#prison!spencer

“You scared me,” I responded. I’d chosen to ignore the accusatory tone in favor of beginning to remove the outer layers of my uniform. I felt Spencer’s eyes watching me hungrily, following my hands as I stripped down.

“Why is that?” he asked, a darkness bleeding through the tone.

I shrugged, unsure what other reaction I should have had to a man in my bed at night, especially considering it’d been months since that was a normal occurrence.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be here, that’s all,” I explained, tossing my clothes into the hamper beside me and grabbing one of the shirts he'd bought me that I’d grown attached to while he was away. Although it'd been years since he'd sprayed his cologne on it, it still managed to smell like him. That decision to reach for a memory rather than him, however, only seemed to further irritate him.

“You weren’t expecting your boyfriend to come see you?”

“No, not really. You didn’t call me, and you know how jumpy I get,” I answered, slipping straight from one shirt into the other. It was strange, the hostility that I felt permeating the tiny room, and I had a feeling I was missing something I was supposed to know.

“Yes, I do,” Spencer said quietly, running a hand over his face in what appeared to be contemplation.

The silence between us didn’t last longer than the time it took for my pants and bra to hit the floor, leaving me clad only in his gift and a pair of flimsy cotton underwear.

“Come here, bunny,” he instructed before beckoning to me with one finger. That was when I realized that one of his hands had been concealed the whole time, hidden behind his back. I tried not to read into it; he was probably just holding himself up. But still, there was something almost animalistic in his tone that made me pause as he said, “Come sit on my lap.”

I complied, unable to resist the temptation even if I'd wanted to.

“You’ve gotten bossier since you got out, you know,” I giggled, approaching him with a pep in my step that was meant to hide any insecurity I had over how else prison might have changed the man I love.

“Does it bother you?”

His voice softened almost immediately upon touching me, his hand taking mine as soon as he could reach it. When I tried to straddle him, he just shook his head, guiding me to turn so that my back was to his chest.

“No…” I somewhat lied as I took my seat.

‘Bother’ was the wrong word, but I didn’t have a better one. It was different, strange, and… Thrilling, the man who had emerged from the other side of the prison walls.  

“You like it, don’t you?” he read my mind, speaking my thoughts into my ear, “Knowing that I can’t resist touching you?”

And true to his word, his hand released mine and started dragging down my waist and over my inner thigh. His fingertips pressed so harshly against the sensitive skin that I felt them long after they’d left.

“Spencer…” I sighed, letting my head fall back against his shoulder.

It had been so long since the two of us had been like this together. Of course, we’d slept together practically minutes after he’d been released, but this felt different. There were no distractions or plans or things to do. It was just the two of us with roaming hands and too much time.

“I was worried about you when I was in there,” Spencer spoke again, this time through clenched teeth. The words didn’t surprise me; he’d told me as much every single time I stepped foot in the prison. There had been a number of times when he even specified what it was that he was worried about - although he’d never prepared me for what came next.

Forcing his face into the crook of my neck, he started to lay heavy kisses against my neck, mumbling an angry insult against the skin, “I know how needy you are. How much you crave the attention of men.”

“That’s not true!” I tried to defend myself, my words interrupted by a wanton moan as he pressed his teeth into my shoulder.

“Be quiet,” he growled, “When you came to see me, you seemed so… put together.”

I tried my hardest to follow his instructions, biting down hard enough on my tongue that I should’ve tasted blood - because his hand was going everywhere but where I wanted it, his nails now digging into me and leaving marks any way that they could. Still, I feared that the whimpers they elicited would be enough for him to justify a punishment.

Although, that didn’t sound bad, either. Spencer and I had experimented a little bit with rough play before he was so rudely taken from me. We'd never delved into any extremes, though, since my sweet boyfriend had always insisted that it would be wrong to corrupt me… no matter how badly I wanted him to.

So I had resigned myself to the idea that I would have to convince him another day, sometime in the future when he couldn’t ignore the impulses anymore. And before prison, I'd honestly thought that the day might never come. That was, until that night, when Spencer’s mouth and hand roamed over my body with a possessiveness that should have frightened me.

Before I could even ask what had gotten into him, he gave me my answer.

“I thought that you might have found someone else to satisfy those cravings.”

The world came to a record-scratch stop, the breath vacating my lungs so quickly I nearly choked on their absence.

“I would never do that!”

Spencer, sensing my sudden urge to leave his lap, wrapped his arm around me and held my hips down flush against his.

“I know that now,” he laughed through the struggle, “Because while I was waiting for you, I found something very interesting.”

I paused again, my mind racing with all the things he could have found. It was a short list of things that would actually make me feel some sort of shame, but the possibilities for things that could be misconstrued were endless.

“Wait—“ I rasped, grabbing onto his arm with both of mine as he finally revealed a small, familiar object clutched in his hand.

“It turns out I didn’t need to be worried at all.”

Holding down the button on the small bullet vibrator, Spencer quickly lowered it between my legs before I got a single word in edgewise. Instead, the only noises leaving my mouth were a surprised yelp, followed by deep, heaving breaths.

“Because my sweet, innocent little bunny found a way to take care of herself,” he mocked, no doubt noticing that within seconds, I’d turned to pliable putty in his hands.

“Spencer, stop,” I panted in the least convincing manner.

“No. Tell me, is this what you did every night while I was gone?” he demanded, rolling the toy in soft circles over my clit to avoid overstimulating me immediately.

I hated the fact that he knew to do that, and as a result I couldn’t answer him. I just sat there, a mess in his arms as he continued to angrily grind insults through his clenched teeth.

“Is this how you replaced me?”

I managed to get out one firm word with a shake of my head, “No!”

“Did you even miss me?”

