PAIRING: Spencer Reid x Genius!Reader
Summary: Spencer Reid has been secretly writing letters to his BAU colleague, documenting his growing feelings in a notebook he never intends to share. What starts as a single observation about her brilliant mind evolves into forty-three letters chronicling his admiration for her intelligence, the way she challenges him intellectually, and his gradual realization that he's fallen in love with someone who makes him feel less isolated in his own complexity.
The first time Spencer Reid noticed you, really noticed you, wasn't in the middle of a case or over a crime scene photo. It was at the jet's tiny table, where you were bent over a book so worn the spine had given up its original color entirely. The pages were soft with handling, edges rounded by countless fingers, and you held it with the careful reverence of someone who understood that some books were companions rather than objects.
You had a habit of scribbling notes in the margins, not just neat underlining or pristine highlighting, but full conversations with the author. Your handwriting was small and precise, cramped into whatever space the publisher had left blank. Arguments, corrections, cross-references that spoke of a mind that couldn't simply absorb information but had to wrestle with it, turn it over, make it earn its place in your understanding.
He didn't mean to pry. Reid had always been drawn to the written word like iron filings to a magnet, unable to resist the pull of text wherever it appeared. His gaze caught on a single line you'd scrawled in the corner of page 247, your pen pressed deep enough to leave an impression on the page beneath: "This conclusion ignores the 1873 precedent entirely. Intellectually sloppy."
Reid had been halfway through his own copy of the same text, Criminal Psychology: Historical Perspectives, methodically working through it with the same systematic approach he brought to everything else. And you were right. Completely, undeniably right. The author had glossed over a landmark case that fundamentally challenged his thesis. Reid had read those pages twice and missed it both times.
That unsettled him more than he cared to admit.
It wasn't that Spencer Reid wasn't used to being challenged. His team did it constantly, Morgan with good-natured jokes about his social skills, Garcia with tangents that pulled conversations into unexpected territories, Emily with sly literary references that tested the breadth of his reading. But this was different. This wasn't social sparring or friendly competition. This was someone who read as deeply as he did, who carried facts not as weapons or shields but as furniture in their mind, lived-in, comfortable, arranged with the unconscious care of someone who had made knowledge into a home.
You made intelligence look effortless, which was something Reid had never learned to do. His brilliance came with disclaimers and apologies, with the constant awareness that he was taking up too much space in conversations, moving too fast for others to follow. But watching you read, seeing the way you engaged with ideas as if they were old friends you were catching up with, he felt a strange recognition. Here was someone who understood that thinking wasn't just a process but a way of being in the world.
That night, while the team decompressed after closing the case, Morgan and Emily comparing notes at the hotel bar, Garcia video-chatting with someone back home, Reid sat alone in his hotel room with a cheap motel notepad balanced on his knee. The paper was thin enough that his pen caught on the fibers, but he found himself writing anyway, without conscious intention, as if his thoughts had simply overflowed the usual boundaries.
Today you corrected something I hadn't even realized I'd overlooked, and I can't decide if I should feel embarrassed or grateful. Probably both. I should tell you that in person, that your observation was brilliant, that it made me reconsider not just that author's argument but my own reading habits. Instead, I'm writing it here, in a letter I'll never give you.
You remind me that knowledge isn't static, that it's supposed to be alive, like conversation. When I read, I collect information. When you read, you seem to be having an argument, or a debate, or maybe just a really interesting discussion with someone who isn't there. I didn't know that was possible. I didn't know it was something I wanted to learn how to do.
Somehow, watching you work makes me want to be sharper, better. I didn't think anyone could do that anymore.
He set the pen down, staring at his own handwriting as if it belonged to someone else. The words looked strange on the page, too revealing, too much. He should crumple it up, throw it away, pretend he'd never written something so absurdly personal about a colleague he barely knew.
Instead, he folded the paper carefully and tucked it into the back of his notebook, telling himself it was just an outlet. A way to process thoughts that had nowhere else to go. Nothing more than that.
Over the following weeks, the letters multiplied like some kind of intellectual infection. They filled the margins of case files he filed away immediately afterward, took over empty envelopes from his desk drawer, sprawled across the backs of take-out menus and hotel stationery. They were never planned, never scheduled, they just appeared, usually late at night when his mind was too full and too tired to maintain its usual careful boundaries.
Sometimes they were about trivial things, observations that felt too small to mention in actual conversation:
You argued that Satie's "Gymnopédies" are more mathematically structured than Debussy's works during the discussion about background music in Garcia's office. I still disagree, Debussy's use of parallel motion and unresolved tensions creates a mathematical complexity that Satie's minimalism can't match, but I admire how stubbornly you defended your point. You didn't back down when Morgan made that joke about classical music being pretentious, and you didn't oversimplify your argument when JJ asked for clarification. You just... held your ground. I've never learned how to do that without sounding condescending.
Sometimes they drifted toward confessions he could never voice aloud:
I never believed anyone could understand what it's like to live in a mind that doesn't stop, that treats every piece of information like a puzzle piece that might fit into a picture I can't quite see yet. But when you talk about cases, when you make those connections that seem obvious only after you've pointed them out, I don't feel so isolated in my own head. I don't feel so... odd. You make me think that maybe the way I see the world isn't something to apologize for.
He would never let you see them. That was the rule, the one constant that allowed him to keep writing. The letters were a pressure valve, a way to process feelings that had no appropriate outlet in his carefully structured professional life. They were safe precisely because they would remain private, locked away in a notebook that traveled everywhere with him but opened for no one.
The routine of it became surprisingly comforting. After difficult cases, when his mind was too wired to sleep, he would find himself reaching for his pen almost automatically. The letters became a way of talking to you without the risk of saying too much, of exploring thoughts he couldn't afford to examine too closely in the light of day.
One evening on the jet, the rest of the team stretched out in various stages of exhaustion, and you caught him staring. He hadn't meant to be obvious about it, but there was something about the way you worked that drew his attention, the complete focus you brought to everything, the way you seemed to disappear into whatever you were reading or thinking about, emerging only when you had something worth saying.
"Reid?" you asked softly, not looking up from the file in your lap. You had a way of saying his name that was different from how others said it, not like you were testing the syllables or weighing their strangeness, just like it was a word that belonged in your mouth. "You've been awfully quiet tonight. More than usual."
He blinked, startled out of his observation. Heat rose in his cheeks as he realized he'd been caught. "Just thinking," he managed.
