divorced soft dom frank langdon x younger inexperienced female reader
cw: age-gap relationship, dryhumping, langdon is a praising machine and reader has a praise kink
frank langdon loves to brag about you, his controversially younger girlfriend. he's had enough of his coworkers teasing him for being a single ken with two kids, so when you two finally dated, he bought hotdogs for everyone in day shift to celebrate his first day of being your boyfriend.
a lot of people wonder why would a sweet little angel like you want to date a guy like frank. he isn't exactly easy to deal with. meanwhile, you couldn't help but wonder, why would abby dump this man? frank is gentle, caring, and he's gorgeous too. he never let you down.
he always asks for your consent in anything he's about to do.
"angel, can i kiss you there? i can feel your pulse. your heart is pumping blood so fast," his warm breath ghosts the side of your neck. you're currently sitting on his lap, both your hands are clutching his shirt. frank smells like sea salt and you love it. his scent always grounds you on moments like this.
when you nod, frank presses his mouth on your neck, right on the pulse. he stays like that for a few seconds before switching between soft nips and licking. you never felt so wanted before.
his hands slip under your shirt, tracing your back, unclasping the lacy bra he bought you a week ago. you flinch a little in surprise and he stops immediately. "easy, bunny. too soon?" you can tell he tried to make his voice sounds softer but failed because you can still hear the hoarseness.
"just surprised..." you mutter.
"yeah? should've talked you through it, hun. i'm sorry, alright?" he peppers apologetic kisses on your neck and chest. "won't happen again, sweetheart. i promise."
right. he also talks you through everything. you're rather... inexperienced, compared to other girls around you. you once told him about this as your insecurity, thinking he'd be upset, but he didn't. he found it adorable."what a good girl you are, darling. keeping yourself pure, baby? for who, i wonder? for me, yeah? i'll take care of you, i promise. ain't nothing to be sad about, baby." that's what he said a month ago when you two started dating officially.
he nuzzles your neck, his stuble making you giggle. he chuckles at that, "tickles?"
you nod.
his hands continue their journey up your back, stroking the soft skin there. "i unclasp it already, honey. can i keep going?"
a soft whimper left your mouth, "yeah..."
"good girl. thank you, baby. i'll take off your shirt now, okay? can i see my pretty baby?"
another nod from you and sighs in relief, "atta girl. my brave little bunny. arms up."
he slides your shirt off your head, then your bra. he takes a moment to admire the view, wetting his lips because the air suddenly feels too hot and humid around you two.
frank's hands move to cup your breasts, giving them a slow squeeze that makes your stomach tingles. his lips meet yours as he does that and you swear you can feel the dampness between your thighs.
"can i use my mouth, angel? just like last time," his voice is gruff from arousal. you can't help but nod. "my beautiful angel..." were his last words before his lips close around your nipple. your fingers find his hair, gripping them as you whimper and moan.
he switches from one breast to the other. your head is dizzy with pleasure and you subconsciously rock your hips forward against his crotch. frank chuckles, "ah-ah, little lady wants more, huh?"
"feels good..." you whimper, hips still rolling slowly.
"then keep going, baby. use me 'till you come."
then his mouth is back on your breast. suckling and nipping as his hands brush your hair. he's not guiding your movement, he wants you to find your own rhythm, setting everything at your pace. he knows that this much of stimulation is enough to make you finish.
you can feel his hardness pressing against your damp panties. frank can feel it too, but his focus is still on you. on making his baby feels good, so he ignored it.
"feeling good, bun?"
you gasp, "frank— ngh!"
he bit down a little harder on your nipple and your eyes roll back, whole body shaking as you come clothed. slick fluid coating your panties, leaving a wet spot on his pants. frank brings your head down to his chest, stroking the back of your head gently.
"ssh, easy..."
you whimper in his chest, catching your breath. frank plants kisses on the top of your head. "you're getting so good at making yourself come. my smart baby," he holds you there tightly.
after a few moments, you lift your head up, looking at him with glassy eyes from the pleasure earlier. he notices that and raises an eyebrow, "what's that look for?"
"wanna help you come, frank."
oh, he was right. his sweet baby is a fast learner, after all.
—
hey so this is my first fic ever i'm lowkey nervous
girl please do a recs post on eric coulter fics if you haven’t already!!! theres no one writing for that man on here and wattpad’s blocked where i live 😭 thanks!!!!
I got you 😌 (unfortunately some fanfics I've read are on wattpad 😭 but I'll recommend the ones that aren't)
* = favorites
AO3
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Breathe (some soul in me) - Eric\Tris by Michaela18 [finished] chapters 6/6
* Quarantined Hearts - Eric\Tris by busylefeitz [finished] chapters 57/57
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* A Permanent Misunderstanding - Eric\Tris by firelord65 [finished] chapters 5/5
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The window in your office faces the side yard. When you first moved in, your mother had suggested the spare room at the front of the house. Better light, she said, more cheerful. But you’d chosen this one for the quiet, for the way the afternoon sun came in at an angle rather than head-on, for the oak tree at the edge of the property that did something useful with the wind. It was the right room. You knew it immediately, the way you know that certain thoughts have to be written down. That was five years ago. The house next door was empty for most of them, which suited you fine. You had not anticipated Aaron Hotchner. You have not rearranged your office, letting the neighbors come as a welcome distraction.
You knew their names before you met him. The first time by accident.
It had been a Tuesday evening, six days after he moved in, when you were on the porch later than usual because Circe had gone down easily and the night was warm and your manuscript was being difficult and sometimes the only cure is to sit in the dark and not look at it for a while. You hadn’t heard him come out. You’d just become gradually aware, in the way you become aware of weather, that someone was standing on the porch next door. His voice carried more than you would have expected from a man that contained. Low, but clear.
