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[callalillywrites]

Henry's Matchmaking Efforts 1 - Spencer Reid

Pairing: Spencer Reid x F!Reader

Word Count: 1747

Summary: Henry decides to use his school's craft fair to try and set up his favorite godfather, Spencer, with one of his favorite teachers. His ploy seems to work, too.

Warnings: None

A/N: With this fill for last year's spring event for Fluff Bingo, I couldn't help but use one of the few kiddos we have to set Spencer up with his favorite teacher. I love Jack, but Henry is equally precious. How could I not use him this way?

Part 2

Spencer Reid Masterlist | Character Masterlist

"Uncle Spence, you made it," Henry shouted, his happiness apparent. He raced between the groups of people, easily dodging elbows and knees, in his pursuit of his destination. That happened to be one Spencer Reid, godfather extraordinaire.

Spencer couldn't help the smile that tugged across his lips, bending down and catching Henry in his arms. "I couldn't miss this when you invited me as sweetly as you did. Where's your mom?"

"Dad came with me. Mom's home with Micheal. He's sick."

That pulled Spencer's previous smile into a frown for a moment.

Will, who'd been watching his son and his friend interact, stepped in. "Michael's fine. Just a little stomach bug going around school. Henry had it last week. He's fine to be here. We both are."

It was no secret how Spencer felt about germs, even those involving those he cared about.

Hearing that nothing serious was going on, Spencer allowed himself to relax. His attention returned to Henry as he asked, "So, what should we see first? I don't know that I've been to a craft fair like this one before. You'll have to show me how it's done. I don't want to miss anything."

Henry beamed at the idea of teaching Spencer something. His godfather was so smart, he knew, and it wasn't everyday that Spencer told someone he didn't know something. Knowing just the place they'd start, he grabbed Spencer's hand and tugged him forward.

No words were exchanged as Henry was on a mission, but a look of amusement passed between Spencer and Will.

Spencer didn't have a clue what Henry had in mind first, but he never would've considered the refreshment table set off to one side. Across the banner, he read the school's name that Henry attended. Compared to the other booths set up nearby, he didn't spy any type of signage broadcasting prices.

Henry called out a name, but Spencer couldn't quite make it out over the noise echoing through the large space. He hadn't thought to ever forget the sounds of a gym, and he hadn't really. Just that the memories had managed to fade at the edges a bit.

All Spencer knew was one moment Henry was holding his hand, and the next, he's watching Henry tugging someone from the booth until they stood in front of Spencer. Until you stood in front of him. You wore the sweetest smile Spencer could remember anyone ever wearing. When it flashed towards him, he almost forgot how to breathe. You were breathtaking.

"So, you're the famous Uncle Spence we hear so much about," you said, holding out your hand while also introducing yourself. You retracted your hand just as quickly, but your face never lost its smile. Settling for a small wave, you asked, "Are you enjoying the craft fair, Dr. Reid?"

Spencer's brain refused to work. You had him off-kilter with the knowledge you've shown in the few moments of time you've shared with him. How did you know he didn't like to touch others, especially strangers? How did you know he went by doctor rather than mister?

As if guessing his thoughts, you leaned a bit closer but not too close and said only loud enough for him to hear, "Henry talks about you a lot. We hear about your adventures every week. You're quite impressive. Henry tells us you're a real-life hero."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Spencer stammered.

His cheeks warmed at Henry's praise of him, but more so, at the way you continued to look at him. He could make out the open curiosity you had for him, but he couldn't tell if it was genuine interest one feels for another or if you were merely being polite for a student's sake. A part, bigger than he'd ever admit aloud, of him wanted it to be the former, but his experience almost assured it was the latter.

"Hm, I wouldn't discount yourself too much," you rebutted softly, your eyes leaving his face to inspect the rest of him. He really hoped you wouldn't find him lacking, grateful Hotch and Morgan weren't standing next to him. Will was more than enough to make enough comparisons. You must've liked what you saw because your smile never faltered though your attention shifted to Henry. "Wanna grab your uncle one of the cookies I promised to save just for him?"

Henry nodded and dashed behind the booth's large table.

Spencer could make out the containers from the store you'd bought the cookies. One of them held a couple leftovers that weren't available to others. The others had been set out around the table in a display meant to entice fair-goers until the supply had been depleted.

Henry raced back with the plastic package, handing it to you.

You popped it open and motioned for Spencer to take the cookies. "Only hands that might've grazed them were mine, and I wore gloves after washing my hands thoroughly. Can't be too careful nowadays."

The way you hadn't made him feel weird for his germaphobia endeared you to him all the more. It was the reason he didn't hesitate in picking up the cookies while murmuring his thanks. As politeness dictated, he took a bite and followed it up with, "There are really good."

"They're the best store-bought ones you can find," your eyes sparked with mischief as you added, "but you should really try the ones I bake sometime."

The cookie he'd been chewing lodged itself, causing him to choke.

Will came to his rescue, thumping his back until he could take in normal breaths again.

You, the sweet temptress you were, held out a small cup of lemonade from the booth you manned for the school. Your face had contorted into something more akin to someone feeling shame or apologetic of their actions as you murmured, "I didn't mean for that to sound the way it did. I mean, I do bake some great treats, but I'm not trying to insinuate anything. We are surrounded by families and little ones after all."

Spencer quickly shook his head. Even if he'd only met you, he knew enough from what Henry had told him to know you spoke the truth. Everything about you screamed how much you adored the kids, calling out to the ones you recognized. It didn't matter you held a conversation with him or any other adults that happened along. You had kind words for everyone that passed and encouragement for the few students helping you run the booth.

As if realizing he'd been monopolizing your time, he took a step back.

"I should let you get back to it," he said, grabbing up Henry's hand, "but maybe we can stop by again. See if you have anything left before we head out."

Your smile glowed once more as you nodded. "I'd really like that. Maybe you could tell me what about the booths I can't see, too. I've heard some good things, but I won't really get the chance to explore today."

"It's all weekend, isn't it?" Will asked, surprising both you and Spencer as he hadn't really said anything up until then.

You nodded.

Will continued, "Are you working the booth tomorrow?"

You shook your head.

At your answer, Will's grin came out as he eyed Spencer for a moment before turning back to you, "Then, maybe you and Spencer here could explore the fair together. That is if Spencer here wouldn't mind coming back and seeing it a second time. What do ya say, Spence?"

"Oh, I couldn't ask that of you. That would be too much," you protested, but Spencer was already saying, "Um, yeah, I could do that."

Will clapped. "Great. Now that's settled. Henry, why don't we let them sort themselves out, then we can pick Uncle Spence back up in say another few minutes?"

Henry quickly agreed, taking off for a booth not too far away. It held a bunch of crocheted plush animals that might appeal to his younger brother.

Will followed after him after shooting Spencer a wink and saying, "Don't bungle it now."

When the two of you were alone, you risked touching Spencer's sleeve. His gaze dropped to where your warmth seeped through his thin shirt before you hastily took it away again. He missed it as soon as you did. That surprised him the most.

"Please, don't think I was fishing. I wouldn't want to impose on what's surely limited time to yourself. You don't have to come back tomorrow if you don't want to."

"But what if I want to," Spencer said over your rambling.

It was enough to have you snapping your mouth shut in brief shock. It was also enough to have Spencer wondering if he'd somehow overstepped or misread your earlier possible interest in him.

Only when your smile blossomed once more did he breathe out a soft sigh.

"I'd really like that but only if you really and truly want to."

Spencer allowed his own smile to come out as he said, "I really want to."

The two of you might've continued to smile at each other if one of your students hadn't called out to you.

"I better get back to it, but please, stop by before you leave. We can exchange numbers, then we can secure plans for tomorrow after I'm done for the day." You took a step back toward the booth behind you, but you didn't get far before you added, "I really am glad I got the chance to meet you, Dr. Reid."

Spencer offered his own sentiments, watching as you backed up until you bumped the booth. He bit his lip lest his smile grow wider at how cute you were.

It took another minute before he, too, moved away, intent on catching up with Will and Henry. After all, he had a new job to scope out the best booths to show you tomorrow. Maybe even spend a few minutes considering his options to prolong his time with you tomorrow, including possible dinner plans.

Spencer had known Henry had a special reason to ask him to his school's annual craft fair, but he hadn't counted on you being that reason. He definitely hadn't considered how much you would end up affecting him or the turn of events that took place.

But, he couldn't say he regretted them as he spared a final glance at you and your booth.

Nope, no regrets at all.

[lambskine]

'one yellow eye' got me so fucked up im thinking about spencer reid trapping his zombie-infected lover in their home and cuffing her to the bed they used to share and studying every medical textbook he can while he steals sedatives and preservatives and medication from work and telling her about the day they met while he transfuses his blood into her veins and stroking her hair and saying the government'll find a cure soon, or he'll figure out how to make one himself, just hold on. just hold on. please just hold on. he'd bleed himself dry if it means you'll hold on for just a minute longer. please.

[shadowww-bunny]

「Blind profiling」 -S. R.

❥ No case in BAU history had ever felt as complex or baffling as the one Morgan suddenly overheard developing behind the closed doors of the conference room. Now, finding out what is happening inside between Reid and you —and, more importantly, figuring out how much money the team is about to lose in the betting pool—becomes a matter of national security.

❥ fluff, workplace romance

A blessed silence filled the BAU bullpen—the kind that only happens after a grueling case is finally closed. Half the team had already retreated to their offices to tackle the mountains of paperwork, while Derek Morgan, lazily swirling a coffee mug in his hand, headed toward the conference room to grab his tablet.

He already had his hand on the doorknob when a soft, ragged gasp drifted through the half-drawn blinds.

"Oh god, Spence, be gentle, that’s a sensitive spot!"

The voice was undeniably yours, a breathless, strained whisper with a distinct edge of tension.

"I'm...I`m trying!" Reid’s panicked falsetto rang out. His own breathing sounded quick and uneven, as if he’d just run a marathon. "But if you don't stop squirming, I'm only going to make it worse. Please, just relax."

"How am I supposed to relax when your hands are shaking so badly? You’re the genius, find the right angle."

"The angle has nothing to do with this! Statistically speaking, pain tolerance decreases when—"

"Not now, Spence! If anyone walks in here because Dr. Reid can’t find the right position, I am replacing all your coffee with decaf!"

Morgan pressed his palm to his face, feeling his professional profiler brain wage war with his inner loyal friend. His imagination, unprompted, immediately conjured up pictures completely inappropriate for the FBI headquarters.

At that moment, soft footsteps approached from behind. Emily stepped off the elevator, looking at Morgan with a mix of amusement and skepticism as he practically glued his ear to the conference room door.

"Derek? What are you doing?"

Morgan whipped around, slamming a finger against his lips, and urgently gestured for her to come over. Intrigued, Prentiss stepped closer.

Suddenly, the sharp sound of tearing fabric echoed from inside, followed by your highly expressive, drawn-out groan.

"Oh my god, not so hard, you’re going to rip my shirt! That hurts like hell!"

Something clattered to the floor, and the table creaked loudly, as if someone had heavily leaned their weight against it. Then, Reid let out a heavy sigh and started rambling nervously.

"Okay, okay, I get it. Take off your jacket. Now hold on to me. Like this..."

Emily’s eyes widened to an almost comical size. In a matter of seconds, she went from the shocked “Oh my god, they’re finally doing it!” stage to the sudden realization of “Oh my god, they’re doing it on Hotch’s table!”.

Morgan and Prentiss leaned into the door in perfect synchronization, so utterly consumed by trying to reconstruct the scene inside that they completely missed the significant cough behind them.

"May I ask, ladies and gentlemen, whose profile you are currently analyzing through a keyhole?"

Rossi stood a few paces away, holding a cup of espresso. But before he could even form a guess, Prentiss grabbed the sleeve of his expensive jacket and pulled him into the huddle.

"Spence, wait, you’re squeezing too tight." Your voice broke, followed by a wet sniffle. "Your hands are freezing! Take it out!"

"If we stop right now, it’ll be unhygienic and counterproductive," Reid replied stubbornly. "Please, just trust me. I know what I'm doing."

Rossi froze. A whole spectrum of emotions flashed across his face—from sheer shock to a deep, paternal satisfaction, which he immediately masked with his signature nonchalance.

"Wow," he murmured softly. "And here I thought we’d have to wait until next Christmas for this."

"What’s going on?" Penelope practically sprinted up to the group, her sparkly pen in hand, the moment she caught wind of their frantic whispering. "You guys look like you just caught the Replicator."

"Worse, baby girl," Morgan whispered, nodding toward the door. "Looks like our genius finally moved from theory to practice."

"Oh my goodness!" Garcia gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. She almost shrieked, but Morgan clamped his hand over her lips just in time.

Within a minute, the door had gathered a full-blown strategy meeting. JJ appeared around the corner with a case file, only to be yanked into the pile by Morgan. And as the final touch, Hotch stepped out of his office. Seeing half of his elite unit huddled outside the conference room with dead-serious expressions, he frowned and walked over with heavy, commanding strides.

"What is this unauthorized gathering about?" Hotchner eyed the team suspiciously.

Morgan silently pointed to the crack in the door. From inside came a final, overwhelmingly loud cry.

"Yes! Yes, Spence... oh god, finally."

Hotch didn’t hesitate. With the face of a man ready to storm a terrorist bunker, he decisively threw his shoulder into the door and stepped inside. Behind him, holding their breath, the rest of the team clustered together, expecting to witness the most scandalous and long-awaited sight in FBI history.

But reality proved to be much more literal.

You were sitting on the edge of the conference table, your blouse unbuttoned at the top and draped loosely over one shoulder. Spencer was stepped deep between your knees, his torso pressed flush against yours to get a closer look.

One of his thighs was wedged snugly between yours for balance, pinning you lightly against the table. His hands were braced firmly on your bare collarbone and shoulder, while you were clinging to the lapels of his jacket like a lifeline, your fingers wrinkling the fabric.

Surrounding the two of you were rolls of gauze, hydrogen peroxide, and medical tape. Reid looked completely disheveled, mostly because you had been tugging at his clothes while he tried to treat a nasty gash on your shoulder.

Reid blinked in utter confusion at the frozen team in the doorway. He opened his mouth, likely to spout some scientific justification for administering first aid, but you cut him off.

"What’s the matter, guys? Judging by your faces, you were expecting at least a ritual sacrifice."

You shifted your bandaged shoulder and defiantly tilted your chin up, even though your cheeks flushed a faint pink.

Morgan recovered first, letting out a booming laugh as he slid down the wall. Rossi just shook his head, while Hotch pinched the bridge of his nose.

"False alarm, Reid’s still a saint," Emily smirked, gently nudging a giggling JJ and a deeply disappointed Penelope back out the door.

----------------

When the door clicked shut, leaving only the two of you in the room, Reid slowly turned his head back to you, his cheeks flaring a bright, furious crimson.

​"They... they thought we were..." he stammered, his brain finally processing the double entendres of your conversation. His voice dropping an octave. "Mathematically speaking, the probability of them misinterpreting a basic wound treatment shouldn't have been that high, considering they are trained profilers."

​You couldn't help but chuckle, wincing slightly as you pulled your blouse back up. "Spence, we were screaming about 'angles,' and 'fingers,' Honestly, I'm just glad Hotch didn't tackle you to the ground."

​Reid looked down at the medical tape in his hands, a shy, surprisingly soft smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Well... for the record," he murmured, looking up at you through his eyelashes, "if I were to ever... do that... I wouldn't need a statistical breakdown to find the right angle."

[moonlighttt33]

Strange Circumstances, Part 1

Spencer Reid x F!Reader | 3500

Summary: The pit in your stomach, coupled with a series of strange circumstances, has led you to believe you're being followed. But what happens when nobody believes you except your crush, Spencer Reid

A/n: Welcome to part 1 of my new Spencer Reid fanfic! I was inspired to write this based on a TikTok I saw by @editssbyrosee. Not sure when Part 2 will be up since my summer class has been keeping me busy, but I'll do my best to get it out as soon as I can, divas. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Part 1!!

Warnings: Stalking

It was another morning at the BAU, and you were pouring yourself a larger coffee than usual when your coworker, Derek Morgan, came to your side. 

“Rough night there, princess,” he said jokingly. This made you roll your eyes and set the pot down. 

“Ha ha,” you said sarcastically, then started walking back to the desks.

“No, seriously, you alright? You seem a bit off?” He asked, following you, drawing the attention of your ever-observant coworkers. You set your coffee down and turn to look at Morgan and now Reid and Pretniss awaiting your answer. 

“I don’t know; this whole morning has just felt off, like I'm in an episode of The Twilight Zone or something?” 

“What, like you're still in a dream or something?” Prentiss asks.

“Who's dreaming?” Hotch's voice rings from the upper level.

You sighed. “Nobody.”

“Alright then, remember reports are due on my desk by the end of the day,” Hotch called down and headed back into his office.

Once you were in the clear, Morgan reiterated the previous question. 

“I don’t know; it just has a weird vibe,” you said.

“A vibe?” Morgan echoed, already fighting a grin. 

“Yes, a vibe.” You gestured vaguely around the room. “I just feel off like the hairs on my neck are stuck standing up. Keep catching myself looking over my shoulder”

Morgan raised an eyebrow. “Expecting somebody?”

Spencer finally looked up from the book he'd been pretending to read.

“Your brain is constantly processing information you're not consciously aware of,” he said. “Sometimes it notices subtle changes before you can identify what changed. That can create a persistent sense that something isn't quite right.” 

You looked at him while biting your cheek.

“While this feeling can be useful, it can also be influenced by stress or expectation. Considering our recent cases and the way you're biting your cheek, I assume stress.” 

You nodded absently, though you were finding it hard to focus when Spencer looked that good. You forced your gaze to look around and could've sworn you saw something near the conference room, but when you looked again, there was nothing. Maybe Reid was right; maybe it was stress. 

“Did you guys ever see that one episode of Twilight Zone-” Prettiss began helping shift the focus away from you. 

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

The rest of the day went by relatively quickly, as you shifted through case files, picking ones for the team to review. At the end of the day, you turned in your files and waved goodbye to everyone. 

On the train ride home, you listened to music and read a magazine, but that weird feeling was still in the back of your mind. You looked up at the fellow passengers but didn't see anything unusual. You tried to shake it off and go back to reading. Spending the rest of the night trying to relax at home. 

The following morning, you followed your same routine and headed out for the day. You were trying to cross the street when a red car flew past, making you seethe. It wasn’t even 8 am and you had almost been taken out. You shook it off and headed to your favorite cafe. When you were finished there and heading out, a lady held the door open for you, bringing up your foul mood. The rest of the day was similar to the last except when you noticed a red car again on the way home. 

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

The next two weeks were cut and dry. With a case here and there and, of course, tons of paperwork and cases for you to screen. During your free time, you did your usual, from grocery shopping to runs in the park. Everything was normal and fine except for your mind constantly picking up on the sight of red cars and the random calls from unknown numbers. Your brain hadn’t fully processed what type of car almost hit you, but now it’s like you couldn’t miss any red ones. It was slowly weighing on you as you became hypervigilant, looking for one whenever you were out. Though of course it was a big city and red cars were everywhere, making your nerves futile. Reid gave you the statistic on it when you brought it up. But you still just had a weird feeling that you couldn’t shake. You tried to bring it up to the team, but they all agreed it was a response to almost being hit. So you poured yourself into your work and tried to ignore your unease. Because it had to be irrational, like everyone said. 