The vulnerability in the waver of his voice broke me. Realistically, logically, I knew that Spencer couldn’t honestly be jealous of something as simple as a sex toy. He knew how much I loved him; how much I needed him. But I could also tell that he’d been away for too long, and his insecurity that had existed when I first met him had returned. But as sad as it was, I knew a convenient way to show him why he had nothing to worry about.

“Yes! Yes, I missed you so much,” I cried, trying not to focus on the sensations that were flooding my mind with desire. I couldn’t do anything until he told me to. I needed his permission.

“What did you think about when you used this, hm?”

“You. I thought of you,” I promised, finally allowing my legs to shake to show him how close I was to coming undone.

He didn’t look pleased. His hand grabbed a fistful of my hair and forced my head to the side so that he could inspect my face. I let him, confident that the only thing he would find was my submission.

“Spencer, please,” I said through strained vocal cords, my eyes barely able to stay on his as he held the toy against me without any reprieve. He didn’t say anything, yet, just watching me struggle to stay silent and compliant while his pupils grew wide at the sight.

And just when I thought that I wouldn’t be able to hold on any longer, he said those magical words.

“Go ahead. Come.”

His grip on my hair tightening, he continued to taunt me, his mouth just a few inches from mine.

“You know you want to. Come on this little toy and pretend it’s what you really want.”

My body immediately responded to his command. Letting my head fall back into his hand, the rest of my body went rigid, the tremors in my legs intensifying as the orgasm dragged on.

I knew Spencer was watching me, but the shameless pleasure I was experiencing was too overwhelming. I should have pretended to be at least a little disinterested in it, at least for now. I wanted him to be reassured that I would always prefer him to a motor, no matter how much it made me feel.

It wouldn’t be the last orgasm of the night, or at least I hoped not, so I didn’t try to linger in that euphoria any longer than necessary. The problem was that I actually hadn’t used the toy in a few weeks, and I’d just worked a ridiculously long shift and was exhausted. So as soon as I came back to earth, I went completely limp in his arms.

Spencer laughed.

“Are you tired now, bunny?” he said through a little pout. The gentle roar of the vibrator stopped, and both of his hands were on me again. He ran his fingers over my jaw to force me to look at him.

“You got your fill and now you think we’re done?”

“No. I want you,” I slurred, still catching my breath and gathering my strength to be more convincing. It wasn’t that hard, considering his reaction to my words. He grabbed my jaw, his palm covering my nose and mouth while he pulled me closer.

“You want me?”

“I need you!” I yelled, trying to make the muffled words coherent.

Despite the darkness, he felt so playful. The thin ring of his dark honey colored irises visible from the hallway light sneaking past the door. He looked so beautiful, and I got the sudden urge to wrap him up in my arms and remind him just how loved he really was.

But what he had planned would probably be good, too.

“I know you need me. I’m worried that you might have forgotten,” he explained, dropping his hand down so he could toy with my bottom lip, dragging it down to see if I would dare act without his order.

There was no winning, though, because in not breaking the expectations he placed on me, I failed to show him enough of my desire.

“Have you forgotten how I make you feel?”

That time there was no right answer because I would win either way. He would be proud if I told him the truth, that I could never forget the way he made me feel because he was written on my skin and imprinted in my heart.

But if I told him I’d forgotten, he’d be forced to teach me again— to treat tonight like the first night we spent hours tangled in sheets, trying to memorize the tiniest nuance of each other’s body.

By the look in his eyes, he was remembering that night, too. Satisfied with the plumpness of my lips, he lowered his face so that our lips were barely touching before he whispered, “Let me remind you.”

Spencer didn’t actually kiss my lips; he just let the words linger against me before diverting his mouth in a hot trail of sloppy kisses down my jaw. It quickly descended, and the second he had a chance, he latched onto the sensitive skin of my neck and began to suckle harsh bruises over my pulse.

I cried out at the sensation and the statement such an action made. He didn’t even bother asking me if he could mark me, because to him, I already belonged to him. But as soon as he finished with one mark, he would move to a new spot and start the process all over again.

When he'd exhausted the skin on my neck, he began to move down over my collarbones, pausing to sink his teeth into me just enough to leave a mark behind.

“Every night I dreamt about kissing you. About marking every inch of your skin so no one is mistaken,” he growled against my skin, his hands digging into my hips before lifting me from his lap and tossing me onto my back on the bed.

His hands were rough and clumsy as he grabbed a handful of the shirt, pulling me to sit up. I understood the order before he said it, removing the shirt to free more of his canvas. And no sooner had the shirt hit the bed than his hands found my wrists, forcing me down and pinning me against the bed.

The silk tie he wore hung between us, reminding me that while I lay there covered in only my sweat and arousal-soaked underwear, he was still fully clothed, ready to make a mess of me once more. I looked to him with a smile, but I was met with rage. An unbridled hatred for all the men who got to see me while he was gone.

Dragging his nails harshly down my chest, he marked the skin of my breasts with his hand first before he grabbed one, kneading the flesh with a force that made my hips buck against him.

“I want an excuse to destroy any man who so much as looks at you wrong. Anyone who looks at you like you don’t belong to me.”

I couldn’t handle the way he looked at me as he said it, the brown of his eyes no longer visible to me as the darkness inside of him covered everything. I didn’t need to see; I trusted he would lead me through it.

“There wasn’t anyone,” I whined, knowing he wouldn’t believe me but needing him to hear it nonetheless.

He didn’t appreciate the answer, lowering himself to begin suckling his marks over my chest.

“Bullshit. You’re just too sweet and naive to notice the way they look at you. But I see it,” he explained, almost sounding sad under the jealousy and insecurity, “And now when they look at you, they’ll see me.”

