oh heyyy…. let’s pretend that i didn’t disappear from the face of the earth like…. i was always here wdym???
i apologize for my absence :(( i've had a nightmare with my health and i've been in like a writing slump (block doesn't feel like the right word? like i have seven named fics sitting and waiting and could yap about the plots for days i just can't seem to find the motivation to write past the first few paragraphs?? but the ideas are there and fully formed??) i will be back properly soon i'm sure. once i complete one fic i'm sure i can get back into the swing of things, and my dear baby moss is waiting for me so i'm obligated to return actually xxx
i am hereee!! i apologize for my disappearance!!!! work and uni and life has been hectic :(
i missed posting here and i missed posting moss and i’m hoping to get the next part out before the new year because it is actually relevant to the holidays so would be so fitting rahhhh!!!!! no promises, but that’s the hope. i’ve barely edited part eight but when christmas is over i’ll get on it teehee
Description: Shaken by a case, you find yourself at Spencer’s door in the dead of night, seeking comfort. In the quiet of rain and night light, long-suppressed feelings surface, leading to a tender, intimate confession that changes everything.
Pairing: Spencer Reid x GN!reader
Warnings: Emotional discussions hinting at grief, references to child victims and family tragedy, mentions of sexual content and just a little bit of grinding.
Word Count: 816
A/N: This one came out shorter than expected, alas, I was scared to elaborate further for Spencer because he means so much but we always have next time! @cobbled-peach arty I dedicate this piece to you, P!ATD x Spencer is always the dream, thank you for indulging me with it MWAH :D
You’re not sure how you end up at his door.
The case in Boston had ended hours ago. A plane ride, a thousand yards of airport linoleum, the cold press of your badge as you checked into your empty apartment, none of it felt real.
The only real thing, the only constant thing was the memory of Spencer’s hand brushing against yours as you sat across from the unsub’s mother, trembling and tired and barely holding it together.
And now here you are. Still trembling. Still tired. He did say if you don’t let it out you’re gonna let it eat you away, quoting a 2022 study about psychological symptoms varying with the level of social support one has. You found yourself at his door at three in the morning. Summer on its deathbed , the cold of rain biting at your nose and eyelids, standing still, moving back and forth on your heels.
He opens the door almost immediately, hair slightly dishevelled, his cardigan slipping off one shoulder like he’d been pacing.
"Hey," he says, voice softer than the overhead rain.
You smile weakly. "Hey. I know it’s late…"
"Doesn’t matter." He steps aside. “Come in.”
You sit on his couch. It’s warm, still indented where he must’ve been curled up reading. You tuck your legs under you. He hands you tea without asking how you take it.
"You okay?" he asks finally.
You nod, then shake your head. "I guess....all that buzzing. It just... it got to me. The kid. The mother. I don’t know. It felt like we were just background noise in their tragedy."
His voice is low. “That’s all we ever are. People never remember the agents. They only remember what they lost.”
The silence stretches like smoke between you.
"There is simply nothing worse than knowing how it ends. After every case I keep re-realising this and feel like an ambulance, like a chaser of faith, trying to outrun the echoes of all of it."
Outside, the rain slashes the windows. You watch it for a while. Then he says something you don’t expect.
"I meant everything I said that night."
You look at him slowly. "What night?"
He doesn’t answer. He just stares at the coffee table.
You know exactly which night he means. The hotel bar in Arizona, five months ago. The bourbon. The way he told you he wished you didn’t have to go home to an empty apartment. That if he weren’t so afraid of ruining things, he’d ask to come with you.
You didn’t say anything then.
You’re saying something now.
You move toward him. The mug, set down with a quiet clink. You take his hand, cold fingers tightening.
“I remember,” you whisper.
His eyes flick to yours. "I never took it back."
"I didn’t want you to."
A beat. He’s sitting in front of you now, knees touching, warmth enveloping both of you, breathing like he’s balancing on the edge of a thought he’s not sure he’s allowed to have.
His gaze drops to your mouth, then flicks away, like looking too long might give him away entirely.
You can feel the confession hanging between you, fragile, weightless, charged–stretching the air tight.
His hand lifts, stops, then finally commits, fingertips brushing your jaw in the gentlest line, as if he’s asking for permission without words. Then he’s kissing you. Slow. Shaky. Like he needs to more than just memorise this moment.
You crawl into his lap without thinking. Your forehead against his, his hands pressing into the base of your spine, grounding you.
"You always show up right before I fall apart," he says against your skin.
"Put another X on the calendar," you murmur. "Another night survived."
He huffs a laugh that isn’t quite a laugh. “Yeah.”
There’s no rush. His hands slide up your shirt slowly, thumbs caressing your ribs like pages of a beloved book he was just reading. Your breath hitches, but you don’t stop him. You have both waited far too long to mistake this for suddenness.
"You make my will come back to life, Spencer. Thank you."
His mouth is at your collarbone now, afraid to say anything further lest he whisper “you’re welcome” and break the fragile quiet between you. Gentle. Patient.
"This isn’t a one-time event for me," he says quietly. "This is me... choosing you, only you. Again and again."
Your hips move, slowly. Not out of want (yet) but need. For connection. For softness. For the comfort of the man who thinks too much and feels even more.
You press your forehead to his. Move against him in a rhythm older than language. Both of you breathing like it hurts not to. Tonight your bodies are a symphony and time is conducting.
i cut my own bangs today and they came out too short and now i look like a little lad </3 hope everyone else is having a far more wonderful day
also thank u everyone for the love on the newest part of moss!!! i’m so very busy so it’ll probably be early dec for the next part as i wanna get out a non-moss fic as well before part 8!!!!!!
── 'Please don't forgive me, it'd be a pity after all of that.'
[series masterlist]
pairing: spencer reid x on/off gf!reader [no use of y/n]
genre: umm hurt/comfort + smut + fluff
summary: spencer stays at your apartment to take care of you post-injury. you begin to worry that, as life resumes, your relationship will fracture again
cw: brief discussion of injuries (stab wounds and taking pain killers), PTSD and panic attacks, smut (not really explicit?? like implied p-in-v i guess?? but still mdni!!!), use of pet names, perceived arguments (you'll understand when you read), mean comments being made to reader about relationships/herself/spencer
a/n: sorry this took so long!!! life has been so busy and time has gotten away from me but here you go!! she's quite long, partially because i'm also establishing future plots in this part wooo. MINORS please dni beneath the time skip that part includes the smut!!! also was lowkey drunk when going through to check grammar so idk how amazing the spelling is lol
w/c: 7.6k
── one month later | november
You come into the kitchen still half-asleep, the hem of your t-shirt brushing your thighs as it slips off one shoulder. Spencer is already there, moving around like he’s been up for hours. He probably has. There are two mugs on the counter, steam curling from both.
‘Morning,’ he says without looking up, measuring sugar into his cup.
‘Morning,’ you reply.
He glances at you, pauses, takes in the disarray of you, the gestures vaguely toward the table. ‘Sit. You shouldn’t be standing too long first thing.’
You roll your eyes but sit anyway. It’s easier than protesting. Music hums softly from the radio on the counter – something orchestral and sparse, not insisting on any words. The morning light comes through the window soft and low. In the glass, you catch sight of yourselves reflected: you sat at the table, him moving with a kind of absurd domestic purpose.
‘How’s your side?’ he asks.
‘Fine,’ you say, pressing your palm just below your ribs. The skin there is most smooth now, but it still feels like something’s lodged beneath it. Not pain, exactly, but more like a shadow of it. Spencer watches the movement. You drop your hand reflexively before he can comment.
‘I barely notice it,’ you add quickly.
He nods. It’s hard to tell whether he believes you or not. He slides one of the mugs toward you, then starts buttering toast with slow precision. This is how most mornings go. When he sits across from you, his knees bump yours under the table, and he smiles.
You eat quietly. He refills your cap without asking, pushes the butter closer, all part of a simple routine. You feel almost embarrassed by how much care surrounds you. When you’re done, you push back your chair and reach for the plates. He rises at the same time.
‘I’ll do it,’ he says.
‘You cooked,’ you counter, even though “cooked” feels too generous a word for toast and coffee. ‘It’s my turn.’
‘You’re supposed to be resting.’
‘I’m not an invalid, Spence.’
He folds his arms and tries not to smile. ‘Doctor’s orders.’
‘You’re not a medical professional,’ you tell him, taking the plates anyway.
He tries to intercept the plates from your hand, and suddenly you’re both at the sink, shoulders brushing in the small kitchen. Your kitchen is small enough that it doesn’t allow for distance.
‘Spencer,’ you say, turning on the tap. ‘Go sit down. I’ll be fine.’
You begin rinsing them. The motion feels good and grounding, despite the simplicity. You haven’t done much of anything lately that hasn’t involved being horizontal. The restlessness has been gathering under your skin for weeks.
‘I really don’t mind washing them,’ he says again. He leans against the counter beside you, body warm like the water. ‘You don’t need to rush into things.’
‘I’m not rushing. I’ve recovered. I’d like to start feeling normal again.’
‘Normal’s overrated,’ he says lightly.
‘Easy for you to say,’ you mutter, reaching for the sponge. ‘You’ve been getting up at six every morning like a functioning adult. I can barely make it through a cup of coffee without wanting to crawl back into bed.’
He watches you, more serious now. ‘You don’t need to try and prove yourself, you know?’
You hum faintly in acknowledgement. His eyes remain on you. You focus on the plates, on the sound of water hitting the porcelain, not wanting to admit what you’re really thinking.