It wasn’t until you got back late from a case one night when you got spooked. You exited the company car and headed to your door when you heard heavy footsteps behind you. You whipped your head around to see someone running around the corner up ahead. Why anyone would be running at 3 am you didn’t know, but you just opened your door and eagerly escaped inside. When you entered your living room, you noticed that it smelt weird, almost like peppermint. You walked through the rest of the apartment and didn’t find anything else out of place. The trash in your bathroom had been knocked over, but you assumed it was your cat. The drawer in your bedroom was also ajar, but you probably left it like that as you rushed to pack your go bag. So you went to bed and entered a dreamless sleep. But later on in the night, you woke up to your phone buzzing on the nightstand. You slowly opened your eyes and expected to see Hotch's name, only to find it was an unknown caller again. You groaned and silenced it, going back to sleep. In the morning, you woke up and saw 5 other missed calls from strangers. Sending warning signs off in your mind. But you pushed it aside for now since you were late to work. During your spare time, you stopped by Penelope’s den. 

“Hey Pen think you could run a number for me?” 

“Of course!! Who do you need?”

You gave her your phone and let her do her magic, just for them to be traced back to nothing significant. 

“Looks like it was just spam, y/n; you probably got put on a call list or something.”

“Oh, ok thanks Pen,” you say. You were a little disappointed as you wanted an answer to your unease.

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

It wasn’t until you grabbed coffee one morning that you became convinced. The guy behind the counter who always took your order began striking up a conversation. Now normally this wouldn’t be alarming until he brought up the yoga class you used to be in. You never shared this information, and this was textbook stalker behavior. You quickly left for work, ready to slam this guy with a hefty stalking charge as the case formed in your mind. 

You practically ran into the main room eager to tell everyone. To your luck, everyone was congregating around Reid’s desk, likely to watch a magic trick. 

“Guys, I figured it out!! What’s been bothering me, or better yet, who?” 

“Well, tell us,” Emily said excitedly.

“The guy at my coffee shop!!” You say, but they begin shooting unconvinced looks at each other. “Okay, walk with me here. Today he asked about my yoga class that, mind you, I haven’t gone to in 5 months. Or the fact that I see him occasionally walking down the street near the smoothie shop I like. And here’s the cherry on top of the cake. I saw him get into a red car recently!” 

Silence fell across the room as you searched everyone’s faces. They all looked awkward and like they were biting their tongues.

“Guys?” You ask with confidence wavering.

“Well, y/n, it’s a theory all right, but do you have any concrete evidence?” JJ asked dismissively.

Her response irritated you. You weren't dumb and knew she was right, but her complete rejection was what bothered you. You were close to JJ; she trained you in her image when you took over her spot as communications liaison. You didn't think her, of all people, would shut you down so fast.

“I guess not. But how do you explain the yoga thing?” You accuse. 

“Didn’t you always stop there after class?” Emily asks, making you nod in response. “Then he probably noticed you stopped showing up in yoga clothes and with your mat.”

“Yeah, the kid probably made an observation, hardly a stalker sending you letters or anything,” Morgan said. 

You looked at all of them, defeated. Your eyes settled on Reid silently begging him to understand. 

“You can have Penelope run a background check,” Reid says quietly.

“This is why you’re my favorite genius,” you say, feeling relieved someone was taking you seriously.

But when the check came back clean, the team lost full faith in your theory, despite your protests. Hotch went so far as to pull you into his office and offer you time off. Saying this job has a way of messing with your head sometimes. You reassured him that you were fine, but he wasn’t convinced and sent you home early for the day. You were irritated at this point; you knew something had to be happening, but the people you trusted most didn’t believe you. Instead, they chalked it up to strange circumstances. Sure, maybe it wasn’t the coffee worker guy, but you just knew someone was following you. 

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

You felt too restless to go home, so you headed to a place you didn’t frequent often, the movie theater. During the previews, the lady sitting next to you was chatty; you thought it was annoying at first, but her company was refreshing in light of feeling rejected by the team. She looked a bit familiar, but you couldn't place it, chalking it up to her just having one of those faces. But you exchanged Instagrams confirming you didn't know her, then turned your attention to the movie starting. During which she offered you a box of Junior Mints, which you took eagerly. Afterwards, you said goodbye and headed to dinner. Your phone buzzed with her liking the few posts you had up. You stared affectionately at Reid's post, and you decked out in Halloween costumes at the office. Laughing at the memory of being the only two to dress up as the rest poked fun. It made you sad knowing you had been away for only a few hours and were missing them already. The sight of the unknown text flashed across the screen and broke you out of your thoughts and made the hair stand up on the back of your neck. The text read, “Hello, beautiful.”  You had to get out of here. You took a different way home and quickly retreated inside. You paced around your apartment trying to figure out what to do when your phone rang again, but to your relief, it was Reid. 

“Hello Spencer,” you answered anxiously.

“Hi y/n, I wanted to check in on you.” 

At the sound of his voice, you crumpled onto your couch. 

“Thanks, Spence. I’m doing alright, I guess. I’m just anxious. I know what you guys think, but I’m telling you something is going on here.”

“Would you wanna come over and talk about it?” 

Relief washed over you. “God yes, I’ll be there in 15.”

“Ok, see you then,” he says softly and hangs up.

His words gave you a second wind, and you jumped up, gathering things to leave. But as you reached the front door, the sight of a piece of paper on the floor sent chills across your body. You slowly bent down to pick it up and investigate it. It was the magazine you’ve been reading on the train. You had misplaced your copy, but here it was lying on your floor. You drop it and run to your back door. You keep your gun close as you open the door and scan the perimeter. Once you check it’s clear, you run to your car and drive frantically to Spencer’s.

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

Your heart was still racing as you got to his door and knocked. Spencer immediately opened the door and welcomed you into his cozy place. You eagerly stepped in, and relief washed over you. Spencer’s apartment was unique in the sense that it was purely his. Hundreds of books lined the wall, and the air smelled of coffee and tea, with fancy leather chairs and sofas. Case files and research notes were scattered around the various surfaces. You’d only been here in passing, dropping him off after a case or to borrow a book. But it felt more like a library than a living space.

“Make yourself at home,” he said while you took your shoes off. 

“Thanks, Spence,” you replied with a sigh.

You made your way into his living room and settled into the couch. You rubbed your face with your hands, trying to process what had transpired today alone. Without missing a beat, Spencer joined you on the couch, holding two steaming mugs of tea, offering you one. He truly knew you better than anyone. You let the comfortable silence of the moment fall over you as you drank. However, your mind was still racing, and you were bouncing your leg anxiously. This made Reid flash you a knowing look.

“Do you think I’m going crazy?” you ask quietly, biting your inner cheek.

“No, y/n, of course not.” He responded quickly and placed his hand on your knee. The contact sent butterflies to your stomach.

“I know something is happening here. But I also know that my evidence is circumstantial. I don’t know what to do,” you murmur. 

You watch as the gears turn in Reid's head and pray his genius worked in your favor. 

“Ok, we’ll treat it like any other case. Start at the beginning and work through it all, analyzing as we go. If there is something I promise we’ll find it y/n” 

“I’ve been trying to do that in my head, but I guess the expertise of a profiler would help,” you joke lightly. 

“Perfect, let's get to work,” he said as he stood up. You watched as he shuffled around his place, grabbing you pen and paper. Then he went to what you assumed was a closet and pulled out a huge whiteboard on wheels, rolling it over to the couch area. 

“Of course you would have one of these at home,” you snicker. 

“Hey, it comes in handy!” 

“Clearly,” you muse. 

“Okay, start from the top and leave nothing out,” he said while uncapping his markers. 

You spent the next few minutes recounting everything that had happened from the unknown calls to the creepy text and magazine appearing near your front door, watching as he scribbled them all down. Seeing them written out like this made you even more nervous. To you, they all seemed suspicious and interconnected, but what if they didn't look that way to Reid? 

“Did you inspect the magazine at all?”

“No, I was so freaked that after I realized what it was, I dropped it immediately.”

“Ok what magazine was it?” 

“The New Yorker,” you reply and watch as he writes it down. 

“Any other texts?” he continued. Making you shake your head no. He then just stares at the board, and you're sure he is in some Reid mind palace stringing things together. 

“Victimology is next,” He muttered and cast a look at you.

He began muttering more as he wrote down basic facts about you. Age, Location, Occupation, etc., but when the word “attractive " was written down, it made you blush. You knew he was doing this from a completely analytical sense, but you were still giddy that Spencer thought that about you. But this wasn't the time to gush over the insane crush you had on him. Even though his sweater clung tighter than normal to his body, highlighting his frame, or the way he pushed the sleeves up, revealing his arms, or how his hands looked while writing. Or how you desperately wished you were hanging out in Spencer's apartment when you weren't a potential victim. You began imagining what it would be like to spend time here together. Cooking dinner together or making out on the couch you were sitting on. 

“Y/n? Earth to y/n.” his voice pulled you out of your daydreams, making you blush violently.

“Yeah, sorry, lost in thought for a second there,” you say sheepishly. 

He made you more nervous as he joined you back on the couch. You watched as he sighed and lightly threw his head back to stare at the ceiling. This was not helping the thoughts you were already having about him. You just admired his features and the way he was so effortlessly perfect. But then he turned to look at you. 

“I hate to ask this, but do you know anyone who would do something like this? Any estranged family members? Bad ex? Statistically speaking, 77% of female victims know their stalkers. It's actually only a small percentage nationwide that have cases of being stalked by a stranger, and this is around 9%,” he rambled in classic Reid fashion. 

You took a second to rake your brain. “Um, I don’t think so. I'm close with my family, and they all live states away. Sure, I have the odd cousin or two, but none of them would do this.”

He asked you more about your childhood and how you grew up. The question a eager distraction from the heavy topic lurking on the whiteboard. Following it up with questions about your previous relationships. You explained your past ones and watched as his jaw tightened over the way one of them treated you. He was eager to place him as a suspect until you said he was married with kids, making him an unlikely candidate. You circled back around to the coffee shop guy but agreed you were quick to place blame out of desperation. Especially since Garcia looked into him. The clock ticked by as Reid continued to pick your brain. The comfort of his apartment and the blanket you had wrapped yourself in was making you sleepy.

“It's probably unlikely, but what if this person saw me on TV? I mean, I’m constantly on there reporting and talking to people for you guys. What if I talked to someone and they took it the wrong way?” you say with a yawn, making him yawn too.

“Have you noticed anyone who would fit that description. Like an old reporter talking to you or someone going completely out of the way to make conversation?” 

“No?” you said sleepily and snuggled deeper into his couch. 

You couldn't fight it anymore and sank, your head resting near Spencer's legs. You let yourself close your eyes and felt sleep creeping in, but you were a bit cramped, desiring more space. 

“Could I use you as a pillow?” you ask, not really thinking.

“Sure, y/n,” he says in his cute, awkward tone. 

You push yourself up a bit to settle your head in his lap, turning on your side to get extra comfortable. Spencer was a bit tense, but after a few moments you felt him relax. His hand found your hair and gently played with it as you fell asleep.

“Oh, I met someone at the movies earlier. But she was nice,” you murmur. 

“Y/n?” Reid asked softly, but you had already fallen asleep. 

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

You weren't sure what time it was when you woke. The room was still dark, but the warmth wrapped around your waist told you everything you needed to know. At some point, Spencer had stretched out beside you on the couch and fallen asleep with his arms around you. You'd never been so grateful to have accidentally drifted off on someone's couch. A smile tugged at your lips as you melted back against him, savoring the comfort of being held. Nestling closer into his embrace, you let yourself drift back to sleep.

Morning light flooded through the apartment, and the sound of a male voice pulled you awake. You blinked your eyes open and immediately noticed Spencer was gone. Glancing around, you found him in the kitchen, pacing back and forth with his phone pressed to his ear. You stayed quiet, hoping to catch what he was saying, but all you heard was a string of subdued “okays" before the call ended. As he lowered the phone, you pushed yourself up from the couch and walked over to him. He turned toward you, his face drained of color. The fear in his expression sent a chill through you before he even spoke.

“A body was found,” he said quietly.

You searched his face, your pulse quickening as he hesitated, as though the next words were almost too difficult to say.

“She was holding a New Yorker,” he said at last. “And… she looks like you, y/n.”

[h0lym01y]

(Sorry if I’m in your inbox twice, I think Tumblr ate my ask. 🙇)

But I wanted to know if there were any hc’s or details that didn’t make it into the final cut of Headlock? :D

When I read the ending, it gave me the impression that the team subtly disapproved of Spencer and the reader getting engaged/married, so I wonder if there was any pushback in the bg? Like Derek or Hotch trying to explain that a fresh start away from each other was still possible.

(Also everyone’s reaction to the change in the reader and Spencer’s relationship dynamic in Chapter 4 was sooo good, especially Emily’s. I can’t help but wonder how worse they would’ve been if there had been a potential baby too 😆)

okay wait let me lock in on this

unofficial headlock epilouge stuff :

I think that Hotch only brings them back onto the team because he's worried about the consequences if he doesn't. He can't just bring back reader because she would refuse to come back without Spencer and he can't just bring back Spencer because he'll have a fit without her. I think a part of him is also scared of leaving her completely alone with Spencer, if they aren't working at the BAU he has no was of telling what's happening with them, he knows they'll just disappear. I think there's a lot of guilt about what happened to them as well and he now feels responsible for keeping an eye on the both of them.

I think that Emily probably had the strongest reaction to everything and makes it clear that she doesn't approve. I think she can very clearly see the relationship for what it is and I think that outside of the bunker, at least for a little while, they get worse. Spencer and reader have like a sickeningly dependent relationship, to the point that Hotch doesn't dare try to seperate them on cases anymore because he knows something as simple as that ends in tears from reader and an argument with Spencer. Emily probably tries to talk to her about it and explain how it looks but i doubt there's really any alone time anymore and Spencers always there to step into the conversation. It gets to a point where Emily stops objecting to the relationship because she knows there's nothing she can do. She likely stops talking to both of them completely.

J.J. definietly tries to keep things friendly, she's probably the only one who still tries to invite them out to places. Similar to Hotch she feels guilty about choosing this case and sending them to Seattle in the first place even if she couldn’t have known what would happen.

Penelope avoids them both at all costs. she’s scared of spencer and she scared of upsetting you because then she has to deal with spencer.

Derek doesn’t handle it well. I think that it’s extremely uncomfortable for him to see what Spencer has become. He considered them to be as close as family but seeing what he’s become is a hard pill to swallow. Similar to J.J. Im sure he still invites them out but I think he avoids talking to either of them.

[reidfullyyours]

[h0lym01y]

like a beautiful gorgeous final girl omg

[callsign-coolsquirrel]

🖍️✂️

would you believe it but this was inspired by @nottherealslimshady who liked my art and i go on peoples accounts who like my stuff to see what other stuff they like and brain went prince reid ➡️dad reid im not even ovulating its just dad reid era rn making a princess cone crown

OH AND a version of this but with older/later season!Spencer on Patreon 🫣it was also uploaded a few hours prior to this one

[in-another-april]

infodumping spencer you are. so special to me

[lacedcompulsion]

FLATLANDS

Hotch sends you and Spencer to Iowa to conduct a death row interview with an inmate. Thing is, there's not much to do in Iowa but fuck.

pairing: spencer reid x bau!reader

tags/warnings: 18+, wc: 5.9k, whew, smut, porn w plot, piv sex, unprotected sex, drunk sex, oral sex (both receiving), fingering, soft-dom spencer ish, biting, praise kink, this is so self-indulgent muahahaha, discussions of a case, but nothing too bad it's canon typical stuff, iowa hate idgaf!!, drinking/getting drunk, i think that's it!

notes: this is likeeee. one of my first times writing longer smut. also i did in fact say i would re-upload old re-worked fics before posting anything new but alas! i am a liar! here is something brand new! i spent like. 9 straight hours on this yesterday. and it is currently almost 8 am and i just spent all night finishing it up instead of sleeping. ALSO i am in fact a philosophy major (future barista moment) and my fics get soooo. philosophy-esque. like. every single time. i'm sorry... i am who i am.

If you had to remove one state from the contiguous union, it would be Iowa. 

You’re standing in a rusty hotel room, which, according to Hotch, is the best they could do to accommodate you. And Spencer. He’s one room over. Your feet vibrate against the rug. You tell yourself it’s the thought of him, one wall over — thinking, sitting, reading, whatever he’s doing — and not some rare kind of bacteria you’re going to catch from the stink of this place.

Hotch sent you and Reid here for a death row interview. One of the inmates, having spent the past seventeen years as a self-proclaimed monk, decided he was done with silence. He answered the bureau’s request for an interview in a letter addressed to Hotch’s desk, written in red ink. It’s your first prison interview — you usually wear the bad guys down before they’re locked away forever — but Spencer has done one or two, he said. You think it might be more.

You’d never been to Iowa, never had a case here. You’re not great with time off, even worse with real vacations. You don’t look out your window for fear the corn fields have gotten closer since you last peeked through the curtains. You swear you can see twenty miles out; the flatness makes it easy to mistake the horizon for something that never, ever ends. 

You’re picking at the skin of your fingernails, toes curled as they still rest but resist against the carpet, when there’s a knock at your door. You don’t check, because you’re not really fearful. It might make you a shitty FBI agent, but you doubt anyone is tracking you down in Iowa. (Iowa. It gets worse each time you think it.)

“Hi,” Spencer says, lips pulled flat. Flat. You think of fields. Corn. Emptiness. Your stomach churns then lurches when you think of your own bed in your own home in a state that has real hills and mountains and trees. 

“Hi.” 

“Thought you might want to look over the file before tomorrow?” He frames it like a question, and you offer a soft smile at his hesitancy before opening the door to let him in. He turns his body to the left to avoid making contact with you as he accepts the invitation and walks on through.

Your bed is still made, your suitcase resting on top of it. He scrunches his nose before recovering.

“I’m not a germaphobe, like someone we both know,” you mock.

“Maybe you should be.” You laugh. You’ve been his teammate for three years now, and it still gets you when he decides he can lighten up and make a joke.

He looks around, still awkward in the yellow tint of the hotel lamp, then decides to sit in the desk chair in the corner.

“You look so ominous,” you say, shaking your head as you pull the file out of the nightstand. 

“Why is your casefile in there?”

“Where do you keep yours?”

“I never put it away.”

“Checks out,” you say, raising your eyebrows and sitting criss-crossed on the edge of your bed, facing him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Gary Foster,” you read off the top of the page, ignoring his bait. “Killed twenty-three women in his basement. His wife never knew.”

“Or claims she didn’t know,” Spencer corrects. 

“You think she did?”

He shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter what I think.”

You glance up at him to find him staring intently at the file in his hands. He’s gripping onto it like it’s all he knows. You store your observations away in your head under a tab titled Perhaps Ask Later. 

You’ve gone over this file a dozen times. It’s virtually seared into your memory. Still, you let him tack off the rest of the information to you, compile the intensive profile Hotch gave you into a bullet point list. 

“He’s gonna focus on me,” you say once he reaches a lull in speech.

“Because you’re a woman?” he confirms. You nod. “Maybe.”

You tap the file a few times with your fingers as a yawn creeps up your throat, threatening to escape. Spencer seems to get the hint before you even let it out. 

“We’ve got a long day tomorrow,” he says before standing. He takes a step forward before turning around and tucking the chair back into the desk. You smile at the politeness. “See you tomorrow?”

“Is that a question?” you tease as you lead him to the door. “I promise I won’t jump out of the window.”

“There’s not much out there.”

“No, there isn’t.” He fumbles with the key for the door across the hall. You wait for him to open it before you start to close yours, the way you would after driving a friend at home. “Night.”

“Night,” he says, though the latter half of the word is muffled by the shut of the door. 

The room is barren again. You open the curtains now that it’s nearing total darkness outside.

It takes six more hours for you to drift off into sleep.

– 

Your hand is immediately on your temple when you awake, rubbing at the budding headache you know will consume you once you get up. This is the punishment you get for allowing yourself only three hours of sleep.

The sunlight hits your bed in fluttering intervals of perfect warmth and scorching heat. This time, when the hindmost rolls around, you force yourself up and place your feet on the ground. You hold your tongue to refrain from releasing a long string of fucks and shits and realize your hand is still refusing to move from its spot rubbing circles in your face. When you make your way to the bathroom, you realize the bed is so hard you’ve left no indent. 