A choked sob left my lips at the feeling of his hands and mouth laying claim to whatever they could. The pressure and warmth provided a distraction from everything else that could possibly be bothering me. Nothing in the world mattered except the man on top of me.

There was a tenderness in the way his tongue circled over my breasts, manipulating the pebbled peak in his mouth. The attention and care paid to each side made time slow down. It was the calm in the eye of the storm; a reminder that he was still capable of praise and love, even at his most unhinged.

He stopped when he was out of breath, pulling back to look at the pattern of petechiae he’d left scattered in his wake. I stayed silent, hoping to see the adoration on his face, but I could tell that something was still missing for him.

Spencer left me there, standing up and beginning to remove his tie and unbutton his shirt. For a while I didn’t move at all, scared that it would earn his wrath or be seen as an attempt to hide from his eyes, even when they weren’t watching.

But eventually I started to sit up, my fingers drifting over the new marks he’d left.

“Tell me what you want,” he ordered, not looking at me past the small sliver visible in his peripherals.

“I-I want…”  I tried to say it, but my throat felt dry as he stripped in front of me, revealing the rest of the barely faded bruises and wounds he’d sustained during his prison stint.

I felt guilty, having already grown used to the marks on his face that seeing them elsewhere stole words from my mouth.

Spencer saw the horror and guilt on my face, and it snapped the thin thread of patience and control he was trying to hold onto.

“I’m waiting.”

“I want you to fuck me. Please.”

“No. You don’t deserve it yet.”

I quickly realized that whatever I said wouldn’t have mattered; he had already chosen the path we would take. When he approached me that time, as naked as I was, I felt even more cornered. Like he was coming to devour me.

“Not only did you take what’s mine, you hid it from me. So poorly, too,” he chastised, stopping his approach just above my legs, his lips ghosting over my hip bones.

“While I was locked up and dreaming of you, you replaced me with a fucking toy.”

I wanted to protest his words, but he never gave me a chance. My voice was cut off by a sudden, throaty cry as his tongue ran along my sex. There was no chance for me to recover my senses before he began to sloppily explore whatever he could, switching between short lapping motions and thrusts inside me.

He barely stopped to breathe, but when he did, he growled against my inner thigh, “Is this what you thought about, bunny?”

Nodding like he would be able to see it thrown back against the pillows, my heels dug into his shoulders, trying to bring him closer again. He took pity on me, but only for a moment before I heard a small chuckle.

“Or maybe you thought about this?”

I didn’t have to wonder for long, with Spencer acting on his words before they were even finished. With one rough motion, he buried two fingers into my heat soaked with his spit and my own arousal. It still hurt enough for my legs to shake, but Spencer forced my hips down with his arm wrapped around my leg.

Everything in the room disappeared. The only sounds I could hear were my own muffled cries mixed with the lewd sounds of Spencer’s mouth as he kissed my poor overstimulated body. Between my moans, I could also hear his, low and insistent.

His fingers filled me so completely I wondered how I would be able to fuck him at this rate. It seemed impossible to take his cock when I could barely handle what he’d done so far.

“Spencer, it’s too much! I-I can’t—“

When I say that I cried, I mean it. Tears that had been pricking at the sides of my eyes quickly pooled and fell, and Spencer made no mention of it. I knew he could hear it in my voice, but he continued his ministrations without an ounce of guilt. The tears weren’t from fear or pain. They were born of my body’s inability to control how badly it wanted him.

“Yes, you can,” he corrected my earlier protest, issuing one final warning before continuing, “You can, and you will.”

I couldn’t tell which was less forgiving: the slight curve of his fingers with each thrust or the speed with which he deftly swirled his tongue and sucked on my clit until I couldn’t hold back my voice any longer.

That time as I came, my back lifted from the bed despite his best efforts to hold me down. He followed me, still, refusing to change his pace even as my nails dug into his scalp and my legs closed around his ears without reservation.

Spencer was a man on a mission to destroy me, and he let nothing stand in his way. Even when I was fully broken, laying with wet cheeks and trembling legs, he didn’t even wait to wipe his mouth before he demanded, “Tell me what you want.”

“Please... sir,” I weakly whispered.

He recognized from the pause that I wasn’t planning on finishing my plea, and he ever so politely pressed on, “Please what?”

“F-Fuck me,” I managed to say.

It was clearly too pathetic for his tastes, because he quickly rejected the request with a dark and angry, “No.”

I didn’t even see him grab the toy, but I certainly heard it roar back to life. Tears streamed down my face before it even touched me. Despite them, a smile was spread over my face because I could feel it. I felt the tension in his body as it seemed to transfer to me and build in my loins.  

Then it was too much, aching in the best and worst way all at once. Spencer approached me, his eyes staring into mine through the tears that blocked my vision.

“Please, don’t make me,” I slurred, trying to appeal to his merciful side hidden behind that slightly scary but mostly fascinating exterior.  

“I’m not making you do anything. You had no problems finishing on it before. I’m just trying to give you what you want.”

As he spoke, Spencer stroked the side of my face, clearing any stray hairs and moving my face so he could watch the tears roll down.

“I’m just trying to spoil you, bunny. Say thank you.”

“Th—“

The word didn’t get far, with his hand pressing harder between my legs until my mouth twisted into the pleasure he sought to exact. My earlier smile had transferred to him, and he watched me with unmatched enthusiasm. Like the scientist he was, he was testing how far I would go before I actually begged for mercy.

He wanted to break me, just to see if he could.

And break I did, losing track of just how many orgasms I’d had and hoping to god there wouldn’t be many more to follow. This one was so quick and so harsh, I barely had time to remind myself to breathe before it was over.

“Good girl. There you go. Look at you. You said you couldn’t do it but you’re doing so well.”

