pretty boy enthusiast

They converse for another moment, and Derek nods toward Hotch’s office door, jaw and brows set so serious you’re beginning to worry. Spencer nods robotically and finally stands. You accidentally catch Derek’s piercing eyes and quickly look away, pretending to be overly concerned with studying your mug. It’s probably not an Oscar-worthy performance. When you hear Hotch’s door open and promptly close again, you look back up. Spencer is obscured from view, but you can see Hotch at his desk through the window, strong profile as steely and hawkish as ever. His lips move. He frowns—it’s his concerned frown. He seems to ask a question, and your stomach lurches as you watch his expression change more robustly than is typical for him. Eyes narrowed, lips slowly parted—what is that? Disbelief, maybe? Anger? And then it softens completely. 

Your boss stands and before you have time to look away he’s closing the blinds. 

You’ve only been here a couple of years, but—how often does that happen?

“Derek,” you half-whisper, scurrying toward his desk. All you get in return is a reluctant glance—a barely there acknowledgement of your existence. 

“Do not drag me into this.”

You lean over his desk, setting your cup down and surely leaving a ring though you don’t particularly care as you frown, glancing back up to Hotch’s office. Still no sign of life. 

“Drag you into what? What’s going on with Spencer?”

Maybe one day you’ll take those profiling classes. They’d sure come in handy today as you’re continuously perplexed by the indecipherable facial expressions of your co-workers. Derek tenses, and then relaxes, and then tenses again. Starts a sentence. Stops it. Knits his brow. 

“You two haven’t talked yet?”

Faces, you struggle with. Inflections, you understand. That’s… pity.

Your own face slackens as you realize the gravity of the situation might be greater than you grasped with your poor perceptive skills. 

“No… did someone die? What is it?”

Derek only leans back in his seat, giving you a sad once-over and shaking his head like this is the last time he’ll ever see you in one piece. 

“This is a conversation for the two of you to have. I’m not getting involved.”

“Just tell me if someone died, Derek!”

He sighs, giving you another hefty dose of I-feel-sorry-for-you. “Nobody’s dying.”

Maybe you’re not the master of intonation like you thought you were, because there’s a secret, or a truth, sewn into the pocket of his words, and you can’t make heads or tails of it. Just as you’re about to further your inquisition, and you’re considering drastic measures, Hotch’s door is opening, and your head is snapping up fast enough your chiropractor will feel it at your next appointment. He eyes you for only a second before turning his attention to Morgan and the rest of the team members, who have actually been working at their desks. 

“We’ve got a case. Round table room.”

Efficient and starkly business as usual. Nothing about his demeanor reveals any secret, though Spencer emerges from behind him stiffly, rubbing his eyes and staring straight ahead. His hair is messy. His tie is perfectly straight, which you actually find disconcerting. You jog up the stairs, favorite mug abandoned on Morgan’s desk, to intercept Spencer as he somnambulates down the catwalk. 

“Spencer,” you whisper, setting your hand on his arm as you catch up. He looks down at the contact like he’s forgotten he’s a physical being. His hair is stringy. His eyes are bleary. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

He blinks. Swallows. Glances over at Derek. “Morgan didn’t tell you?”

“No! He said it was a conversation for you to have with me. Are you alright?”

“I’m…” he nods, slowly. His nose twitches.“I’m fine. We should, uh… Hotch is waiting for us.”

It’s true—the team is gathering. You two are the last stragglers. 

“Spencer.” You’re not taking no for an answer this time—your hand wraps around Spencer’s forearm and you give him an in imploring look. “You’re making me nervous.”

Good friends shouldn’t keep secrets. Then again—you and Spencer aren’t in the best place right now. But you’re supposed to be on the mend. Some secrets are best maintained and locked away to preserve the integrity of the friendship. This isn’t one of those secrets. If Morgan knows, and Hotch knows, you should know. 

“Now, please,” Hotch orders. “Conversations can wait.”

Either you’re imagining it, or he’s being firmer than usual. Not that you blame him. He’s been through a lot in the time you’ve known him. 

Spencer looks between the two of you helplessly. You watch as his arm slips from your grip. “Later.”

The briefing is tedious because all you can think about is what you don’t know, and when Hotch says wheels up in 30 (which, as per usual, doesn’t include you) you stand by the door, waiting for everyone except Spencer to filter out. He stays seated, now having left his fugue state and slumped, picking at his nails with an intense focus. Both Morgan and Hotch give you strange looks as they pass. You try to ignore the sinking feeling and shut the door behind them before pulling out a chair and taking a seat knee-to-knee with Spencer. 

“Spencer.”

He doesn’t look up at you as he speaks. “You’re not going to believe me.”

You frown. 

“What?”

“I mean, I still don’t really believe it… but she has nothing to gain from lying to me. It’s not like I’m rich.”

She?

Gently you pull his hands apart and hold them in your own. He’s got very pretty hands—only now the cuticles are rimmed with half moons of dry blood. You squeeze his fingers, hoping it will satisfy some sensory input he’s clearly seeking without being so injurious. 

“Please just tell me. I know… I’m sorry if things have been weird between us, but I really don’t want to let that ruin—”

“I, uh, got someone pregnant,” he laughs. 

You blink, apology smothered in the wake of this reveal as all the oxygen is sucked out of the room. 

For a moment, you enter a perfect and serene state of thoughtlessness. Your brain is blissfully empty. Like a sparkling porcelain basin. Utterly drained. Bone dry. 

Then the ringing starts. An irritating, high pitched whine. That basin becomes a sound bowl. 

“What?”

Spencer only nods, glancing up at you and quickly back down. He pulls his hands away. You let him. 

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s not a joke.”

The ringing gets worse. 

“I… I’m sorry, I don’t understand. You’ve never even had a real girlfriend.”

It sounds terrible to you, too. It’s not really what you meant to say, and it implies something you didn’t mean to imply, and you’re hoping he’ll miss that as he sometimes does—but you aren’t so lucky. The hurt is palpable in his eyes when he frowns at you. 

“I’m not a leper. I met someone a few months ago.”

Your eyes squeeze shut, but your own thoughts are a racing, dizzying carousel and not a particularly soft landing as you try to give yourself a reprieve from the way he’s looking at you. A few months ago, you’d been under the impression he was pining after you. 

“So you… went out and found some random person to hookup with? And got her pregnant?”

“She’s not random. She’s my girlfriend.”

“What? You don’t have a girlfriend!”

He sits up straighter. Anger clears the fog from his eyes, sharpening him for the first time today, and you don’t know if it’s better or worse. “Why are you so hung up on that? Is it that unbelievable to you?”

“No, it’s just—you told me not even three months ago that you only kissed two other people before me!”

Spencer’s throat bobs. He’s speaking faster now. “And then I moved on, was I not supposed to?”

“Of course you can move on, but it’s—I mean, Jesus, Spencer! It’s surprising! This is crazy!”

He swallows and his jaw clenches. 

“Sorry that the idea that someone could actually be interested in me is so shocking to you.”

You scoff. 

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“So explain how you meant it.”

You flounder at the sharp lash of his words. 

How did you mean it?

Are you surprised he didn’t tell you about this alleged girl?

Well—yes. When has he kept something like this from you before? Never, you suppose. He’s never had anything like this to keep from you. There haven’t been any girls. 

Not any girls, the whole time you’ve known him—except for you. 

You sort of thought… even after you both decided to remain platonic… that it would stay that way. That he’d always be there. Waiting. 

He seems to take this silence as an admission of guilt. 

“Great. Thanks a lot, for being so supportive.”

It’s startling when he stands, grabbing his satchel off the table with enough force you jump, and you’re forced to look up at him. The conversation can’t end like this—not when he’s about to leave for a week. You hate being on bad terms with him, or at least you suspect you would—it’s never really happened before. Not like this, anyway. 

Desperate to stop him from leaving, but too afraid to just admit it, you open your mouth without a plan. 

“Why would I support this? It was idiotic. I mean—you’re twenty seven, Spencer. You’re a fucking FBI agent with three doctorates, and you managed to get yourself baby trapped—because—because what? I rejected you? And in the midst of your rebound you couldn’t figure out how to make a condom work? I knew you were naive, but I truly don’t understand how you could be so stupid.”

There’s nothing to comfort you in Spencer’s face. No smiling landmark, no buoy of awkward levity to cling to, bobbing just above surface and breaking the tension up. Just a clenched jaw, which could mean anything. If it’s rage, or hurt, he’s masking it well. This is almost more terrifying than if he’d just yell at you, because at least then you’d know.

Your heart pounds as you try not to gag on the words you’d just spoken. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, you want to say, but it’s like you don’t know how. The only language you speak comes out in venom and bile and curses. Every argument is as good as an execution. 

He stays, though. 

You’ve always had this way of getting what you want by the worst means possible. Always. It’s like the universe is punishing you for daring to be unsatisfied. If you’re stupid enough to want, to even think too hard about the things you secretly desire—you’ll get them. They will be twisted and perverted and thrown back in your face. Cruel and literal. The more you want a thing, the worse it is when it finally echoes back to you. 

That’s how it goes with Spencer. You wanted him to stay, so he stays. 

His lips part and it’s like tectonic plates shifting. The plastic edge of your chair bites deep into your palms. 

There’s no yelling. Just a slight waver. 

“I can’t imagine being as arrogant and deluded and self-obsessed as you are. Don’t talk to me about stupid when you are incapable of understanding that my entire life does not revolve around you. I started a correspondence with her six months ago. By the time you kissed me, I hadn’t thought about you for months. Maybe that’s just too difficult for you to comprehend.”

Words have never felt so visceral. 

You want to take it all back. Your words. His. All of it. 

I’m sorry. Please don’t leave. 

“Fuck you. Get out.”

One more moment, he spares—one moment for you to watch the disdain turning to stone in his eyes. Cold in a way he’s never looked at you before. 

And then he’s gone. The door doesn’t slam because it can’t but you almost wish it would—you hate that slow-close mechanism because you need some sort of absolute finality here. You need the windows to shake or you need to scream or something other than his retreating back down the catwalk. Your vision pulses with rage and your eyes water but you’re so shocked that tears don’t dare fall. 

This can’t be real. No way he really got a woman pregnant. Obviously he must’ve slept with a psychologically disturbed erotomanic individual who’s desperate to entrap him and has been plotting this out for—well—for at least six months. But Spencer’s not the type to believe anything blindly. He must have proof. 

Who is this girl?

A month ago you kissed and apparently he turned right around and knocked someone up. 

Is that even possible? Conceiving and finding out you’re pregnant in such a short window of time?

What the fuck. 

It crosses your mind that the blinds are open, and you look up to see that nearly the whole BAU had witnessed your altercation from Emily’s desk. When you catch them they all look away. Spencer is nowhere to be seen—and maybe that’s for the best. 

You sniff and stand, straightening your jacket and turning to covertly dab at your cheek. It takes you a long time to tuck all the chairs back into the table. Spencer’s ended up several feet from yours, probably propelled backward by the violent speed with which he’d stood. You stare at the two empty chairs for what is certainly too great a length of time, and then you’re tucking them away just like the rest. By the time you turn back around, the BAU is gone. 

Or at least, you thought they were, which is why you left—and then you’re almost running into Morgan on the stairs. 

“Hey, woah,” he says, grabbing you carefully by the arms in a bid to stabilize you and halt your barreling forward motion. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” you snap. “Why would I not be fine?”

It’s a question you regret asking as soon as it leaves your lips. 

“Because—” Morgan glances around. “Because I know this can’t feel good for you.”

Your face gets hot. 

“For me? I don’t see you jumping for joy either. Spencer is a fucking idiot. He can’t raise a child. He can barely take care of himself, you know that.”

“Alright, first of all—keep your voice down. We don’t know that he’s going to be raising a child. We don’t know what the girl wants yet. Second, he is your friend. I think he was hoping for a little support from you of all people.”

“I don’t know why you keep insinuating that me and Spencer have some special connection. You’re clearly closer with him than I am. How long have you known, anyway?”

“Since last night,” he defends.

“Who else knows?”

Morgan hesitates. “Hotch.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“Okay, Garcia too. That was my fault. By the time we get back, it’ll probably be everybody.”

