Peyo ✮ 20 ✮ They/them ✮ part of the lesbians for Spencer Reid club
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✩ I write for The Raven Cycle and Criminal minds (Spencer Reid, Emily Prentiss, Penelope Garcia, Jemily)
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Description: Seven years ago, you and Spencer made a drunken pact: if you were both still single by thirty-five, you would marry each other.
You forgot about it. Spencer never did.
___________________________________
Title: The Deadline
The agreement had been written on the back of a takeout menu seven years ago, somewhere between the second bottle of wine and Spencer’s attempt to explain why your latest date had failed using probability theory.
“He talked about cryptocurrency for forty-five minutes,” you had said, dropping your forehead onto the kitchen table. “Then he asked whether I’d ever considered fixing my nose.”
Spencer’s expression had gone perfectly still. “What’s wrong with your nose?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why would he—”
“Because he was an ass, Spencer.”
“Oh.” He had looked offended on your behalf, which had made you feel marginally better. “Yes. Statistically, insulting someone during a first date does significantly reduce the likelihood of a second.”
“Thank you, Doctor Romance.”
He had taken the insult with a sip of wine.
His own evening had gone poorly, though it had taken nearly twenty minutes of careful questioning to get him to admit it. The woman had spent most of dinner checking her phone and had eventually told him that talking to him felt like attending a lecture she had forgotten to study for.
You had hated her immediately.
“We’re doomed,” you had decided.
Spencer had frowned. “That seems unnecessarily pessimistic.”
“You’re right. I’m doomed. You’ll meet some brilliant professor who collects first-edition Russian novels, and I’ll be found dead in my apartment after my cat eats half my face.”
“You don’t have a cat.”
“I’ll get one once I’ve accepted my fate.”
That was when you had made the pact. If neither of you was married by thirty-five, you would marry each other.
Spencer had insisted the agreement needed clearly defined terms. You had found a pen while he listed possible complications, including relocation, preexisting engagements, major changes in personal compatibility and, for reasons you still did not understand, tax implications.
You wrote it on the back of the menu.
At thirty-five, if we’re both single, we get married. No backing out.
You had signed beneath it with an exaggerated flourish.
Spencer had studied the words for several seconds before adding his name beside yours in neat, narrow handwriting.
Then you had folded the menu, tucked it into the junk drawer and forgotten about it.
At least, you thought you had.
••••••••••
“Thirty-five,” Garcia announced, dropping a pink bakery box onto the table in the bullpen. “A distinguished age. An elegant age. An age at which a woman knows her worth and will no longer tolerate men who own mattresses without fitted sheets.”
Your birthday was still two weeks away, but Garcia had apparently decided that celebrations were most effective when stretched across several business days.
“I’m not thirty-five yet,” you reminded her.
“Which is why this is a pre-birthday cupcake.”
“There are twelve cupcakes.”
“The passage of time is emotionally demanding.”
Morgan reached into the box before Garcia had finished arranging the napkins.
She slapped his hand away.
“Those are for the birthday girl.”
“The birthday girl isn’t even having a birthday today.” He retorted.
“That sounds like someone who doesn’t deserve frosting.”
You smiled as they argued, reaching for your coffee. Across the bullpen, Spencer had stopped halfway through removing a file from his bag.
His eyes were fixed on the bakery box.
More specifically, on the silver number thirty-five Garcia had stuck into the center cupcake.
You raised your eyebrows at him.
He looked away so quickly that he nearly dropped the file.
It happened again during lunch when JJ asked whether you had any plans for your birthday.
And again when Emily mentioned setting you up with a friend from Interpol.
Spencer became intensely interested in whatever he happened to be holding each time the subject arose. A book. A case file. An empty coffee cup he studied as though the meaning of life might be printed at the bottom.
By the end of the day, you had had enough. You found him in the kitchenette pouring an alarming amount of sugar into his coffee.
“Did I do something?”
His hand paused above the cup. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I haven’t.”
“You took the stairs when you saw me waiting for the elevator.”
“Taking the stairs can improve cardiovascular health and reduce the risk of—”
“You work on the sixth floor.”
He set down the sugar packet. For a moment, he said nothing. His gaze moved toward the doorway, checking whether anyone was nearby. Then he asked, “Do you remember the agreement?”
You stared at him. “What agreement?”
His mouth tightened slightly. The hurt crossed his face so quickly you almost missed it. “Never mind.”
He reached for his coffee, but you caught his wrist before he could leave.
“Spencer.”
“It was years ago. You were upset, and we’d both had wine. It was obviously a joke.”
The memory surfaced slowly.
Takeout containers. Cheap wine. Spencer sitting at your kitchen table with his tie loosened, explaining that he would need access to at least half of the bookshelves if you ever lived together.
Your grip on his wrist loosened.
“Oh my God.”
He gave a small, uncomfortable laugh. “Exactly.”
“The marriage pact.”
A crash sounded from the hallway.
You both turned.
Morgan stood outside the kitchenette with a broken plastic coffee cup at his feet. “The what?”
Spencer closed his eyes.
Within eight minutes, the entire team knew.
You suspected Morgan had broken several laws of physics to spread the information so quickly.
“A marriage pact?” Emily repeated, leaning against your desk. “With Reid?”
“It was a joke.”
“Was it?” JJ asked, glancing toward Spencer.
He was seated at his desk with a book open in front of him. He had not turned a page in five minutes.
Garcia pressed both hands to her chest. “This is the most romantic thing that has ever happened within these deeply beige walls.”
“It isn’t romantic,” you said. “We were drunk and miserable.”
“Historically,” Rossi said from behind his office door, “that’s how plenty of marriages start.”
Hotch emerged from his office carrying a file.
Every head turned toward him.
He looked from you to Spencer, then at the gathering around your desk.
“We have a case.”
The room scattered.
As Hotch passed, he placed the file in your hands. “Congratulations,” he said quietly.
Your mouth fell open. Morgan laughed so hard he had to brace himself against a desk.
The case should have ended the conversation.
Instead, thirty-five followed you to Iowa.
It appeared when you and Spencer were assigned adjoining hotel rooms. When a local detective mistook you for a couple. When Morgan referred to the vending-machine crackers Spencer brought you as “early spousal support.”
You laughed each time because it was easier than examining why Spencer never did.
He smiled occasionally, but it never reached his eyes.
On the flight home, you found him awake while everyone else slept.
The cabin lights were dimmed. Spencer sat across from you, one knee drawn slightly toward his chest, an unopened book resting in his lap.
“You really remembered?” you whispered.
His fingers tightened around the book. “I have an eidetic memory.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He looked toward the dark window. The reflection showed the strain around his eyes. “Yes,” he said.
“For seven years?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His answer took so long that you started to wonder whether he would give one.
“Because I didn’t think it was a joke.”
Something shifted painfully beneath your ribs. “Spencer…”
“I knew you probably didn’t mean it.” His voice stayed low, careful not to wake the others. “At least, not in the same way I did. But you asked, and I thought…” He swallowed. “I thought that if we reached thirty-five and you still wanted me, I would be the luckiest person alive.”
You could hear the steady hum of the jet beneath the silence.
He gave a short laugh that sounded embarrassed. “It was irrational. There was no reason to believe our circumstances would remain unchanged for seven years. The likelihood of either of us entering a long-term relationship was—”
“Spencer.”
He stopped.
“You could have told me.”
“I didn’t want you to feel obligated.”
“So you planned to wait until my birthday and what? Show up with the menu?”
His eyes flickered toward his satchel.
You stared at it.
“No.”
His cheeks turned pink.
“Spencer.”
He lowered his gaze.
Slowly, you reached across the aisle and pulled the satchel toward you.
He did not try to stop you.
The folded paper was tucked inside the inner pocket, protected between two clear plastic sheets.
The restaurant had closed years ago. The ink had faded slightly, and there was a stain near your signature from the wine you had spilled.
But the promise remained.
At thirty-five, if we’re both single, we get married. No backing out.
You ran your thumb across his name.
“You kept it.”
“I went back for it the next morning.”
“You stole my takeout menu?”
“You had thrown it in a drawer with expired coupons and batteries.”
“That was my filing system.”
“It was a fire hazard.”
You laughed softly, though your eyes had begun to burn.
Spencer watched you with the cautious expression he wore when approaching something wounded.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have assumed it meant anything to you.”
You looked at him over the paper.
“The reason I forgot wasn’t because you meant nothing to me.”
He stayed perfectly still.
“I forgot because somewhere along the way, I stopped imagining a future where you wouldn’t be there.” You folded the menu carefully. “You’re already the person I call when something goes wrong. You’re the first person I want to tell when something goes right. Half your books are in my apartment, and you have your own mug in my kitchen.”
“The blue one.”
“The blue one,” you agreed. “You know how I take my coffee. I know you pretend not to be cold because you hate asking for an extra blanket in hotels.”
“I don’t hate asking.”
“You’re using your coat as a blanket right now.”
He glanced down at the jacket draped across his lap.
“That’s circumstantial.”
You smiled then you placed the menu on the empty seat beside you and held out your hand.
Spencer looked at it. His fingers slipped into yours slowly, as if he was afraid you might change your mind halfway through.
