A Working Theory
Spencer Reid x best friend!reader
Summary: For years, Spencer Reid has kept his feelings for his best friend locked away, certain she would never feel the same way. But Spencer, ever the profiler, can't stop noticing certain patterns in her behaviour. The data is right there in front of him, he's just too afraid to trust it. What happens when he can't ignore the evidence anymore?
Genre: Smut (and some fluff. But mostly smutty smut.) 18+ mdni
Word count: 7000
Warnings: Idiots in love trope, no use of 'y/n', oral (m & f receiving), fingering, protected p-in-v (we are sensible), aftercare, use of pet names ('angel' and 'sweet girl'). This is porn with minimal plot. (Let me know if there's anything I've missed).
A/n: Thank you to everyone who read my last (first) fic, I wasn't expecting that many people to even notice it, so all the notes meant a lot. This one has been sat in my drafts for so long, every time I read it I change something, so I think it's finally time to put it out there into the universe before I drive myself insane. I have a few other drafts/ stories on the go, but my requests are open if anyone would like to send me any of their ideas.
This one is very self-serving - I get off on giving late-seasons Spencer Reid a happy ending. He deserved so much more. Anyway, happy reading my loves.
(Divider by @strangergraphics)
Spencer looked up at you from across the room. You were at your desk, staring at the same paragraph of a consult report you'd been trying to finish for the last hour. Your eyes kept drifting, your mind wandering.
He'd been doing that more often lately. Watching. Not the clinical way a profiler watched a suspect, more like an astronomer studying a newly discovered star, trying to make sense of something that had rearranged the shape of his universe. You hadn't noticed, of course.
Across the bullpen, Spencer Reid sat at his desk. He'd been fidgeting all afternoon. More than usual. His pen tapped against his legal pad in rhythms you'd learned to read over four years of friendship. Morse code for anxiety, for something tugging at his brain that he couldn't quite articulate.
You knew him, maybe better than anyone.
What you didn't know, what you couldn't have known, was that Spencer had spent the last three weeks cataloguing data points. Not for a case. For you.
Your head tilted slightly as you read, and your right hand moved to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. The movement was automatic, unconscious, and Spencer had seen you do it thousands of times. But now he let himself notice the shape of your ear, the way your fingers lingered for half a second longer than necessary, the way your lips parted just slightly as you reached the end of a paragraph.
He looked down at his own hands. They were trembling. His heart rate (he'd counted) was sitting at a steady ninety-four beats per minute, which was textbook sympathetic nervous system activation. This had been building for weeks, ever since he'd started letting himself catalogue the evidence instead of dismissing it.
The pupils. That was the one he couldn't explain away. Three days ago, you'd brought him coffee during a briefing. When you handed it to him, your fingers had brushed his, and your eyes had met his for exactly two-point-three seconds. He'd counted. And in those two-point-three seconds, your pupils had dilated. Not dramatically, but enough. Enough that someone trained to notice micro-expressions would catch it.
Spencer had caught it.
And then he'd spent the next seventy-two hours constructing and deconstructing arguments for why it might not mean what he desperately wanted it to mean. Maybe the lighting had shifted. Maybe you were experiencing an adrenaline spike from the case. Maybe he was projecting, imposing his own inconvenient, persistent, all-consuming feelings onto perfectly platonic physiological responses.
He was good at that. Convincing himself he was wrong. He'd had years of practice.
But the pupils weren't the only data point.
Your proximity. In any room you always found yourself close to him. Like the way you'd leaned into his shoulder on the jet last Tuesday, your breath evening out as you drifted off, your body choosing him over the empty seat across the aisle.
There was the way you mirrored his body language. When he leaned forward at the conference room table, you leaned forward. When he crossed his arms, you crossed yours beat later. When he took a sip of coffee, you reached for your own mug. Mirroring was a subconscious indicator of rapport - every profiler knew that - but you did it with him specifically. Consistently. Exclusively.
There was the way you reached for him when you were uncomfortable. A hand on his arm during difficult briefings. A shoulder pressed against his in the elevator after a bad case.
There was the way you called him. Not Garcia, not JJ, not Emily. *Him*. When your car had broken down at two in the morning, you'd called him. When you couldn't sleep because a case had wormed its way into your subconscious, you called him. He always answered. Even at 2am. Even when he was busy. Exhausted. It didn't matter. And when your voice cracked on the other end, something in his chest pulled tight with the need to fix it, to be whatever you needed him to be.