You pinch the bridge of your nose, trying to subdue a building pressure there. 

“He is so fucking stupid,” you mutter. 

“He’s lonely, and he’s hurting. People make bad choices under those circumstances all the time.”

“Yeah. He made a human, though. So.”

“Why are you so mad about this?” Morgan asks. 

“I’m—”

Words catch in your throat. You glance over his shoulder as JJ approaches, her own pale brows drawn in concern. 

“You’re being flagged. I’ll see you later.”

Derek doesn’t say a thing as you shoulder past him, through the bullpen and the glass doors and past the rest of the team (sans Spencer) by the elevators. You don’t really know what course you’re charting until you end up in front of the door to Garcia’s lair. There’s a sign on the door you’ve never noticed. 

The Doctor Is In

Beneath that, a heart-shaped sticky note:

Psychiatric help: 5 cents. Results not guaranteed! 

You open the door and close it behind you and stand there. Penelope turns around in her spinny chair, brows raised jubilantly like she’s expecting a social call. 

You’re breathing a hair too quickly for someone who was only walking. Your fists clench and unclench. Rhythmic. Like a pulsing heart. 

Garcia says your name like a question. 

Your lips twist, and you feel the first hot tear roll down your cheek the way you would feel the earth shifting beneath you. It’s setting a bone that doesn’t heal quite right. It’s a 0 where there should be a 1 in a sea of binary code. Everything, everything, is almost exactly the same, and suddenly so wrong. 

“Me and Spencer got in a fight,” you whisper. 

It’s part of, but not the full truth of the matter. It’s not quite why you feel so off-kilter. 

Another tear falls, and it unsticks Garcia. She’s standing, coming to you, arms open. 

“Oh, honey,” she whispers, wrapping you in a hug. You feel stupid, standing there, soaking the knit of her purple cardigan—truly crying now—but you can’t stop. 

This close, this raw, and with someone who has only ever been kind to you, the truth of your upset bubbles up. It’s impossibly quiet and brittle. Too delicate for this world. It makes you feel sick. 

“He’s having a baby.”

Present day - October 2nd

You’re doing overtime in the kitchenette. That is to say, your window of opportunity is coming to a close, and JJ is still talking—holding you hostage with a silver spoon that clinks as it bumps into the sides of her mug. A plastic clock tick-tick-ticks on the wall. 1:25 PM. Spencer will be coming in for his first afternoon coffee any second now, and it won’t be the end of the world—but you’ve been carefully memorizing his routines so as to move swiftly around him whenever possible. Why create an awkward moment, standing alone in the kitchen, when it’s not necessary? The two of you have enough awkward moments as it is: stilted hellos murmured on the elevator in the mornings. Strange, bubbling heat which fills the stretch of air between you when he’s the first one to show up in the round-table room for a briefing. Each sorry he murmurs when he ghosts your shoulder, passing like phantom ships in the night in and out of Emily’s office, when you can feel the weight of those nice suits he wears now, and something in your chest freezes like solid ice. When you can smell tea tree and amber and woodsmoke, and something lighter—something innocent, and sweet, and simple. Strawberry toothpaste. Orange and vanilla shampoo. 

Charlotte. His daughter, who you’ve yet to meet. Who haunts every desk with crayon drawings made for each member of the BAU. You know her handwriting. You know the way she draws her father, a stick-figure head and shoulders above everyone else and with a wide, flat smile, underscoring two placid dots for eyes, and a scribbled mess atop his head. You surmise she must have long brown hair, from the way she draws herself, and you know Spencer buys her orange and vanilla scented shampoo, and you’ve never met her. She’s a ghost to you. Maybe a shared hallucination everyone else can see. An unacknowledged and inherent truth—like air, or the sun. Yes, it is there. We all know. We’re all perfectly familiar, and we have accepted her as part of our reality. 

Whenever she’s mentioned, you clam up. Charlotte is not someone you have the right to talk about. She is the president of a secret club that everyone else is part of except for you, and that’s the price you pay for leaving five years ago without a word, and you’ll just have to accept that. 

1:26. Spencer breezes in, and you know, just from the tide of air against your back, that he’s still a little unsettled by your presence. You don’t know how you know. But it must always be obvious, after half a decade of your absence, and only a month since your return. If you’re not used to being back, surely he isn’t used to it, either. 

“’Scuse me,” he murmurs to JJ, and she steps aside to let him at the cabinet before resuming her story. 

“So—anyway, Will’s gonna hand off the baton to me as soon as I get home, catch a flight to New Orleans, and then he’s gonna try and get the whole situation with his mom handled as quickly as possible—but obviously, I’ve resigned myself to not coming in tomorrow.”

“Ugh, I’m sorry. That sounds so stressful,” you lament—only peripherally processing the click of ceramic as Spencer retrieves his own mug, the sift of sugar piling at the bottom of his cup over the pouring sound of your own coffee. The sound of fabric brushing fabric as he reaches for things, a sniff as he retrieves a stirring stick. He still does that nose scrunch thing. 

JJ sips sweetened peppermint tea. “You’d think after having done this job for so long a little bit of vomit wouldn’t bother me so much. But, you know—I’ve had worse Wednesday nights.”

You’re about to agree, but Spencer beats you there. The shock of his voice is like a cold wave to the back of the head. 

“You said you’d watch Charlotte tonight. I reminded you last night.”

This is not your confrontation, but you feel yourself tensing up regardless. Stir, stir, stir. Sugar crystals melt like stars into your coffee galaxy during the subsequent pause. 

“Oh, shit, Spence. I’m sorry.”

“So you can’t?”

“My kids are throwing up. Will’s mom’s house just flooded, so he can’t watch them.”

Another tense gap in conversation, like a fissure opening up and threatening to swallow everyone in the kitchenette.

“I’m sorry,” JJ repeats. “I… you could drop her off? I could… I could quarantine her in the office?”

Not likely. 

“No, that’s—it’s fine. It’s not your fault. I’ll figure something out.”

“Maybe Penelope?”

“She’s leading that federal cyber security seminar tonight.”

“Shit,” JJ says again. “Can you reschedule, with… you know?”

“We’ve rescheduled three times. She’s not going to give me another chance if I cancel last minute again.”

This bit seems particularly distressing to JJ, who huffs and sighs and flounders. A dash of half-and-half turns your coffee galaxy into a creamer Milky Way. 

“I don’t know, Spence. Maybe Kate could watch her?”

“I don’t know Kate well enough. It’s fine—thanks—thank you for trying to help. I’ll figure something out.”

He doesn’t quite storm away. Blusters, perhaps. Rolls swiftly out like a high wind in search of some structure to level. 

A layer of awkward quiet covers everything as you take your first sip of coffee. You fix your eyes on the percolator as it drips concentric circles into a puddle of black. 

“He’s going on a date, or something?”

JJ’s brows flash up as she sets her eyes on you. 

“Uh—there’s just… someone he needs to see. They’ve been trying to get together for, what—two months, I think? God, I feel awful.”

Interesting. 

“It’s not your fault. I’m sure he’ll find someone.”

JJ doesn’t look convinced. Her gaze trails after him, as concerned for his well-being as she’s always been, like she’s worried he might walk right off the edge of a cliff. 

“Yeah… I hope so.”

-

The scene sticks with you, long after you’ve sequestered yourself back in your office and finished your coffee. It’s exactly the kind of thing you’ve been so neurotic about avoiding. Overly intimate. Forces you to confront truths you’d rather ignore: Charlotte, for example. Spencer’s living, breathing daughter. The consequence of the action. The tribulations of single-parenthood. All those years in New York, you told yourself he had the whole team to support him. He wouldn’t need you. He’d hardly even notice your absence. Perhaps that was how you’d kept your guilt manageable. 

It’s that very guilt that gnaws at you all afternoon, while you’re lining up your mug with the matching rings of coffee burned into the varnish on your desk. Same mug you’d always used—the one printed with the vanishing Bill of Rights. Chipped, now. Same desk. Stained. Peeling at the corners. Covered in framed photos from your time in the city—pictures of you and people you haven’t spoken with in the month since you came home.

In a way, it’s like no time has passed at all. But some things are showing their age, and their wear. Quantico didn’t freeze the second you left. People went on without you, because they had to. Because the world does not revolve around you. 

For the rest of the day, you remain in your office. Some small animal inside of you feels like hiding. It’s the same animal who runs away when it’s scared and bites when it’s cornered. But you are not that animal anymore. You are a grown, adult woman. Discipline must be implemented. The dog must be kept at heel. 

Or at least—the burning, gnawing ember of guilt deep in the pit of your stomach seems to think so. Fire beats instinct. At 5:26, you close the office door behind you with a soft click, bag shouldered, shoulders squared. No buckling. I don’t do that under pressure anymore. 

Spencer is the last straggler in the bullpen. When you make your way down the stairs, he’s tucking files into his satchel, brows furrowed as his lips form silent, quick words. Like he’s arguing with someone in his head. 

You clear your throat and stop a few healthy feet away. “Hey.”

Spencer looks up, eyes clear with surprise as you shatter whatever spell he’d been under. It’s not like there’s a precedent for casual conversation between the two of you. You haven’t initiated any unnecessary interaction since your return, and you sense he’s been taking queues from you. This isn’t a curveball so much as a Louisville Slugger to the walls you put up and staunchly maintain. He straightens. Lips part. 

“Hey.” Characteristically tentative and devastatingly careful.

“Did you, uh—find a sitter, for tonight?”

A blink. 

“No. No, I didn’t. There’s—everyone is busy. It’s alright. We’ll… we’ll figure something out.”

The way he eyes drop back to his desk, the way his words melt into half-sigh—he is defeated like he’s used to it. Your stomach twists. When you go to speak, you stumble over a false start. Swallow involuntarily. 

“I c—I could watch her. I mean—if you really need someone. I’d… be happy to do it.”

There is so much barbed wire between the two of you now, so many layers of defense, it’s difficult to interpret his expression. Guarded. Doubtful, as this sinks in over the course of a silent moment. The dread you feel, despite having volunteered yourself, is so potent you think it must be mutual.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know. I just wanted to offer. It seems like you were really counting on JJ, and—not that I was eavesdropping, I just, I was right there. I didn’t mean to listen in. It’s none of my business, whatever it is, but if you need someone to watch Charlotte, I can do it. I watched JJ’s kids sometimes, when they were younger.”

“I remember,” he says, quickly, before he has time to censor the past in the way you’ve been doing. Smearing it in whiteout ink and working around it without acknowledgment. It’s jarring for both of you, but Spencer clears his throat and tries to roll with it. “You were good with them.”

In answer you press your lips together. A conciliatory smile. The corners of his own mouth pull—not in a smile, but in that way which means he’s troubled. Doesn’t particularly like his options. 

“Could… could you be in Alexandria by 6:30? I’d be home before ten.”

Alexandria? Does he have a benefactor? Or a sugar daddy?

“Yeah. That’s not too far from me.”

Spencer takes a deep breath and glances back down at his files, slid halfway into the bag. 

“Okay. I’ll text you the address, then. And thank you. I wasn’t expecting… I thought I’d have to cancel again.”

“It’s nothing. I should get going though, if I want to get changed and stuff beforehand.”

“Yeah, of course. I’ll see you later.”

You offer another tentative smile and a little wave as you walk away, and you’re pretty sure you leave your stomach on the floor by his desk. 

You don’t have to do that, he’d said. 

But you do. There is so much you owe him. So much you will never be able to make up for.

Maybe this, at the very least, will help you sleep a little sounder at night. 

-

The street is quiet and narrow, lined with gorgeous brownstones and neat trees with leaves like crests of amber fire floating down onto meticulously maintained sidewalks. The cars parked to either side of yours are sturdy, square things in dark neutrals—unassuming, but new and clearly expensive to the trained eye. Pumpkins and welcome mats dot stoops. Strings of orange lights and autumnal holiday garlands twist around the wrought-iron handrails. 

You triple check the address he’d texted you. 

He told you he moved, and it makes sense. Raising a child in a one bedroom apartment would be far from ideal. Still, a townhouse in old town Alexandria is so beyond your means you can hardly comprehend it. Because of Charlotte, he’s got that adjunct position at Georgetown—teaches an accelerated month-long course for every hundred days he spends at the BAU. Maybe it pays really well. Like—hundreds of thousand of dollars well. Or, more plausibly, he’s laundering money.