“You don’t have to wait until my birthday,” you said.
His brows drew together. “For what?”
“For an answer.”
The hope on his face was almost unbearable.
You tightened your hand around his. “Yes.”
His lips parted.
“Yes to the pact,” you clarified. “Eventually. I’d prefer a real first date before we start discussing tax implications.”
“You remember that?”
“Bits and pieces.”
“I was right about the tax implications.”
“I’m sure you were.”
His thumb moved over your knuckles. “So this would be a date with the intention of determining long-term romantic compatibility?”
“It means you’re taking me to dinner.”
“Tonight?”
“We land after midnight.”
“Tomorrow?”
You pretended to consider it. Spencer waited, visibly tense. “Tomorrow,” you agreed.
His smile appeared slowly, softening his entire face.
You had seen Spencer happy before. You had seen him excited, relieved, amused and triumphant.
You had never seen anyone look at you as though a seven-year wait had been worth every second.
He lifted your joined hands and pressed his lips gently against your knuckles.
Behind him, Morgan opened one eye. “I better be the best man.”
Spencer nearly dropped your hand.
JJ’s muffled laughter came from two rows back.
Garcia sat upright beneath her eye mask. “I’m planning the wedding.”
“There is no wedding,” you whispered fiercely.
“Yet,” Rossi corrected without opening his eyes.
Hotch remained facing the front of the plane. “Everyone go back to sleep.” A beat of silence passed. Then he added, “And congratulations.”
Spencer looked at you, his face bright red.
You leaned across the aisle and kissed his cheek. “Tomorrow,” you reminded him.
His fingers found yours again beneath the armrest.
Just had a yelling match about GenAI with my dad cause he was using chatgpt right in front of my face and I felt so disappointed and angry and I couldn't even give the many arguments because I was just fuming and I wanted to cry
i don't think that i've loved anything as much as the young adult novels i read when i was 15
i had a uni assignment where i had to add examples of stylistic devices and i kept looking at quotes from the raven cycle and six of crows and i WAS IN TEARS
i miss those characters and their worlds so much
don't get me wrong i love literary fiction, especially books about morally grey, weird, gross, off-putting women
but i just wanna read books that i can get lost in!! with characters that stick with me for at least a decade!!
do i reread the faves of my youth this summer or do i try to find new books to care about, that is the question
YOU’RE ALL I HAVE TO LOSE ⟢ spencer reid x greenaway!reader
summary: after spencer is exposed to anthrax, the hardest part isn’t being afraid. it’s knowing you love him for the same reasons you’re furious with him.
genre: angst (with a happy ending!) tags/warnings: reader is elle's sister, inspired by 4x24 amplification so tw for a classic CM near-death experience, reallllly whumpy but there’s some comfort, reader is very angry and very stressed and very in love, emotionally devastating phone message, lowkey feels like an undisclosed jello ad oops, title from close behind by noah kahan, no use of y/n. 6.3k words. part of a series but can be read as a standalone!
a/n: writer’s block took me out back & shot me approx 57 times over the past month, but i finally resurrected myself hallelujah so i am back with a bang 💥 (a very depressing bang. not the fun kind of bang. my bad). hat-tip to @slut-for-artists for the song rec that inspired the title!
greenaway!reader masterlist 🥀
You’re angry.
That’s the only emotion you can process when you first walk into Spencer’s hospital room. You’re angry, and you shouldn’t have to be here, and everything about the place feels wrong. It should be louder. There should be sirens or alarms or shouting, something ugly to match the feeling crawling beneath your ribs, but instead there’s only the measured beep of the monitor, the low hum of fluorescent light, the soft shuffle of Morgan shifting in the chair on the other side of Spencer’s bed, and the anxious tap-tap-tap of your foot against the linoleum floor.
There’s also Spencer.
Spencer, pale against the pillow, is sound asleep in a hospital gown with an IV taped to the back of his hand, a cannula under his nose, and his curls flattened on one side. His mouth is parted slightly, his breathing thin but steady. Better than it could be, according to the doctor. Better than it had been, according to a hollow-eyed Morgan when you first got here. Better than dead, which is apparently the standard you should be grateful he’s surpassing now.
You hate this room. This whole entire fucking day.
Morgan is leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped tight enough that his knuckles have gone pale. He looks like he’s aged ten years since this morning.
“He woke up once,” he says quietly. “Couple seconds. Doctor said that’s good.”
You nod without looking away from Spencer. “Good.”
“He’s gonna be okay.”
You try to hum some sort of acknowledgement, some half-hearted agreement you don’t entirely mean because at this point you can’t really know if that’s true, but no sound comes out. Instead, you reach for Spencer’s hand.
His fingers are warm. The plastic hospital bracelet brushes your wrist when you thread your fingers through his, and you feel almost burned by it. Spencer is supposed to have ink smudged on his hands and paper cuts from case files and maybe chalk dust from a man impromptu lecture no one asked him to give. He is not supposed to look fragile under a hospital blanket.
Morgan studies your face for a second, then stands.
“I’m gonna grab some coffee,” he says.
You don’t point out the fact that he already has a half-full coffee cup in his hand. You just nod.
At the door, he pauses. “He was asking about you earlier. Before they brought him here.”
Your grip tightens around Spencer’s hand.
“Just thought you should know,” he says.
Then he leaves, and the room gets even quieter.
You sit there with Spencer’s hand in yours and stare at his face until the anger sharpens again, because anger is a much easier emotion for you to deal with than fear.
“You absolute idiot,” you whisper.
He doesn’t answer.
—
You had been with Rossi and Emily when you found out.
The day had already felt a bit off-kilter since it started. Anthrax in a park in Annapolis. Dead civilians, sick children, hypermasculine military personnel taking over the BAU and breathing down everyone’s necks. Dr. Kimura from the CDC explained the intensity of this strain in a voice so calm it made the information hard to process. The team had swallowed Cipro in a lame attempt at some sense of control, then scattered across the Washington metropolitan area trying to build a profile before the unsub executed another attack.
You went with Reid and Dr. Kimura to the hospital earlier. You noticed the way his inflection turned clinical as he talked about infection rates and symptom onset, the way his eyes stayed focused on the numbers in the patients’ charts because if he let himself see them as people for too long, he’d feel all of it. You saw the way his focus faltered around Abby, a young woman who just wanted to go on a bike ride around the park and was now experiencing aphasia and severe respiratory distress as she tried to stay alive long enough for a cure to be found. You desperately wanted to touch the back of Spencer’s wrist as you walked beside him in the hallway, but you chose not to, because you were surrounded on all sides by sick people and your relationship did not belong in the middle of it.
You regretted that choice later.
Of all the stupid things to regret, that was the one your brain kept returning to. The touch you hadn’t taken. The two seconds of warmth you’d decided could wait.
By early afternoon, you and Emily were with Rossi following a lead away from the rest of the team, chasing down information on Dr. Lawrence Nichols, a disgraced military scientist who’d been downgraded to working on the flu. Emily was having a tough time with the casual deception a case like this required, so you were talking with her beside the parked SUV when Rossi got a call from Hotch. You watched him out of the corner of your eye as his expression changed and his gaze flicked quickly toward you before it shifted away again.
It was small. Practically nothing. A slight narrowing of his eyes. An almost imperceptible shift.
But still, your stomach went cold.
“What?” you asked.
Rossi lifted one finger, still listening to Hotch on the other end.
Your voice came out sharper. “Rossi.”
He lowered the phone. “Morgan and Reid went to check out Nichols’ house.”
You waited.
Rossi’s jaw tightened. “Nichols is dead. The house is contaminated with anthrax.”
For a second, your hearing went thin, and the whole street seemed to drop underwater. Emily shifted beside you. A car passed behind the SUV, tires hissing against pavement, and all of it reached you half a second late. Emily said something, but you didn’t catch it. Your eyes were fixed on Rossi because you knew there was more coming. You’ve been around the block enough times to know that people always pause before saying the worst part out loud, as if a few seconds of silence can soften the impact of devastation.
“Reid discovered the body and the exposure site inside,” Rossi said. “He sealed himself in before Morgan could enter.”
All at once, heat rushed up the back of your neck. Your hand went tight around the car door handle you hadn’t realized you were holding. Somewhere at the edge of your vision, Emily went still.
“Is he in decontamination protocol now? Or is he already at the hospital?”
Rossi didn’t answer fast enough, which was an answer in itself.
You turned away from both of them and walked three steps before bending forward, hands braced on your knees as you searched for breath.
Emily approached cautiously.
“I’m fine,” you snapped automatically.
“That’s not what I asked. I said Hotch wants to talk to you.”
You straightened slowly, smoothed your hands down your blazer, and took the phone from her.
“Tell me exactly what’s going on,” you said too fast as soon as you got the phone up to your ear.
Hotch did. He gave you all the facts he had: Nichols had been dead for days. There was anthrax spilled in the lab and the AC was blasting it through the house. Definitely a homicide, and whoever killed Nichols was likely responsible for the recent attacks. Reid had gone inside and accidentally stumbled upon the scene, shutting Morgan out before he could follow him inside. Kimura and the CDC team were on their way with protective equipment and a decon shower, but Reid was refusing to leave, instead insisting on working the profile from inside since he was already exposed.