You'd done the same for him, of course. After prison, when sleep became something to fear, when closing his eyes meant being dragged back into that cell, you'd slept beside him. Held him. Your body warm and solid and real against his, anchoring him to a world that didn't always feel worth staying in. With your hand on his chest and your breath steady against his shoulder, he'd found something that felt almost like safety.
It would have been so easy to kiss you then. In the dark, with your body curled against his and your hair smelling like roses and your fingers tracing unconscious patterns on his shirt.
He hadn't.
Because what if he was wrong? What if the thing he saw in your eyes was just friendship? Deep and genuine and real, but friendship nonetheless? What if kissing you meant losing you? He couldn't lose you. He'd lost too much already. His mother, in a way. Maeve. The years the FBI had taken from him. Pieces of himself he wasn't sure he'd ever get back.
But the evidence was mounting. The data was irrefutable. And utterly terrifying.
Spencer closed his file and stood. His chair scraped against the floor, and you looked up from your report. Your lips curved into the small smile you reserved just for him, the one that made his chest ache.
"Hey," he said, crossing the distance between your desks. His satchel hung from his shoulder, and he kept his hands in his pockets. Casual. Like his heart wasn't hammering against his sternum.
"Hey Spence. Everything okay?"
Spencer blinked. "Yes. I mean... Yes. Everything's fine. I was just thinking."
"About?"
About the way your voice softens when you say my name. About the statistical improbability that you could ever feel the same way I do. About how I've memorised the exact shade of your eyes and I'm terrified that telling you the truth might mean I never get to see them again.
"Case," he said.
Your eyebrow lifted. "Which case?"
"The..." He scrambled for something plausible. "The Albuquerque arson case. The accelerant pattern doesn't match the profile."
"We closed that case three weeks ago."
Spencer ran a hand through his hair. "I know. I just... I can't stop thinking about it."
The lie felt flimsy, and he could tell you didn't buy it. Your head tilted and your eyes searched his face.
"Spence." Your voice dropped, quiet enough that no one else in the bullpen would hear. "Talk to me."
And there it was. The opening. The opportunity he'd been waiting for. The moment he'd rehearsed a hundred times in his head, always with a different outcome. Sometimes you smiled and kissed him. Sometimes you looked at him with pity and gently explained that you didn't feel that way. Sometimes you just walked away.
He could let the moment pass. He could make a joke, deflect, retreat to the safety of statistics and comfortable silence. He could bury his feelings so deep that even he forgot they were there.
But the pupils. The mirroring. The way you'd held him through the worst nights of his life and never once made him feel broken.
The evidence was there.
And Spencer Reid had never been able to ignore evidence.
"Can we… I need to talk to you. Not here."
Your brow furrowed. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah. Yes. I just - " He swallowed. "My place? Or yours. Either. Whatever you prefer."
Something in his voice. A tremor beneath the words. You'd heard it before - in the weeks after Millburn, when he'd wake up gasping and you'd be there, already reaching for him in the dark. But this wasn't that. This was different.
"My place," you said, saving your file and shutting down your computer. "Let me grab my coat."
The drive took fourteen minutes. Spencer counted.
He counted because it gave his brain something to do other than imagining every single way this conversation could go wrong, every possible sentence he could fumble, every micro-expression that might cross your face when you realised what he was trying to say. Every way you could let him down. When you finally pulled up outside your building, Spencer followed you inside without a word. The latch of your apartment door clicked into place behind you. Final. Irrevocable. A quiet, ordinary sound that, to Spencer, felt like a point of no return.
Your apartment was warm and cosy. Books stacked on every available surface. A record player sat by the window, a stack of well-worn vinyl leaning against its stand. And there, stuck to your fridge, a photo of the team. Worn soft at the edges like you'd looked at it more than once. He stood in the middle of your living room, hands still buried in his pockets, shoulders tight.
"Spence." You hung your coat on the hook by the door and turned to face him. "You're scaring me a little."
"Don't be scared. Everything's fine. I just need to... I need to talk to you about something."
He pulled his hands from his pockets and gestured toward the couch. "Can we sit?" You nodded and settled into your usual corner, tucking your legs beneath you. He sat, but not close. A careful foot of distance between you. Unusual. Spencer turned to face your direction, but his eyes remained fixed on the floor. This was it. It was now or never.