The sting of the shower is pelting, boiling enough that it feels purifying. After a night spent in sheets you’re sure dozens have sweat through, it’s more than welcome. The heat is the perfect substrate for the anticipatory dread of today’s interview. Speaking to monsters as if there’s a hint of human behind the stitching has never pulled at you in the right way. 

If anything, it’s slowly pulled you apart.

The outlet in your bathroom is broken so you’re forced to dry your hair sitting on the carpet of the room, right next to that window that stares out into nowhere. You feel itchy just sitting on it. You swear the fibers are pressing into your skin, merging with your skin. 

The file is open on the floor in front of you, and you use your thumb to wipe the water falling from your damp hair. The pages already begin to curdle like the feeling in your stomach. 

You put your hair in a ponytail, then worry it’s too sexual — because you’ve absorbed the profile and you know what earns a check on this guys list —- so you take it down and let it rest on your shoulders again. Your knees crack when you stand up and your hip tenses up like it might, too, when you slip your legs into your pants. 

There’s a knock on your door and you mutter fuck as you balance your time between finishing the rest of the buttons on your blouse and stumbling to the door.

“I need a couple minutes,” you say, before you say hello. You leave the door open as you retreat farther into the room. “You can wait in here.”

You squeeze your feet into your heels — half a size too small, and in your head you call the saleslady who insisted on that being necessary for this brand a word that would make your grandmother sour — and peripherally watch him step into the room, hands stuffed in his pockets. 

“You ready?” he asks. You can feel his eyes on your unmade bed. 

“Mhm.” You glance in the square mirror facing the bed and smooth out your clothes. 

“I mean for the interview,” he says after clearing his throat.

“My answer remains.”

“Cool.” He says it in the way that feels fraudulent, but is really just the way he speaks, you’ve come to realize.

“Are you ready?” you ask back, muffled by the file placed between your teeth as you fumble around your desk for your car keys and room card. You make eye contact with him as you head for the door.

“Don’t really have much of a choice, do I?”

“Stand up straight,” you say, holding the door open for him as you both step into the hallway.

“What?” he mutters. He does it anyway.

“He’s gonna zero in on you if you seem to lack confidence.”

“Right.”

It’s silence between you two in the hallway, the elevator, the lobby, and until you’re pulling out of the parking lot. There’s overgrown wheatgrass in the field to your left and plowed corn crop to your right. The furrows stretch on until the curve of the earth swallows them up.

The sky is dull, slate-colored, and bears striking resemblance to something that could wipe you clean. Grain silos whir by every couple of minutes. These people really own a lot of fucking land. Every few miles, a new one, along with a rusting tractor or collapsing barn or crop that looks about ready to dry up and blow away. It gets predictable after mile seven. 

The prison doesn’t appear so much as it settles into your vision. It’s low to the ground, sprawling, gray. A scar pressed into the ground. 

You feel like Spencer the way you’ve completely memorized the profile. You flash your badge at the gate, sign some kind of form and drive into a parking lot that feels as far from the prison as your hotel was.

Spencer lingers in the car two seconds after you get out. He’s nervous, and he’s trying not to show it. You don’t want to mention it, but you need to be on the same page, so you don’t stop your lips from unfurling.

“You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“The anxious math,” you say. “You’re calculating the probability of saying the wrong thing before we even walk in.”

“That’s-” He seems to think better than arguing and redirects his sentence. “That’s not entirely inaccurate.”

You give him one of those closed lip smiles. “He’ll spot it in five seconds. He feeds on nerves like that. First, he’ll comment on your hands, because you fidget when you’re trying not to.”

“You sound like Hotch.”

You scoff out a half-laugh and choose to ignore the comment otherwise. “And he’ll ask how long you’ve known me. If we’re sleeping together. He won’t say it like that, of course. He’ll be crude. He wants to gauge what version of you shows up when you’re off-balance.”

“Why would that knock me off balance?” he asks. The hesitancy has stolen his tone again.

“You fluster easily.”

“Do I?”

“Mhm. You blink three times, touch your collar, and then deflect with statistics. You did it the first time I challenged you during a case.”

He tuts then holds the door of the prison open for you. “You’re profiling me.”

“Of course I am,” you say, then turn your head over your shoulder, waiting for him to walk back up beside you again. He’s close behind you, so close you can almost feel his breath on you. It makes you feel warm. “So will he.”

You greet two more guards inside before shaking hands with the warden. He thanks you for coming with that grim look on his face that everyone in this field seems to have permanently etched into the creases of their skin. The prison is colder inside than it has any right to be, as if the concrete has learned to hold onto every winter it’s ever survived. 

“Still nervous?” you whisper to Spencer. 

He smiles, shakes his head no. 

Good, you mouth.

You pretend not to notice his eyes fixate for a beat longer than necessary on your lips. You lick them in response. When he meets your eyes again, you pretend not to notice that something undecipherable is hidden behind his lids, too. 

—

Foster smiles when you walk in. He doesn’t look at Spencer. You let Spencer pull your chair out for you, which immediately catches the guy’s attention. You think of still water, use it as a guide for being calm.

“Well,” Foster says. He hasn’t dropped the smile from his face. “They sent a good-looking one.”

“We, the FBI, are really grateful you chose to cooperate with us,” you say. “You know, in your final days.”

“Hm.” He turns to Spencer, finally. “She yours?”

You don’t look at him, and you will him to ignore him, to start asking him the standard questions. What’s your name? What year were you born? 

“She’s her own,” he says instead. It comes out even and flat. 

“You hesitated,” Foster says. His smile shows his teeth, now. “I suppose that’s not a crime.”

“No,” you agree. You open your file and lay a picture of his mugshot on the table. You can tell he was expecting photos of one of the women whose life he stole away. “But murder is.”

Spencer clears his throat and nudges your ankle with the tip of his shoe. You give him no reaction, but the next time you reach for the file, you let your fingertips brush against his wrist. 

—

“That wasn’t awful,” Spencer says when you step out, though he says it like he’s releasing one big breath born out of a collection of accumulated air trapped in his lungs. 

Foster did say something crude. You’d prefer not to repeat it, mostly because you’re not sure if Spencer was blushing or if he was just hot. 

The prison was freezing, you remind yourself. Then you shove the thought back down. 

“It wasn’t great,” you say. “I wish I’d pushed him further about—”

“Stop,” he says. His hand is on your bicep now. “Don’t overthink it, you did great.”

“Okay,” you say. “Don’t profile me, now.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

The walk back to the car leaves you sticky and hot. You note, aimlessly, that Iowa gets hot enough if you let it — if you stay long enough to let it swelter.

“Our flight’s not till the morning,” you groan, slamming the car door shut.

“Not a fan of Iowa?”

“In how many languages do you know how to say fuck no?”

“Twelve," he says. His eyes flit to the ceiling. “No, fourteen.” 

“Ridiculous.” 

—

You crash as soon as you get back to your hotel room. You sleep for what feels like two hours but you know is way longer than that, and when you finally peel your eyes open you’re sweating. You’re clinging to your sheets, and you consider yourself bed-ridden as you roll over and check your phone. Hotch has sent you three messages asking for updates. Your stomach twinges with guilt for not answering, though you figure he probably moved on and texted Spencer.

Spencer.

You feel bad. You had ditched him, retreating to your hotel room the second you guys got back. You wonder what he did, if he got food, though there’s not much to do in Iowa. In fact, there’s nothing to do in Iowa. 

You slip out of your clothes and take a quick rinse-off in the shower. Your hair is still wet when you adorn yourself in a gray t-shirt and sleep shorts and creep over across the hall. Your fist raps against the door three times, then twice more for good measure. 

“Hi?”

“Hi,” you say, inviting yourself in as you push past him. It’s identical to yours, but everything’s on the opposite side. “Nice room.”

“Much nicer than yours.”

“Oh, for sure.” You clap your hands together, then flop down on the bed. “So, whatcha been up to?”

He nods his head at a book on the nightstand. You stretch over and pick it up. The History of Iowa’s Small Towns.

“Little on the nose, isn’t it, doctor?”

“It’s interesting.”

“Your mind amazes me,” you whisper, then place it back on the nightstand.

“Have you eaten?” he asks.

“I’m not really hungry,” you say. When he quirks his eyebrow, you add: “Really, I can’t eat for, like, at least two hours after I wake up.”

“You were asleep?”

You nod. “Couldn’t last night. You didn’t think I just ditched you, did you?”

He shrugs. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

You place a hand over your heart. “Well, doctor, I’m just plain offended.”

He smiles, real, genuine. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How’d you mean it?” you ask. You move up on the bed, as if it’s your own, making space for him to sit next to you. 

He sighs, like he really doesn’t want to indulge in this conversation, but his lips pry open and you know he will. “Morgan always says I ramble too much.”

You shrug. “What’s much, anyway?”

“Well, if you’re not hungry,” he starts, lifting himself off the bed and over to the mini fridge, “are you thirsty?”

“My, my.” You smile, teeth and all. “I didn’t know you drank on the job.”

“Not technically on the job anymore, am I?” He holds up a little bottle. “It’s not exactly a martini, but it’s all I’ve got unless you want lukewarm ginger ale.”

You accept the bottle with mock ceremony and open it the second it’s in your hands. “Guess federal per diems only cover motel whiskey. Honestly, this is probably the classiest thing happening in Iowa tonight.”

He laughs softly, twisting open his own cap. “From what I’ve read, and seen, that’s a low bar.”

You raise yours. “To meeting the bar.”

He tilts his head, scrunches his nose. “To stepping over the bar with minimal effort.”

You both take a sip. It’s terrible. You make a face.

He sees it and raises an eyebrow. “Too refined for hotel whiskey?”

“Just surprised it didn’t come with a warning label,” you say, setting the bottle down on the nightstand. “Or a tetanus shot.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, taking another sip of his. “I’m sure the Iowa Department of Health is on it.”

You nod solemnly. “They’re probably just as fast as the Wi-Fi.”

That gets a small smile from him. He sits on the edge of the bed, a little closer than before, but still careful. He’s always so careful.

There’s a lull, full of quiet until the nighttime air-conditioning kicks on and you’re too tired to pretend anything really matters for a while.

“You ever drink from the mini bar before? Like, during a case?” you ask eventually.

“Only when I expect to be stranded somewhere like this.”

“Smart,” you say. 

He glances at you, amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Can’t profile your way out of a cornfield without it.”

You hum in agreement. “I’m not sure if that’s depressing.”

He shrugs, taking another sip. “Probably.” His hand falls to his side, dangerously close to your thigh.

You accept another one. And then another one. You’re sure he’s going shot for shot with you, but you can’t really tell because your head is full and everything’s hazy and suddenly this bed is so, so comfortable. 

You lie back, legs still dangling off the edge, and stare up at the popcorn ceiling like it might reveal state secrets. “Did you know Iowa had one of the highest populations of covered bridges?”

Spencer blinks. “Iowa doesn’t.”

You squint. “It doesn’t?”

“No,” he says, amused. “That’s Madison County. Which is in Iowa. But it’s a specific — actually, nevermind. I’m not sure either of us are in a state for nuance.”

You wag a lazy finger at the ceiling. “I knew that.”

“Sure,” he says, and leans back beside you with a soft thud, hands crossed over his stomach. “Next you’ll tell me Iowa invented jazz.”

“It didn’t?” You cant your head to the side, a smile playing at your lips. 

“God, no.”

You sigh dramatically. “And here I thought this trip was educational.”

He turns his head just slightly toward you. His breath is hot, hotter than it was earlier, and his words are all slurred. You think you might sound the same but don’t keep yourself in line long enough to actually check. “You’ve learned a lot. For example, you’ve learned not to trust the minibar.”

“And that your idea of a good time is reading municipal histories.”

“I sensed you were captivated.”

You pull an arm over your face. “Do you always get this cocky after drinking?”

He tilts his head like he’s genuinely thinking about it. “I think I just feel safe knowing I’m not the only one embarrassing myself.”

You haul a leg up to bend into the bed with you and nudge him with your knee. “You’re not embarrassing. You’re weird. Like, in the good way.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, but you can hear the smile in his voice when he finally says: “Thanks. You’re weird too.”

“Weird and drunk.” You repeat the word drunk a few more times, drawing out a different syllable each time. “Spencer?” 

“Hm?”

“Don’t let me fall asleep here.”

“You say that like I have any control over you,” he murmurs. Your breath catches. Neither of you move.

You peek at him from under your arm. “Are you flirting with me?”

“What?” 

“Whatever. Then don’t speak with that— that tone. Or I’ll start to think you’re flirting with me.”

“I’m not really flirting with you.”

You let the arm drop, but not to the mattress; it finds its way to the sleeve of his shirt, playing with the fabric. “Not really or not yet?”

“That depends,” he says, voice dropped low to a whisper. “Would yet be a problem?”

You roll onto your elbow, looming over him. “Guess we’ll have to find out.”

It lands like a match.

“What are you doing?” he asks. Your lips are the closest they’ve ever been.

“I don’t know.” Your eyes move to where his hand has started to creep onto your thigh. “What are you doing?”

He moves first, but only barely. His head tilts up, lips parting like he’s about to ask a question. 

He gets his answer in the shape of your lips.

Your hand finds the edge of his jaw, fingers skimming up the side of his face. He’s warm. Still flushed from the whiskey or maybe just from you.

You’re kissing, you think. You. Spencer. Kissing. It should make you pull back. You work with him. This is strictly forbidden — that should definitely make you pull back.

But then his fingers press into your hips, grounding you, and you shift, and you’re straddling him before you’ve thought it through. It’s automatic, desperate, like the tension finally cracked open and all that’s left is the pull.

“Still not on the job?” you murmur between kisses, breath brushing his lips.

He shakes his head. “Not even a little.”

He starts to kiss you deeper, like he wants to memorize it. You wonder if he is. Your hands move up under his shirt, and his breath slips, just for a second. Just long enough to make you smile into his mouth.

There’s nothing quiet about any of this. Just heat. And want. And finally.

You roll your hips once as a test. When he tightens his grip on you, you have half the mind to do it again, and again, and again. 

Suddenly, all you can think of are your clothes on the ground and him inside you. 

“Fuck,” he mutters. You release his lips from yours.

“Fuck?”

“Shh,” he hushes, trying to silence you, but you’re already laughing.

“Oh my god, Dr. Spencer Reid, esteemed supervisory special agent, holder of three PhDs, just said fuck.” You whisper the last part, hand clutching at your chest.  

“Will you please resume what we were just doing?”

“My fucking pleasure.”

“Jesus,” he squeezes out. Your hands remove themselves from where they were resting under his shirt and head to the waist of his pants. You watch his chest rise a little quicker, fall with a little more readiness. His hands release your hips and come up to grip your wrists. “I say fuck one time and I’ll never hear the end of it.” 

“Maybe we can put it in another context.” You unhook your legs from their desired place around his hips and scooch yourself down his body. Your fingers, which were just barely, ever so delicately toying with his waistband, curl into both the cotton of his pants and his boxers and tug down at once. He helps you, hips coming off the bed just enough for you to drop them both to his ankles. 

He’s already hard, and your mouth is already hollow, already anticipating something to fill a long-lasting void. You say his name, but it sounds off, because your mouth is already imagining itself wrapped around something far less innocent than words.

His hand comes up to your face, brushing your cheekbone, and the feeling is too soft to name but impossible to ignore. You feel as though all the heat in the room has gotten sucked between your legs, and it pools low, desire biting at the edges of restraint.

“You don’t have to,” he says, watching you spit in your hand. You roll your eyes before wrapping the newly wet hand around him. 

“I’m going to. Just stay like that.” 

You stroke him softly, just a few times before spitting on the tip and working it back down. He whispers your name like its wax, made to melt. You’re not thinking and your voice is velvet when you ask him how long it’s been since he’s been touched like this, the way he deserves to be. Too long, comes his response, and you vow to yourself to show him what he’s been missing.

The next time you bring your lips up to release more spit, you reach down and kiss it. Just the tip, and just ever-so-slightly. You’re not sure he noticed at first, so you do it again, this time more pronounced, and then he’s removing his hand from your face and bringing it up to your hair. His grip is firm enough to anchor, not enough to command. 

When you open your lips more, he tightens his grip. When you make your way down, syrup-slick and mouth dripping of sin, he coils his want at the nape of your neck and pulls. You moan around him, which earns you another tug. 

“That feels good,” he whispers. “So fucking good.”

You’re drunk enough that the praise feels more than trembling and temporary. You take it for more than it probably is and pick up your pace.

He lasts not a minute longer before he’s guiding you off of him, and you couch as you come up for air. 

“I don’t want to finish yet,” he mumbles.

“No?”

“No.” He pulls you up off the ground, one hand on your wrist and the other still in your hair. “Wanna take care of you too. Do you want that? Yeah? Lie down for me.”

You do as you're told, nodding along the way, agreeing fervently and with little free will. You’re drooling, enough that it slips past your lips. He brings his index finger up to your face, collecting it on the pad of his finger and pushing it back into your mouth. Instinctively, you suck. He groans, low, a noise you never would have expected to hear from him, and it makes you shut your legs, thighs rubbing together slightly as you try to fight the feeling festering around your limbs.

He kneels before you, the same way you had with him. “Is this what you want?” You nod. “No, use your words.” He pries your legs open, blows between them. 

Your back is coming up off the bed, enough for him to bring a hand up and grab your waist again. “Yes.”

He wastes little time attaching his mouth to you, tongue everywhere, while his fingers leave bruises in your side. One of your hands is gripping the sheets so hard you can feel your fingernails digging into your palm even through it. This can’t be real, you think, because nothing real feels this good. And this feels so, so good. 

You feel fucked out and he hasn’t even put anything inside of you. It’s just his tongue swiping against you, swirling around your clit, sucking your clit, kissing your clit. You can’t think. At some time you stop being aware of what he’s doing and just let him do it.

His hand leaves your hip and you feel it pulse, throbbing at the loss of harsh connection. Then, he forces your fist to open, to release the white fabric, and he locks your fingers together. It feels intimate, more intimate than his mouth on you, and if you were sober you might have shrugged him away. But you’re not. You’re drunk. Very drunk. So instead you hold his hand harder.

His free hand is trailing along your thigh, and when you glance down at him his eyes are closed, and he looks content, satisfied, and you’re not sure you ever want to unfold from this position. He uses his other hand to trail up and down your thigh before his errant fingers find their way farther up your legs. 

When he slips two inside you, both at once, no warning, you mewl.

He detaches his mouth from you, like he wants to focus solely on finger fucking you. When you glance down at him again, he gives you a perfunctory smile before focusing back at the task he’s chosen to take up. He’s practically gift-wrapping your orgasm. 

“Right there,” you choke out when his fingers curl at the exact right moment in the exact right spot. You don’t announce that you’re coming, but Spencer is a genius. You’re sure he can figure it out. Everything comes undone in waves, the way seafoam spits back into the sand before dissipating, carrying itself back out into a vaster part of the water. 

“Good job,” he says. He kisses you. You can taste your slick on his lips.

“Spencer.”

“You’ve said that already.” You’d laugh if you weren’t so unraveled. “I’m gonna fuck you now, okay?”

“Mhm.”

“What did we say about using our words?”

“To… use them?”

“You’re so smart,” he says, and you can hear him breathing in the way that means he’s trying not to laugh as he presses scattered kisses across your cheek, jaw, lips. “Can you speak up and show me how smart you are?”

“I want you to fuck me.”

“Knew you had it in you.” One of his hands is pressed into the mattress next to your head, and the other is absent from your body. When you finally open your eyes, you look down to see him lining himself up with you.

There’s a pinch in your throat as you feel him ease himself inside, slowly, deliberately, like he’s scared you might crumble and break beneath him. You won’t, which you assure him by using one hand to grab onto his bicep and the other to rest on his hip, guiding him all the way inside of you. 