What makes total sense to you is Spencer’s stoop being the most thoroughly decked-out for Halloween on the whole street. You’re squeezed between a handmade scarecrow wearing an old sweater vest that you actually recognize and a skeleton smoking a fake cigarette. It seems Spencer does not believe in such a thing as too many pumpkins, but if the limit did exist, he’d be rapidly approaching it. 

The door is opening before you get the chance to lift the antique knocker, spilling warm light out onto the chilly sidewalk, and there’s Spencer in a peacoat. Breathless like he’d just run down the stairs. Hair falling in his face like he’d been pushing it back. 

For a brief, aching second, he is someone you know well. Your heart catches on a rib. 

“Hello,” he breathes, taking a moment to stand awkwardly before he remembers to invite you in, like he can’t believe a girl from his past has been superimposed at this current front door. Like you’re a total anachronism. You can’t blame him. “Sorry. Come in.”

Spencer pulls the door open wide for you and steps back so you can enter. It smells like cedar and old books and feu de bois and amber. The entryway is deep and warm, a dark staircase going straight upstairs to your left and a wide arch leading into the living area on your right. You peer in.

The home is like his old apartment on steroids. The walls are the color of old parchment, but you’d hardly noticed, covered as they are in an eclectic gallery of surrealist paintings, and the hundreds (now possibly numbering on thousands) of books in his collection, housed in dark walnut built-ins with ornate detailed corners. The couch is a deep-set, wine colored sectional, and strewn with knit blankets and throw pillows, stationed in front of a grand brick fire place over a rich tapestry rug. Several stained glass Tiffany-style lamps cast various pools of warm glow through the room, reflecting off the plethora of trinkets and photos on the mantle. You look away, to the console table aside the stairs, topped with an antique looking mirror and several houseplants that must be fake, because he’d never been able to keep one alive back then. At the end of the hallway is a closed door, probably leading to a bathroom. 

“Wow. Nice digs.”

“Thanks, yeah.” He closes the door behind you and clears his throat. “Still getting used to it. We just moved in last spring.”

We.

“I—”

The sound of rapid pattering interrupts you. Little footsteps coming from upstairs. You turn your head just in time to see a tiny thing, though much bigger than you remembered, racing down the creaky steps—a streak of blue followed by two dark braids. 

“Woah! What did we say about running in the house?” Spencer scolds as Charlotte barrels into his leg—but his fondness for her is evident in the way he sets his hand atop her hair, pushing deep brown wisps out of her big eyes. 

“I got afraid. It was dark,” she justifies breathlessly. He frowns. For the moment, you’re forgotten, and it’s just as well, because you’d be shocked into silence by the sight anyway. She’s not the baby you’d last seen her as, and logically you knew she wouldn’t be, but it never quite sunk in. She’s, like… a real human person. Just miniature. 

For a month you’ve been around Spencer, for years you’ve been thinking about the two of them, and you’ve heard her mentioned since you got back, sure—but seeing it—seeing her and him together—is entirely different. Maybe you didn’t really believe she would be so grown up now. You’d only seen her a handful of times before you left, and that screaming infant could’ve been anyone’s.

“Dark where?”

“Your office. I made a fort under your desk.” She beams up at him, hanging onto his leg and standing on his foot, swinging from him like he’s a jungle gym. The smile on her face says she’s not supposed to do that.

“Okay,” he says dryly—clearly he’s learned to choose his battles—and looks back up at you. For a moment, after he introduces you to Charlotte, you’re not sure how to respond. You’re still in something of a state of shock. Awe, maybe. 

This child is unmistakably, undeniably, his. 

But even more than that, she looks like her mother—a face that had begun to blur in your dreams over the years since you’d seen her last. You only met her a handful of times during her pregnancy, and now it’s like she’s staring right at you through her daughter’s eyes.

“Wow, hi, Charlotte!” you manage, hoarsely. “It’s nice to meet you. I like your pajamas.”

“They’re space,” she says simply, slowly curling behind her dad’s leg to hide, even as she’s gracing you with a smile. 

“That’s so cool. Do you like space?”

She looks at you, and then back up at her dad for approval, still clinging to him, with eyes that may as well have been copy-pasted from his face onto hers. They’re wide, warm brown, framed by long, dark lashes. Spencer scratches her scalp affectionately, and nothing could prepare you for the unfiltered adoration he’s regarding her with.

He’s not just a clueless, bereaved 28 year old holding a wailing baby anymore. He’s actually a father. 

“She likes her butterfly pajamas more, but space is good too. Charlie, you should show her the present Derek brought you later.” Then, to you, “She knows all the planets in the solar system.”

And he’s so proud of her when he says it, his eyes are so sparkly and smiley and so clouded with love your breath catches. 

“Okay,” she agrees hesitantly. 

You smile absently. A silence you don’t have the strength to lift falls and Spencer is quick to fill it. 

“Okay. So, uh, no peanuts, but her epi-pen is on the kitchen counter just in case. I left my card, too, the PIN is 3449. Get whatever you want for dinner. And don’t worry about putting her to bed. I’ll be home before ten. She’s kind of a night-owl anyway… despite my greatest efforts.”

“Like her dad,” you marvel, still smiling at her. She’s still hiding, eyeing you with a cautious sort of interest. Spencer exhales a nervous laugh. 

“Yes. Like her dad.”

A moment passes, and you sense the reluctance in him of a parent hesitant to leave their child. It’s strange and at the same time not at all out of place on him. But then he’s crouching down to be at Charlotte’s level. 

“Okay. I’m gonna head out now, but I’ll be home to tuck you in, alright?”

“Okay.”

He smooths her braids and you realize he must’ve done them himself. How old was she when he learned how to do that?

“Are you gonna be good?”

“Yes.”

“Are you gonna run up the stairs?”

“No!”

“Okay, okay! I just had to check. Give me a hug.”

Charlotte gives him two dramatic kisses on each cheek and hugs him tightly. 

“I love you,” he says, smushed against her head, and you can tell it’s not an after thought. He means it with every fiber of his being. Have you ever heard him tell anyone that he loves them in so many words? Has he ever been so unafraid in expressing it?

“I love you too. I have to go take Rosie for a ride before it starts raining, ’cause she’s afraid of thunder,” Charlotte says matter-of-factly as she pulls away. 

“I think that’s a great idea.”

So she bounds into the living room and beyond toward what you presume is the kitchen—which is apparently where they keep the stables. 

Spencer stands. Clears his throat like he’s suddenly insecure. “Rosie’s not a real horse.”

You’re terribly charmed by the entire exchange. Breathlessly so.

He’s so happy with her. 

“Ah. Thanks for clearing that up.”

Spencer takes a deep breath and pats his pockets like he’s making sure he’s got everything. It’s a familiar gesture—the eidetic memory never stopped him from being forgetful. 

“Alright… all good?”

“Yes,” you nod once. Decisively. 

“Okay then. I’ll be back around nine or ten.”

“Got it.”

“Don’t be afraid to call.”

“Understood.”

He remains rooted to the spot. 

The internal struggle is palpable—the push-pull between whatever it is he’s so desperate to attend to and the fear of leaving his daughter with someone untested. 

More than that, you realize that he’s fighting with something on the tip of his tongue. Like it’s hurting him to consider saying. 

In the end, it wins. He looks genuinely pained as he sighs and then speaks. 

“If she—if she starts… it’s been a while, but she has tantrums sometimes—and they’re, they’re pretty bad. So if that happens, just… call me right away.”

You blink. 

“Okay.”

“She probably won’t. I’m sure she won’t.”

Some odd undercurrent laps at the foot of the conversation. Some tone you don’t understand. Some mine under the floorboards you hadn’t noticed a moment ago. 

He’s staring into you like you might know what’s going unsaid. 

But there’s little time to ponder and no room for further discussion before he’s taking another deep breath. 

“Okay. I will… see you later. Lock up behind me?”

Your smile is a delayed flicker and it probably doesn’t reach your eyes. 

“Yeah. See you later.”

You follow him to the door and stand with one hand on the knob as he makes his way down to the sidewalk. He pauses. Turns to face you once more. A sweet, dark autumn breeze ruffles his hair. 

“Thank you for doing this. Really. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.”

“Of course. I’m happy to,” you say softly. You wonder if he thinks you’re lying. You wonder if you are lying. Most of all, you wish he’d stop thanking you.

Either way, he doesn’t push. Just bids you a quiet goodbye with a final awkward smile, and you wave. Then you’re closing the door, locking up just as requested. 

The wood digs into your back as you lean against it, deeper when you fill your lungs completely. 

One breath. 

And then you’re launching deeper into labyrinth, chasing after a little ghost with dark braids. 

-

There are no explosive temper tantrums. Not even a hint of a bad mood. On the contrary; Charlotte is exuberant. 

You shouldn’t be surprised, but Spencer Reid has raised a delightfully entertaining and precociously conversational child. At first she’s shy, but once you present her with butter chicken, she thinks you’re God’s gift to earth. 

She shows you the present Derek got her: a little box which projects a spinning solar system in a sea of pretty jewel-toned lights onto the wall when you turn off the myriad lamps, and she names each and every planet, just like Spencer said she would. You get to meet Rosie, who is a plushie horse head on a long stick, and indulge her love for invisible sugar cubes. She shows you her dance from The Nutcracker, and you agree to play ballet class with her—which ends up being her favorite game of the night. Every time you intentionally flub a step, she breaks out into hysterical laughter. Her energy is contagious, and you fall into the swing of babysitting quite easily. Even if she weren’t so charming, you’d be captivated. You see her father in the set of her eyes and the warmth of her hair and the slope of her nose. She’s real. She’s him. Genetically. It’s hard to look away—to stop searching for proof in every familiar feature. 

After several hours, she finally tires herself out. You’ve long since been directing her games from the decadent comfort of the couch. 

“Can we watch TV?”

“Do you even have a TV?”

Charlotte nods, her long brown braids now hopelessly tangled. They weren’t like that before you showed her how to do somersaults on the sofa—something Spencer may or may not appreciate. 

“It’s in daddy’s room,” she says, rocking back and forth on her little feet, gripping the edge of the couch for support. “Sometimes when I’m sad we watch movies and TV in there and he lets me sleep in his bed. Even though it’s bad sleep hygiene. Because of blue light.”

“I see,” you nod, pulling your knees to your chest against the slight chill and eyeing the fireplace desirously. “Are you sad right now?”

You almost can’t imagine it. Despite being born of borderline Shakespearean tragedy—despite Spencer’s ominous warning about temper tantrums—she seems like a perfectly happy, outgoing little girl. 

She shakes her head emphatically, and climbs onto the couch, shuffling toward you on her knees. “No. I just wanted to show you Scooby Doo.”

“Hm. Well, I don’t think I should go into your dad’s room. Maybe you guys can watch it later. I think he’s getting back soon.”

Charlotte tugs down her pajama shirt so the little shooting stars and planets on it stretch into oblong blobs and kneels next to you. Her little milk teeth are perfect pearly white as she smiles shyly, and she definitely has her dad’s eyes—huge, rich brown, you-can’t-say-no-to-me eyes. 

“Why are you hugging yourself?”

She still has her chirpy little sing-song baby voice. It’s absurdly cute. 

“Because I’m cold.”

“Don’t move,” she orders, and just like that she’s back up, running across cushions to the other side of the couch (you probably shouldn’t let her do that) and kneeling again, fussily choosing from the stacked pile of blankets at the corner of the sectional. “Fluffy or yarn?”

“Definitely fluffy.”

“Definitely,” she agrees happily in her sweet musical way, like she loves the sound of the word. “Definitely, definitely.”

A moment later she’s successfully unfolded all the blankets in order to grab the on at the very bottom of the pile—a big cream-colored one—and drags it back over to you, making a show of tossing and pulling and patting and smoothing till you’re completely tucked in up to your shoulders. 

“There. You can sleep here tonight.”

“Oh, you know—I don’t think we’re having a sleepover, Charlotte.”