His mouth opened, but instead of the automatic affirmation he'd planned, what came was an almost-smile, involuntary and telling. "Something like that."
You lifted your head then, eyes bright with the same analytical sharpness that had first caught his attention, and he felt suddenly transparent. You tilted your head slightly, studying him with the same careful attention you brought to crime scenes and case files. "You know, I don't think you're ever just thinking about one thing. Your mind seems like it runs on multiple tracks simultaneously."
And just like that, you'd pinned him to the wall as easily as if you'd read one of his letters. The observation was so accurate, so casually perceptive, that for a moment he couldn't breathe. No one had ever described his thought processes with such simple precision. Most people, when they bothered to comment on how his mind worked, focused on speed or volume, how quickly he processed information, how much he could remember. You were the first person to notice the layered quality of his thinking, the way he was always running several analyses in parallel.
That night, alone in his apartment with the city's ambient noise filtering through his windows, he wrote again:
You see through me in a way that should terrify me, but somehow it doesn't. Maybe because you don't seem to see it as something to fix or manage or work around. When you mentioned the way my mind works, you sounded... interested. Curious. Not like it was a problem to solve.
I think I've been waiting most of my life for someone like you, someone who knows that genius isn't about having answers but about being hungry for the right questions. Someone who understands that intelligence isn't a performance or a party trick, but a way of being alive in the world.
I can't tell you any of this, obviously. So I'll write it here instead, and maybe someday these letters will mean something more than the space they take up in my notebook. Maybe someday I'll be brave enough to let someone else read them. But not yet. Not until I understand what this feeling is, this sense of recognition that hits me every time you speak.
Spencer Reid was a man who lived in facts and figures, who found comfort in data and patterns and the reliable logic of evidence. But with you, he found himself writing truths he couldn't catalogue anywhere else, observations and longings and half-formed realizations that belonged to some other category entirely. The notebook thickened with these letters, week by week, each one a small act of honesty he couldn't quite manage in person.
The notebook had become a second shadow, slipping into Reid's satchel with the same unconscious necessity as his badge and service weapon. He told himself it was practical, a place for case notes, random observations, the kind of miscellaneous thoughts that occurred to him throughout the day. He never admitted, even to himself, that more than half the pages bore your name in ink, disguised as letters that would never find their way to a mailbox.
The jet had become his favorite place to watch you work. Something about the confined space, the white noise of engines, the way the team naturally settled into comfortable silence during long flights, it created a bubble where observation felt less intrusive. You had a ritual: coffee first, always black, carried in a thermos from whatever local place had caught your attention. Then files, spread across the small table with the methodical precision of someone who understood that organization was the foundation of insight. Finally, the questions, not the obvious ones that occurred to everyone, but the angular approaches that came from seeing patterns others missed.
Cases had a way of grinding down the edges of the team. Exhaustion accumulated like sediment, not just physical tiredness but the deeper weariness that came from constantly confronting humanity's capacity for cruelty. But somehow, you and Reid had developed a way of filling those hollow hours with conversation that felt like restoration rather than effort.
It wasn't small talk, which neither of you had patience for. Instead, it was the kind of discussion that emerged when two minds found themselves operating at the same frequency:
"Do you ever think about linguistic extinction?" you asked one night, tapping your pen against a legal pad covered in notes that looked more like a scholar's margin commentary than standard case analysis. "How are we losing words faster than we're creating them?"
Reid's head came up from his own files, attention immediately engaged. "Most people underestimate the rate of lexical attrition. We focus on neologisms, new words entering the language, but we rarely track what's disappearing."
"Exactly." You leaned forward slightly, the way you did when an idea was building momentum in your mind. "Shakespeare used over twenty thousand distinct words in his plays and sonnets. The average contemporary English speaker actively uses maybe three thousand."
"Though that's somewhat misleading," Reid countered, settling into the familiar rhythm of intellectual exchange. "Contemporary speakers have access to specialized vocabularies that didn't exist in Shakespeare's time. Medical terminology, technological language, scientific nomenclature."
"But are we more articulate? Or just more technical?" Your eyes were bright now, engaged in the way that made something warm unfurl in Reid's chest. "There's a difference between having words and having the right words."
"You're talking about precision versus expression," he realized. "The difference between clinical accuracy and emotional resonance."
"Yes!" The enthusiasm in your voice was infectious, pulling him deeper into the discussion. "We can describe the neurochemical basis of love, but we've lost most of the words poets used to describe its effects. We're technically precise but emotionally impoverished."
Reid found himself leaning forward, too, drawn into your orbit of thought. "It's linguistic natural selection, but we might be selecting for efficiency over beauty."
"Survival of the most functional vocabulary rather than the most meaningful."
The conversation continued for another hour, ranging from the evolution of slang to the cultural implications of translation, touching on everything from cognitive linguistics to the philosophy of language. By the time it wound down, Reid realized he'd forgotten to count the minutes, something that rarely happened to him. Time had become fluid, unmeasured, existing only as the space between one thought and the next.
Later, in the privacy of his apartment, he tried to capture the feeling:
When you talk about ideas, really talk, not just exchange information but explore concepts like you're mapping uncharted territory, I forget to count the minutes. That's unusual for me. I'm always aware of time passing, always calculating duration and efficiency. But with you, the hours feel less heavy. They feel... generous.
Today we talked about language for ninety-three minutes. I know because I checked afterward, amazed that so much time had passed without my noticing. You make conversation feel like discovery. Not just of new information, but of new ways of thinking about information I thought I already understood.
Back at Quantico, you and Reid had begun gravitating toward the same coffee shop during breaks, a small place three blocks from the Federal Building that served coffee strong enough to justify the walk. It had become an unspoken routine, something that evolved naturally from practical necessity into something approaching friendship.
"Please tell me you don't actually drink that," you said one afternoon, eyeing the contents of Reid's cup with something approaching horror. The liquid inside was dark enough to be opaque, steaming like a chemistry experiment gone wrong.
"It's efficient," Reid replied, though his defensive tone suggested he wasn't entirely convinced by his own argument. "High caffeine concentration, minimal time investment, cost-effective."
You shook your head with the expression of someone witnessing a crime against nature. "That's not coffee, it's a caffeine delivery system. Coffee should be treated with some basic respect for what it's trying to accomplish."
"Which is what, exactly?" Reid asked, genuinely curious despite his attachment to his brutally practical approach to beverages.