Spencer’s voice was the only thing tethering me to the world, the vibrations moving slowly down my leg to prevent the whiplash of sensations. I tried to look down at his hands, my eyes barely staying open, but Spencer guided my face back to his. With soft, slow breaths, he implicitly demanded that I follow his lead and recalibrate before we continued.

My body needed it more than I’d thought, greedily accepting the air and the calmness of the moment. I wanted so badly to wrap myself up in him, to bury my face in his neck and succumb to sleep in the arms of the man I loved. But I couldn’t. It was crystal clear in his eyes that Spencer wasn’t finished yet.

“Look at me and tell me what you want.”

Swallowing thickly and speaking lowly, I confidently and clearly replied this time. If he wanted to break me down to nothing, that nothing would still be poised. That nothing would still tell him without a doubt in her mind what she needed from him.

“Fuck me, sir.”

“Do you think you’ve earned it?” he said it more as a chastisement than a genuine question, and I knew the answer he was looking for.

I shook my head no, too scared to say the word.

“But you’re still asking me to fuck you?” Spencer asked, setting the vibrator aside and letting his hand gently massage my shaking legs.

“Yes, sir. I’m begging, sir.”

Begging was not an overstatement or hyperbole. My entire body was shifting towards him with every motion of his fingers. Like the world’s best puppeteer, he commanded my body to move at his will although it was deathly tired.

“Fine. Only because you asked nicely,” he teased, pursing his lips to mock my pout, “and you look so fucking precious.”

As he climbed on top of me, he took his time pressing gentle kisses over all the teeth marks and bruises he could find. His breath tickled my skin, and it almost felt cool against the heated surface. I was still so overwhelmed that even that minuscule sensation coaxed a low moan from my throat.

“So needy...” he laughed at the sound, “I can’t believe you thought a little toy would ever be enough for you.”

“I need you, Spencer. I’ll always need you,” I speedily replied, unable to keep my hands from lacing through his hair, forcing him to look at me the same as he’d made me earlier, “I’ll always want you.”

It was a slight distinction, a nuance he might have not even considered in the moment. But once I said it— once he heard it— his features softened.

“That’s right, bunny. You’re such a precious thing. I just need to make sure you’re taken care of appropriately,” he sarcastically cooed.

I didn’t even mind. All I could think of in that moment was the feel of his erection pressed against my thigh. He spread my legs, letting them fall limp to the side as he positioned himself at my heat. But as soon as he entered me, roughly and all at once, my muscles jerked around him.

He kissed the side of my face while he chuckled, contrasting his brutal entrance with a tantalizingly slow pace.

“This is what you were waiting for. Wasn’t it? This is what you thought about?”

“Yes,” I sighed.

The exhaustion took so many things from me, but it didn’t take the overwhelming love I felt for Spencer Reid. Feeling him, sharing his breath and surrendering my body for his use and pleasure was all that I wanted.

He must have heard that in my panting and mewls, because he returned his own moan as he struggled to keep his pace light.

“God, I missed this,” he said through clenched teeth.

Although so dreadfully tired and sore, I forced my hand to move. I forced myself to drag my hand down his back, my nails leaving angry welts behind. They were a message to him; confirmation that he was okay to continue.

A promise that he could let go. A promise that I could take it.

Spencer heard it.

“You’re such a good girl. So happy making me feel good.”

His praise was genuine and paired with ruthless thrusts. Of all the bruises that would be left in his wake, I hoped that the pattern of his fingers on my hips would last the longest.

I gasped when he suddenly shoved his arm under my back, canting my hips forward to better serve his needs.

“That’s what gets you off, isn’t it? Knowing what you do to me?” he growled into my neck, unable or unwilling to look me in the eyes as he wrecked what was left of me. “Or is it what I make you want? How I make you feel?”

I honestly didn’t have an answer. Both of them were true, but both also missed the point. It wasn’t just knowing that I drove him mad enough to take me despite the tears, and it wasn’t that he made me like that— it was knowing that beneath it all was the man I loved, giving me all of himself and knowing I would still love him after.

Then again, there was the carnal side. I would be lying if I pretended like his ravishing me to his heart’s content didn’t spark something in me. Even then, as he fucked me hard enough to shake the entire bed frame, I wanted more. I wanted him to leave evidence of him on every inch of my being. I wanted to be utterly wrecked and owned and loved by that man.

He knew it, too. He loved it, too.

“You weren’t like this when I met you, you used to be so fucking pure,” Spencer sneered, bringing his hand up to squeeze my chin and force my lips in another pout, “Now look at you. Look at you.”

The only way I could follow his instructions was in the reflection of his eyes, which were too absorbed by the darkness to be visible. But I didn’t need a mirror.

I could feel the way he controlled me. I could feel him taking over. I let him.

“Please, Spencer.”

It was my final plea, a cry for him to take mercy on my weary body and let us both find peace together.

With a few particularly powerful thrusts, Spencer almost lost himself in the pleasure. I could see the way his face creased as the sweat dripped from his brow. His breathing was heavy and irregular, his grip on my face dropping to my jaw just shy of the column of my throat.

“Crying and begging for me to make you come again. My pretty, greedy little bunny.”

I wanted him to grab me wherever he desired— and it was obvious where that was— but I recognized his apprehension and decided to let it pass unannounced for now. Heaven knew we were both already beat from the sudden escalation in our relatively vanilla lifestyle.

“Please, sir,” I croaked, baring my neck to him to show him his hand there wasn’t required for him to control me. “I need it.”

Spencer didn’t answer with another taunt or promise that time. No, instead he answered by exerting all remaining energy in his motions. He bottomed out inside of me with each thrust, his mouth finally finding mine again through the heavy breaths and moans.