She looks crestfallen, but hides it well, squishing a babyish cheek against the couch cushion next to you and picking at its seam. 

“Well… why not?”

“Because your dad is coming home soon, remember? Isn’t that exciting?”

She makes a face. 

“No. I see him all the time. I want to keep playing with you.”

Your heart swells. She’s got the same earnest sweetness as her father, and is well on her way to having just as much attitude. Carefully you untuck your hand from the blanket and brush her braid over her shoulder. 

“That’s sweet, Charlotte. I’m having fun too. Maybe we can hang out again sometime.”

She takes the little act of affection as an invitation to plop down next to you and lean into your shoulder. For a split second you freeze—but you snap out of it and offer her a corner of the blanket. She takes it until you’re both warm and cozy and tucked in. 

“Why do you know my dad?” She asks, words lilted with that same childish prosody. 

“We work together.”

“I know everyone he works with. ‘Nelope, JJ, Kate, Dave, Derek, and Emily. Plus, he used to work with Hotch and Alex. He never told me about you.”

Makes sense. There’d be no reason to talk about you.

“Well, that’s because I went away for a while. You won’t remember this, but we actually met when you were just a tiny baby.”

Her wide eyes go wider as she looks up at you in awe. 

“Really?”

“Yep. I remember the day your dad brought you into the office for the first time. You were so small he could hold you with one arm, isn’t that crazy?”

You don’t mention that the office had never been more somber than it was that day—not even when Haley died. That when you look back on the memories, they’re devoid of color or sound, aside from Charlotte’s screaming. It was too soon to bring her in, but where else could he go? Where else could he possibly take her?

“Did you know my mom?”

Your blood flash-freezes for a moment as you’re pulled out of the memory with a bucket of ice water to the face. You’re not quite sure how to answer without opening Pandora’s box. 

You’re not quite sure there’s an answer to that question that you could give to anyone. 

Thankfully, and possibly due to divine intervention, you hear keys jingling in the door, and for all Charlotte claims to find her dad boring, you swear her ears perk up. She’s craning her head over the back of the couch and her little face erupts in the biggest smile when the door opens. 

“Daddy!”

You turn slightly, sitting up a little straighter and dropping the blanket, suddenly hyper-conscious of how you might look too comfortable on his couch, or too familiar with his daughter. 

The smile that blossoms on your own face is completely unconscious as you watch them—the way she scrambles off the couch and runs as fast as her tiny feet will carry her around it, immediately glomming onto his leg just like she’d done before he left. 

“Oh, my girl,” he half-grunts, half laughs at the impact, sliding a still-dripping umbrella into the holder by the door before dropping to her level and pulling his daughter into a hug. Immediately you note the exhaustion whittling cracks in his voice and carving itself under his eyes. Like whatever he’d been out doing hadn’t gone so well. “Missed you. Were you good while I was gone?”

“Definitely,” she says. His brows dart up. 

“Definitely? You sound pretty confident.”

Spencer’s eyes slide to you, full of wry humor despite his lack of energy like he’s waiting for your corroboration. Charlotte doesn’t give you the chance to speak, and his eyes immediately flash back to her. It’s for the best—he hasn’t looked at you with that much ease in years. You wouldn’t have known what to say. 

She leans farther into her father’s hold and looks over to you. “Guess what? She said we could have a sleepover tonight.”

“Wh—okay, that’s—that’s not quite what I said,” you hurry, suddenly regaining your voice, floundering in a plush blanket and face warming as you try to find the balance between correcting her mistake before Spencer can misconstrue it and not getting too defensive over a comment from a five year old.

He straightens her shirt fondly. 

“Sometimes Charlie Mae remembers things how she wants to remember them and not necessarily how they actually happened, huh?”

“I told her the TV is in your room and we could sleep in there! You would let us, right?”

Spencer, more used to redirecting the overactive juvenile mind than you are, artfully changes the subject, all the while fussing with her braids. 

“You must be tired, lovebug. Did you brush your teeth?”

“Yes. She counted to two minutes for me. I’m not tired. And I’m not a bug.”

“Okay, Homo sapien-sapien bipedal girl. Why don’t you go get cozy in bed and pick out a book for us?”

Charlotte’s eyes light up. “Bruce Springsteen?” She asks, boisterous and over-excited. Spencer laughs dryly, watching as she jets for the stairs like she jets everywhere she goes. 

“Shel Silverstein. Careful on the stairs, Char.”

“I’m bipedal!”

Both of you watch her through the fluted railing until she disappears, and you feel only a little slighted that she didn’t say goodbye.

“Bruce Springsteen,” Spencer mutters incredulously, still crouching. 

You smile. 

“David Rossi’s influence?”

Spencer rises again, unslinging his bag and hanging it up by the door. “Oh, undoubtedly. How was she really?”

“She was great,” you admit, reluctantly relinquishing the warmth of the heavy blanket and standing up yourself, stretching your arms above your head and resisting the urge to yawn.

He faces you. 

“Good.”

After a beat you realize he has nothing more to say. That he’s standing, hands pocketed, studying you from the other side of the couch. With Charlotte gone, the room feels darker. The air feels thicker. Thrumming.

It’s almost like he’s waiting to see what else you do.

Unabashedly, he’s watching. 

Quickly you realize that you are a specimen under glass, to be examined intently. 

Your face warms. 

You clear your throat.  

“How was your, uh, thing?” you ask awkwardly, sliding your hands into your back pockets. An innocent, if not a little invasive, question. Born of necessity—something toward which you can direct the charge in the air. 

For a moment, you’re afraid it’s not going to work, as his expression remains unchanged. 

Then he’s back to being shy-adjacent. Like an unpaused movie. That eerie air of examination, and something sticky, dissipates. 

“Uh—it was... Yeah, it was good.”

It doesn’t sound true, but that’s none of your business. You hum, wrapping your arms around yourself. Spencer’s eyes dart down to note the action. You wonder if he’s only just now noticing the casual attire—a thin sweater too light for the season. Too casual for work. You tug it down over your waistband.

“Well, I had a good time, too. Charlotte is awesome.”

Spencer finally moves again, shrugging off his coat and hanging it up as he speaks. “She’s pretty great, huh?”

“I can’t believe she’s so grown up. She’s five, right? And her IQ is probably what, like—200?”

“No idea.”

You laugh in disbelief. 

“You haven’t had her tested?”

Spencer leans against the arch and crosses his arms. The way his eyes flit to something just above your head, and he squints—it’s familiar. He’s deciding how much of a private truth he wants to reveal. 

“I’ve… been avoiding it. She homeschools anyway, so we adjust the curriculum based on what she’s ready for.”

“Wow. Homeschool. How do you have time for that?”

“I do not,” he chuckles. “Her grandparents do it.”

“Her—oh. That’s—that’s good. Probably comes in handy to have family nearby with all the traveling you do.”

“It does. They adore her.”

“Yeah. Not hard to understand why.”

You act like you don’t suddenly have a million questions about the nature of his relationship with Charlotte’s grandparents.

Now that you’re thinking of it—hadn’t you heard murmurings of them in the weeks following Charlotte’s birth? Of course, you can’t remember for sure. You were already pretty checked out by that point. 

Rain lashes the window hard and draws you both from some mutual dreamland. Spencer is regarding you with the beginnings of that same contemplative look on his face. 

“Okay, well… I should get going,” you decide, reaching down to grab your keys from the table. 

Spencer gives a dramatic berth as you pass him into the entryway to put your jacket on, watching as you pull on your boots. The smell of dark rain and something smokier follows as he reaches around you. Beneath it is the same detergent and shampoo he’d always smelled like. It’s distracting as you mindlessly accept whatever he’s now holding out to you. Smooth. Tortoise shell. The handle of his umbrella.

“You should take this.”

This hallway is much narrower than it’d seemed earlier. You clear your throat.

“Oh, thanks! I’ll—I can bring it to work tomorrow. To give back.”

He gives you that smile—perfect teeth barely flashing as he nods once. Somehow self-effacing as though it were his dumb addendum and not your own. “Appreciated.”

Right.

“Okay. Cool.”

Why can’t you move? Why are you glued to the spot, watching him watch you? 

“You were a lifesaver tonight, truly. You absolutely didn’t have to do this, but I really appreciate that you did.”

You balk and attempt to shake it off. Lifesaver.

Not very likely.

“No worries. Really. I had fun.”

The air in the room is warm and dark. It smells, tastes, feels of some previously forgotten contentment. 

For a fraction of a second, so quick it’s disorienting—you feel more home than you have in years. Like the two timelines you’ve been straddling have briefly synced up. His eyes are exactly the same as they’ve always been, and there is a flash of intimacy that does not belong to you.

Then, years in the future, a little voice from upstairs is hollering, “Daddy!”

The air goes from amber back to oxygen. You go from fossil and memory to living, breathing people. Both of you loose awkward little laughs. 

“You’re being summoned, I think.”

“Oh, yes. Charlotte has a thing about timeliness.”

“She is quite the character.”

“That she is. I’m glad you got to meet her, again.”

You swallow a thorn and try not to think about how his voice softens. 

About what you did to them. 

“Me too.”

Spencer opens the door for you, inviting in a shocking snap of wind. The rain is so heavy it splashes against the sidewalks and makes brilliant glowing sprays as cars zoom through puddles in the dark.

“You gonna be okay out there?” Spencer asks. 

You brandish your umbrella. “I’ll be great.”

“Are you sure? You can wait in here for a little while. It’s a rainband, it won’t last.”

“No, no, it’s okay. You have someone waiting to be read to.”

He nods again, taking another distrusting look at the conditions of the road behind you. “Drive safe, okay?”

“I will. Have a good night.”

Is that a weird thing to say? Do people say that? Is that appropriate? Too casual? Too formal?

But that little smile stays pasted on his face. 

“Yeah. You too.”

Then you’re on the porch, popping open the umbrella and scurrying off into the downpour, hastily looking both ways before running across the street to where you’ve parked. 

For a moment you fumble with your keys, but after a few embarrassing seconds (you know Spencer is waiting to close the door until you’re safely in your car) you manage to climb in, closing the umbrella and shaking it out before tossing it in the passenger’s seat and shutting your door against the deluge. 

The wheel goes slick under your clammy, white-knuckle grip as your eyes close and you take several deep breaths, trying to fight the roiling of your stomach. 

When you open your eyes again, Spencer is gone. The front door is closed, but the windows are still the warmest on the block.

You put the car in reverse.

-

By the time you get back to your apartment, any semblance of joy or redemption from your time with Charlotte has shed like an old skin—curdling in the stale air as you lean hard against the door to close it behind you. It squeaks against the floor and you wrestle with the lock in the dark. That sickly malaise of having woken up in your early twenties is worse than usual tonight, as you turn to face the big empty living room. Maybe that’s what you get for choosing to live in the same building you’d moved out of five years prior. 

When you were twenty-two you chose it for its charm. You had a comfortable income. The excitement of being an adult hadn’t worn off yet. Making coffee in the morning still felt like playing house. When you’d toured the unit, you thought the parquet flooring and the lofted ceilings were so elegant, and the big paneled windows with their sliding sashes were romantic. Only after you moved in did you realize they were painted shut—so you took a razor and some acetone and fought for several hours to get them open. It was the first thing you did when you moved back in. 

Now, your kick off your boots and don’t bother turning the light on before making your way to sit in front of one of them, cracking it a few inches open to let the cold breeze keep you company. 

This was also routine, all those years ago. Sometimes when you sit on the floor like this, next to your big potted palm, shamelessly watching the people in their own little yellow squares of light across the way dancing or fighting or watching TV, you feel like you’re with your younger self. 

If she was really here, she’d be out on the fire escape with a cigarette. But it’s too cold now, and you don’t like the way the metal grate leaves a grid on your skin. Now, you’d be an idiot to climb out onto a rusty death trap hanging from the side of your building by a couple of screws. Smoking’s not as glamorous as it used to be, either. There comes a point where you either need to grow out of it or admit that you’re addicted. 

Besides, last time you moved out your landlord withheld the damage deposit because apparently the apartment smelled like tobacco. You didn’t believe her, but you’re not going to risk it again. 

And maybe it feels good to have control over something. An old habit you can stop yourself from slipping back into.