"I've been observing something," he started, and the words came out stilted, rehearsed. Like he'd been practicing them in his head for days. "Patterns. Behavioral patterns. Specific to you. And me. Us."
Your breath caught. He heard it - the slight hitch, the way your chest stuttered. "Spencer."
"Just - let me finish. Please. If I don't get this out I'm going to lose my nerve."
He took a breath. Rapid. Shallow. "Your pupils dilate when you look at me. I've measured, I have three weeks of data. Not consistently, but with a correlation coefficient that's statistically significant."
You didn't say anything.
"You mirror my body language," he continued, the words coming faster now, tumbling out like he was reciting a paper from memory. "Crossing your arms when I cross mine, leaning forward when I lean forward, even adjusting your breathing rate to match mine, which is a phenomenon called interpersonal synchrony and it's been well-documented in dyads who share a close emotional bond but it's typically most pronounced in..." He stopped. Swallowed. "In romantic partnerships."
Your lips parted. Said nothing.
"You reach for me," he said, and the words caught in his throat. "Instinctively. When you're uncomfortable. When you're scared. When you're upset. You reach for me. When we're in a room together, you position yourself within arm's reach of me regardless of the spatial configuration. Your body orients toward mine. Your feet point at me when we're talking. You find reasons to touch me - my shoulder, my wrist, your knee against mine. You're not… you don't do that with anyone else. I've checked."
Your mouth opened. Closed. You stayed quiet.
"And at first, I dismissed it. All of it. Because it didn't make sense. I know correlation doesn't equal causation. I know there could be other explanations, I've considered all of them. I thought, there's no way. I'm projecting. I want it to be true so badly that I'm manufacturing evidence to support a conclusion I've already drawn. That's confirmation bias. It's a classic cognitive error."
He paused. You still hadn't moved.
But the pupil dilation," he broke off and looked at you. Finally. His eyes, those impossible hazel eyes, held yours with an intensity that stole your breath. "It's a physiological response mediated by the autonomic nervous system. You can't fake it. And your pupils dilate for me."
The silence that followed was deafening. Spencer's heart was hammering so hard he could feel it in his temples. His hands were trembling. You watched him notice you notice, and he folded them together in his lap, knuckles whitening. Then he turned to face you fully, and though his hands still shook, he didn't try to hide it anymore. "I'm terrified that saying what I'm about to say might ruin everything. But I can't... I can't ignore the evidence anymore." He braced himself. "I'm in love with you," he said. "I have been. For a while. A long while. I don't know exactly when it started, but I know that when I was in that cell, when I couldn't think of anything worth surviving for, I thought of you. I thought of your laugh. Your smile. The way you ask me questions when I'm rambling about something no one else cares about. The way you make me feel like my brain isn't something to tolerate but something to..." His voice broke again. He pressed his lips together, composing himself. "Something to celebrate. And I know... I know that the probability of someone like you having feelings for someone like me is statistically very low. I know I've never been the person people choose. I know I'm broken in ways that might never fully heal."
You couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't do anything but watch him unravel before you, this brilliant, beautiful man who had no idea how completely he owned you.
"I'm a profiler," he said, quieter now. "And I see things. I see how you look at me. And as improbable as it might seem, every piece of evidence I have suggests you might feel the same way. I need to know if the data means what I think it means. Because if it doesn't, if I'm wrong, I need to find a way to be okay with that. I need to find a way to keep being your friend without this - this hope - eating me alive." His voice dropped to something raw and unguarded. "So I guess my question is," he said, rough, scraped bare, "am I wrong? Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm reading into things that aren't there, and I'll stop. I'll never bring it up again. We can pretend this conversation never happened, and I'll be fine. *We'll* be fine. I just need to know, because I can't keep - " His voice broke. "I can't keep hoping for something that might not exist."
The tears spilled over. One traced a path down your cheek, and Spencer's fingers twitched with the urge to brush it away. "Do you have feelings for me?"
For a long moment, you didn't speak. Couldn’t.
Spencer counted the seconds. One. Two. Three. Four. His heart pounded hard enough to shake his ribs, and his palms were sweating, and he was already mentally preparing himself for the rejection, already constructing the argument for why this didn't have to change anything, already drafting the apology.
Your hand found his cheek, warm and stubbled and so familiar. His breath caught. His eyes - wide, terrified, hopeful - searched your face like he was memorising it for the last time.