Then he leans forward and presses a kiss to your shoulder. Light, almost absentminded. It knocks the air from your lungs all the same. You exhale slowly, shaky. He doesn’t linger on it, doesn’t even perform an acknowledgement of it. He steps away, giving you space and retreating to the sofa. You keep washing until the sink is empty. The apartment smells entirely of butter and coffee, and you feel marginally more human.
You dry your hands slowly, dragging the towel between your fingers until it’s damp. In the living room, Spencer has put on a documentary – something about whales, the muted colors of migration maps filling the screen while a man narrates patiently. His face is lit in the pale light. One of his hands curls loosely around his mug.
It’s almost comical how easily he’s slipped back into your space, how seamlessly his things have found their way back amongst yours. His charger is plugged in beside the bed, some of his books on the coffee table, his coat hanging beside yours. You thumb the seam of the towel and watch him with a familiar ache – not from your side this time, but from somewhere lower and quieter.
He should’ve gone back to Quantico weeks ago. You both know it. Instead, he’s been here, working from your living room, finding reasons to stay close. Whenever you’ve asked, he’s said, ‘We just haven’t had any new cases,’ which you know is a total lie. You’ve heard him consulting across the phone. The guilt tugs at you, even though he never does anything to make you feel it.
Spencer sips his coffee and tilts his head, something the narrator has said catching him.
Spencer sips his coffee and tilts his head slightly, something the narrator has said catching him. His hair’s still slightly mussed and his bare feet rest against the cold floor. He looks over, catches your gaze, and smiles. You automatically cross the room and sink down beside him. He lifts his arm without even thinking. You tuck yourself under it. You slip your feet under his legs to warm them. He doesn’t comment, just shifts a little to make room. He combs his fingers absently through your hair.
On screen, the narrator is talking about humpbacks, their annual migration, how they travel thousands of miles only to return to the same waters again. For a while, neither of you speaks. The documentary moves from one ocean to another, projecting slow underwater footage.
You watch the shapes moving under the surface, the whales enormous and weightless, and say, ‘It’s kind of sad.’
‘What is?’
‘That they leave. They have to go so far away. Even if they come back, it’s never exactly the same place, is it?’
He shrugs lightly. ‘It’s just how they live. Leaving and returning. It’s part of their biology.’
You hum. You think it must feel strange, to always be drifting. You watch them glide. Your throat feels tight. It takes you a moment to realize what’s happening; the sadness is suddenly too large, and you find yourself crying soundlessly. You wipe at your cheek quickly.
Spencer notices and tilts his head, concern cutting across his features. ‘I didn’t realize you were so sentimental about whales.’
You let out a shaky laugh. ‘I’m not.’
He doesn’t push. He reaches out and brushes his thumb gently beneath your eye. He nods as if to say it’s okay. You nod back, though you’re not sure what you’re agreeing to. Maybe it’s just confirmation that the melancholy has little to do with whales at all.
After several minutes he says, carefully, ‘Do you want to go back to bed?’
You swallow. You don’t even know what emotion you’re crying about anymore.
‘Yes. I’d like that, thank you.’
The second night back home was the worst.
You woke to heat pressing against your skin, damp and stifling. For a moment you didn’t know where you were. The room felt unfamiliar, off-balance, too dark and too quiet. Your head felt heavy with fever, your mouth dry. Sweat clung to your neck and your hair curled against your jaw. The sheets were twisted around your legs, your shirt sticking to your back. Whatever they’d given you at the hospital had clearly worn off.
You reached blindly for a glass of water on the bedside table – instinct from the hospital – but your fingers met empty space.
That’s when the panic started – small at first. A pulse under your ribs that spread through your chest until it reached your limbs. The ceiling looked all wrong, too white and clinical. The shadows on the walls bent in strange directions. The radiator hummed with a mechanical monotony too close to the sound of hospital monitors.
You touched your hand to your side, feeling the press of bandages. Beneath, it stung. The pain was sharp, like you were being stabbed all over again. Your body hadn’t forgotten what it was like to hurt that way.
‘Spencer?’ you croaked. He’d been there when you went to bed – you remembered that. Now there was no answer.
You could almost feel the cold vinyl under your ribs again, the metallic taste of blood. You sat up too fast. The room tilted; dark spots flickered at the edges of your vision. Air wouldn’t move through you properly. It caught, or stuttered, or felt too thick. You pressed both hands over your ears to block out phantom noises – the shuffle of nurses’ shoes, the beep of machines.
The bed dipped under your movement, and for a dizzying moment you expected to see white walls and wires and blood spilling from your side.
Then the door opened. Light spilled across the floor, yellow and soft, and his voice came before his face did.
‘Hey, hey,’ Spencer said, stepping into the room. He had a damp cloth in one hand, a fresh glass of water in the other. ‘It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m here.’
He set both things on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed.
‘Can you look at me?’ he said. His palm found your cheek, guiding your gaze to his. His face was close and unblinking. ‘That’s it. Hi. You’re okay. Stay with me.’
You found yourself obeying. You fixed your gaze on the small, familiar, real details of him – the slope of his nose, the shape of his mouth, the faint line between his eyebrows that only appears when he’s worried. Gradually, your breath began to return, jagged at first, then steadier.
‘You were burning up,’ he murmured, taking the cloth and smoothing it across your forehead. ‘You scared me for a second,’ he admitted. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have left you. I was just getting something for your fever.’
You let him guide you upright, even though the motion made your side ache. You drank the water and swallowed two painkillers, the tablets catching in your throat. He took the glass when you were done and went to refill it. When he came back, you were lying on your good side, face turned toward the wall, the plaster cool against your forehead.
He sat again. He asked if you wanted to drink some more. You shook your head. You thought you’d be sick. He set the glass on the nightstand and folded his hands in his lap. He watched your breathing – counted it, probably, trying not to worry out loud.
The heat came in waves, spreading under your skin like it wanted to hollow you out from the inside. You could feel sweat pooling at your hairline, dampening the pillowcase.
‘You’re alright,’ he repeated. ‘The painkillers will kick in soon. Do you want anything else?’
‘No, thank you.’ A pause. ‘Well, maybe your hand, actually. If that’s okay?’
He didn’t hesitate. His hand found yours beneath the sheet, fingers cool against your fever-warm skin. He didn’t comment on how tight you were gripping him. His thumb moved slowly over your knuckles like he believed measured touch could regulate temperature, like he could smooth out the heat himself. You matched your breathing to his without meaning to. Your little finger linked with his and stayed like that for a while.
‘I hate this,’ you said, your voice barely audible.
‘The fever?’
‘No. The fact that everything feels like it’s happening again.’
He nodded once, not asking what you meant. You were grateful for that. He only said, ‘It isn’t,’ in that same quiet tone. The words helped enough.
You squeezed his hand tighter and breathed through the heat. He moved after a moment, just enough to lie down beside you. His had stayed in yours. He didn’t crowd you but positioned himself close enough so that he could remain a point of reference in the dark.
‘You should sleep.’
‘I’m afraid to.’
He didn’t tell you not to be. He didn’t tell you that the worst was over.
Instead, his hand shifted slightly, resting against your back through the thin fabric of your shirt. His palm moved in slow, steady circles that acted as a constant anchor. You felt the tremor in your own breathing starting to even out. The heat under your skin still pulsed and burned, but it no longer felt like it was swallowing you whole.
After a while, you said, barely above a whisper, ‘Can you—Can you touch my back? Properly. Under the shirt. Your hands are cold.’
He hesitated only for a moment and then his fingers brushed the hem of your shirt, lifting it just enough to slip his hand underneath. The shock of his cool hands made you shiver, but then the relief came. He traced slow, meaningless shapes across your back.
‘Better?’ he asked.
You nodded. ‘Yeah.’
His hand stayed there, moving lazily until your body began to loosen. You could feel yourself slipping under the surface of sleep. The last thing tethering you to consciousness was the cool rhythm of his hand against your spine.
Some part of you recognized the danger in how safe it felt. The soft, impossible sense of peace that only came from him always seemed to lead to heartbreak. You thought, vaguely, that you should resist it and keep yourself from leaning too far. But no.
If you were going to sink, you decided, you’d rather sink here. If you had to drown again – in memory, or fever, or in everything you were trying so hard to keep down – then at least you’d drown in him.
‘Can you tell me what’s on your mind now?’ Spencer asks, looking at you.
You’re lying on your back, legs stretched up against the wall, toes tracing idle patterns in the air. The sheets are warm beneath you. The room smells of coffee and clean laundry. Spencer had been half-sprawled across you for a while before shifting to give you space, and is now on his side beside you, one elbow propped against the mattress, fingers moving idly along the inside of your arm.
‘I’m thinking about how weird my legs look.’
He lets out a soft laugh. ‘Your legs look fine,’ he says. ‘I mean what’s really on your mind. I want to know.’
‘It’s nothing dramatic. Just—tomorrow.’
‘Ah,’ he says, without much drama.
‘I don’t feel ready,’ you admit. ‘Or, like, I do physically. I’m healed. Cleared. Fine. But every time I think about walking into that building again, I get this… sense of foreboding. Like everything’s going to fall apart.’
Spencer’s fingers pause, then continue tracing the length of your arm. ‘It won’t fall apart,’ he says.
‘You sound very sure.’
‘I am sure.’
‘Okay, maybe “falling apart” is dramatic,’ you say. ‘What I mean is: things will go back to usual, or whatever usual means for us. You’ll go back to work, and I’ll be back at work. And this—’ you gesture vaguely between the two of you, ‘—this month, will become something that never really happened. You’ll stop staying over. Or I’ll stop asking you to. And then we’ll be back to square one.’
Spencer looks at you, cataloguing every flicker of your expression. The room is warm and dim. The radio is still playing something soft in the kitchen, barely audible from here.