For a moment, you think maybe you want a cigarette. You haven’t wanted one since you got back. 

Indulge one craving to keep the others at bay, some slithery, sibilant voice whispers in your head. You like making deals, don’t you? 

You can keep promises—can’t you?

Your stomach turns. A familiar breeze hits your cheek. It smells like the city—gas and rain and asphalt and fried food and a hint of green, of life, that you’d realized long ago wasn’t ever really out there.

If only you’d realized how poisonous your guilt would be, how much it would grow into this throbbing, undulating thing, taking up space in the pit of your stomach, before you agreed to come back. 

If only you’d realized an ex-smoker can’t have just one cigarette. An addict can never be casual about their vices. Can never stop wanting. 

If only you’d realized keeping promises made to a dead woman is a lot harder than keeping promises made to a living one. 

You arrive right at golden hour, when everything looks like it’s been dipped in honey, too soft, too golden, too damn familiar. 

The light slants through the cypress trees lining the gravel driveway, casting long, flickering shadows across the hood of the car like fingers you don’t want to name. 

The air smells like rosemary and sunscreen residue, like heat baked into old stones and that same vanilla-sweet cigarette someone always smokes down the hill, burning slow, never gone. 

The wheels of your suitcase stutter against the gravel in a rhythm your body remembers even if your brain tries not to. It’s the same sound every summer since you were eight: uneven, jarring, too loud in the stillness. It sounds like memory. It sounds like a warning you never listen to. 

Laughter rises from behind the house, bright, breathless, edged with wine and the kind of joy that makes you feel at home before you’ve even walked in. You stop at the gate. Not ready to see everyone. Not him. Not yet or not again. You breathe in sharp, like maybe oxygen will smooth out the tremor in your hands. It doesn’t. 

The house is exactly the same. Of course it is. That’s the part that knocks you off balance. The terracotta tiles still dip unevenly toward the front steps, like they might collapse if you step too hard. The shutters still creak, lazy with age. The olive trees are overgrown, thick with shadows that look too much like last year. You already know the cicadas will start screaming right before dusk like they always do. You already know the kitchen door sticks unless you lift it gently. You already know this place too well.  You already know how the next weeks will go.

Inside, the floor is cool beneath your sandals, a sudden relief against skin too warm from the drive. You don’t call out. Don’t let anyone know you’ve arrived. Instead, you slip up the stairs without a sound, like the house might swallow you whole if you move gently enough. 

The door to your usual room opens with the same soft resistance. It still smells faintly of the linen detergent his mother always used, dried lavender and something older, something dustier. Nostalgia, maybe. Or the ache of something that never was. 

The closet door creaks like it remembers you. You shove your suitcase inside without even pretending you’ll unpack it tonight. The zip catches on the edge of the frame and you yank harder than you mean to. The thud echoes. Too loud for a room this quiet. 

It smells the same in here. Wood polish and sun-warmed fabric, the ghost of old perfume clinging to the curtains. You feel it settle around you, this too-familiar hush. As if the walls remember every version of you that’s ever stood here. Eight, twelve, seventeen. Laughing, crying, pretending. There are layers of you folded into the linens. Some you’ve outgrown. Some that still fit a little too well. You don't look in the mirror. 

You pull off your shoes and cross to the balcony, bare feet whispering across cool tile. The small iron door sticks before it gives, then opens wide to the same view you’ve looked at a hundred times before, maybe more. And still, it stuns. 

The hills roll out in ribbons of gold and green, draped over each other like sleep-warmed limbs. Light bleeds across them in waves, hazy with heat and distance. It’s a landscape built for remembering: soft-edged, sun-split, too beautiful to feel safe. Below, the pool lies still, catching the last of the sun like it’s trying to bottle the moment. Its surface trembles in the breeze, glinting and nervous. Like a mirror about to crack. Like it knows things. Like it sees you. 

And then—just like that—the silence breaks. 

Laughter rides the wind, faint at first, then clearer. Voices carry up from the patio, sun-drenched and wine-loose. You recognize them even before you parse the words: your mother’s high, bright tone; Charles’ mother, always elegant even when she’s too loud; the boys, deep-voiced and jostling each other as they pass around olives or wine or stories no one’s finished telling. It’s a soundscape of summer, unchanged and unbothered by time. 

Your mother sees you first. Of course she does. She stands and waves both arms overhead, graceless and joyful, like a child who’s been given a second dessert. “There you are!” she calls, as if you’ve been lost for days, not delayed for hours. “You’re so late! Come down—we’ve started without you!” 

They act like nothing’s changed. Like you’ve never left. Like you’re not bracing yourself in a doorway two floors above them, body gone still. 

You scan the crowd, breath held tight. He’s not there. 

For a flicker of a moment—so quick you almost miss it—you let yourself hope. Maybe he’s not here this year. Maybe he’s in Monaco, like he would usually be. Or Spain, or Italy, or anywhere other than this sliver of hillside where everything feels one second away from breaking open. The thought slides in cold and fast: maybe you won’t see him at all. 

Relief blooms. Clean. Bright. A burst of something dangerously close to joy. You hold onto it like a secret. You let yourself believe it. 

But then you open your bedroom door again. 

And the house, ancient and alive in the ways that matter most, seems to punish you for the thought. 

Because he’s right there. 

You don’t hear him until he’s too close, until it’s too late to step aside, too late to pull the door shut and breathe. You turn and collide, your chest hitting bare skin, solid and warm and real in a way that steals your breath more than the impact. You gasp. His hands are already on your arms, firm but unhurried, grounding you before you stumble. 

His grip is confident, muscle and memory and the cruel exactness of someone who still remembers the shape of you. It’s the way he always used to touch you: like you were his, like you’d never been anything else. 

And of course he’s not wearing a shirt. 

The hallway is narrow and the air between you shrinks until it feels nonexistent. You can smell him: salt and sun, a trace of cologne he never wears in the city and something else, maybe the ghost of last summer or the one before. He leans in just slightly, not enough to threaten, just enough to take up all your space. 

“Bonjour, chérie,” he says, voice wrapped in silk and sunshine, rough at the edges from sleep or wine or both. The words slip out like they belong here, like you still belong to each other. His smile is slow and sharp, all teeth and nostalgia. “Seems like you missed me.” 

The sound of him is a whole summer unto itself. Familiar in a way that hurts. The vowels curl lazy in his throat, lower than you remember, but not strange. Never strange. 

Then his face tilts, just slightly, and he presses a kiss to your cheek. 

It’s too soft. Too slow. Like the kind of thing that should come after everything else, not before it. It lingers longer than it should, like punctuation that doesn’t quite fit the sentence. 

You don’t move. You don’t return it. You just pull back a fraction, barely enough to register, and meet his gaze without offering much of anything. “Yeah. Hi.” 

The moment breaks like glass underfoot. 

You walk down toward the backyard together. Side by side. Not touching, but too close not to feel it. The air has thickened, the late heat curling under your collar, sweat at the nape of your neck now tinged with the weight of memory. You can feel it building around you, this ache you didn’t plan to carry. 

You step through the open patio doors just as someone uncorks another bottle of wine. The pop cuts through the twilight like a held breath finally let go. 

Your mother sees you first—again—and claps her hands together like she’s been waiting days instead of hours. “There she is!” she says, already half out of her chair. “I thought we’d have to send Charles up with a search party.” 

Someone laughs, Arthur, that same easy snort he’s had since he was thirteen. His mother is already pouring you a glass of white, humming something tuneless as she gestures you toward the table. 

The scent of grilled peaches and rosemary chicken curls through the warm air. The citronella candles flicker. There’s a stack of mismatched plates on the table, a bowl of cherries passed around like currency, laughter rising in messy waves between bites. 

They pull you into it easily, like you never left, like nothing cracked or shifted or nearly unraveled. Your father ruffles your hair like you're still the same girl who wore bandaids on her knees and sulked through dinners. One of the Leclercs tells you you look different, then immediately backpedals with a compliment that feels rehearsed but sweet. 

You smile at all the right moments. Sip your wine. Let the warmth of their welcome soak through your skin. 

But even as you laugh, even as you settle into your old seat and pass the salad bowl like muscle memory, you feel him across the table, his gaze, the orbit of his presence, quiet and magnetic. 

You don’t look at him again. At least you try.

Later, the sun is long gone. The last streaks of lavender have faded from the sky. The pool lights blink on one by one, casting the water in a pale blue glow that ripples against the stone like soft electricity. It looks otherworldly now, like a portal instead of a pool. 

You sit at the deep end, feet in the water, your drink sweating onto the flagstone beside you. The chill of the pool creeps up your calves, grounding, but it’s not enough to cool the fire crawling under your skin. 

Then Charles is there. 

He doesn’t speak. Just slides down beside you, as easy as anything, his thigh brushing yours in a way that feels accidental and entirely intentional. You don’t move away. You don’t lean in. The closeness settles, thick and quiet. 

“I missed this,” he murmurs, gaze out over the water. The words land soft, but they burn anyway. 

You don’t ask him what he means. You already know. You’ve always known. He means this, this moment, this version of you, this curated slice of late summer nostalgia. Not you in your real life. Not you with complications and context. Just here. Just now. Just like this. 

You turn toward him. His face is turned slightly down, lit from beneath by the water’s shimmer. Half-shadow, half-memory. His mouth is parted. His expression open, soft. That look he only ever wears after too much wine and too little caution.

He leans in. 

Of course he does. It’s written in his bones, the way he moves toward you. Like there’s only one ending this scene has ever had. 

His mouth hovers, inches from yours. The space between you hums. 

But you don’t close it. 

You turn your head, slow and deliberate. His breath skims your cheek instead of your lips. 

You look ahead, toward the water, and say, quiet but steady, “Yeah. You missed this.” 

Silence folds around you like thick night air, humid, clinging, full of everything unsaid. It presses in where words should go, settling between your collarbones, behind your ribs, in the hollows of your throat. 

He doesn’t speak. Just lingers there, breath still shallow from the space you didn’t close. His face is close enough that you can see the shift in his eyes, the flicker of something wounded, or worse, surprised. As if he’d forgotten you had the power to say no. The will to say no.

He pulls back, slowly, like he doesn’t want to spook the moment entirely. Like he’s still hoping it might rewind if he moves carefully enough. But you’re already somewhere else. 

You slide your feet out of the pool, water dripping off your calves, leaving small dark prints across the stone. You don’t glance back. You just rise, smooth your dress down with damp fingers, and walk away—deliberate, quiet, unhurried. The echo of what almost happened follows you. It stays with him, hovering in the charged space where your lips didn’t meet, suspended between the low hum of the pool filter and the ache curling just under the sound of summer. 

You didn’t always hate the sound of the cicadas. 

But now, you hear them for what they are: a warning, not a song. 

Every July, someone herded you into this house like clockwork, since you were seven. Like tradition was a story you could rehearse. “Let the kids bond,” the adults always said, raising glasses full of ice and wine. As if summer could be assigned. As if affection could be grown like tomatoes in clay pots.

But it worked. At least in the way those things sometimes do. Not because anyone forced it, but because the days were long and the rules were soft and kids will always find each other in the absence of supervision.

Within hours of arrival, all kids would be side-by-side again, running barefoot through the dusty village streets, staging makeshift pool parties with chipped speakers and melting popsicles, choreographing elaborate games that never needed to be explained, only remembered.

They’d pile into one bedroom for sleepovers that turned into late-night whisper wars, the kind that made your cheeks ache from laughing. They shared bikes and towels and secrets that only made sense under July skies. Together they discovered the hidden parts of the town, abandoned stone barns at the edge of the vineyard, an old cemetery you all swore was haunted, a bakery that gave free pastries if Charles asked in his charming Monegasque way.

No one really missed their parents. The adults were background noise: clinking glasses, sun hats, lazy arguments about where to buy the best olives. They lived on the terrace, in the wine-soaked air of adult summers, while you lived in the dirt and chlorine and wonder of your own little kingdom.

The friendships were real in the way summer friendships are. Bright. Uncomplicated. Built on nothing but shared time.

Every year, you slipped into it like a costume that still fit. Every year, you tried not to notice how it didn’t quite feel the same as it did the year before.