“I know, Jack. I know”. A pause, long enough that you understood he was listening. “No, it’s good. It’s a good area, I think you’ll really like it. Another pause. “I’m not — I’m fine. It’s fine.” The particular cadence of someone reassuring a person who isn’t entirely convinced, which you recognized because you used it yourself, mostly on your mother. “I’ll see you in a few weeks. Get some sleep.” Then quiet. Then the sound of him going back inside. You sat with his name for a moment the way Circe sat with things, just holding it and not doing anything with it yet. Jack. Who was he? A partner, a son, a friend?
You learned for sure the next morning, with a coffee cake. Linda, three doors down, appeared at your door while Circe was still in her pajamas, holding a foil-wrapped plate with the specific energy of a woman who considers herself the connective tissue of the street. She handed it over and told you his name was Hotchner, Aaron Hotchner, retired government something-or-other, very private (but she managed to get a little chat anyway) and that his son was coming to visit soon from college. Lovely boy apparently, name of Jack. She said it like she was giving you a gift. Circe quietly cataloged this information as she eavesdropped, although you made no effort to stop her. You thanked Linda for the food.
The coffee cake was excellent. So was the information.
That had been a week ago. Now Circe is on the floor behind you with her dinosaurs. She does this on the days she’s home, drags the whole plastic bin in from her room and sets up a civilization somewhere near your feet, narrating quietly under her breath while you work, the two of you existing in the same comfortable silence you’ve built over four years of it being just the two of you. She doesn’t need you to respond. She doesn’t need much from you during these hours except proximity, which is something you understand completely. You are on page four of something that might become chapter nine, or might become nothing. It’s that kind of morning.
She had learned not to want things too loudly, you type. Wanting loudly was how you got heard, and getting heard was how you got—
“Jack has a nice car.” Circe announces.
You stop typing.
“With the funny license plate.” She adds, with authority, as though clarifying for the dinosaurs. You glance toward the window. The rental has been gone for days. She has apparently been sitting with this observation, aging it like something she wasn’t ready to serve yet.
“Mm.” you say, which is the sound you make when you are still technically writing. Circe picks up the stegosaurus, which is named Gerald for reasons that were explained to you once and have since become lore. She walks him across the hardwood in a considering way. “He waved at me,” she tells Gerald. “The neighbors son. He’s Jack.”
You look at the window again. The side of the Hotchner house is pale brick and one dark window and the edge of what you’ve determined must be the kitchen based on the light. You look at your page.
Wanting loudly was how you got—
“Jack is a good name,” Circe decides. “Gerald, do you think Jack is a good name?”
Gerald, via Circe, takes three steps to the left.
“I also think so.” She agrees.
You save your document. You are not going to finish this page, you have made your peace with it.
“What about Aaron?” You ask, because you are weak and also curious what she’ll do with it. A long pause. Very considered. Circe walks Gerald back the other way and then sets him down facing the small triceratops she calls Persephone, which she named herself, which you have a lot of feelings about.
“Aaron is a serious name.” she says finally.
“I think so too.”
“It’s for serious people.” She picks up Persephone, holds her up to examine her. “He’s serious. The man.”
“You’ve seen him twice.”
“Three times.” she corrects, with the patient precision she uses when you are wrong and she is being gracious about it. “The garbage night.”
You had forgotten the garbage night. She hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t.
“He stood outside for a long time,” she says, more quietly, walking Persephone in a slow circle around Gerald. “After he put the garbage. He just stood.”
“People do that sometimes.”
“Why?”
You look at your blank page. The cursor blinks at you, unhelpful. “Sometimes being inside feels like a lot when people get sad or overwhelmed,” you say. “So people stand outside for a minute.”
Circe absorbs this with the focused silence she reserves for information she intends to keep. Then she nods, and puts Persephone down gently beside Gerald.
“Okay.” she says. Satisfied. Filed away.
From your desk you can see the edge of the Hotchner house. You had chosen this room for the quiet, you had chosen it for the oak tree and the angle of the sun and the way it felt like thinking.
You had not chosen it for this. But here it is anyway.
“Do you think Jack comes home a lot?” Circe asks.
“I don’t know, baby.”
“I think he comes home a lot,” she says, in the tone of someone stating a preference as fact, which is a habit she gets from you and which your mother has pointed out more than once. “Because of Aaron.”
“What do you mean?”
She looks up at you then, briefly, with those serious dark eyes. “Because Aaron probably misses him,” she says, like this is very obvious. “When he goes.”
The cursor blinks.
You look at your daughter. Four years old, cross-legged on your office floor, arranging her dinosaurs in a circle now for reasons of her own. You feel the specific tenderness that ambushes you sometimes, the love that has no edges, the love that looks like his eyes and talks like itself and is somehow the best and hardest thing in every room it’s in.
“Yeah,” you say. “Probably.”
“Gerald misses Persephone when I put them in different boxes.” She offers. This is important contextual information.
“I know he does.”
“So I don’t do that anymore.” She looks very serious about this. “I keep them together.”
You turn back to your screen.
She had learned not to want things too loudly, it says. Wanting loudly was how you got heard.
You delete the last line. Start it again.
The trick, she had decided, was not to want less. Just to want quietly, in rooms where no one was watching.
Behind you, Circe has lined the dinosaurs up along the windowsill, all of them facing the Hotchner house, and is telling them in a low serious voice about the man next door and his son Jack and his serious name and his garbage nights, building her small mythology out of details and guesswork and four years of understanding people by standing very still and watching.
You don’t tell her to move them. You chose this room for the quiet, for the oak tree, for the angle of the afternoon light.
That’s still true.