Already exposed.
Those words had a sharp, horrible finality to them.
“What do you mean, he’s refusing to leave? You’re his boss, Hotch. Make him leave.”
Hotch’s voice stayed even, but there was strain under it. “He believes there may be an antidote or identifying information on the partner inside the house. He’s continuing to work the scene until one or both of those things are located.”
You pinched the skin between your brows. “Get him on this call for me.”
Emily turned fully toward you then. Rossi was watching with the careful stillness of someone standing near a live wire. Hotch said nothing.
You swallowed hard. “Hotch, transfer me to Reid’s phone, now. I think we all know he won’t answer if I call him myself, and I need to talk some sense into him.”
“He’s working.”
“Hotch. Please.”
The silence that followed was very, very loaded.
Then Hotch said, “Give me a minute.”
You lowered the phone a little and stared at nothing for a second. Your chest felt too tight, your blood too loud, every part of your body braced for impact. Emily came to stand beside you, but she didn’t try to touch you, and you appreciated that more than you could say.
“He’s going to do everything he can to find the cure and track down the unsub and get out of there,” she said.
“I know.”
“He’s Reid. If there’s something in that house to find, he’ll find it.”
“I know.”
And you did know. That was the problem. You knew him so well there was no room to be surprised. Spencer would knowingly stay in a room full of anthrax because people were dying and he had a chance to stop it. He would put his lungs and brain and life on the line to prevent the person responsible for the prior attacks and Nichols’ death from taking any more lives. You’d expect nothing less from Spencer Reid, and right now, you hated him for it.
A muffled voice came through the phone before you could fully catch your breath.
When you lifted it back to your ear, you heard movement first. Then Spencer.
“Hi.”
He sounded too normal.
You gripped the phone so hard your fingers hurt. “Do not hi me right now, Spencer Reid.”
A tiny pause. Then, softer, “Okay.”
“Are you symptomatic?”
“Not really.”
“Spencer,” you said.
“I’m okay right now,” he said, before you could ask again. “Kimura’s team is coming in soon. We’re currently in a limited window where I’m still useful and the scene is still viable.”
“Oh, goodie. Well, as long as you’re useful, everything’s just fine then,” you bit out.
“Sweetheart,” he said softly, “you know what I mean.”
Emily looked away. Rossi did too, like they were granting you privacy by pretending not to hear the sharpness in your voice.
Spencer was quiet for a second. You pictured him inside Nichols’ house, phone held close, hair falling in his face. You pictured powder on the floor, sealed doors. You pictured him alone in there.
“I found a second workspace,” he said. “There’s a bunch of notebooks filled with different handwriting, so it definitely doesn’t belong to Nichols. Whoever this desk belongs to is probably our unsub.”
You wanted to scream.
Instead, you leaned your forehead against the SUV door and forced yourself to breathe through your nose. “You need to go to the hospital.”
“I will.”
“Now, Spence.”
He paused. “I’ll go as soon as I can.”
Your throat tightened.
“You do realize you’re a person too, right?” you asked. “Not just a brain with a badge and a duty to uphold.”
Despite everything, you heard the faintest breath of a laugh. “I’m aware.”
“Great. Then act like it.”
“I am acting like it,” he said, and there it was, his signature stubbornness. “Leaving now wouldn’t make me safer in any meaningful way if we still can’t identify the unsub and still don’t have an antidote for the strain. If I can figure it out from in here, there’s a chance we can save the patients at the hospital, and me.”
You pressed your free hand over your eyes.
“Don’t do that,” you said.
“Do what?”
“Make sense.”
His quiet inhale caught slightly. Maybe from the anthrax, or maybe from you. It was hard to tell.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“But you’re still staying.”
“For now,” he said.
You sighed softly and rubbed your temple with your free hand. “You’re so frustrating.”
“I know.”
“And arrogant.”
“I can be, on occasion.”
“And so ungodly, unbelievably stupid.”
“Well, technically, I’m quantifiably a genius, although I don’t believe—”
“Spencer.”
“I know you’re angry with me,” he said quietly.
“You have no idea how much.”
“Well, I think I have some idea. I know you.”
“No, you really don’t.” You looked down at your boots. “Because if you did, you’d be walking out of that house right now.”
His voice went softer. “If I thought walking out was the thing most likely to get me back to you, I would. I promise you, I would.”
That took every bit of air out of you.
Spencer didn’t rush to fill the silence. He just let the words sit there, awful and sincere and completely unfair.
Then he said, “I’m not trying to scare you.”
“Well, you’re doing a damn good job for someone who isn’t trying,” you replied. You blinked hard, furious at your body for even considering tears when rage was so much more useful.
“Listen to me,” you said. “Find what you need to find, and then you get the hell out. No extra detours or noble self-sacrificing bullshit. Got it?”
“I’ll be careful,” he said.
There was more noise on his end now. Another voice. Hotch, maybe, through the sealed door closing him inside.
“I have to go,” Spencer said, pausing before he added: “I love you.”
You dug your fingernails into your palm.
“Don’t say it like that,” you whispered.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re only saying it in case it’s the last thing I hear from you.”
He took a shaky breath. “I’m saying it because it’s true,” he said firmly. “And because I want to say it. That’s all, okay? I love you.”
You swallowed, and when you spoke again, your voice was steadier than you felt. “I love you too. Stop being a hero and get back to me.”
“I will.”
The line clicked dead a second later.
You kept the phone against your ear long after there was nothing left to hear.
—
The next time Spencer let himself think about you, really think about you, he was sitting on the floor with poison in the air and sweat cooling at the back of his neck.
By then, his body had started showing signs of distress. The cough had come first, small enough that he tried to classify it as irritation from the environment, from dust, from the pollen in the garden outside. Then came the ache behind his eyes, the heat under his skin, the faint tremor in his hand that he could ignore if he kept it busy, if he kept turning pages, pulling drawers open, reading notes, forcing pieces of Dr. Nichols’ life into order.
He was aware of each symptom with miserable precision. He knew exactly what they meant. He also knew the unsub was still out there with a larger attack planned, so his personal awareness changed nothing. His body could be evidence later. Right now, he had work to do.
Still, there came a point when he had to step back and admit how serious things had gotten.
Garcia’s voice shook through the phone when he asked her to record a message for his mother. She tried to be brave about it. He could hear the effort it took, could picture her sitting at her desk with all that color and joy around her while despair leaked through anyway.
He recorded his message to Diana as steadily as he could.
He said all the things a son should say when he’s trying very hard to say goodbye without sounding like he’s saying goodbye. He kept his voice gentle. He tried not to cough in the middle of it. He nearly failed once, clearing his throat to get the urge to pass. When he finished, Garcia was silent for a few seconds.
“Okay,” she said finally, and he could hear the tears in her voice. “Okay, I got it.”
Spencer swallowed. He was covered in a sheen of sweat. His throat hurt. Everything hurt, actually, in a diffuse, widespread way he disliked for its lack of specificity. “Garcia?”
“Yeah, boy wonder?”
He closed his eyes.
He had been trying not to ask. He had been trying to tell himself that the message to his mother was already indulgent enough, that he did not have the right to take more time away from the case for something that served no immediate operational purpose. But the thought of you never getting to hear his voice again if this went badly kept pressing against the inside of his ribs until it became impossible to ignore.
“Can you, uh, record one more message for me?”
Garcia inhaled sharply.
“Oh,” she whispered, understanding immediately. “Of course. Yeah, of course I can.”
Spencer opened his eyes and looked around the room. Papers were spread across the floor in front of him, Dr. Nichols’ handwriting scrawled across margins and folders and binders. Somewhere outside, people were moving around in protective suits, building a perimeter, preparing to come in as soon as they could. Out in the field somewhere, you were trying to work despite your fury and fear. He knew that with the same certainty he knew his own name, the same certainty with which he could recite the periodic table in order by atomic number. You were angry because you were scared. You were scared because you loved him. That thought — that you loved him — probably should have brought some comfort; instead, it made his chest ache worse than the cough did.
“Ready whenever you are,” Garcia said, softly enough that it almost didn’t sound like her.
Spencer tried to take a breath deep enough to steady himself. It caught halfway down. He turned aside, coughed hard into his elbow, and waited for the room to stop tilting.
Then he looked down at his hands, at the pale dust along his cuffs, at the pulse ticking too fast beneath his skin, and began.
“Hi,” he said simply, because every other possible opening sounded wrong — either too formal, or too casual, or too final. He let out a breath that was almost a laugh and tried again. “You’re going to hate this. I know that. You’re probably already furious with me, and you’ve got every right to be, so if this message makes you even more furious, I’m sorry.
“I just need you to know that I wasn’t trying to be a martyr. I know you’ll think that’s what it was, some ‘noble self-sacrificing bullshit’ like you called it earlier, but that’s not what this is for me.” He paused, eyes stinging. “I keep thinking if I find the right thing fast enough, if I can connect the dots, then maybe we can stop the next attack and everyone at the hospital would have a chance. Maybe I would, too.