"I got so mad, earlier," he says. "When he was talking about you like that."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," he whispers. "Don't fucking apologize."

The heat is back, swirling in your stomach, rushing up your chest like every vein you have has replaced blood with feverish fire. Spencer throws more gasoline on it when he slides almost all the way out, then pushes himself back in. You’re quiet, and even the air around you seems to have hushed itself. 

When he finds a rhythm, he takes advantage of it. Fucks you a little harder, just enough that you can’t close your mouth, can’t quiet yourself even when you try. You’re trying to tread carefully, but you don’t have it in you to not tip your chin up and search for a kiss. You move your other hand to wrap around his forearm, the one right next to your head, and you can’t stop yourself from digging your nails into the skin when he gives you one particularly hard thrust.

“Do that again,” you whisper.

“This?” he asks, though it’s more of a mock. He does it again, this time a little slower. You feel like crying, because you have no other outlet for what exactly it is you’re currently feeling. When he does it again you have no choice but to squeeze your eyes shut. He kisses you again, idly, like you’ve got all the time in the world. You’re not sure you have more than five minutes in you before you pass out. “You feel so good.”

“Needed you.”

“Yeah?” he says. Your words seem to have made him snap his hips against yours a little harder. 

He uses one of his hands to grab under your thigh, then pushes your leg up. You let out a broken moan you don’t even register as your own until he stretches you farther apart and you do it again. You’d be embarrassed if you weren’t clawing at an indescribable edge. You feel ripe. Nothing holy is coming for you. You arch your back like it might. 

"Mine." He says it while looking down at you. He says it with his chest. He says it like it's an absolute.

You bring your hand to the back of his neck and make him kiss you. Once for the thrill, twice just to feel the burn of it really settle in. 

Then you come. And everything else does, too. It’s unraveling. Not fingers but friction, not skin but static, not breath but flood. The room is slipping sideways, hips first, mouth second. you forget your name or maybe you give it away. There's no shape to anything, to the sting between your legs, only pulse — wet, reckless, existing in the hollows of your thighs. When he bends down and lets out a sound that sounds suspiciously like your name, your teeth catch on his shoulder like a warning. He doesn’t flinch. You bite down harder.

Nothing makes sense for a while except the sound of the air-conditioner. 

Spencer says something. Then again. Then, he taps your cheek twice, says your name until you come to.

“Hm?”

“You okay?”

“‘m okay. Are you okay?”

He laughs. It’s quiet and hoarse and still warm. “Yes ma’am.”

“Hmmmm.”

“Hmm what?’

“I like that. We’ll use that ‘nother time.” You let out a heavy sigh as he chuckles. He slips out of you and you suck in a breath that catches in the pockets of your teeth, cold and shocking against the roof of your mouth.

“Sorry.” You shake your head and hope it conveys that he has nothing to apologize for. He rolls over next to you. “You should pee.”

“Pee schmee.”

“I think I’m gonna retract my previous statements about your high level of intelligence now.” You smack him with your hand and laugh, hearty and probably too loud.

“I’m still drunk,” you say after a few more moments of silence.

“I think that’s how that whole drinking thing works, yeah.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.” His answer comes quicker than you were expecting.

“Okay. Me neither. Just checking.” You blow hair out of your face, and when that doesn’t work you bring a palm up and use the strength of four fingers to wipe it away from the sweat gathering in satin sheets across your skin. “I hate this room.”

“Me too.”

“I don’t hate you,” you whisper.

“Well,” he whispers back. “I don’t hate you either.”

“Do you wanna maybe… I don’t know. Not be on the job tomorrow morning?”

It might just be the alcohol, but his expression is soft and lush, like when dawn’s light shudders through early morning fog. 

“I would like that.”

[girllblogging777]

𝜗𝜚 𝑰𝑻'𝑺 𝑵𝑶𝑾 𝑶𝑹 𝑵𝑬𝑽𝑬𝑹

summary : spencer wants to put an end to the teasing and attempts to set him up during a night out. so, he blurts out his bigest secret - involving a mysterious woman, the promise of forever, and a tiny vegas chapel word count : 1.5k pairings : spencer reid x secret wife! reader (highschool sweethearts, hidden relationship) notes : based on this request, hope u like it !!

“come on, pretty boy” morgan laughs out in reaction to spencer’s hundredth glare he’s thrown at his colleague since the beginning of the evening. “live a little. the bar is full of girls and you’re staying here with tolstoy ?”

he points to the book on his lap, that spencer thought he’d made a good job at concealing.

“it’s pushkin,” reid mumbles under his breath in correction.

the abrupt beat drop cuts off their conversation and he finally releases a breath, right before a quite drunk and giggly emily decides to add in.

“yeah, and he’s pushing !”

and really, he was.

actually, everyone tonight seemed to be doing nothing but pushing spencer to the edge, making him lose all of his very minimal leftover patience after this week’s case. going out with the team was supposed to lighten up their mood, and let them bond over drinks and a fun time.

but it was all he hated. loud music, sticky hands and the heavy smell of sweat in a room full of people he couldn’t care less about. simply being here felt like the biggest chore for him, when all he wanted was to be home.

home, where you were.

his thoughts wandered to you, a predictable path he’d learned not to resist anymore. in the quiet of your shared apartment, far away from the bar and its buzzing energy, you were probably curled up on the couch right now, waiting for him to come back.

fingers clenching reflexively against his emotional support copy of the captain’s daughter - the second hand one, he wouldn’t dare take the special edition he’d gotten from you to a bar, of all places - he closed his eyes.

breathe in, and out.

five things he can see - the table with its empty glasses, reflecting the light of the dusty disco ball. a half full ashtray, the girls’ purses he was supposed to keep an eye on, where were the girls ? his own messenger bag, his cardigan thrown over the chair.

“hey, reid !” jj shouts over the music, coming back with another round of drinks, the glasses are full this time. for now.

“cute girl over there at the bar keep staring at you !” she says in attempt to lighten things up.

don’t look up, it’s no bother. she’s not her anyway.

four things he can smell - alcohol, strong and biter. sweat, cigarette smoke, hand sanitizer.

when he does turn to look around, all of the team is back in time for refreshments. sitting back down around their little table, cramped in the booth and its leather seats, he tries to drown out the thoughts.

“you know,” emily slurs right into his ear “they’re right… you deserve to allow yourself to have a good time, genius.”

and her intentions are nice, although masked by a fair share of alcohol. all of his friends only want the best for him, after all… if only they knew.

penelope chimes in, giddy at the fact that her favourite topic on earth - spencer’s love life, or lack thereof - found its way to the table.

“hey, be nice to him !” she warns, pointing an accusatory finger towards emily. “we know reid can pull, that’s a given. the only reason he doesn’t is because he refuses to waste his time on people who don't deserve him... like the absolute diva he is.”

three things he can hear - morgan chuckling. because obviously, the last part was directed to him. another stupid techno song coming on. and glasses clinking.

“cheers to that, kiddos !” rossi winks.

spencer takes ahold of his drink, trying to keep himself busy with the glass instead of spilling any lemonade - or secrets he'd later regret.

the cold beverage soothes his throat, helping him stay focused on something other than the heavy gazes currently piercing right through him. a few feet away at the bar, those girls weren't exactly subtle about staring at him. such a neat looking guy, with silky chocolate curls and an almost shy slender figure, stood out from the friday night crowd.

breathe in, and out.

it's all too much, he can't handle it anymore. his hands reach for the wallet in his back pocket, he'll just pay and leave. mutter something about a migraine, and finally head far away from here.

"you know," morgan adds, unaware his palm on spencer's shoulder does nothing but fuel his inner panic and send him into further turmoil. "one of these days, we might just have to forcefullly introduce you to someone. 'bet the girls over there would love to be that someone."

"enough !"

he doesn't hear himself speak. ears ringing from the atrocious music he can't bear anymore, he feels as if he was floating outside of his body.

nothing could've prevented him from what he said next.

"i already have a someone, okay ?" sharp, the tone he uses is unlike him, and surprises all of them. "and i don't need you to tell me what to do, or who to be with. i'm not a kid, i'm married !"

if a disco ball had a soul, pretty sure the one above his head would look down at him and sigh, reflecting nothing but the cutting fragments of the frustration he emanates.

the truth needs to be faced.

but the truth, no matter how beautiful and real, didn't exactly need to come out tonight, when alcohol and teasing had taken over all of his friends. he saw it in the way penelope stilled, jj's jaw dropped, and emily's stoicism turned into wide eyes and raised brows.

only hotch stayed his usual calm, collected self. he'd seen the marital status on spencer's file ages ago, and never bothered to mention it again. after all, a good profiler didn't need to see a ring - they all should've read into spencer's mysterious phone calls in empty conference rooms, and meticulously packed lunches covered in pink sticky notes.

however, no one seemed to care that much. enough, at least, to figure out he was married.

"...since. when." questions penelope, whose heavy bracelets jingle when she covers her mouth with her hands.

spencer's answer comes dry, fumbling with the wallet he'd just taken out. meticulously, he pulls out a small picture he'd carefully kept tucked away for, well, ages.

"since... ever ?" he attempts, head tilting shyly. "the wedding in vegas took place two thousand and sixty seven days ago. but technically, we've been together since before i joined the bau. i was seventeen," he corrects factually.

seventeen when the stars aligned, the universe granting him what would become his anchor in the sea, his shelter during the storm. at the mention of a wedding, memories of a rainy summer night led by impulsive decisions rushes back. he'd never been one to act precipitately, but the decision you two had made that night, he'd never regretted.

none of them can believe what he’s saying, looking at him as if he’d just taken a bomb out of his messenger bag and displayed it right there, on the sticky wooden table.

“MARRIED ? IN VEGAS ?”

then, it's kind of all a blur. he vaguely remembers showing the tiny black and white photograph to them, ears turning slightly pink. a plethora of questions hit him, to which he answers obligedly. as hard as it is to admit, spencer likes to be able to talk about you without any barriers, for once.

"do you guys live together ?"

"how come we've never met her ?"

"does she know you don't talk about it at work ?"

"is she a cat or a dog person ?"

all of a sudden, it seems as if they all want to know the most uninteresting and mundane aspects of his life, each question more surprising than the last - the latter coming from a very thrilled penelope, buzzing with some sort of girl power energy and from a lot of cocktails.

two things he can smell - curiosity, strong and pulsating through them. an imminent desire to crawl back to your safe arms.

then, the floodgates open, and he lets it all out. he mentions the first day of highschool, how lost and lonely he felt. his mother's trips to the hospital, your hand in his everytime. a shy kiss on the mouth after graduating, the one of many not so shy ones. summer vacations to his birth state. a guy dressed as elvis. i do's and cheap rings a size too small.

when spencer's heart feels lighter and the adrenaline subsides, he promises everyone he'll introduce you to them. then, he wastes no time calling a cab for his drunken friends whose inebriety he feels deeply grateful for - he knows he'll ned to face the remarks later, but it gives him some time - and rushes home.

stairs, fifteen steps. his key in the lock.

the door opens to you, half asleep and smiling brightly. you're wearing one of his shirts that’s a little too big for you, slightly showing your shoulder. the sound of his familiar footsteps made your earls perk up.

"they know," he blurts out, arms wrapping desperately around your waist. "i told them everything, i couldn't hold it anymore"

giggling, you don't ask. simply lean into him and laugh, because you figured it out the minute you saw his distraught expression.

one thing he can taste - your soft lips against his.

a/n : don’t forget to reblog and comment if you enjoyed reading !! love u mwah mwah

@tateshifts @gf2bellamy @xervoxs @kaz-03 @cynbx @sleepysleepnomore @emerkinsella89 @sweetheartspence @g4rvez-r3id @peanutalergy @keirareidss @eternlmoonshine @khaleesibeach @xbluereid @spencilweidblog @corollaim @mostofmeghan @siriuslyval03 @midn1ght-ra1n @rose-of-the-grave @copper-rose-strings @irisinlovee @thecrimsonfog @glossiercheek

[whisperedmeg]

LIKE REAL PEOPLE DO ⟢ spencer reid x greenaway!reader

summary: a follow-up doctor’s appointment leaves you with medical clearance, a filthy dream, and a rapidly deteriorating ability to act normal around your boyfriend spencer reid. genre: smut (with a lil angst & hurt/comfort) tags/warnings: 18+ MDNI! reader is elle's sister, mentions of gunshot wound/surgery, sex dream, miscommunication (or more like lack thereof), pent-up horniness, incredibly tender & thoughtful spencer reid, making out, dry humping, fingering, oral (f receiving), handjob, very lovey dovey p-in-v sex, spencer calls reader angel & sweetheart, no use of y/n. title from the hozier song. 6.6k words a/n: wow i missed writing smut!! hope you guys enjoy this one as much as i loved writing it. GIF creds to @reidgif 🫶🏼

greenaway!reader masterlist 🥀

The problem with bringing Spencer Reid to a follow-up appointment is that he takes follow-up appointments very seriously.

You sit on the paper-lined exam table in a gown that does nothing for your dignity. In the chair beside you, Spencer has his hands folded neatly in his lap, his expression locked into that polite, attentive mask he wears when he is one second away from making your life worse with a technically reasonable question.

You should have come to this appointment alone.

Instead, Spencer drove you here, walked you in, sat beside you in the waiting room, and then stayed because somewhere in the last few months, the line between your life and his got erased so thoroughly neither of you even pretended to look for it.

The doctor flips through your scans. “Everything looks good,” he says. “You’re healing well. Scar tissue is forming the way we want it to. You can keep increasing your workouts gradually, and as long as you’re comfortable, you can resume regular sexual activity, including intercourse.”

The room goes silent.

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

He clears his throat.

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

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

You make a soft sound of despair.

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

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

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

Does not look at you.

Interesting.

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

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

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

The silence stretches just long enough to get weird.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re such a loser.”

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

Your pulse does something deeply unhelpful.

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

—

That night, sleep gets hold of you slowly.

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

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

Now, his mouth is already on yours.

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

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

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

You wake up.

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

Which is offensive, frankly.

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

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

Spencer makes a sleepy sound and rolls slightly toward you.

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

“Y’okay?” he murmurs.

You almost laugh. “Mm-hm.”

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

“Astute observation, doc.”

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

The tenderness of it nearly kills you.

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

Morning does nothing to improve your mood.

By lunch, you are deeply tired of yourself.

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

You don’t look at him. “No.”

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

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

His brows draw together. “Me?”

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

Something flickers across his face. 

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

“Partly.”

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

You glare at him.

He waits.

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

“Nothing,” you mutter.

“That’s definitely not true.”

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

“Annoying how?”

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

Spencer blinks.

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

To your annoyance, the corner of his mouth twitches.

“This isn’t funny,” you say.

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

You glare at him until the twitch fades.

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

The room goes quieter around the truth of that.

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

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

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

His eyebrows go up. “A monk.”

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

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

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

“Just what?” you ask.

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

You let that sit for a second.

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

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

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

His eyes flick back to yours.

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

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

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

Spencer’s mouth twitches. “Monastic.”

“You know what I mean.”

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

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

He gives you a look that says really?

You fold your arms tighter. “Drop it.”

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

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

He blinks. “What does that mean?”

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

“Why?”

“Spencer.”

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

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

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

He goes perfectly still.

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

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

For one long second, Spencer just stares at you.

“Oh,” he says faintly.

You glare at him. “Yeah. Oh.”

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

“Please don’t say it like that.”

“How should I say it?”

“Preferably not at all.”

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

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

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

Spencer huffs a quiet breath. “My vibe.”

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

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

The question lands low in your stomach.

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

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

You tilt your chin up. “Good.”

That does it.

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

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

He backs you into the counter.

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

“You okay?”

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

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

That does something to him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You suck in a sharp breath.

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

But this is different.

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

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

Spencer notices, because of course he does.

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

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

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

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

Spencer waits.

You swallow. “It just feels… different.”

Understanding moves through his face so gently it almost hurts. 

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

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

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

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

Your fingers thread into his hair.

“Spencer,” you whisper.

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

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

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

“I’m just being myself,” he says.

You narrow your eyes. “Exactly.”

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

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

Your head falls back. The room spins pleasantly.

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

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

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

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

“Missed this?” you tease.

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

You hum. “Try me.”

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

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

Heat flashes through you.

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

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

You do it again.

“Who said anything about fair?”

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

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

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

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

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

He looks down, mortified. “Oh no.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Spencer,” you gasp.

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

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

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

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

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

“Jesus,” he breathes.

“Hi,” you murmur, smug and breathless.

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

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

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

“You’re going to what?”

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

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

Afterward, neither of you goes very far.

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

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

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

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

“Any pain?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spencer’s eyes stay on yours.

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

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

“Okay,” he murmurs.

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

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

“Still okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” you whisper. “Promise.”

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

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

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

Your fingers tighten on his shoulders. “Spencer.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“More,” you whisper.

Spencer’s eyes search yours. “Yeah?”

You nod. “Yeah.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I love you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a long moment, neither of you moves.

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

You look wrecked. He looks worse.

“Hi,” you whisper.

He huffs a disbelieving laugh. “Hi.”

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

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

“That’d be awfully inconvenient.”

“Very.”

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

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

His fingers drift to your scar again.

Your hand finds his hair. “Spencer.”

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

“Yeah?” he asks quietly.

You shake your head. “Nothing.”

His expression says liar with devastating affection.

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

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

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

Then Spencer laughs under his breath.

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

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

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

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

“You absolutely are.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spencer goes very still.

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

“I mean nothing. Go to sleep.”

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

You make a muffled sound of regret into his shoulder.

“When was it?”

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

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

“A while, Spencer.”

He waits.

Of course he waits.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His shoulders shake with another laugh. “Wow.”

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

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

“You’ll survive.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spencer answers by drawing you a little closer.

You let him.

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

ᝰ.ᐟ

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

PSA: likes do very little for promoting posts on tumblr! if you'd like to support a fic, please reblog!

[nereidprinc3ss]

bambi

in which spencer reid and fem!reader fuck like they missed each other (because they always do) and he teases her for her shaky legs

18+ (smut) warnings/tags: softdom spencer, piv sex (riding, a first for nereidprinc3ss) /oral f receiving (in that order) mentions of him accidentally grabbing her hips too hard, slight somno SORT OF like he starts going down on her while she’s sleepy and then she kind of goes in and out but its all consensual, sorry haters i fucking love sleepy sex and I always will, teasing, lots of praise, fluffy, established relationship, he loves her badddd, aftercare, literally nothing bad happens no angst for once they just are having sex cause they are in love which is arguably the most superior kind of sex! a/n: I don’t think I’ve ever written smut that is so wham bam thank you ma’am like really we just get RIGHT into it!! also no gif no pics we r going old nereidprinc3ss on this one I hope you loveeee!!!

You roll over onto Spencer and kiss once, long and deep and sweet. He hums into it, too whipped to pretend like he’s got self control or respect, hands finding the soft skin of your bare waist and settling there. 

How it got to this point so quickly, no more than fifteen minutes after he walked through the door, you can’t say. Usually the two of you are a bit more domestic when he gets home from a case, but eight days is a long time to be apart, and the trail of clothing leading from the welcome mat to the foot of the bed attests to that. 

So does the lack of teasing, of begging—at least, a lack up until this point. Right now, there’s only him, patient and content to let you play at being in charge. You pull back and reach down to grab him gently, aligning him at your entrance with a trembling hand. This part, you’re not usually responsible for. 

He assures you with a hand to the small of your back, rubbing soothing circles. “You got it. Slowly.”

You do as he says, brow furrowing in focus as you sink down an inch or two onto him. Spencer’s breathing grows erratic as you take more and more of him, and in a heroic display of overachieving, you take the rest of him at once with nothing but a squeak. He laughs breathily as his fingers dig into your hips. 

“Fuck—I said slow.”