He kissed me even harder than he fucked me, and I felt the crescendo growing again, slower but more powerful this time. Because it wasn’t just the physical aspects of the sex, but also the way our tongues mingled together and shared the space between us.

In that moment, we were hardly two separate people anymore. Spencer felt like an extension of myself, a piece of me that couldn’t be removed without permanent damage to my heart. My hands held his face, forcing him to stay with me, his lips on mine as my final climax of the night took over me in creeping waves. When my mouth couldn’t stay closed for his kisses any longer, he laid them on my cheeks instead.

“Good girl,” he said so sweetly before his own release followed.

Buried as deeply as he could within me, Spencer let out a noise also similar to my cries from before. His relief was visible in each of his muscles, his body slowly giving into the bliss as his warmth filled me.

I could hardly move, but I once again found the strength to stroke his back, bringing him back down to earth and back to me. His tired body collapsed onto mine with no grace at all, and I would have laughed if he weren’t crushing me.

“Shit,” I mumbled with the last breath I had left.

“Language,” Spencer mumbled back, although the word was barely comprehensible with his mouth still smushed against my neck. Thankfully, he showed mercy for only the second time that night and rolled off me before I suffocated under his weight.

With my newfound freedom, I laughed, delirious and happier than words could describe.

“I’m too sleepy to care ‘bout rules,” I whispered, also apparently too tired to talk right.

Spencer didn’t mind though, considering he was smiling back at me with a gentle, loving look that I felt like I hadn’t seen all night. It was a welcome and calming change of pace.

“I know you’re tired. We need to clean you up, though.”

He nodded when I groaned in response, having fully expected my resistance to moving. But then he said something peculiar, something that sank into my skin and raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

“You’re all dirty now that you let me touch you,” he said.

I sat with the words, replaying them in my head as he practically carried me to the bathroom. I mulled them over to the sound of the bath running and thought of how to respond for as long as the water stayed warm.

Because while I knew what I wanted to say so badly, I wasn’t good with words like him— especially not in my current state.

But I couldn’t let that be the end of the night. I couldn’t let him think those words without correction.

“Hey Spencer?” I said, breaking the silence while his hands carefully caressed my arms, gently washing the bruised skin.

He stopped at the sound of my voice, clearly being ripped from his own mind.

“Yes?” he asked, cautiously and quietly, almost unheard over the splashing water.

“Thank you for taking care of me. You’re a kind, gentle, wonderful man, and I love you very much.”

Silence followed, his hands falling down to my lap as he undoubtedly repeated the words to himself, hoping to find some flaw or lie in the logic. But he wouldn’t find them because they didn’t exist. In that moment particularly, there was nothing at all I could criticize. My heart was too full of love to feel anything else.

“I just thought you might need to hear that,” I explained, slipping my hands under his palms and coaxing his fingers to intertwine with mine.

With the tiniest chuckle, the kind that came out more an exhale than anything that could be properly called a laugh, Spencer followed suit.

“Thank you, bunny,” he whispered with a crack in his voice, pulling me closer and wrapping our arms around my chest. Letting out a small sigh of relief, he rested his face on my shoulder with a small kiss.

“Anytime.”

(Tell me what you thought of this piece here!)

But there he was, exactly where I’d expected him to be. It wasn’t only the way the little visible moonlight reflected off his face that made him more silhouette than man — there was something else inhuman about him. I wondered if that feeling was the reason why the words shadow and specter were interchangeable.

“Spencer?” I called out into the cold quiet, hoping for any semblance of a response. When I got none, I spoke again, louder and with a broken force behind the two syllables that I used to only sing, “... Spencer?”

“I can hear you,” was all that he said.

I wanted it to be a comfort, but it only brought more questions to my already crowded thoughts.

“What are you doing awake?” I asked as I finally arrived at his side.

“There’s a storm,” he concluded, still standing in the same statuesque stance I’d found him in. “I couldn’t sleep with the noise.”

It was a lie. I had the decency not to call him out on it because I knew it would accomplish nothing other than sowing further distrust. I say further, but the truth was that I had no idea what had come between us in the first place. The only thing I knew was that Spencer left me already broken and returned with missing pieces.

“You’ve always slept better when it’s raining,” I pointed out. But I couldn’t will it into existence, no matter how hard I tried.

“Not tonight,” he answered between teeth that begged for the freedom to chatter in the cold. He did not grant them their wish, his jaw steeling back over to keep the words inside.

Spencer had a secret. Its presence was obvious, the proverbial giant baring its ivory tusks in the darkness of our living room, but I did not have a hold on its reigns. The frustration and the insecurity, while felt and suffered by us both, did not belong to me.

“It’s been three days.”

A glance at Spencer’s tightly clenched fists told me that his hands were equally empty. The lead for the monster inside him was not wrapped around his hands. It was wrapped around his neck, suffocating him as he choked out, “Has it?”

“Yes,” I whispered once I drummed up the courage to touch him. Like the clashing of cymbals, my fingertips on his arm caused him to jump. Despite that movement, he didn’t shy away from me. Even as I wrapped my arms around him from behind, he didn’t budge from his place against the window.

“Hm,” he huffed in something that was probably meant to resemble a bitter laugh.

“Please come back to b—” my plea was cut short before it ever came to be.

“I can’t.”

Unlike his previous shaky words, there was no reservation in that admission.

How do you help someone who always has the answers? What do you do when that person won’t even provide you with the seemingly unanswerable question? How do you help someone that doesn’t want your help?

I didn’t know. Spencer was always the one with the answers. So, I did the only thing I could think to do, bringing us back to our usual dynamic regardless of how dead it seemed.

“Spencer, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t go back to bed,” he repeated. His words were slightly condescending, his stoic tone warping into something that hurt.