‘You think this is temporary,’ he says at last.
You stare up at the ceiling. Your legs are starting to tingle where they’re pressed against the wall, but you don’t move.
‘I think everything is temporary,’ you say quietly. He doesn’t try to disagree with the philosophy of it. He just shifts closer, keeps touching your arm. ‘It’s just—’ You sigh. You aren’t going to explain this well. ‘The last time things were good, they didn’t stay good. It never stays good. Life always happens, and then we… I don’t know. Fall out of sync.’
You lower your legs, bending at the knees. He moves aside to make room for you, and you roll onto your side, facing him.
‘And don’t promise that “everything will be fine,” or whatever,’ you add.
‘I won’t.’ His voice is calm and steady. ‘I know we’ll have moments where things are hard, or distant, or messy. That’s just how it goes. But I can tell you that I’m not planning on leaving if things become tricky.’
Your throat tightens. You swallow. The words feel like they’re dragging out of you, raw and uncomfortable.
‘I’m worried that once I’m better, you won’t know what to do with me.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve been—’ You gesture vaguely toward him, toward the apartment, toward all of this, ‘—here. And attentive. And really, really great. But I keep thinking that once I go back to work, and I’m not… recovering, or fragile, you’ll realize there’s no reason to stay.’
There’s a long pause. He doesn’t look away. He barely even blinks.
‘You think I’m only here because you were hurt?’ he asks.
Your silence answers for you.
Spencer exhales slowly, like he’s being careful not to turn this into an argument. He sits up, folding his legs in front of him, and steeples his fingers together.
‘That night in the hospital,’ he says, ‘when they first told me you were stable, I couldn’t feel anything. Not relief. Not fear. Nothing. I was sitting in the waiting room and I was just—blank.’ His voice is quiet. He’s simply recounting, not performing. ‘And I realized it was because I didn’t know what I would do if I lost you. There wasn’t a version of my life that made sense without you in it.’
Your chest aches. Not in the physical way. Something older than that.
‘I didn’t stay because you were hurt,’ he says. ‘I stayed because I don’t want to do any of this without you.’
You look down, pressing your lips together, trying to steady something inside yourself. But it keeps unsteadying.
His hand slides up, warm and sure, to cradle your jaw. You close your eyes. His thumb moves slowly along your cheek.
‘I know you’re convinced that people leave,’ he says. ‘I know this time of year is immensely difficult for you. I know you think history will repeat itself, that it’ll be like your parents all over again. But you’re not them, and neither am I.’
‘I know. It just doesn’t feel like something I can logic myself out of.’
‘I’m not asking you to logic your way out of it. I’m just asking you to let me stay through it.’
Your voice breaks when you say, ‘Okay.’
He leans forward and presses his forehead to yours. It’s not dramatic. It’s not cinematic. It just feels like something real and ordinary and enormous. You stay like that, breathing the same warm air, until your chest stops trembling. Eventually, you lie back down. He fits himself behind you, arm slung loosely around your waist, his hand resting gently over your side. You hold his hand there.
For a while neither of you says anything.
In the other room, the whales keep moving. The morning keeps unfolding. And the world does not fall apart. Not today.
── three weeks later | december
The world does end on a Tuesday evening.
It’s raining, though it wasn’t meant to. The forecast promised a clear night, but instead the sky has opened without warning and now the street looks unfamiliar in the wet – like a place you’ve passed through in a dream but can’t quite recognise in waking life. The pavement gleams under the streetlights as you pass his car, unnervingly bright.
You’re already shivering when you reach his building, water dripping from your sleeves. You didn’t bring an umbrella. You didn’t think to. The moment the train doors opened, you stepped int the downpour and walked until you reached his street, your pulse beating a harsh, arrhythmic warning into your throat.
Spencer’s building looks different in the rain. You climb the stairs to his apartment, and the metal railing is cold beneath your hand. You haven’t been here in so long that it feels like someone has rearranged things in your absence. The hallway is too quiet. You wipe your palms against your jeans, but they stay damp.
You knock once. Then again, a little harder.
Silence.
You swallow and knock once more, calling out: ‘Spence?’
Nothing.
Your hands are shaking. You lean your forehead against the door. It feels cool and indifferent beneath your skin. The whole building feels as though it’s holding its breath, strangely quiet, as if Spencer’s presence was the only thing keeping this space alive.
Your breathing comes unevenly. You try to steady it, pressing your palm to your sternum as if you can physically force calm into yourself, but you body is already in motion. Spencer would know how to calm you down, but he isn’t here anymore.
You’ve been here before. Not here literally, not at his door, or in the depths of a panic attack, but in this headspace. The sickening sense of having gone too far without realizing it, of having stepped over a line you couldn’t see but should have known was there.
Your brain jumps to the worst possible place with the kind of speed that feels cruel: he’s inside. He can hear you. He’s choosing not to answer.
The thought hollows you instantly and then you’re knocking again, rapidly. Your knuckles sting at the impact, but you barely register it. You imagine him standing in the middle of his living room, motionless, listening. Deciding. Turning away. The image is so vivid that you feel like you could throw up.
Your phone is slick in your hand from the rain. You’re shaking so badly you almost drop it. You swipe at the screen, and his name is the first on the list. For a moment you hover over the call button, thinking: don’t embarrass yourself, don’t make it worse.
But then you press his name.
The phone starts ringing immediately, painfully loud against your ear. Each buzz feels stretched out, elongated past a reasonable point. Your breath stutters. You press the phone harder to your ear like you can force the connection through sheer will.
The hallway spins very slightly around you. Your heart keeps trying to fight its way upward, into your mouth. Your other hand grips the doorframe. Hard. As if the building might tilt and you’ll fall if you don’t anchor yourself to something solid.
Please pick up, you think. Please, please pick up.
Six days ago, Spencer had left for Delaware on a case. On his second night there, you were on the phone with him, ling sideways across the couch. His voice, even through the distortion, made the apartment feel less empty. He sounded tired – slow and soft, simultaneously working on the case whilst speaking to you.
He complained that the hotel bed wasn’t as comfortable as yours; you complained that the place felt too quiet without him there.
‘I hate calls,’ you muttered eventually, in a lull. The words fell out of you lazily. You flipped onto your back, so you were staring at the ceiling.
‘You can’t hate calls,’ he said. ‘Technology is literally your job.’
You let out a small laugh. ‘Mm. I can hate them,’ you said. ‘But I guess it’s better than nothing. It’s nice to hear your voice.’
‘You spoke to me yesterday morning.’
‘Exactly. It’s been over twenty-four hours. I’m well within my right to miss you.’
He laughed quietly, too tired to hide how fond he was. Then he went silent again, and you listened to him move around faintly on the other end of the line. The rustle of paper. The soft scrape of a chair leg. He was always like this when he was deep in a case: mind separated into small, precise compartments.
When he spoke again, his voice had softened. ‘Well, I miss you too. We should be wrapping up here by Monday. I can’t wait to see you then.’
You smiled into the phone. You felt warmth blooming in your chest, a pulse of uncomplicated affection. Then, without warning, something tightened in you.
‘Oh,’ you said. ‘I won’t be around Monday. I’ve got that trip.’
The line went quiet. You couldn’t tell if it was poor reception, or if he was distracted, or if something in him was shutting down. You prompted: ‘Spence?’
‘Hey, yeah. What trip was that again?’ he asked.
‘The seminar thing,’ you said. ‘The one in South Elroy. You know, the one me and Milo are presenting at. It was planned months ago. I’m sure I told you.’
‘Right. You did mention that.’
‘Yeah,’ you said, even though suddenly you weren’t sure you had.
He went quiet again. Then he said, ‘So you’re going with Milo.’
‘Yeah. It’s just two days. It’s work.’
Another pause. You could hear him shifting faintly on the other end of the line, accompanied by the sound of him thinking. You wished you could see his face. Calls were impossible – too full of gaps where assumptions rushed in to fill the space. You read his silence as loaded.
You had, in fact, forgotten to mention the trip. Not because you were hiding anything, not because it meant anything. It had simply slipped through your fingers while your life had been rearranging itself – between the breakup, and the aftermath, and getting stabbed, and trying to behave like a normal person again.
But Milo had been a quiet thorn between you for months. Neither of you had said much about it. At work, Milo made comments and little jabs about your relationship and had even tried to flirt with you the day you came back from medical leave. You could see how this might sound to Spencer: you, travelling with an ex, even for work. It was the optics of it. You knew this might feel like a betrayal.
‘It really isn’t a big thing,’ you said, which made it sound worse.
There was a faint rustle of movement from his end of the line. It sounded like someone getting up from a chair, papers shifting again.
‘No, yeah, I know,’ he said. ‘Hey, I—uh, I actually need to go.’
‘Oh. Okay. Sure.’
‘I’ll call you when we wrap up, alright?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
He said goodbye in a quiet, automatic sounding way, and then the lined clicked dead. You kept the phone pressed to your ear for a few seconds after the call ended, listening to the flat tone. It felt abrupt, like he’d reached the end of something and decided not to explain why.
You thought about sending a text, something small and neutral, but everything you drafted felt wrong. Eventually, you gave up and tossed the phone aside.
The seminar itself ended up being both uneventful and awful.
The conference room was small and drafty. Barely anyone showed up – maybe ten people in total. Milo, undeterred, behaved as though he were presenting at a global summit. He clicked through his slides with theatrical confidence. He kept touching your shoulder when talking about the Bureau. You shifted your chair an inch away, wishing for invisibility.
When it was over, you helped tidy cables, answered a few technical questions, tried to stay busy. Milo bragged nearby about his “innovation-first approach,” the phrase sounding emptier each time he said it.