You can’t think. The overwhelm of it all is too much as you crumple forward onto his chest. The subtle rocking you’re doing to try and alleviate some of the pressure in your core is apparently too much as he stops you by the hips, fingers pressing into those same tender spots.

Spencer’s breath is ragged. “Don’t… do not move.”

“Fuck,” you breathe into his shoulder, long and drawn out as despite his wishes you wriggle around, trying to get comfortable. “Oh my god.”

“My lovely girl, please… please don’t move,” Spencer gasps, a plead, and you try to stop for him, nuzzling even deeper against his neck. “I need a minute.”

“It’s too much,” you slur, dizzy as you try to adjust to the feeling. “Please.” You don’t know what you’re asking for. Maybe relief from the sensation that he can’t offer you. Maybe more. 

Spencer is undone by you—the way you writhe on top of him, the way your voice shakes, the way you’re so totally and completely overwhelmed and he can feel it and he loves it. 

“Baby,” he breathes, and he meant to say a lot more than that, but it’s the best he can manage when he is this overstimulated. “Baby,” he whispers again, wrapping his arms around you in an effort to ground you, to give you something else to focus on as you both get used to the feeling. 

It’s going well—for a moment, before your back is arching. 

“Spence, I need to move, I can’t—”

“Okay, okay.” He takes a deep breath, returning his hands to your waist and mentally preparing himself not to cum early. He’s desperate to give you want you want, to feel you like this. “Go ahead. Move, honey. Please.”

By the time you slowly lift your hips up and drop back down with a low cry, Spencer’s lost. His head falls back against the pillow and his eyes squeeze shut. 

“Fuck,” he groans. “Oh, angel, I missed you.”

You do it again, motivated by his praise, and he can hear your little gasps and desperate gulps of air. 

“I missed you so much,” you whine and clench around him, pleasure so intense it’s a resounding ache in the far reaches of your body. “Oh, fuck, Spencer.”

Spencer shivers. He loves when you make it personal, when you say his name like that and it becomes clear this isn’t just about the physical.

“My girl. Just like that. Doing so well, baby, just like that.”

Each pass of your hips has you whining. Your lips skim over his neck, not cognizant enough to actually kiss—only to know that you want the contact. 

“Please can I go faster?”

Spencer almost doesn’t realize you’re speaking to him he’s so lost in pleasure. The idea of faster is as compelling as it is troublesome. Spencer doesn’t know if he can’t take faster, not when he has you like this, but he certainly wants to find out. 

“Yeah, lovely. Do whatever feels good.”

You readjust and begin to pick up the pace, stumbling over a few false starts as it’s clearly more sensation than you’d been prepared for. 

Spencer, on the other hand, has his eyes screwed shut tight, and is attempting to draw a two-dimensional Császár polyhedron on your back, but he loses his place with every twitch of your hips, so eventually he decides to trace imperfect Mandelbrots down your spine—anything to avoid thinking about how the pH of your body interacts with sweet vanilla perfume to create a scent so deeply intoxicating he’d leave his entire life behind just to trail after it, or how you fucking feel against him, on top of him, around him, how miraculous it is that you keep letting him touch you—

“Oh—” you whine quietly, a strangled sort of noise that has his heart skipping. Your hand tangles desperately in his hair as you rock your hips faster and faster and he lets out a tortured groan. “Spencer, oh my fucking god.”

“I know, baby,” he manages, endeared by the fact that you feel so good you have to share it with him. Even now you’re trying to explain it because you want him to be part of it—as if he doesn’t know exactly what you’re feeling already. “That feels good, huh?”

“Mm—f—eels—” you cut yourself off with a cry into the crook of his neck, and he holds the back of your head, vision greying as he stares unseeing at the ceiling because if he looks down this’ll be over too soon. 

“You’re so good,” he breathes, “you’re perfect.”He hears you gasp at the same time as your rhythm falters, and presses a kiss somewhere indiscriminately on your head. “Gonna cum?” He murmurs in your ear, and you nod desperately, rutting against him hopelessly as your thighs tremble from exertion. 

Even the smallest drop-off in friction has his head spinning like he stood up too quickly, so he gives himself enough leverage to start fucking you. You cry out and shift your weight like you’re going to try and evade the feeling—self-sabotage, you always do this—and he again has to hold your hips in an iron vice, just to force you to feel it. 

“You’re okay, I’m gonna get you there.”

“Fuck!” You very nearly yell, still trying to wriggle away up until the very last second like the tide going out before the tsunami comes. When you do cum, your demeanor instantly changes—you get heavy and clingy and whiny as you rock back and forth through your orgasm. 

“Good girl,” Spencer murmurs, being careful in the way he continues to fuck you until he reaches his peak as well, not long after. You shudder, and Spencer feels the way your entire body tenses the way it sometimes does after a particularly strong orgasm, and he fights his way out of the brain fog to rub your back with the skimming tips of his fingers. “Shh. You’re okay. Relax, baby.”

And you do, unwound by the dance of his hand and with a few shallow breaths that gradually deepen, until you’re once more slack on top of him. 

“You’re incredible,” he exhales, with his lips pressed to your hairline. 

So clearly overwhelmed, the only response you can muster is a soft squeak. Spencer laughs fondly, still mapping the soft curve of your back. He feels the way you’re still attempting to train your breathing and kisses your hair again. “What do you need, angel?”

“I’m s’posed to be taking care of you,” you slur. Spencer chuckles again and his brow knits. 

“According to who?”

“According to… I was on top…”

“Yeah. You did all the hard stuff. Your legs are shaking.”

You whine softly. “No they’re not.”

His hand slides down to your thigh, and he rubs the trembling muscles. 

“No? No Bambi legs for me this time?”

You squeeze them around his waist like you could shrink away from his touch. “Spence…”

“I’m teasing you, honey,” he murmurs, pressing kisses wherever he can reach. “You’re cute.”

“Hm.”

“Look at me,” he murmurs, angling his head expectantly as you slowly raise yours. The look on your face is so sweet—eyes half lidded, lips swollen and much higher in color than usual. Your cheek is warm to the touch. His heart flutters like it did on your first date, and the first time he kissed you, and the first time you fell asleep on his shoulder. This view will never get old. “Wow. Look at you, beautiful girl. Can I have a kiss?”

And you grant him his wish, with a long, soft kiss that’s worth every second of that burning feeling in his lungs, every time. 

Eventually you huff out the remainder of your air against his well-kissed lips and your head flops to his chest. 

“I’m sleepy.”

“So go to sleep,” he murmurs, so warm from your kiss he feels nothing could be wrong in the world at this moment. 

“I can’t.”

“Why’s that?”

“’Cause you just got home ’nd I missed you and I wanna spend time with you.”

“We have three days to spend together. If you go to sleep now, we’ll actually get more time together tomorrow.”

“But it’s more about, like, how it feels—how much time it feels like we spend together right when you get home, and if I go to sleep now, it’s gonna feel like less time, and—basically you’re just not understanding my math.”

“What math?” He laughs, continuing to rub your legs all the way up to your hips, at which point you hiss and buck—a very visceral feeling when he’s still inside of you. “What? What hurts?”

“You tried to fucking tear my hip flexors from my body, is what hurts,” you grumble. 

“Tender?”

“Mhm.”

“I’m really sorry, angel. Tylenol?”

“Mm-mm. Can you kiss me better?” Sleep stains your voice. Spencer smiles to himself. 

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.”

“Lie down.”

Again you whine as you slip off of him, landing heavily on your back. He sits up, watches with so much affection the way you squeeze your thighs together and arch ever so slightly against the empty feeling. 

“Spencer?” You whisper as he cups the top of your knees. 

“Hm?”

“I love you.”

He pushes your legs apart gently so he can settle in between them and kisses you again. “I love you. So much.”

“Glad we’re on the same page.”

He presses a kiss to your head, down your neck, taking the scenic route to your hip bones, but you don’t seem to mind. 

The feeling of his lips gentle on the tender flesh has you humming softly, eyes fluttering shut as he showers you with gentle kisses. His traces every place his fingers had pressed earlier—feels the way you relax further underneath him. Nobody’s ever let him in this deeply before, but you trust him with everything you have; your body, your soul, in life or death, awake and in sleep. He’ll never take that for granted. He will never pass on an opportunity like this, to be the one who takes care of you, who puts you back together, as long as you’ll let him. 

Still dancing the line of consciousness, you part your legs, the slow drag of your bare thigh like a jumper cable to his heart. Fingertips trace desirous paths up your inner thigh and back down again. He recognizes this invitation for what it is, and he knows exactly how to give you what you want, but he asks first anyway. 

“Was that on purpose?”

“I d’know what you mean. I’m so sleepy,” you slur, and he believes the second half of your statement to be fact. 

Spencer pushes your thigh a little higher, and you’re completely pliable for him, completely gorgeous. As soon as he skims your thigh with a barely-there kiss, exactly the way you like, you’re lacing a hand in his hair. 

“Please, Spence…” you murmur, and he can’t argue with that. He especially can’t argue when you widen your legs just that slightest bit more, and your arousal is opalescent between your legs. 

He hums, trailing more kisses up until he’s setting the softest one yet against your clit. “Beautiful girl…”

The following gasp is so tiny he could’ve missed it if he wasn’t so attuned to your noises—and then he gets lost in you, making sure to keep his ministrations light as you already came twice recently and are sure to be sensitive. He doesn’t want to wake you from whatever twilight half-slumber trance you’re in, either, sensing that if he does you’ll fight all over again to stay up.

And admittedly, he adores being trusted to take care of you like this.

Your back arches as much as you’re capable of in this state, and he can’t help the way he just barely suctions onto you at that moment, coaxing a sighing moan so sweet and vulnerable and open it gives him chills. Fuck. He really wants to make you cum. But instead he practices patience, tracing you with the tip of his tongue, pressing gentle kisses everywhere you need them—he draws it out. For he doesn’t know how long. 

The first time you get close, your hips begin to roll, and you spout little ah’s, but he talks you back down again, laughing lightly at your angelic cooing, your little sounds of sleepy pleasure. Even now you’re so responsive, moving against his mouth as he slips a finger into your soaked entrance, fucks you for a moment, and then retreats. Maybe he’s being unfair, but you don’t seem to mind. 

In fact, you’re slipping in and out of sleep as he devours you for what feels like hours, one hand pressed lovingly to your stomach, stroking the soft skin there. Spencer’s never had this long to explore you with his mouth and he takes full advantage of every moment, but he keeps all his kisses and licks and touches gentle and reverent and so loving. 

You don’t know how long it’s been, or how many times he’s made you cum when he finally retreats—you half-wake just as he’s finishing cleaning you up. Soon he tosses the towel aside and presses feather-light kisses to each of your cheeks, tear-stained and warm with pleasure. You feel completely drained and completely loved. 

“Hi, sleeping beauty,” he murmurs, climbing into bed with you, at some point having gotten dressed. 

You manage an embarrassed little laugh. More tears crawl down your cheeks as you roll to your side. Spencer brushes them away and pulls you into him, slinging your thigh over his waist. He chuckles. 

“Shaky?”

“Stop,” you whine, embarrassed by his teasing, and hide your face against his chest. “That’s not my fault.”

“It’s nobody’s fault. It’s sweet,” he insists as he rubs your back. And then, a moment later, “So—do you think we’ve spent enough time together for tonight?”

“No.”

He sighs good-naturedly. 

“You’re gonna wear me out, you know that?”

“’F you… can’t handle the heat… get outta the kitchen.”

When he next speaks you can hear the smile in his voice. 

“Go to sleep, Bambi. Let’s see if you can walk in the morning.”

[bingbongsupremacy]

Knowing the Surprise

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Pregnant!Reader

Summary: You surprise Spencer about your pregnancy, only to find out he already knew.

There's no description of reader's body type, weight, skin color or hair.

The plan had been perfect.

You'd bought the tiny pair of socks weeks ago, hiding them in the back of your dresser drawer every time Spencer walked into the room. You'd rehearsed what you were going to say at least a hundred times.

Tonight was supposed to be the night. Spencer just got back from a trip to Ohio, one that'd taken him away from Virginia for over two weeks. You couldn't keep this secret for much longer. Your belly was starting to grow, and who knows how noticable it will be when Spencer comes back from his next case.

Spencer was working late on paperwork at the dining room table, glasses sliding down his nose as he typed away on his laptop. You stood in the hallway clutching a small white gift bag, your heart pounding so hard you were sure he could hear it from across the apartment.

"Spence? Do you have a minute, baby?" You ask softly while peering into the room, bag hidden behind your back.

"Hm? Yeah, what's up?" he answered without looking up.

"I got you something." You say stepping into the room and pulling the bag from behind you.

That made him glance up. His brows furrowed a bit in confusion. "A gift? It's not my birthday."

You smiled nervously. "Just open it."

He looked immediately suspicious. "You've been smiling like that for three days."

"I have not." You tried to suppress your grin.

"You have." He chuckled.

"I haven't!"

"You absolutely have."

You rolled your eyes and shoved the bag into his hands. "Just open it, Spence."

Spencer laughed softly and pulled out the tissue paper covering his surprise. Then he froze as his eyes landed on the bottom of the bag. He pulled out the pair of tiny white socks. They looked ridiculously small in his hands as he cupped them tenderly.

For a long moment, neither of you spoke. Finally, his is eyes lifted slowly to yours.

You felt tears already threatening. "Surprise?"

The biggest smile you'd ever seen spread across his face. "I knew it."

You blinked and your jaw dropped. "Wait."

Spencer started laughing.

"Wait!" you repeated. "How did you already know? I've been so careful, so I could surprise you!"

"I suspected." Spencer holds your gaze.

"Spencer!"

"I'm serious."

"No! No, absolutely not. There is no way you knew." You shook your head.

"I didn't know for certain," he corrected. "I suspected."

You crossed your arms. " What? How long?"

Spencer looked almost sheepish. "About a month."

"A MONTH?!" You gasped. You couldn't believe this.

"You started drinking ginger tea every morning." Spencer pointed to the pack of ginger tea packets on the kitchen counter.

"That's not evidence!" You argued.

"You hate ginger."

"I could've changed my mind!"

He gave you an 'are you serious' look. "I very clearly remember you telling me you'd rather swallow tea made from boiled rusted nail water than eat anything with ginger."

"Okay, fair." You grumbled.

He stood from his chair and walked over to you, pulling you into his arms. His touch was warm against your skin.

"You were also nauseous every morning for almost two weeks. That's when I really started wondering if you were okay." He mumbled into your temple.

"Lots of things cause nausea." You pointed out.

"You cried because a dog in a commercial learned how to sit."

Your face burned. "That dog worked really hard."

Spencer laughed. "You've also been taking naps."

"I take naps."

"You've never voluntarily taken naps."

"...Okay."

"And-"

"There's more?!" You turned to look him in the eye. Sometimes you forgot how observant he was.

"There was the day you almost bought prenatal vitamins before realizing I was standing next to you."

Your mouth fell open. "I thought you didn't see that!"

"I notice everything about you. I love you, and I want to know everything that's going on with you."

You groaned and buried your face in your hands. "I spent weeks planning this surprise."

"It was still a surprise. I mean, I wasn't sure. You confirmed it for me." Spencer gently rubs soothing circles into your shoulders. "I knew something was different. I had a theory. But I wasn't going to say anything until you were ready."

Your chest squeezed.

Spencer reached for your hands.

Suddenly the tears you'd been holding back spilled over.

His smile immediately disappeared when he noticed. "Oh no."

You laughed through the tears. "It's happy crying."

"Statistically speaking, people say that right before more crying."

You nodded. "Accurate. I definitely feel more tears coming. "

Spencer gently wiped a tear from your cheek. "You're really pregnant?"

The wonder in his voice made your heart ache. You nodded. "Yeah."

For the first time all evening, he looked genuinely overwhelmed. His eyes became glassy. "You are."

"I am." You grinned slightly. These hormones were seriously throwing you all over the place.

"We're having a baby... I'm having a baby with my best friend." Spencer whispered. A disbelieving laugh escaped him. He seemed a bit shocked. "We're having a baby."

You laughed too. "That's generally how pregnancy works, yes."

Spencer wrapped his arms around you so quickly you nearly stumbled.

The hug was tight, like he couldn't quite believe you or this moment was real. You felt him press his face into your hair. "I've been reading parenting books."

You pulled back. "You WHAT?"

His ears turned pink. "Only six."

"ONLY SIX?"

"I wanted to be prepared."

"You thought I was pregnant and immediately started studying?" You were in disbelief. Of course Spencer would immediately hit the books.

"That's usually how I handle things."

You couldn't stop laughing. "You're unbelievable."

"I know."

"What if I hadn't been pregnant? You would've been wasting your time."

Spencer shook his head. "First of all, learning, no matter the subject, is never a waste of time. Second of all, if you hadn't been pregnant now, I'd be helping prepare for the future when we did get pregnant."

His hand settled gently against your stomach. The gesture was tentative, almost reverent. Neither of you could feel anything yet. It was far too early.

But his eyes softened anyway. "You know," he murmured, "our kid is going to be smarter than both of us."

You snorted. "That's terrifying." You imagined having a tiny genius child running around the house.

"Very."

"Absolutely dangerous."

"Society may not survive."

You laughed as he kissed your forehead. Then he kissed your nose, your cheeks and lips. When he pulled away, he rested his forehead against yours. "I can't wait to meet them."

The emotion in his voice nearly made you cry again.

Spencer noticed immediately. "Oh no."

"It's happening again."

"The crying?"

"The crying."

He sighed dramatically and pulled you back into his arms. "Okay."

"What?"

"I'll go get tissues."

You laughed through your tears. "Good plan."

And as Spencer held you against his chest, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt, he thought that for once in his life, knowing the answer beforehand hadn't made the surprise any less wonderful.

[wonderlanderings]

Qualitative Over Quantitative

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: spencer reid x fem!reader 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 2.7k 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: early seasons spencer, a lot of data that might or might not be true, spencer rambling, talk about sex but honestly just pure fluff 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: In which Derek Morgan's teasing backfires spectacularly, and Spencer Reid accidentally reveals he's been keeping a very important secret.

: ̗̀➛ [𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧] [𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭] [𝐢𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐱]

𝐚/𝐧: I've been rewatching criminal minds and i can't stop thinking about him

The bullpen is winding down for the evening. The usual frantic hum of phones and keyboards has faded into a low, comfortable murmur—the sound of exhaustion finally winning the long war against urgency. Desk lamps cast small pools of amber light across scattered case files, illuminating coffee rings and margin scrawls in warm, fleeting gold. Somewhere across the floor, the ancient breakroom coffee maker hisses its last, bitter brew of the night, a sound almost like a sigh.

Derek Morgan leans back in his chair, the old springs groaning in protest. He tosses a pen idly between his fingers, a familiar, teasing smirk curving his mouth. “You know, Reid,” he says, loud enough for half the unit to hear, “for a genius, you really don’t know how to prioritize. All those encyclopaedic facts rattling around in your head, and you still haven’t figured out that Saturday nights are for living. Not for whatever obscure Russian novel you’re dissecting this week.”

Across the bullpen, Emily Prentiss looks up with the patient expression of someone who has witnessed this exact argument forty-seven times before. She doesn’t intervene. She’s learned.

Reid doesn’t look up from his case file, though his pen pauses for just a fraction of a second—a tell so small only someone watching closely would catch it. “Dostoevsky is hardly obscure,” he says, tone perfectly even. “And for the record, my Saturday nights are perfectly fulfilling, thank you.”

“Uh-huh.” Morgan chuckles, swivelling toward JJ and Prentiss like a talk show host inviting audience participation. “Tell me I’m wrong. Between the two of us—genius boy and yours truly—who do you think gets lucky more often?”

But before anyone can answer, Reid clears his throat.

“That's an entirely misleading metric,” he says.

Morgan's grin widens. “Oh, is it?”