Every year, you and Charles always found your way back to each other, too—but that was a different kind of bond.

That night, the grown-ups were inside, already drunk on rosé and charred sea bass and the weightlessness of the season. Laughter leaked out through the open windows, mingling with the too loud cicadas and the low hum of the pool filter. Someone had lit the fire pit too early. It sputtered in the wind, more smoke than flame. 

You were sitting cross-legged near the edge of the glow, arms wrapped around your knees, half-listening to the night. And then he sat beside you. 

He smelled like chlorine and something expensive. A trace of bonfire clung to him, warm and sharp. 

He leaned in close, eyes gleaming with something just on the edge of mischief. 

“T’as encore peur de moi, hein?” he asked, teasing. Still scared of me, huh? 

You shook your head, but the word no barely made it out, more breath than voice. 

He watched your face like it was something he could easily figure out how to read. His thumb brushed your cheek, a slow, deliberate touch, like he was waiting for permission you didn’t know how to give. 

Then: “Have you ever kissed someone?” 

You didn’t answer. He didn’t wait. 

The kiss was soft. Clumsy. Your teeth knocked once. He laughed, low, unbothered and leaned in again. This time it was smoother, warmer, his hand slipping behind your neck. You felt it all the way down your spine. 

Behind you, the fire cracked like punctuation. 

That was the first kiss. But not the last. 

That summer unfolded in stolen moments and shared towels, too-long glances and too-short goodnights. Kisses in the shade. Fingers brushed beneath the table. A closeness that grew like ivy—tender, quiet, climbing fast. 

Then it was the next summer and the same house. The same pool, shimmering. The same voices floated from the kitchen, wine-loose and full of soft arguments about apricot jam and whether anyone remembered to buy more cheese. 

But the quiet between you had changed. 

You were older. Not by much, but enough. Enough to know what you wanted, or at least to want wanting. And enough to notice that he looked at you differently now, less like a childhood friend, more like a secret. 

You were by the pool again. Of course you were. That’s where it always started. 

You sat beside him, legs dangling in the warm water, the tiles still hot against your palms. The sun had just slipped behind the hills, leaving the sky dusted with gold. Your skin buzzed with heat and the residual hum of too many hours in the sun. 

He leaned back on his elbows, shirt tossed somewhere behind him, hair still wet from the pool. He didn’t say much. Neither did you. The silence between you was thick with memory and something newer, something heavier. 

Eventually, you ended up stretched out on one of the lounge chairs, side by side, barely touching. 

You turned onto your side to face him, chin propped on your hand. He was watching the stars begin to appear, like he could read something in their flicker. You watched him instead. The lines of his jaw. The soft rise and fall of his chest. The curve of his mouth, parted like he was about to speak but hadn’t yet decided how. 

His fingers found your stomach—light at first. A single brush. Then again, slower. He was tracing the edge of your bikini bottoms like he was learning it. 

“Tu veux que je continue?”  You want me to keep going?

You didn’t know what yes looked like yet. But you didn’t say no. 

He pulled you into his lap, tentative at first, but then firmer, like he knew what he was doing and wanted you to know it too. His hands settled on your hips, guiding. Grounding. 

You were grinding into him in soft, uncertain rolls, your breath catching every time you felt the friction hit just right. His mouth dropped open. A low groan escaped him, half-swallowed by the night. 

You didn’t stop. You couldn’t. The pressure built, slowly at first, then all at once. And even though you were both still dressed—your bikini clinging wetly to you, his swim trunks low on his hips—it didn’t matter. 

You came like that. Both of you. Quietly. Urgently. In the dark, with the stars blinking overhead and the pool lights flickering like underwater fireflies. 

It wasn’t the last time that summer. 

You did it again. And again. In the shallow end, half-hidden behind the pool float. In your bed with the shutters open. In his, early in the morning when no one else was awake. On the sun-warmed couch the afternoon the parents went grocery shopping and left you behind “just to relax.” 

That summer was a secret, pressed between kisses and the hush of wet skin, held like breath, never spoken aloud. You never talked about what it meant. 

You just kept doing it. 

Another year passed. And again, it was the same house, the same pool, the same slant of light across the water like time didn’t matter at all. But this time, it did. This time, you noticed how the air felt heavier, slower, like it was dragging you toward something inevitable. 

He was already in the water when you came out, doing lazy laps in the deep end. The surface broke around his shoulders as he swam, broad now, stronger. You could see it immediately. The difference. His chest was fuller. His jaw more carved. There was a shadow of stubble across his cheek and it caught the late light like it was meant to be there. 

He’d changed. Not in a way that made you uncertain, no, in a way that made your stomach flip. Grown into himself. Grown into the way he watched you now, more direct, more aware of the way your body had changed too. It wasn’t subtle. Nothing about it was. 

The others were inside again, predictably tipsy—someone had made sangria this evening and you could hear the sound of glass clinking, soft laughter echoing through the windows. 

And again, it was just the two of you. 

You sat at the edge of the pool, again, feet in the water, again, arms wrapped loosely around your knees, again. You didn’t say much. You didn’t have to. 

He pulled himself out of the pool, water dripping off him in steady rivulets. He didn’t towel off. Just came over and stood behind you for a second, close enough to make you shiver even in the heat. 

When he leaned down, his voice was rough in your ear. “Come with me.” 

You didn’t ask where. 

You followed him to the pool house, one hand brushing against his, pretending it was an accident. 

Inside, the air was thick. He kissed you against the door. No buildup. No hesitation. His mouth was hungry and open and wet with want. 

You let him push your swimsuit straps down slowly, almost reverently, like he was unwrapping something delicate. Like he knew exactly what he was doing and wanted you to believe he cared. His fingers brushed your shoulder, then lower, tracing your skin in a line so feather-light it made you hold your breath. 

He kissed you again, this time slower, deeper, like he was trying to anchor the moment in your chest. Like it meant something. 

You wanted to believe it did. 

You didn’t say anything when he lay you down on the old chaise lounge in the pool house. It groaned under your weight, too narrow and too soft in all the wrong places, but it didn’t matter. Nothing did except the way he looked at you—eyes half-lidded, lips parted, gaze dragging down your body like it held some secret he wanted to memorize. Like you were something rare. 

And maybe you were. For a second, you let yourself believe you were. 

His hand traced the edge of your ribs, slow and deliberate, before slipping down to your waist. He stopped there—fingers hovering at the dip of your skin like a question. Not forceful, not impatient. Just waiting. For breath. For permission. Or maybe just to make the moment stretch—so it would feel like more than it was.

“Cha—Charles, I’ve never…”

“Je sais,” I know he said softly, then, switching to English, “I’ll show you.”

He didn’t smile. But there was a quiet curve to his mouth, something settled and self-assured, like he already knew you’d say yes. Like he’d been waiting for this moment—not because it meant something, but because he wanted to feel it. To feel you.

He kissed you again, slower this time. Not rushed. Not greedy. His lips dragged over your cheek, your jaw, your neck, like he was mapping you for his own satisfaction. He whispered something into your skin—your name maybe, or just breath. You nodded anyway, body already giving in.

He slipped your swimsuit bottoms down, inch by inch, his knuckles brushing your thighs. You tried not to squirm, not to notice how awkward it felt—your skin damp and sticky, your legs trembling. But his touch didn’t waver. He wasn’t embarrassed. If anything, he liked it. The unraveling of you. The way you softened under him.

The condom came out of his pocket with practiced ease. He tore the wrapper open with his teeth, grinning faintly like it was a joke he’d told before. His hands were steady, his breath even. When he rolled it on, you could feel the heat of him against your leg—solid, certain.

And then he looked at you. Just for a second.

“Ready?” he murmured, more serious now. Almost soft.

You nodded.

When he pushed in, it hurt—a sharp, blooming stretch that made you gasp. He paused, exhaled against your throat, one hand gripping your hip. Not possessive. Not protective. Just...grounding. Measured. His other hand skimmed your ribs, coaxing your body open like he wanted you to feel it, really feel it, and remember that it was him.

“Just breathe,” he said, low and calm. And you did. You let him move.

It wasn’t rushed. Every stroke was deliberate, built for tension, for pleasure. He was focused—not on himself, but on you. The way your back arched. The way your breath caught. He studied you like it mattered. Like your pleasure was the goal, not the side effect. And somehow, that made it worse. Because it was good. He was good. And you knew that’s all he ever intended to be.

It didn’t last long, but it felt long enough. He stayed with you the whole time, hands steady, pace unhurried. He kissed you through it—not your mouth, but everywhere else. The curve of your collarbone. The place just below your ear. Your shoulder.

And when it was over, he didn’t roll away immediately. He hovered, catching his breath, his palm resting flat on your stomach like he was claiming something. Or just appreciating it.

He kissed your shoulder again, soft and absentminded.

And still, you pretended it meant something. That maybe he felt something too.

But his body was already cooling. Sliding away from yours like tide pulling back from sand. And you were left aching, not from the stretch, not from the sex, but from the quiet understanding settling in your chest.

He was never going to stay.

That should’ve been your first or last lesson:  Summer isn’t about what you remember.  It’s about what you let yourself forget. 

Every summer after that, it was just the same again. 

It didn’t matter how much time passed, how many months crawled by in between. When you returned to the house, the pool, everything clicked back into place like muscle memory. Like a scene you both knew too well to forget. 

It always started at the pool. 

You’d be lying out on one of the sun-warmed loungers, a book forgotten on your lap, the heat humming under your skin. He’d appear like he always did, barefoot, tanned, hair longer or shorter depending on the year, but always smug with familiarity. He’d grin like no time had passed and sit beside you like he’d never left. 

“Missed me?”  Always that. Or something like it. A joke. A flirt. An echo. 

And just like that, the rhythm began again. 

He knew your body by then. Where to touch. How to kiss you soft at first, then deeper, just rough enough to make you forget how temporary it all was. You always let him. You always wanted him to. 

Each year, he found new ways to make you feel like you mattered, at least here, at least now. He’d rest his head on your stomach while you played with his hair. He’d trace shapes along your thigh with fingers gone lazy from sun and sex. He’d steal your sunglasses and lie in the shade with his head in your lap, talking nonsense while your heart thudded like it still didn’t know better. 

Once, the summer you turned nineteen, you both swam out to the middle of the pool just before midnight. The water was warm, moonlit. He held your waist beneath the surface and whispered something soft and slurred into your ear. You didn’t catch it all, just the word “belle” and the breathy way he said your name like it hurt him to say it. He kissed your collarbone underwater. You held your breath until it ached. 

That night, you fell asleep in his bed, tangled in sheets that smelled like summer and him. When you woke up, he was already outside, playing cards with your siblings like nothing had changed. He didn’t look at you until you passed behind his chair and even then it was just a wink. Like the night didn’t live inside you now. Like it wasn’t something you’d carry. 

By your twenty-first summer, it was almost funny, how predictable it all was. The pool. The silence after. The space between what you hoped for and what he gave. You started to expect it: the way he’d vanish for whole afternoons without explanation, then reappear at sunset with wet hair and some joke about paddleboarding. The way he always kissed you like it was the last time, but never said goodbye. 

Then months of nothing. 

Until the next year. Until the next return. Until the next version of the same old story. 

You learned to live for the moments and to let go of the rest. 

You told yourself it was okay. That it didn’t mean anything if you didn’t let it. That summer was just summer, and he was just a boy you knew how to miss. 

But some nights, back in your apartment, deep in the middle of winter, you’d dream of him. Of chlorine and starlight and the way he once held your wrist like it was something precious. You’d wake up breathless, your mouth still shaped around his name. 

And every summer, you’d go back. 

Back in the present, you lie awake in the same bed you’ve had him in almost every night. For years. 

Different sheets now, soft hotel-cotton ones your mother picked up in some end-of-season sale, but the same creaky mattress, the same half-stuck window that never quite lets in enough air. The same fan above you, still clicking faintly with every lazy rotation like it’s keeping time for a memory you can’t outrun. 

You stare at the ceiling and imagine him still outside. Poolside. Beer bottle sweating in his hand, gaze fixed on the horizon like it holds answers. Maybe he’s wondering why you didn’t let him kiss you. He propably isn’t. You never know how deep his thoughts go when you’re not in the room. And you’re not sure which version hurts more. 