Only one moment cut through the monotony: a tall, broad-shouldered Texan detective approached with sharp, incisive questions – about bias, liability, the moral architecture of the system. He seemed genuinely interested. He thought they could use a system like yours. You promised to send over some documentation. You were halfway through a debate on facial recognition when Milo tried to interject.
The detective left immediately. You felt a flare of satisfaction at Milo’s defeat.
On the way back to the hotel, Milo took the opportunity to engage in “proper” conversation. He remained clumsy and self-involved. In the lobby, he said, ‘You and that guy still doing that weird not-together-but together thing?’
You told him to drop it. He grinned.
‘You always liked a challenge, didn’t you?’
You, reluctantly, followed him into the elevator. He stood too close to you the entire time.
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he said.
‘What question?’
‘You and—what’s his name?’ He knew the name. ‘Spencer? Still doing that, ambiguous thing?’
‘We’re together,’ you said, though the word felt fragile in your mouth, as if it might shred itself on the way out.
‘Right. Together. Sure.’
The elevator doors opened with a dull chime. He stepped out first. You wanted to let it go. You should’ve let it go. But you couldn’t quite swallow the defensive impulse.
‘What does that mean?’
He stopped in front of his door, keycard in hand, and shrugged like he was humoring a child.
‘Nothing. Just—he’s kind of neurotic, isn’t he?’ He slid the card into the reader. ‘And you… well. You’re you.’
You stared at him. Your stomach dropped in a familiar, nauseating spiral. You’re you. You knew what he meant. You’d heard variations of it your entire life – too sensitive, too reactive, too unstable, too something.
‘I don’t know why you say things like that,’ you said, just tired.
‘I meant it as a compliment,’ Milo said. ‘It’s just how you are. You pick the ones who need you. You go for the ones who are a little… volatile. Makes you feel wanted, right?’
Your stomach tightened. Milo went on, undeterred.
‘Which is fine. No judgement,’ he added. ‘It’s a personality type. You like to feel needed.’ His shrug was light, indifferent. ‘I was steady. Reliable,’ he tapped his chest with mock modesty, ‘though to you, that meant boring. But Spencer? He’s—what’s the word—mercurial. A little broken around the edges. And you get to be the thing that keeps him together. Makes you feel more necessary.’
You felt heat rising in your face. A humiliation you couldn’t quite place. It was like being seen and misunderstood in the exact same breath. You didn’t need Milo – Milo who didn’t know Spencer, who didn’t even really know you – picking apart your personality.
‘I’m going to my room,’ you said, and he simply smiled like he was indulging you.
He might’ve made another comment, but you didn’t hear. You felt something inside you locking up, hard and sharp and immediate.
Inside your room, you leaned against the door and breathed too quickly. Everything was unfamiliar. You felt vaguely unreal.
In the dark, you imagined Spencer in Delaware. You pictured him on an unfamiliar bed too, thinking about you and Milo, and what that meant, and what it didn’t. You pictured his hands curled loosely in the sheets, jaw tight. You pictured the quiet hurt of it.
You showered and crawled into the stiff hotel sheets. The hair was damp against your neck. You tried not to think about the work you had to complete tomorrow. Tried not to think about Milo’s words, also. They had started repeating themselves in the tone of your own thoughts, becoming as much your own analysis of yourself as his.
Your phone buzzed close to nine.
Spencer had messaged: Hey. Can we talk?
Just that. Those four words tightened around you like a fist. “Can we talk?” meant endings. Meant he had already made up his mind. Meant the thing you had predicted was finally happening.
You didn’t answer. You turned your phone face-down on the pillow beside you, like it made a difference. You tried to reason with yourself in that quiet, babbling way you do when panic pretends to be logic. But beneath every thought was something simple, old and familiar:
If you don’t open the door, no one can walk out.
You closed your eyes and pretended you didn’t feel the world shifting.
‘Hello?’ Spencer says, answering the phone now. His voice is warm with surprise.
‘Spencer—hi.’ You hear yourself, high and thin, like your voice is coming from somewhere outside you. ‘Can you let me in? I’ve been knocking. I know you probably don’t want to see me and you’re probably mad. I should’ve texted you back. I know I messed up again, with the trip—’
He cuts in, gentle but confused. ‘Wait, I didn’t hear you knocking. Hold on,’ he says, and you hear him moving around. ‘Did you say something about me being mad?’
Your throat tightens so suddenly it hurts. You squeeze your eyes shut, pressing your palm to the painted wood of his door as if you could will him to open it faster.
‘Yeah. Sorry. I should’ve mentioned about the trip. I didn’t keep it from you on purpose, I just… everything with Milo, and I spiraled, and—’
‘Okay. Hey. Slow down, I can’t tell what you’re saying,’ he says softly. ‘I can’t see you. Are you down the hall?’
‘No. No—I’m right in front of your door.’
A pause. ‘At my apartment?’ he says slowly.
‘Yes. Literally right outside.’
You hear a breath on the other end – half sigh, half surprise, and something else you can’t quite name. A beat passes. Then, quietly:
‘Honey.’ Your knees nearly give out. ‘I’m at your apartment.’
You blink. The hallway wavers slightly in your peripheral vision.
‘What?’
‘I’ve been here for the past day. I came when I got back.’
You pull the phone away from your ear and stare at the door like it’s personally betrayed you.
‘But…’ Your voice is small. ‘Why would you be at my place?’
There’s a real laugh from him now. Soft, disbelieving, affectionate in a way that makes your chest ache. ‘Because that’s where I’ve been living.’
And the thing is: he’s right. He’s been there every night for a month.
Most of his stuff is there. The rhythms of living together had become so natural you hadn’t even noticed the shift from “staying over” to “being home.”
You sit down right there in the hallway, back to the wall, dripping rainwater onto the floor. You make a noise that sounds like oh. It’s quiet and embarrassed. You feel wrecked in a way that has nothing to do with shame, but everything to do with relief. You’re quiet for a long moment, and then you let out a soft laugh.
Spencer asks, ‘Are you crying?’
‘No. I’m laughing,’ you say. ‘Because I’m stupid.’
‘You’re not stupid. Want me to come and get you?’
Your voice cracks as you nod. ‘Yes please.’
‘Okay. Give me twenty minutes.’
He finds you exactly where he said he would: sitting on the floor in the hallway, back against the wall, coat still damp. You look up when you hear his footsteps in the hall, and there he is, hair slightly windswept, pinks cheek from the cold. He takes one look at you and huffs out a laugh – not unkind, not mocking. A soft, incredulous oh, sweetheart kind of sound.
‘Hi,’ he says.
You let out a humiliated sort of groan and bring both hands up to your face, as though you could hide inside your palms. ‘Don’t.’
He crouches in front of you and gently pulls your hands away. His expression is warm and affectionate. A little bewildered, but there’s no distance in it, no hurt.
‘I can’t believe you came here,’ he says, smiling faintly.
You shrug helplessly. ‘I wanted to fix things before they got worse.’
‘Fix what?’ he asks, genuinely. ‘I was confused about what you were saying on the phone.’ He sits down beside you on the hall floor, the cold radiating up from the tiles. His shoulder touches yours. It’s light but it steadies you instantly.
‘You were upset. About the trip. And then you sent that text—’ You do a vague, spiraling gesture with your hands.
‘What text?’
‘The “Hey, can we talk?” text.’ You look at him like the words should be self-explanatory. ‘You don’t send that if everything’s fine. That’s a breakup text. I’ve used that before to break up with people.’
Spencer blinks. Then: ‘I literally meant can we talk? As in, were you free to call.’ He says it so plainly you almost want to press your face into your hands again.
‘Oh. Well, you shouldn’t send texts like that,’ you instruct him. ‘It’s ominous. I thought you were going to end things.’
‘Okay. Noted,’ he huffs a laugh. ‘Still, I don’t understand why I’d be mad at you.’
‘Because of Milo.’
His face scrunches, like he’s questioning if you’re serious. ‘God forbid you go on a work trip with… someone you work with.’
‘You should not be this forgiving.’
‘Forgiving you for what? You didn’t do anything wrong.’
You open your mouth. Then close it again. It’s painful how ridiculous you feel.
‘I thought you would be bothered by Milo. After the whole thing this summer. Plus, I did ignore you.’
‘Mm. Well, I didn’t think much of the text considering your technology aversion. And I know you don’t like Milo. You don’t even pretend to like him. I wasn’t worried. Should I have been worried?’
‘No! God—no. He’s so stupid.’ Against your will, you laugh. ‘I can’t believe you ever let me date him.’
‘I’m pretty sure I made my views on the situation quite obvious. But, hey, that’s all in the past, right?’ He gives you a soft look, nudging his shoulder against yours. ‘I’m sorry if anything I did stressed you out.’
‘It’s okay.’
He bumps your shoulder and takes your hand, and says something about getting you out of the hallway. He unlocks the door, and the moment it swings open, you’re hit with the stillness of a place that hasn’t been lived in. The air is slightly stale, and a fine layer of dust covers the kitchen counter. One lonely mug sits in the drying rack.
He takes your coat from your shoulders, shaking off the cold and damp. ‘Go shower,’ he says. ‘Warm up.’
The shower takes longer than it needs to. The tiles are familiar, exactly as you remember them, and it strikes you that you haven’t stood here in almost a year. The water takes a while to heat. You turn off the tap when the steam makes it hard to breathe and stand there for a moment, simply feeling the warmth.
Wrapped in a towel, you pad barefoot through the apartment. The air is cool against your damp skin. He’s sitting cross-legged at the end of his bed, a faint smile on his face that is the same as the one from the hallway but loosened, eased of confusion.
