to pretend I’m fine while I’m picturing you covered in blood on a metal slab. I need you to try to be a little less reckless on the job. I’m not asking you to not be you, but you can’t keep operating like you’re indestructible, or like no one would miss you if you were gone.” His breath catches. “And I know I didn’t say it right. I know I made it sound like I was trying to control you, but I swear, that’s not what I meant. I just— I can’t lose you. I can’t. Not before I’ve even told you—”

He cuts himself off.

Your pulse trips. You nod, steady. “I know, Spencer. I know.”

He shifts a little closer. It’s barely anything — just an inch, maybe two — but it might as well be an earthquake.

“I shouldn’t have said I’m not your girlfriend,” you force out. “That was mean. I knew it would hurt you and I said it anyway because I panicked and needed to get the attention off the fact that you—” Care about me. Like me. Maybe even…more than like me. You swallow the words and change course. “—the fact that you said I’m important to you.”

Spencer’s eyes go very shiny for a second, and you have to look down at the cheap motel duvet to keep talking.

“And you’re right,” you add, barely above a whisper. “We’re not strangers. We haven’t been strangers for a long time. I know what we are to each other. But I keep thinking if I just don’t call it anything, I can’t break it. Which is… stupid. I know it’s stupid.”

“I didn’t like hearing it,” he admits, voice small and honest.

“Yeah,” you say. “I know.”

He bites his lip. “I—I know you’re not mine in the way I want you to be. I’ve gotten used to that, mostly. But… I’m yours.” His voice wavers, then steadies. “You may not realize it, or want to hear it, but I am. I don’t know how to be okay pretending I’m not yours when I am. When that's all I want to be.”

Oh.

Something inside you — some stubborn barricade you’ve had up for years — gives a little under that.

“Spencer,” you whisper, and your hand moves before you can second-guess it. You slide your palm over the mattress, find his wrist in the dark. “I know you are.”

He closes his eyes like relief is physically painful.

“And I’m—” You breathe. Swallow. You owe him this much. “I’m yours, too. I just don’t know how to do it out loud yet.”

His eyes snap open. He looks wrecked and stupidly happy and still terrified all at once.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

Your thumb presses gently where you’re holding him, like you’re warning him and soothing him at the same time. “But you can’t expect me to know when you want something without saying it. I’m a good profiler, but I’m not a mind reader. I didn’t know the title thing was eating at you. We could’ve talked about it earlier.”

“Is it really all that surprising?”

You sigh softly. “No,” you admit. “But I’m already so far out of my depth here. So unless you say otherwise, I’m going to assume everything’s fine, because I need it to be fine. I don’t let myself think about the alternative, because then I’ll have to deal with the fact I can’t give you what you deserve—yet. I’m working on it, I promise, but… I’m not there yet.”

He nods. “I know. I should’ve said something. But—for the record, I’m not trying to push you into something you aren’t ready for. I’m just…hoping you will be ready for it, one day. On your own time. But I do want that. I want to call you my girlfriend. I want you, and I can’t pretend I don’t. I can’t be casual about you.”

The word — girlfriend — pops and fizzles beneath your skin.

“I’m glad you still want that,” you whisper honestly. “I kind of spent the last two days thinking you were done with me.”

His eyebrows pull in, and he reaches out to brush his thumb along your cheekbone. “I could never be done with you, sweetheart.”

God.

You feel it hit low, dizzying. Under any other circumstances you’d chastise him for the pet name, but not now, not when he said it like that.

“Okay,” you breathe. “Okay. Good.”

For a second you both just lie there, staring at each other, breathing the same air. The hurt is still there, but under it, something else finally breaks through the surface — relief, hot and bright and shaking.

His voice drops, barely audible over the rain. “Can I—”

“Please,” you whisper, already moving, already finding his lips with yours.

The first kiss isn’t hungry — it’s overwhelmingly tender. It’s you’re here pressed mouth to mouth. It’s I’m sorry / I’m sorry too / Don’t ever do that to me again / I promise I won’t / I forgive you / I missed you so much I thought I’d crawl out of my skin / I missed you more / Impossible.

The second pass of his mouth over yours goes deeper without either of you meaning to. The sound you make is embarrassingly needy; the sound he answers with is worse. Your hand slips from his wrist to his jaw, then to the back of his neck. He inches closer across the sheets until his chest is pressed to yours, warm through cotton.

You break just long enough to breathe, foreheads touching. You’re both shaking.

“Spence,” you whisper.

He exhales like he’s been waiting days to hear you say his name like that. He whispers yours back.

There’s a beat where you could stop. You both know it’s there — you feel it hover between you like a hand on the brake.

Neither of you takes it.

Instead, your noses brush. His thumb is on your jaw. Your knee slides forward under the sheets and bumps his thigh.

When you kiss him again, it’s with intent, with gravity, with every hour of silence and every unsent apology and every inch of want you’ve been starving out of yourselves.

The night tilts.

—

You keep kissing because relief tastes like oxygen and you’ve both been underwater for two days. You kiss because you can. You kiss because stopping would feel like cutting off circulation.

You edge closer, and he meets you halfway like gravity. The mattress dips, and your knee slips between his thighs, and all at once you’re half over his hips, half draped across his chest, not even pretending to be polite about it.

“Need you closer,” you breathe.

He makes a noise that sounds torn out of him and moves under you — a slow roll of his hips up into yours that drags his cock against the heat between your legs through all the thin, flimsy layers in the way. The friction is instant and indecent. Your mouth stutters open on a gasp, and for a moment, you’re suspended like that.

“Hi,” Spencer whispers against your lips, bringing you back into yourself, voice so stupidly tender you could break.

You answer by kissing him messier. Less careful. You fist both hands in his t-shirt, straddle him completely, and roll your own hips this time.

He slides one palm down, grips the back of your thigh and starts to rock you, slow and filthy, helping you grind against the hard line of him. You whine into his mouth and feel him swallow it like it’s holy.

The rain outside is hammering so loud you couldn’t hear the voice in the back of your head if you tried. You give up on keeping quiet and let out desperate little breaths every time the pressure hits just right; he falls apart in soft curses that sound new in his mouth. He’s warm and solid under you and you can feel his pulse everywhere you’re touching him.

He pulls away just enough to breathe. “Can I—” His fingers hover at the hem of your top. “Do you want me to… Can I take this off?”

Everything in you goes still. You’re bare under the shirt, and you know — bone-deep know — that if you say yes, you’re not coming back from it. This is you stepping across the line and letting him see all the parts of you no one else gets to see without armor.

You hear yourself say, very small and very sure, “Please.”

He slides his hands under the fabric, palms warm against your ribs, like he’s telling your body what’s about to happen. Then he eases the cotton up, slow, reverent, knuckles ghosting over your stomach, the undersides of your breasts. You sit back on his hips to help him, arms raised, and he pulls the shirt off over your head and drops it somewhere you’ll worry about later.

Cold air hits your skin. You feel it pebble over you, and then you feel him looking at you.

Spencer goes silent in that awed, scientific way of his, like he’s staring at a comet that only passes by once a century. “I am trying very hard not to ruin the moment by telling you the precise number of milliseconds I’ve spent thinking about seeing you like this,” he admits. Then, simpler: “You’re so beautiful.”

Something warm blooms in your chest. You want to deflect the compliment — you’re wired to deflect — but the earnest look on his face won’t let you. It would feel cruel not to accept it.

“Spence,” you whisper. “Touch me.”

He makes a sound you feel in your spine as his hands come up to cup you with both palms, thumbs brushing over you in slow, reverent circles. You arch into him without a second thought.

“God,” he murmurs. He leans up to kiss your throat, the thin skin where your pulse beats high, then lower, his mouth tracing the line of your collarbone, the soft slope of your breast. He mouths at you like he’s grateful, like he’s starving.

“I need this off,” you whisper, shoving at his shirt like it offended you by existing.

He sits up on instinct, letting you push it up over his head. Underneath he’s all long lines and unfair softness — collarbone and sternum and that ridiculous waist you’ve thought about way too many times. You smooth your hands over him, just to feel. His chest jumps under your palms and he sucks in a breath through his teeth.

“This okay?” you murmur, tracing down, following the thin trail of hair below his navel, familiarizing yourself with skin you’ve only ever stolen touches of through clothes.

His eyes flutter. “Yeah,” he whispers, a little ragged. “Yes. Anything you want.”

Your heart does something dangerous at that.

You lean back in to kiss him and lose time for a while. Everything turns slow and greedy, unhurried but inevitable. Your nipples drag against his chest in a way that makes him groan into your mouth and makes you chase more just to hear it again. He sucks gently at your lower lip, and you answer by rolling your hips in a way that makes the both of you gasp into each other’s mouths.

Then his hands move, one at your waist and one at the back of your neck. You feel a shift in him — something steadier, more intentional settling in his shoulders.

“Lie back for me?” he asks, almost nervous, voice rough.

You let him roll you underneath him, your spine meeting the mattress. He hovers over you on his forearms, and you’re already breathing too hard, already slick, already trembling a little with adrenaline and want.

His mouth is on you again immediately, trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses down your throat, along your collarbone, down to your breasts. His tongue drags slow over your nipple and you arch clean off the bed, fingers diving into his hair. He groans against you like your reaction hit him straight in the spine.

“Spence,” you gasp.

His hands slip lower, following the curve of your waist, the flex of your stomach, reverent and a little shaky. He pauses at the waistband of your pajama shorts. Looks up. Waits.

You nod so fast you’re almost embarrassed.

He slides his fingers under the elastic, drags them down, and it’s so careful you could cry. There’s no hurry in it. No desperate ripping. Just his hands easing your shorts and underwear down your thighs, over your knees, past your calves. He discards them somewhere, and then he’s just looking at you.

You know that should make you feel vulnerable enough to crawl out of your own skin, but instead, you feel… wanted. Worshipped. Safe.

He touches you, finally. Long fingers tracing the outside of your thigh, then up, higher, higher, until he’s cupping the heat of you, feeling the way you’re already so, so wet for him.

“Oh,” he whispers, like you’ve just answered a question he’s been too polite to ask. “Here?” he murmurs, thumb circling your clit, featherlight at first, letting your reactions guide him. His middle and ring finger slip through your slick and gather you, just testing, just mapping.

“Spencer,” you say, needy and unpretty and not ashamed, and that’s his answer. He slides one long finger into you, slow.

Your hips chase it immediately, your body taking him deeper. He curves his knuckles and you gasp, eyes squeezing shut, and he makes a soft, reverent sound that should not be as filthy as it is.

“Like that?” he breathes.

“Yes—oh—yes.”

He doesn’t talk a lot after that — he just listens.

Every time your breath catches or your thighs tense, he adjusts. He slides a second finger into you when he feels you stretch for him, and the fullness makes your mouth fall open, your back bow off the mattress. His thumb finds your clit in these slow, tight circles that turn into perfect pressure when you whimper please, please, please without even realizing you’re saying it.

“That’s it,” he whispers, quiet encouragement that goes straight to your center, and for a moment you think any ounce of praise from him could probably make you come on the spot.

Your heel drags up the back of his calf, trying to get him even closer, pulling him into you. Your hand is in his hair because you need to hold on to something, need to ground yourself in him.

He starts kissing his way down your body while he works you. First the soft space between your breasts, then the underside of your ribs, then lower, down your stomach, slow enough to make you dizzy, giving you a hundred and one chances to tell him to stop.

You’re not going to tell him to stop.

By the time he settles between your thighs and looks up at you — curls mussed, pupils blown — you’re wrecked.

He waits, and you nod.

His mouth closes over your clit and you swear you see actual stars behind your eyes. His fingers keep fucking into you, curling up, finding that sensitive spot he located unbelievably quick (such an overachiever, as always). You’re babbling again without meaning to — yes, right there, fuck, don’t stop please don’t stop — and he just groans against you and does exactly what you ask like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to do.

You feel it build: warmth into need, need into pressure, pressure into please.

The coil in your stomach tightens, tightens, tightens—oh.

You come hard around his fingers, his mouth still on you through it, and you say his name the way you never say anything, like it’s the only word you know. Your whole body goes white-hot, shaking, and he holds you through it, stays with you, working you gently through the aftershocks until you’re trembling and over-sensitive.

He doesn’t stop until you ask him to. He withdraws slow, presses one more kiss to your inner thigh, and moves back up your body.

It hits you then, square between the ribs, just how stupidly beautiful Spencer is. It’s catastrophic.

The plush of his mouth, still a little swollen. The uneven stubble along his jaw that rasped against the inside of your thigh a minute ago. The long lines and soft edges of him — chest and shoulders and that ridiculous waist. The little crinkles at the corners of his eyes. The single freckle over the arch of his brow. All of him, right here above you, chin and fingers still slick with you, looking at you like you’re the best thing he’ll ever look at in this life.

You’ve always thought he was handsome. Even on day one, when he couldn’t hold eye contact with you for longer than three seconds, your stomach still did that humiliating, dizzying little swoop. But this is different. This is not just attraction. It’s not just god, you’re hot. This is… too much to process. This is no one has ever looked at me like this before but you’re somehow doing it like it’s the most natural instinct in the world.

You’re peeled open in a way you don’t normally let happen. Not with anyone. Not ever. But here you are: naked, breath uneven, nerves still buzzing where his mouth had you, and he’s above you, steady, eyes blown and soft and full. He’s bare for you, too — not just his skin, but all the careful, controlled parts of him, wide open and offered.

And then there’s the way he’s looking at you.

If you could bottle that look and take a swig anytime you needed it, you could fix yourself forever. Your worst days, the spiral ones where you’re convinced you’re hard to love / too much / too sharp / a liability — one taste of the way he’s looking at you right now and poof. Gone. It’s ridiculous and infuriating and dizzying all at once. It lights up under your breastbone like someone struck a match in all the places you thought were doomed to stay damp and dark forever.

It’s too much. You have to look away.

You turn your head into the pillow, gaze skittering to the wall, his shoulder, the wrinkle in the motel sheet by your hip — anywhere but his eyes, because if you keep feeling that much tenderness you’re going to do something irreversible like cry or tell him every secret you’ve ever had.