You close your eyes. Try not to think about the answer. 

You wake up to too much light. The kind of light that doesn’t soften—it sharpens. It cuts. It pours through the shutters like judgment, golden and brutal. You hate how the sun here always feels like it’s watching you. Like it knows. 

You make it downstairs still half-asleep, barefoot, wearing a too-big T-shirt that isn’t his but might as well be. Faded navy, soft with years of wash. You wore it in the summers before. He once said it made you look like summer personified. You pretended it didn’t make your stomach twist when he said things like that. 

At the breakfast table, your mother presses a mug into your hand. “Drink, ma chérie. You look pale.” 

You mumble a merci, too tired to fake much warmth. The smell of coffee is grounding, almost. Until someone laughs and makes a joke about the playlist. Something about how it's still full of the same French indie tracks from five years ago. Still Charles’s. Still yours in ways you try not to think about. 

You chew your toast slowly. You laugh when you’re supposed to. You answer questions about work, about London, about whether or not you’re seeing anyone. You lie easily. You’ve had practice. Everyone’s too sun-drunk to notice the cracks. 

But the weight of past summers clings to you like wet linen, heavy, clinging, impossible to shake. It’s in the way your skin prickles under his name, even when you don’t hear it. In the way you keep checking the patio door without meaning to. 

And for a second, for just a blink, you let yourself wonder if maybe this year will be different. Maybe he won’t behave the same way. Maybe, just maybe, this is the summer where the pattern finally breaks. 

But of course he does. 

He shows up just past noon, towel slung low around his neck like it’s a movie prop, sunglasses in his hair, his skin bronzed from the early sun. His grin is all practiced ease, sun-warmed confidence. He walks like the lawn belongs to him. Like you do. 

Your stomach twists. Not in hate. Not in longing. Something murkier. Something like resignation. 

He looks right at you. 

“What you looking at, chérie?” he says, the lilt of his voice just teasing enough to make it sting. 

Your eyes meet. Just for a second too long. 

Then he drops into the chair across from you, legs spread, posture loose and open like you’re already in his lap. He sips from a drink someone handed him and then slides his foot under the table. It nudges yours once. Then again. Then trails just a bit higher up your shin. 

You shift your leg away like it burns. 

He notices. His eyebrows pull in slightly, almost imperceptible, but you catch it. He doesn’t say anything. 

Later, it’s just the two of you again. The house is quiet, naps and errands, people scattered. You’re in the kitchen refilling water bottles, sleeves rolled, hair still damp from a swim you took alone. 

He walks in like he owns the walls. Leans back against the counter, arms crossed, watching you. 

“Pourquoi tu m’évites?”  Why are you avoiding me?

You screw the cap on too tightly. You feel the twist in your wrist. “I’m not.” 

His smile doesn’t falter, but there’s something colder beneath it now. “Didn’t say goodnight. Didn’t kiss me. Didn’t even look at me.” 

You raise your gaze to the window. “You didn’t say anything worth replying to.” 

He blinks, once. A slow reaction, like he’s recalibrating. You can feel the moment his confidence falters, but just slightly. 

“You mad at me?” he asks, softer now. 

You finally look at him, and it lands heavy. Your voice is steady. “No.” 

He pushes off the counter. Takes a slow step forward. Then another. He’s close now. Closer than he should be. 

You take a step back. Barely. Reflex. 

And that’s when the smile falls. 

“You didn’t used to do that,” he says. His voice is quieter. Not a whisper, but something near it. 

You shrug. “I didn’t used to think about things too much.” 

The silence between you feels electric. Not like desire, like static. Like the storm that builds just before something snaps. 

He stares at you for a beat. Then two. 

And for the first time, maybe ever, he doesn’t have something slick to say back. 

You end up by the pool again that evening. Of course you do. 

It’s muscle memory by now, the tug in your chest when the sun dips low and the damn cicadas start up again, loud and constant like they’ve never stopped screaming since the first time. The water shimmers in the half-light, dappled gold giving way to deeper blue. It smells like chlorine and dusk and the faint curl of someone’s forgotten cologne in the air. 

The others are gone, upstairs, passed out in the humid lull of too much rosé, or maybe out driving to the village for dessert or cigarettes or something else that doesn’t matter. The point is: it’s just the two of you. 

Like always. 

You’re sitting on the edge of the pool, feet skimming the surface, arms wrapped loosely around your knees. Again. Just as always. Again and again and again. The concrete is still warm beneath your thighs, and the silence buzzes, close and thick and unspoken. 

He joins you without asking. Drops into the space beside you like he belongs there, like there was never a version of this where he didn’t. His thigh brushes yours. He doesn’t move it. 

You feel the tension gather in your chest like a fist. It wraps around your ribs, slow and quiet and cruel. You breathe carefully, like exhaling too loudly might shatter the delicate balance of pretending you’re unaffected. 

For a while, he doesn’t say anything. Just lets the silence stretch, the way he always does when he wants you to come to him. When he’s too sure you will. 

Then: “You remember that storm summer?”  His voice is soft, nostalgic. Easy. That tone he uses when he wants you to forget what he’s done, what he hasn’t said. 

You nod. Slowly. 

He smiles, crooked and fond. “You were so scared, you crawled into my bed in the middle of the night.” 

You remember. 

You weren’t scared. Not really. You just wanted an excuse. You needed a reason to cross the hallway. Something you could say later that made it sound innocent. 

You say, “I wasn’t scared.” 

He chuckles, low in his throat. “Sure you weren’t.” 

And then he reaches for you. 

It’s not rushed. Not aggressive. Just smooth, confident, the way it always is with him. Like he knows what your body wants even when your mouth says nothing. Like he’s done this before. Because he has. 

His hand finds your jaw, thumb tracing the edge of your cheekbone. His mouth hovers, breath warm against your skin. He doesn’t kiss you yet. He doesn’t have to. 

“You want this,” he murmurs, eyes on your mouth.  It´s not a question.

And maybe, maybe, a part of you does. 

But not like this. 

Not again. Not in this cycle of silence and sunburn and pretending. Not when you know how it ends. Not when he never stays. 

Because what you want—really want—is for it to mean something. To be more than a summer reflex. More than a postcard memory you both abandon when September comes. 

And this—his hand, his grin, his whisper—it isn’t more. 

Not to him. 

You pull back. 

Just slightly. But enough. 

His fingers fall away like he’s been burned. He blinks, slow, like the moment broke too fast for him to catch it. 

“What?” he says, like it genuinely baffles him. 

You swallow, throat dry. You keep your voice even. “I don´t want this. I don’t want to be your vacation habit anymore.” 

His brows draw together. He leans back a little, his weight shifting. “It’s not like that.” 

You laugh. But there’s no humor in it. Just sharpness. Just air escaping through something cracked. 

“Of course it is,” you say. And then you stand. 

You leave him there, pool lights flickering across his skin, hand still half-curled in the air like he doesn’t understand how this didn’t go the way it always does. 

You don’t look back. 

That night, even in sleep, it’s him. 

Of course it is. 

Your dreams pull you under like warm water, heavy, thick, familiar. And in them, it’s always Charles. Always that night, that specific summer, like your brain’s built a shrine to it in the back of your mind. A flickering reel of skin and salt and him, always him, undoing you in soft shadows. 

You’d had sex before. Lots of it, if you’re being honest. Familiar, habitual, sometimes even fun. You knew each other’s rhythms, the little cues, a hand at the base of your spine meant he wanted it slow, a kiss to your jaw meant he wanted it now. You could read each other in darkness better than most people could in daylight. 

But that night was different. 

It was slower. Hungrier. Like you both knew the clock was ticking on the end of summer and neither of you could afford to waste what was left. He touched you like you were something rare. Something that might vanish if he moved too fast. 

You remember the way he found you, on the balcony, legs tucked beneath you, curled in a sweatshirt that wasn’t yours. It was hisYou remember the feel of it: oversized, sun-warmed, smelling faintly of detergent.

He leaned against the balcony door, watching you for a long time before he said anything. Eyes heavy, hair a little damp, arms crossed casually like he didn’t know he was already in your bloodstream. 

“Tu penses à moi?”  Are you thinking about me?

You didn’t answer. You didn’t have to. 

Because then he crossed the space and kissed you like it was the first time all over again. Like he hadn’t already had you a dozen different ways in every spare corner of this house. His mouth was warm, coaxing, so slow it hurt. His hands gripped your thighs, tugged you closer, and you didn’t resist. You never did. 

He didn’t say much. Charles never needed to. His hands said enough, sliding under his shirt on your body, over your ribs, up to your chest. He palmed you gently, thumbs grazing over skin until your breath hitched. You melted into him, easy, too easy. 

Because that was the problem, wasn’t it? 

You always wanted him. Even when you shouldn’t. 

Inside, the house was empty. Or quiet enough to pretend it was. The others were gone, out late or asleep or too drunk to notice. The air buzzed with possibility. With risk. With heat. 

He laid you down on the mattress like he was offering you to the night. Peeled your clothes off piece by piece. He looked at you like he wanted to memorize everything—every curve, every mark, the way your stomach fluttered when his fingers ghosted across your skin. 

And then his mouth was on you. 

You’d made a sound, sharp, startled, like something broken. He looked up at you, lips wet, hair falling into his eyes. Smirked like the devil himself. 

“Tu l’aimes comme ça, hein?”  You like it like that, huh?

You nodded. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. 

He reached toward the nightstand, already moving for the drawer. But your hand caught his wrist.

You shook your head.

Soft. Certain.

His eyes flicked to yours, caught something there he hadn’t expected. Surprise bloomed into something darker, sharper.

He swore under his breath in French. “Putain…” Then louder, brow furrowed: “You serious ?”

You nodded, just once, barely.

He swore again, rougher this time, almost frustrated, but not with you. With himself. With the weight of what this meant.

And when he finally pushed into you—bare, careful, deep—you gasped, and he stilled. For one suspended second, you both just breathed, your bodies locked together like an answer to a question neither of you had been ready to ask.

You wrapped your legs around him—not from reflex, but from want. From something deeper. Like if you could just hold him close enough, if you stayed joined like this long enough, maybe something would shift. Maybe he’d stay.

And for a moment, it felt like he might.

Because this time, it wasn’t rushed. Wasn’t distant. He moved slowly, deliberately, each thrust thick with heat and something that almost felt like care. He kissed you between breaths—your shoulder, your jaw, your mouth—and each one felt less like routine, more like instinct. More like he needed you.

He moaned your name, more than once. Said it like a truth he couldn’t swallow. Like it meant something now.

And you let yourself answer—soft noises, whispered pleas, arms wrapped tight around him as if to keep him from unraveling out of your life.

When it was over, he didn’t pull away right away. He stayed inside you, forehead resting against yours, breath tangled with yours. Then his hand slipped behind your neck, fingers warm and tender, and he kissed you.

Really kissed you.

Like it mattered.

And the worst part?

You let yourself believe it did.

Again.

You told yourself this time was different. That maybe all the years of almost could turn into something solid. That maybe the ache in your chest meant he felt it too.

But even as he held you, even as his mouth lingered on yours—your heart knew better.

Because even care, when it isn’t followed by clarity, still ends in confusion.

And when he fell asleep, arm wrapped around you, heavy and warm, like something that belonged, you didn’t move.

He was pressed so close you could feel the rise and fall of his chest against your back, his breath soft and steady on the curve of your neck. It should not have been comforting. Should not have made you feel wanted.

But the worst part? It was.

So you lay there, still and wide awake, your heart thudding against the silence, your body sore in places you wanted to pretend meant something. And all you could hear, through the window, through the ache, were the fucking cicadas.

You wake up drenched in sweat. The kind that feels cold even in the heat. Your shirt sticks to your back, your shorts twisted around your waist, limbs tangled in the sheets like you fought something in your sleep and lost. 

Your heart pounds. 

Hard. Too hard. Like he never left your body. Like he’s still in you, mouth on your skin, hands between your legs, voice in your ear. Your thighs clench involuntarily. You hate the way it makes your stomach twist. 

It disgusts you. 