"Pleasure," you said simply. "The ritual of it. The fact that someone, somewhere, grew those beans with the intention of creating something enjoyable. When you treat it like fuel, you're missing the entire point."
Reid studied your face, noting the slight flush of conviction that appeared when you talked about things you cared about. "You sound like Morgan talking about his car."
"Morgan's car doesn't affect the quality of his day every single morning," you countered. "Coffee is a daily relationship. It deserves some consideration."
What followed was a thirty-minute debate about optimal brewing temperatures, during which Reid insisted on ninety-six degrees Celsius while you advocated for ninety-two. You discussed extraction times, grind consistency, and the merits of different brewing methods with the same intensity most people reserved for political arguments. The barista, a college student with multiple piercings and a philosophy textbook tucked under the register, rolled his eyes at customers who turned coffee into academia.
But Reid found himself energized by the discussion in a way that had nothing to do with caffeine. You challenged his assumptions not aggressively but thoughtfully, treating his opinions as worthy of engagement even when you disagreed. It was the kind of intellectual sparring he'd always craved but rarely found, argument as exploration rather than combat.
That night, his handwriting carried traces of the day's energy:
You challenge me in the smallest ways, over coffee brewing temperatures, over word definitions, over things that shouldn't matter but somehow do with you. I didn't think anyone could make me want to argue for the pure pleasure of arguing. But with you, I'd debate the optimal angle of rainfall if it meant hearing how your mind approaches the problem.
There's something addictive about the way you think. You don't just accept information; you interrogate it, turn it over, test its weight. You make me want to be more rigorous in my own thinking, not because you're critical but because you make intellectual curiosity look like joy.
It wasn't all intense discussion and academic debate. Some of Reid's favorite moments were the quieter ones, late flights when the team had settled into exhausted silence, the office empty except for the two of you working through case files, the comfortable pauses that developed during longer conversations.
You'd developed a way of communicating without words that Reid found both unsettling and deeply satisfying. A glance across the jet's narrow aisle when someone made a comment that missed the mark. A slight shake of your head when he was about to offer information that would only complicate an already tense situation. A raised eyebrow that said Did you catch that inconsistency too? More clearly than speech ever could.
Reid wasn't good at silence usually. His mind had too many active processes, too much information demanding attention. Quiet felt like wasted time, space that should be filled with facts or analysis or at least the comfort of familiar mental routines. But with you, silence had texture, it was deliberate rather than empty, full of unspoken understanding rather than awkward gaps.
That kind of communion was harder to capture in words, but he tried:
You make silence feel like conversation. We can sit for twenty minutes without speaking, and I never feel like something is missing from the interaction. That scares me more than I want to admit. I've spent most of my life believing that my value to other people was in what I could say, what I could explain or analyze, or contribute verbally. With you, I'm learning that presence might be enough. That being understood doesn't always require being heard.
I don't know what to do with that knowledge. It changes something fundamental about how I think about relationships, about connection, about what it means to not be alone.
One afternoon in the bullpen, during the strange lull that sometimes occurred between cases, you appeared at Reid's desk with a file folder and an expression he couldn't immediately categorize. You leaned against the edge of his desk with the casual familiarity that had developed between you over months of shared conversations and mutual respect.
"You know, Reid," you said, your voice carrying that thoughtful quality it took on when you were working through an idea, "you never give yourself enough credit."
He looked up from the statistical analysis he'd been reviewing, thrown off by the sudden shift from professional to personal. "I'm sorry, what do you mean?"
"The way you talk about yourself. About your social skills, about how other people perceive you. You act like your intelligence isolates you, like it's something you have to apologize for." You paused, studying his face with the same careful attention you brought to crime scenes. "But you don't see the way people look at you when you explain things. When you make those connections that seem impossible until you lay them out step by step."
Reid felt his throat tighten, words tangling somewhere between disbelief and a desperate wish to accept what you were saying. He defaulted to the safety of statistics, the familiar armor of objective fact. "The average person experiences impostor syndrome at least once in their lifetime. I just happened to experience it in a particularly specialized field where..."
You cut him off gently, not with interruption but with the kind of quiet certainty that made argument impossible. "It's not impostor syndrome, Spencer. It's you systematically underestimating your own worth."
The use of his first name hit him like a small electric shock. You'd been working together for months, but the team usually defaulted to surnames in professional settings. Hearing you say 'Spencer' felt deliberate, intimate, like you were addressing not just the FBI agent but the person underneath.
"I watch you work," you continued, apparently unaware of the small revolution your words were causing in his chest. "I watch how you approach problems, how you synthesize information, how you can take a room full of conflicting theories and find the thread that connects them all. That's not just intelligence, Spencer. That's wisdom. And when you share that process with others, when you walk them through your reasoning, they're not annoyed or intimidated. They're grateful."
Reid stared at you, trying to process feedback that contradicted every assumption he'd made about how others perceived him. The logical part of his mind wanted to argue, to point out all the times he'd been too much, too fast, too detailed for normal social interaction. But there was something in your voice, a conviction that felt based on careful observation rather than polite encouragement, that made him pause.
That night, his pen trembled slightly as he wrote:
You said something today that I can't stop replaying in my mind. You said that people are grateful when I explain things, not annoyed. You used the word 'wisdom' to describe something I do. I don't know how to accept that assessment, but I want to believe you. More than that, I want to understand why it matters more coming from you than it would from anyone else.
You see me in a way that feels both terrifying and necessary. Like you're holding up a mirror that shows me something I've never been able to see clearly. I don't know if the person you're describing is real, but I want to become him. I want to be worthy of the confidence you seem to have in me.
By the time weeks had turned into months, Reid's notebook was more than half full, pages dense with observations and confessions and late-night attempts to understand what was happening to him. The letters had evolved from simple curiosities to something approaching a second life, a parallel existence where he could be honest about feelings that had no place in his carefully structured professional world.
But the weight of them was beginning to press against the boundaries he'd established. Every time you smiled at him across a conference table, every time you leaned close enough during case discussions that he could smell your shampoo, every time you asked for his opinion and listened to the answer like it truly mattered, he felt the edges of his self-control fraying.
It wasn't just admiration anymore, though that remained. It wasn't just respect for your intelligence or gratitude for your friendship. It was something larger and more dangerous, something that made his chest tight and his thoughts scattered whenever you were near.
I think I need to acknowledge what this has become, even if I can only do it here, in writing, where the words can't hurt either of us.