“Hey,” he whispers, tenderly nosing at your cheekbone and pulling you back into your body. “Where’d you go?”

You blink. Then blink again, and again, until you can force your eyes back to his. “‘M here,” you whisper, voice embarrassingly thin. You reach for him to ground yourself, fingers curling around his forearm.

He kisses your cheek before lifting his head to look at you again. “Physically, maybe. But your mind went somewhere else just now.” He studies you, concern knitting his brows together. “Was that… not okay?”

You snap back to him so fast your neck almost twinges. “What? God, no. Wait, I mean — yes, of course it was okay.” You groan, covering your face with your hand for half a second. “I’m screwing this up. Sorry. Let me try again.”

His mouth curves, worried and amused all at once. “Take your time.”

“It was more than okay,” you tell him. That part comes out clean. “Spencer, that was—you were unbelievable. Like, so good it’s insulting. I didn’t ‘go somewhere else.’ I just…” you trail off, searching for the right word and not finding one big enough. “I think I’m feeling more feelings than I’m used to feeling in…this particular situation, and my mind doesn’t quite know what to do with all of them.”

Smooooth. How many times can you possibly use the word “feeling” in one sentence? New record!

His eyes search yours for a few quiet moments before he speaks, confusion washing through his features. “Feelings like…?”

You blow out a slow, shaky breath. You hate this part. You hate saying the quiet thing. But you do it anyway, because it’s Spencer, and this is, apparently, what he’s turned you into: mush. Emotional, honest, vulnerable mush.

“I can’t remember the last time something like that felt so… intimate,” you admit. You feel the word catch in your throat on the way out. “I mean, I know the act itself is intimate, obviously. I’m not a robot. But I mean… you. You, doing that. Looking at me like that while you’re doing it. I haven’t— I don’t…” you swallow. “That was the first time in a long time I’ve done anything like that with someone I actually care about. And I’ve never done that with someone I care about the way I care about you.”

Spencer’s breath hitches so sharply you can feel it against your ribs. He looks as if all the oxygen in his body has been knocked out of him, and his face does that thing that half looks like he wants to laugh and cry and thank you and swear and maybe throw a parade, and half like he’s still terrified he messed something up.

“Is that a bad thing?” he manages.

“Of course it’s not,” you say immediately, a little too fast. “No. Just different. It’s a good thing, at least it’s supposed to be.” Your laugh scrapes out, self-conscious and breathless. “It’s just new for me, letting my feelings touch the rest of me. I usually put them in a box, shove the box into a dark corner and pretend that corner doesn’t exist. I’m very high-functioning that way, in case you haven’t noticed.”

He huffs a little, fond, because yes, he has noticed.

You don’t look away from him this time when you go on. “But I can’t do that with you. I’ve tried. Like, my god, I have tried.” Your voice drops. “But I can’t compartmentalize the way you make me feel. Especially not with this,” you say, gesturing weakly between your bodies. “You don’t belong in a box. You never have. I can’t get you to stay put.”

You watch him process that, calculus and probabilities firing behind his eyes. He swallows, nods, and when he speaks next, his voice is softer than you’ve maybe ever heard it. “Do you want to stop? I know it’s a lot for you right now. We don’t have to keep going.”

Another realization hits you at that moment: no, god no, you don’t want to stop. It’s not just that you’re turned on and want to keep going — it’s that the idea of going back to before makes something inside you bare its teeth. You have this sudden, terrifying clarity that you never, ever want to go back to starving yourself of him on purpose. You don’t want to go back to wearing a straitjacket you strapped on yourself. All the months of careful waiting, of kissing on couches but stopping when it got too real, of touching yourself after he’s gone just to try (unsuccessfully) to soothe the ache the restraint left behind — all of it has led here, to this.

You reach for him, both arms looping around his neck to pull him back down over you.

“No,” you breathe. “No. I don’t want to stop. I really don’t want to stop.”

You find his mouth in the dim — soft, grateful, a little ruined — and kiss him in hopes you can give him that answer in a language you’re actually fluent in.

When you finally part for air, you hold his face there, inches from yours. “I want you,” you whisper. “All of you. If you’ll have me.”

Spencer makes a sound that is not polished, not composed, not anything but yours. You feel his forehead settle against you like he had to bow just to keep from coming apart. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah, I’ll have you.”

Thank the fucking universe.

You push his pants eagerly down his hips and they catch at his ankles, sending you into a fit of giggles. He laughs with you until he finds the strength to kick them all the way off, and for a second he’s just there, gorgeous and flushed and shaking over you.

His boxers are still on, tented and marked by a small damp spot where the tip of his cock rests. You gently palm him through the cotton because you need to feel him, need to know him in your hand. His forehead drops to your shoulder with a strangled “oh,” but you’re the one who goes a little dizzy.

He’s big. Much bigger than you’d expected.

“Oh my god,” you blurt, and he makes a mortified noise before starting to apologize. You cut that off immediately with a kiss, your hand stroking firmer, letting your thumb trace the shape of him through the fabric. “Don’t you dare be sorry,” you say against his lips. “You’re perfect.”

You feel him shudder. Then you feel him believe you.

He fumbles one hand blindly toward the nightstand, still kissing you, and comes back with his wallet. He fishes out a foil packet with shaking fingers.

You blink at him, breathless and fond. “You would keep a condom in there. Did Derek teach you that?”

His cheeks flush. “Preparedness is—”

“Sexy,” you finish.

He huffs out a broken laugh and pushes his boxers down. You help, because you want to, because you need his skin on your skin. The fabric slides away and then he’s bared to you for the first time and god, you’re overwhelmed.

He’s thick and flushed and leaking at the tip, and the sight hits you so hard you actually whimper. You wrap your fingers around him and he groans like you shorted out all of his higher brain functions on contact. You stroke him once, slow, and watch his mouth fall open, feel the way his hips twitch. You grin, high on the power of it, and help him roll on the condom. He’s concentrating so hard on not embarrassing himself that you could die from how much you adore him.

When he’s ready, he looks back up at you. He swallows. “Still okay?”

“Yes,” you promise, plain and sure. Your hands frame his face like you’re swearing on it.

He settles between your legs, one hand braced by your head, the other smoothing down your thigh, guiding your knee up around his hip. The first press of him against you is all heat and anticipation and stretch.

“Hey,” he murmurs, voice right there with you, low and steady. “Look at me.”

You open your eyes back to his. You didn’t even realize you’d squeezed them shut.

And then finally, finally, he starts to push in.

It’s a slow, claiming slide that makes your lungs forget how to function. Your nails bite into his shoulders, not to stop him, just to hold on. You feel every inch, feel your body make room for him, feel yourself give.

“Spence,” you gasp, half laugh, half prayer.

“I know,” he gets out, equally wrecked. “I know. You feel—” He loses the end of the sentence like his entire vocabulary disappeared and just kisses you instead, as if that’s the only method of communication left.

He bottoms out with a low groan, hips flush to you, and just stays there. He’s shaking. You’re shaking. You can feel his pulse inside you, and it’s obscene how good it feels. It’s obscene how right it feels.

“You okay?” he whispers, forehead pressed to yours.

You nod, desperate. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Please move.”

Something like relief punches out of him. “Okay,” he breathes. “Okay.”

He doesn’t start pounding. Of course he doesn’t — you knew he wouldn’t. He rocks into you slow, controlled, deep, like he’s memorizing the way you take him. It’s the kind of steady, dragging rhythm that makes you feel every inch of him, every withdrawal and push, sparks jumping low in your belly.

Your hand finds his forearm and holds, like you need him right there. His thumb strokes your cheekbone, so gentle you could almost sob.

You can hear yourself. You’re not quiet. You’ve admittedly never really been quiet in bed, but this is different. You’re making all these desperate, needy little sounds into his mouth every time he hits that spot, and you don’t care, you don’t care, you don’t care. You feel wild with it — not just the physical, but the fact that it’s him, that this is you and him, and no one else has ever had exactly this.

He’s not quiet either. You catch the soft curses he usually seldom uses, the reverent little oh my god, the way he whispers your name like it’s gospel. Every time you roll your hips up to meet him, he chokes on air.

“Just like that,” he pants into your mouth when you catch a rhythm that makes both of you see stars. “Yeah, just like that, that’s perfect, you’re— God, you’re so perfect.”

You clench around him and he nearly collapses.

“Jesus,” he gasps, burying his face in your neck for a second like he needs a safe place to fall apart. He rasps a strained “good girl,” but it isn’t filthy like that phrase normally would be. It’s just praise, pure and wonderful, straight from his heart.

After a few slow, rolling minutes like that — sweat sticking your chest to his, his hair damp at the nape, your legs wrapped high around his waist — something hungry wakes up in you.

“Spencer,” you whisper, smiling against his mouth, sweet and breathless. “Switch with me.”

His eyes go dark at that. He moves willingly, immediately, rolling onto his back and bringing you with him, hands steadying you at your hips like he’s afraid you’ll float away. You sink down onto him and both of you make a sound you’re pretty sure would get you evicted if anyone could hear you over the storm.

“Oh, fuck,” he blurts out, head tipping back, eyes squeezed shut. His hands flex hard at your waist, like he has to physically restrain himself from gripping you hard enough to leave marks.

You plant your palms on his chest and start to move.

It’s slow at first, exploratory. He’s flushed, mouth open, eyes glassy and desperate every time he blinks up at you. One of his hands slides up, cups your breast, thumb circling your nipple, and you whine, moving faster, chasing more.

“Yeah,” he pants, encouraging, voice so raw it barely holds shape. “Like that. You look—” He swallows hard. “You look unreal. You’re so beautiful.”

You find a rhythm that grinds you down where you need it and pleasure spikes, white and hot. Your head tips back. A sound falls out of you, loud and unpretty and honest.

He groans like you just took him apart molecule by molecule. “Angel girl. That’s it, just like that.”

Angel girl hits you like a train. You practically sob from how good it feels in your ears.

Your thighs start to tremble. He feels it instantly, hands slowing your hips to steady you. He sits up, chest to chest with you for a heartbeat, kissing you like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your mouth from the inside.

Then, with a gentleness that guts you, he murmurs, “Let me take care of you,” and flips you once more.

It happens so fluidly it doesn’t even register. One second you’re on top; the next you’re on your back again and he’s above you, braced, eyes blown, hair a total disaster, looking exactly like every dream of this moment you’ve ever had but better. So much better.

You wrap one leg around his waist. He pushes your other knee gently up toward your chest, opening you, and then thrusts in deep.

You see stars.

Your breath leaves on a noise that’s half moan, half plea. “Spence—please—”

“I’ve got you,” he whispers, and you believe him down to the bone. He slides one of your hands up over your head and laces your fingers with his, pinning it there against the pillow, holding you down in the sweetest way possible, owning you but only because you offered.

His other hand slips between your bodies, finding your clit without fumbling, circling with the exact pressure he’s already learned you like. It’s devastating. It’s perfect. It’s him, focused and shaking and so, so determined to make you fall apart again.

“That’s it,” he says, voice low and steady even though you can feel how close he is, how much he’s holding in. “That’s it. Let go.”

Your body answers before your mouth can. Your climax slams into you, a bright, overwhelming crest that arches you up against him, clenching tight around his cock. The moan that rips out of you is helpless and raw, and you barely even register you’re saying his name like a prayer until he groans at the sound of it.

He doesn’t stop. He works you through it, through every shaking aftershock, whispering it’s okay, I’ve got you, god you’re so pretty when you come, that’s it until the pleasure rolls and ebbs, leaving you ruined and open and panting.

You’re dimly aware that he’s falling apart above you. His rhythm goes ragged, hips stuttering like he’s right at the edge and trying to hold himself back just to be sure you’re all the way there.

“I’m—” he chokes, voice breaking. He’s so close he can barely talk.

You pull him down into a kiss and roll your hips up to meet him, giving him everything you have. “Please,” you whisper against his mouth, dizzy and wrecked and happy. “Come for me, Spence.”

He does.

His whole body locks, then shudders, and he lets out this strangled, gorgeous noise you feel all the way in your cells. He buries his face in your neck and gives himself to you, hips pressing deep as he spills into the condom. You hold him there, arms wrapped around his shoulders, fingers in his hair, murmuring his name while the last pulses work through him.

He goes heavy in a good way, boneless and trembling and laughing into your skin like he can’t believe any of this is allowed.

Then he remembers himself. Of course he does. He’s careful the second his brain comes back online.

“Hold on,” he murmurs, sweet and apologetic, easing out of you slow, like he’s afraid to hurt you now that the edge is gone. You hiss at the sensitivity and he winces in sympathy, kissing your cheek like sorry, sorry, sorry, and you cut it off with a lazy kiss because stop apologizing for my favorite thing that’s ever happened. He gets out of bed—much to your chagrin—and slips off the condom, tying it with the same precision he applies to solving homicides. You might laugh at that if you weren’t still actively floating.

He’s back almost immediately with a warm, damp washcloth from the bathroom. He cleans you up with this soft, focused tenderness that makes your eyes sting, checking in with a quiet “okay?” every time you twitch.

His boxers go back on. Your t-shirt comes back over your head. He helps you into it, like he can’t stop taking care of you now that you’ve finally let him.

And then you’re back under the covers, both of you loose-limbed and wrecked and stupidly gentle. You end up half on top of him without discussing it — your thigh slung over his hips and head against his chest, his palm splayed across the small of your back and nose tucked into your hair like he’s decided that’s just where it goes now.

He tries three times to speak before anything comes out. “I—” He laughs softly at himself, breath still uneven. “Are you okay?”

You tip your face up and kiss along his jaw, lazy, affectionate. “So okay,” you murmur, voice hoarse and happy. “You?”

“Same,” he says, and the word comes out so full you feel it in your chest. He nudges his nose against your temple. “You were—” He shakes his head, abandons it, finds something braver. “Thank you. For trusting me.”

Something warm and liquid rolls through you at that. “Thank you for making it worth the wait,” you whisper.

He makes a helpless sound that’s half laugh, half groan, and tightens his arm around you.