Not the memory. Not exactly. It’s the clarity of it. The precision. The way your body betrays you with perfect recall. The way the ghost of him still clings, under your nails, behind your knees, at the hollow of your throat. 

You roll over too fast, kicking the sheets away. The pillow slips, flops off the side of the bed and knocks over the half-empty glass of water. You hear it before you see it. 

The shatter. 

Loud in the quiet. 

“Fuck,” you mutter, louder than you meant. The word sticks in the humid air like smoke. 

You sit up too quickly, swing your legs over the edge and try to stand. A jagged sting slices through your heel. A hot, immediate pain. 

You hiss, sharper this time, “Fuck—” 

You freeze mid-step, breathing through your teeth. Blood pools beneath your arch, ruby-red on white tile. It drips from you steadily, and you don’t move. Just glare at the floor like it offended you. 

Then: a knock at the door. 

“Chérie?” 

Of course. 

Charles. 

“You okay?” 

His voice is soft, concerned, but not panicked. You know that tone. It’s his gentle act. His default charm. You almost say “go away,” but the words never make it out. 

He steps in like it’s still his place to. Like this is still routine. Like he didn’t unravel you in your sleep and leave the seams exposed. 

“I heard something brea—” He stops mid-sentence. Eyes drop to your foot. To the blood. “Oh. Did you hurt yourself?” 

You don’t answer right away. Your jaw is too tight. “I stepped on glass,” you say finally. “Be careful—it’s everywhere.” 

He glances down. “I’m wearing shoes,” he says with a small shrug. “Don’t worry.” 

You want to snap at him for it, for the casualness, the ease. But then he’s moving. Crunching glass underfoot like it’s nothing. And then suddenly he’s close—too close—and before you can protest, he’s lifting you. 

Strong arms under your knees, a hand steady at your back. He carries you a few steps and sets you down gently, away from the mess, onto the other side of the bed.

“Wait here,” he says, already turning away. 

And for some reason, you do. 

He disappears into the bathroom without another word. You hear the familiar creak of the cabinet door, the rattle of the first-aid kit as he digs through it, the splash of water in the sink. He moves like someone who’s done this before—like someone who’s been taught to fix what he breaks, but not to stop breaking it. 

When he returns, his sleeves are rolled up, and he’s carrying a damp towel, the antiseptic, tweezers, and gauze. He kneels in front of you without asking. He doesn’t sit. He kneels. And it’s stupid, but something about that posture makes your throat catch. Like penance. Like prayer. 

He sets everything carefully on the edge of the bed beside your thigh, glancing up once. His eyes are unreadable. Not soft, exactly, but focused. Present. 

His fingers hover over your foot. 

“Don’t move,” he says, barely above a whisper. 

You try not to. 

But when he touches the first shard, you jolt, sharp and involuntary. Pain flares, quick and bright. You suck in a breath through your teeth. Tears burn before you can stop them. One escapes, streaking hot down your cheek. 

“Fuck,” you whisper, trembling. 

His hands still. “Sorry,” he says, this time with real quiet behind it. “Just a little longer.” 

You nod, eyes shut tight. 

He goes back in, slow now, precise. The tweezers move delicately, and his other hand steadies your ankle. His thumb rubs absent circles on your skin, maybe without realizing it. Maybe on purpose. You don’t know which would be worse. 

You need something to hold onto. Anything. Your hand finds his shoulder, fingers curling into the warm fabric of his shirt, gripping harder than you mean to. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t comment. 

The last shard comes free, and you feel the pressure ease. He presses the towel to your foot, then tapes the gauze gently in place, wrapping it secure, snug—but not tight. 

Then, just when you think it’s over, he does something unexpected. 

He leans down. 

And kisses your ankle. 

Light. Warm. Unforgivable. 

Your breath catches. You stare at him, but he doesn’t look up right away. He brushes his fingers once more along your calf, and finally speaks, voice low, coaxing: 

“You’re good now.” 

But he doesn’t move away. 

He lingers, still holding your leg, thumb brushing slow arcs against your skin. 

“I can make you forget the pain,” he murmurs, as his lips press higher, just a little. A kiss to the curve of your calf. Then another, slow, deliberate, just below your knee. 

“Charles…” It’s barely a breath. A warning with no teeth. 

But he keeps going. 

His mouth moves up your leg with agonizing care, each kiss another spark in the dark. Your hand stays on his shoulder, palm flat now, a soft push. Not enough to stop him. Just enough to ask. 

He pauses. 

Lifts his head. His breath skims your thigh. His eyes find yours—dark, wide, a flicker of something earnest or maybe just expertly disguised want. 

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks. 

The question is simple. The silence that follows is not. 

You look at him. His hair is a mess, sticking out in soft, familiar directions. His expression is almost boyish. Expectant. You hate that you can’t tell if it’s real. If any of this is. 

You should say yes. 

You should scream it. 

But you don’t. 

You say nothing. 

And he smirks—small, knowing. That same smirk from every summer before. 

You lie there wondering how the hell you got here again. 

Wondering when wanting stopped being a choice, and just became something your body did, on cue, on instinct, like muscle memory carved too deep to unlearn. 

Because it isn’t supposed to feel like this. 

Not like guilt twisted up in your gut. Not like shame blooming in your chest before he’s even touched you properly. 

But he does. Touch you, that is. Slowly. With precision, with purpose. His mouth drags higher along the inside of your thigh, teasing you, coaxing you open. Your breath stutters. Your legs part like a reflex, and that’s when it happens, he slips a hand under your shorts and pushes your panties aside with a confidence that makes your stomach curl. 

You should stop him. You’re thinking it, you know you are. 

But then his mouth is on you. 

Hot. Open. Patient. 

He licks a slow, deliberate stripe up your center, and your hips twitch helplessly toward him. His hand presses gently to your stomach, grounding you like he knows what you need even before you do. You feel the press of his palm, firm and familiar, the faint scrape of his stubble against the inside of your thigh. It makes you shiver. 

You squeeze your eyes shut. 

What are you doing? 

But then he moans softly into you, like the taste of you is something he's missed, like it's the only thing that matters. And your thoughts splinter, because the thing about Charles is, he doesn’t need much to undo you. One sound, one breath, one flick of his tongue, and you’re unraveling like you never learned how to hold yourself together. 

His mouth moves with a purpose now—slow but relentless, teasing you open, licking you soft and wet and dizzy until your hands scramble for something—anything—to hold onto. The sheets. His shoulders. The edge of the mattress. 

You feel yourself slipping under, pulled into the tide of him again. You gasp, his name breaks from your lips unbidden, and you hate how natural it feels, how familiar. 

He doesn’t stop. 

He never does. 

He keeps going like he wants to wring every shiver from your bones, every gasp from your lungs. And when you come, sharp and loud and trembling, he hums like he’s satisfied, like he owns it. 

When he finally pulls away, his mouth glistens and his eyes are blown wide, dark with want. He wipes his lips with the back of his hand and climbs over you without a word, sliding into the space between your thighs like it was carved out for him. 

Your body reaches for him before you can stop it. Your fingers find his jaw, your mouth parts for his kiss. You want to push him away, but you’re already pulling him closer. 

He kisses you slow, like he’s trying to make you forget the ache, the history, the truth. His hand finds your chest, warm and heavy, palm pressing into your skin until you gasp into his mouth. He drinks it down greedily. 

“Want you,” he murmurs into your throat. “Right now.” 

You close your eyes. It’s too late. You’re already here. 

“You already have me,” you say. And it’s the most honest thing you’ve said all summer. 

He exhales, shaky. You feel his body stutter for a second, like your words land somewhere deep in him, a hit he didn’t expect. You don’t know if it’s guilt or triumph that flashes across his face. 

Then everything unravels. 

He pushes his pants down, yours follow, and it happens in a blur, like your bodies are moving faster than your minds can keep up. You’re already wet, already open, and when he pushes into you, slow and full and unbearably deep, both of you make a sound like it hurts. 

Maybe it does. 

You wrap around him without thinking. Like instinct. Like gravity. He fucks you slow at first, deliberate, like he’s trying to savor it. And for a moment, it almost feels real.

Almost tender. But there's a wall there, always has been something unreachable behind his eyes.

Still, your hand finds his. Fingers lace tight. Foreheads press together.

Your name breaks from his lips again, softer this time—like a question, like a prayer. His pace falters. His jaw tightens. And then something in him gives. He pushes deeper, harder, with that desperate edge—like he’s trying to reach the parts of you he never could. Like he wants to leave something behind in you, something only he can claim.

You come again, your body wrung out, face turned into the pillow to muffle the sound. You bite down so hard you taste copper. This one is different. It burns. It's grief threaded through pleasure—like mourning disguised as release. A goodbye, dressed up in want.

He finishes seconds later, his face pressed into your neck, breath short and uneven. He doesn't say your name this time.

He just breathes, still buried in you.

Then, quietly, he says, “That’s what I missed.”

You feel it like a blade. The tears sting instantly, blurring the edges of the room. He kisses your shoulder—soft, almost reverent—and asks, “Do you want me to stay?”

You don’t answer right away. Can’t.

When you do, it’s a whisper: “No.”

He’s still for a second. Then he kisses your cheek, almost like a thank-you, and stands.

"See you tomorrow, chérie."

Just like that.

No apology. No fight. No closing of the space he just carved open.

You hear the rustle of fabric, the zipper. He doesn’t look back. He’s already halfway dressed before you even sit up.

Your skin is sticky with sweat, with him. The sheets twisted around your legs. The silence.

Except it isn’t silent.

The goddamn cicadas are screaming outside.

You wake with the taste of him still lingering on your tongue—salt and sweat and the bitter afterburn of regret. You haven’t even opened your eyes yet and already you feel it, clawing up your throat: the self-loathing, the ache, the heavy hush of shame that no shower can scrub away. 

You feel hollow. Stupid. Bruised in places no one can see. 

You don’t cry. You’re past crying. Past pleading. There’s nothing left in your chest but the slow, dull throb of disappointment. 

Mostly at yourself. 

By the time the sun finds its angle across the pool deck, you’ve already been sitting out there for hours. Skin hot, eyes dry, limbs leaden with the weight of what you’re about to say. You've gone over it a hundred times, every word, every beat, every possible way to get through it without shaking. 

You hear him before you see him. Flip-flops against tile. A yawn, too casual. Then the creak of the lounge chair as he lowers himself beside you, like nothing’s changed. Like you didn't break open under him last night and wake up full of splinters. 

He stretches, scratches the back of his neck. Glances at you sideways. 

“Sleep okay?” 

His voice is easy. Too easy. Like you’re strangers playing house. Like he didn’t kiss you with shaking hands. Like he didn’t leave without saying a word. 

You don’t answer the question. You just say it. 

“I meant what I said yesterday.” 

He pauses. “What?” 

“That I don’t want to be your summer vacation habit.” 

“Didn’t feel like that last night.”

And there it is.

You turn to him, slow. Eyes burning. Voice steady.

“You only wanna kiss by the pool,” you say, the words landing heavier than you expected. “When you’re in the mood. When the sky’s pink and the water’s warm and no one else is looking.”

He shifts but doesn’t speak. The silence between you buzzes — thick with the motherfucking cicadas, thick with every version of you that said yes when she should’ve said nothing.

“You want me to talk like your maman in French,” you go on, “soft and sweet and half-wrapped in fantasy. Like I’m something you can visit, not someone you choose.”

His jaw clenches.

“And you just wanna vibe—sometimes. Not all the time. God forbid you actually have to keep me in your mind when I’m not right in front of you.”

The hurt flashes across his face this time. Brief, but real. But you’re already past it.

His voice comes soft, defensive: “C’est pas vrai…” It’s not true

But it is. God, it is.

“You were calling me to your room,” you say. “I always answered right away.”

You pause, then say it plain:

“But you never made me stay.”

He reaches for your name like it’s a solution. Like if he says it soft enough, it’ll stitch something back together.

But you shake your head.

“Don’t.”

And this time, he listens.

You stand. Not with hope. Not with heartbreak. But with the aching stillness of someone finally done romanticizing their own loneliness.

You leave him there. In the blue-glow hush of a memory too fragile to carry. In a summer you won’t write poems about anymore. With the soft chirps of cicadas arround him.

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