It’s just also true that the view got interesting.
summary: over the two months of secret relationship aaron fell in love with you. and then a case go wrong. very, very wrong.
word count: 1.9k
tw: injury, typical cm violence, near death, angst, grief.
masterlist
UNSTEADY
Aaron Hotchner had always been good at hiding things.
His emotions. His fears. His pain.
And for the last two months, he'd been hiding you.
Not because he was ashamed. Quite the opposite. You were the one thing in his life that felt entirely his.
The stolen coffees before briefings. The lingering touches when nobody was looking. The rare evenings spent together in his apartment after impossible cases, where the weight on his shoulders seemed just a little lighter.
The team knew something was different about him lately. None of them knew why.
And neither of you were ready to tell them.
Not yet.
You thought you had time.
~♡~
The next case was in D.C. Middle age man kidnapping and burning alive older men retaired from the now closed hospital. Personal vendetta.
You got to the location. The unsub was hiding in the abandoned warehouse with his victim. Of course he was. Somehow they loved the same places that usually made your skin crawl. Too much room to hide. Too many possibilities for something to go wrong.
The warehouse exploded before anyone could react.
One second you were moving through the abandoned building with Morgan and Reid behind you.
The next—
Fire.
Heat.
A deafening blast that threw you backward.
Pain erupted through your body.
Then darkness.
The explosion happened at 2:17 PM.
Aaron would remember that for the rest of his life.
Not because he wanted to.
Because his brain branded the moment into him with cruel precision.
One second he could see you, entering the place with gun in your hands.
The next—
Fire.
A deafening roar.
The entire side of the building disappeared in a wave of smoke and debris.
His heart stopped. Actually stopped.
For one horrifying second he couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't move.
Because he'd seen exactly where you had been standing.
And that section of the building no longer existed.
"Y/N!"
His voice tore out of him before he realized he'd spoken.
People were shouting. Agents were moving.
The world erupted into chaos.
Aaron barely heard any of it. All he could hear was the ringing in his ears. All he could see was smoke.
And all he could think was—
Please God, not her.
Not her.
He was already running. Someone yelled after him - Morgan or Prentiss- he didn't know and frankly didn't care.
Pieces of concrete crunched beneath his shoes, smoke burned his lungs.
His chest felt tight like something was squeezing his heart with both hands.
"Y/N!"
Nothing.
No answer.
The fear became unbearable.
He went through it all. He had been shot before, stabbed, held hostage.
He'd watched friends die, watched innocent people die.
He knew fear.
This was different.
This wasn't fear.
This was pure panic.
The kind that strips away every layer of discipline and leaves only desperation behind. Then he saw you.
Lying motionless beneath shattered debris.
Covered in blood. Too much blood. Far too much.
And suddenly the world tilted.
"No."
His voice cracked as he dropped to his knees beside you.
"No, no, no..."
His hands shook so violently he could barely touch you.
Aaron Hotchner's hands never shook. Yet now they trembled uncontrollably as he brushed dust and blood from your face.
Your eyes remained closed.
You weren't moving.
For one horrible second he thought—
The thought nearly destroyed him.
She's gone.
Then your chest rose weakly. A tiny breath but a breath.
Relief slammed into him so hard he almost cried right there.
"Y/N."
His voice broke, again.
"Come on."
His fingers cupped your face. You felt way too cold.
His stomach dropped. Years of profiling had taught him exactly what blood loss looked like. You were losing too much. Way too much. Right in front of him.
Your eyes fluttered open and Aaron nearly sobbed from relief.
"There you are."
The words came out strangled.
You looked confused. Pain-filled. Barely conscious.
Still, you managed to focus on him.
"Aaron..."
God.
The sound of your voice nearly shattered him. He hadn't realized how terrified he was of never hearing it again.
The blood kept spreading. Aaron couldn't stop staring at it. Every second there seemed to be more.
His hands were stained red from trying to put pressure on the wounds.
It wasn't enough.
Nothing felt like enough. Years of training. Years of crisis management.
And suddenly he felt completely helpless.
Because this wasn't a victim, a witness or a stranger.
This was you.
The woman he'd spent over two months falling hopelessly in love with.
The woman he'd started imagining a future with.
The woman who made him smile when nobody was looking.
The woman who somehow slipped through every wall he'd built.
And now she was dying in his arms.
"No."
The word escaped before he could stop it. His eyes burned.
"No."
You blinked slowly, trying to stay conscious, to stay with him.
And Aaron realized something horrifying.
You looked tired.
Not physically.
The kind of tired that scared doctors. The kind of tired that meant people started slipping away.
Fear exploded inside him.
"No."
A tear slid down his face. Then another.
"Stay awake."
Your eyes focused on him.
Barely.
"Aaron..."
"Stay awake."
His voice broke completely.
He didn't care who heard. Didn't care who was watching.
Nothing mattered anymore. Not the case. Not the team. Not appearances.
Nothing.
Just you. Only you.
"Look at me."
His forehead pressed against yours.
"You hear me?"
You nodded weakly.
The tears wouldn't stop now. He couldn't stop them. Couldn't stop anything.
Because he was losing you.
And for the first time since Haley's death, Aaron felt truly terrified of loving someone.
Because this—
This was the price.
This unbearable pain.
This helplessness.
This agony.
"Don't leave me."
The plea slipped out before he could stop it.
Your eyes widened slightly.
He saw it, saw you realizing how terrified he was.
How completely broken he was becoming.
"I can't—"
"Don't."
His voice cracked.
"Please don't."
You weakly reached for his hand.
Your fingers barely closed around his.
But Hotch held on like a drowning man.
"I love you."
The words escaped him.
Raw.
Desperate.
Unplanned.
The truth he'd been holding inside for weeks.
"I love you."
His entire face crumpled.
"You can't leave me before I tell you that."
Silence.
Around him, the team had frozen.