I've fallen in love with you.
Not the easy, uncomplicated kind of love that happens in movies, the kind where people lock eyes across crowded rooms and just know. This feels more like a slow landslide, like something that's been shifting and settling for months without my full awareness, until one day I looked up and realized the landscape of my internal world had completely changed.
I love the way your mind works, not just its sharpness or its speed, but its particular quality of curiosity, the way you approach ideas like puzzles worth solving rather than facts to be collected. I love that you read with a pen in your hand, that you argue with authors, that you treat every book like a conversation partner.
I love your voice when you get excited about something, the way it takes on this intensity that makes everyone else stop and listen. I love that you notice things, small things, important things, things that other people miss. I love that you make me want to be more precise in my own observations, not because you demand it but because you make accuracy look like art.
I don't know what terrifies me more: the thought of telling you how I feel, or the thought of carrying this secret forever. Both options seem impossible, but one of them is going to have to become real.
He set down his pen and stared at the words, heart racing as if he'd just confessed aloud rather than to an empty page. The admission felt both liberating and catastrophic, finally naming what he'd been dancing around for months, but also making it real in a way that couldn't be undone.
Reid closed the notebook carefully and placed it in his satchel, where it would travel with him tomorrow and every day after, carrying words he couldn't say but could no longer deny.
Something was shifting between you, and Reid couldn't decide if he was imagining it or if his heightened awareness was finally allowing him to see what had been there all along.
It started with small things, details that might have been coincidental if taken individually, but felt deliberate when viewed as a pattern. The way you'd started saving him a seat on the jet without comment, choosing the spot across from yours so you could continue conversations during the flight. How you'd begun asking questions about his mother, his childhood, his thoughts on topics that had nothing to do with work, not with the clinical curiosity of a profiler, but with the gentle persistence of someone who actually wanted to understand.
You'd started bringing him coffee from the good place down the street, appearing at his desk with a cup that was somehow always exactly the right temperature, prepared exactly how he liked it, even though he'd never explicitly told you his preferences. When he'd mentioned it, you'd shrugged and said you were observant, but there was something in your eyes that suggested observation wasn't the whole story.
During briefings, he'd catch you watching him when he presented analysis, not with the polite attention most people gave to his explanations, but with genuine engagement, as if you were following not just his conclusions but his process of reaching them. You'd nod at points where others looked confused, ask follow-up questions that proved you were thinking three steps ahead of his presentation.
Reid found himself hyperaware of these moments, cataloguing them with the same methodical attention he brought to case evidence. He told himself it was simply professional courtesy, collegial respect, the natural development of a working relationship between two compatible minds. But late at night, alone with his notebook, he allowed himself to wonder if there might be more to it.
Today, you walked with me to the Metro after we finished the case reports, even though I know your car is parked in the opposite direction. We talked about nothing important, the weather, the case we just closed, a book you're reading, but there was something in the way you lingered at the station entrance, like you weren't quite ready for the conversation to end.
You asked me if I ever feel like I'm living in two worlds at once, the one in my head and the one everyone else sees. The question caught me completely off guard, not just because of its perceptiveness but because of its intimacy. It wasn't the kind of thing people usually ask unless they understand the feeling themselves.
When I said yes, when I told you that I feel that way constantly, you looked at me with this expression of recognition that made my chest ache. Like you knew exactly what I meant, like you'd been waiting for someone to understand that particular kind of loneliness.
For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like the only person living inside my own head.
The conversation had happened on a Thursday evening, the city loud with rush hour traffic and neon signs flickering to life against the growing darkness. You'd walked beside him in comfortable silence for most of the journey, occasionally commenting on storefronts or asking his opinion on local restaurants, the kind of easy interaction that felt natural despite being relatively new.
But then, just before reaching the Metro entrance, you'd stopped walking and asked the question that would replay in his mind for days afterward: "Spencer, do you ever feel like you're living in two worlds at once? The one in your head, and the one everyone else sees?"
Reid's steps had faltered, not just because of the question but because of the way you'd asked it, quietly, seriously, like it was something you'd been thinking about for a while. There was vulnerability in your voice that he'd never heard before, a crack in the professional composure you usually maintained.
"Yes," he'd replied without thinking, the honesty surprising even himself. "All the time."
You'd looked at him then, really looked, with an intensity that made him feel transparent. But instead of the discomfort he usually experienced when people tried to analyze him, he'd felt... seen. Understood in a way that was both unsettling and profoundly comforting.
"I thought you might," you'd said softly, and there was something in your expression, recognition, sympathy, a kind of relief, that suggested the question hadn't been casual curiosity but personal necessity.
They'd parted ways after that, but the moment had lingered in Reid's mind like an echo, reverberating through his thoughts and coloring everything that came after. You'd seen something in him that he'd never explicitly shared, had recognized a kind of isolation he'd assumed was uniquely his own.
I keep thinking about what you said, about living in two worlds. I've spent most of my life assuming that the disconnect between my internal experience and external reality was a personal failing, something I needed to manage better, hide more effectively, apologize for more consistently.
But when you asked that question, when you acknowledged that you felt it too, it reframed everything. Maybe it's not a flaw. Maybe it's just a different way of being conscious, of processing experience. Maybe there are others who understand what it's like to have so much happening internally that the external world sometimes feels thin, insufficient, like a two-dimensional representation of something that should have more depth.
I want to ask you about your two worlds. I want to know what goes on in your head when you're quiet during briefings, what you're thinking about when you get that distant look during long flights. But I don't know how to ask without revealing too much about my own internal landscape.
Maybe that's what connection actually is, not finding someone who sees the world the same way you do, but finding someone who acknowledges that your way of seeing is valid, even if they can't share it directly.
The inevitable happened on a Tuesday afternoon, during the kind of mundane moment that retrospectively felt loaded with significance. Reid had been rushing to pack up after a briefing, stuffing files into his satchel with uncharacteristic haste because he'd promised his mother he'd call at a specific time. The notebook, his constant companion, his repository of secrets, slipped free of its usual position and hit the floor with the soft thud of paper meeting linoleum.
He didn't notice immediately, too focused on organizing his materials and calculating travel time to the Metro. It wasn't until you bent down to retrieve the fallen item that he realized what had happened.
"Hey, Reid, you dropped..." Your voice cut off abruptly as your eyes found the open page, and Reid felt the world telescope into a single point of horror.