"Yes" you said, a smile appearing on your face despite the tears that were still falling. Despite the evidence, to hear you say it out loud... he didn't believe what he was hearing.
He blinked. "You do?"
"I've been in love with you for years, Spencer. Years." A laugh bubbled up from your chest, wet and disbelieving. "I thought you didn't see me like that. I thought I was just your friend. Your safe person. And that was enough. God, that was more than enough, just being in your life. But I never let myself hope for more."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"Why didn't you?"
"Because I was scared." He laughed, and the sound was shaky and raw and more honest than anything he'd said in years. "I'm still scared. Terrified, actually. Because if this goes wrong, if I mess this up, I lose the most important relationship in my life. I lose you. And I can't... I can't lose you."
"You're not going to lose me." You reached for his hand. "Spencer, you're never going to lose me. You're the best thing in my life."
The world stopped. Spencer couldn't speak. His throat had closed up, and his eyes were stinging, and everything he wanted to say felt too big for words.
So he kissed you instead.
It wasn't calculated. It wasn't one of the forty-seven scenarios he'd run in his head. It was gentle at first. Tentative. His lips pressed to yours with a reverence that made your chest ache. His hands were on your cheeks, cradling your face like you were something precious.
Your hand came up to cup his jaw, and you kissed him back.
The confirmation that you wanted this - that you wanted *him* - broke something open inside Spencer's chest.
He deepened the kiss, one hand sliding into your hair, the other finding your waist. Your fingers curled into the fabric of his sweater, pulling him closer, closer, until there was no space left between your bodies and he could feel the hammering of your heart against his chest.
*Matching rhythm,* he thought distantly. *Our hearts are beating in matching rhythm.*
You pulled back first, gasping for breath, and Spencer's forehead dropped to rest against yours.
"Hi," you whispered, and your smile was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"Hi," he whispered back.
You kissed him again, harder, and the sound he made - a small, broken thing from the back of his throat - ignited something in your belly. This time, there was nothing gentle about it. Your fingers twisted in the fabric of his shirt. His hands slid down to your hips and gripped, anchoring you to him. The kiss deepened. Opened. His tongue brushed your lower lip, a question, and you answered by pulling him closer, closer, until there was no space left to close.
Somehow, you ended up in his lap. Straddling him on your couch, knees bracketing his hips, your hands fisted in his hair. His mouth was everywhere - your lips, the corner of your jaw, the hollow of your throat. Each kiss a discovery. Each gasp a confession.
"Wait," he breathed against your collarbone. "Wait, wait."
You stilled immediately. Your hands loosened in his hair. "What? What's wrong?"
"Nothing. No, nothing's wrong, that's - everything's right. That's the problem. I just need to know." He lifted his head and met your eyes. His pupils were blown wide, dark swallowing hazel. "Are you sure? Are you sure about this? About me? Because if we do this, if we - there's no going back. I can't - I can't lose you. Not you. Anyone else, but not you."
Your heart cracked open. Right down the middle. You cupped his face in both hands and held his gaze.
"I have never been more sure of anything in my life," you said, and you said it slowly, deliberately, so he could profile every microexpression, every involuntary tell that proved you meant it.
"If we do this, I can't - I don't want this to be a one-time thing. I don't want casual. I want... I need something real in my life."
"I want the same thing. I want you. All of you. Everything. The parts you think are broken and the parts you think are too much and every single thing in between. I want all of it, Spencer. I love you."
He kissed you again, slower this time. Deeper. His teeth caught your lower lip, drawing a soft whimper from your throat, and the sound sent a rush of heat spiralling through his veins.
"Then we're not doing this on the couch," he murmured.
Before you could respond, he bent down and scooped you into his arms.
You made a startled sound, your arms wrapping around his neck. "Spencer!"
You laughed, and the sound was bright and surprised and so lovely that Spencer felt his chest ache with it. He'd made you laugh. He'd kissed you and you'd kissed him back and now he was carrying you to your bedroom, and this was his life. This was actually his life.
He carried you down the hallway toward your bedroom, and the movement, the easy strength of it, sent heat pooling low in your belly. Spencer - lanky, bookish Spencer, who got winded walking up three flights of stairs - was carrying you to bed like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He laid you on the bed gently. Reverently. The mattress dipped under your weight.