You lie there, too giddy to sleep and too wrung out to have another Serious Talk, so you don’t. You talk about stupid, safe things instead. How the rain sounds like a thousand people sprinting on a high school gym floor. How this motel has the worst wall art you’ve ever seen. How one day you’re absolutely going to make him tell you the number of milliseconds he spent thinking about seeing your boobs.

You admit, smug and sleepy, that you’re going to remember the way he called you angel girl for a month and use it against him whenever you want something. He blushes in the dark, the heat of it against you.

He asks if you’re warm enough. You are, because you’re basically plastered to him like a second skin, but he still hauls the thin motel quilt higher around your shoulders and tucks it in like a cocoon.

You make a lazy promise to act totally normal at work once you make it back to town. He makes a lazier promise to try not to stare at you like everyone should know you’re his. That makes your stomach flip in a way that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the part of you that’s finally, finally letting itself be his.

Eventually your bodies go heavy in the right way. You’re still tangled — his hand at your waist, your fingers laced in his hair like you plan to keep him — both of you buzzing with the good kind of ruin.

You fall asleep mid-smile in a room that feels like it belongs to both of you.

Outside, the flood keeps the world shut. Inside, you’re his and he’s yours and there’s nothing between you but heat and breath and the slow, steady fact of tomorrow.

ᝰ.ᐟ

this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️

You can’t really see him, but you can feel him. You feel the tremor in his grip, the way he’s holding on like he can keep you from slipping away through sheer stubbornness. His thumb strokes the side of your hand once, twice, three times.

“Please, baby,” he begs, but his voice barely sounds like the Spencer you know. It’s desperate and broken and terrified.

You try to answer, but nothing comes out. Your tongue feels too big for your mouth. You manage a breath that tastes like copper.

Spencer’s face swims into view as the hallway lights flicker across him. He looks… wrong. Too pale. Too sharp around the eyes. Like someone took the idea of Spencer Reid and scraped all his softness off with a blade.

“Look at me,” he begs. “Keep your eyes open, please. Please baby, please keep your eyes open.”

You do. At least… you think you do. It’s hard. Your vision keeps sliding away.

A voice cuts through the air again, this time from farther back, tight and controlled. Hotch. Then Morgan. Emily, too. You can’t really make out what they’re saying, but you can tell they don’t sound like themselves either.

Another hall appears ahead, marked by double doors with a red sign: STAFF ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT.

The gurney accelerates.

Spencer keeps up for a few more strides. His hand tightens around yours. It’s the only thing you can sense at the moment that feels like it actually belongs to you.

More voices. Ones you don’t recognize, arguing with the one voice you’d recognize anywhere. Telling him he can’t go any further, that he has to let you go.

Don’t let me go, you try to yell, but nothing comes out.

Spencer squeezes your hand even harder before his fingers slip from yours — slowly, then all at once. Your hand feels cold and empty and suddenly, pain is all you can feel.

They push you through the doors.

The air changes back here. Cooler. Sharper. Louder. The lights above you are brighter, almost angry.

You try to remember what it feels like to breathe. You try to remember what it feels like to be alive.

The ceiling keeps moving above you.

Then everything goes dark.

—

Spencer stays exactly where the doors cut him off.

He stands there with his shoulders pulled tight, like his body is bracing for an impact that already happened. His hands hang at his sides miserably.

Hotch gets everyone moving, steering them down the hall into a waiting room that smells like stale coffee and disinfectant. The chairs are bolted to the floor. A vending machine hums in the corner.

Garcia sinks into a seat and immediately stands again. JJ’s hand hovers near her shoulder, unsure whether to offer comfort or space. Emily stands near a window, arms crossed, eyes fixed on nothing and everything all at once. Morgan paces, then stops, then paces again, anger doing laps underneath his skin.

Spencer just keeps staring at the doors.

Hotch’s phone rings once. He silences it, then pockets it without looking away from Spencer. “Reid.”

Spencer’s head snaps toward him, too fast. “Huh?”

Hotch’s voice stays even. “I need you to take a breath.”

Spencer does, albeit reluctantly. His eyes are wet. He looks lost.

Hotch nods in tentative approval and turns to Penelope. “Garcia, pull up Greenaway’s file and access her emergency contact information.”

Garcia blinks twice then fumbles for her laptop. Her fingers shake. She forces them into motion anyway, because this is what she’s trained to do when the world is on fire.

“Emergency contact info. Yes. Okay. I can do that,” she whispers, and her voice wobbles on the edge of breaking. “Let’s see, let’s see…”

Then she freezes. “Oh,” she whispers, a sad, wobbly smile appearing and disappearing within seconds.

Hotch’s gaze sharpens. “What is it, Garcia?”

Garcia swallows hard. “She, um, she updated her emergency contact info a few months ago. Before that, she didn’t have anyone listed at all. But now, it’s… it’s Reid. Spencer is her emergency contact.”

Spencer’s expression empties out again, something raw flashing underneath. He looks haunted, like the fact that you chose him makes the universe feel even crueler.

Hotch nods once. “Unfortunately that doesn’t help us right now. We need to track down a family member who can give consent.”

Garcia’s eyes widen. “Consent for what?”

Hotch does his best to soften it. “If something changes during surgery. If… certain decisions need to be made. The hospital is going to ask for a family member to make those decisions on her behalf.”

The waiting room goes quiet in a way that makes every small sound louder. The hum of the vending machine. The squeak of Morgan’s shoe as he stops moving. Garcia’s breath catching.

Garcia’s hands hover over her keyboard for half a second, then slam down with purpose. A few stubborn tears leak out and she wipes them away with the heel of her palm.

“Okay. Family. Right. I’ll… I can find Elle,” she says.

Morgan’s brows lift. “You can?”

Garcia’s mouth trembles before determination hardens it. “She changed all her numbers and didn’t leave the Bureau with an updated address after she resigned, but this is me we’re talking about here.” Garcia’s fingers fly again. “I can find her.”

Spencer finally looks away from the doors long enough to meet Hotch’s eyes. There’s something in his expression that feels like a confession without words.

Hotch’s gaze softens. “She’s going to get through this, Reid.”

Spencer’s throat bobs. He nods once, as if agreeing will somehow keep you alive.

And then his eyes snap back to the doors, because that’s where you went, and he still hasn’t figured out how to exist on the side of them where you aren’t.

—

The hospital chapel is, mercifully, empty when Spencer slips inside. He sits in a pew with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles go white.

He’s so lost in thought that he doesn’t hear the door open at first. He doesn’t hear footsteps. He barely even hears his own breathing.

“I didn’t take you for the praying type, kid,” Rossi says behind him.

Spencer’s head jerks up. He looks startled to be seen.

“I’m not,” he says quietly. “I just… I didn’t know where else to go. I couldn’t stay out there with everyone looking at me like that.”

Rossi nods once and doesn’t ask for an explanation as to what Spencer means by like that. He stands in the aisle for a beat, letting Spencer have the space to decide whether he can handle another person in the room.

Once he realizes Spencer isn’t going to shoo him away, Rossi slides into the pew one row behind him and leans forward.

“She’s going to be fine, Spencer,” Rossi says. “And when she wakes up, she’s going to lose her mind cackling at the idea of you sitting in a chapel.”

A sound escapes Spencer that might be a laugh in a different universe. Here, it’s just air breaking. He’s silent for another full minute before saying anything.

“I can’t stop thinking about the last thing I said to her,” he admits, staring down at his hands as if they might tell him the answer. “I keep trying to remember what it was, but… I can’t. It’s not there. It’s like my mind totally erased it.”

His fingers flex, then tighten again, like he’s trying to pull the memory out through his skin.

“I should know,” he says, voice pitching with frustration. “I mean, I remember pretty much everything. I remember every mathematical equation I’ve ever learned and I can recite all 1,312 unabridged pages of The Count of Monte Cristo, but I can’t remember the last thing I said to my girlfriend before—”

His throat closes. He drags a breath in through his nose, harsh and shaky. “It was probably something stupid, anyway,” he says finally. “And no matter what it was, I know for a fact it wasn’t what I should’ve said.”

Rossi’s gaze stays on him. “What should you have said?”

Spencer stares at the altar, then away from it, then down at his hands again. His jaw works like he’s chewing on something too big to swallow.

“That I love her.”

Silence expands around the words. Spencer’s shoulders bow in on themselves, like he’s been holding up something impossible and finally set it down.

“I’m in love with her,” he adds, as if the clarification is necessary.

“Of course you are. I already knew that, kid,” Rossi says.

Spencer looks over his shoulder, eyes flashing wide. “How?”

Rossi lifts his brows. “It’s written all over your face every time you look at her. And, for whatever my opinion is worth, it’s written all over hers every time she looks at you, too.” He pauses, choosing his words with care. “She may act like she’s made of steel, but when that girl looks at you, she melts. And when you look at her, it’s like the rest of the universe ceases to exist. That’s love if I’ve ever seen it, and despite what my three failed marriages may lead you to believe, I do in fact know a thing or two about love.”

Spencer’s breath catches. He scrubs a hand over his mouth, like he’s trying desperately to keep himself from falling apart.

“It’s been so hard not to tell her,” he admits, and the honesty in it is almost unbearable. “It would be the easiest, most natural thing in the world to say those words to her.” He swallows, blinking fast. "I literally feel them in my mouth all the time, but I’ve had to swallow them back constantly, because I’m terrified of what’ll happen if I say it out loud. I’m terrified it’ll change something.”

Rossi tilts his head, listening in that earnest way he always does.

Spencer’s fingers twist together. “I don’t even need her to say it back. I mean— I want to hear it, obviously. I… I hope she loves me too.” His voice dips, gentler, almost reverent. “But that’s not why I want to say it. I just… I want her to know I love her. I want her to feel loved. But she’s… she’s been through so much. Words like that are scary for her. She could feel like she’s about to be trapped, or disappointed, or left behind.” His voice drops. “And I can’t… I can’t be another person who makes her feel like love is a weapon.”

Rossi’s tone turns firm without turning cruel. “So you’ve been keeping it to yourself.”

Spencer nods once, miserable. “I didn’t want to scare her away.” He exhales shakily. “And now she’s in surgery with a bullet lodged in her abdomen and I can’t even remember what I last said to her and I’m realizing I might never get the chance to say what I should have said.”

Rossi leans forward a fraction, voice low and certain. “You will. When she wakes up, you can tell her.”

Spencer’s laugh is broken, disbelieving. “But what if—”

“No if, Reid. When she wakes up, you tell her. Don’t wait.” Rossi insists. “She deserves to know, and you deserve to love her as loudly as you want.”

Spencer’s throat works. He nods, but it looks more like a tremor than agreement.

“I’m just—” His voice catches. “I’m so scared.”

Rossi’s hand reaches forward and settles on Spencer’s shoulder. “I know you are, kid. We’re all a little terrified right now,” he admits. “But she’s strong. She’ll get through this.”

He squeezes Spencer’s shoulder gently, then adds once more, for good measure:

“And when she wakes up, you’re going to tell her.”

—

The waiting room itself flinches when Elle Greenaway walks in.

JJ is the first one to stand. Her face does something complicated in the space between recognition and regret. Hotch follows a beat later, all straight lines and control, like the reasons why Elle walked out of the BAU have been folded into his suit jacket and carefully buttoned away.

Morgan’s pacing stops mid-stride. Garcia’s breath catches like a hiccup. Emily turns from the window, taking Elle in for the first time with a quick, assessing look.

Elle looks… the same, and also not. Her hair is longer, and her bangs have grown out. Her eyes are darker somehow, like they’ve seen too much and turned to stone.

She takes in the room with one sweep, and for a second, it’s like she’s back in it. Like she never left.

“Elle. Hi,” JJ says in quiet greeting.

“Jennifer.” Elle’s voice is steady, but her gaze flicks over all of them like she’s counting. “Hotch.”

“Elle,” Hotch says with a nod. There’s a tremor of regret hidden in his tone, but he covers it in that well-practiced way any seasoned unit chief can.

Garcia breaks the tension, bounding out of her seat and across the room, arms flung around Elle before anyone can decide if it’s appropriate or not.

“Oh my god,” Garcia says into her shoulder, muffled and tear-soaked. “Do you know how freaking hard you were to find? Even for me? I had to— I had to do things I’m pretty sure are illegal in, like, at least thirteen states. And then you didn’t answer my first two phone calls!”

Elle’s arms hover for a second, then settle, brief and stiff around Penelope’s torso.

“Well, I never did like the phone,” Elle says simply, eyes cutting to Morgan.

He huffs a humorless laugh. JJ’s mouth twitches, and then she’s serious again.

Hotch gestures toward the seats. “Sit. We’ll fill you in. Your sister was shot during a takedown.”

Elle’s expression doesn’t change, but something inside her tightens. “Where?”

“Her side,” JJ answers, words clipped and careful. “The bullet somehow managed to sneak through between the straps of her vest.”

Morgan’s jaw works. “Before you ask, the unsub’s dead,” he says sternly. “I took him down right after he got the shot off.” He doesn’t say it out loud, but it’s clear he blames himself for not getting there first.

Hotch continues, calm in the way he has to be even when everything is very much not calm. “She lost a lot of blood. The bullet lodged somewhere in her abdomen, and the surgeons haven’t told us yet how extensive the damage is.”

“So she’s in surgery right now?” Elle asks.

“Yes,” Hotch says. “All we know for sure is that it’s serious.”

Elle drags a hand down her face, then glances around the room again, startled by how rattled they all look. “Yeah, I can tell it’s serious by the looks on all of your faces,” she says. “I mean, damn. You all look awful,” she adds, hoping a brief moment of teasing isn’t totally inappropriate.

Morgan snorts. “Watch it, Greenaway. And hey, if you think we look like hell, you gotta see how much worse Reid looks.”

Elle’s brows knit with the realization that Spencer isn’t there. She looks around the room, as if his lanky frame might be tucked behind the vending machine in the corner. “Yeah,” she says slowly. “Where is Reid, anyway? And… wait, hold on. Why would he look any worse than the rest of you?”

The air in the room goes completely still as a somber realization hits the team:

Elle doesn’t know about you and Spencer. She doesn’t know anything about your life.