Nobody moved.
Nobody spoke.
Morgan looked stunned.
JJ's eyes filled with tears.
Emily covered her mouth.
Reid looked heartbroken.
But Hotch didn't notice.
His world had narrowed to the woman bleeding beneath his hands.
"I love you."
A sob escaped him.
Actual grief already forming inside him.
Because part of him was convinced he was about to lose you.
And he didn't know how he would survive that.
The moment your eyes closed, Aaron's heart stopped.
"Y/N?"
Nothing.
"Y/N!"
Panic. Pure panic.
His pulse thundered in his ears.
The paramedics rushed forward.
Aaron grabbed your hand.
"Y/N!"
Nothing.
"No."
His voice cracked violently.
"No."
The paramedics tried to move him.
He fought them.
Not aggressively.
Desperately.
Like a man refusing to let go of the only thing keeping him alive.
"Sir—"
"No."
"Hotch."
Morgan's voice.
Firm.
Gentle.
"Hotch, let them help her."
Aaron looked at him and Morgan had never seen him look so devastated.
Not after Haley.
Not after Foyet.
Not ever.
Aaron looked broken.
Completely broken.
And Morgan's own heart cracked at the sight.
Because suddenly everything made sense.
Every glance.
Every protective instinct.
Every subtle shift in Hotch over the last two months.
He loved you.
God, he loved you.
~♡~
The waiting room was somehow worse.
Hours passed.
Hours.
Aaron sat staring at the operating room doors.
Not moving.
Not speaking.
Not blinking much.
His hands were still stained with your blood. Nobody had been able to convince him to wash them.
He couldn't.
Because somehow washing them felt wrong like acknowledging the possibility that you wouldn't come back.
The thought made him physically sick.
Emily sat beside him.
JJ across from him.
Morgan nearby.
Reid pacing.
Nobody left.
"We know."
Emily finally said quietly.
Aaron didn't respond.
"You don't have to explain."
His jaw tightened.
The silence stretched.
Then his voice emerged.
Rough.
Broken.
"I should have been closer."
"No," Morgan said immediately.
"I should have gotten her out first."
"Hotcy."
"I saw the signs."
His voice trembled.
"I should have known."
The guilt was consuming him, everyone could see it.
Reid crouched in front of him.
"Hotch."
For a moment the younger man struggled to find words.
"If the roles were reversed, what would you tell one of us?"
Aaron looked away because he knew. He knew exactly what he'd say.
You can't predict everything.
You aren't responsible for every outcome.
Some things happen despite your best efforts.
But none of those words felt true right now.
Not when it was you.
Hours later, JJ handed him coffee.
He didn't drink it.
Morgan forced him to eat half a sandwich.
He barely tasted it.
Emily sat beside him nearly the entire night.
Just existing there, a steady presence.
The way Aaron had been for all of them over the years.
When his composure finally cracked around 3 AM, it happened silently.
A tear. Then another. Then suddenly he was crying.
Head bowed, shoulders shaking.
The grief pouring out faster than he could contain it.
Nobody looked away.
Nobody pretended not to notice.
Morgan moved first, gripping his shoulder. Firm and steady.
"You hear me?"
Aaron closed his eyes.
"You are not losing her."
The certainty in Morgan's voice nearly broke him.
"What if I do?"
The question came out so quietly they almost didn't hear it.
The room fell silent because none of them had ever heard Aaron Hotchner sound afraid before.
Not truly afraid.
Morgan squeezed his shoulder harder.
"Then we'll get through it together."
Aaron looked at him. Morgan's eyes were full of emotion.
"So stop carrying this by yourself."
For the first time that night, Aaron wasn't alone in his fear.
The team carried part of it for him.
Sat beside him.
Waited with him.
Hoped with him.
Loved him enough not to let him suffer by himself.
And when the surgeon finally walked through those doors and said the words—
"She's going to be okay."
Aaron broke down completely.
Not because he was sad.
Not because he was scared.
But because the unbearable weight crushing his chest finally disappeared.
His legs nearly gave out.
Morgan caught him before he hit the floor.
And for the first time in twelve endless hours, Aaron allowed himself to believe he would get to see you again.
Okay so author reader, single mother reader, time skip of some sort, reader has a four year old daughter.
Next chapter>>
✦ ──── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──── ✦
The Saturday Jack Hotchner comes home, you are on the porch with your coffee going cold.
This has become a habit you don’t examine too closely. This afternoon you had the excuse of the porch, the coffee, the quiet excuse of fresh air while Circe naps.
You tell yourself it’s because April has finally remembered how to be gentle. The dogwoods are blooming three houses down. The oak at the edge of the yard has begun dropping shadows instead of bare branches across the grass. The morning air still carries a chill, but only just. It smells faintly of damp earth and cut grass and somebody’s laundry drying on a line.
You tell yourself it has nothing to do with the black SUV that has been in the driveway next door for two weeks now.
Or the man who gets up earlier than anyone else on the street and comes home later.
The man who takes his garbage out every Thursday night with military precision, who always locks his front door twice, who stands for a moment afterward with his hand still on the knob, staring into the dark yard as though he’s listening for something.
You have been watching Aaron Hotchner the way you write, careful, at planned, building a person out of details he doesn’t know he’s offering.
You know he drinks his coffee on his own porch some mornings, standing instead of sitting. One hand around the mug, the other tucked into his pocket.
You know he owns exactly one item of clothing that isn’t dark, a dark green t shirt he wore on a Wednesday when the temperature climbed unexpectedly into the seventies.
You know he checks the weather before leaving every morning because he always pauses in the doorway and looks at the sky.
You know he pauses at his mailbox the same way every time, shoulders tightening almost imperceptibly, like he’s bracing for impact.
Whatever he finds inside never seems to be what he’s hoping for.