‘Hi,’ he says again, looser this time.
‘Stop saying hi,’ you murmur, laughing under your breath. ‘It’s making me feel like an idiot.’
You sit beside him, towel tucked lightly around you. There’s a moment of silence. You think you could leave it there – remain in the warmth of the present moment – but the thought sits wrong in your chest. Something in you resists it, the same old reflex that says you don’t get to just have this.
‘I don’t think you should forgive me,’ you say.
‘Ah,’ he says, slow and amused. ‘We’re still talking about this.’
‘Not just about the trip. I mean, everything. All of it. You shouldn’t let me back in so easily.’
Spencer looks at you the way someone looks at a puzzle they’ve already solved.
‘I thought we’d already gone over this,’ he says gently. ‘I forgive you. I’ve already forgiven you. And I’m going to keep doing that, probably. Because I know you. And I want you.’
You whisper, ‘I don’t understand why.’
‘You don’t have to. You just need to accept it.’
You let out a quiet, frustrated breath.
He watches you for a moment, then shifts closer, close enough that his knee touches yours.
‘Come here,’ he says.
He lifts one hand and touches your cheek with the backs of his fingers. Then he leans in a presses a kiss to your temple. Then another, just beside your eye. Then one at the corner of your mouth.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Proving it,’ he says, and his voice is light but his eyes are very serious.
He kisses your cheek, and your jaw. And the space just beneath your ear. It’s not urgent or claiming. Just… close. Just there. You can feel laughter building in your chest – not because it’s funny, exactly, but because it feels impossible to be wanted so tenderly.
‘Okay,’ you say, huffing a soft laugh. ‘Okay, I get it.’
‘I don’t think you do,’ he murmurs, smiling into your skin, and he keeps going. Slow, deliberate, almost methodical kisses.
You lean forward, resting your forehead against his. The towel slips slightly, and his hands come up to hold it in place. You breathe out his name without thinking, because it’s the only sound that fits, that needs to be said. The only thing you want. He looks back at you like there’s nothing complicated here, like it really is that simple: wanting and being wanted, can be easy, if you let it.
Something in your chest finally, finally loosens.
This time, you kiss him first. It’s soft, just like before, but more certain. Your hand slides to the side of his neck, his hair brushing your wrist. He responds immediately, fingers tracing your jaw, your shoulder, the warm skin of your collarbone. You can feel the heat of him through his shirt. The rhythm of his breathing matches yours almost perfectly. Your lips part slightly, and he leans into the space, kissing you while leaving room for you to lead and follow at once.
The towel falls completely at some point. His hands trace your sides and the small of your back. You shiver, a soft involuntary sound escaping your throat – relief, desire and affection all folded into one. The tension you’ve been carrying, the panic that chased you to his apartment, the fear of losing him again, it all seems to ebb a little with each press of his lips, replaced with a consuming closeness.
You straddle him, letting instinct draw you close. The world narrows until its just the two of you. You move together without rush, without urgency. Everything is quiet except the sound of your breathing, the give of the mattress beneath you, the soft laugh that slips from you when he accidentally bumps noses with you and apologizes into your mouth.
You guide him out of his shirt. His skin is warm under your palms, his heartbeat steady beneath your fingertips. You kiss along his jaw. He exhales like he’s been holding his breath for months. Your hands wander over his chest, memorizing the familiar angles and planes you’ve loved before. His fingers trace circles at your waist, along your ribs, brushing your skin lightly, intentionally, as if every touch is a promise. Every time your lips part to catch his, his mouth is there, patient and sure, and it works, the way it always did.
You break for air, foreheads pressed together, hearts thudding in tandem. His hand drifts into your hair, tangling gently at the nape of your neck, and you press into him without thinking, letting the quiet heat of your bodies speak for you both. You move against him in tiny shifts, testing the space, adjusting.
The next few moments unfold almost wordlessly. The air between you grows heavy, close. Every motion feels deliberate: the slide of skin against skin, the careful rhythm you fall into together. His hand finds your hip, anchoring you there, and you lean into the touch. The room feels too small for how much space he takes up inside you.
It’s not rushed. There’s nothing frantic about it. The world narrows to a pulse, a pattern of movement you both understand without speaking. His fingers tighten briefly at your waist; you tilt your head back, eyes closed, the quiet sound of his name leaving your mouth before you can stop it. You stay like that for a long time, moving in sync, the kind of closeness that blurs the edges of everything else. It feels less like an act and more like an answer to a question neither of you had known how to ask.
You murmur his name when it’s too much, when the warmth and closeness feels overwhelming in the best possible way. He responds with a soft sound, a quiet laugh, pressing you closer, forehead to forehead.
When it crests, when the heat and intimacy become almost a physical pulse, he holds you through it. Fingers tangling in your hair, palms flat against your back, he anchors you. Your heart thuds against his chest; you press into him without hesitation. He whispers your name, and it vibrates through you.
The room is quiet and warm when it ends. Your cheek rests against his chest, the steady thrum of his heartbeat under your ear like an anchor. Your breathe in the faint scent of him, and for the first time in what feels like forever, you let yourself believe it: you can be loved. Fully. Without conditions. Without hesitation.
Your fingers trace idle patterns on his chest feeling the rise and fall with his breaths. You close your eyes, letting the silence settle around you, letting it seep into your bones. The panic, the self-doubt, the old reflex to push away – it’s still there, somewhere in the edges, but it feels smaller, manageable. He is here. He is steady. And he wants you.
You’ve said I love you before – but always at the wrong times. In arguments, when things were slipping, when you were frightened of losing him, when you didn’t know what else to say and just needed words. You said it like a rope you were throwing across a widening distance. But now you tell him with intention:
‘Spencer. I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ he says. The words come easy.
You smile, and add, ‘You called me honey earlier.’
He goes very still. His ears are already turning pink. He clears his throat, looking anywhere except directly at you. He mutters something about trying to be comforting. You grin and tell him that it was comforting, just unexpected.
‘Now you’re making me feel like an idiot,’ he says, nudging your knee lightly.
‘Aha.’
He considers you for a moment, thumb rubbing your shoulder, then asks, voice quieter now, the way people speak when they’re admitting to wanting something: ‘Did you like me calling you that?’
‘Yeah. I did.’
Spencer’s smile grows slowly, starting in his eyes first. He shifts closer, hand coming up to the side of your face, thumb brushing gently at your cheek. He kisses you once again, soft and close-mouthed.
‘Can I keep calling you that, then?’
‘If you want to. I’d like that. It was nice.’
For the first time in a long time, there is no panic. No anticipation of loss. No rehearsing of disaster.
Things are not perfect, but they are good.
a/n: wooooooooooooooweee if you made it here congrats, i feel like this one was a mouthful. i always finding myself being like more will be explained in future chapters and i feel like i need to stop doing that because that is quite literally how stories work.
ANYWAY, even though i created the character i am president of the milo haters club i swear this is the end of him (physically, at least). i don't think i have anything more to say, but i hope you enjoyed (and again sorry for how long this took good lord)
Tomorrow came and went Artie </3 kidding PLEASE take your time but just want to make sure u are ok
I KNOW actually so bad of me to say coming tomorrow and then dip without giving it LMAO
im all good my tumblr was actually just bugging out and i couldn’t post anything but I promise today or tomorrow i’m just trying to format it properly teehee <3
── 'I don't see why you would want me, if I could I would be anybody else.'
[series masterlist]
pairing: spencer reid x on/off gf!reader [no use of y/n]
genre: hurt/COMFORT
summary: spencer receives a sudden and shocking phone call. the two of you are forced to confront how much you've been damaging each other
cw: canon-typical violence (cases, injuries, knives). reader's dad is mentioned. non-sexual nudity (sort of???), longgg discussion about relationships, incl mentions of maeve + that plotline
a/n: their toxic era ends today guys. i <3 them. sorry this took so long oops this part is probably the one that i'm most worried for because i want to explain their thought processes in a non-clunky way. it's a tad dialogue heavy, so sorry! anyway, i hope this clears things up hehehe
wc: 6k
── one-and-a-half months later | october
Spencer drives to work with the radio off. He has never liked it on, because it tends to clutter his thoughts. His phone lies in the cupholder on silent. Fifty minutes ago, Hotch called about a case: local, thirty minutes from Quantico. A set of decomposing bodies had been uncovered in a communal allotment.
In the parking lot he sees Morgan, mid-phone call, brow tense, shaking his head. They walk inside together. When morgan finally hangs up, Spencer asks if it was about the case.
‘No, Savannah,’ Morgan says. ‘Big rush at the hospital, so it’s unlikely she’s going to make it to date night. And now with our case—’ he gestures vaguely as the elevator closes, ‘—I can’t either.’
‘Strangely good timing,’ Spencer says, lips pressing into an amused line.
‘Something like that. I just don’t want her to be stressed.’
Up on the sixth floor, the bullpen is noisy. JJ is on the phone, Hotch pacing outside his office, Penelope moving between various people. Spencer puts his bag down and starts flicking through the new files on his desk, and a few minutes later Tara waves them into the briefing room.
At the round table Hotch runs them through the case. Morgan leans forward on his elbows, the team watching as evidence is projected onto a large screen. Spencer listens, writes down details, folds them into the right corner of his mind. When the meeting ends, everyone scatters. He gathers his notes into his satchel, transfers his phone from his pocket to his bag.
The screen lights midway. He freezes. Eight missed calls from a D.C. number he doesn’t recognize. It rings again in his hand. He hovers for a moment before accepting it, lifting it to his ear.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, may I speak with Spencer Reid?’