Letter #42. His handwriting, unmistakable and incriminating. And at the top of the page, your name, written with the careful precision he brought to everything important.
Time seemed to slow as Reid watched you process what you were seeing. Your thumb rested against the edge of the paper, eyes scanning the first few lines with an expression he couldn't read, surprise, yes, but not shock. Not the immediate revulsion or embarrassment he'd expected. Just... careful attention, as if you were trying to understand rather than simply react.
The bullpen buzzed with its usual end-of-day activity, conversations winding down, phones ringing, the familiar sounds of a workplace transitioning from productivity to preparation for departure. But for Reid, all of that faded into background noise. His entire world had contracted to this moment: your hand holding evidence of feelings he'd never meant to expose.
He surged forward, reflexes overriding conscious thought, and snatched the notebook from your hands with more force than he'd intended. "That's not..." His voice cracked, betraying him. He swallowed hard and tried again. "It's just... case notes. Personal case notes."
It was a terrible lie, and you both knew it.
Your gaze lifted slowly, meeting his with steady attention that somehow felt both gentle and inexorable. "Case notes with my name at the top?"
Heat climbed up Reid's neck, spreading across his cheeks in a flush he couldn't control. Words tangled in his throat, explanations, denials, deflections, all of them inadequate for the magnitude of what had just been revealed. Reid could recite the periodic table backwards, could calculate complex mathematical equations in his head, and could profile unknown subjects based on the smallest behavioral details. But he couldn't explain away the evidence of his own heart, written in his unmistakable handwriting.
He clutched the notebook against his chest like armor, as if he could somehow retroactively protect what had already been exposed. "You weren't supposed to see that."
"Spencer." Your voice was softer than he'd ever heard it, not accusatory or shocked but simply... present. Waiting. "What are they?"
The question hung in the air between you, and Reid realized that silence wasn't an option. You'd seen enough to know that whatever was in that notebook was significant, personal, about you. Pretending otherwise would only make things worse.
"They're..." His throat felt tight, words scraping against vocal cords that seemed to have forgotten their function. He tried again, quieter this time. "Letters. To you. That I never intended to send."
He watched your face carefully, searching for signs of disgust, pity, the kind of uncomfortable sympathy that would confirm his worst fears about what this revelation meant for your working relationship. But what he saw instead was something closer to curiosity, not the invasive kind that demanded explanation, but the gentle interest you brought to puzzles worth solving.
"Why?" you asked, and the question was so simple, so free of judgment, that it nearly undid him entirely.
The honest answer was too large, too complicated, too dangerous to speak aloud in a federal building surrounded by colleagues and supervisors. But looking at you, at your patient expression, your lack of visible horror, the way you were treating this revelation as information rather than a crisis, Reid found himself reaching for truth instead of deflection.
"Because it's easier to write what I can't say," he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. "Because you..." He broke off, fingers tightening around the notebook until his knuckles went white. "Because you make me feel things I don't know how to process. Things I don't think I'm supposed to feel for someone I work with."
The admission hung between you like a bridge. Reid couldn't decide whether to cross or burn. He felt exposed in a way that went beyond professional embarrassment, this was personal vulnerability on a scale he'd never experienced, never wanted to experience, never thought himself capable of surviving.
"You could have told me," you said quietly, and there was something in your voice that made him look at you more carefully.
Reid let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob, bitter and disbelieving. "You don't understand." He shook his head, hair falling across his forehead in the way it did when he was agitated. "I'm not, I don't do this. I don't know how to do this. People don't..." He gestured helplessly, trying to encompass everything he couldn't articulate. "I'm someone who counts things, who memorizes data instead of learning to improvise. I don't take risks with relationships. I don't make confessions. I write letters I never send because it's safer than finding out that the person I..." He cut himself off before the word 'love' could escape, but the shape of it hung in the air anyway.
"But you did," you said softly, your eyes dropping to the notebook still pressed against his chest. "You did confess. Here."
He followed your gaze, then clutched the notebook tighter, as if he could somehow take back what had already been revealed. "And now you know. And everything is ruined."
"Ruined?" Your eyebrows drew together in genuine confusion. "Spencer, why would telling me how you feel ruin anything?"
"Because it changes everything," he said, the words rushing out with the force of weeks of suppressed panic. "Because now you'll feel obligated to respond, or worse, you'll feel uncomfortable working with me, and I'll have destroyed the best professional relationship I've ever had because I couldn't keep my feelings contained where they belonged."
The bullpen continued its evening wind-down around you, but the conversation felt sealed in its own bubble of intensity. Reid was aware of his elevated heart rate, of the way his palms had begun to sweat, of all the physiological markers of acute stress that his body was helpfully cataloguing even as his mind spiraled toward worst-case scenarios.
You were quiet for a long moment, long enough that Reid began to construct elaborate plans for requesting a transfer, for explaining to Hotch why he could no longer work effectively with certain team members, for rebuilding his professional life around the crater this revelation was about to leave in it.
Then you said, "Maybe it should change everything."
The words hit Reid like a physical shock, stopping his internal catastrophizing mid-thought. He forced himself to look at you directly, searching your expression for signs that he'd misunderstood, that you were being kind rather than honest, that this was the beginning of a gentle letdown rather than... whatever the alternative might be.
What he found was something he'd never seen directed at him before: warmth, quiet and steady and unmistakably real. Not pity, not professional courtesy, not the careful neutrality people usually employed when trying to navigate his intensity. Just... warmth.
"You..." His voice broke slightly. "You mean... ?"
"I mean, I've been waiting for you to say something," you said, and there was a vulnerability in your voice that matched his own. "I didn't know if you ever would. You're so careful, so controlled. I started to think maybe I was imagining things."
Reid felt the world tilt on its axis, reality reorganizing itself around this new information. "Imagining what things?"
"The way you look at me during briefings. How do you remember details about conversations we had weeks ago? The fact that you started bringing me articles about topics I mentioned being interested in. The way you listen when I talk, not just waiting for your turn to speak, but actually listening, like what I'm saying matters to you beyond its professional relevance."
Each observation felt like a small revelation, evidence of his feelings that he'd thought he was concealing but apparently had been broadcasting more clearly than he'd realized. Reid ran through his recent interactions with you, trying to see them from your perspective, wondering what other signals he'd been unconsciously sending.
"I thought I was being subtle," he admitted weakly.
"You were being Spencer," you said, and there was something almost fond in your voice. "Which means you were being intense and thoughtful and completely obvious to anyone paying attention."