Something sharp. Sharp like the makeshift shiv that he’d used to escape. I knew that story, but not because Spencer told me. Spencer didn’t talk to me about prison.

‘I can’t,’ he would say every time.  Just like he did that night. I had been too afraid to ask the question that was begging to follow. But that night, seeing the pale, angular visage of haunted hollowness, I had to try.

“Why not?”

Slowly, Spencer moved. His head turned towards me, but only far enough that he could see my features in his peripheral.

I’d never felt more unsettled by a lover’s eyes. He inspected me from that position so carefully and for such an extended period that I swore I must’ve made a mistake. I expected him to remove my arms and silently find his way to the couch.

It wouldn’t have been the first time.

But to my surprise, Spencer did neither of those things. His hands remained hung at his sides when he finally closed his eyes. Even through his eyelids, I saw the restlessness swimming in the hazel.

“Because they’re there,” he whispered like the undisclosed people would be able to hear him. “I can feel them there.”

His words abruptly stopped, his eyes shooting open in a panic. If my arms hadn’t been around him, I might not have noticed the way his breathing got heavier, and his muscles began to pulse as he tried to calm himself down.

My hands around his waist rose to his chest, slowly finding their way over his heart that beat slow but hard, as if simultaneously begging for rest and seeking a fight wherever it could find one.

Hyper-vigilance, he’d said before. Haunted was a better, truer description of the half-dead man in my embrace. For a second I thought he might lean back into me, allowing himself the slightest freedom to feel comfort, but then he stood up straighter, his back separating from my chest where my heart beat just as hard for him.

“Who are ‘they?’” I tried to keep my voice as unthreatening as possible, to sound more like the woman who loved him than a mother or a therapist. They didn’t exactly carry warm memories at the moment.  

“The other men,” he explained vaguely.

I sought the answers the only way I could think to do it. “The men from the prison?” I said, praying that making him talk wouldn’t drive him further away. Begging him to either come back to me or at least issue a death certificate for the man I used to know.

“Which men?” I pressed.

“All of them,” he choked, and I could see it again. The lead for the monster taking over our home was made of shackles still confining Spencer.

‘It’s for your protection,’ they had said when I asked them if he had to be shackled when I saw him. As if he could ever hurt me. As if I wouldn’t let him if he did. Because the Spencer I knew would never hurt for nothing.

I was not naive; I knew that he was troubled. He had been since the moment I met him. But I heard in a movie once that there are people born with tragedy in their blood, and I’d never heard anything more accurately describe Spencer Reid.

“What about the—“

“They are all there,” Spencer loudly interrupted, tearing away from me and slamming his body against the wall in an attempt to create distance where there was none. “They are all there, all the time.”

With features contorted in a terrified grimace, Spencer’s short breaths and heaving chest were the first indications of tears. They came before even the brackish waters. But once those rose over his lashes, I felt my face wet much the same.  

“I’m here, too,” I urged in what I’d hoped would sound like a promise, “Will you talk to me about them?”

I sounded like a therapist again, and Spencer’s head thunked against the wall as he closed his eyes for just one second before they shot open again.

I wondered what he saw that scared him so badly.  

“I can’t,” he croaked.

“Why not?”

“I can’t,” he repeated. “I can’t!”

That time when the admission left him, it came with an unintelligible shout. Spencer’s hands raked through his hair, pulling on the loose, curly locks that had grown to almost cover his eyes.

I wondered if he thought that would hide ‘them’ from his vision.

When I reached out to him, he twisted away from me until the side of his face hit the wall. It was like he didn’t even know where he was, having lost all sense of self-awareness. He must have felt as much like a ghost as he looked to me. Spencer slid down the wall, shrinking into himself and hugging his knees to his chest.

Like a child or cornered animal, he turned his head towards the wall, the plaster undoubtedly cool against his sweat covered forehead. After a brief second, he hit his head harder against the wall, seeking to feel what he’d felt before.

But I couldn’t let him. Falling to the floor after him, I placed my hand between the wall and his head. To my surprise, he continued to hit it, anyway, like he didn’t even notice that he was crushing my hand in the process. Each sharp pain that spread through my palm and shot into my fingertips was nothing compared to the aching in my chest.

I didn’t call out to him because it didn’t feel like it would matter. It didn’t feel like he was there at all.

Using the least amount of force as possible, I wrenched Spencer away from the wall, pulling him against my chest. The trembles and sobs reverberated through me, the sensation soaking into my bones and leaving a different kind of scar.  

I could never forget the way it felt, holding him covered in a cold sweat and tears as he clutched my shirt like it was all he had left. That memory would stay with me forever, burned in what would hopefully fade into the background so I wouldn’t have to see it every time I looked at him.

And I realized then, that what Spencer saw must have been worse, and for him, it might never fade.

“What did they do to you?” I cried, my words slurred by a tired tongue drowning in tears.

“It doesn’t matter,” he whined. Despite the illogicality of the statement, it was not a lie. It was the clearest and most confident that he had been. In a way, he almost sounded angry. Frustrated that I couldn’t see what he saw; I couldn’t comprehend it on my own. Terrified that he had to say it himself.

“Then what does?” I said quietly, using a gentle, careful hand to lift his chin back up to me. The resistance felt at first quickly faded when his eyes met mine. Through those bloodshot eyes and dark irises caught in the shadows, I saw the man I knew. Spencer was still there, holding onto a thread that had frayed beyond repair.

“It was me.”

The words hung in the still stale air, and the longer I searched his face to try and understand, the more scared he became. His eyes widened, his teeth finally beginning to chatter and his face slipping from my fingertips. I desperately threw my arms around his shoulders, pulling him back before he could drift away again.

“You? It was you… what?”