“And I keep thinking about you. I don’t know if that helps or makes it worse, but I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I thought about you being mad at me, and about the way you must’ve been rolling your eyes when we were on the phone earlier, and about your apartment, and the coffee you pretend to like when I make it too sweet, and the way you look at me when you think I’m not paying attention.”
A cough broke through him. He bent forward, eyes squeezed shut, one hand braced against the floor. It took too long to stop. When he lifted the phone again, his voice had gone hoarse around the edges.
“I wanted more time with you,” he said. “I wanted more ordinary days. That’s— that’s what I keep coming back to, which is strange, because technically, ordinary days are the least remarkable kind, but I think those are the ones I’ll miss the most. You at my desk stealing pens, and you pretending not to smile when I say something you think is ridiculous, and you falling asleep before the end of a movie and denying it in the morning.
“And if you’re hearing this, I know you’re going to want to do the thing where you decide this proves some terrible theory you’ve always had about what happens when you let people matter too much, but…”
His eyes burned. Because of the fever, maybe. Heartbreak, definitely.
“Don’t do that. Please, please don’t do that. Don’t let this be the reason you shut everyone out. I know it took a lot for you to let me in, and I know asking this is unfair, and I hate that I can’t say it to you in person, but I need you to keep letting people love you. You have to let them stay.”
He coughed again, violent enough this time to make his whole chest seize.
“The team loves you,” he said. “You know that. Garcia will smother you with affection and care packages. Morgan will check on you constantly and won’t even pretend to act cool about it. JJ will know when you’re lying about being fine before you can finish a sentence, so don’t try. Emily will sit beside you casually and pretend she isn’t worried, because she knows you hate being handled.” A faint, broken smile pulled at his mouth. “Rossi will feed you, so get ready to eat a lot of pasta. Hotch will give you space and somehow still make sure you’re never truly alone.”
He swallowed hard.
“And Elle… Call her. Please. She was there once when you needed her. Let her be there for you again.”
The words felt intrusive, maybe, as if he was reaching into parts of your life he had no right to touch. But if this was all he got, if this recording became the last shape his love ever took, he needed it to be honest.
“I don’t want you to be alone,” he said, voice breaking. “I don’t want you to decide that losing me means you were right to keep the door locked. I can’t bear it, so please, do this for me.”
He pressed his thumb into the crease of his palm until the tremor in it settled.
“I love you. I know you know that. I know I say it all the time now, probably too much, and if I get out of here you can complain about that for the rest of our lives and I won’t argue with you. But if I don’t,” he said, forcing himself through it, “then I need you to know that loving you was never something I regretted. Not for one second. And being loved by you was… it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
A sound came suddenly from outside the room. Movement. Voices. The heavy plastic rustle of protective equipment. He looked up and saw shapes gathering beyond the doorway, bright orange suits and face shields and Dr. Kimura’s focused eyes as her team entered the house.
He looked back down at the phone. There was so much more he wanted to say. There would always be so much more. That was the terrible thing about loving you — no matter what he said, it could never be enough to cover it.
“I have to go,” he said. “I’m going to try very hard to make sure you never have to hear this.”
Then, quieter:
“I love you. I really, really love you. Keep letting people in, okay?”
Garcia made a tiny broken sound through the phone, then cut the recording and the call before he could hear her cry.
—
The day stitched together in pieces after that.
Rossi and Emily kept you updated as information moved through the team, and Morgan called whenever there was a concrete update on what was going on in the house. Garcia called once too, telling you they had a name now — Chad Brown — and that Reid had been right about Nichols not working alone. There was a protégé. A student. A man with knowledge and access and ideology and rage.
You remember standing with your arms folded so tightly across your chest that your shoulders started to ache. You remember Emily offering you water and you pretending not to hear her. You remember Rossi telling you to sit down, not as an order, but in that low, paternal way of his that made you want to be even more difficult on principle. You remember staring at your phone until your eyes burned, as if your fear could force Spencer’s name to appear on the screen.
Mostly, you remember waiting.
When Hotch finally called, his voice was steady. They had Brown. The attack on the Metro had been stopped. Reid and Kimura’s team found what they needed. Reid was out of the house and had been decontaminated. Paramedics had transported him to the hospital where the treatment was being prepared, and Kimura was hopeful, and they would know more soon.
“Is he conscious?” you asked.
“Last we heard, yes,” Hotch said, and the words scraped through you. “Morgan is on the way to Walter Reed now to see what’s going on.”
You wanted to ask if Spencer had asked for you, but you didn’t. It felt too naked, somehow. Too pathetic. So you just said, “I’m on my way,” and Hotch didn’t waste anyone’s time pretending he could stop you.
Garcia found you before you made it out of the building.
She looked wrecked. Her mascara had smudged at the corners, and she had one hand wrapped around a cup of coffee she clearly hadn’t touched. She stopped in front of you like she wanted to hug you, then thought better of it, although it looked like that decision pained her immensely.
“He really, really loves you,” she said quietly.
The words were so abrupt, so earnest, that for a second you could only stare at her.
“I know,” you said.
Garcia nodded too fast. “I know you know. I just—” Her mouth trembled, and she pressed it together. “I just needed to make sure. I wanted you to hear it.”
Something about her face made your chest tighten. There was more to it — something she wasn’t saying, something she was holding back. You could see it in the way she looked at you, nervous and guilty and gentle all at once.
But Penelope Garcia, for all her usual glitter and gossip and inability to mind her own business, could keep a secret when it really mattered.
So you let her.
You just reached for her hand, squeezed once, and pushed through the doors to the parking lot.
—
Now, as you sit in an ungodly stiff chair next to his hospital bed, Spencer’s fingers move against yours.
It’s small. Barely anything. An involuntary twitch, maybe. But it’s enough of a movement to assume it could mean something bigger if you’re desperate enough, and apparently you are, because you go still so suddenly Morgan looks up from the cup of red Jell-O he’s been eating with a plastic spoon.
“Reid?” Morgan says.
Spencer’s brow furrows.
For a second, nothing happens. Then his eyes open slowly, heavy and unfocused at first. He blinks up at the ceiling like he’s trying very hard to decipher what type of room the ceiling belongs to.
Morgan moves, relief breaking over his face. “Hey, kid.”
Spencer’s gaze shifts toward him. It takes effort. Everything about his movements right now looks like it takes effort.
His voice comes out rough. “Are you eating Jell-O?”
Morgan cracks a wide grin. “Man, you almost die from a bioweapon and this is what you wake up concerned about?”
Spencer blinks slowly. “Is there any more Jell-O?”
Your laugh escapes before you can stop it. It’s small and wet and humiliating, and Spencer’s eyes move immediately toward the sound.
The drowsy confusion in his face shifts, turning into something so relieved and so sorry that all the air you just got back leaves you again.
“Hi,” he says.
You swallow. “Hi.”
Morgan looks between the two of you for half a second, then pushes himself out of his chair. “I’m gonna go tell Dr. Kimura that Sleeping Beauty here is awake,” he says. “And apparently find more Jell-O.”
Spencer’s mouth twitches faintly. “Green, if they have it.”
“You’re lucky I’m pretty much obligated to be nice to you right now,” Morgan tells him sarcastically, but his hand lands on Spencer’s shoulder for a second before he leaves, firm and warm and full of things he’ll probably never say out loud.
Then the door closes behind him and the room is quiet again, but it isn’t the same quiet as before, because Spencer’s awake now. His eyes are open. His fingers are caught between yours, weak but there, his thumb making the smallest attempt to move against your skin.
There’s too many feelings to parse through. Relief, first. Relief so enormous it can barely fit inside your body, but somehow it does, pressing against the anger and terror and frustration you also feel, against all the miserable little aftershocks of the day.
For a moment, you just look at him.
He looks terrible. Pale, sweaty, hair mussed, lips dry, throat probably raw from coughing and whatever else his body has been through. He also looks alive.
You want to kiss him.
You want to hit him.
You settle for tightening your hold on his hand and saying, very evenly, “I’m so mad at you.”
Spencer closes his eyes for a second.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t,” you say, because the calmness is already slipping. “You really, truly do not. I possess levels of anger right now that are previously unrecorded in modern psychiatry.”
His mouth curves faintly, but it fades almost immediately. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
Spencer looks at you for a long second, too tired to dress the truth up into anything gentle. “I’m sorry for what it did to you,” he says. His voice is rough and low, dragged out of a throat that still isn’t ready to cooperate. “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, and I’m sorry that when I did, I couldn’t tell you what you wanted to hear.” He pauses, breathing carefully. “But if I had left before we found what we needed, people could have died.”
You stare at the bed rail.
You know the exact reason behind the choice he made, because you’ve made choices with the same bones. Spencer’s been on the other side of this with you before. Not with anthrax in your lungs, obviously, but in basements and alleys and warehouses and too many places where you put the job before your own safety without a second thought.
You hate that. You hate him a little for making it impossible to be purely angry.
“I know,” you say, voice quieter now. “I know you’re right. Or close enough to right that I can’t even enjoy being mad at you properly.”
Spencer gives you a weak, exhausted almost-smile. “I’m sorry for that too.”