"Were you paying attention?"
The question came out more vulnerable than he'd intended, carrying years of assumption that his internal experiences were largely invisible to others, that his feelings were his own burden to carry.
"Spencer," you said gently, and the way you said his name made something tight in his chest begin to loosen. "I've been paying attention to you since the day we met."
The admission hung in the air between you, shifting the balance of the conversation from his confession to something more mutual. Reid felt some of the panicked energy drain out of his system, replaced by a different kind of nervousness, anticipation rather than dread.
"So what happens now?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Now we figure out what this looks like," you replied, and there was certainty in your voice that helped anchor him. "What we want it to look like."
Reid looked down at the notebook in his hands, then back at your face. "I have forty-three letters in here. Forty-three separate attempts to tell you things I couldn't say out loud."
"I'd like to read them," you said quietly. "If you'll let me. Not all at once," you added quickly, seeing the panic that flashed across his expression. "But eventually. I want to understand how you see me, how you see this."
The thought of you reading his most private thoughts should have been terrifying. Instead, Reid found it was oddly comforting, the idea that someone might finally know the full extent of what went on in his head, might see the careful attention he paid to details that seemed insignificant to everyone else.
"They're not..." He paused, trying to find the right words. "They're not linear. Some of them are just fragments, observations I couldn't put anywhere else. Some of them are probably embarrassingly detailed about things like the way you drink coffee or the expression you get when you're thinking through a difficult problem."
"I think I'd like them even more for that," you said, and there was something in your smile that made Reid's heart skip in a way that had nothing to do with anxiety.
For a moment, they stood there in the gradually emptying bullpen, looking at each other across a distance that felt both infinite and negligible. Reid could hear his own pulse in his ears, could feel the weight of the notebook in his hands, could sense the magnitude of what was happening even as part of his mind insisted this couldn't be real.
"Spencer," you said softly, and he realized you'd moved closer while he was lost in thought. Close enough that he could see the flecks of color in your eyes, could smell the subtle scent of your perfume mixed with coffee, and the particular smell of someone who spent their days thinking hard about difficult things.
"I'm glad you wrote those letters. Even if you never meant to send them." You paused, seeming to consider your next words carefully. "But I'm even more glad that I got to read one."
Reid felt something like joy unfurling in his chest, tentative and fragile, but unmistakably real. "Even though it means I've been essentially stalking you with written observations for months?"
"Even though it means you've been paying attention to me in ways I didn't know anyone ever did," you corrected gently.
The distinction mattered more than he could articulate. You weren't seeing his intense focus as intrusive or overwhelming, but as a form of care. It was a reframing that challenged every assumption he'd made about how his particular brand of attention was received by others.
"What happens tomorrow?" he asked, because his mind was already jumping ahead to practical concerns, to how this revelation would affect their working relationship, to whether the team would notice changes in their dynamic.
"Tomorrow we see how this feels in the daylight," you replied. "We take it slowly, figure out how to navigate this with work and the team and all the complications that come with caring about a colleague."
"And if it's too complicated? If it doesn't work?"
You looked at him for a long moment, and Reid had the sense that you were seeing not just his current anxiety but the deeper fear underneath, that he was somehow fundamentally unsuited for the kind of connection he'd written about in those letters.
"Spencer," you said finally, "the fact that you wrote forty-three letters about someone before working up the courage to say something in person doesn't make you bad at relationships. It makes you someone who thinks before they act, who considers consequences, who cares enough to be careful with other people's feelings."
"Even if it took accidentally dropping my notebook for anything to happen?"
"Even then. Maybe especially then." You smiled, and there was something almost mischievous in your expression. "Besides, I was starting to think I might have to engineer a situation where you'd be forced to admit how you felt. This just saved me the trouble of creative scheming."
The image of you plotting ways to extract confessions from him was so unexpectedly charming that Reid actually laughed, a real laugh that surprised him with its lightness.
"You would have schemed?"
"I'm very good at scheming when properly motivated," you said with mock seriousness. "You should be grateful that fate intervened through notebook mismanagement."
Reid looked down at the notebook in his hands, then back at your face, and felt something shift permanently in how he understood his own story. For months, he'd been writing letters to preserve feelings he couldn't express, convinced that keeping them hidden was the only way to protect what he valued about your relationship.
But maybe the real protection had come from the expression itself, from taking his feelings seriously enough to articulate them, even in private. Maybe the letters had been preparation rather than substitution, a way of learning to be honest about what mattered to him.
"Can I ask you something?" he said suddenly.
"When you picked up the notebook, when you saw what it was, were you surprised?"
You considered the question seriously, tilting your head in the way you did when you were thinking through complex problems. "Not surprised, exactly. More like... relieved?"
"I'd started to wonder if I was reading too much into things. If the attention I thought you were paying me was just your normal level of observation applied to everyone around you. Finding out that you'd been writing letters about me specifically was confirmation that I wasn't imagining the connection I felt."
Reid absorbed this information, marveling at the idea that you'd been as uncertain about his feelings as he'd been about yours. It seemed impossible that someone as perceptive and confident as you could experience the same kind of self-doubt that had plagued him for months.
"I've never been good at reading social cues," he admitted. "I kept telling myself that any interest I thought I detected was probably just professional courtesy."
"And I kept telling myself that someone as brilliant as you would have said something if you were actually interested," you replied. "We're quite a pair of overthinking strategists."
"Maybe that's why it works," Reid said, surprising himself with the certainty in his voice.
The notebook lay open between you like a bridge across months of careful distance. The bullpen had mostly emptied, the usual end-of-day exodus leaving behind only the dedicated workaholics and those unlucky enough to be buried under particularly complex case reports. The overhead lights had dimmed to their evening setting, casting everything in softer focus, making the whole conversation feel both more intimate and more surreal.
Reid's hands hovered over the notebook, no longer clutching it protectively but not quite ready to close it either. For the first time in months, the physical weight of his secrets had been lifted, replaced by something more complex but infinitely more manageable, the weight of possibility.
"You know," you said, settling into the chair beside his desk with the kind of casual familiarity that had developed between you over months of shared coffee breaks and late-night case discussions, "you weren't as subtle as you thought you were."
Reid felt heat rise in his cheeks again, but it was embarrassment tempered by curiosity rather than pure mortification. "What do you mean?"