Spencer, unable to look away, closed his eyes again, instead. He shook his head, and between shaky breaths, spoke broken words like a river that burst through the dam.

“I can’t do this. I can’t look at you and talk about this. I can’t even look at you and think about it.”

With each passing word, he grew more frantic until his eyes were open, and his hands pressed down on my shoulder like he had to hold me down on Earth with him.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he cried, “I can’t look at you when I think about it and I think about it all the time.” The words were forced out of his teeth so strongly that spit fell with them, his jaw grinding the bones together and his hands clenching to the point I was scared they might bruise.

Spencer’s eyes were open again, but they were even emptier than before.

“Tell me how I can help you,” I pleaded.

“Tell me…” he mumbled back until he choked on the words. Even then, he pushed through the sentence despite the way it crackled to the point it was almost incomprehensible. “Promise me. Promise me that you’ll love me no matter what.”

It was the most terrifying thing I’d ever heard. The words themselves burned worse than the throbbing in my hand and the pressure on my shoulders, but they were not the worst part. It was the way that blank stare paired with the absolute desperation in his tone. The pair brought me to the conclusion that no matter what I did, I couldn’t promise him what he was asking me.

I wanted to say I was sorry, but instead I asked again, “What happened?”

But relentless in his pursuit for the promise that wasn’t coming, Spencer shook his head, the hands briefly granting me reprieve from the pain only to root themselves in my hair.

“Please. Please, promise me that you will still love me.”

With every beg, I felt the monster in the room growing in size. My own breathing became labored, and my lungs were unable to fill in the little space left for us.

I didn’t have an answer for him. He took the silence for what it was — a rejection of his request. Although I could tell him from his face that he saw it coming, the anticipation of failure didn’t hurt either of us any less.

“Because if you can’t promise me that I…” he trailed off, weary and only barely awake.

“Spencer, look at me.”

My hands over his forearms caused them to release some tension, his hands falling from my hair and hitting the bruised skin of my shoulders. His eyes then burned into them, recognizing the damage already done for a split second before he forced himself to forget for as long as he could. But in the morning when he saw the marks, he would feel it all over again. We both would.

I didn’t fault him for the bruises or the pain, though. I knew that whatever he felt hurt twice as badly, and it was not the kind that would fade in a few days.

“I can’t make you that promise, but what I can promise is that I love you right now.” I barely made it through the admission with those eyes staring into me. The only thing that allowed me to finish was knowing what would immediately follow. “I love you, Spencer, and I want to help you. You have to let me try.”

I don’t know what it was that made him break. Maybe it was the ever persistent and patient tempo of raindrops against the window, or perhaps it was my insistent need to know the answers, but Spencer took one more deep breath before the words I’d been waiting for fell gracelessly out of his mouth.

“I tried to kill them.”

The silence returned with a new haunted hollowness.

“I almost killed them,” he corrected.

“Who is ‘them?’” I asked instead of addressing the root of the problem. Spencer knew what I was trying to do and refused to let it happen.

“I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t care.”

It was a lie.

“I don’t believe that,” I said, shaking my head and closing my eyes to escape the look on his face as it glistened with the moonlight somehow still filtering through the clouds to find him.

He waited until they opened again before his hand cradled the back of my head, forcing me to lock eyes with him as he continued with crystalline clarity, “I didn’t care who they were, because as far as I was concerned, they all deserved it.”

It was still a lie. It was a lie that he, for whatever reason, really, really wanted to believe. But wanting to believe something didn’t make it any truer.

“You don’t mean that,” I opined, only to be shot down just as swiftly.

“How would you know?” The condescension in his voice was nothing but a poorly disguised defense. He knew as well as I did that what he was saying made no sense.

Because the Spencer Reid I knew would never hurt for nothing.

“Because if you didn’t care, if you really believe they would all be better off dead, you wouldn’t be losing sleep over it,” I stated slowly and softly, “You wouldn’t be crying and begging me to still love you if you didn’t care, Spencer. That doesn’t make any sense.”

All I could hope was that the words got through to him when they were muttered in my voice instead of the constant monologue running through his mind.

And they did. With a slightly delayed reaction as the words sunk in and filled his mind that was hellbent on self-sabotage, Spencer hung his head in what I could only imagine was an unthinkable shame.

“They killed Luis,” he replied meekly, “They killed him in front of me, but they were supposed to kill me.”

My only memory of the young man was instantly recalled, and I tried not to let myself imagine what Spencer must be seeing. When my mind shifted to see Spencer in his place, I shutdown the thoughts altogether. Unfortunately for the both of us, though, Spencer had already seen the horror on my face.

Completely breathless, Spencer’s voice whistled when he asked, “Why didn’t they just kill me?”

That was it— the unanswerable question that clung to him like a second skin. Tattooed on the inside of his eyelids and burned into his irises, the question that prevented the both of us from seeing anything else.

I didn’t have an answer for him. There was only one thing I could be certain of. So, that was what I said.

“Luis shouldn’t have died. But that doesn’t mean that you should have, either.”

But Spencer couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t hear my words because it was only half the question. It was not just why hadn’t they killed him when given the opportunity, but why the world, a god, fate, or destiny dictated that he shouldn’t have. Even if Luis hadn’t died, it became clear to me at that moment that Spencer still would have thought himself worthy of death.

Spencer was not asking me why they didn’t kill him instead. Spencer was asking me why he was alive at all.

“What if it worked?”

The question only barely broke me from my horrified thoughts. Having forgot his admission from seconds before in all the panic, all I could think to mutter was a broken, “What?”

“What if I killed those men? Would you still love me?”

I didn’t have an answer for him beyond, “Don’t ask me that.”

