#spotch

The pit of Aaron's stomach flips in distress. The fork abruptly begins to tremble in his hand. "I—what?" He puts down the fork quickly to keep from dropping it and disguises his trembling hands by wiping around his mouth with his napkin. "I—Why? What? Who? Where?" He finds it impossible to form a coherent question, so he hopes Spencer will understand something from the noises he just produced and answer it.

Spencer's brows furrow. "You don't look too keen on the idea." Aaron makes another odd sound, something like clearing his throat passed off from choking on his food, and he's grimacing. "I dunno. JJ says she does it with Emily sometimes and it's fun. You know, during sex."

Aaron's whole body tightens up. "Yeah, I got that part." His face and knuckles blanche white. Even his lips lose color.

"I didn't know. You look kind of like I asked you cut my body up and pickle me into jars—"

"JJ told you to do this?"

"Yeah, JJ and Emily—"

"Stop, stop, I don't want to know." Aaron isn't sure of where this all came from, but with those clues, he is very sure he doesn't want to find out. "No."

Spencer frowns, not in an objectionable way, but in a thoughtful way. Clearly this conversation poked a whole bunch of needles into Aaron like bad acupuncture and then rolled him over on that side without taking the needles out. "Could we... Talk about it? You look pretty upset."

"No," Aaron says again. He tries to pick up his fork, but he fumbles with it and is unable to keep a grip on it. He's lost his appetite, anyway. He takes his plate to the kitchen, washes it off, and goes to shower with the door closed, like always—usually so Spencer won't see his upper body, but tonight so Spencer won't see the steam pour out of the room as he turns the water up all the way and scrubs himself until his skin is pink and raw.

Hours later, they're lying together in bed. Spencer drowses in a post-coital haze, his head on Aaron's clothed chest—besides Aaron's shirt, they're both naked. Aaron reads a book, or pretends to, but he hasn't turned a page in three and a half minutes, and Aaron usually reads about two hundred fifty words a minute, which means he's a minute and a half late to turn this page—

"Are you afraid of me?"

"Hm...?" Spencer blinks a few times to shake himself from his sleepy reverie. "What?"

"Do you—Do you think I would ever hurt you?"

"No, of course not. I would never think that." Aaron licks his lips and dog-ears the page (Spencer winces at this but doesn't remark on it) and puts the book to the side. "Are you okay?" Aaron was even more tender than usual tonight, and while ultimately it was for Spencer's benefit, he's concerned about its origins. Aaron has made it pretty clear he doesn't want to talk about the conversation earlier, but Spencer wonders how, exactly, a simple question got him so bent out of shape.

"Do you trust me?" Aaron presses.

"Yeah, of course. You licked my anus, like, ten minutes ago. I trust you not to give us E coli , which is the highest of compliments." Spencer tries to restore some levity to the conversation, since it's clear Aaron won't say what's actually bothering him, and Spencer doesn't particularly like to hold these long conversations completely in the dark.

His attempt doesn't assuage Aaron. "And you trust me not to hurt you? Or put my hands on you, ever?"

Spencer rolls over in his arms to look Aaron in the eyes. "Aaron," he says gently, "I trust you never to let any harm come to me, ever. That's why I asked you to do that." Aaron looks stricken. "You could put your hands on my throat, and I would be the safest man on this wide green earth. Do you think I would ever give that to someone else?" Aaron always knows what's best for him, is always gentle, always sensitive to his needs—he doesn't know where this anxiety came from, but it's not founded in the reality of the Aaron he knows. "You don't have to defend yourself. You don't want to do it. End of conversation." Spencer rubs soothing circles on Aaron's chest.

"I don't want you to think I would ever let anything hurt you."

"I don't think that."

"Even me."

"I don't think that, either." Spencer kisses him. "It's okay. I know better than to try to take sex advice from a couple that involves Emily. She's, like, the opposite of you."

Aaron's interest is piqued. "In what way?" Spencer opens his mouth. "No, wait, never mind, I don't—I don't want to know."

That night, Spencer rests easily, but Aaron squeezes him so tightly around the middle that he has to wiggle more than once to breathe, and very late, long after Aaron thinks he has fallen asleep, he feels Aaron cry silently, face buried between Spencer's shoulder blades.

The next evening, Spencer brews some stew on the stove using the very precise instructions Aaron laid out for him. So far, nothing is on fire, nothing has been blackened into coal, and nothing is melting, so Spencer is achieving expectations. The front door unlocks, and he turns to watch Aaron enter, carrying a boat load of groceries. "Hey, soup's brewing."

"It's stew," Aaron corrects as Spencer takes his bags.

"Yeah, whatever. It's not on fire, is my point."

"I've never been so proud," Aaron deadpans. Spencer kisses his cheek and rolls his eyes and goes to help Aaron put things away in the kitchen. "And, um, I got something—something for you." Aaron's cheeks flush unexpectedly, and Spencer raises his eyebrows in great interest as Aaron holds out a bag to him. "I, uh, I talked to Garcia, and she had some… suggestions."

Spencer wants to ask what kind of suggestions, but inside the bag, he finds a headband with pink cat ears, a pink lacy bralette, and a pink collar with a jingly bell and a small tag—the tag engraved: Spencer .

It's mortifying. It's sweet. It's the most adventurous thing Aaron has ever done (granted, the bar was low). Spencer kisses him hard. "Oh, I love it!"

"Oh, good, I thought maybe Garcia was way off base, but after yesterday, I was afraid to talk to JJ, I don't think I can look either of them in the eye ever again—"

"We could add to the tag property of Aaron Hotchner —"

Aaron shoots him a mild-tempered look. "Don't push your luck."

Spencer fidgets with the bell on the collar. "Say, uh, Garcia didn't say anything to you about, uh... cowboys, did she?"

Aaron frowns. "No, she didn't."

"Or horses, or... Assless chaps?"

"No... No. Should she have?"