"The way you'd glance over during briefings when I made a point you found particularly interesting. How you started staying later on nights when I was working late, even when your own cases were wrapped up. The fact that you somehow always knew exactly how I liked my coffee, even though I never explicitly told you." You paused, a small smile playing at the corners of your mouth. "And then there were the books."
"Spencer, in the past three months, you've left seventeen different articles and book recommendations on my desk. All of them related to topics I'd mentioned being curious about, usually in passing during conversations that happened weeks earlier. Either you have the most extraordinary memory for casual comments in human history, or you were paying very specific attention to what I said."
Reid ran through his mental catalog of book recommendations, realizing with growing embarrassment how obvious his pattern of behavior must have been to someone trained in observation and analysis. "I thought I was being helpful. Collegial."
"You were being sweet," you said simply, and the word hit him with unexpected force. "Thoughtful in a way that went way beyond normal professional courtesy."
The idea that his attempts at connection had been received as sweetness rather than intrusion was still difficult for Reid to process. He'd spent so long assuming that his intensity was something to be managed and minimized that the possibility of it being welcomed felt revolutionary.
"I didn't know how else to..." He gestured vaguely, trying to encompass months of careful navigation around feelings he couldn't directly address. "I wanted to show you that I paid attention to what you said, that I cared about your interests, but I couldn't figure out how to do that without seeming..."
"Without seeming like you cared too much?"
"Exactly." Reid looked down at his hands, noting the slight tremor that had been present since you'd first picked up the notebook. "I've never been good at calibrating appropriate levels of interest. I tend to go from zero to complete fascination without much middle ground."
"And you thought complete fascination would scare me off?"
The question was asked gently, without judgment, but Reid heard the underlying invitation to examine his assumptions about how others perceived his intensity.
"It's scared other people off," he said quietly. "I learned early that showing too much interest in someone, caring too obviously, asking too many questions, it makes people uncomfortable. They start to feel like they're under a microscope, like they can't relax around me."
You were quiet for a moment, and Reid could almost see you processing this information, fitting it into your growing understanding of how he moved through the world.
"Spencer," you said finally, "has it occurred to you that maybe you've been trying to connect with people who weren't equipped to appreciate the way you care?"
The suggestion was so fundamentally different from his usual framework for understanding social rejection that it took him several seconds to fully absorb it.
"I mean, your way of showing interest, the attention to detail, the thoughtful follow-up, the deep engagement with things that matter to people, that's not overwhelming to everyone. To some people, it's exactly what they've been hoping to find." You leaned forward slightly, and Reid found himself caught by the sincerity in your expression. "I've spent most of my adult life around people who listen just long enough to find an opening to talk about themselves. Do you know how rare it is to find someone who remembers not just what you said, but why it mattered to you?"
Reid felt something shift in his understanding of his own social history. He'd always attributed the failure of previous relationships, romantic and platonic, to his own excessive intensity, his inability to moderate his natural tendencies toward deep focus and comprehensive care. But maybe the problem hadn't been the intensity itself, but rather a mismatch between his style of connection and what others were prepared to receive.
"You really don't find it overwhelming?" he asked, needing to hear the confirmation again.
"Spencer, I find it wonderful. I find it exactly what I didn't know I was looking for."
The words settled into his chest like warm honey, soothing places that had been tender for longer than he cared to admit. Reid looked at you sitting beside his desk, completely relaxed despite having just discovered months' worth of secret documentation about your relationship, and felt something like wonder at the strangeness of human connection.
"Can I ask you something?" he said.
"When did you start thinking about me as... more than a colleague?"
You tilted your head, considering the question with the same careful attention you brought to complex case analysis. "I don't think there was a specific moment. It was more like... accumulation. All these small interactions and observations that gradually shifted how I thought about you."
Reid was genuinely curious about your perspective on the development of whatever this was between you. His own experience had felt so internal, so much like a private evolution of feeling that he'd assumed was largely invisible to its object.
"The first time I really noticed you as Spencer rather than just Dr. Reid was during that case in Phoenix," you said, settling back in your chair as if preparing to tell a longer story. "Do you remember the interview with the victim's sister?"
Reid nodded. It had been a difficult conversation, the woman was grieving, angry, and deeply suspicious of federal involvement in what she saw as a local tragedy.
"You spent forty-five minutes with her, not pushing for information but just... listening. Letting her tell you about her sister, about their childhood, about things that had nothing to do with the case but everything to do with helping her feel heard." You paused, a soft expression crossing your face. "And when she finally broke down crying, you didn't try to comfort her with platitudes or redirect her back to the investigation. You just sat with her in that grief and let it be what it was."
Reid remembered that interview differently, as a frustrating exercise in patience, a necessary investment of time to build rapport with a reluctant witness. He'd never considered that his approach might have appeared particularly compassionate to an observer.
"Most people would have tried to manage her emotions," you continued. "Get her calmed down so they can proceed with their agenda. But you seemed to understand that her grief was part of the information, that respecting it was more important than efficiently extracting what we needed."
"She was in pain," Reid said simply. "It would have been cruel to ask her to set that aside for our convenience."
"Exactly. And that's when I started paying attention to how you interacted with people, not just witnesses and suspects, but everyone. The way you talk to Garcia when she's excited about something technical that you don't really understand, but you ask questions anyway because you can see how much it matters to her. How you always remember to ask Morgan about his latest home renovation project, even though construction has nothing to do with your interests."
Reid felt slightly overwhelmed by this catalog of behaviors he'd never thought of as particularly noteworthy. "Those are just... normal social courtesies."
"No, Spencer, they're not. They're evidence of someone who pays attention to what makes other people happy, who cares enough to engage with their enthusiasms even when they don't share them." You smiled, and there was something almost fond in your expression. "That's when I started wondering what it would be like to be the focus of that kind of attention intentionally."
The admission sent a flutter of something warm and electric through Reid's chest. The idea that his general approach to human interaction had been what first attracted your interest was both flattering and slightly bewildering.
"And then there was the conversation about translation theory," you continued.
Reid blinked, trying to place the reference. "Translation theory?"
"Three weeks ago, on the jet back from the case in Minneapolis. We were talking about the challenges of translating poetry, about how meaning changes when you move between languages. You said that every translation is really a new poem inspired by the original."
The conversation came back to him, one of those long, meandering discussions that had become a regular feature of your shared flights, topics that started with work but expanded into broader questions about language, meaning, art.
"I remember," he said. "You disagreed. You said that good translation was about preserving as much of the original meaning as possible, that the translator's job was to be invisible."