You look back at him, and the sight of him ruins you all over again.
“You could have died, Spencer,” you manage to say in a hoarse whisper.
His expression changes. The humor disappears, what little there was of it. His fingers tighten around yours with visible effort.
Your voice shakes, and that irritates you enough to make your eyes burn. “I know you. I know you weren’t actually trying to be some self-sacrificing hero, even though you have a very irritating talent for landing there by accident. I know I probably would’ve done the same thing, which is frustrating because it makes my moral high ground very unstable.” You inhale, careful and shaky. “But I was so scared, Spencer. I was so scared I couldn’t pretend to be normal about it.”
He looks at you like that sentence hurts him worse than anything else.
“I thought about that too much,” he says.
You frown. “About what?”
“You. Being scared.” His eyes drift down to your joined hands. “I thought about you being angry, and about you pretending you weren’t afraid because Rossi and Emily were there. I kept thinking…” His brow creases faintly, concentration pulling through the haze. “I kept thinking if I could just find the answer, then maybe I’d get back to you before anyone else could see your fear. I knew you’d hate it if they could.”
You let out a breath that breaks in the middle. Your free hand lifts before you really decide to move, fingers hovering near his face. He watches you do it, quiet and trusting, and that almost makes it worse.
You brush his hair back from his forehead, and his eyes close.
The simple trust of it dismantles you a little. You had spent the whole day imagining him behind sealed doors, breathing poisoned air, making logical arguments while his body betrayed him by degrees. Now he’s here, under your hand, alive and exhausted and still somehow trying to be gentle with you when he’s the one in the hospital bed.
“I love you,” you say. “And I genuinely hate you right now.”
Spencer’s eyes open again, slow and soft. “That seems pretty fair.”
Your laugh comes out wet. You look away, but he squeezes your hand before you can get far.
“I love you too,” he says. “And I know it doesn’t make it better, but I was trying to make sure I could get back to you. That was the point. I know it looked like I was choosing the work over everything else, but I wasn’t. The work was my way out.”
You turn back toward him.
He looks exhausted by the length of his own words, breaths a little uneven, but his eyes stay on yours.
“I know,” you whisper, because you do. “I know, Spence.”
You lean forward carefully, giving him time to shift away if he needs to, but he doesn’t. He tilts his face up the smallest amount, and you press your mouth to his.
The kiss is soft by necessity. There’s no heat in it, not really — not the kind the two of you are used to. His lips are chapped and warm and careful beneath yours, and for one long, holy second, all you can focus on is that you get to do this again. You get to kiss him in a hospital bed and hate the reason for it, but you still have him here to kiss. You get the fragile press of his mouth, the weak squeeze of his fingers around yours, the proof that his body is still a living thing and not a memory you’ll spend the rest of your life surviving. It isn’t enough to undo the day, but it gives your fear and love somewhere to go. It’s a promise made with whatever energy he has left.
When you pull back, your forehead rests near his temple.
“You scared the hell out of me,” you murmur.
“I know.
“If you ever do that again, I will murder you myself.”
“I know.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I know.”
You pull back enough to glare at him. “Normally you’d argue with at least one of those.”
His tired smile is tiny and perfect. “I’m conserving my energy.”
The door opens after a soft knock, and Dr. Kimura steps in with Morgan hovering behind her, a green Jell-O cup in one hand and a fresh coffee in the other.
“Look who I found,” Morgan says.
Spencer nods at Dr. Kimura before his gaze flicks to the Jell-O. “Is that for me?”
Morgan chuckles. “Yeah, kid, it’s for you.”
You wipe quickly under one eye with your thumb and try to regain whatever dignity you can scrape off the floor.
Kimura checks Spencer over. Vitals, pupils, lungs, cognitive questions he answers with enough impressive precision to make Kimura’s eyebrows lift. Morgan stays near the doorway, and you don’t let go of Spencer’s hand the entire time.
Eventually, the room settles again.
Morgan leaves the Jell-O on the tray and tells Spencer not to be a pain in the ass to you or any of the nurses. Dr. Kimura tells him he’s on the mend but needs a lot of rest, and Spencer nods, probably because he knows you wouldn’t give him a choice anyway.
Once it’s just the two of you alone in the room again, your anger has gone a bit quieter. It’s still there, and knowing you, it’ll probably stay there for a while, tucked stubbornly behind your ribs, ever-present but currently overshadowed by disgusting amounts of relief and love.
Spencer’s eyes are already slipping closed.
“Sleep,” you say.
“Will you stay?”
You sit back and wrap both hands around his. “Yeah, genius, I’ll stay. Obviously.”
The corner of his mouth turns up into a crooked, sleepy smile. “Good.”
It takes less than a minute for him to fall asleep again.
This time, watching him sleep doesn’t feel like waiting for the floor to disappear beneath you. His breathing is still rougher than you’d like, and his face is still too pale, but the monitor keeps a steady rhythm. Alive. Alive. Alive. His fingers are warm under yours, and there’s a green Jell-O cup sitting unopened on the tray because, apparently, even near-death experiences cannot kill Spencer Reid’s bizarre snack preferences. You know he’ll ask for a spoon as soon as he’s awake again and his appetite comes back.
You do not know about the recording.
You do not know that somewhere, locked carefully behind Garcia’s cyberdefenses, there is a version of his voice trying to love you through the worst possible outcome. You do not know that he spent the better part of what might’ve been his last hour on earth trying to make sure you would be okay.
But maybe it’s better you don’t know.
You don’t need the version of him that said goodbye. You need this one: alive, stubborn, fever-warm, breathing steadily with Jell-O waiting untouched beside him.
His fingers twitch against yours again in sleep.
You keep holding on. You hold on, and you stay.
ᝰ.ᐟ
this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️
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YOU’RE ALL I HAVE TO LOSE ⟢ spencer reid x greenaway!reader
summary: after spencer is exposed to anthrax, the hardest part isn’t being afraid. it’s knowing you love him for the same reasons you’re furious with him.
genre: angst (with a happy ending!) tags/warnings: reader is elle's sister, inspired by 4x24 amplification so tw for a classic CM near-death experience, reallllly whumpy but there’s some comfort, reader is very angry and very stressed and very in love, emotionally devastating phone message, lowkey feels like an undisclosed jello ad oops, title from close behind by noah kahan, no use of y/n. 6.3k words. part of a series but can be read as a standalone!
a/n: writer’s block took me out back & shot me approx 57 times over the past month, but i finally resurrected myself hallelujah so i am back with a bang 💥 (a very depressing bang. not the fun kind of bang. my bad). hat-tip to @slut-for-artists for the song rec that inspired the title!
greenaway!reader masterlist 🥀
You’re angry.
That’s the only emotion you can process when you first walk into Spencer’s hospital room. You’re angry, and you shouldn’t have to be here, and everything about the place feels wrong. It should be louder. There should be sirens or alarms or shouting, something ugly to match the feeling crawling beneath your ribs, but instead there’s only the measured beep of the monitor, the low hum of fluorescent light, the soft shuffle of Morgan shifting in the chair on the other side of Spencer’s bed, and the anxious tap-tap-tap of your foot against the linoleum floor.
There’s also Spencer.
Spencer, pale against the pillow, is sound asleep in a hospital gown with an IV taped to the back of his hand, a cannula under his nose, and his curls flattened on one side. His mouth is parted slightly, his breathing thin but steady. Better than it could be, according to the doctor. Better than it had been, according to a hollow-eyed Morgan when you first got here. Better than dead, which is apparently the standard you should be grateful he’s surpassing now.
You hate this room. This whole entire fucking day.
Morgan is leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped tight enough that his knuckles have gone pale. He looks like he’s aged ten years since this morning.
“He woke up once,” he says quietly. “Couple seconds. Doctor said that’s good.”
You nod without looking away from Spencer. “Good.”
“He’s gonna be okay.”
You try to hum some sort of acknowledgement, some half-hearted agreement you don’t entirely mean because at this point you can’t really know if that’s true, but no sound comes out. Instead, you reach for Spencer’s hand.
His fingers are warm. The plastic hospital bracelet brushes your wrist when you thread your fingers through his, and you feel almost burned by it. Spencer is supposed to have ink smudged on his hands and paper cuts from case files and maybe chalk dust from a man impromptu lecture no one asked him to give. He is not supposed to look fragile under a hospital blanket.
Morgan studies your face for a second, then stands.
“I’m gonna grab some coffee,” he says.
You don’t point out the fact that he already has a half-full coffee cup in his hand. You just nod.
At the door, he pauses. “He was asking about you earlier. Before they brought him here.”
Your grip tightens around Spencer’s hand.
“Just thought you should know,” he says.
Then he leaves, and the room gets even quieter.
You sit there with Spencer’s hand in yours and stare at his face until the anger sharpens again, because anger is a much easier emotion for you to deal with than fear.
“You absolute idiot,” you whisper.
He doesn’t answer.
—
You had been with Rossi and Emily when you found out.