You don’t know what he’s hoping for.
That is the part that keeps you on the porch.
Because people are easier when they’re fictional.
Characters eventually tell you why they do things, real people keep their secrets.
And Aaron Hotchner, from everything you’ve seen, appears to be built entirely out of them.
Circe is awake before you hear her.
That’s always how it goes.
One moment you’re alone and the next she’s simply there, solid and warm against the screen door in yellow pajamas patterned with tiny moons. Her dark hair sticks out in every possible direction, one side flattened from sleep.
She has her father’s eyes.
The one you don’t let yourself think about very often.
Those eyes move slowly across the yard now, taking inventory of the world the way they always do when she’s waking up. Tree. Bird. Mailbox. Mama.
Safe.
She got that from him too.
“Hi honey,” you say softly. “Good nap?”
She doesn’t answer, which means yes.
Circe crosses the porch and leans against your leg. You rest a hand on top of her messy hair without thinking.
For a moment it’s just the two of you.
The oak tree creaks quietly overhead, a breeze rattles new leaves together.
Somewhere farther down the street a lawn mower starts up.
Your coffee gets colder.
Then a car pulls into the driveway next door. Both of you look.
You can’t help it.
It’s a rental. Something about the plates gives it away immediately.
The young man who steps out is tall in the loose, unfinished way of someone who grew into his height too quickly and hasn’t quite caught up to it. Long limbs. Broad shoulders. He has Aaron Hotchner’s jaw, and his eyes.
Only softer, and less guarded.
He pulls a duffel bag from the back seat and stands there for a second, staring at the house.
Like he’s making sure it’s still real, checking that it wasn’t a dream.
The front door opens before he reaches the porch.
Aaron steps outside, and something in him changes.
Not enough that most people would notice.
But you have spent two weeks watching him.
You see it.
Some careful, load-bearing thing inside him shifts. The tension that lives permanently around his mouth eases.
He doesn’t smile immediately, he just watches.
Watches his son the way you sometimes watch Circe when she isn’t paying attention.The way people look at things they’re afraid to lose.
Like he’s memorizing him.
Just in case.
The thought lands somewhere deep and aching in your heart. Then Aaron steps forward, his son meets him halfway. The hug lasts only a second.
Brief.
Complete.
Enough.
You look away, It feels like something you weren’t meant to witness.
Which is ridiculous.
You’ve been quietly cataloguing this man for two weeks.
But grief has strange etiquette. You recognize the particular tenderness of someone holding on to what they have left. And that isn’t yours.
Circe, however, has never once cared about social etiquette.
You feel her move before you see it.
She wanders to the edge of the porch, bare feet silent against the painted wood.
Then she raises one hand to wave.
Small.
Serious.
The way she does everything.
You hold your breath for a moment.
Jack sees her first, and his entire face brightens.
A grin, immediate and genuine.
He waves back enthusiastically.
“Hey!” he calls.
Circe lowers her hand, satisfied that the exchange has been completed successfully.
Then Aaron looks up. He finds you before you can pretend you weren’t watching. Of course he does.
You don’t know yet that finding things is written into his bones.
You only know the feeling if the specific weight of being seen by someone who is actually looking. His eyes meet yours across the stretch of lawn.Dark, and steady. Unreadable in the way of someone who was like that by design.
He gives a single nod. You lift your coffee cup in response. Not quite a wave. Not quite nothing. For a second, neither of you looks away. Then Jack says something, Aaron’s attention shifts. His hand settles briefly on the back of his son’s neck, a touch so automatic it has clearly existed for years. And together they disappear inside.
The door closes. The house next door comes alive. A light flicks on somewhere that you’ve determined must be the kitchen. A shadow crosses a window, then another. The ordinary evidence of people living together.Circe looks up at you.
“That’s our neighbors.” she announces gravely. A statement, like she figured this out and had to fill you in. You bite back a smile.
“Yes,” you agree. “They are.”
She considers this. Apparently satisfied, she turns and wanders back inside in search of juice or cartoons or whatever four-year-old priority has already replaced the entire encounter. Just like that, the subject is closed for now. You remain on the porch. The oak tree stirs overhead, and the street settles back into silence. Next door, the kitchen light glows warm behind drawn curtains. You find yourself looking at it anyway. The same way you’ve been watching everything about Aaron Hotchner, sure there’s something written there. Some story you’re still trying to learn how to read. Your coffee is cold.
summary: what starts as an academic crush on your painfully observant professor becomes significantly harder to survive after spencer reid signs a piece of feedback with “I remain yours sincerely.” unfortunately, you make the deeply questionable decision to keep it tucked inside your phone case.
includes: no use of y/n, professor!spencer reid, student/teacher dynamic, mutual pining, slow burn, academic yearning, intellectual intimacy, awkward flirting, emotional repression, praise kink if you squint, small age gap, office hours tension, accidental confession, unresolved sexual tension, humiliation as a love language, reader is down catastrophic, hopeful ending
based on this request
By the second semester, you know three things with absolute certainty.
First: Dr. Spencer Reid writes on whiteboards like he’s racing a clock only he can see.
Second: nobody voluntarily sits in the front row because it’s psychologically exhausting to be perceived by him for extended periods of time.
And third:
You are developing a deeply academic crush that is rapidly mutating into something clinically embarrassing.
The lecture hall hums softly around you with the sounds of backpacks unzipping and laptops waking from sleep. Rain taps against the high windows in restless little bursts, turning the late afternoon light silver at the edges.
At the front of the room, Dr. Reid is already halfway through uncapping three different markers at once.
He’s wearing a charcoal cardigan today.
You notice because of course you do.
Not in a normal way, either.
In the kind of way where your brain stores the information carefully like it might appear on an exam later.