He lowered himself onto the bed, his body covering yours, his weight braced on his forearms. Your legs parted to accommodate him, and the fit was perfect; your hips aligned, your chests pressed together.
Spencer looked at you. Your lips were swollen. Your cheeks were flushed. Your pupils were blown wide, and he didn't need a textbook to tell him what that meant.
"You're beautiful," he said, and the words came out reverent. Worshipful. "You're so beautiful. I've always thought so. Even before - I've always thought so."
You reached for him. Your fingers found the hem of his sweater and brushed the warm skin of his stomach underneath. He shivered. A full-body tremor that you felt through the mattress.
"Can I?" you asked.
He nodded, and you pulled the sweater up. He raised his arms to help you, and the fabric slid over his head and fell somewhere on the floor. His hair was a mess, sticking up in all directions, and you smiled at the sight of him - flushed, disheveled, and entirely undone.
Your turn.
He undressed you slowly.
Piece by piece. Button by button. And he let himself savor every inch of skin he uncovered. The curve of your shoulder. The hollow of your throat. The way your breath caught when his knuckles brushed your collarbone.
The last button slipped free, he pushed the fabric aside and the blouse joined his sweater, discarded somewhere on the floor.
He finished undressing you with the same deliberate care, mapping your body with his hands and his mouth.
When the last piece of fabric was stripped away and you were bare beneath him, he looked at you and he made a sound. Low. Almost pained.
"_Wow._"
His pants and boxers were next. You undressed him carefully, pressing kisses to each new inch of skin revealed - his narrow chest, the jut of his hipbone, the pale stretch of his thigh. He was trembling by the time you were done. So were you.
Naked together. Nothing between you. The air was cool and his skin was hot and when he settled beside you on the bed, his weight dipping the mattress, you turned toward him on instinct.
His hands found your breasts. Palms first, cupping the weight of them, and you exhaled sharply at the contact. Then his thumbs circled your nipples, and you arched into his touch. He catalogued your responses - the way your breath caught when he applied pressure, the way your hips shifted when he rolled a nipple between thumb and forefinger, the way your mouth fell open when he bent his head and took one peak into his mouth.
"Oh," you gasped.
He worked your breasts with his mouth and his hands, switching sides, learning what made you gasp and what made you moan and what made you fist your hands in the sheets. The flat of his tongue. The edge of his teeth. The gentle suction that made your back bow off the mattress.
"Spence, oh my God."
Your fingers tangled in his hair, holding him close, and he let himself get lost in the taste of your skin, the sounds you made, the way your body arched into his touch.
His mouth found yours again. Different now. Hungrier. The gentle reverence was still there, an undercurrent, but layered over it was something more urgent, more desperate.
His hand slid lower. Over your stomach. Down to the junction of your thighs.
"Can I?" Another question. Always checking. Always making sure.
"Yes. Yes."
You gasped as his fingers finally, finally slipped between your legs. You were wet. So wet. His fingers slipped through your folds and you shuddered, a full-body tremor that he felt in his own bones.
"You're so - " He didn't finish the sentence. Couldn't, apparently. His vocabulary abandoned him entirely as his fingers explored you. Slow. So agonisingly slow. His index finger traced the outline of your clit, so gently it was barely there.. Your hips bucked involuntarily, and you made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a curse.
"I've got you," he said. "I've got you.
He applied more pressure now. Circled his finger, slow and deliberate, working you higher, higher, until you were trembling beneath him.
"I want - " you started, but the words dissolved into a moan as he applied slightly more pressure.
"What do you want?"
"More," you whispered. "Please."
The please nearly undid him.
He gave you more.
He pressed two fingers against your entrance, sliding in with an ease that made both of you groan. His thumb found your clit at the same time and began drawing circles while his fingers curled inside you, searching.
When he found the spot - that rough patch of tissue on your anterior wall - your whole body jolted. "There," you gasped. "Right there. Oh god, Spencer, right there."
He didn't need to be told twice.
He hit it again. And again. Over and over.
His fingers worked you with almost surgical precision while his thumb continued its maddening pattern.
"It's _too_ good. It's... I need... faster. Please."
He adjusted immediately. His fingers quickened, his thumb pressed harder, and the pleasure sharpened into something almost unbearable.
You were babbling now, words dissolving into sounds, your hands fisted in the sheets and your head thrown back.