The day had already felt a bit off-kilter since it started. Anthrax in a park in Annapolis. Dead civilians, sick children, hypermasculine military personnel taking over the BAU and breathing down everyone’s necks. Dr. Kimura from the CDC explained the intensity of this strain in a voice so calm it made the information hard to process. The team had swallowed Cipro in a lame attempt at some sense of control, then scattered across the Washington metropolitan area trying to build a profile before the unsub executed another attack.
You went with Reid and Dr. Kimura to the hospital earlier. You noticed the way his inflection turned clinical as he talked about infection rates and symptom onset, the way his eyes stayed focused on the numbers in the patients’ charts because if he let himself see them as people for too long, he’d feel all of it. You saw the way his focus faltered around Abby, a young woman who just wanted to go on a bike ride around the park and was now experiencing aphasia and severe respiratory distress as she tried to stay alive long enough for a cure to be found. You desperately wanted to touch the back of Spencer’s wrist as you walked beside him in the hallway, but you chose not to, because you were surrounded on all sides by sick people and your relationship did not belong in the middle of it.
You regretted that choice later.
Of all the stupid things to regret, that was the one your brain kept returning to. The touch you hadn’t taken. The two seconds of warmth you’d decided could wait.
By early afternoon, you and Emily were with Rossi following a lead away from the rest of the team, chasing down information on Dr. Lawrence Nichols, a disgraced military scientist who’d been downgraded to working on the flu. Emily was having a tough time with the casual deception a case like this required, so you were talking with her beside the parked SUV when Rossi got a call from Hotch. You watched him out of the corner of your eye as his expression changed and his gaze flicked quickly toward you before it shifted away again.
It was small. Practically nothing. A slight narrowing of his eyes. An almost imperceptible shift.
But still, your stomach went cold.
“What?” you asked.
Rossi lifted one finger, still listening to Hotch on the other end.
Your voice came out sharper. “Rossi.”
He lowered the phone. “Morgan and Reid went to check out Nichols’ house.”
You waited.
Rossi’s jaw tightened. “Nichols is dead. The house is contaminated with anthrax.”
For a second, your hearing went thin, and the whole street seemed to drop underwater. Emily shifted beside you. A car passed behind the SUV, tires hissing against pavement, and all of it reached you half a second late. Emily said something, but you didn’t catch it. Your eyes were fixed on Rossi because you knew there was more coming. You’ve been around the block enough times to know that people always pause before saying the worst part out loud, as if a few seconds of silence can soften the impact of devastation.
“Reid discovered the body and the exposure site inside,” Rossi said. “He sealed himself in before Morgan could enter.”
All at once, heat rushed up the back of your neck. Your hand went tight around the car door handle you hadn’t realized you were holding. Somewhere at the edge of your vision, Emily went still.
“Is he in decontamination protocol now? Or is he already at the hospital?”
Rossi didn’t answer fast enough, which was an answer in itself.
You turned away from both of them and walked three steps before bending forward, hands braced on your knees as you searched for breath.
Emily approached cautiously.
“I’m fine,” you snapped automatically.
“That’s not what I asked. I said Hotch wants to talk to you.”
You straightened slowly, smoothed your hands down your blazer, and took the phone from her.
“Tell me exactly what’s going on,” you said too fast as soon as you got the phone up to your ear.
Hotch did. He gave you all the facts he had: Nichols had been dead for days. There was anthrax spilled in the lab and the AC was blasting it through the house. Definitely a homicide, and whoever killed Nichols was likely responsible for the recent attacks. Reid had gone inside and accidentally stumbled upon the scene, shutting Morgan out before he could follow him inside. Kimura and the CDC team were on their way with protective equipment and a decon shower, but Reid was refusing to leave, instead insisting on working the profile from inside since he was already exposed.
Already exposed.
Those words had a sharp, horrible finality to them.
“What do you mean, he’s refusing to leave? You’re his boss, Hotch. Make him leave.”
Hotch’s voice stayed even, but there was strain under it. “He believes there may be an antidote or identifying information on the partner inside the house. He’s continuing to work the scene until one or both of those things are located.”
You pinched the skin between your brows. “Get him on this call for me.”
Emily turned fully toward you then. Rossi was watching with the careful stillness of someone standing near a live wire. Hotch said nothing.
You swallowed hard. “Hotch, transfer me to Reid’s phone, now. I think we all know he won’t answer if I call him myself, and I need to talk some sense into him.”
“He’s working.”
“Hotch. Please.”
The silence that followed was very, very loaded.
Then Hotch said, “Give me a minute.”
You lowered the phone a little and stared at nothing for a second. Your chest felt too tight, your blood too loud, every part of your body braced for impact. Emily came to stand beside you, but she didn’t try to touch you, and you appreciated that more than you could say.
“He’s going to do everything he can to find the cure and track down the unsub and get out of there,” she said.
“I know.”
“He’s Reid. If there’s something in that house to find, he’ll find it.”
“I know.”
And you did know. That was the problem. You knew him so well there was no room to be surprised. Spencer would knowingly stay in a room full of anthrax because people were dying and he had a chance to stop it. He would put his lungs and brain and life on the line to prevent the person responsible for the prior attacks and Nichols’ death from taking any more lives. You’d expect nothing less from Spencer Reid, and right now, you hated him for it.
A muffled voice came through the phone before you could fully catch your breath.
When you lifted it back to your ear, you heard movement first. Then Spencer.
“Hi.”
He sounded too normal.
You gripped the phone so hard your fingers hurt. “Do not hi me right now, Spencer Reid.”
A tiny pause. Then, softer, “Okay.”
“Are you symptomatic?”
“Not really.”
“Spencer,” you said.
“I’m okay right now,” he said, before you could ask again. “Kimura’s team is coming in soon. We’re currently in a limited window where I’m still useful and the scene is still viable.”
“Oh, goodie. Well, as long as you’re useful, everything’s just fine then,” you bit out.
“Sweetheart,” he said softly, “you know what I mean.”
Emily looked away. Rossi did too, like they were granting you privacy by pretending not to hear the sharpness in your voice.
Spencer was quiet for a second. You pictured him inside Nichols’ house, phone held close, hair falling in his face. You pictured powder on the floor, sealed doors. You pictured him alone in there.
“I found a second workspace,” he said. “There’s a bunch of notebooks filled with different handwriting, so it definitely doesn’t belong to Nichols. Whoever this desk belongs to is probably our unsub.”
You wanted to scream.
Instead, you leaned your forehead against the SUV door and forced yourself to breathe through your nose. “You need to go to the hospital.”
“I will.”
“Now, Spence.”
He paused. “I’ll go as soon as I can.”
Your throat tightened.
“You do realize you’re a person too, right?” you asked. “Not just a brain with a badge and a duty to uphold.”
Despite everything, you heard the faintest breath of a laugh. “I’m aware.”
“Great. Then act like it.”
“I am acting like it,” he said, and there it was, his signature stubbornness. “Leaving now wouldn’t make me safer in any meaningful way if we still can’t identify the unsub and still don’t have an antidote for the strain. If I can figure it out from in here, there’s a chance we can save the patients at the hospital, and me.”
You pressed your free hand over your eyes.
“Don’t do that,” you said.
“Do what?”
“Make sense.”
His quiet inhale caught slightly. Maybe from the anthrax, or maybe from you. It was hard to tell.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“But you’re still staying.”
“For now,” he said.
You sighed softly and rubbed your temple with your free hand. “You’re so frustrating.”
“I know.”
“And arrogant.”
“I can be, on occasion.”
“And so ungodly, unbelievably stupid.”
“Well, technically, I’m quantifiably a genius, although I don’t believe—”
“Spencer.”
“I know you’re angry with me,” he said quietly.
“You have no idea how much.”
“Well, I think I have some idea. I know you.”
“No, you really don’t.” You looked down at your boots. “Because if you did, you’d be walking out of that house right now.”
His voice went softer. “If I thought walking out was the thing most likely to get me back to you, I would. I promise you, I would.”
That took every bit of air out of you.
Spencer didn’t rush to fill the silence. He just let the words sit there, awful and sincere and completely unfair.
Then he said, “I’m not trying to scare you.”
“Well, you’re doing a damn good job for someone who isn’t trying,” you replied. You blinked hard, furious at your body for even considering tears when rage was so much more useful.
“Listen to me,” you said. “Find what you need to find, and then you get the hell out. No extra detours or noble self-sacrificing bullshit. Got it?”
“I’ll be careful,” he said.
There was more noise on his end now. Another voice. Hotch, maybe, through the sealed door closing him inside.
“I have to go,” Spencer said, pausing before he added: “I love you.”
You dug your fingernails into your palm.
“Don’t say it like that,” you whispered.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re only saying it in case it’s the last thing I hear from you.”
He took a shaky breath. “I’m saying it because it’s true,” he said firmly. “And because I want to say it. That’s all, okay? I love you.”
You swallowed, and when you spoke again, your voice was steadier than you felt. “I love you too. Stop being a hero and get back to me.”
“I will.”
The line clicked dead a second later.
You kept the phone against your ear long after there was nothing left to hear.
—
The next time Spencer let himself think about you, really think about you, he was sitting on the floor with poison in the air and sweat cooling at the back of his neck.