“Statistically,” he says without turning around, “most people remember information better when there’s contextual novelty attached to it, which is why you all remember where you were during emotionally significant events but not what you ate last Tuesday.”
A beat.
Then he glances back toward the class.
“Unless it was tacos. People tend to remember tacos.”
A few students laugh.
You do too, unfortunately loud enough that his eyes flick toward you automatically.
There it is.
That tiny spark of recognition.
Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just enough to say I know you.
Which is worse.
Much, much worse.
Because you’ve taken two semesters with him now. You go to office hours. You answer questions when nobody else will. Once, during your first class, you made an offhand comment about eidetic memory research and his entire face lit up like someone plugged sunlight directly into the national power grid.
Since then, you’ve been doomed.
Utterly doomed.
You try to focus on the lecture.
Really.
You do.
But Dr. Reid teaches like a man accidentally possessed by forty-seven documentaries and an anxiety disorder. He paces when he gets excited. His hands move constantly while he talks, long fingers stained faintly with marker ink. He veers off-topic in fascinating directions and then somehow circles perfectly back without notes.
It should not be attractive.
And yet.
Here you are.
Again.
Second semester.
Same problem.
Maybe worse.
“Now, if we look at the correlation between environmental instability and cognitive adaptation,” Dr. Reid continues, already turning back toward the board before the class has fully caught up, “there’s a measurable increase in hypervigilant pattern recognition in subjects exposed to inconsistent formative environments, which sounds complicated but is actually just your brain becoming an overachieving raccoon.”
Marker squeaks across the whiteboard in frantic slanted lines.
His handwriting is terrible.
Not objectively unreadable, exactly. More like every word is trying to outrun the next one. Sharp angles, crowded letters, arrows shoved into margins as though his thoughts physically cannot remain in a straight line.
You stare at it anyway.
Fondly.
Which feels like a personal failing.
He writes faster as he talks, cardigan pulling slightly across his shoulders when he reaches higher on the board. One sleeve has ridden up near his wrist, exposing the thin line of his watch and a faint smudge of ink against his skin.
You should be taking notes.
Instead, your brain is busy cataloging details like you'll be taking a quiz on his anatomy.
Then he steps sideways to underline something, and your gaze drops completely against your will.
Oh no.
Oh, that’s unfortunate.
Because apparently Dr. Spencer Reid has a nice ass.
Not in a dramatic way.
Not in a “male model carved from marble” way.
Just… unfairly nice for a man who spends most of his time talking about psychology and forgetting to eat lunch.
The slacks help.
Which feels hostile, honestly.
You blink hard and jerk your attention back to your laptop with the violent internal energy of someone trying to slam shut fifty browser tabs at once.
Focus.
Academic environment.
You are a serious student.
A serious student who absolutely did not just spend several seconds staring at her professor’s ass while he explained trauma responses.
Jesus Christ.
“Repeated exposure to unpredictability,” he says, still writing, “can create compensatory behaviors centered around control, organization, or information gathering.”
A few tired chuckles.
Then the clock clicks over.
Immediate chaos.
The lecture hall empties like someone pulled a drain plug.
Students flood toward the exits in clusters of conversation and damp jackets, the noise swelling briefly before dissolving into the hallway outside. Within less than a minute, the room goes from crowded to echoing.
You stay seated.
Not intentionally.
At least that’s what you tell yourself.
Your laptop suddenly needs to be shut very carefully. Your charger has apparently tangled itself into a knot requiring advanced engineering. Your pens must be arranged with the precision of ceremonial artifacts.
At the front of the room, another student has stopped to ask Dr. Reid something about the midterm.
You try not to stare while pretending not to listen.
It’s difficult.
Because listening to Spencer Reid explain things is like accidentally falling into a Wikipedia rabbit hole narrated by a very pretty insomniac.
“…the issue isn’t the terminology,” he’s saying, already rifling through papers again while the student nods along. “It’s application. Most people can memorize diagnostic criteria. The harder part is recognizing behavioral variance in context.”
His sleeve slips down slightly as he gestures, revealing ink smudged along the side of his hand again.
God.
You wonder briefly if there’s a psychological term for being attracted to a man who looks like he's constantly five minutes away from a lecture.
Probably.
He’d know it.
The student thanks him and heads out, disappearing into the hallway with everyone else until suddenly it’s just—
You.
And him.
The room feels different when it empties.
Too large. Too quiet.
Rain patters softly against the windows.
Dr. Reid glances up from stacking his notes, clearly registering your continued existence only now. “Oh, you're still here. Perfect.”
Your stomach drops so fast it’s honestly impressive.
Perfect?
There is no version of “perfect” that has ever ended calmly for a student being addressed by a professor after class.
Your brain immediately begins cycling through possibilities at medically concerning speed.
You plagiarized accidentally somehow.
You cited the wrong edition.
You hallucinated an entire journal article in APA format.
You’ve been academically excommunicated.
“Me?” you say brilliantly.
Dr. Reid blinks once. “Yes?”
Excellent start.
You shove your charger into your bag and stand quickly enough that your chair squeaks against the floor.
The sound echoes.
Violently.
You briefly consider walking directly into the rain and starting a new life elsewhere.
Instead, you manage a strained little, “Sorry. Uh. Yeah. What’s up?”
Dr. Reid gathers a few loose papers into a stack before pulling one free.
Your paper.
You recognize the bent corner immediately because you spent three straight hours staring at it last weekend in a caffeine-induced fugue state.
“I finally finished reading these last night,” he says, tapping the packet lightly. “Your section on adaptive masking behaviors was particularly good.”
The panic in your bloodstream stutters awkwardly. “…good?”
“Yes.” He looks faintly surprised by your surprise. “Very good, actually.”