He lowered his mouth to your breast again, sucking in rhythm with his fingers, and you screamed.
"I'm going to - " you started.
He pulled his fingers out.
You made a sound of pure frustration, and Spencer laughed - a low, dark sound he hadn't known he was capable of making.
"Not yet."
The kiss he pressed to your lips was brief. Then he kissed your chin. Your throat. Your sternum. The soft skin of your stomach. Your hipbone. Lower. Lower. Until his breath ghosted hot on your inner thigh.
His mouth found your clit and you bucked against him.
His tongue was flat and hot and when it dragged over your clit, your vision whited out. Your hands flew to his hair, gripping, anchoring. He hummed against you, and the vibration pushed you even higher.
He slid two fingers inside you while his mouth worked your clit, and this time he didn't hold back. His fingers curled, found that rough patch of tissue, and pressed. Over and over. With the same surgical precision he'd used moments ago only faster now, harder, more insistent. The rhythm building toward something that had your thighs trembling and your breath coming in ragged gasps.
The dual stimulation was overwhelming. His fingers inside you, precise and relentless. His mouth on your clit, soft and slick and perfect.
He sucked, gently at first, and your thighs clamped around his head.
"Right there, right there, oh my God, Spencer, right there - "
He didn't stop. Didn't pause. His free hand pressed your thigh back, holding you open for him, and he sucked harder.
You broke.
Your orgasm hit you hard. It was an implosion. A collapse inward. Your body folded around the pleasure, every muscle clenching and unclenching in rhythm, and you cried out something that sounded like his name.
He worked you through it, gentler now, softer, until your body went limp beneath his hands. Then he pressed one last kiss to your inner thigh and looked up at you.
His lips were swollen. His eyes were bright and awed and a little bit smug. Your chest heaved as you tried to catch your breath, and your eyes were glassy and distant and so, so beautiful.
You couldn't speak. You could barely breathe. You reached for him blindly, and he understood. He crawled up your body, arms bracketing your shoulders, and let you pull him down into a kiss.
"Are you okay?" he murmured against your mouth.
You blinked. Focused on his face. And then you smiled. "Yeah. Yes. That was..." You laughed, breathless and giddy. "That was intense."
He smiled at you. "Good." Then he fell quiet, eyes locked on yours, like he couldn't bring himself to look away.
You kissed him again, deeper, and felt his erection heavy against your thigh. Hard and hot and leaking. "Your turn."
He pulled back slightly, brow furrowing. "You don't have to. If you're tired or sensitive or... "
When you wrapped your fingers around him, he made a sound you'd never heard from him before - a broken, desperate whimper.
"You're..." he started, and then your thumb swiped across the head of his cock, collecting the bead of moisture there, and he forgot the rest of the sentence.
"I'm what?" You looked up at him through your lashes, eyes sparkling with mischief and wonder.
"Perfect," he managed. "You're perfect."
You pushed at his shoulder. He let you roll him onto his back, his head finding your pillow, his hair fanning out in a messy halo.
You took your time. The same deliberate reverence he'd shown you. Your lips traced the line of his sternum, the dip of his navel.
"You're beautiful," you said as you kissed down his body. "I don't know if anyone tells you that enough. But you are."
Spencer's throat tightened. "No one tells me that."
"Then I'm going to tell you every day." You pressed a kiss to his hipbone. "Every single day." Another kiss, lower. "Until you believe it."
You kissed the inside of his thigh and he shuddered, his hands fisting in the sheets.
Your hand wrapped around the base of his cock. The contact made him gasp, his hips jerking involuntarily, and you tightened your grip in response.
You stroked him slowly. Once. Twice. Learning the shape of him, the weight of him in your palm.
"You're... that's... *oh.*"
You traced the ridge of his frenulum, slow and deliberate, and his hips jerked off the bed. You pressed a hand to his stomach, holding him still.
"Be patient," you murmured against his skin.
"I've been patient for four years," he gritted out. "I'm at capacity."
You laughed - couldn't help it - and took him into your mouth.
The sound he made was inhuman. Your name, half-sob, half-prayer. His hand flew to your hair, not pushing, just holding. Anchoring. You worked him slowly, learning his shape the way he'd learned yours. Your tongue traced the ridge of his frenulum and he gasped.
"Oh."
You did it again. Slower. Your tongue flat and warm, tracing the ridge of the glans, probing the sensitive spot just beneath the head. His hands fisted in the sheets. His breath came in sharp, ragged bursts.