He hesitates. Then: ‘Yes, this is Dr. Reid.’
The voice on the other end of the phone is tinny and male. Calm but wrong.
‘Great. Dr. Reid, I’m calling from Stafford Hospital emergency department. We have you listed here as an emergency contact for—’ and your name follows. Spencer’s brain jams. He hears the rest in halting staccato, the sentence breaking into useless fragments. He only picks up certain words: stab… surgery… subway. He becomes rigid and frozen, like someone has placed a weight onto each muscle in his body.
He hears himself asking, ‘Is she conscious?’
‘She was conscious when she arrived but has been sedated for surgery. I’m sorry, I can’t give you any further medical details over the phone. We do need you to come to the hospital as soon as possible.’
‘I don’t—You said she was stabbed?’
‘Yes, Dr. Reid. Like I said, she sustained a stab wound whilst on the subway. Do you know when you’ll be able to get here?’
His grip on the phone tightens until his knuckles ache. The words become static. His chest feels like it’s being crushed. He’s dimly aware of the bullpen around him, the space feeling both too small and miles wide.
Then Morgan is in front of him, face urgent and searching. His brows pull together in a way that asks what’s going on? Spencer’s mouth opens. His lips shape the words too fast.
‘She—she was stabbed. On the subway. They said—surgery—they said she was in surgery.’
‘Who?’
He can’t force the name out. It stumbles silently on his lips. But Morgan sees, understands, Savannah's earlier call making sudden sense. He grips Spencer’s arm.
‘Okay. Okay, breathe. Who’s on the phone? The hospital?’
Spencer nods frantically, still clutching the phone to his ear. The nurse is speaking again, measured, repeating directions to the emergency ward.
‘Dr Reid, we just need you to come to the hospital as soon as you can,’ he says, for the third or fourth time now.
Spencer says, 'Yes, I’m coming,' and lowers the phone. He stares at it as if there’s more it could tell him. Morgan has slipped into the steady rhythm of reassurance: I’ll tell Hotch. Don’t worry about the case. Spencer doesn’t register it all. The words scatter in his mind and slip away before he can grasp them. They don’t feel real. None of this feels real. His heart pounds and the bullpen tilts under his feet.
He’s used to his mind moving before his body can catch up, but now the opposite is true. His actions are driven by impulse. Satchel, jacket, an automatic reach for his scarf – except it isn’t there, wasn’t ever there, and the misstep sends another bolt of panic through his chest.
Then, somehow, Morgan is walking him to the elevator. Spencer is pressing the button. Morgan’s palm rubs circles into his shoulder – an eight, grounding – but it feels very far away, drawn onto a body that doesn’t feel entirely his. He wants to ask Morgan to come with him, but his throat doesn’t work.
The hospital waiting room is washed out in fluorescent light. Everyone looks sick, even if they’re not. The chairs are made from hard plastic and bolted to the floor, most of them filled with families, coats bunched on their laps.
He feels his pulse in his throat, and his wrists, and his fingers – everywhere at once. His satchel drags from his shoulder, and he only just catches it before it hits the floor. He gives the receptionist your name, then his own, and clarifies he’s your emergency contact. This fact only seems to really hit him when he’s spoken it out loud, and he finds himself startled. He’s your emergency contact. Him. Not Milo, not anyone else.
He gets told to sit in one of the plastic chairs and wait with everyone else. He does, but the action doesn’t feel like sitting. More like being dropped into place without permission. His hands twitch against his slacks. A woman across from him is crying into a man’s shoulder. A vending machine hums. Time folds in on itself.
Morgan arrives an hour and a half later. Spencer doesn’t notice him until the chair beside him creaks. He suddenly feels shaken back into his body.
‘Hotch cleared me,’ Morgan says quietly. ‘We’re both off the case for now. He told me to stay with you.’ He rubs a hand over his jaw, checks the clock, then looks back to Spencer. ‘They got the guy who did it. Multiple stabbings in the same subway car. He was arrested almost immediately.’
Spencer stairs straight ahead. He feels his pulse migrating, now sitting behind his eyes and thrumming in his ears. His voice comes out cracked and thin. ‘It’s my fault.’
‘Reid—’
‘We always took the subway together. I was the one who stopped that. I told her she should take it alone. I was being stupid, petty, about her boyfriend. And now—now she’s—’ He gestures helplessly, trying to conduct a jagged thought into place. ‘Now she’s in surgery and—’
‘Hey. Stop. This isn’t on you. You didn’t put that knife in his hand.’
‘But if I had just—’
‘Reid, listen to me. I want you to hear me. She’s alive. She’s getting the best care possible. That’s what matters. There’s nothing more you could’ve done.’
Spencer’s pulse continues to thrum fast. Too fast. Tachycardic, he thinks. Morgan keeps talking, steady, but the words slip in and out, half-caught. Still, Spencer feels the weight of his presence, solid and steady next to him.
Spencer met Milo five days after Vegas. You arranged the meeting. A small tearoom in D.C., cramped tables and mismatched china cups. Neutral ground, you called it. Over text you’d said that Milo couldn’t wait to meet him.
Spencer arrived first. He sat stiffly at a table for four, coat still buttoned, hands folded in his lap. His mind kept circling the same thought: whatever he said would come out wrong. He would sound defensive, or superior, or overeager. The situation was already skewed, and he knew it – two of you, one of him.
Still, he told himself that it was better than the alternative. Better than avoiding the meeting altogether and watching the distance between you stretch again.
He spent time trying to imagine Milo. Mostly he saw a blur, an outline with no features. He tried to prepare for a conversation that hadn’t started yet, testing and discarding phrases in his head. He was uncomfortably aware of the performance aspect: how his presence would inevitably be measured, how his words would later be repeated and reinterpreted by the two of you, when he wasn’t there.
When Milo came in, hand linked with yours, Spencer’s first thought – before he could censor it – was that he looked like himself. Not exactly, but enough to startle. He wondered if you noticed the resemblance, or if it was something you’d chosen unconsciously.
The similarities stopped at the physical.
When you excused yourself to the counter to order drinks, Milo leaned back in his chair. He gave a quiet, disdainful laugh.
‘She picked this place,’ he said, voice low, confiding. ‘You can tell, can’t you? I’d never choose somewhere like this. Too loud. Can’t hear myself think. But anything for my girl, right?’
It was a minor remark, almost offhand, bit it stuck. You returned with the teapots, pouring carefully into cups. Milo touched your wrist when you sat back down, and Spencer felt the intent of that action immediately.
Milo talked. A lot. He talked about his work, traffic the state of public transport, an article he’d read about the decline of independent bookstores. Spencer nodded, offered the occasional response. He noticed Milo didn’t ask questions, simply drifted through topics of his choosing. When Spencer spoke, Milo’s hand would drift – to your arm, your shoulder, later your thigh, as if reminding everyone of their place.
‘It’s funny,’ Milo said, and his hand was still on your thigh at this point. ‘Most people think I’m quiet. Really I just don’t see the point in small talk. It’s like, if I don’t have anything worth saying, why would I speak at all?’
Spencer had never been so confused. He wanted to tell him he was disproving his own theory. This was small talk, only louder. Instead, he fixed his eyes on the teacup.
Half an hour in, Milo excused himself for the bathroom. The moment he was gone, Spencer looked at you, eyebrows raised.
You exhaled and shifted the cup between your hands. ‘He struggles with conversation sometimes. He doesn’t have… loads of friends. It’s harder for him.’
‘Right. Harder for him.’
‘He’s not like you. He’s not good at, you know, keeping people engaged. He doesn’t have that instinct.’
‘That instinct being… conversation?’
‘Cut him some slack, please,’ you said. ‘He’s different. He doesn’t like “casual connections.”’
Spencer looked mildly incredulous. Histone was so even it was hard to tell if his words were intended as a joke. ‘Then why’d he agree to meet me?’
You blinked, caught. ‘Because. It’s important to me. And he wanted to.’
He tilted his head, considering this. Wanted to meet me, but won’t actually meet me, he thought. Milo hadn’t asked him a single question in thirty minutes. The entire encounter had felt like a marking of territory.
‘It didn’t feel like he wanted to talk to me. It felt like he wanted me to know you belong to him.’
‘That’s not fair,’ you said quickly. ‘You’re being harsh, Spencer. He doesn’t have a lot of people, so he struggles. He told me I was one of his first friends in Operational Tech. He doesn’t really speak to anyone there but me.’
Spencer said nothing. You read his silence as resistance and continued.
‘You haven’t always been great at communication either. You were like Milo once. So… be nice.’
The remark landed heavier than you probably meant it to. He lowered his gaze, tracing the edge of his saucer with one fingertip. He made no outward sign of argument, but inside the thought twisted. He was never like Milo; at least when he’d struggled with conversations, he’d been courteous. He hadn’t spoken about friends he didn’t have as if they were a failing of the world instead of his own.
When Milo came back, the conversation resumed as if nothing had passed between you and Spencer. But the current had shifted; every word felt slightly misaligned. You smiled at Milo’s remarks, and Spencer made the appropriate noises, but his gaze was elsewhere.
It was evening by the time you left. The air smelled of wet leaves and exhaust. You pulled your coat tighter. Milo was on his phone, half a step ahead, and Spencer said, almost without thinking: ‘You like him.’
It took a long moment, but you replied with, ‘Yes, I do.’
He nodded. The confirmation was unnecessary, but he nodded anyway.
‘That’s good,’ he said, and his voice was level, but the words landed wrong.
‘You don’t.’