“Yes, actually.” Reid sets his pen down with a soft click, and the team recognizes the signs immediately: the slight straightening of his spine, the way his fingers begin to tap a staccato rhythm against the table, the subtle tilt of his head as he shifts into lecture mode. He's about to do the math out loud.

“First of all,” Reid begins, holding up a finger, “‘getting lucky’ is a subjective, self-reported measure, which introduces significant recall bias and social desirability bias. People overestimate. Significantly. By as much as forty percent in some studies.” Another finger goes up. “Secondly, you're comparing two data points—you and me—without controlling for variables like opportunity, environment, or personal standards. You have a tendency to equate quantity with quality, which is statistically unsound.”

Morgan groans, dragging a hand down his face. “Here we go.”

Reid ignores him entirely, already mid-stride into the argument. His voice picks up speed—not quite rambling, but close, the way it does when he's genuinely enjoying himself. “Let's say, hypothetically, you sleep with a different woman every week. Generous, but possible. However—” He holds up a finger, ticking off points like a professor during office hours. “—you've also mentioned, on multiple occasions, that you don't ‘mix work with play’ and that you need at least one night to decompress. That leaves Friday and Saturday as your only viable windows. So let's assume sexual encounters occur on Friday or Saturday night. That's roughly two opportunities per week—but even then, not every weekend yields a new partner. You have off weeks. You get sick. Sometimes,” he adds, with the faintest hint of smugness, “women say no.”

Morgan's smirk twitches. “Okay, first of all—”

Reid tilts his head, gaze going distant as he does the numbers behind his eyes. His fingers twitch like he's physically calculating in the air. You've seen him do this a hundred times—map a geographic profile, run a probability tree, recite the entire history of some obscure piece of trivia. 

“Accounting for statistical probability of rejection, scheduling conflicts, and the inherent inefficiencies of the modern casual dating landscape—which, by the way, is heavily skewed by algorithmic dating app fatigue—your actual frequency likely drops to one new partner every ten to fourteen days. Optimistically.”

JJ is already grinning, resting her chin on her hand like she's watching her favourite courtroom drama. “I feel like I should stop you both,” she says, “but I really want to hear where he's going with this.”

Prentiss leans back in her chair, arms crossed. “Oh, he's going somewhere. You can always tell when he does the head-tilt.”

Morgan points a finger at Reid, though his voice has lost its edge—there's genuine affection underneath the exasperation. “Alright, fine. Let's say I'm one every two weeks. What's your number, pretty boy? Hm? When's the last time you even—”

“That's not the point,” Reid interrupts, a little too quickly.

He presses on, gaining momentum now. His voice picks up that familiar, rapid-fire cadence—the one that makes unsubs' heads spin and makes the rest of the team feel like they're sitting in on a TED Talk they didn't buy tickets for. His fingers have resumed their tapping, faster now, keeping time with the race of his thoughts.

"Now, consider a person in a committed, cohabitating relationship. Let's establish a baseline: the average frequency of sexual activity for couples in the early stages of domestic partnership—say, the first two years—ranges from three to five times per week, depending on variables like work stress, health, and general compatibility. Let's take the conservative estimate: every other day."

Morgan opens his mouth—to argue, to deflect, you're not sure—but Reid holds up a finger without looking, and Morgan closes it again.

"Now," Reid continues, "multiply that over a four-week month. The partnered individual is engaging in sexual activity approximately twelve to sixteen times per month. The single person cycling through weekly encounters—assuming one new partner per week, which we've already established is an overestimate—is averaging four times per month."

Morgan crosses his arms, jaw tight. He's not offended—they all know him well enough to recognize the difference—but he's definitely recalibrating. "So you're saying—"

He delivers the final blow with clinical precision, but there's something softer lurking underneath. 

"And you're not even accounting for quality of experience, emotional investment, or—most importantly—long-term satisfaction metrics," Reid continues, his voice quieter now, less performative. "A single meaningful connection, maintained over time, statistically outperforms high-frequency, low-retention encounters in nearly every category of reported happiness. The Harvard Grant Study—one of the longest longitudinal studies on human development—found that the single strongest predictor of life satisfaction wasn't career success or financial security. It was the warmth and consistency of close relationships."

He pauses. Swallows. 

"So, really, the question isn't who ‘get’s lucky’ more." His voice drops, barely above a murmur now. Intimate, almost. Like he's forgotten anyone else is in the room. "It's who ‘get’s lucky’ enough."

For a beat, no one speaks.

Then Prentiss raises her coffee cup in a slow, deliberate toast. "I believe you just got murdered by math, Morgan."

The tension breaks—but not entirely. JJ snickers. Morgan rubs the back of his neck, shaking his head, but there's no heat in it. "Man, I just asked a simple question."

"You asked a misleading question," Reid corrects, but his voice has lost its sharpness. He's retreating back into himself, the way his shoulders curl inward slightly, the way his gaze drops to the case file again. Like he's said too much. 

Morgan blinks, his smirk frozen mid-spread. He holds up a hand like he's stopping traffic. "Hold on. Hold on." His eyes narrow, processing, replaying something in his head. "You're talking about you."

Reid's mouth opens, then closes. A faint flush creeps up his neck—not the blotchy, embarrassed red of someone caught in a lie, but something softer. Pinker. The colour of someone who hadn't meant to say as much as he just did. His hand drifts to the back of his neck, a self-soothing gesture he doesn't even realize he has.

Prentiss leans forward, delighted, her elbows on her desk like she's settling in for a season finale. "Reid. Are you telling us you're in a serious, every-other-day relationship?"

"That's… not what I said." He adjusts his satchel strap, suddenly very interested in the grain of his desk. His fingers find the edge of a case file and straighten it unnecessarily. Then straighten it again. The file doesn't need straightening. Everyone knows it. No one says anything. "I was speaking hypothetically. Broad statistical trends. Aggregate data."

"Uh-huh." Morgan plants both hands on his desk and pushes up slightly. His grin is slow, dangerous, and utterly delighted. "You just compared yourself to me. Which means you're the one having sex every other day. With a girlfriend." He drags the word out like he's tasting it for the first time. 

JJ crosses her arms, mock-offended, though her eyes are warm. "Spencer Reid, how long has this been going on?"

Reid swallows. Hard. His gaze flickers to the window—not looking for an escape route, but for a moment of stillness. A place to land. When he looks back at the team, they see something they don't often get from him: not deflection, not a lecture, not a rapid-fire recitation of unrelated facts to change the subject.

Genuine, quiet vulnerability.

"Several months," he admits, low enough that they have to lean in to hear.

The word lands like a stone in still water. Ripples spreading outward. Morgan's smirk softens at the edges. JJ's arms uncross. Prentiss sits back slightly, her teasing expression fading into something more careful. More respectful.

No one pushes. Not yet.

But they're all looking at him differently now. Like they're seeing a new version of Spencer Reid—one who exists outside the bullpen, outside the case files, outside the lonely apartment they'd all quietly assumed he went home to every night.

"Kid." Morgan shakes his head, and there's something different in his voice now—not teasing, not needling. Something almost admiring. "I take it back. Every single thing. Every joke, every 'maybe try a bar sometime,' every time I said you'd die alone surrounded by books." He squeezes Reid's shoulder, a brief, grounding pressure. "You've been holding out on us."

Reid ducks his head, but the smallest smile tugs at his lips—shy, yes, but unmistakably real. It's not his knowing smirk or his closed-off court testimony expression. It's something softer. Something private, accidentally spilled. Like he's been keeping a secret so long that the act of letting it see daylight feels physically strange—but not unwelcome.

"You asked about frequency," he says, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug that's almost bashful. "I just answered the question."

"You really did," Prentiss says, grinning wide enough to crinkle her eyes. "In excruciating detail."

JJ tilts her head, studying him like a case file she's only just realized she misread completely. Her gaze is warm but probing—that particular JJ look that says I see you, and I'm not letting you off the hook that easily. "And for the record," she says, her voice gentle but pointed, "I'm going to need to meet this person. Several months and you never even mentioned her name? That's practically classified information. I'm officially offended."

Reid opens his mouth—maybe to deflect, maybe to recite something about privacy and healthy relationship boundaries, maybe to quote a study on the importance of keeping certain parts of one's life separate from one's workplace—but then he catches something over Morgan's shoulder.

His words die in his throat.

The elevator doors slide open with a soft, mechanical chime—the kind of sound so familiar it usually doesn't register anymore. But tonight, it cuts through the bullpen like a bell.

And there you are.

Standing by the elevator bank, keys looped loosely around your fingers, a worn file folder tucked under your arm. You've clearly just come up from the archives—there's a faint smudge of dust on your sleeve, pale grey against the fabric, and your hair is slightly askew from leaning over old case boxes, a few strands escaping to frame your face. The overhead light catches the curve of your jaw, the concentration in your brow.

You're not looking at them yet.

Your attention is still on the files in your hands—a thick stack, dog-eared and labeled in fading marker. You're flipping through them absently, lips moving just slightly as you read, your thumb holding your place in whatever document has captured your focus. 

Reid forgets how to breathe.

It's not dramatic—not in the way movies make it seem. There's no swelling music, no slow-motion montage. Just the sudden, startling realization that he has been holding himself together all evening, and now, seeing you, every carefully constructed wall is coming down.

You look tired.

He notices it first because he always notices it first—the slight droop of your shoulders, the way you're blinking a little too slowly at the pages in your hand. You've been in the archives for hours. Probably forgot to eat. Definitely forgot to drink water.

But you're also smiling. Just a little. A small, absent curve of your lips as you read whatever case file has captured your attention. It's the smile you get when you've found something good—a lead, a connection, a piece of the puzzle that was missing.

He loves that smile.

He loves the dust on your sleeve and the mess of your hair and the way you bite your lower lip when you're concentrating. He loves that you exist in the same building as him, the same world, the same moment.

He loves you.

And now everyone is about to know it.

Reid's flush, which had been fading to a manageable pink, returns with interest—creeping up his neck, flooding his cheeks, brushing the tips of his ears. But here's the thing that makes Morgan's eyebrows climb: Reid doesn't look away. He doesn't duck his head or pretend to read something.

Instead, that small, proud smile stays.

Grows, even.

Morgan is the first to put it together. Of course he is. He watches Reid's face change—watches the shyness give way to something steadier, something almost protective—and then he follows Reid's gaze across the bullpen.

His eyes land on you.

His smirk doesn't just return. It blooms.

"No," he breathes, barely above a whisper. Then, louder, disbelieving: "No."

Prentiss notices Morgan's reaction before she notices you. She glances at him, then at Reid, then follows the sightline like a guided missile. When she finds you—dust-smeared, distracted, muttering to yourself over a case file—her eyebrows climb.

She doesn't say anything. She just tilts her head, watching, cataloging, filing away every micro-expression on Reid's face for later analysis.

But her silence is louder than words.

The bullpen feels suspended. Held breath and half-finished sentences. Even the ancient coffee maker seems to have stopped hissing, as if it, too, is waiting.

Morgan turns back to Reid, slow and deliberate, like a man approaching a wild animal he's just realized is actually a house cat. His expression cycles through about six different emotions in the span of two seconds—confusion, disbelief, dawning recognition, and finally, something dangerously close to pride.

"You told us you were 'helping her with research.'" He makes air quotes, fingers curving with theatrical emphasis. "That's what you said. 'The archives are extensive, Morgan, and she's new, and it's purely professional, Morgan, stop reading into things, Morgan.'"

Reid's flush deepens—creeping up from his collar, brushing the tips of his ears, painting his cheekbones in soft, tell-tale pink—but he doesn't deny it. He doesn't deflect. He doesn't launch into a rapid-fire lecture about privacy or workplace relationships or the statistical unlikelihood of his personal life being anyone's business.

"I was helping with research," Reid says quietly. "That's how it started."

"And then?" Prentiss prompts, leaning forward like she's watching the season finale she didn't know she needed. Her coffee cup is still frozen in her hand, forgotten. She doesn't blink.

Reid's eyes don't leave yours.

The bullpen falls away. The desks, the case files, the amber glow of the lamps—all of it fades into background noise. There's only him. Only the way he's looking at you like you've rearranged his entire understanding of the universe.

"And then," he says, and his voice catches slightly—just a breath, just a fracture, but you hear it. You always hear it. "I realized I didn't want to stop."

[wonderlanderings]

The Experiment

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: spencer reid x fem!reader 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 3.1k 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: mdni, smut, not season specific i just like the picture, honestly I don't know what else, Spencer being a nerd but that's why i love him 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: Spencer Reid has never been able to resist an unsolved mystery. And tonight, you have just become his most fascinating one yet.

: ̗̀➛ [𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧] [𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭] [𝐢𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐱]

𝐚/𝐧: I had another thought about Spencer

In the quiet, sacred space of your shared bedroom—a sanctuary walled with books and the soft glow of a lamp he always insists on leaving on—Spencer Reid loves you like a prayer. Soft. Reverent. Spoken only for you, in a language that exists nowhere else.

His lovemaking is a quiet rebellion against the violence that has etched itself into the grooves of his memory. It is not performative; there is no audience here, no statistics to recite, no profile to construct. This is the most honest version of him—stripped of his defences, his nervous tangents, his armour of facts. He is so profoundly, achingly kind-hearted, so intellectually aware of the fragility of the human body and spirit, that the thought of causing you even a whisper of pain is not just unthinkable—it is sacrilegious. He treats your body like a rare manuscript, turning each page with a reverence that borders on awe.

He learns you the way he learns everything else: with relentless, obsessive devotion. But where his mind usually files away data for analysis, here he archives only for the sake of remembering. He catalogues the tremor in your thighs before you crest, the way your fingers twist and release the sheets in a rhythm only he can decipher, the soft, broken sound of his name falling from your lips like a confession he never expected to hear. He knows the exact flutter of your lashes that precedes a gasp, the precise arch of your spine that means he has found the angle that makes your mind go blissfully, beautifully blank.

He has memorized the delicate geography of your pleasure with cartographic precision: the spot behind your ear that makes you shiver, the hollow of your throat where he can feel your pulse racing, a frantic bird against his tongue, the dip at the base of your spine that makes you arch into him like a bow drawn taut. Every sound you make—the soft, breathy whimpers, the broken, desperate moans, the way your breath catches and stutters when he whispers your name against your collarbone—is a data point in the vast, intimate library he keeps of you.

But this is not cold analysis. There is no detachment here. This is worship, documented not in notebooks or files, but in the language of his hands, the reverent press of his lips, the quiet, trembling whispers he leaves against your skin like benedictions. When he moves inside you, it is with the patience of someone who has waited his whole life to be this close to another person. He watches you with those wide, dark eyes—eyes that have seen the worst of humanity—and in them, you see only wonder. Only you.

Until one night, a small, incidental variable is introduced.

It happens in the space between one breath and the next—a moment so fleeting, so unremarkable in its origin, that neither of you could have predicted the seismic shift it would cause. You are lost in the overwhelming sensation of him, the sharp, building tension coiling low in your own gut, when he reaches for your hips. The movement is meant to pull you closer, to deepen the connection, to anchor himself in the dizzying warmth of you. But his grip—usually so measured, so deliberately gentle—is unconsciously firmer than he intended.

His fingers bite into the soft flesh of your hips as he guides your rhythm, a subtle but undeniable directive in his hold. There is a quiet authority in the way he moves you, a flicker of something primal that slips past his usual careful restraint—a crack in the veneer of his control that he didn't even know was there. It is not cruel. It is not demanding in the way he fears. It is simply certain. A wordless claim, an unthinking possession, a momentary forgetting of his own carefully constructed rules.

Your head falls back, your fingers fisting in the sheets as the sensation ripples through you like a stone dropped into still water. A sound escapes your lips—not the soft, breathy whimpers he knows so well, but something deeper, hungrier, a sound that seems to surprise even you. Your hips roll against his grip, not pulling away, but pressing into it, chasing the delicious pressure of his hands, the unexpected thrill of being held so firmly.

Spencer's entire body goes rigid.

His mind, which has been blissfully quiet—a rare and precious thing, that silence, the only silence he has ever truly craved—suddenly snaps back to hyper-focus like a rubber band pulled taut and released. His hands on your hips freeze, his movements ceasing entirely as if someone has pressed pause on the world. The heat between you lingers, suspended, but the air in the room changes, thickens with the weight of his sudden, sharp awareness.

His eyes, dark and glazed with passion just a heartbeat ago, now sharpen with an almost forensic intensity as they search your face. He is reading you the way he reads a crime scene—every micro-expression, every flutter of your lashes, every shallow, uneven breath. The flush on your cheeks. The parted swell of your lips. The way your chest rises and falls in quick, uneven pants. He catalogues it all, his brilliant mind racing through a thousand calculations in the span of a single, suspended second.

But this is not a crime scene. You are not a victim. And the evidence he is gathering is not of trauma, but of something far more complicated.

He sees it now—the way your pupils are blown wide, dark and wanting. The way your body is still pressed against his, not recoiling, but seeking. The way your hips shifted against his grip, chasing the pressure of his fingers. The way that sound—that raw, desperate, beautiful sound—still seems to echo in the space between you.

He blinks. Once. Twice. The gears in his mind are audibly turning, cross-referencing, running a rapid-fire comparative analysis against every single data point he has ever collected on you.

"That," he breathes, his voice a little unsteady, still rough around the edges from the pleasure you had been building together. His throat works as he swallows, trying to recalibrate. "That was... new."

You feel a blush creep up your neck, spreading across your chest like warm honey. Embarrassment mingles with the lingering aftershocks of pleasure, leaving you warm and flustered beneath his intense, searching gaze. His eyes have not left your face—they are fixed on you with the kind of focused attention he usually reserves for cold cases and impossible puzzles.

"What was?" you ask, though you already know. You can still feel the echo of that sound in your own throat, the way it had surprised even you.

"That sound," he insists, his brow furrowed in genuine, scientific confusion. There is no accusation in his tone, only the desperate, almost frantic need of a man who has encountered an anomaly he cannot immediately explain. "You've never made that sound before. I would have remembered."

He says it with such certainty, such unshakeable confidence, that there is no room for argument. And you know he is right—of course he is right. He has filed them all away: every gasp, every sigh, every broken moan that has ever fallen from your lips, neatly organized in the vast, intimate library he keeps of you. Your pleasure is his favourite area of study, his most cherished collection. He knows the precise pitch of your breathy whimpers, the way your voice cracks when he hits that perfect spot, the shuddering exhalation you make when you finally let go, the soft, almost surprised laugh that sometimes escapes you in the quiet aftermath. He knows them all, has committed them to memory like verses of poetry he never wants to forget, like the lines of a book he could recite in his sleep.

And this—this low, guttural hum, this sound of startled surrender that seemed to rise from somewhere deep in your chest, raw and unfiltered and utterly unguarded—is entirely unprecedented.

His brow furrows deeper, and you can practically see the wheels turning behind his eyes. He is running diagnostics. He is comparing this new sound against the archive, searching for a match, finding none. The absence of precedent is clearly troubling him—not because he dislikes the sound, but because he did not predict it. Because it suggests that there are still corners of you he has not yet mapped, still responses he has not yet learned to anticipate.

And for a man who has built his entire identity around knowing, around understanding, around being prepared for every variable—that is a deeply unsettling thought.

He looks down at his hands, still gripping your hips, and for a moment, something flickers across his face. Surprise. Uncertainty. His thumbs trace soothing circles over the very spots where his fingers had pressed too hard, a silent apology in the gentleness of the gesture. The contrast is striking—the firm grip that had sparked this entire revelation, now softened into something almost penitent.

"Did I hurt you?" he asks, his voice softer now, the analytical sharpness giving way to a thread of genuine concern. It is the voice he uses when he is afraid he has made a mistake, when the fear of causing you pain overrides every other impulse in his body.

You shake your head, still breathless, still riding the lingering waves of sensation. "No. It was... it was good. Different. But good."