"You like that?"
"Yes. Please. Keep... keep doing that."
You did. You took him into your mouth, inch by agonising inch, your lips stretched around his girth, your tongue pressing against the underside of his shaft. The wet heat of your mouth was overwhelming. The suction. The rhythm. The way you hollowed your cheeks and pulled back, only to sink down again, deeper this time, until the head of his cock nudged the back of your throat.
"Oh my God," he breathed.
You hummed around him. The vibration traveled through his entire body, and his hips bucked before he could stop them, and you made a small choking sound and pulled back.
"Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to - "
"It's fine." You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand, and your smile was absolutely devastating.
Then you took him back into your mouth, and Spencer stopped being able to form coherent sentences. Your hand worked the base of his shaft while your mouth focused on the head, sucking and drawing patterns with your tongue. Then you pulled back and pressed the flat of your tongue against his frenulum, and he saw stars.
"Fuck. Fuck."
Your thumb found the sensitive spot. Rubbed small circles over it. Your tongue traced down his shaft, lower, until your lips were pressed against his balls, and the dual sensation - your hand on his cock, your mouth on his sac - made his vision blur at the edges.
"I'm - I'm close." he managed. "If you don't stop, I'm going to come. And I really, *really* want to be inside you when that happens."
You lifted your head. Met his eyes. His pupils were so dilated they'd almost swallowed the hazel entirely.
You kissed the head of his cock once, and pulled off immediately. His cock throbbed at the loss of contact, and he made a sound that might have been a whimper.
"Condom," you said. "Nightstand drawer."
He fumbled for it while you watched, chest heaving, skin flushed. His fingers were less steady than usual - he dropped the foil packet twice before tearing it open with his teeth, which stirred something in your chest. You took it from him and rolled it down his length, slow, deliberate, watching his face contort with the effort of holding still.
"Okay," you breathed. "Okay."
You swung your leg over his hips. His hands found your waist, steadying you, and his eyes never left yours as you positioned yourself above him.
The first press of him against your entrance made you both freeze. Eye contact. Held. Suspended.
You sank down slowly.
The first inch stole his breath. The second made him groan. He filled you inch by inch, and you watched his face as you took him in; the way his jaw went slack, the way his pupils blew even wider.
"Oh my God," he whispered.
"Yeah," you agreed, your voice thin and reedy. "Yeah."
The stretch was incredible. He could see it on your face; the way your lips parted, the way your brow furrowed. He could feel it in the way you clenched around him, tight and hot and perfect.
Then you bottomed out. He was fully inside you. And for a moment, neither of you moved. Just breathed. Just _felt_.
"Are you okay?" he managed.
"Yes." The word was breathless.
You stayed like that for a moment, both of you adjusting, both of you trembling. Then your hips began to move. Slowly at first. A grinding motion that had you both gasping. His hands found your hips, steadying you.
"You feel - " He couldn't finish. Had to swallow. Tried again. "You feel _amazing_."
You leaned forward, bracing your hands on his chest, and began to move. Up and down. A slow, rolling rhythm. His cock dragged against your inner walls with every stroke.
"Oh my god," you breathed. "Spencer, you feel - "
"I know. So do you. You feel - I can't even - you're incredible."
You lifted your hips and sank back down. Lifted and sank. The angle, the depth, the fullness - it was everything. It was too much and not enough and exactly right all at once.
His hand came up to cup your face, thumb stroking your cheekbone. "You're so beautiful," he said again, because he couldn't stop saying it. "So, so beautiful. I've wanted this for so long. I've wanted you for so long."
"I'm here." You leaned down to press your forehead to his.
Tears pricked your eyes. You blinked them away, leaned down, kissed him hard. He kissed you back, one hand still cradling your face, the other sliding down to your hip to guide your movements.
You rode him like that - foreheads pressed together, breath mingling, eyes locked - until your thighs burned. Until his breathing went ragged and his grip went bruising and you could feel him straining toward the edge.
"Lie down, angel," he whispered.
The endearment slipped out before he could stop it, but your eyes went wide and soft.
You smiled and slid off him. He followed you immediately, rolling you onto your back, settling between your thighs. Your arms reached for him as his cock found your entrance again, and he pushed in with one smooth stroke.
"Yes," you hissed. You wrapped your legs around him, heels digging into his lower back, pulling him deeper, closer, _more_.