Garcia’s eyes widen. JJ’s gaze flicks to Hotch, then away. Morgan’s face freezes in a way that would almost be funny if it weren’t devastating. Emily watches the pause like she’s watching a door swing open into a room none of them want to be the first to enter.

Elle’s eyes move over each of them, quick and suspicious. “What? What am I missing?”

Morgan’s throat bobs. He looks like he’s about to tell the truth, and then decides he’s not allowed to. Instead, he just says, “You need to talk to Reid, Elle.”

She stares at him for a beat, then nods. “Okay. Tell me where to find him.”

—

The chapel door clicks softly behind Elle when she finds her way inside.

Rossi is the first person she sees — she never knew him personally, but he’s basically a Bureau legend, so she recognizes him immediately. He’s already rising, hand reaching out to pat Spencer’s shoulder one last time before leaving the two of them alone.

Spencer doesn’t look up at first. Elle walks slowly to the edge of the pew he’s sitting in and clears her throat.

His face lifts, and she feels the impact of his expression like a blow to the ribs. He looks completely hollowed out. Like someone scraped him down to the bone and stranded him there.

Spencer stands. “Elle,” he says breathlessly. He blinks a few times, worried he’s hallucinating.

They hug. It’s awkward, because everything is awkward when standing in a hospital chapel at a time like this, but there’s a warmth and familiarity to it still. Elle’s hand presses once between his shoulder blades, a quick, grounding pat that almost feels like apology.

They separate and Elle gestures down towards the pew, encouraging Spencer to sit before she slides in beside him.

A heavy silence settles between them. It makes Elle itchy, so she reaches for humor to break the ice. “Wow. Morgan really wasn’t kidding. You do look even worse than the rest of them.”

Spencer’s mouth tries to lift, but it doesn’t quite make it there. His eyes flick away, then back.

Elle studies him slowly. She takes in the shaking hands he’s trying to hide. The rawness around his eyes. The way his fear doesn’t look like concern for a colleague. It looks like something private. Something intimate. Something… more.

“Oh,” she whispers.

Spencer’s shoulders tense.

Elle swallows as the pieces of a puzzle she didn’t expect to be solving arrange themselves in her mind. “Oh my god,” she breathes. “You’re… you’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

Spencer looks up at her miserably. “We’ve, um, kind of been together for a while.”

Elle blinks. “Together,” she repeats, like the word tastes strange.

Spencer nods once. “Yes. She’s… she’s my girlfriend.”

Elle’s eyes burn for a second, the hurt of her sister leaving her out of such an important part of her life flashing sharp and ugly before she can cover it. She looks away toward the altar, jaw tight.

“I didn’t know,” she whispers.

“She told me once that she wanted to tell you, but… I don’t think she knew how,” Spencer says.

Elle’s laugh is quiet and brittle. “Yeah. Can’t say I blame her. I probably wouldn’t tell me anything either if I were her.”

Spencer shifts, restless, then decides not to touch the complicated-estranged-sister-dynamic of it all and move on to more practical discussion.

“They said she lost a lot of blood,” he says. “She was barely conscious when they wheeled her into the operating room.” His voice falters, and he swallows it back. “They probably won’t be able to tell us much until she’s out of surgery.”

Elle looks at him again, really looks, and whatever she sees there rearranges something in her. He probably knows her better than I do now, she thinks to herself. He deserves to fall apart, but I don’t. I lost that right a long time ago.

“Okay,” she says briskly, as if she can muscle her way through her emotions by treating them like a job. “Then we need to go back to the waiting room with everyone else. We need to be there when the doctor comes out so we don’t miss anything.”

Spencer hesitates, eyes flicking down to his feet.

Elle’s voice goes firm, but not unkind. “Reid.”

He looks up at her.

“She’ll be okay. She’s a Greenaway, you know. If I can survive getting shot on the job, so can she,” Elle says. She stands, offering him her hand.

“C’mon. We’ll face it together.”

—

Time becomes a cruel, shapeless thing in hospitals.

Minutes stretch until they feel indistinguishable from hours. The clock above the vending machines keeps ticking like it isn’t personally offending everyone in the room.

Hotch stays near the doorway, posture rigid, eyes trained down the hallway as if focus alone can summon good news. JJ sits with her hands clasped in her lap, gaze fixed on a spot on the floor. Garcia keeps wiping her cheeks with her sleeves, smearing mascara she doesn’t have the energy to care about. Rossi walks back and forth between the coffee machine and whoever needs caffeine most. Emily’s still by the window, lost in thought. Morgan’s still pacing.

Spencer, on the other hand, doesn’t pace.

He can’t. He’s frozen in place.

He’s been stuck in the same chair for so long that the fabric has creased under him. Elbows on his knees, hands laced together so hard his fingers ache, eyes locked on the STAFF ONLY double doors at the end of the hall like he’s bracing for the worst. Every so often his thumb drags over his knuckle like he’s trying to keep himself anchored in his own body.

Elle stands off to the side, distanced from the cluster. Her arms are crossed tight, jaw clenched, gaze sharp and distant. Her posture reads as defensive until you look closer and realize it’s the only way she knows to keep her hands from shaking.

Then, in the middle of all the quiet, the doors open.

The surgeon moves with the measured calm of someone who’s done this too many times to let it affect him anymore. His mask is down around his neck. He reaches up and takes his scrub cap off his head as he approaches.

Hotch stands immediately. JJ and Garcia are up a second later. Emily turns from the window and plants herself next to Rossi. Morgan stops pacing so abruptly his shoes squeak against the linoleum floor.

Spencer doesn’t stand so much as unfold. Like his body has been coiled around panic for hours and forgot how to be upright.

Elle steps closer, arms still crossed tight.

“Are you all here for Agent Greenaway?” the surgeon asks.

“Yes,” Hotch says. “How is she?”

“She’s out of surgery,” he says. “We were able to remove the bullet and repair the internal damage, but she lost a significant amount of blood. Things were touch and go for a while. She made it through surgery, but her condition is still critical.”

“What now?” Hotch asks.

“Well, the next twenty-four hours will tell us a lot,” the surgeon says. “She’s being transferred to the ICU floor now so she can be closely monitored for complications — bleeding, infection, organ failure, blood pressure. She’s still sedated, but we’ll start weaning her off the anesthesia slowly to see how she responds.

Spencer’s throat bobs. “Can we see her?”

The surgeon looks at him, eyes flicking over his rumpled suit and raw face. “Normally it’s family only in the ICU, but… you’re FBI, so I think we can make some exceptions. There’s a max of two people allowed in the room at a time, though. I’ll send someone out to bring you to her.”

Spencer nods with sincere understanding. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.”

Hotch shakes the surgeon’s hand and turns toward the team. “All of you except for Elle and Reid, go home. Get some rest. We’ll come by in shifts tomorrow.”

JJ looks at Spencer sympathetically. “Call us if anything changes,” she says.

Morgan claps Spencer’s shoulder once, firm. “Don’t do that thing where you forget to eat, kid. You know your girl will kill you when she wakes up if she finds out you’ve got nothing in your system but shitty hospital coffee.”

The corner of Spencer’s mouth twitches. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “She will.”

—

You look smaller in the ICU bed.

Not like you’ve shrunk. But… like the world finally managed to nearly swallow you up.

There’s tubing everywhere and tape keeping wires stuck to your limbs and the steady beep-beep of monitors filling the air.

Spencer freezes, breath catching like he’s afraid to exhale too hard and disturb you.

Elle moves first. She steps in next to the bed, eyes darting over the machines, then reaches down and touches your wrist gently. Her fingers linger there for a moment before she pulls back and crosses her arms, looking around the room as if she knows she shouldn’t be seeing you like this.

“I’m going to—” She stops, glances at Spencer, and something passes between them that doesn’t need words. She steps back. “I’ll let you spend some time alone with her.”

He nods gratefully and watches her go until the room is only you and him and the machines.

He moves to the bedside, hand finding yours like a magnet. Your fingers are cool, so he wraps his other hand around them as well. He knows how much you hate being cold.

“Hi,” he whispers. His voice cracks on that single word. He clears his throat, blinking tears out of the way. “Hey, sweetheart.”

He swallows, thumb stroking your knuckles in a slow, desperate pattern. “The whole team stayed the entire time you were in surgery,” he tells you, even though he knows you can’t actually hear him right now. “Hotch, Rossi, JJ, Morgan, Garcia, Emily… they— they didn’t leave until they knew you made it through. I think Garcia might’ve cried enough to flood the whole floor, which is… pretty on-brand.”

His laugh is wet, but it doesn’t last. He presses his forehead to your hand for a second, eyes squeezed shut.

“And, uh, Elle’s here too,” he adds, softer, like he’s bracing for you to flinch even though you’re unconscious. “Garcia somehow tracked her down. She got here before you even made it out of surgery.”

He inhales shakily. “You— god, you were in that operating room for hours. I don’t think I’ve ever been that terrified before. I’m still terrified, because the doctor’s don’t even know if you’ll wake up. Normally I’d try to calculate the odds on this sort of thing, but it… it sort of feels like I left my brain in another room. I can’t make sense of anything. It’s all just random numbers jumbled around in my head,” he admits. “But you have to wake up, because I… I have something I need to tell you. And I need you to hear it. I need you to really be here when I say it.”

A tear slips free. He wipes it with the back of his hand, angry at himself for breaking, then immediately looks guilty, like you’d scold him for being mean to his own feelings.

He leans down until his lips brush your knuckles, kissing them softer than he ever has before.

“Please,” he whispers against your skin. “Please wake up as soon as you can.”

—

All night long, Spencer refuses to leave.

He shifts positions. He stands and moves out of the way when the nurses come in. He sits again, knee bouncing. He learns the rhythm of the monitor the way he learns facts, memorizes it like it’s a language he can speak back to you.

A doctor tells him the anesthesia can take a while to wear off, especially after major trauma and blood loss, especially when they’re keeping you comfortable and stable. He nods like knowing the reason makes the waiting any less brutal. It doesn’t.

Elle drifts in and out. She watches Spencer watching you and looks away every time. But even when she leaves, she never goes farther than the cafeteria downstairs.

Night folds into morning. The window shifts from black to gray to the shy, watery light of dawn.

You still haven't woken up. But as the hours pass, the room starts to change.

At first, your bed was surrounded by equipment and machines and too many lines disappearing into your body. Now the wires have thinned. The tubes were removed one by one as you stabilized, like the hospital has been slowly giving you back to yourself. A monitor still tracks your heart in patient little beeps, but it doesn’t sound as frantic. Your breathing is steadier. Your color looks… closer to normal, if you squint.

Spencer’s still in the chair beside you, pulled so close the armrests bump the bed frame. His body is folded forward, forearms crossed on the mattress, head resting on them in a miserable attempt at getting some rest. His curls are a mess. His tie is gone. His shirt is wrinkled and slightly untucked. One of his hands is still wrapped around yours, fingers laced like he’s afraid you’ll slip away if he lets go for even a second.

Then — quietly, almost stubbornly — you start to come back. Consciousness returns in pieces.

First, pain. Dull and deep, like your body is just a giant bruise with a heartbeat. Then, the weight of the blankets. The dry, cottony taste in your mouth. The faint sting of antiseptic in your nose. Sound swims in next — the monitor, the low hush of the AC, a cart rolling down the hall.

You try to breathe in and it hurts, sharp at your side.

Your fingers twitch without permission.

Spencer’s hand tightens reflexively. His head lifts, eyes snapping open.

For a second, he just stares at you, and you stare back at him.

Then his face crumples in a way you’ve never seen before. Relief and fear and pain crash together so violently they all morph into one heartbreaking expression.

“Hi,” he whispers shakily.

You swallow, wince, and immediately regret having a throat. “Hi,” you rasp.

Spencer makes a sound that could be a laugh and also could be a sob. He helps you take a sip of water before leaning in closer, free hand hovering near your face, desperate to touch you but cautious not to overwhelm you in such a fragile state.

“You’re awake,” he says in disbelief.

You blink slowly, the room swimming around you. You look at him and your brain catalogs the details: the red in his eyes, the shadow of stubble across his cheeks, the way his shoulders are hunched like he’s been frozen in that chair for hours.

You manage a tiny smirk. “Geez, Spence,” you murmur. “I got shot, yet somehow you’re the one who looks like hell.”

A laugh actually breaks free from Spencer’s throat for real this time. “That’s—” He exhales hard, eyes shining. “That’s seriously the first thing you have to say?”

“Gotta stay on brand,” you whisper, then wince again.

Spencer’s thumb strokes your knuckles. His touch is careful, reverent. He lowers his forehead toward your hand like he’s about to pray into it, then stops himself and just… holds on tighter.

“I thought—” He swallows. His eyes squeeze shut for half a beat. “God, I was so scared.”

The words land in your chest even heavier than the pain. You try to lift your other hand to touch his face, but you only make it halfway there before gravity wins. Spencer catches it, guiding it back down gently.

“Easy,” he murmurs. “Don’t— don’t move too much.”

You breathe out through your nose, a weak huff. “Bossy.”

His mouth twitches. “I’m not trying to be.”

“I know,” you whisper softly. You clear your throat, trying to find your edge again. “What… what happened?”

His expression flickers, panic trying to surge back in. He steadies it with effort. “You were shot between the straps of your vest on your left side,” he explains quietly. “You were rushed into surgery. It—” He takes a breath. “You lost a lot of blood. Really scared everyone half to death.”

“Sounds like something I’d do,” you mumble..

Spencer’s eyes crinkle with something like gratitude, like your humor is proof you’re really here. He leans in just a little, careful not to jostle you, and presses a kiss to your knuckles.

You stare at him, woozy at the tenderness. Your heart does something stupid. Before you can acknowledge it, the door opens.

A nurse slips in first, followed by the doctor. Spencer stands immediately, but he doesn’t let go of your hand.

“Welcome back,” the doctor says, voice calm and practiced. She shines a light in your eyes. Asks you your name. Where you are. What day it is.

You get most of it right. You get some of it wrong, which is understandable considering the fact your head feels like it’s full of jello and static.

They check your vitals, ask about your pain levels, adjust your meds. Your side throbs. Spencer answers questions for you when he can.