His eyes search yours for a long, suspended moment, weighing your words against the data of your flushed cheeks, your still-racing pulse, the way your chest rises and falls in quick, uneven breaths. He is reading every micro-expression, every subtle shift in your features, looking for any sign that you are hiding discomfort behind a brave smile.

But all he finds is truth.

His hands are still on your hips, but they have gone still now, frozen in place like a man who has suddenly realized he is holding something infinitely precious and infinitely fragile. He stares at you, and you can see the war raging behind his eyes—the part of him that wants to retreat into the safety of what he knows, and the part of him that is undeniably, irresistibly curious about what else he might discover if he lets himself be surprised.

You can almost hear the whir of his thoughts, the rapid-fire cross-referencing of variables, the way he's deconstructing the last ten seconds with the same forensic precision he'd use to crack an unsub's pattern. He replays the moment in his head, frame by frame, searching for the anomaly. The change in angle? No. The increase in pace? Unlikely. It was the pressure—the feeling of being anchored, of being taken. His fingers had dug into the soft flesh of your hips, and somewhere in that unconscious assertion of control, he had unlocked something he hadn't even known was there.

You watch him work through it, fascinated despite yourself. There is something almost unbearably endearing about the way he approaches your pleasure like it is the most important research project of his life—because, in a way, it is. His lips move silently, forming words he is not quite speaking aloud, testing hypotheses against the evidence of your flushed skin and ragged breaths.

You can see the moment he isolates the key factor—the pressure of his grip, the unconscious assertion of his own wanting, the way he had held you not like something precious to be protected, but like something his to keep.

There, you think, watching his eyes sharpen with recognition. He found it.

"Pressure," he says aloud, testing the word, letting it settle in the air between you. "The variable is pressure. Not just physical pressure, but—" He pauses, searching for the right terminology, his brow furrowing deeper. "The pressure of... of intention. Of certainty." He looks at you, his gaze searching, almost vulnerable. 

And then, a second later, something shifts.

A slow, predatory smile—something you have never seen before—curves his lips. It is not the soft, boyish smile he gives you over morning coffee, nor the awkward, self-deprecating grin he wears when he's rambling about something obscure. It is not the gentle, wondering expression he wears when he watches you sleep, or the shy, almost surprised smile that appears when you tell him you love him.

This is different.

This is the smile of a man who has just found the solution to a complex equation, who sees the answer laid out before him and cannot wait to test his theory. There is a spark in his eyes, a glint of something almost primal, and it sends a shiver down your spine that has nothing to do with the cold. It is the smile of someone who has spent his entire life in his own head, analysing and overthinking, and has suddenly discovered that his body has its own intelligence—and that intelligence knows exactly what it wants.

"Okay," he says, his voice dropping an octave. It is lower, rougher, stripped of its usual academic cadence. The careful enunciation is gone, replaced by something rawer, more immediate. He leans down, his lips brushing the shell of your ear, his breath hot against your skin, and you feel the words more than you hear them. "Let's run this experiment again."

He doesn't ask permission. There is no hesitant pause, no gentle inquiry of "Is this okay?" The question has already been answered—by your gasp, by the way your body arched into his grip, by the sound you made that he is now determined to recreate. 

He simply repeats the motion, but this time with intention. This time with purpose.

His hand roams your hip, his fingers splaying across the curve of your waist, spanning the soft flesh with an ownership that makes your breath catch. 

His grip is firm and unyielding as he pulls you down to grind on him, controlling the rhythm with a confidence that feels almost foreign on him.

The air leaves your lungs in a sharp exhale, morphing into that same, low, surrendering hum. The sound vibrates through your chest, your throat, spilling out of you like you have no choice in the matter, like your body has decided to speak a language your mind has never learned. Your fingers clutch at his shoulders, nails digging into him, anchoring yourself to him as the world tilts dangerously off its axis.

Spencer's eyes darken at the sound. His jaw tightens, a muscle feathering in his cheek. He lets out a shuddering breath, and for a moment, his composure wavers—the scientist eclipsed by the man, the observer becoming the participant. His carefully constructed walls, built brick by brick over a lifetime of feeling too much and being too much, crumble in the space of a single heartbeat.

"There it is," he breathes, his voice rough with something like wonder. "That's the variable."

He does it again, adjusting the angle of his hips, the pressure of his fingers, testing the boundaries of this new discovery. His thumb presses into the hollow of your hip bone, a small, deliberate point of contact that sends a jolt of sensation through your entire body. He watches your face with rapt attention, cataloguing every micro-expression, every flutter of your lashes, every hitch in your breathing. His eyes are dark, focused, alight with the particular intensity of a man who has found something he did not know he was searching for.

He is no longer simply making love to you; he is studying you, learning you anew, rewriting the data he thought he had memorized. The archive he has built of your pleasure—once so carefully curated, so lovingly preserved—is now being expanded, updated, transformed by this new variable he has discovered. And he is thrilled by it. You can see it in the way his lips part slightly, the way his brow furrows with concentration, the way his breathing has quickened to match the pace of his thoughts.

His free hand comes up to cup your jaw, tilting your face toward his. His thumb traces the curve of your lower lip, feather-light, almost reverent—a stark contrast to the firm grip of his other hand on your hip. The duality of him, the gentle and the commanding, the scholar and the man, exists in perfect balance in this moment.

He does it again, adjusting the angle of his hips, the pressure of his fingers, testing the boundaries of this new discovery. His thumb presses into the hollow of your hip bone, and he watches your face with rapt attention, cataloging every micro-expression, every flutter of your lashes, every hitch in your breathing. He is no longer simply making love to you; he is studying you, learning you anew, rewriting the data he thought he had memorized.

"This is fascinating," he murmurs, half to himself, half to you. "I've spent years analyzing behavioral patterns, but I never considered..." He trails off, his grip tightening fractionally as he pulls you into another thrust. "...how much variation exists in a single reaction."

You can barely form a response, your thoughts scattering like leaves in a storm. But you manage a breathless, "Spencer..."

He pauses, his eyes snapping to yours. The analytical sharpness softens, just slightly, replaced by something warmer. "Too much?" he asks, his thumb tracing a soothing circle on your hip. "Do you want me to stop?"

It is such a Spencer question—so careful, so considerate, even now. Even when he is on the verge of unraveling something new about you, he still needs to know that you are with him, that you are not just an experiment.

You shake your head, your voice barely a whisper. "No. Don't stop."

His smile returns, softer now, but no less determined. "Good," he says, and there is a thread of relief in his voice, a quiet gratitude that you are willing to let him explore this with you. "Because I'm not done with this hypothesis yet."

And then he proves it, testing the variable again and again, mapping the contours of your pleasure with the same devotion he once reserved for the most complex of cases. He is not just learning about you—he is learning about himself, about the parts of him he has kept carefully contained. And in the quiet, sacred space of your shared bedroom, he discovers that sometimes the most important discoveries are not found in books, but in the trembling surrender of the person who trusts you enough to let you take control.

[certaimromance]

✦ My Baby Goes Away.

Spencer Reid x Morgan's sister!reader

2k tea party | main masterlist

Summary: After arguing with his secret girlfriend for the first time, Spencer looks for advice from Derek Morgan, who has no idea the girl in question is you, his own sister.

Words: 6k.

Warnings & Tags: typical cm stuff. established & secret relationship. fluff. english isn't my first language (sorry for my mistakes, be kind please).

Note: My 2k party is back<33 go and check it out and enjoy this! I had so much fun writing it, so it’s a bit lazy in narrative, sorry</3 my mind is full of legal terms and uni stuff.

Spencer Reid had solved murders faster than this.

He had identified offenders from a single blurry photograph and a handful of contradictory witness statements that should, by all reasonable standards, have led nowhere. He had built psychological profiles from fragments of behavior that other people dismissed as noise, from inconsistencies in tone, timing, geography, and motive that only made sense once his mind had already begun stitching them together. He had memorized entire textbooks after a single read and spent years accumulating knowledge so dense it might as well have been its own language. His mind was engineered, always moving forward toward understanding. It was what made him valuable at the FBI. It was what made him one of the best profilers in the bureau.

And yet, somehow, after two full days, he still had absolutely no idea how to fix his argument with you.

The realization was becoming increasingly frustrating.

Because unlike a case, there was no evidence board to organize. No witness interviews to conduct. No behavioral indicators he could neatly categorize and analyze until a solution presented itself. There was only silence. Two days of it.

Forty-eight hours.

Two thousand eight hundred and eighty minutes.

One hundred and seventy-two thousand, eight hundred seconds.

Not that he had been counting.

Not intentionally, at least.

The numbers just…appeared, uninvited, the way facts tended to do in his head when something refused to resolve itself.

The argument itself kept replaying in his head whenever he had a free moment, his mind returning to it with the same relentless persistence it reserved for unsolved cases. It happened during paperwork. During meetings. While standing in line for coffee. While brushing his teeth before bed. The memory would surface without warning, unfolding with such perfect clarity that it sometimes felt less like recollection and more like reliving it in real time. Every sentence was preserved in his memory exactly as it had happened. Every pause. Every look. Every slight hesitation between words.

He could remember the exact way your eyebrows had pulled together when he said something wrong. Just that small movement between your eyes that he had learned to recognize over time, the one that always appeared when you were hurt but trying not to show it. He remembered the way your arms had crossed over your chest afterward. He remembered the slight tension in your shoulders. The way your gaze had briefly dropped toward the floor before returning to him.

And he remembered your voice.

That was the part that haunted him most.

Not because you had been angry.

Because you hadn’t.

Spencer almost wished you had yelled.

He wished you had raised your voice, accused him of being an idiot, thrown every frustration directly at his face so he would have something concrete to work with. Anger was understandable. Anger was measurable. Anger had direction. He could have apologized for anger. He could have identified the source and addressed it.

But disappointment? it was infinitely worse.

That was the truly maddening part.

Spencer Reid’s entire career was built around understanding people.

Patterns made sense to him. Motives made sense to him. Human behavior, despite its complexity, usually made sense to him.

Yet somehow the further he examined the argument, the less certain he became. Every conclusion led to three more possibilities. Every explanation seemed incomplete. Maybe it had been something he said. Maybe it had been something he hadn’t said. Maybe it wasn’t about that specific conversation at all. Maybe it was something that had been bothering you for weeks and had finally reached a breaking point.

His mind chased possibilities endlessly, constructing theories only to discard them moments later, each one dissolving under the weight of another, quieter truth he didn’t want to examine too closely.

Which was unfortunate.

Because he missed you.

A lot more than he had initially allowed himself to quantify.

The absence was no longer just a shift in routine or a simple change in the office dynamic. It was everywhere now: seeping into the margins of his attention, slipping between case files, hiding in the pauses between conversations that used to include you so naturally he had never thought to appreciate them.

Cases felt longer, too.

Not because the work itself had changed, crime scenes still demanded the same precision, profiles still required the same mental architecture, but because he kept finding himself reaching for moments that weren’t there anymore. Small things. The insignificant things that should have been irrelevant in the grand structure of his day, and yet had somehow become essential without his permission.

He would turn slightly in his chair after spotting a pattern in a victimology report, already forming the sentence in his mind, already anticipating the way your voice, always quicker than people expected from someone who wasn’t even in the Bureau, would respond. You, Morgan’s younger sister, the civilian presence who had somehow become an unspoken part of their orbit at the work, drifting in and out of the bullpen with coffee runs, questions, or just the kind of energy that made the fluorescent lighting feel less oppressive.

And then the moment would collapse.

Because you weren’t there.

He’d look up from a report after discovering a strange historical correlation, something useless to most people, but exactly the kind of detail he knew would make you laugh and tell him he “needed a hobby that wasn’t trivia disguised as trauma” and his hand would already be halfway toward his phone before he remembered there was no message thread actively unfolding between you two at that moment. Only silence where there had recently been a rhythm.

Even coffee tasted worse, which he knew was irrational because, chemically speaking, the coffee was identical. Same beans, same machine, same burnt undertone that lingered too long on the tongue. And yet it felt different sitting alone in the break room, like the absence of your commentary had somehow altered the physics of it. Like taste, somehow, had become contextual.

Spencer sat at his desk, shoulders slightly hunched, a thin folder open in front of him that he had reread three times without absorbing a single line. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead with a mechanical patience that made the silence feel even louder. Around him, the bullpen continued its usual rhythm, papers shuffled, phones rang, the distant cadence of someone's laughter breaking briefly through the procedural monotony.

And still, none of it reached him properly.

Then, agent Morgan dropped into the chair across from him with the kind of familiarity that didn’t require permission, leaning back like he had already decided this conversation was happening whether Spencer was ready for it or not.

“Pretty boy.”

Spencer blinked, as if the word had taken a moment to travel through whatever fog had settled behind his eyes.

“What?” he replied, though it came out slightly delayed, like he had to retrieve himself from somewhere else before answering.

“You’ve been reading the same page for ten minutes,” he repeated, slower this time.

Spencer’s grip tightened slightly on the file before he corrected, almost automatically, “I have not.”

Morgan didn’t even bother arguing. He simply lifted a hand and pointed across the desk with an almost lazy precision.

“The paper is upside down.”

There was a beat of silence where Spencer didn’t move at all, as though his brain had to reassemble the last thirty seconds into something coherent. Then, slowly, he looked down.

The page was, in fact, upside down.

“…oh,” he said, softly. Not quite embarrassed, not quite resigned, just caught in the inconvenient reality of being observed too closely by someone who knew him too well.

Morgan let out a short snort, shaking his head like he’d just confirmed a suspicion rather than discovered anything new.

“What’s going on with you?”

Spencer didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he straightened the file, even though it didn’t need fixing, aligning the corners with unnecessary precision as if structure could substitute for composure. His eyes stayed on the desk, on the scattered papers that suddenly felt too loud in their stillness.

“I’m fine,” he said at last, a little too quickly, like the words had been waiting right at the surface and only needed the smallest excuse to spill out.

“Reid.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Reid.”

Spencer’s shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly at the repetition, the way Morgan’s voice had shifted from teasing to something sharper, more deliberate. There was no escape hatch in that tone. Only persistence.

He sighed, the sound quiet and tired in a way that didn’t belong to the report in front of him, and certainly not to the fluorescent-lit bullpen that usually kept everything neatly compartmentalized.

“What?”

Morgan leaned back again, studying him with a growing certainty that had nothing to do with profiling and everything to do with experience. The kind of certainty that came from knowing someone long enough to recognize when they were lying even before they opened their mouth.

“Girl?”

The single word hit the air like a thrown object.

Spencer froze.

Morgan’s grin widened, slow and unmistakably victorious.

“Oh my God,” he said, leaning forward now, elbows on his knees. “There is a girl.”

“No.”

It came out too fast.

Too practiced.

Morgan tilted his head. “That wasn’t a denial.”

“It was.”

“It was the worst denial I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Spencer dragged a hand down his face, pressing briefly at his eyes as if physical pressure might reset the conversation entirely. It didn’t. Of course it didn’t. Derek Morgan wasn’t the type to let something go once he had it between his teeth.

“It’s not—” Spencer started, then stopped, because even he didn’t know what direction that sentence was supposed to go in.

“You got a girlfriend?”

“No.”

Morgan’s eyebrows lifted so high they practically disappeared into his forehead. “Oh.”

A beat.

Then, softer, almost delighted: “Secret girlfriend?”

The silence that followed wasn’t loud, but it was definitive. It filled the space between them in a way no words could compete with, settling over Spencer like gravity finally deciding to stop being generous.

Morgan blinked once.

Then twice.

And then he leaned back so abruptly his chair creaked, one hand flying up to his chest like he needed to physically contain his reaction.

“Oh my God,” he said again, but this time it wasn’t teasing. It was disbelief wrapped around amusement. “Reid. No. No way.”

Spencer lowered his voice immediately, shoulders tightening as he glanced around the bullpen like the entire building had suddenly become invested in his personal collapse. “Please lower your voice.”

“You have a secret girlfriend?”

“Technically,” Spencer admitted, reluctantly, as if even the word came with conditions he hadn’t fully agreed to.

Morgan froze for half a second.

That was worse than any reaction so far.

“Since when?”

“Five months.”

The word landed.

Morgan made a sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh, choking slightly as he leaned forward again, eyes widening in genuine shock. “Five months?!”

Heads turned.

A few agents paused mid-step. Someone near the coffee station actually looked over their shoulder. Even the hum of the bullpen seemed to tilt toward them for a moment, like the entire room had decided this was more interesting than paperwork.

Spencer felt heat crawl up the back of his neck. He wished, with a kind of desperate clarity, that the floor would simply give up on him and solve the problem permanently.

Morgan, entirely unhelpful, looked delighted in the worst possible way.

“You’ve been dating someone for five months and nobody knows?” he asked, voice lower now but no less incredulous.

“It wasn’t intentional,” Spencer muttered.

Morgan gave him a look that said he did not believe in accidents of that magnitude.

“It absolutely was intentional.”

Spencer exhaled through his nose, a tired sound that carried the weight of someone who had stopped trying to win this particular argument.

“Can we not focus on that part?”

Morgan’s expression changed slightly at that, just enough to signal he’d caught something underneath the embarrassment. The teasing didn’t disappear, but it softened at the edges.

“Something happened,” he said instead.

Spencer hesitated.

It was subtle, but enough.

His eyes dropped to the desk. To the corner of the file he’d been straightening for no reason. To anything except his friend.

Morgan didn’t need more than that.

“You fought.”

“It was a disagreement,” Spencer corrected automatically, as if the phrasing might make it less real.

Morgan scoffed. “How long since you’ve talked?”

A pause.

Spencer hesitated just long enough to give himself away.

“…two days.”

Morgan let out a slow, low whistle, leaning back again like the situation had just upgraded itself from something interesting to an inevitable disaster.

“Damn,” he said simply.

Spencer rubbed a hand over his face, dragging it down like he could erase the entire conversation if he tried hard enough.

“I know,” he muttered.

“What happened?”

Spencer hesitated.

Normally, he would never have even come close to discussing his relationship with anyone at work. It wasn’t just a boundary, it was a principle. Something he kept carefully intact because once you started letting people in, even a little, they tended to see things you weren’t ready to explain. But Derek Morgan wasn’t just anyone at work. He was his friend. And worse, in this specific case, he was also your big brother, which meant there were layers of complication Spencer hadn’t fully accounted for when he started dating you in the first place.

So he spoke anyway.

Not your name. Never your name. Just fragments that still somehow felt too revealing.

He explained how he had missed a dinner he had promised would be just the two of you, no cases, no interruptions, no excuses waiting in the wings. He explained how it hadn’t been malicious, how time had slipped in the way it always did, like sand through fingers he didn’t realize were open until it was already gone. He explained how it wasn’t even the first time, and how that detail alone had changed the entire shape of the conversation when he finally walked through the door too late.

And then he admitted, less willingly, that when frustration came, when disappointment turned into something sharper, he had reacted instead of listening. That he had defended himself with logic, with context, with all the reasons that made sense in his head but apparently didn’t matter in the moment they were spoken. That somewhere between explaining and insisting, he had stopped hearing the part where it wasn’t about being right.

By the end of it, neither of them had apologized. Not properly. Not in a way that closed anything. Just a silence that stretched and hardened until it became its own kind of wall.

Derek listened the entire time without interrupting, which, in hindsight, should have been Spencer’s first warning.

When he finally finished, Morgan leaned back in his chair, exhaled through his nose, and looked at him with the kind of expression usually reserved for malfunctioning equipment or particularly disappointing case files.

“You were an idiot.”

Spencer blinked once. “What?”

“You were an idiot.”

“I don’t think that’s objectively—”

“You forgot dinner.”

“There was a case, and my mind was…occupied,” Spencer corrected quickly, almost reflexively, as if precision could soften the accusation.

Morgan pointed at him like that settled it. “Exactly. You don’t forget things. You remember license plates from twenty years ago, but you forgot a dinner you promised her?”