‘I don’t have to,’ he replied, not unkindly, but final. There was more he wanted to say. He wanted to say that you deserved better. That he could be better. The words crowded up in his chest but didn’t reach his mouth. Out loud they would sound self-serving, pathetic, maybe cruel. It wouldn’t be fair, so he kept it in.
You looked at him, as if you wanted to argue against his dislike of Milo, but it appeared that your fight had thinned. You only said, ‘Right,’ and adjusted your bag on your shoulder.
When you hugged goodbye, it was brief, almost perfunctory. You were both aware you’d been mean to each other. Not directly, not with raised voices or accusations, but in the way their words had curled at the edges, barbed in subtext. Your defense of Milo had been sharper than it needed to be; his disbelief in Milo had been quieter but no less cutting.
The attempt at bridging the gap had failed.
Spencer’s hand barely touched your back. Then Milo tugged you toward the subway, and Spencer turned the other way.
When you wake, it takes a long moment to understand where you are. The ceiling is white. Not the kind of white you know from your own bedroom, but the hospital kind – smooth panels, vented squares, buzzing lights. Your body feels stiff and wrong, as if someone has stitched sandbags under your skin.
Spencer is in the chair by your bed. His elbows are on his knees, and he’s tuning something over in his hands: a Mars bar, the wrapped creased from fidgeting. When you shift against the pillow he looks up, and his face changes in stages. First, the wide-eyed alertness of panic, then the kind of relief so sharp it almost knocks you back.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘You’re awake.’
Your eyes close and reopen slowly. They feel heavier than the rest of you. He leans closer.
‘You scared me,’ he says. There’s no preamble, no softening. There’s just the truth, heavy and sudden. Your heart clenches at it. ‘You can’t… You can’t just get stabbed on the subway. You can’t do that.’
Your voice comes out rough, like it’s been dragged across sandpaper. ‘Mm… didn’t do it on purpose, you know…’
For a second, he just stares at you, like he’s offended you’d even try to make light of it. Then something in his chest loosens. He lets out a disbelieving laugh, uneven.
‘Don’t—’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Don’t joke about it. I thought—’ He stops. His throat moves as if the rest of the sentence is too heavy to carry. His eyes look damp, and his cheeks too.
‘I’m okay,’ you rasp, forcing the faint twitch of a smile. ‘See. Still alive. Still making your life a nightmare.’
He exhales shakily. ‘You really scared me,’ he tells you again, quieter this time. The repetition makes it worse, somehow.
‘Is everyone else… from the subway? They’re okay?’
‘Yes,’ he says quickly. ‘Yeah. It was bad, but they’re all stable. All four of them. You were the worst off.’
‘Figures,’ you murmur, lips quirking weakly. Your eyes close again. ‘Seven years in the field without a single hospital stay. One year out and I get stabbed on my commute.’
For a second there’s silence. Then he laughs again – thin, brittle, breaking halfway through. He presses a hand to his face, laughing and wiping at his eyes all at once.
‘God. Stop that,’ he says. ‘That’s not funny.’ But he’s still laughing quietly, the sound wet, spilling out of him.
‘It’s a little funny.’
‘No. It’s really not. But—God.’
His hand drops. His smile collapses into something raw, damp around the edges. You watch him, chest heavy in a way not entirely explained by the bandages. He looks at you like you’ve just been handed back to him from the brink, like he still can’t believe it.
‘I should’ve—I should’ve been there,’ he says. ‘On the subway with you. The subway was our thing. I should’ve been with you.’
‘What, to throw yourself in front of the knife for me? That’s stupid.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Just—anything other than this.’
The chocolate bar is still in his other hand. The wrapper looks like it has collapsed in on itself, dented and sad from his constant worrying fingers.
‘Is that for me?’ you ask.
‘Yeah. I thought you might want it. For energy, or something. I know you like these ones. But I don’t know if you’re ever allowed to eat year. I can ask someone, if you want—’
‘I’m fine, thank you. I appreciate it, though.’
He nods. The room hums around you: machines whirring, footsteps in the corridor, voices murmuring behind the door. You lie very still, your body heavy and fixed in place. It makes you think of insects pinned under glass, wings outstretched but motionless, preserved in their stillness, being inspected.
Your focus stays on him through it all, and you ask, suddenly, ‘What are you even doing here?’
‘They called me,’ he says, as if your question is absurd.
‘They called you?’
‘I’m down as your emergency contact.’
You weren’t aware of that. The realization must show on your face, because he goes on, quickly: ‘Sorry. I can go if you don’t want me here. You can call Milo. I was going to try and find his number, but I figured he wouldn’t appreciate me being the one to tell him.’
‘I didn’t know you were my emergency contact. God, I’m sorry. I haven’t updated my records in forever. Or my contacts. Something must’ve defaulted when I unblocked you. I honestly didn’t realize.’
‘It’s fine. I’m glad they called me. If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t even know you were here. You would’ve kept this all to yourself.’
‘Yeah. Probably.’
‘They called your dad too,’ he says. ‘He’s on his way. Morgan’s around somewhere. You didn’t tell me what to do about Milo.’
You sink back against the pillow with a sigh and blink slowly. The thought of your father feels exhausting. Imagining his worry, his reaction. Guilt trickles through you at the sheer disruption of everything. You feel awful in every aspect of your being.
‘Yeah, um, leave Milo for now,’ you tell him.
Spencer nods once, tightly. His brows furrow. He looks like he wants to ask more, but doesn’t. He just files it away.
‘Okay,’ he says.
Silence settles. It’s not uncomfortable. He’s still clutching the chocolate bar, thumb moving across the foil in a repetitive rhythm. You reach out and touch his arm, weakly.
‘Thank you,’ you say. ‘For being here.’
His gaze flicks up, startled, before gentling. He doesn’t trust his voice to hold steady, so he just says, ‘Always,’ and leaves it at that.
── four days later | october
Spencer pushes open the door to your apartment and holds out his arm. You tell him you can walk to the sofa yourself, but he just looks at you skeptically and helps anyway. His hand on your elbow is steady and unyielding.
Being back in your apartment feels like a reprieve. The familiar shapes of your furniture, the muted color of the walls. At the hospital everything had moved too quickly, like someone had pressed fast-forward on a movie. Your body had been present but your mind kept lagging behind.
Your father was the first thing that made sense. He came into the room looking like he hadn’t slept in weeks, eyes rimmed red. You almost felt worse for him than for yourself. He asked if you were in pain, if the doctors were competent, what would happen with the medical bills. He also said he would take time off work, stay until you were better. You told him no; you didn’t want anyone rearranging their lives for you. He kissed your forehead and said he’d be back at the weekend regardless.
Derek told you he’d never been so panicked in his life. You doubted if that was true, but you let him say it. The two of you ate Jell-O from plastic cups on your second day there, and then you forced him to rejoin the case.
You told Spencer to rejoin too, but he was stubborn. He kept repeating that Hotch had signed him off, so he could say. He said it like an equation, something simple and solved: you were hurt, you needed care, therefore he would be here.
He balanced his time between sitting with you, talking with doctors and having vague discussions with Savannah just outside the door. On your second day, during the Jell-O eating, he’d gathered that you and Milo had broken up. Any conversation revolving around him was brief and spoken in the past tense.
He hadn’t pushed. He only knew it must have happened not long after the meeting in D.C. The guilt that came from that was complicated – he felt guilty that his actions in the city may have caused the split, and then he felt guilty for the relief that followed.
Now he lowers you carefully onto the sofa, sets down the folders Savannah had handed him, and adjusts the pillows behind your back with a kind of clinical thoroughness.
‘Better?’ he asks.
‘A bit. I feel really disgusting though. Like I need a shower.’
‘You can’t get your stitches wet,’ he reminds you.
‘Then maybe I can just stick my head over the sink and wash my hair that way. It feels really greasy. I won’t be able to sleep with it like this.’
‘No. You’ll strain yourself doing that. Or you’ll slip. Or—just, no. I’ll help you.’
‘You’ll help me?’
He nods as if it’s obvious.
In the bathroom, he lingers in the doorway and pushes up his sleeves. He surveys the tiny space. There’s a towel draped over the counter and the sink looks inadequate for the task. You decide on the bath instead.
‘We’ll have to get you out of that,’ he says, pointing at your hoodie. ‘Otherwise it’ll get soaked. I don’t think I’ll be able to wash around it, and I don’t want you to get ill.’
‘I’m not wearing anything under it.’
‘That doesn’t matter to me. I don’t really care. I’m not—I’ve seen you before.’ He rubs at his forehead with the side of his arm, flustered. ‘That’s not the point, sorry. I didn’t mean to imply—I can get you a bra if you want, or something.’
You almost laugh, raising your eyebrows in amusement.
‘Or I can take your hoodie off in the least sexy way possible,’ he offers. ‘If that helps. Keep things casual.’
You don’t know what he means by that, but want to see what he does, so nod. He makes a show of tugging the hoodie upward gingerly, deliberately getting it stuck on your arm so he can fumble exaggeratedly with the sleeve. He pokes his tongue out in concentration. It’s not inherently sexy, but it’s not unsexy. Nothing is unsexy with him.
You sit on the floor by the bathtub. The porcelain is cold against your skin, but his hands are warm as he adjusts the towel and moves your hair back gently. He sets the hand-towel over your chest to keep you covered. He runs the faucet, checks the temperature, and cups water over your hair. At first he’s careful to the point of uselessness, fingers practically hovering, but gradually he grows confident. His nails graze your scalp lightly and your eyes flutter shut.
It isn’t romantic. It isn’t even tender, really. It’s just Spencer: methodical and determined.
He brushes hair from your face. It feels sleek and heavy between his fingers. The water runs steadily and trickles down the curve of your neck. You feel oddly soothed, like you’ve been pressed beneath a warm blanket.