When they finally leave, you take a slow breath.

Spencer sits back down, the chair scraping softly as he somehow pulls it even closer than it was before.

“You’ve been here the entire time, haven’t you?” you ask, voice quiet.

He nods. “Of course I have.”

“Spencer,” you whisper. “You look… wrecked. You didn’t have to stay this whole time, really.”

He swallows. His thumb pauses against your skin, then resumes, slower. “Yes, I did,” he insists, and it makes your chest ache. “I didn’t— I didn’t want to miss it.”

“Miss what?”

“Anything,” he says quietly. “Any… time with you. Just in case.”

You stare at him. Your throat tightens in a way that has nothing to do with being in the ICU.

He hesitates, then says, “So… Elle is here.”

Your stomach drops. “What the fuck?”

Spencer nods. “Yeah. Garcia got ahold of her. She’s been here since you were still in surgery.”

You blink, trying to reconcile that with the last time you heard her voice. With the years of silence that followed. Your hand tightens in his automatically.

Spencer notices. Of course he does. His grip firms, anchoring you, and his eyes search your face. “Do you want me to go get her?”

“No,” you say quickly, then pause, because you aren’t actually as sure of your answer as you thought you’d be. “Maybe. I— I don’t know.”

Spencer nods like he understands exactly what that means. “Okay,” he says with a soft, comforting smile. “It’s just us for now. I’ll get her when you’re ready.”

—

Hours later, after the room finally settles, when the lights feel less harsh and your breathing doesn’t sound like it’s scraping against your organs on the way out, you look at Spencer and whisper, “Okay.”

His eyes sharpen instantly. “Okay?”

You swallow. Your throat still feels a bit like sandpaper. “You can get her,” you say.

Spencer nods. He squeezes your hand once. “Alright, as long as you’re sure.”

You squeeze his hand back. “I’m not, but this is probably as sure as I’m gonna get, so it’s time I rip the bandage off.”

He gets up then, walking to the door and looking back at you once more before turning the handle and stepping into the hall.

A minute passes. Maybe two. Maybe twelve. It’s hard to say.

Then the handle turns again.

Elle steps in slowly, as if she’s prepared to navigate around potential booby traps. Spencer follows behind her, gaze flicking to you.

You hold it long enough to nod.

Spencer hesitates, then walks to your bedside and murmurs, “I’ll… give you two some privacy.” He reaches down and squeezes your arm lightly before disappearing back out into the hall.

The room suddenly feels like it’s suffocating you.

Elle hovers near the end of the bed.

“You look like shit,” she says finally.

It would almost be funny if it didn’t make your chest tighten. You manage a weak, unimpressed blink. “So do you.”

Elle’s mouth twitches, but it doesn’t turn into a smile.

“So,” you say. “Did you seriously think I’d want you to show up here just because I almost died?”

Elle’s eyes flash with something defensive. “Garcia called me and said you were bleeding out on an operating table. What was I supposed to do, ignore that?”

“It’s been nearly two years, Elle,” you reply, voice hoarse and flat. “Two fucking years of nothing. No calls. No emails. You quit the Bureau and then you were just… gone. You left the FBI, and you left me.”

The sharpness in your voice costs you. You have to breathe through it, slow and careful, because your body is fragile right now. Your rage, however, is not.

“I didn’t plan on leaving you,” she says, and it comes out too quiet. “I only meant to leave the BAU.”

You let out a rough laugh that turns into a wince. “Well, congratulations. You managed to do both, and for no good reason, because I was still with the New York office when you quit the BAU. I wasn’t connected to this team at all. Leaving me behind along with it never made any fucking sense.”

Elle’s eyes go shiny for half a second, then harden again, because that’s what she does when she’s cornered. “You don’t understand what it was like for me.”

“You’re right,” you say. “I don’t. You never told me.”

Elle opens her mouth. Closes it. Her gaze drops to the blanket, then to your hands.

“I couldn’t,” she says finally, quieter. “I couldn’t talk about any of it. I was so angry all the time. I was—” She exhales, sharp. “I didn’t know how to come back from it. And I especially didn’t know how to talk about it with you while you were on your meteoric rise through Bureau ranks.”

“So your solution was to disappear?” you ask angrily, the words tasting bitter. “It felt like you died, Elle.”

She flinches.

Good.

There’s pressure behind your eyes that has nothing to do with the pain. You blink it away, furious at your body for being weak in front of her.

“You want to know the worst part?” you ask.

Elle’s gaze lifts slowly.

“You’re the whole reason I transferred to the BAU.”

Elle goes still. “What?”

“Yeah. I was so messed up by you ghosting me that I chose to come to this unit just to try to understand why it made you leave your entire life behind,” you explain. “I needed answers. I wanted to understand how you could walk away from everything you’d ever known and not even look back once.” You take a slow breath. “And… joining this team ended up accidentally becoming the best decision I’ve ever made, because of, um, reasons I’m sure you’ve deduced by now.” Your gaze flicks toward the door, mind drawing up images of Spencer pacing on the other side. “So I don’t regret it. But I never got the answers I came here for. I still don’t understand any of it. I don’t understand why you had to leave me behind too.”

The silence that follows is heavy.

Elle swallows hard. For a second she looks younger, like the person she was before the BAU hollowed her out.

“I could never have predicted that you’d transfer here,” she manages. “I didn’t think you’d rebuild your whole life around my mess.”

“You’re my sister, Elle. And you know how stubborn I am. Did you really think I’d let go that easily?” you ask, exasperated.

“I just… I thought I was protecting you,” she says, voice quiet. “I thought if I stayed away, you wouldn’t get pulled into it. You wouldn’t get… contaminated. I— I didn’t want my issues to rub off on you. You deserve better than that. I never wanted you to be afraid of the job the way I was at the end.”

You stare at her for a long moment, heartbeat steadying. Then you say, more tired than angry now, “I don’t scare easily, Elle.”

Elle’s throat works. “I know.”

“Ghosting me was unfair, and unnecessary. I could’ve handled it. Maybe I could’ve even helped you.”

Elle node and steps closer, finally, to the side of the bed.

“I can’t go back and change it now, but, for what it’s worth, I am sorry,” she says quietly.

It’s worth more than she probably thinks, but you don’t offer up forgiveness that easily, so you just nod.

“Sooooo. Reid,” she says abruptly, changing the subject completely with the sound of his name. “I’ve never seen him like that before.”

Your pulse trips, annoying and obvious. You keep your face neutral with effort. “Like what?”

Elle’s eyes flick to yours, sharp with the kind of teasing that’s also a test. “Terrified,” she says. “Wrecked. Like the other half of his soul was being ripped away from him.”

You roll your eyes, but it lacks bite. “He’s dramatic.”

“No,” Elle says immediately, and her tone is so certain it almost makes you laugh. “He’s not. That’s the thing. Spencer Reid has always been… careful. And practical, and thoughtful. He usually keeps himself together.” She pauses, and when she speaks again her voice is lower, more sincere. “You should’ve seen him in that waiting room, sis. He looked like he was dying right alongside you.”

Your throat tightens in a different way. You stare at the blankets and pretend they’re the reason your face is flushing. “He said he hasn’t left the hospital once.”

“Yep” Elle confirms. “Not once. I came in a few times to check on you before you woke up, and he was always in the same spot. Holding your hand like it was the only thing keeping him afloat.”

You don’t answer right away, because if you do your voice might crack, and you refuse to give her that satisfaction.

Elle leans back slightly, studying you. “How long has this been going on?” she asks, nodding toward the door, toward the hall where Spencer’s definitely pacing. “You and him.”

You hesitate. It feels weird to talk about this sort of thing with her after all this time.

“A while,” you reply.

Elle huffs softly. “That’s rather vague.”

“Do you want dates and timestamps?” you mutter. “I barely know what day it is. Cut me some slack, I just got shot.”

Elle’s mouth twitches. “Fair.” She looks at you for a beat, then adds, “He’s a really good guy, you know.”

You blink. “I know that.”

Elle’s brows lift. “And he looks at you like you’re… everything. It’s actually kind of terrifying, how intense he’s been. He’s, like, completely devoted to you. Obsessed might be a better word.”

Heat crawls up your neck. You shift slightly, regret it instantly, and cover it by making a face. “Oh my god, Elle. Stop.”

Elle’s smile finally appears, small and crooked. “What? You know I’m not wrong. And I approve, in case you were wondering how I feel about it.”

You stare at her, half irritated, half… oddly grateful. “I didn’t ask for your blessing.”

“Obviously not. But you’re getting it anyway, so suck it up, sis.”

That makes you laugh, which hurts, which makes you glare down at your own ribs with a sigh.

Elle watches you, and something soft passes over her face. “You’re lucky to have him,” she says. “And he’s even luckier to have you.”

Your lips twist awkwardly as you suppress a smile, gaze flicking toward the door again without thinking.

Elle catches it immediately.

“My god, you’re just as obsessed with him as he is with you, aren’t you? You can’t stop looking for him.”

You blink. “No I’m not.”

“You so are,” Elle says, delighted in the way only sisters can be about humiliating you at the worst possible time. “You’re completely obsessed.”

“I’m not—”

Elle cuts you off, eyes bright. “You’re as bad as he is.”

You scowl. “He’s definitely worse.”

Elle snorts. “Probably. But still.”

You fall quiet again, your anger draining down to something tired and unresolved but much lighter than it was before. Elle’s hand finally settles on the blanket near yours, not quite touching you, but close.

“I’m not—” Elle starts, then stops. Her voice shifts, less sharp. “I don’t know how to fix what I did.”

You swallow. Your eyes burn. “I don’t know if you can, Elle,” you admit. Then, softer: “But… you’re here. You came when I needed you. So let’s just… try again from here.”

Elle’s eyes go glassy as she nods, hand finally grasping yours. “Yeah,” she agrees. “We can start right here.”

You breathe in slowly, careful around the pain, and let the moment sit.

A soft shuffle of movement floats in through the door — the sound of Spencer hovering.

You glance toward it again before you can stop yourself.

Elle’s smirk returns. “Alright, alright,” she says, voice low. “I’ll tell your boyfriend to come back in before he combusts. I mean, seriously, I think he’s a real fire hazard out there.”

You roll your eyes, but your mouth twitches. “Don’t make fun of him.”

Elle lifts both hands in surrender, still smiling. “I’ll stop,” she says as she walks to the door. “But only because I’m saving it for when you can fight back.”

She slips out into the hall, door clicking shut behind her.

And for the first time in two years, the hole her absence left inside you feels a little less hollow.

—

Golden hour is a strange experience inside a hospital room.

Outside the window, the sky is turning molten. Sunset washes the room in soft shades of orange and amber, painting the sterile white walls with something warm. It makes the ICU feel significantly less miserable, even if only for a few minutes before the sun sinks below the horizon.

Spencer sits beside you, angled toward the bed. His hand is wrapped around yours again.

You feel more awake now. More yourself. The brain fog has cleared enough that you can hold a thought without losing it halfway through. You can track his eyes as they flit across the pages of the book in his lap. You can read the exhaustion in the slump of his shoulders and the stubbornness in the way he keeps trying to sit up straighter anyway.

“You look slightly less like you’ve been through a war compared to how you looked earlier,” you murmur to break the silence.

He looks up from his book and huffs a quiet laugh. “Wow, what a compliment.”

You realize he’s wearing a sweater now. It looks much more comfortable than the dress shirt he’d been wearing for god knows how many hours straight.

“When did you change your clothes?” you ask.

He smiles softly. “Morgan dropped off my go bag while you were sleeping a couple hours ago,” he explains, nodding towards the duffel bag sitting on the floor across the room.

You hum in acknowledgment, oddly comforted by the knowledge that he still hasn’t left your side.

Spencer’s thumb strokes your knuckles, slow. “Do you… remember anything else?” he asks after a moment.

“Not much,” you admit. “I remember chasing the unsub, but I don’t remember going down. I remember being on the gurney being wheeled down the hall, and I remember you being there until you weren’t. Other than that, it’s all pretty blank until I woke up to you hovering by my bedside looking like a Victorian ghost.”

That earns a soft, shaky laugh. He looks down, blinking like he’s trying to clear something out of his eyes without letting you see it.

“You were gone,” he says after a minute, and the words are barely above a whisper. “And I— I couldn’t do anything.”

Your fingers curl around his, weak but deliberate. “You did do something, Spence. You stayed.”

His mouth twitches. “I didn’t want to leave.”

You stare at his hand around yours. His knuckles are slightly raw. You wonder how many times he washed them in the hospital bathroom just to have something he could control.

“What’s wrong?” you ask quietly.

His brows knit. “What do you mean?”

You gesture vaguely at his entire existence. “You’re… vibrating.”

Spencer looks down for a second, then back at you, and his eyes are shining in a way that makes your stomach drop.

“I don’t know how to be normal right now,” he admits.

You try for sarcasm, but it comes out too soft. “Yeah. You’re being a little intense.”

“I know,” he whispers.

He stares at you like he’s trying to hold himself together with eye contact.

Then he says, very carefully, “I— I can’t remember the last thing I said to you. Before it happened. Before you—” He swallows. The muscle in his throat jumps. “It was probably something stupid. And it feels—” He shakes his head once, frustrated. “It feels wrong that the last thing you heard from me might have been… small.”

Your throat tightens. You can’t fix that for him. You can’t rewrite the seconds before the shot. You can’t remember what he said either.

So you do the only thing you can: you squeeze his hand.

“I need to tell you something," he says after a long beat of silence, voice nearly a whisper. “You don’t have to say anything back. I just need you to listen.”

You nod. Spencer inhales. His shoulders tense like he’s bracing for impact.

Then, his eyes soften as he looks into yours and says, voice sounding terrified and incredibly certain all at once:

“I love you.”

Woah.

Your mouth goes dry.

“I’m— I’m in love with you. I have been for a while, but I never said it because I was trying to be careful. But now—” His voice catches. He swallows hard. “Now I feel sick about it, because being careful almost cost me the chance to ever get to say it.”

You open your mouth to respond, but no sound comes out.