By then, his body had started showing signs of distress. The cough had come first, small enough that he tried to classify it as irritation from the environment, from dust, from the pollen in the garden outside. Then came the ache behind his eyes, the heat under his skin, the faint tremor in his hand that he could ignore if he kept it busy, if he kept turning pages, pulling drawers open, reading notes, forcing pieces of Dr. Nichols’ life into order.
He was aware of each symptom with miserable precision. He knew exactly what they meant. He also knew the unsub was still out there with a larger attack planned, so his personal awareness changed nothing. His body could be evidence later. Right now, he had work to do.
Still, there came a point when he had to step back and admit how serious things had gotten.
Garcia’s voice shook through the phone when he asked her to record a message for his mother. She tried to be brave about it. He could hear the effort it took, could picture her sitting at her desk with all that color and joy around her while despair leaked through anyway.
He recorded his message to Diana as steadily as he could.
He said all the things a son should say when he’s trying very hard to say goodbye without sounding like he’s saying goodbye. He kept his voice gentle. He tried not to cough in the middle of it. He nearly failed once, clearing his throat to get the urge to pass. When he finished, Garcia was silent for a few seconds.
“Okay,” she said finally, and he could hear the tears in her voice. “Okay, I got it.”
Spencer swallowed. He was covered in a sheen of sweat. His throat hurt. Everything hurt, actually, in a diffuse, widespread way he disliked for its lack of specificity. “Garcia?”
“Yeah, boy wonder?”
He closed his eyes.
He had been trying not to ask. He had been trying to tell himself that the message to his mother was already indulgent enough, that he did not have the right to take more time away from the case for something that served no immediate operational purpose. But the thought of you never getting to hear his voice again if this went badly kept pressing against the inside of his ribs until it became impossible to ignore.
“Can you, uh, record one more message for me?”
Garcia inhaled sharply.
“Oh,” she whispered, understanding immediately. “Of course. Yeah, of course I can.”
Spencer opened his eyes and looked around the room. Papers were spread across the floor in front of him, Dr. Nichols’ handwriting scrawled across margins and folders and binders. Somewhere outside, people were moving around in protective suits, building a perimeter, preparing to come in as soon as they could. Out in the field somewhere, you were trying to work despite your fury and fear. He knew that with the same certainty he knew his own name, the same certainty with which he could recite the periodic table in order by atomic number. You were angry because you were scared. You were scared because you loved him. That thought — that you loved him — probably should have brought some comfort; instead, it made his chest ache worse than the cough did.
“Ready whenever you are,” Garcia said, softly enough that it almost didn’t sound like her.
Spencer tried to take a breath deep enough to steady himself. It caught halfway down. He turned aside, coughed hard into his elbow, and waited for the room to stop tilting.
Then he looked down at his hands, at the pale dust along his cuffs, at the pulse ticking too fast beneath his skin, and began.
“Hi,” he said simply, because every other possible opening sounded wrong — either too formal, or too casual, or too final. He let out a breath that was almost a laugh and tried again. “You’re going to hate this. I know that. You’re probably already furious with me, and you’ve got every right to be, so if this message makes you even more furious, I’m sorry.
“I just need you to know that I wasn’t trying to be a martyr. I know you’ll think that’s what it was, some ‘noble self-sacrificing bullshit’ like you called it earlier, but that’s not what this is for me.” He paused, eyes stinging. “I keep thinking if I find the right thing fast enough, if I can connect the dots, then maybe we can stop the next attack and everyone at the hospital would have a chance. Maybe I would, too.
“And I keep thinking about you. I don’t know if that helps or makes it worse, but I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I thought about you being mad at me, and about the way you must’ve been rolling your eyes when we were on the phone earlier, and about your apartment, and the coffee you pretend to like when I make it too sweet, and the way you look at me when you think I’m not paying attention.”
A cough broke through him. He bent forward, eyes squeezed shut, one hand braced against the floor. It took too long to stop. When he lifted the phone again, his voice had gone hoarse around the edges.
“I wanted more time with you,” he said. “I wanted more ordinary days. That’s— that’s what I keep coming back to, which is strange, because technically, ordinary days are the least remarkable kind, but I think those are the ones I’ll miss the most. You at my desk stealing pens, and you pretending not to smile when I say something you think is ridiculous, and you falling asleep before the end of a movie and denying it in the morning.
“And if you’re hearing this, I know you’re going to want to do the thing where you decide this proves some terrible theory you’ve always had about what happens when you let people matter too much, but…”
His eyes burned. Because of the fever, maybe. Heartbreak, definitely.
“Don’t do that. Please, please don’t do that. Don’t let this be the reason you shut everyone out. I know it took a lot for you to let me in, and I know asking this is unfair, and I hate that I can’t say it to you in person, but I need you to keep letting people love you. You have to let them stay.”
He coughed again, violent enough this time to make his whole chest seize.
“The team loves you,” he said. “You know that. Garcia will smother you with affection and care packages. Morgan will check on you constantly and won’t even pretend to act cool about it. JJ will know when you’re lying about being fine before you can finish a sentence, so don’t try. Emily will sit beside you casually and pretend she isn’t worried, because she knows you hate being handled.” A faint, broken smile pulled at his mouth. “Rossi will feed you, so get ready to eat a lot of pasta. Hotch will give you space and somehow still make sure you’re never truly alone.”
He swallowed hard.
“And Elle… Call her. Please. She was there once when you needed her. Let her be there for you again.”
The words felt intrusive, maybe, as if he was reaching into parts of your life he had no right to touch. But if this was all he got, if this recording became the last shape his love ever took, he needed it to be honest.
“I don’t want you to be alone,” he said, voice breaking. “I don’t want you to decide that losing me means you were right to keep the door locked. I can’t bear it, so please, do this for me.”
He pressed his thumb into the crease of his palm until the tremor in it settled.
“I love you. I know you know that. I know I say it all the time now, probably too much, and if I get out of here you can complain about that for the rest of our lives and I won’t argue with you. But if I don’t,” he said, forcing himself through it, “then I need you to know that loving you was never something I regretted. Not for one second. And being loved by you was… it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
A sound came suddenly from outside the room. Movement. Voices. The heavy plastic rustle of protective equipment. He looked up and saw shapes gathering beyond the doorway, bright orange suits and face shields and Dr. Kimura’s focused eyes as her team entered the house.
He looked back down at the phone. There was so much more he wanted to say. There would always be so much more. That was the terrible thing about loving you — no matter what he said, it could never be enough to cover it.
“I have to go,” he said. “I’m going to try very hard to make sure you never have to hear this.”
Then, quieter:
“I love you. I really, really love you. Keep letting people in, okay?”
Garcia made a tiny broken sound through the phone, then cut the recording and the call before he could hear her cry.
—
The day stitched together in pieces after that.
Rossi and Emily kept you updated as information moved through the team, and Morgan called whenever there was a concrete update on what was going on in the house. Garcia called once too, telling you they had a name now — Chad Brown — and that Reid had been right about Nichols not working alone. There was a protégé. A student. A man with knowledge and access and ideology and rage.
You remember standing with your arms folded so tightly across your chest that your shoulders started to ache. You remember Emily offering you water and you pretending not to hear her. You remember Rossi telling you to sit down, not as an order, but in that low, paternal way of his that made you want to be even more difficult on principle. You remember staring at your phone until your eyes burned, as if your fear could force Spencer’s name to appear on the screen.
Mostly, you remember waiting.
When Hotch finally called, his voice was steady. They had Brown. The attack on the Metro had been stopped. Reid and Kimura’s team found what they needed. Reid was out of the house and had been decontaminated. Paramedics had transported him to the hospital where the treatment was being prepared, and Kimura was hopeful, and they would know more soon.
“Is he conscious?” you asked.
“Last we heard, yes,” Hotch said, and the words scraped through you. “Morgan is on the way to Walter Reed now to see what’s going on.”
You wanted to ask if Spencer had asked for you, but you didn’t. It felt too naked, somehow. Too pathetic. So you just said, “I’m on my way,” and Hotch didn’t waste anyone’s time pretending he could stop you.
Garcia found you before you made it out of the building.
She looked wrecked. Her mascara had smudged at the corners, and she had one hand wrapped around a cup of coffee she clearly hadn’t touched. She stopped in front of you like she wanted to hug you, then thought better of it, although it looked like that decision pained her immensely.
“He really, really loves you,” she said quietly.
The words were so abrupt, so earnest, that for a second you could only stare at her.
“I know,” you said.
Garcia nodded too fast. “I know you know. I just—” Her mouth trembled, and she pressed it together. “I just needed to make sure. I wanted you to hear it.”
Something about her face made your chest tighten. There was more to it — something she wasn’t saying, something she was holding back. You could see it in the way she looked at you, nervous and guilty and gentle all at once.
But Penelope Garcia, for all her usual glitter and gossip and inability to mind her own business, could keep a secret when it really mattered.
So you let her.
You just reached for her hand, squeezed once, and pushed through the doors to the parking lot.
—
Now, as you sit in an ungodly stiff chair next to his hospital bed, Spencer’s fingers move against yours.