There’s something deeply unfair about receiving praise from Spencer Reid specifically. He says things too earnestly. No performance to it. No academic politeness. Just direct sincerity delivered with terrifying eye contact.
You feel your nervous system fold like cheap lawn furniture.
“You made an interesting connection between hypervigilance and social mirroring,” he continues, flipping through the pages. “Most students approached the assignment from a purely diagnostic perspective, but you framed it as a survival adaptation first, which is considerably more accurate.”
Your heart does an embarrassing little cartwheel.
Because this is the problem.
Not just that he’s attractive.
It’s that every time he talks to you, it feels like he’s opening a secret door in your ribcage and switching on all the lights.
“Oh,” you manage intelligently. “Thanks.”
“And your question here.” He points suddenly to a paragraph halfway down the page. “About whether prolonged masking eventually alters baseline identity perception?”
You nod slowly.
He looks delighted.
Actually delighted.
Like you handed him a particularly interesting puzzle and not a half-panicked essay written at two in the morning while eating stale pretzels.
“That’s the kind of question people usually don’t ask until graduate-level behavioral analysis,” he says. “There’s still ongoing debate about it, especially regarding prolonged trauma adaptation and identity diffusion.”
You try very hard to remain normal about the fact that Spencer Reid is complimenting your intelligence in an empty lecture hall while rain taps softly against the windows like a movie determined to make things worse for you personally.
“Most current models oversimplify the distinction between performed identity and integrated identity,” he continues, already slipping fully into Lecture Mode again. “Humans are actually much more context-dependent than people like to admit. Personality isn’t nearly as fixed as we pretend it is.”
He flips another page absentmindedly.
“You also cited Dr. Nakamura’s 2018 paper, which almost nobody finds unless they’re specifically looking for it.”
Your mouth opens before your brain catches up.
“…you noticed my citations?”
Dr. Reid looks up.
There’s a tiny crease between his brows now, confused in the gentlest way possible. “Of course I noticed your citations.”
Well.
That’s going to live in your skull forever now.
He says it like it’s obvious. Like naturally he paid attention. Like naturally he read your work closely enough to recognize specific research choices.
Meanwhile you’re trying not to ascend directly out of your body.
“You’re one of the strongest writers in the class,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Your arguments are usually more structurally complex than your peers’, even when you seem unsure of them.”
The room abruptly feels too warm.
You grip the strap of your bag tighter. “I didn’t know you thought that.”
Because there’s something unbearably intimate about being understood academically by someone you admire. It feels dangerously adjacent to being seen naked. Like he’s looking directly at the shape of your thoughts with careful hands.
Dr. Reid glances back down at your paper again, seemingly unaware he’s currently causing neurological events.
“I did mark a few places where your transitions got rushed,” he says, pulling a pen from behind his ear. “Mostly because I think you were thinking faster than you could physically write.”
You laugh softly before you can stop yourself. “That does happen.”
“Yes,” he says immediately, almost too quickly. “I know.”
Silence.
Tiny.
Strange.
His expression shifts a fraction afterward, like maybe he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Rain rattles softly against the windows again.
And suddenly you become acutely aware that you are alone with Spencer Reid in an empty lecture hall while he holds your paper like it’s something fragile.
Dangerous situation, truly.
Then he uncaps the pen and scribbles something quickly across the last page.
His handwriting slants wildly across the margin.
Fast. Crowded. Ink-smudged.
You watch his hand move despite yourself.
When he finishes, he folds the packet once and offers it back to you.
“There,” he says. “I added a few additional reading recommendations if you want them.”
You step forward to take it, fingers brushing briefly against his.
Electricity.
Actual cinematic electricity.
You almost drop the paper.
Humiliating.
“Thanks,” you say, quieter now.
“Mhm.”
But he doesn’t let go immediately.
Not enough to mean something.
Just enough to notice.
Then he seems to catch himself and releases the pages all at once, clearing his throat lightly before stepping back toward the desk.
You look down automatically.
At the bottom of the final page, beneath a cluster of notes and arrows and recommended articles, he’s signed off absentmindedly in cramped blue ink.
Excellent work here. Keep pushing this line of thought.
I think you’re asking the right questions.
— I remain yours sincerely,
Spencer Reid, PhD
Your pulse trips over itself.
Because who signs feedback like that?
Who writes I remain yours sincerely like a Shakespearean poet accidentally trapped in modern academia?
And worse:
Why does it make your stomach feel like it just fell down an elevator shaft?
The walk back to your apartment is a blur of rainwater, campus lights, and psychological deterioration.
Your umbrella keeps tilting sideways in the wind.
You barely notice.
Because every functioning part of your brain is currently occupied by one singular, catastrophic detail:
I remain yours sincerely.
Who writes that.
You clutch the paper tighter inside your bag every time the rain picks up, irrationally terrified the ink might smear. Which feels insane. Deeply insane. The behavior of a woman one inconvenience away from being studied in a laboratory.
By the time you get home, your shoes are damp, your hair is frizzing at the edges, and your nervous system is fried.
You lock the apartment door behind you and immediately pull the paper back out.
Like an addict.
Like a widow rereading war letters.
“Oh, this is bad,” you mutter to yourself.
Your apartment offers no judgment. Just soft lamplight and the hum of the refrigerator and rain whispering against the windows.
You drop your bag onto the couch.
Then sit at the kitchen table with the paper spread carefully in front of you.
You read the signature again.
And again.
And then, because apparently humiliation is now a recreational activity, you trace the letters lightly with your thumb.
Spencer Reid, PhD.
The ink catches faintly against the pad of your finger where he pressed harder on certain strokes. You can almost see the speed of him in it. The impatience. The intelligence outrunning the mechanics of handwriting.
God. You're so weird. You're unhinged. You're obsessed.