You say, offhandedly and drowsy: ‘All this running water is making me want to pee.’
‘Okay,’ he says seriously. ‘We’ll manage that too.’
He doesn’t really need to help, but he eases the waistband of your sweatpants down anyway so they don’t catch against the bandages. His eyes don’t linger. When you’re steady on your feet, he turns his back immediately, hands clasped tight in front of him like he’s bracing for something. He stares intently at the tiled wall until you’re done.
It’s all ridiculous, undignified, completely embarrassing. And yet, when you’ve pulled the sweatpants back up and he’s adjusted them so they don’t cut into your wound, you’re left with a strange, fragile warmth in your chest.
Later, you’re curled on the sofa again, hair wrapped in a towel that’s slipping loose. Spencer sits beside you. He’s quiet, almost monkish in the way he’s folded himself up. There’s something unbearably gentle about the silence between you.
The comfort of it is disarming. You hadn’t expected to get it back with him – after Vegas, after Milo. Maybe it’s too disarming, because your thoughts slip somewhere you don’t mean to let them, and before you can stop yourself the words are out.
‘If I had died, would you have mourned me like you mourned her?’
He blinks. ‘Who?’
‘Maeve.’
The name feels unfamiliar on your tongue, foreign even. He echoes her name quietly, and it seems stranger still when it comes out in his voice. You realize, as soon as it leaves your mouth, that he hasn’t mentioned her in years. Not directly. Not even in passing. It makes your question feel naïve and stupid, like opening up an old wound and demanding to know if it still bleeds.
You look down at your hands and murmur, ‘Forget it. That was stupid.’
‘No. I just don’t—What? Why are you talking about Maeve?’
‘I just wanted to know,’ you say simply.
His face is tense. He rubs at his jaw. After a moment, he relents and answers.
‘Maeve was…’ You watch him revise what he almost said. ‘She was important to me. She’ll always be important to me. I don’t think that kind of grief ever disappears.’
‘So you’re saying yes, then. You’d mourn me less.’
‘No.’ He says it so quickly it’s almost harsh. ‘Don’t put words into my mouth, please. What I’m saying is that it isn’t a measurement. Not one of the other, not more or less. What I felt for her doesn’t cancel out what I feel for you.’
You shift. Your voice comes out more tentative. ‘But I thought… Before Rossi’s wedding, you were thinking about her, weren’t you? That’s what it felt like. And that case, before I left the BAU—’ You falter, suddenly self-conscious. ‘You spent all that time with the witness. I thought it was because she reminded you of Maeve.’
‘No. God, no.’
‘You don’t have to spare my feelings, Spencer.’
‘I’m not,’ he says firmly. He leans toward you, insistent. ‘She didn’t cross my mind once at the wedding. And that witness; I stayed close to her because she was terrified, because I knew how to help. Not because she looked like Maeve, or because she was some echo of her. I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t do that to her, either.’
You sit in silence, body slack. It makes you feel foolish, small almost, that you’d carried this private suspicion for so long, convinced of it in ways that had shaped how you behaved with him.
‘I never knew you thought that way,’ he says. ‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘I thought it would be obvious. That I was worried about her, or worried about you still being in love with her.’
‘Obvious?’ he says incredulously. ‘How could it be obvious? We’ve never discussed her. Not once.’
You press your palm against your thigh, then against your eyes, trying to hold yourself together. You look at him, and your voice shakes.
‘I don’t understand. If you’re over her, why did you keep leaving me?’
‘Leaving you?’ He looks bewildered.
‘Yes. Every time. You kept leaving. You let it happen.’
‘You broke up with me,’ he says. ‘Every single time. You left.’
You bite down on the inside of your cheek, defensive. ‘And you were more than willing to let me go,’ you counter.
‘Is that what you think?’
‘Yes. You say goodbye to me so easily, Spencer. Like it doesn’t even hurt you. I don’t understand why, if it’s not about you not wanting me.’
Spencer’s expression shifts, pained, like he’s been caught on something he doesn’t want to reveal.
‘It’s weird,’ he admits finally. His voice is careful, hesitant, like he’s trying to line up thoughts that don’t want to be ordered. ‘I don’t know if I can explain it.’
‘I want you to try.’
He sighs deeply.
‘A lot of people in my life have left. They don’t always mean to, but they do. My dad. Elle. Gideon, Emily, technically. And yes, Maeve. I don’t know. Like I said, it’s weird. I was reflecting on it a while back and realized that none of them said goodbye. I didn’t either. And I don’t—I can’t stand not knowing when the end is coming. I don’t like being blindsided like that.’
You shift forward instinctively. You want to reach out and touch him in some way, but you don’t.
‘So when you said you wanted to end things, or take a break, I thought: Okay. Fine. At least that way it’s solid. I can accept the ending before it has the chance to surprise me. Because that’s better than—than waiting for someone to disappear without warning.’
The longer he speaks, the more your stomach turns. Something about his words feel horribly familiar. You think about how you’ve been doing a similar thing, just from the other side. Like two halves of the same bad coin, you think.
Your throat tightens at that. Your mother flashes through your mind: the way she walked out, shutting doors behind her like she was allergic to permanence. How, as a child, you had learned to read the warning signs, to preempt the leaving before it happened. You’d made it your own defense mechanism – if you ended things first, then no one had the power to abandon you.
And now you’re here doing it to him. Teaching him that same lesson over and over again. That people leave. That nobody stays.
‘Oh god,’ you whisper. ‘I’m an idiot. I thought you didn’t want me. That you still wanted Maeve or something. I don’t know. I always think that I’m just the type of person people leave.’ You look at him with wide eyes. ‘When I pushed you away, it wasn’t because I didn’t want you. It’s because if I leave first, then I can’t be left. That’s what I’ve learned. That’s what I’ve been doing.’
Spencer blinks, slow. You can see the words slowly sinking into his skin.
‘Of course I want you,’ he says quietly.
‘You don’t always show it. I never know what you want, actually. You act like you never want anything.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You never tell me. You say you don’t mind. About anything. Where to eat, what to do, what to talk about. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use the word “want” until now.’
He blinks, taken aback, but not defensive. He tips his head, considering.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Then I’ll tell you. I want you to talk to me. I want you to be comfortable, and to feel safe, and to know that you never have to hold anything back – no matter how hard it is, or how much I might dislike it.’ A pause. ‘I want you.’
You press your lips together. Something like disbelief catches in your chest.
‘I don’t understand why. After I’ve made you so upset before. You should want someone else.’
Spencer huffs out a laugh then – gentle, almost incredulous. He shakes his head. ‘You can’t tell me to say what I want and then tell me not to want it. That’s counterproductive. And also not fair.’
‘Sorry.’
The sound of his laugh, light in spite of everything, makes something soften in you. Your shoulders feel a fraction looser.
He shifts, bracing a hand against the cushions to push himself upright. Panic flickers through you, at the thought of him leaving you now. You reach for him instinctively. The stitches pull, and you wince, but you manage to catch his pinky finger in your hand.
‘Don’t go,’ you whisper.
The tiniest smile tugs at his mouth. He shifts his arm, enough to hook his pinky completely around yours. ‘I wasn’t planning on leaving. I’m going to get you some pajamas. Maybe a hairdryer.’
He disentangles his pinky from your fingers carefully after, as if your hand is delicate. He disappears into your bedroom for a few minutes. You can hear him moving about, opening drawers. He returns with a folded stack balanced in one hand.
‘Your pajama set. And—’ he hesitates, ‘—clean underwear.’
Your face warms, but he’s already carrying on, unbothered. ‘I remember telling you to organize that drawer. You still haven't done that. Did you know there’s a whole pillowcase stuffed in there? Maybe I can sort it out tomorrow.’
When you’re changed, he plugs in the hairdryer. You sit obediently on the edge of the bed while he works, awkward at first, then confident. He keeps the nozzle a careful distance from your scalp while his other hand combs through the damp strands. The heat makes you sleepy.
Afterward, he disappears into the kitchen. You hear the faint sound of clinking, water running. When he returns, it’s with two mugs.
‘Green tea with ginger. I read a book where it said it’s supposed to help with anxiety.’
You’re already curled on your side, so he simply sets them on the table, close enough for you to reach. Steam curls upward, ghosting the air between you. You don’t tell him that you don’t need it. That already, just from the sound of his footsteps moving around your apartment, the anxiety that’s been lodged in your chest for the past four days has thinned to something bearable. That might be too many confessions for one night, though. You only thank him instead.
You think about moths as he switches off the lamp. How they circle the glow, fragile but compelled, unable to do anything else. That’s what you feel like now: the fragile thing, drifting toward him without much choice. You think maybe he’s the same with you, circling with that same instinct. You’re not angry at the thought. The realization that maybe you’re meant to be near each other is soothing.
He lowers himself onto the mattress beside you. You’ve missed him being there. He keeps his distance, but the space between you hums.
‘You’re not being very casual about all this,’ you murmur into the pillow. ‘About taking care of me. Even though you said you would.’
He laughs softly and says, into the dark, ‘Yeah, well, I don’t think I’ve ever been capable of being casual about you.’
[series masterlist] | [next part >]
a/n: i hope that you enjoyed and this made sense!!! more to come on their thought processes and #character development
i wanted to apologize again for how long this took. i hated the original four days later draft and couldn't get it right and i don't think i love it still, but i don't hate it. a win is a win. uni has started back up for me again also, and i'm writing my diss which is highkey my priority (i've been in the lab for so many hours and it's draining me) + that combined with my recent endo flare and new meds are keeping me exhausted lmaoo. so, slow updates for the next few weeks it seems.
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