He started thrusting. Slowly at first - savoring every sensation, cataloguing every response. But his control was fraying, and your legs were tightening around him, and the sounds you were making were driving him out of his mind.
He built speed.
He set a pace that was almost punishing. Fast. Deep. His hips snapped against yours and the sound of it - wet and rhythmic and obscene - filled the room. His chest pressed against yours. His breath was hot against your ear.
He angled his hips, searching for that spot he'd found with his fingers, and when you gasped - loud and sharp - he knew he'd found it again.
Then his hand was between your bodies, his thumb finding your clit, rubbing tight circles that matched the rhythm of his thrusts.
The dual stimulation. Again. But different this time - sharper, more urgent, his cock inside you and his thumb on your clit and his voice in your ear.
You were begging now.
"Oh god - Spencer - don't stop - please don't stop, it feels so good, I'm so close - "
"I won't stop." His voice was wrecked. "I've got you, sweet girl. I've got you. Let go for me."
You did.
Your orgasm hit like a detonation.
It was bigger than the first one. Deeper. Your vision went white, then black, then exploded into stars. Your body arched off the bed and locked there, every muscle seized, every nerve firing. You might have screamed. You might have said his name. You didn't know. You didn't know anything except the pleasure, rolling through you in waves that crashed and retreated and crashed again.
Somewhere in the haze, you felt him follow.
His release slammed into him with the force of a freight train. He buried himself deep and came with a moan that was almost a sob, groaning your name into your throat. His face pressed into the curve of your neck, his body shaking against yours. His grip on your hip tightened almost to the point of pain.
And then stillness. Silence.
You didn't know how long you stayed like that - bodies tangled, breath ragged, hearts pounding in matching rhythm.
His weight was warm and solid on top of you, and you didn't want him to move. Ever.
Eventually, he became aware of your hand stroking his hair. Of your lips pressing soft kisses to his temple, his cheek, his jaw.
He lifted his head. Looked at you with something like wonder, something like disbelief.
Then he kissed you. Your forehead. Your eyelids. The tip of your nose. Both cheekbones. Your chin. Your lips. Every inch of your face, pressed with soft, reverent kisses that made your throat tight and your eyes sting. You smiled beneath his lips, and it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
Eventually - reluctantly - he pulled out and rolled onto his back. His hand found yours immediately, lacing your fingers together. He laid there for a while, just breathing, before he lifted your joined hands and pressed a kiss to your knuckles.
"I'll be right back," he whispered.
He disappeared into your bathroom. You heard water running. Cabinets opening and closing. His soft footsteps returning. And then a warm washcloth, gentle between your thighs. You watched him with heavy-lidded eyes as he cleaned you up. Gentle strokes. Careful hands. The same reverence from before.
When he was done, he tossed the washcloth towards the hamper and climbed back into bed beside you. His arms wrapped around you, your head found the hollow of his shoulder and your hand splayed across his chest. His fingers traced absent patterns on your upper arm.
"You should go pee," he said. "To avoid a UTI. The risk of urinary tract infections after intercourse increases by approximately 50 percent. Postcoital urination reduces the risk by - "
You burst out laughing. "There's my nerd."
He smiled. You felt it against your hair. "I'm serious. The urethra is in close proximity to multiple bacterial sources and during intercourse those bacteria can be - "
"I'm going. I'm going." You pushed yourself up, still laughing, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Don't go anywhere."
"Unlikely."
You padded to the bathroom. When you returned, he was still there. Still in your bed. Still looking at you with that expression - like he couldn't quite believe you were real.
You climbed in beside him and he pulled you close immediately, his arms wrapping around you like he'd been doing it for years. Like he'd never let go.
"I love you," he whispered into the darkness. "I've been telling you I love you for years in the only way I knew how. Every word. Every look."
"I love you too, Spence."
His arms tightened. His lips pressed to your forehead.
"Goodnight, my angel."
You felt his breathing slow, felt his body relax against yours — the tension he'd carried for months, years, finally bleeding away. Your eyes grew heavy, your limbs warm, and all you could think was how much you loved him. How much you'd always loved him. How ridiculous it was, that you'd both spent so long terrified of something that felt this right.
Sleep came quickly. The last thing you were aware of before you were pulled under was the steady beat of his heart beneath your ear, and the weight of his arm, warm around your waist.