His lips tilted into a twisted, forlorn grin like he had gotten an answer. But he hadn’t. I wasn’t ordering him to stop because the answer was no.

“It doesn’t matter because it didn’t happen,” I continued before the smile could grow any wider.

Tired cheeks twitched at my words, falling back into a frown that was somehow more comforting than his smile.

“It matters to me,” he mumbled.

Pulling his hands away from me, I found myself more exhausted than I thought possible. It felt like the longer he held onto me, the more the anger and sadness flowed between us, seeking equilibrium in our embrace.

But there were some things in that feeling that shouldn’t exist at all. The suffocating weight of a tusked beast that didn’t belong on this Earth, let alone in our living room.

“You have to let this self-hatred go.”

Spencer’s shoulders hunched further forward without me to hold onto, and for a moment I thought he might fall even lower. His hands on the ground stopped him, although he continued to rock in his place.

“Easy for you to say,” he chuckled, “You don’t have to see it.”

When I didn’t have an answer, he posited another question with even more bitterness, “What’s it like? To be able to forget things?”

His eyes were not empty anymore when they flashed full of rage. But after a few breaths in the silence, that faded, too, only to be replaced with a soul-crushing sorrow.

“I don’t get to do that,” he sighed. “The harder I try to forget, the more my brain clings to the memory, and now—“

Spencer stopped again. Unlike before, he kept the words close for a reason that didn’t appear to be selfish at all. Our eyes met until I realized what he was doing. He was asking for my permission to speak. He was asking my permission to feel the full force of whatever was in his head.

That time, I didn’t pull his hands off me. I took his hand in mine, squeezing it tightly until he was able to return the gesture. With a deep breath out through a puckered mouth, Spencer closed his eyes as if to demonstrate what was happening as he spoke, “Now every single time I close my eyes, even just for a second, I can see the way it looked when those men were dying.”

The longer his eyes stayed shut, the tighter our grips became. Though it hurt, it felt like a necessary kind. It was the only way for me to understand what was happening in his world.

“And some nights… some nights it’s not them at all,” he paused before explaining, “It’s not them, and it’s not Luis. It’s Nadie Ramos. It’s my mom.”

“Spencer—“

“And it’s you.”

His eyes were open as he forced the words through his teeth with boiling blood. The disgust was written all over pallid features, and I felt it in his hand falling limp. Resting his head against the wall, he never once took his eyes off me as he continued, “Some nights I just sit there and I see you, choking on your own blood. And I don’t get to touch you, or hold you, or help you because there are handcuffs on my wrists and bars between us, and I—“

When he closed his eyes that time, I swore he almost found sleep. The tension bottlenecked at our hands and he tried to inch away from me. I wouldn’t let him, pulling myself even closer until we both rested against the wall.

Turning to keep his eyes on mine, Spencer whispered out the broken answer to my very first question.

‘What are you doing awake?’ I had asked.

“I don’t want to see it anymore,” was his answer.

We both saw the flaw in his logic, but I had the decency not to point it out. Not only could he not avoid sleep forever, avoiding sleep would not stop the pain or the memories. Just as he’d said, the harder he tried to lock them away, the further into the maze of memories he would go.

That was where the man I loved was. Trapped behind dozens of armored doors, banging desperately on the windows and scratching at the door with bloody nails. I couldn’t get him out of the prison of his mind on my own, so I did the only thing I could think to do.

Bringing the deadweight of his hand up to my chest, I rested it against my heart. And just like that, to the soundtrack of a slowly slowing metronome, I joined him in his mind with closed eyes and a set of promises that I felt equipped to make.

“I’m still here, Spencer. And I still love you.”

Then, resting his head against my shoulder, Spencer began to mold himself onto my side. I thought nothing of it until the meek word was mumbled against my shoulder.

“Why?”

“I don’t need a reason,” I said with a bit of a laugh, “but there are so many.”

To my delight, Spencer chuckled back. It was fleeting, but it was there. He was still there. I just needed to be there with him.

“What if it never stops? I can’t live like this,” he asked. Before my heart sank too far, he followed the question with the only words that could bring my breath back to me. “But... I really don’t want to leave.”

“Please don’t. I would miss you so badly,” I answered, letting my hands start to flow over his arm that wrapped around my waist. “I can’t promise you that the memories will fade, because I know they might not for you. But I can promise you one day you’ll find more beautiful things to remember when you close your eyes.”

Spencer nodded, understanding that what I said was true. But then in his typical childish and petty way, he playfully countered, “I can’t think of anything more beautiful than you.”

Through the laughter, I muttered a simple, “I can.”

I wasn’t being self-deprecating, though. It was simply the truth. There were so many beautiful things that came to mind when it came to our future. The thoughts filled my dreams both sleeping and waking. When I closed my eyes, I felt the weight of a ring on my finger that didn’t yet exist. I could see him clearly, clutching the tiny hands of a child that sat in my lap.

When I closed my eyes, it was a lot like it was then, with Spencer’s hand over my heart and our bodies pooled together until we could find equilibrium again. That day it was pain, but it would just as easily be happiness again.

“One day you’re going to be surrounded by so much love that there won’t be room for anything else,” I assured him with a smile. “Until that day, I’ll do whatever I can to make up the difference. And when I can’t, I’ll still be there with you.”

Tilting his head up just enough for our lips to meet, Spencer held me a little bit tighter before he collapsed into my lap. My hands combed through his hair, clearing it from his eyes so that I could see the way they settled.

“I love you, Spencer,” I promised.

“Please, say it again,” he whispered on the floor of our home. The rain continued in the background, dripping down the windowsill and weighing down the humid air to return the water to the soil below. In sync with the gentle breeze carrying the droplets, Spencer’s breathing slowed.

“I love you,” I whispered as he finally found sleep.

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