Spencer’s thumb brushes over your knuckles, trembling. “You don’t have to say it back. You don’t have to say anything at all, honestly,” he says quickly. “I’m not… I didn’t say it to get a response. I just need you to know that while you were in that operating room, the fact that I love you was the only thing in my head that felt real.”

He watches you, breathing shallowly, nerves on edge like he’s waiting for you to flinch.

But you don’t flinch. Instead, you whisper, “Say it again.”

He freezes.

“What?”

“Say it again. Please.”

Spencer’s expression shifts into something so tender it hurts to look at. Like he can’t believe you’re asking for more of something he’s been rationing for so long. He leans closer, careful not to crowd you, and says it like a secret meant only for you:

“I love you.”

The words hit your chest and sit there, heavy and warm.

“I love you,” he repeats again, slower this time.

You stare at him, eyes shining, lips curled up helplessly into a grin.

“I’m— I’m probably going to say it too much,” Spencer admits with a dry laugh. “Like… all the time. You’re going to get so annoyed with me.”

“Good,” you whisper.

His brows lift, surprised at the softness of your answer.

You watch him for a second. The tremor in his fingers. The way his breath still isn’t fully steady.

And you realize what you need, sharp and immediate.

“Come here,” you say.

Spencer blinks. “I am here.”

“No,” you insist, voice rough. “In bed. With me.”

His eyes go wide, alarm immediately rising. “What? I— I can’t. That’s against hospital policy.”

“I got shot, Spencer,” you say flatly. “I almost died. I’m in the fucking ICU and you just told me you love me. I do not give a rat’s ass about hospital policy right now.”

Spencer’s mouth opens, then closes again. He looks like he’s trying to fight an internal battle against a lifetime of rule-following in a matter of moments.

“You need rest,” he tries.

“So do you,” you counter. “You haven’t slept in, like, seventy years. You’ve been folded into that chair like a sad paper crane.”

Spencer lets out a helpless little laugh. “I’m not—”

“Please,” you whisper.

Spencer goes still. His gaze drops to your face, to your eyes, to the way you’re trying to look tough while asking for something you desperately need.

He nods once. “Okay.”

He stands carefully, kicking off his shoes because, above all, he’s still Spencer Reid and cannot stand the idea of germs on the sheets. He hesitates at the edge of the mattress then slides in, settling down next to your good side.

You shift toward him with a small, careful movement that your body, mercifully, barely protests. Spencer’s arm comes around you, so gently you could sob, anchoring you against him.

Your cheek ends up against his shoulder. You can smell him— coffee and soap long faded, replaced by hospital air and stress and him. You close your eyes. Your body relaxes in a way you didn’t realize it was refusing to.

“This feels so illegal,” Spencer murmurs.

You hum weakly. “I’ll let you arrest me later, Agent.”

His laugh shakes against your hair. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Mm,” you hum. “Say it again.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

You roll your eyes. “Not that, doofus. You know that’s not what I mean.”

You feel his smile against your temple before he speaks.

“I love you,” he whispers finally.

You lift your head just enough to look at him. He’s gazing down at you, face just a breath away from yours. His eyes are soft and wrecked and devoted in a way that makes you feel unbelievably seen. The feeling nearly overwhelms you, so you do the only thing you can think of:

You kiss him.

It’s gentle, careful, more of a simple press than anything else, because you’re fragile and he’s terrified and your heart is still being monitored by machines that could start yelling at any moment. Spencer makes a quiet sound against your mouth that cracks something open inside you.

When you pull back, your forehead rests against his.

Spencer’s thumb strokes your cheek, feather-light. “I love you,” he says again.

You let out a shaky breath that might be a laugh if you had more energy. “I know,” you whisper.

—

By the next morning, you’re out of the ICU.

You’re nowhere close to fine, but you’re stable enough to get moved to a different floor. The new room is quieter. The nurses don’t hover with the same tight urgency.

Spencer is still there, of course.

At some point in the early hours, between vitals checks and pain meds and drifting in and out of sleep, he braided your hair. You remember the gentle tug, the way his fingers moved with startling confidence, like he’d studied the way you do it ages ago and filed the steps away for later. The braid lies over your shoulder now, neat and contained, making you feel a little less like a patient and a little more like yourself.

Elle is gone.

She left after sitting with you for a while this morning with a quiet promise to call. A promise to text. A promise to try. You don’t know what that means yet, or if you can trust it, but it’s a start.

The team stops by mid-morning. They don’t stay long. They talk in short bursts, careful not to exhaust you. They tease. They scold. They try to make you laugh.

When they finally file out, Garcia blows you a kiss and Morgan points two fingers at his eyes before turning them to you as if to say he’s “watching you.”

And, like clockwork, Spencer’s hand finds yours again the second the door closes.

—

Golden hour arrives again, just as it did the day before.

White hospital walls warm into amber. The plastic on the bed rail glows. Even the IV line catches a sunbeam and looks almost delicate, which is offensive, because nothing about the last forty-eight hours has been delicate.

Spencer has another book open, but you can tell he’s been on the same page for a while. His long fingers keep tracing along the margins. His leg bounces. His lashes flutter when eyes flick up to you and back to the text, like he can’t resist checking on you.

You don’t say anything. You just watch him.

You watch the pinch between his brows and the way his mouth softens. The way the light catches in his eyes and turns them into pools of honey. The way he looks tired in the most human, heartbreaking way — like exhaustion has settled into his bones yet he’s still choosing to stay upright for you.

You realize then that you know him in a hundred tiny ways. Maybe a thousand, even.

You know the rhythm of his breathing when he’s pretending to be calm. You know the angle he tilts his head at when he’s listening intently. You know the way he replaces your chewed-to-death pens without ever making it a thing. You know how he used to hand you coffee with a doodled sleeve, back when “you” and “him” were still a slow, careful story he was letting you write at your own pace.

And you also know the way he loves you.

His love is an action verb. It’s constant. It’s something he does with his hands and his eyes and his patience, day after day, even when you give him nothing in return except a sharp remark and a look that says don’t get used to this.

He said the words for the first time yesterday. In this same amber light, with you stitched together and half gone, he said I love you like he’d die if he waited another second to let it out.

You’ve been carrying that around ever since, turning the words over like a stone in your palm until your skin is warm from it.

Spencer finally flips the page. Then he pauses and looks up, expression shifting into that soft, amused patience he saves for you when you’re being difficult in a way he finds strangely endearing.

“You’ve been staring at me for seven minutes and forty-two seconds straight,” he says teasingly. “It’s… rather intimidating.”

You roll your eyes. Your body might be fragile, but your personality is still very much intact. “Maybe you’ve got something on your face.”

“I don’t have anything on my face,” he murmurs. His smile lingers a beat longer than usual, and then it fades into something quieter. He closes the book and sets it down on the tray table.

“Is something on your mind?” he asks gently.

You should say no. You should deflect. You should make a joke about hospital food or the nurse’s shoes or the fact that the giant teddy bear Garcia dropped off is staring into your soul.

Instead, you hear yourself say, “Can I ask you something?”

Spencer nods. “Anything.”

You look down at your hands for a second, because the question is embarrassingly vulnerable in its simplicity. “When did you… know?”

“Know what?”

Your throat tightens, but you swallow around it. “When did you know that you loved me?”

Spencer goes still, like he’s handling something fragile.

“I don’t know if there was one specific moment,” he says. “It was more like… a feeling that just kept happening. Over and over. Even in ways that didn’t make any sense at first.”

You hold his eyes. “Like what?”

He exhales, the sound soft. “Remember that time you tried to make a smoothie but forgot to put the lid on the blender, so fruit ended up all over my kitchen ceiling? I felt it then, even though I was so annoyed with you. And I felt it on the jet every time you handed me one of your earbuds and gave me those pouty eyes to guilt me into listening to your 90s punk playlist. And that time you fell asleep with your head in my lap after insisting you weren’t too tired for one more episode of Doctor Who.” His thumb brushes your knuckles once, careful. “There came a point where I realized I’m not just… impressed by you, or curious about you, or attracted to you. I’m… invested. In your day, and your mood, and whether or not you slept. In whether or not you smiled.”

You feel your chest tighten, warm and painful in equal measure.

“It became very easy to imagine my future with you in it,” Spencer says. “And nearly impossible to imagine one without you.”

You swallow. “Why didn’t you say it when you first realized you felt it?”

Spencer’s jaw shifts. His leg stops bouncing for the first time in hours.

“Because I wanted to keep you,” he says simply. “And I was worried it would scare you away.”

Your breath catches.

He continues, voice steady. “You’ve always been honest with me about how… loud certain feelings can be for you. How quickly they can turn into pressure. And I didn’t want you to hear I love you and feel trapped under it.” His gaze softens. “I wanted you to hear it when you could take it as what it is for me. Just as something I feel, and something I choose. Not as something that means you owe me anything, or that I’m expecting more than you can give.”

Guilt twists behind your ribs. “God, that wasn’t fair to you, Spence. You shouldn’t have had to manage me like that,” you say.

Spencer’s eyes hold yours. “It didn’t feel unfair,” he promises gently. “I was just trying to love you the best way I knew how, and that meant keeping it quiet.”

You look away for a second, because if you keep looking at him, you might crack open entirely. The sunset stripe across the sheets blurs a little. You blink it back into focus.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper.

Spencer shakes his head. “You don’t need to be sorry.”

“Yes, I do,” you say. You breathe carefully through the ache in your side. “I mean, I’m not sorry for being who I am. I’m not sorry for having… whatever this is in my brain that treats love like a fire alarm. It’s just a part of me.” Your mouth tightens. “But I am sorry for not giving you any signs that I wanted to hear you say it, because… I did. I think I’ve wanted to hear those words for a while now. So I’m sorry for how long you swallowed it back, and for how long you thought you had to make your feelings smaller so I wouldn’t bolt.”

Spencer’s expression shifts, something tender and painful crossing his face like a shadow. “I didn’t mind.”

You give him a look. “Yes, you did.”

He exhales a small laugh, caught. “Okay,” he admits softly. “I did. Sometimes. It wasn’t… comfortable. Holding it back kinda sucked.” His thumb strokes your knuckles again. “But it was worth it.”

You breathe. You can feel the beat of your heart against your chest. You can also feel how close you came to not getting to have this moment at all.

“When I woke up in the ICU,” you say slowly, “it mattered to me that yours was the first face I saw.” You swallow hard. “It made me realize that I don’t want to be the kind of person who only tells the truth when it’s convenient, because life isn’t convenient. Getting shot sure as hell wasn’t convenient.”

You shift your hand, lacing your fingers between his.

“I’ve been… feeling your love for a while now, to be honest,” you admit. “It’s been this, like, steady undercurrent that weaves through every moment we spend together. So even though you waited to say it, you didn’t wait to make me feel it.”

Spencer’s throat moves as he swallows. His gaze doesn’t leave your face.

“And then I almost died,” you continue with a humorless chuckle, “and the only thing I could think after I woke up was that I didn’t want to waste any more time acting like this isn’t the realest thing I’ve ever felt.”

The words hang between you, bright and frightening.

Spencer’s eyes are wet now, lashes darkening. He doesn’t interrupt. He just leans closer, like he’s drawn to you the way the tides are drawn to the moon.

“Can we each share one true thing?” you ask nervously.

Spencer’s mouth trembles, almost a smile, almost disbelief. “We haven’t done that in a while,” he murmurs.

“I know,” you whisper. “But… we started with one truth a day to make it easier for me to open up. So I figure if it worked then, maybe it can still work now, because I have a truth for you.”

Spencer nods, a slow, steady yes. “Okay,” he says. “Go ahead. One true thing.”

Your heart pounds so hard you can feel it in your fingertips.

“My one true thing…” You swallow. “My one true thing, Spencer Reid, is that I love you too.”

His face changes instantly, like he’s been struck by something bright. His breath stutters. He looks stunned — genuinely stunned — and then his expression collapses into relief so intense it makes him sway.

“You…” he whispers, almost soundless. “You love me?”

You huff a small laugh. “Yes,” you murmur. “That is what I said, is it not?”

Spencer lets out a shaky exhale that sounds like he’s been holding it for months. He stands decisively, like his body needs to be closer to you right now. He leans over the bed, careful of your injured side, one hand braced on the mattress.

His other hand cups your cheek, warm and steady, and then he’s kissing you.

It’s slow at first, reverent, as if he’s making sure you feel all of it. Then it deepens, because you finally have enough strength to kiss him back like you mean it.

His mouth is warm, soft and hungry in that controlled Spencer way — desire threaded through devotion, like he’s holding you and wanting you and protecting you and worshipping you all at once. A quiet sound slips from him when you pull him closer with your hand on his bicep. He shifts, careful, and sits on the edge of the bed so he can lean in without hurting you.

When you finally break for air, his forehead rests against yours. His eyes are bright and wrecked.

“I love you,” he whispers, like he’ll never make it scarce again.

“That’s good,” you murmur with a smile. “Because it would’ve been pretty embarrassing if I made that whole speech and finally said it back just for you to decide you didn’t mean it.”

He laughs and kisses you again — shorter this time, gentler — and then he lingers close, thumb brushing your cheekbone.

After a few breaths, his expression shifts into something full of love and practicality at the same time.

“Okay,” he says softly. “My one true thing is going to be annoying, so brace yourself.”

You squint. “Oh geez.”

His mouth twitches. “You’re going to be stuck in here for at least another day or two,” he says matter-of-factly. “Maybe longer. The doctors want to watch your labs and your incision and your pain control. You’re probably going to go a little stir-crazy by the end of it.”

“Shocking.”

“And when they discharge you,” he continues, “it’ll be with some serious restrictions. No lifting anything heavier than ten pounds. No driving. No stairs if we can avoid them.” His eyes hold yours, gentle but firm. “And… I’m going to be with you for all of it.”

An instinctive protest rises in your throat, familiar and sharp.

Spencer sees it coming, and speaks before you can get it out. “Not because you can’t take care of yourself. I know you’re more than capable,” he promises. “But your body needs time to recover, and you have a habit of treating pain like… like it’s an inconvenience you can bully into submission.” His thumb brushes your cheek again. “I’m not letting you prove toughness at the expense of your healing.”

You glare weakly. “You’re insufferable.”