It’s small. Barely anything. An involuntary twitch, maybe. But it’s enough of a movement to assume it could mean something bigger if you’re desperate enough, and apparently you are, because you go still so suddenly Morgan looks up from the cup of red Jell-O he’s been eating with a plastic spoon.
“Reid?” Morgan says.
Spencer’s brow furrows.
For a second, nothing happens. Then his eyes open slowly, heavy and unfocused at first. He blinks up at the ceiling like he’s trying very hard to decipher what type of room the ceiling belongs to.
Morgan moves, relief breaking over his face. “Hey, kid.”
Spencer’s gaze shifts toward him. It takes effort. Everything about his movements right now looks like it takes effort.
His voice comes out rough. “Are you eating Jell-O?”
Morgan cracks a wide grin. “Man, you almost die from a bioweapon and this is what you wake up concerned about?”
Spencer blinks slowly. “Is there any more Jell-O?”
Your laugh escapes before you can stop it. It’s small and wet and humiliating, and Spencer’s eyes move immediately toward the sound.
The drowsy confusion in his face shifts, turning into something so relieved and so sorry that all the air you just got back leaves you again.
“Hi,” he says.
You swallow. “Hi.”
Morgan looks between the two of you for half a second, then pushes himself out of his chair. “I’m gonna go tell Dr. Kimura that Sleeping Beauty here is awake,” he says. “And apparently find more Jell-O.”
Spencer’s mouth twitches faintly. “Green, if they have it.”
“You’re lucky I’m pretty much obligated to be nice to you right now,” Morgan tells him sarcastically, but his hand lands on Spencer’s shoulder for a second before he leaves, firm and warm and full of things he’ll probably never say out loud.
Then the door closes behind him and the room is quiet again, but it isn’t the same quiet as before, because Spencer’s awake now. His eyes are open. His fingers are caught between yours, weak but there, his thumb making the smallest attempt to move against your skin.
There’s too many feelings to parse through. Relief, first. Relief so enormous it can barely fit inside your body, but somehow it does, pressing against the anger and terror and frustration you also feel, against all the miserable little aftershocks of the day.
For a moment, you just look at him.
He looks terrible. Pale, sweaty, hair mussed, lips dry, throat probably raw from coughing and whatever else his body has been through. He also looks alive.
You want to kiss him.
You want to hit him.
You settle for tightening your hold on his hand and saying, very evenly, “I’m so mad at you.”
Spencer closes his eyes for a second.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t,” you say, because the calmness is already slipping. “You really, truly do not. I possess levels of anger right now that are previously unrecorded in modern psychiatry.”
His mouth curves faintly, but it fades almost immediately. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
Spencer looks at you for a long second, too tired to dress the truth up into anything gentle. “I’m sorry for what it did to you,” he says. His voice is rough and low, dragged out of a throat that still isn’t ready to cooperate. “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, and I’m sorry that when I did, I couldn’t tell you what you wanted to hear.” He pauses, breathing carefully. “But if I had left before we found what we needed, people could have died.”
You stare at the bed rail.
You know the exact reason behind the choice he made, because you’ve made choices with the same bones. Spencer’s been on the other side of this with you before. Not with anthrax in your lungs, obviously, but in basements and alleys and warehouses and too many places where you put the job before your own safety without a second thought.
You hate that. You hate him a little for making it impossible to be purely angry.
“I know,” you say, voice quieter now. “I know you’re right. Or close enough to right that I can’t even enjoy being mad at you properly.”
Spencer gives you a weak, exhausted almost-smile. “I’m sorry for that too.”
You look back at him, and the sight of him ruins you all over again.
“You could have died, Spencer,” you manage to say in a hoarse whisper.
His expression changes. The humor disappears, what little there was of it. His fingers tighten around yours with visible effort.
Your voice shakes, and that irritates you enough to make your eyes burn. “I know you. I know you weren’t actually trying to be some self-sacrificing hero, even though you have a very irritating talent for landing there by accident. I know I probably would’ve done the same thing, which is frustrating because it makes my moral high ground very unstable.” You inhale, careful and shaky. “But I was so scared, Spencer. I was so scared I couldn’t pretend to be normal about it.”
He looks at you like that sentence hurts him worse than anything else.
“I thought about that too much,” he says.
You frown. “About what?”
“You. Being scared.” His eyes drift down to your joined hands. “I thought about you being angry, and about you pretending you weren’t afraid because Rossi and Emily were there. I kept thinking…” His brow creases faintly, concentration pulling through the haze. “I kept thinking if I could just find the answer, then maybe I’d get back to you before anyone else could see your fear. I knew you’d hate it if they could.”
You let out a breath that breaks in the middle. Your free hand lifts before you really decide to move, fingers hovering near his face. He watches you do it, quiet and trusting, and that almost makes it worse.
You brush his hair back from his forehead, and his eyes close.
The simple trust of it dismantles you a little. You had spent the whole day imagining him behind sealed doors, breathing poisoned air, making logical arguments while his body betrayed him by degrees. Now he’s here, under your hand, alive and exhausted and still somehow trying to be gentle with you when he’s the one in the hospital bed.
“I love you,” you say. “And I genuinely hate you right now.”
Spencer’s eyes open again, slow and soft. “That seems pretty fair.”
Your laugh comes out wet. You look away, but he squeezes your hand before you can get far.
“I love you too,” he says. “And I know it doesn’t make it better, but I was trying to make sure I could get back to you. That was the point. I know it looked like I was choosing the work over everything else, but I wasn’t. The work was my way out.”
You turn back toward him.
He looks exhausted by the length of his own words, breaths a little uneven, but his eyes stay on yours.
“I know,” you whisper, because you do. “I know, Spence.”
You lean forward carefully, giving him time to shift away if he needs to, but he doesn’t. He tilts his face up the smallest amount, and you press your mouth to his.
The kiss is soft by necessity. There’s no heat in it, not really — not the kind the two of you are used to. His lips are chapped and warm and careful beneath yours, and for one long, holy second, all you can focus on is that you get to do this again. You get to kiss him in a hospital bed and hate the reason for it, but you still have him here to kiss. You get the fragile press of his mouth, the weak squeeze of his fingers around yours, the proof that his body is still a living thing and not a memory you’ll spend the rest of your life surviving. It isn’t enough to undo the day, but it gives your fear and love somewhere to go. It’s a promise made with whatever energy he has left.
When you pull back, your forehead rests near his temple.
“You scared the hell out of me,” you murmur.
“I know.
“If you ever do that again, I will murder you myself.”
“I know.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I know.”
You pull back enough to glare at him. “Normally you’d argue with at least one of those.”
His tired smile is tiny and perfect. “I’m conserving my energy.”
The door opens after a soft knock, and Dr. Kimura steps in with Morgan hovering behind her, a green Jell-O cup in one hand and a fresh coffee in the other.
“Look who I found,” Morgan says.
Spencer nods at Dr. Kimura before his gaze flicks to the Jell-O. “Is that for me?”
Morgan chuckles. “Yeah, kid, it’s for you.”
You wipe quickly under one eye with your thumb and try to regain whatever dignity you can scrape off the floor.
Kimura checks Spencer over. Vitals, pupils, lungs, cognitive questions he answers with enough impressive precision to make Kimura’s eyebrows lift. Morgan stays near the doorway, and you don’t let go of Spencer’s hand the entire time.
Eventually, the room settles again.
Morgan leaves the Jell-O on the tray and tells Spencer not to be a pain in the ass to you or any of the nurses. Dr. Kimura tells him he’s on the mend but needs a lot of rest, and Spencer nods, probably because he knows you wouldn’t give him a choice anyway.
Once it’s just the two of you alone in the room again, your anger has gone a bit quieter. It’s still there, and knowing you, it’ll probably stay there for a while, tucked stubbornly behind your ribs, ever-present but currently overshadowed by disgusting amounts of relief and love.
Spencer’s eyes are already slipping closed.
“Sleep,” you say.
“Will you stay?”
You sit back and wrap both hands around his. “Yeah, genius, I’ll stay. Obviously.”
The corner of his mouth turns up into a crooked, sleepy smile. “Good.”
It takes less than a minute for him to fall asleep again.
This time, watching him sleep doesn’t feel like waiting for the floor to disappear beneath you. His breathing is still rougher than you’d like, and his face is still too pale, but the monitor keeps a steady rhythm. Alive. Alive. Alive. His fingers are warm under yours, and there’s a green Jell-O cup sitting unopened on the tray because, apparently, even near-death experiences cannot kill Spencer Reid’s bizarre snack preferences. You know he’ll ask for a spoon as soon as he’s awake again and his appetite comes back.
You do not know about the recording.
You do not know that somewhere, locked carefully behind Garcia’s cyberdefenses, there is a version of his voice trying to love you through the worst possible outcome. You do not know that he spent the better part of what might’ve been his last hour on earth trying to make sure you would be okay.
But maybe it’s better you don’t know.
You don’t need the version of him that said goodbye. You need this one: alive, stubborn, fever-warm, breathing steadily with Jell-O waiting untouched beside him.
His fingers twitch against yours again in sleep.
You keep holding on. You hold on, and you stay.
ᝰ.ᐟ
this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️
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