Spencer opened his mouth, then stopped. Closed it. Then tried again anyway, because not responding felt worse.

“I know,” he admitted quietly.

“And then instead of apologizing,” Morgan continued, “you gave her a lecture about why you forgot.”

“…yes.”

Morgan nodded once, like the case was already solved. “Yeah. Idiot.”

Spencer sank a little deeper into his chair, as if he could physically distance himself from the conclusion. “I wasn’t trying to upset her,” he said, quieter now. “Logically, if I explained the circumstances, she would understand why I missed it.”

Morgan let out a short laugh, shaking his head. “Kid, women don’t always want logic.”

“That’s statistically impossible,” Spencer said automatically, because it was safer than sitting with the rest of it.

Morgan didn’t even acknowledge that.

He just leaned forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees, the humor in his expression thinning into something steadier, less teasing now, more grounded, like he was done playing with the situation and had decided to actually look at it.

“Sometimes they just want you to admit you hurt their feelings.”

Spencer considered that for a moment longer than most people would have. His mind, as usual, tried to systematize it, translate it into something measurable, something predictable. But it didn’t settle into a neat equation. It hovered instead, annoyingly unresolved.

“You know what she’s waiting for right now?” Morgan continued, like he was narrating something painfully obvious. “An apology. And flowers. Be classic about it.”

Spencer blinked. “…that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

The simplicity of it almost offended him on principle.

“But what if she’s still angry?” he asked, because of course he had to account for every possible variable. “Anger doesn’t resolve instantly just because an apology is issued. There’s usually a cooling period, sometimes followed by—”

“Reid.” Morgan cut in flatly.

Spencer tried again, more quietly. “What if she doesn’t forgive me?”

Morgan let out a short laugh, shaking his head like the question itself was exhausting.

“Trust me,” he said. “If she’s put up with you for five months, she’s not leaving that easily.”

That earned the smallest shift in Spencer’s expression. Not quite relief, but something close enough to soften the edges. A reluctant smile pulled at his mouth before he could stop it.

Morgan noticed immediately, of course.

And then, like he couldn’t help himself, he added casually, almost offhand, too casual to be innocent:

“What’s her name anyway?”

The shift was immediate and almost physical.

Spencer went still in a way that wasn’t simply silence, it was interruption at the level of thought. Like whatever careful, fragile structure he had been maintaining inside his head had just been tapped in the wrong place and was now threatening to collapse in on itself. His eyes lifted too quickly, then dropped just as fast, betraying him before he could even attempt to form something resembling composure.

“…What?” he said, but it came out too sharp, too reflexive, as if the question itself had accused him of something.

Morgan tilted his head, watching him with the slow, patient attention of someone who had just found something interesting and had no intention of letting it go. “Her name,” he repeated, softer now, almost conversational. “The mystery girlfriend you’ve been circling around for the last half hour.”

Spencer’s brain did something deeply unhelpful, like attempt to exit his skull.

“I—” he started.

Then stopped.

Then tried again, weaker this time. “I didn’t say she was— I mean, I didn’t specify—”

Morgan’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Reid.”

That single word cut straight through whatever remaining momentum Spencer had been clinging to.

He stopped.

The silence that followed felt too loud for a room that had only seconds ago contained casual conversation. Spencer’s gaze dropped, then flicked away again, as if eye contact had become structurally unsafe. He adjusted his grip on his bag strap with unnecessary force, like he could physically organize his thoughts if he held onto something hard enough.

“I should go,” he said quickly, already moving before the sentence had fully finished forming, chair scraping faintly behind him as he stood a fraction too fast.

Morgan leaned back in his seat, utterly at ease now, watching the whole thing unfold like it was entertainment he hadn’t expected to enjoy this much.

Spencer didn’t look at him. Didn’t dare.

He just grabbed his bag, too tight, too precise, like if he handled it correctly he could still salvage what was left of his dignity.

Behind him, Morgan called after him, voice edged with amusement that had fully settled in now, no longer restrained by sympathy or hesitation.

“Kid.”

Spencer froze, hand on the strap.

Morgan’s grin widened. “You’re worse at hiding things than you are at talking to women.”

Well, that wasn’t what his little sister could say.

***

Spencer Reid found you at your work just after midday, when the world inside your building was caught in that peculiar rhythm of motion without urgency. He stood outside for a moment longer than necessary, as if the threshold itself required preparation. The flowers in his hands were simple, chosen with intent rather than extravagance, but even that simplicity had been carefully overthought, the stems adjusted and readjusted until they were aligned in a way that made sense only to him. He shifted his grip once, then again, thumb brushing against the wrapping as though precision could somehow translate into reassurance.

When he finally stepped inside, the change was immediate. The hum of the place wrapped around him, warmer, more alive, and suddenly he was hyperaware of everything: his own footsteps, the faint rustle of paper in his hand, the way his presence seemed to interrupt a rhythm he hadn’t been part of a second ago. He saw you before you saw him.

That alone made his pulse jump.

You were mid-task, completely absorbed in whatever demanded your attention at that moment, posture angled slightly forward in a way that suggested focus so deep it made the rest of the room irrelevant. There was a pen in your hand, and your hair had fallen slightly out of place, soft strands escaping whatever attempt you had made earlier to control them. Your expression was set in concentration, the kind that made you look, for a fleeting second, unreachable. Not distant in an emotional sense, but sealed inside your own momentum, like the world would have to wait until you decided otherwise.

It hit him again then, that disorienting realization that never fully settled no matter how many times he experienced it: you were not an equation he could balance, not a pattern he could predict, not a hypothesis that yielded itself neatly to observation. You were real in a way his mind struggled to compress into something manageable. Not something to analyze. Not something to solve. Just you...existing in front of him with an immediacy that made everything else feel slightly out of focus.

He cleared his throat softly.

It was small, almost tentative, but it still felt too loud in his own ears.

Your eyes lifted.

There was a pause before you registered him fully.

It wasn’t immediate. First came confusion, like your mind briefly refusing to assign meaning to what you were seeing. Then recognition flickered through, softening that confusion just enough to make it real. And then something sharper settled in behind your gaze, like you were weighing the space between him showing up and him leaving again, and deciding which outcome you were prepared to tolerate.

Spencer swallowed.

“I—hi,” he started, and then immediately looked like he regretted choosing that particular arrangement of syllables. His shoulders shifted minutely, tension tightening and releasing in uneven pulses. “I brought…flowers.”

He lifted them slightly, like he was presenting something far more fragile than it already was. The bouquet tilted just a fraction in his grip, stems aligned with an almost anxious precision, as though even their angle might influence how this moment unfolded.

You blinked at them.

Then at him.

Then back at the flowers, as if your brain was taking a second longer than usual to reconcile intention with reality.

“…Okay,” you said slowly, the word drawn out with cautious neutrality, like you were waiting for the rest of the sentence to arrive and complete whatever meaning this was supposed to have.

Spencer nodded too quickly. “Yes. Right. They’re not— I mean, they’re not symbolic of anything negative.” He paused, corrected himself mid-thought, then continued with increasing urgency, “They’re actually meant to be apologetic.”

That made your brows lift slightly.

His grip on the flowers tightened a fraction before he forced it to relax.

“I missed our dinner,” he said suddenly, words spilling forward now that the threshold had been crossed. “And I know that wasn’t the first time, and I know I said it wouldn’t happen again, and I did try to come back but the case ran longer than expected and I should have called earlier, or at least sent a message, and I understand why you were upset because it’s not really about the dinner itself, it’s about—”

“Spencer.”

The interruption was quiet, but it landed cleanly.

He stopped instantly, like a switch had been flipped somewhere inside him. His mouth closed, the rest of the explanation collapsing unfinished behind his teeth. He looked at you properly then, as if realizing for the first time in the last thirty seconds that he hadn’t actually been speaking to resolve anything, you were supposed to be part of the conversation, not just the endpoint of it.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, simpler this time. “I shouldn’t have missed it. And I shouldn’t have made you feel like it didn’t matter.”

Spencer’s gaze stayed on you, careful now in a different way. Less defensive. More exposed.

Then, almost reluctantly, like the admission had to physically push its way out of him, he added, “And I…asked Morgan for advice, you should know it.”

There was a pause.

A very specific kind of pause, the kind that didn’t belong to silence so much as to realization. Like your brain had to double-check it had processed the sentence correctly before allowing any reaction to form.

Your expression changed first. Not immediately disbelief, but a slow recalibration, like the information had to be tested against reality before it was accepted. Then your brows lifted slightly. Then your mouth twitched, just barely, the smallest betrayal of something trying very hard not to become laughter too soon.

“Wait,” you said slowly. “You asked my brother for advice.”

Spencer nodded once, cautious now. “Yes.”

You laughed.

It started as something small, an exhale of disbelief that slipped out before you could catch it, but it didn’t stay small. It built quickly, breaking through whatever tension had been sitting between you a second ago. You pressed a hand briefly to your mouth, like you were trying to contain it, but it didn’t help. If anything, it made it worse. Your shoulders shook slightly as you looked at him, as if trying to reconcile the very serious man standing in front of you with the information he had just offered up so sincerely.

“You asked Derek,” you repeated between breaths, still laughing. “About us?”

Spencer looked mildly pained now, the way he always did when he realized a decision had aged badly in real time. “In retrospect,” he said carefully, “I recognize that may not have been optimal decision-making.”

That made you laugh harder.

“Oh my— Spencer,” you said, still smiling, still shaking your head like your body couldn’t decide whether to recover or continue. “That is the worst possible person you could’ve gone to.”

“I’m aware,” he said quietly. “He told me I was an idiot.”

That only made you laugh more, and something in his chest loosened at the sound, like a tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding finally shifted, fraction by fraction, into something less suffocating.

When your laughter finally faded, you looked at him again.

Still hurt, maybe. Still not entirely okay.

But softer now.

“And?” you asked.

Spencer hesitated, then held the flowers out a little more properly this time, like he was committing to the moment instead of escaping it.

“And,” he finished carefully, still holding the flowers out a little too formally, “he was…unfortunately correct about several things.”

You tilted your head, considering him for a second, then scoffed lightly as if the idea itself offended you.

“Derek is never correct.”

That made Spencer pause.

You stepped closer, and before he could recalibrate whatever internal system was trying to predict the next outcome, you leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek.

“You should just talk to me,” you said quietly, already pulling back slightly but keeping close enough that he could still feel you there. “We are adults.”

Spencer blinked once.

“I thought you were mad,” he admitted, voice thinner now, confused in that very specific way he got when reality didn’t match the model he had built in his head.

You exhaled through your nose, half amused, half exasperated, and lifted a hand to his face, fingertips brushing lightly along his cheek as if anchoring him back into something real.

“I was,” you said honestly. “Very much.”

That made his shoulders tense slightly, instinctively bracing.

“But I understand your work,” you continued, softer now, “and the shitty hours. I get it, Spencer. I really do.”

His eyes searched yours, still wary, still trying to calculate where the sharp edge was supposed to come in.

Instead, there was none.

Just you.

You thumbed gently along his cheekbone, steadying him in a way no explanation ever had.

“I believe in communication,” you added, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

Something in Spencer finally gave up resisting.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, but this time it didn’t sound like part of a defense. It sounded like the end of one.

You studied him for a second, still close enough that your hand remained on his cheek, thumb resting lightly as if you’d decided that was simply where it belonged now.

“Good,” you said simply.

Spencer blinked. “Good?”

“Yes,” you nodded once, like it was obvious. “Apology accepted.”

That seemed to short-circuit him for a second.

“Just like that?” he asked, cautiously, as if he was checking whether there was a second stage to this he hadn’t been briefed on.

You gave him a look. “Spencer. I already kissed your face. What more do you want from me.”

His ears went slightly pink at that, which only made you smile more.

“I—” he started, then stopped, recalculating. “That’s…fair.”

You finally took the flowers from his hands before he could overthink them into oblivion, your fingers brushing his in the exchange. He visibly tracked the movement like it mattered more than it should have.

“They’re pretty,” you added, glancing at them.

“I chose them based on color theory and—” he began automatically.

“I love that.”

That cut him off mid-explanation, and for a second he looked like he was about to defend himself out of habit. Then he saw your expression and the defense just didn’t arrive.

Instead, he exhaled a small breath that might have been a laugh if he was braver.

“I also panicked slightly,” he admitted.

You nodded seriously. “That I believe.”

A pause settled between you again, but this time it wasn’t heavy. It was comfortable in a way neither of you had quite figured out how to name yet.

Spencer glanced at you, then at the flowers, then back at you like he was still trying to confirm this wasn’t some alternate reality where he had successfully handled emotional confrontation without catastrophe.

You, on the other hand, looked entirely too pleased with yourself.

“You know,” you said, tilting your head slightly, “for someone who overthinks everything, you’re kind of cute when you’re trying not to implode.”

That made him freeze.

“…That is not a clinically recognized category of attractiveness,” he said automatically.

You smiled wider. “Didn’t say it was.”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, then seemed to settle on the only safe response available.

“I don’t know what to do with compliments,” he admitted.

“That’s okay,” you said, stepping a little closer again, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “I can help you.”

His gaze flickered to yours, softer now, less defensive and more present.

“That seems inefficient,” he murmured, but there was no real protest in it.

You lightly bumped your shoulder against his.

“I think you’ll survive.”

A beat.

Then, quieter, almost shy despite everything, he asked, “So…we’re okay?”

You didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, you reached up and gently fixed the collar of his shirt like it had been bothering you all day, smoothing it into place with casual care.

“Yeah,” you said finally. “We’re okay.”

***

When you got home, the apartment was quiet in that familiar, lived-in way: TV murmuring low in the background, something forgettable playing to an audience that wasn’t really watching. The kind of sound that filled space without demanding anything from it. Your brother was on the couch, stretched out like he belonged to it more than the furniture itself, one arm draped over the backrest, the other holding the remote in a loose grip that suggested he’d already stopped caring what was on.

He looked up the moment the door clicked shut.

At first it was automatic, half a greeting forming on his tongue, some casual comment ready to be thrown your way without much thought. But it never made it out. It stalled, visibly, the second his eyes actually focused.

The flowers came first.

Bright, unmistakable, slightly ridiculous in the way only something intentionally chosen could be. Then your expression, too alive, too soft around the edges, like you were still carrying whatever moment had just happened outside the apartment and hadn’t fully put it down yet. And then the smile. That was the real problem. Not just a smile, but one that kept threatening to turn into laughter every time you breathed, like it had gotten stuck halfway between contained and completely out of control.

Derek slowly sat up a little straighter.

Not alarmed exactly. More like recalibrating. Like his brain had just received new data that didn’t match any of the existing categories he had available.

“…Flowers, uh?” he said at last, drawing the words out carefully. He leaned back just slightly, like increasing physical distance might help him understand what he was looking at. “Should I be worried?”

You didn’t even hesitate.

The answer came too fast, too clean.

“Nope.”

A beat of silence followed that, heavy in its simplicity.

Derek stared at you for another second, then the flowers again, then your face, like he was checking for inconsistencies in a story he already didn’t trust. Slowly, very slowly, one corner of his mouth twitched.

“…Mm,” he hummed, leaning back into the couch with the long-suffering patience of a man who had clearly just missed a very important piece of information.

You didn’t stop.

You walked right past him like the conversation had already been filed away, resolved, and archived somewhere in your mind under done, the flowers cradled casually in your arms as you disappeared down the hallway. The door to your room was already half open before Derek could even find the next thought.

The apartment fell quiet again.

Not peaceful. Not normal.

Just…paused.

Derek stayed still for about three seconds, which, for him, was practically an eternity. Then he slowly turned his head toward the hallway like it might physically supply him with missing context if he stared at it hard enough. His brows pulled together, faintly at first, then deeper, like the situation was refusing to align itself into anything logical.

The smile on your face replayed in his head.

Then the flowers.

Then the timing.

Then the very specific, very suspicious absence of any emotional damage whatsoever.

Derek sat forward a fraction.

“…No way,” he muttered, almost to himself.

A pause stretched out, thin and sharp.

His gaze flicked toward the hallway again, then back, like he was assembling a puzzle he absolutely did not want to finish. Slowly, the realization stopped being theoretical. It settled. It clicked into place with the quiet horror of inevitability.

His eyes widened slightly.

Then he leaned back into the couch again, staring up at the ceiling like it had betrayed him personally and without warning.

There was a beat of silence.

Then, with absolute conviction—

“NO WAY.”

[l0vinghimwasreid]

spencer ‘doesn’t do handshakes’ reid is absolutely obsessed with touching fem!reader

18+ (smut)

wc: 705

starts as fluff then transitions into smut, i couldn’t help myself

⋆ he’s a cuddlebug in the most extreme and literal sense.

⋆ like he can’t get enough, he’s constantly touching her.

⋆ if they’re holding hands and she needs to pull away to do something, he’s whining and wrapping an arm around her waist to keep her close.

⋆ if he needs to pull his hand out of her grasp, he’ll hold it with the other hand, or wrap her arm around his waist, or place her hand on his arm to maintain the contact.

⋆ she wasn’t sure how he’d be about pda, especially around his coworkers, but he’s completely insatiable with his touches and kisses.

⋆ obviously he loves kissing her on the mouth the most, but he loves kissing her forehead, cheeks, nose, chin, anywhere and everywhere he can reach.

⋆ he’d even ask her to give him a forehead kiss when he’s feeling especially needy (always).

⋆ he loves wrapping his arms around her waist from behind her, fusing his chest to her back. he’ll dip his hands under her shirt or her waistband, just wanting to feel her skin.

⋆ when they’re at home and he’s reading next to her on the couch, he’ll try to keep a hand on her leg, but it’s easiest if he just lies with his head in her lap. this way he can hold his book properly and still be close to her. she’ll play with his hair and his eyes will start drooping and he loooves falling asleep like that. he’ll turn to press his face into her stomach and wrap his arms around her waist in his sleep.

⋆ in his sleep he still tries to get as close to her as possible, enclosing her waist with his arms and nuzzling his head into her neck.

⋆ obviously spooning her is his favorite, but she’ll wake up on her back or stomach with him all over her in any way possible, even if it’s just his legs tangled with hers.

⋆ he encourages her to lay completely on top of him.

⋆ he’ll even wrap his arms around her thigh and hold it to his chest when they’re lying together, just constantly holding her in any way possible.

⋆ he loves cuddling with her on the couch the most because of the forced proximity.

⋆ if she’s across the couch from him, he’ll pull her feet into his lap, wrapping a hand over her ankle and running his hand up and down her shin as they watch tv together.

⋆ they are absolutely that couple that sits on the same side of the table at restaurants.

⋆ god forbid he has to sit across from her for any reason, he’s playing footsie with her under the table: linking their ankles together and holding one of her feet between his.

⋆ and she worries about him when he leaves for cases and he has to sleep all alone, so she sends him with a sweater that smells like her. she jokes about making him a build-a-bear with the voice recording device inside so he can still have a piece of her when he’s away.

he doesn’t realize that she’s kidding and nods excitedly, wide-eyed, because ultimately him being away so often is one of the main reasons he needs to be as close to her as possible when he is home.

⋆ (oh and nothing is better than naked cuddling with her. he neeeeds the skin-to-skin contact.

⋆ he’s absolutely into cockwarming and fingerwarming(?): he’ll keep his fingers inside of her, not moving them, just feeling her, until she’s begging and whining and grinding on him.

⋆ if he finds her lying on her stomach, he’ll lay his head on her ass. she’ll ask him if he needs something, and he’ll say nope. eventually, he’ll start playing with her waistband, needing to get his head between her thighs. you know, just to get even closer to her.

⋆ he loves having her sat between his legs, his chest to her back, as he slowly toys with her breasts and pussy. he’ll wrap his legs around hers to keep her even closer to him and to spread her open for him to play with.)

kind of part 2 regarding spencer's germaphobia during sex