“I know,” he says, completely unbothered. “I’ll stay at your apartment, and stock your fridge, and make sure you take your meds on time. I’ll drive you to all your follow-up appointments, and I’ll make sure you don’t overdo it and tear your stitches because you decided you’re invincible.”

“I am invincible,” you argue.

He gives you a look. “You were shot, honey.”

You wave a hand dismissively. “Meh. That was a fluke.”

Spencer laughs softly. “I’ll talk to Hotch about working cases remotely from Quantico as much as possible instead of traveling. I don’t want to leave you unless I have to.”

“You can’t stop doing the job,” you protest, even though something inside you glows at the idea that he’d choose you without hesitation. “Don’t— don’t make your world smaller because of me.”

Spencer’s gaze steadies on yours. “I’m not making my world smaller,” he says quietly. “I’m just… recentering it around the things that matter most.”

Your chest tightens at that.

He squeezes your hand gently. “You’re going to heal,” he adds, voice certain. “You’re probably going to hate physical therapy and you’re definitely going to pretend you’re fine even when you’re not, but I also know for a fact that you’re going to recover faster than anyone expects you to, because you’re you.”

You exhale a shaky breath that almost feels like a laugh. “And you’re going to be annoying about it the entire time.”

“I’m going to be relentlessly annoying,” he teases.

You glare. “Ugh. You’re lucky I love you.”

Spencer’s smile turns soft and devastating. “Yeah. I am.”

You stare at him for a long moment, heart pounding, and squeeze his hand.

Spencer stays close, warm at your side. You’re still in the weird in-between: stitched up, sore, not fully back to yourself—

but his hand is in yours.

And because of that, this liminal space feels survivable.

ᝰ.ᐟ

➜ next part

this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️

The kid’s eyes flicker. Focus, then blur. Like he’s looking at Spencer and through him at the same time.

Around you, the perimeter holds its breath: uniforms, SWAT, Hotch’s stillness. Everyone waiting for the moment the situation inevitably tips.

Spencer keeps going.

“You’ve been hurt,” he says. “You’ve been humiliated and you didn’t deserve any of that.”

The kid’s mouth twitches, and a sound catches in his throat.

He doesn’t lower the gun, but for a second—just a second—his shoulders drop like he wants to believe Spencer.

“Look at me,” Spencer says. “You’re not a monster.”

The kid blinks fast. Wet lashes, red-rimmed eyes.

“Don’t,” he croaks, voice cracking around the word like it hurts. “They tortured me! Every day, this town found new ways to tear me down. Don’t act like you know what that’s like.”

Spencer’s throat works. “I do, though. I know exactly what it feels like to be the kid everybody watches and nobody helps. And if you put down that gun and let me walk you out of here, I promise we can get you some help.”

For a moment, the kid pauses, and it almost looks like he’s considering doing what Spencer asked. He opens his mouth, closes it, looks around, looks back at Spencer with a fleeting flicker of hope. But then he blinks again and tightens his grip around the rifle like it’s too late to change course. Too late to make a different decision.

You see it before Spencer does. Or maybe he sees it and refuses to believe it.

The kid’s gaze skates past Spencer, and with a sudden, almost deliberate motion, he lifts the rifle.

“Wait—” Spencer says, voice rising for the first time, cracking. “No— no! Don’t—”

A loud crack cuts through the air and sends the kid to the ground.

Spencer doesn’t move. He’s still standing with his hands up, frozen, staring at the unsub’s body as blood pools around him.

Hotch says his name. “Reid.”

Spencer lowers his arms slowly, like he’s fighting gravity.

His gaze is still locked on the kid on the ground. On the rifle lying useless beside him, like it was never the point at all.

“He— he was listening to me,” Spencer says under his breath, hoarse. “He was listening. I thought—”

You reach for him, careful, and when your fingers brush his elbow you feel it — his whole body trembling, the way he’s holding himself together by sheer force of will.

“That kid was trying to force our hand. That was always his plan. He wanted to die,” someone says nearby, too loud, too blunt. A cop trying to make it clean and simple.

Spencer’s head turns sharply.

“He just wanted it all to stop,” he says, voice razor-thin. “He couldn’t see a way out. It’s not the same thing.”

Then Spencer turns back to the body like he can rewind time if he stares hard enough. Like he can change the outcome.

For a second, you can’t tell if he’s breathing.

He’s so still it’s unnatural — still frozen in the moments before the shot. Like the part of him that reached for the kid hasn’t caught up to the fact that there’s nothing left to reach for.

You step in closer until you’re at his shoulder, but his eyes still don’t leave the blood, because he isn’t just seeing the boy on the pavement.

He’s seeing a version of himself that didn’t make it out.

—

The jet is dim and humming, the kind of soft, constant noise that usually helps your nerves settle. Tonight it just makes everything feel underwater.

The team is scattered in their usual places: Rossi reads, Prentiss has her eyes closed, Morgan’s listening to music, Hotch and JJ skim through files.

Spencer is sitting across the aisle.

Not beside you.

Even after cases that leave you both scraped raw, he always ends up beside you. But tonight, he doesn’t.

That’s the first wrong thing, and it makes you itch.

The second wrong thing is the book in his hands. It’s open, yes, but his eyes keep sliding over the same line like it’s written in a language he’s forgotten how to read. His knee bounces. His fingers drum a pattern on the page — tap tap pause, tap tap tap.

You wait. Five minutes. Then ten. The itch under your skin keeps getting worse.

Finally, you lean across the aisle and keep your voice low. “You’re not fooling me.”

He doesn’t look up. “What?”

“You’re pretending you’re reading,” you say, “but you’ve been on the same page since we hit cruising altitude.”

His jaw tightens. “I’m reading.”

You blink slowly. “Okay.”

Silence stretches. The engine hum fills the gaps.

You try again, softer this time. “You almost had him, Spence.”

His head snaps up, eyes sharp, bright with fatigue and something else that makes your chest pinch.

“Stop. Don’t,” he says.

It’s clipped and sharp and immediate, like you stepped on a wire.

You hold still. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t make it sound like that was—” He stops, throat working. “It wasn’t a win.”

“I’m not saying it was a win,” you whisper. “I’m saying you did everything you could.”

Your fingers curl around the armrest. You pick your next words carefully, like they’re glass.

“You’re allowed to be upset,” you say. “It’s normal to—”

“Can you not do this right now?” he cuts in sharply.

Your stomach drops. His face immediately shifts, like he realizes how it sounded, but he doesn’t pull it back. He can’t. He’s too far out on the ledge.

You stare at him for a beat.

Then, because it’s true and because you’re not going to sugarcoat him into thinking this is fine:

“You’re being kind of a dick,” you say, quiet enough that only he can hear. “And I know you’re not a dick. So what’s actually going on?”

He flinches, and for a second you think he’s going to shut down, fold himself into that seat and lock you out completely.

Instead he exhales, long and shaky, and his eyes flick to yours.

“I’m sorry,” he says genuinely. “I just… I can’t talk about this right now.”

“I’m not asking you to pour your heart out at thirty thousand feet, Spencer. I’m asking you to stop pretending you’re fine, and to let me be there for you.”

His throat bobs. He looks back down at the book. His fingers tighten around it until the pages crinkle.

“I really thought I was getting through to him,” he says finally, voice so low you almost miss it. “For a second I really thought I’d get him out of there alive.”

Your chest aches.

“I know,” you say softly.

He sits there for another beat, frozen between wanting space and wanting you.

Then he closes the book, stands, and crosses the aisle.

He drops into the seat beside you like it’s the only place left in the world.

His knee bumps yours and he stares straight ahead, jaw tight, one hand settling on the armrest between you.

You let your knuckles brush his for half a second. He shifts just enough that his hand presses against yours, not quite holding, but not letting go either.

You look out of the dark window and swallow the worry until it’s quiet.

—

By the time you get home, your body is running on muscle memory and fear.

Keys. Lock. Shoes kicked off in the general direction of the mat. You flick on a lamp and the living room blooms into soft light that doesn’t match the way your chest feels.

It’s too quiet. There’s too much room for your brain to start replaying the last twenty-four hours like it’s trying to find the exact frame where everything went wrong.

On the tarmac, Spencer had walked with you all the way down the stairs, close enough that his shoulder brushed yours once. You’d let yourself believe, for half a second, that he was going to get in your car like he usually does after cases. That you’d end up back here together, washing the week off in the shower, trading exhausted jokes in the kitchen, falling asleep with your bodies tangled because neither of you knows how to do distance anymore.

Instead, he’d stopped and said:

“I think I need some space tonight.”

You blinked.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he added quickly, like that made it better.

You didn’t argue. You could’ve; you wanted to. But you swallowed it down because you’re trying — really trying — to be the kind of girlfriend who doesn’t make everything about her issues. To be the kind of person who can hear I need space without hearing I’m leaving.

So you nodded, kept your voice steady. “Okay.”

Now you’re alone in your apartment, staring at the empty space on the couch where his long legs usually end up, and you hate how fast your brain starts building stories out of nothing.

You drag your fingers through your hair. You should shower. You should eat something. You should do anything that isn’t standing in the middle of your living room like a ghost in your own life.

Eventually, you move into the kitchen and fill a glass with water you don’t drink and lean your hip against the counter.

Your phone stays face-down on the table where you can’t stare at it.

If he said he’d call tomorrow, he’ll call tomorrow. Spencer Reid is a lot of things, but he’s never careless with promises.

Still, your chest aches, dull and persistent, like a bruise you keep pressing to see if it still hurts.

You’re halfway through convincing yourself to move again when the knock comes.

Two soft taps that signal, immediately, that they don’t belong to anyone else.

You’re at the door before you can think.

Spencer stands in the hall, cardigan wrinkled, hair a mess, eyes shining like he hasn’t blinked enough since the case ended. He looks… smaller, somehow.

For a second he just stands there, like he’s waiting for you to tell him he shouldn’t be here.

“Spencer,” you say, and it comes out quieter than you mean it to.

His throat works. He swallows like it hurts.

“I know I said I—” he starts, but you don’t let him finish.

You grab his sleeve and pull him inside with one decisive motion, like the question was never whether he could come in, only how long it would take you to get your hands on him. The door clicks shut behind him and the sound is weirdly final, like you’ve shut out everything except this.

He exhales — one shaky breath that feels like a surrender, and you slide your palms up his arms, grounding yourself in the reality of him: warm, solid, here. You tip your chin up and kiss him once, slow and soft and steady.

When you pull back, he keeps his forehead close to yours, eyes closed.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

“For what?” you ask, because you need him to say it.

His eyes open. They flick over your face like he’s counting you, making sure you’re real.

“For being a jerk on the jet. For needing—” He stops, jaw tightening. Then, quieter: “For not being able to do tonight by myself.”

Something in your chest loosens at that.

“That’s okay,” you say. “I’ll make some tea.”

He lets go of you so you can walk towards the kitchen, but follows you like a shadow. Like if you step too far away, he might slip back into the dark.

“Green?” you ask. “Or black? Chamomile maybe?”

He hovers in the doorway for half a beat, then he steps closer.

“Whatever you’re having.”

You open a cabinet with more force than necessary. The mugs clink. The sound makes you flinch and he flinches with you, like your nervous systems are wired together now, some odd little Bluetooth connection you never knew you were agreeing to.

You can feel him behind you, close enough that the warmth of his body presses into your back without him actually touching you. You’d tease him on a normal night — ever heard of personal space, Dr. Reid? — but tonight you don’t.

The kettle starts to fill. Water rushes over metal, loud in the quiet.

“You said you needed space,” you say lightly.

“I know I did,” he murmurs.

You glance at him over your shoulder.

He looks miserable. Not dramatic-miserable, but Spencer-miserable.

“But?” you prompt.

His eyes flick to yours. He holds them. That alone feels like a confession.

“I needed you,” he admits, and it’s so quiet you almost miss it.

Something in you softens at that.

“Okay,” you say. “So you’re here.”

You turn back to the counter and set the kettle on its base. The click is sharp. You reach for the tea tin and—

—and his arms come around you.

His forearms lock across your stomach and he bends to press his face into the side of your neck, breathing you in like he’s trying to recalibrate. Like he walked all the way here on instinct and now that he’s got you, he doesn’t know what else to do except hold on.

You let out a slow breath and lean back into him, giving him permission without words.

“I’m here,” you whisper.

He makes a sound — half exhale, half something he wanted to say but swallowed back instead — and his arms tighten again.

Your heart does this stupid, tender ache that makes you want to punch a wall.

You tilt your head just enough to brush your mouth against his temple. A kiss that says stay.

He shifts, lips skimming the side of your jaw in return.

When you reach for the tea again, he doesn’t let go.

He just follows the motion, glued to your back, moving with you as you drop the tea bags into the mugs, as you pour the hot water, as you add honey without asking because you know he likes it that way.

It would be funny, on any other night. A tall, lanky, genius of a grown man clinging to you in your kitchen like a lost kid at the county fair.

Tonight, it just makes your throat burn.

“Breathe,” you say softly.

“I am,” he murmurs, but you can hear the lie in it.

So you inhale, slow and deliberate, and hold it just long enough for him to feel it before breathing out.

His chest rises against your back, uneven at first — then, gradually, his breath matches yours.

There. That’s something, at least. You feel it in the way his hands stop flexing, in the way his shoulders drop a millimeter, as if you’ve coaxed him down from some internal ledge.

When you finally turn in his arms, mug in each hand, he doesn’t step back.

You hold his gaze and tip your chin. “Couch.”

He nods, finally releasing you long enough to let you lead him into the living room.

You set the mugs down on the coffee table. Before you can move to the other end of the couch to sit, his fingers catch your wrist, gentle but firm.

“Don’t go far,” he says.

Your chest tightens again, that same sweet bruise.

You step closer, slide your palms up his arms, and kiss him once more, a little deeper this time, because you want him to feel it.

When you pull back, his eyes stay shut for a second, like he’s memorizing the shape of the moment.

“I’m not going anywhere,” you tell him.

And for the first time since the gunshot, the tension in his face eases just enough that you can see the person underneath it again.