"Right. And we spent two hours debating it, getting more and more animated, until JJ pointed out that we were having an academic argument at thirty thousand feet like it was the most natural thing in the world." You paused, your expression growing more serious. "That's when I realized that I'd never had that kind of intellectual connection with anyone before. The kind where you can disagree completely but still find the conversation energizing rather than frustrating."
Reid felt a familiar flutter of recognition. Those conversations had become one of his favorite parts of the job, the opportunity to engage with someone whose mind worked quickly enough to keep up with his tangents, who challenged his ideas without making him feel defensive about having them.
"I started looking forward to those discussions more than I probably should have," he admitted.
"So did I. And that's when I started wondering if what I was feeling was purely intellectual admiration or something more complicated."
The gradual revelation of your perspective on their developing relationship was like watching a familiar movie from a different character's point of view, recognizing scenes and conversations he remembered, but seeing them illuminated by entirely different motivations and reactions.
"How long have you been wondering?" Reid asked.
"Consciously? About six weeks. Unconsciously... probably longer." You paused, seeming to consider how much to reveal. "There was a night about two months ago when I went home after one of our coffee shop discussions and realized I'd been smiling for three straight hours. Not because anything particularly amusing had happened, just because I'd enjoyed your company so much."
Reid tried to remember which conversation you might be referencing, but they all blurred together in his memory, a series of pleasant interludes that had gradually become the highlight of his workdays.
"I had a similar realization," he said slowly. "Though it took me longer to recognize what it meant."
"What was your realization?"
Reid considered how to articulate the moment when his feelings had shifted from professional admiration to something more personal and significantly more complicated.
"I was at home, reading an article about cognitive linguistics, and I found myself thinking about how you would respond to the author's thesis. Not just wondering if you'd find it interesting, but actually imagining the conversation we might have about it, anticipating your counterarguments." He paused, feeling heat rise in his cheeks as he admitted the next part. "I realized I was essentially having an imaginary discussion with you, and that I was enjoying it more than the actual article."
"That's when you started writing the letters?"
"That's when I admitted to myself that I was in trouble," Reid corrected. "The letters came later, when I realized that thinking about you constantly was becoming a significant distraction from my actual responsibilities."
You laughed, not mockingly, but with genuine amusement and what sounded like affection. "So you decided to organize your feelings about me into written form?"
"It seemed more efficient than letting them take up processing power during work hours," Reid said, then immediately realized how clinical that sounded. "That's not, I don't mean to make it sound like you were a problem to be solved."
"I know what you mean," you said gently. "And honestly, it's very you to approach emotional complexity with systematic organization."
Reid wasn't sure if that was a compliment or a gentle critique of his methods, but your tone suggested the former.
"Was it helpful?" you asked. "The writing?"
Reid considered the question seriously. Had the letters served their intended purpose of helping him manage his feelings more effectively?
"Yes and no," he said finally. "Writing them helped me understand what I was feeling, made me more articulate about why you affected me the way you did. But it also made everything more intense, more real. Instead of just having a crush that I could dismiss as workplace proximity, I had pages of evidence that what I felt was substantial and specific and..." He trailed off, searching for the right word.
"And worth taking seriously," he finished quietly.
The admission hung in the air between you, and Reid realized that this might be the most honest he'd ever been about his emotional processes with another person. The vulnerability was terrifying, but also strangely liberating, like finally setting down a weight he'd been carrying for so long he'd forgotten how heavy it was.
"Spencer," you said softly, "can I tell you something?"
He nodded, not trusting his voice.
"I'm honored that you took your feelings about me seriously enough to examine them so carefully. Most people, when they're attracted to someone, either act on it immediately or dismiss it without much thought. The fact that you wanted to understand what you felt, that you cared enough to be thoughtful about it..." You paused, seeming to search for the right words. "It makes me feel valued in a way I've never experienced before."
Reid stared at you, trying to process feedback that contradicted every assumption he'd made about how his analytical approach to emotions would be received.
"You don't think it's weird that I wrote forty-three letters about you before working up the courage to have a single direct conversation about my feelings?"
"I think it's perfectly Spencer Reid," you said, and there was warmth in your voice that made the statement sound like praise rather than resignation. "And I think I'm very lucky that you're someone who takes feelings seriously, who considers their implications, who cares enough about other people to be careful with their hearts."
The words settled into Reid's chest like a benediction, soothing years of self-criticism about his inability to be spontaneous or casual in matters of emotional significance.
"So what happens now?" he asked, echoing his earlier question but with less anxiety and more genuine curiosity.
"Now we see what it's like to have these conversations in person instead of on paper," you said. "We figure out how this changes things, how it doesn't, what we want it to become."
Reid looked down at the notebook, still open to Letter #42, then back at your face.
"I don't want to keep writing letters I'll never send," he said quietly.
"Then don't," you replied, and your smile was warm and certain and full of possibility. "Write ones you will send. Or better yet, just tell me the things you want to say."
The suggestion was both thrilling and terrifying, the idea of direct emotional communication, unmediated by the safety of private written reflection. But looking at you, at the patience and encouragement in your expression, Reid thought he might be ready to try.
"Okay," he said, and the word felt like a promise. "I'd like that."
"Good," you said, reaching across the small space between your chairs to take his hand. The contact was light, tentative, giving him every opportunity to pull away if he wanted to.
Reid didn't pull away. Instead, he marveled at how natural it felt, how right, your fingers warm against his, the connection both grounding and electrifying.
"Good," he echoed, and for the first time in months, the future felt like something to anticipate rather than worry about.
Later, when the bullpen had emptied completely and the building had settled into its nighttime quiet, Reid found himself walking with you toward the parking garage, the notebook tucked safely in his satchel but no longer feeling like a burden of secrets.
"Spencer," you said as you reached the point where you'd need to separate toward your respective cars.
"Thank you for writing those letters. Even if you never meant for me to see them." You paused, and there was something almost shy in your expression. "But I'm glad I did."
Reid felt that now-familiar flutter of warmth and possibility in his chest. "Me too," he said, and meant it completely.
As he drove home through the quiet streets of DC, Reid found himself thinking not about the embarrassment of exposure or the complexity of workplace relationships, but about the simple, revolutionary idea that sometimes the scariest thing you could do was also the most necessary.
And sometimes, if you were very lucky, the person you'd been afraid to be honest with had been waiting for your honesty all along.