He sits, knees spread, forearms on his thighs, mug cooling on the table untouched. You settle beside him, close enough that your shoulder brushes his.

For a while, neither of you speaks. Then, quietly, he says, “I wasn’t lying when I said I knew what it was like.”

Your throat tightens.

“On the scene,” he adds, still not looking at you. “When I was talking to the unsub.”

You nod once, slow, but you don’t speak. You’ve learned — through the job, through him, through yourself — that people say more when you let the silence simmer.

Spencer swallows. His fingers knit together and then unknot again. You feel his knee start bouncing again, that familiar frantic tempo, and you press your palm over it. The motion stutters, then slows.

“Before we cleared the area,” Spencer says, “I saw him scan the crowd for threats the same way I used to scan school hallways.”

Your chest gives a small, aching jerk.

“You used to do that?”

“Of course I did,” he murmurs. “I learned pretty early on that if you can predict who’s going to hurt you, you can… you can minimize the damage by avoiding certain people. Certain places. Certain tones of voice.”

He finally looks at you then, and it’s devastating, how sad his eyes are. Like he’s been carrying this feeling around forever and today he got reminded of the weight.

“And earlier, watching him, I just kept thinking—he and I learned the same skill, but where I learned to adapt, he learned to—” He cuts himself off, jaw tight. “To retaliate.”

You shift closer, your thigh fully against his now. Your hand slides from his knee to the inside of his wrist, thumb finding his pulse.

“I don’t think it’s just watching him die that got to me,” he says. “We see unsubs get taken down all the time.”

“Spence,” you murmur, a warning and a comfort wrapped together.

He closes his eyes.

“It was that when he looked at me,” Spencer continues, voice dropping, “it felt like… like he recognized me.”

A beat passes, then another.

“Like he was looking in a mirror,” he adds. “And… he wasn’t wrong to see that.”

The admission sits between you, heavy and terrible.

You want to say a hundred things. You want to tell him he’s not anything like that. You want to list all the ways he’s different, all the ways he’s good, all the ways he’s Spencer, your Spencer.

But you know him too well. If you come at him with reassurance right now, he’ll dodge it like it’s a thrown object.

“Talk to me,” you whisper instead.

He looks at you again, and something passes over his face — fear, maybe. Or relief. Or both, tangled together.

“I keep thinking,” he says, “if I’d had one more minute… if I’d just said the right thing… if I’d been better at it…”

“You were good at it,” you cut in, gentle but firm. “You were amazing at it. You’re the only one of us who could’ve even come close to getting through to him.”

His jaw clenches. “And yet he still died.”

You slide your other hand up to the side of his face, fingers brushing his cheekbone, grounding him in something human.

“Spence,” you say, and it comes out soft in a way you don’t always allow yourself. “Look at me.”

The hurt in his eyes makes your own burn. You blink hard, once, and refuse to let it spill. You need to be the solid one right now.

“You can’t save everyone,” you say quietly. “Even if you do everything right.”

“I know that,” he says. “Logically, I understand that’s true.”

“Okay,” you reply. “Then this isn’t logical. So tell me what it is.”

He stares at you for a long second like he’s deciding whether to let you see something he normally keeps locked behind his teeth.

Then he exhales, slow.

“It’s terrifying,” he admits. “To—” His voice catches, and he clears his throat, angry at his own body. “To stand there and realize that the person in the room who you have the most in common with is the bad guy. To… know just how close you were to turning into him. How close you still could be.”

Your stomach drops. You keep your hand on his face. You don’t let him drift away.

He swallows again, eyes fixed somewhere past your shoulder like he’s seeing a different room.

“I was in the library,” he begins. “And Harper Hillman comes up to me. She tells me that, uh, Alexa Lisbon wants to meet me behind the field house. Alexa Lisbon was, like, easily the prettiest girl in school.”

You can almost see it: young Spencer, book-bag slung over one shoulder, heart doing something stupid and hopeful despite everything he knew.

Your chest aches so hard you feel it in your teeth.

You keep your voice quiet, steady. “So what happened? Alexa wasn’t there?”

His eyes flick to yours for half a second, then away.

“She was there,” he says. “So was the entire football team.” His jaw tightens. “They… stripped me naked and tied me to a goalpost.”

The words are blunt, clinical, like he’s trying to numb them by making them factual.

But nothing about this is numb.

“So many kids were there,” Spencer continues, voice rougher now. “You know, just… just watching. Nobody tried to stop them.”

Your hand slides from his cheek to the back of his neck, fingers threading into his hair gently, like you’re holding him in place.

He keeps staring into nowhere, blinking too fast.

“I begged,” he says, and the word is barely a whisper. “I begged them to, but they just…” His throat works. He swallows hard. “They just watched.”

Your stomach twists violently. You press your forehead to his temple for a second, a quiet, involuntary gesture of I’m here.

Spencer inhales shakily.

“And finally,” he says, “they got bored and they left.”

He laughs once, empty. “It was like midnight when I finally got home, and my mom didn’t—” He stops, eyes squeezing shut. “My mom was having one of her episodes, so she didn’t even realize I was late.”

For a moment, you can’t speak. Your mind keeps trying to build an image and rejecting it because it’s too cruel to hold. Spencer, barefoot on cold grass, rope burns, humiliated, alone. Spencer walking home in the dark to a mother too confused to notice.

You feel something feral rise in you, hot and protective and murderous, but you put that anger aside because you know he doesn’t need you to hunt down Harper Hillman and Alexa Lisbon and the entire football team right now (no matter how badly you want to). That’s not why he’s telling you this.

Your hand tightens on the back of his neck. Your other hand slides down his arm and finds his hand, prying his fist open slowly until his fingers uncurl into your palm.

“You never told her, did you?” you say quietly.

Spencer shakes his head. “I thought—” His voice cracks. “It’s one of those things that I thought if I didn’t talk about it, I’d just forget, but I remember it like it was yesterday.”

Your throat burns. You swallow.

You shift until your knees tuck against his thighs and your arms can wrap around him properly. His hands hover for a heartbeat — uncertain, like he’s forgotten how to be held without it meaning he’s weak.

Then you guide him, gentle and firm, and he folds into you. He leans his head against your shoulder and lets you pull him closer.

He exhales against you, shuddering. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and you can tell he means it for a hundred things at once.

“Stop,” you say. You pull back just enough to look at him. “Don’t apologize to me for… surviving, or for telling me about it.”

His eyes flicker. The shame tries to reassert itself.

You don’t let it.

“Hey,” you murmur. “Look at me.”

He does, and you take a long breath, pushing back against the part of you that still wants to run from honesty and closeness; the voice inside your head that, while much quieter now than it once was, still tries to convince you that letting him all the way in is a bad idea.

“You are the safest person I’ve ever known, Spencer Reid,” you say slowly, letting him feel every word. “And you’re sitting here acting like you’re dangerous because you understand first-hand what pain can do to people.” Your thumb traces his pulse at his jaw. “But… you understanding that is the whole point. It makes you good at this job. It makes you human.”

He stares at you like he’s trying to memorize your face. Like he’s trying to decide if he’s allowed to believe you.

“I’ve never told anyone that story before,” he says quietly.

The weight of it presses down, intimate and terrifying. You feel it in your ribs: his trust, his choice.

He swallows. “You’re the only person I've ever wanted to tell. And I didn’t… I didn’t want to be alone with it.”

Your heart does something painful and tender at the same time.

“You don’t have to be alone with anything anymore,” you murmur. “Not if you don’t want to be.”

His eyes shine. He doesn’t blink.

“I don’t think I really realized how much I need you until tonight,” he says quietly. “I’ve always wanted you, obviously. But I need you, too.”

Your breath catches.

You slide your fingers into his hair, hold him close.

“You have me,” you say. “Okay? You have me.”

—

Time passes in small, quiet ways.

In the tea that goes cold on the coffee table because neither of you remembers to drink it. In the way the city noise outside shifts from restless to sleepy. In the way Spencer’s grip on you loosens — not because he wants to let go, but because he doesn’t feel like he has to hold on for dear life anymore.

At some point, you stop counting his breaths and start trusting them.

He stays curled into you on the couch for a long time, forehead tucked against your shoulder, one hand spread at your waist like he’s memorizing the shape of you. Every so often his fingers flex, as if he’s checking you’re still there. Every time you slide your palm over his knuckles in answer.

You don’t talk much. There isn’t a clean follow-up line to they tied me to a goalpost that makes the world make sense again. There’s just… being.

You feel him come back to himself in increments. His shoulders drop. His jaw unclenches. The tightness behind his eyes softens into something tired instead of broken.

When he finally lifts his head, it’s careful, like he doesn’t want to break the spell.

His eyes meet yours.

“There you are,” you say softly.

A tiny smile flickers at the corner of his mouth. “Hi.”

He reaches up, thumb brushing your cheekbone where you’d wiped away a tear earlier that you’re refusing to acknowledge.

“I’m sorry,” he starts again.

You catch his wrist gently. “Don’t be.”

You sit up slowly, stretching your legs, and he follows your movement immediately like his body has decided you’re the North Star and he’s not fighting it anymore.

“Do you want to shower?” you ask.

He hesitates for half a beat, then nods. “Yeah.”

In the bathroom, you move around each other the way you always do. It’s a familiar routine. Toothbrushes side by side, your sweatshirt abandoned on the counter, his fingers catching yours when you reach for the same towel.

The shower steam turns the harshness of the day into something blurred at the edges. You wash your hair and he stands behind you, hands resting gently on your hips, leaning down to press a kiss to your shoulder like he can’t help himself. Like the nearness is still a need, even now that he’s steadier.

You turn, water sliding down the sides of your face, and he’s looking at you in that quiet, intent way he always does when he’s thinking too hard.

“What?” you ask.

He shakes his head, almost embarrassed. “Nothing.”

You don’t let him get away with it, but you also don’t press like an interrogator. You just step closer, palms flattening against his chest, and tip your chin up.

He leans down and kisses you, slow and sure, like he’s re-learning what it feels like to be held without punishment. You kiss him back until the tension in his shoulders fully releases, until his hands slide up your back and settle there like they belong.

When you pull away, he stays close, nose brushing yours.

“You’re…” he starts, then stops, as if he can’t find a word that isn’t too big.

You grin, trying to lighten the air around him. “I’m what? Your perfect, wonderful, super hot girlfriend?”

He laughs for a second — an actual laugh, warm and surprised.

“Well, yes,” he admits, a little helpless. “That’s true too.” His gaze drops for a beat, then returns to yours. “But I was going to say that you… you make it quieter. All of it.”

Your throat tightens, because you know what he means. You quiet his self-doubt, his self-criticism, his fear.

“You make it easier to breathe,” you answer, and it comes out softer than you expected. Honest in a way you don’t usually allow yourself to be. “Like I can stop bracing for the worst all the time.”

His eyes flicker — surprise, something bright and almost shy — and then he smiles softly. “Good,” he murmurs.

When you get out, you hand him a towel. He reaches for it but uses it to tug you in instead, wrapping it around both of you for a second like a makeshift shelter.

You rest your cheek against his skin and let his warmth sink into your bones.

In your bedroom, the routine continues.

He moves around your space like he belongs there, and he does. It’s etched into all the quiet details: the drawer you emptied for him months ago, the small stack of books he keeps on your nightstand, the fact he knows where you store your extra pillows and you know which side of the mattress he drifts toward in his sleep.

You watch him for a moment as he stands at the edge of the bed, shirt in his hands, hair damp, skin still flushed from the shower.

There’s something about seeing him like this — unarmored — that always makes your chest go tight. Like you’re witnessing something you weren’t supposed to get access to.

He catches you staring and raises his eyebrows faintly as he pulls the fabric over his head. “What?”

You shrug, attempting casual and failing. “Nothing.”

He gives you that small, knowing smile and climbs into bed. When you follow, he reaches for you immediately — an arm around your waist, pulling you in until your back is against his chest.

You settle with a sigh you didn’t realize you’d been holding in all day. His hand slides up your side, slow and grounding, then comes to rest over your ribs where your heartbeat keeps thudding like it’s trying to prove something.

“Thank you,” he murmurs into your hair.

“For what?”

“For coming to the door,” he says quietly. “For not making me explain before I could even think straight.” His arm tightens once, steady. “For letting me be here.”

You turn in his arms, just enough to look at him. In the dark, his eyes catch what little light there is, and they’re softer now.

“Like I was gonna leave you out there in the hall,” you murmur, thumb skimming his jaw. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

His mouth twitches, almost a laugh.

“I didn’t know what I needed,” he admits. “But it was you. I just needed you.”

“I know,” you whisper. “You have me.”

For a second, he almost looks like he might say something bigger. Something he can’t take back. But instead, he swallows it and leans in to kiss you again, the kind of kiss that still makes your stomach flip even after everything. Like you’re still new to each other, like you’re still learning, like you’ll never be done.

When you pull back, he rests his forehead against yours.

“Tomorrow,” he murmurs, voice already thick with sleep, “I’m going to be better.”

You hold his face between your hands for a moment, grounding him the way he’s grounded you so many times.

“You don’t have to be,” you say softly. “Just… be here.”

His eyes close on a slow exhale.

“I’m here. I’m yours,” he says, and the words are so devastatingly sincere that you feel them settle in your bones.

You settle back against him as his arm tightens around you, and then his breathing evens out, sleep taking him.

You lie there in the dark with him warm at your back, his hand over your heart like he’s using it to keep time, and you let yourself absorb the quiet.

It’s not total silence or stillness, not really. Not with his breathing in your ear or his palm rising and falling over your ribs.

You shift a fraction, and his arm tightens around you like he can’t bear to let you drift too far, even in sleep. It makes your throat burn with a feeling you refuse to name tonight, so you settle for staring up at the ceiling until your eyes go soft.

Tomorrow will arrive with its teeth. The job will soon enough hand you another case that chips away at your soul.

But tonight, Spencer found you anyway.

And you let yourself believe — just for this one quiet stretch of night — that if the world ever tries to pull you apart, he’ll still reach for you in the dark. That you’ll still reach back.

ᝰ.ᐟ

next part →

this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️

& don’t forget to send in requests for my 2k event, greenaway!reader marathon, happening next month!