Your phone buzzes with a text from your friend Maya.
did u survive reid’s lecture or did he accidentally make eye contact and kill you instantly
You stare at the message for a long moment before replying:
worse
Three dots appear immediately.
what happened
You look down at the paper again.
At the stupid signature.
At the devastating little yours.
Then, against every survival instinct evolution ever gifted humanity, you take a picture of the bottom half of the page and send it.
There’s a full thirty seconds of silence.
Then:
OH YOU ARE DOWN HORRENDOUS
You groan aloud and drop your forehead directly onto the table.
The phone buzzes again.
“I remain yours sincerely”????? WHAT IS HE A PROFESSOR OR A MAN WRITING YOU FROM THE CRIMEAN WAR
Another buzz.
he wants u biblically
“HE DOES NOT,” you say aloud to the empty apartment, scandalized.
Your phone immediately lights up again.
u kept the paper though didnt u
You freeze.
Slowly, guiltily, your eyes drift toward your desk drawer.
Because inside that drawer already sits: one graded response paper, two annotated reading packets, and a sticky note from three weeks ago where Dr. Reid had written:
Your interpretation here is excellent. Come see me during office hours if you want to discuss further.
The sticky note currently lives tucked inside your favorite book like a pressed flower.
You close your eyes.
“Jesus Christ,” you whisper to yourself.
Another text arrives.
DID U KEEP THE PAPER
You type back:
not officially
Maya responds instantly.
that is the most incriminating answer ive ever heard
You abandon the conversation entirely and toss your phone onto the couch before she can escalate further.
Then you sit there alone for a moment.
Quiet apartment. Rain outside. Spencer Reid’s handwriting beneath your fingertips.
The thing is, you know this crush is ridiculous.
He’s your professor. Technically not even that much older than you, but enough that it matters. Enough that your brain keeps trying to file this under impossible and failing spectacularly every single time he looks at you like your thoughts are worth listening to.
That’s the real problem.
Not the cardigan.
Not the hands.
Not even the objectively offensive existence of that signature.
It’s the attention.
The terrifying sincerity of it.
Spencer Reid listens to you like he’s carefully placing your words somewhere safe.
And you don’t think anyone has ever done that before.
Your chest aches unexpectedly at the thought.
Too honest.
Too close to something real.
You exhale slowly and pick the paper up again, intending to finally put it away somewhere normal and reasonable.
Instead, your gaze catches on the folded edge of your clear phone case sitting beside you on the table.
No.
Absolutely not.
You stare at it.
Then at the paper.
Then back at the phone.
“This would be a humiliating choice,” you inform yourself firmly.
Silence.
Rain taps softly against the windows.
Five minutes later, you are sitting on your couch with Spencer Reid’s signature folded carefully behind your phone.
You look at it through the clear plastic.
Immediate stomach flip.
“Oh, you absolute loser,” you whisper to yourself.
But unfortunately:
you’re smiling.
By the time midterms crawl across campus like a biblical plague, your situation has not improved.
If anything, it’s evolved.
Dangerously.
Because now there is routine.
Now there are office hours conversations that accidentally become forty-five minutes long. Now there are moments where Dr. Reid pauses to ask, “You read the article I mentioned, right?” already knowing the answer before you nod.
Now there are tiny things.
Tiny, lethal things.
The way he automatically hands you printed articles first when passing materials down the row. The way his face brightens with visible recognition every time you speak in class. The way he says your name like he enjoys the shape of it.
It’s become less like a crush and more like being slowly haunted.
Which is why remaining after lecture today feels less unusual than it probably should.
You don’t mean to time it like this.
It just… happens.
The room empties in that familiar way, like the building exhales and forgets to inhale again. Chairs scrape. Jackets zip. Someone laughs too loudly in the hallway like they’re trying to prove they’re still human after all that thinking.
And then it’s just you again, hovering at the edge of the aisle with your notebook pressed a little too tightly to your chest.
Dr. Reid is still at the whiteboard.
Erasing.
Relentless little motions. Wrist flicking. Chalk dust or marker residue or whatever ghosts lectures leave behind drifting faintly in the air. His cardigan is pushed up at the elbows now, like it’s given up on behaving properly.
He doesn’t look over immediately.
Which, somehow, makes it worse.
Because you’ve started to associate his attention with a kind of internal weather shift. Like the room tilts slightly toward you when he notices you’re there.
You clear your throat.
Soft. Careful.
“Dr. Reid?”
The eraser pauses mid-swipe.
Then stops completely.
He turns.
And there it is.
That subtle recalibration. Like a radio finding your frequency without meaning to.
“Oh,” he says. Not surprised exactly. Just… pleased in a quiet way that feels too personal to name. “You’re still here again.”
Again.
Like it’s a pattern he’s noticed.
Like he’s been waiting for it.
You nod, suddenly hyper-aware of your hands, your posture, your entire existence. “Yeah. I had a question about today’s lecture.”
“Of course.” He sets the eraser down on the ledge beneath the board and steps away from it fully now, giving you his attention like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “What about it?”
Your brain, traitorous thing that it is, briefly offers you ten different ways to phrase this more intelligently.
None of them survive the trip to your mouth.
“It was about emotional responses,” you say. “Like… how people react differently to the same stimulus depending on context and prior experience.”
He nods slowly, like he’s already tracing where this is going.
You continue anyway, because stopping now would be suspicious and also physically impossible.
“You said something about adaptation shaping perception. And I was thinking about whether emotional responses can… overwrite themselves? Like, if enough context builds up, does the original reaction still matter, or does it get replaced entirely?”
Dr. Reid tilts his head slightly, studying you the way he studies everything he respects—carefully, like it might shift if he blinks wrong.
“That’s a more complicated question than it sounds like you intended it to be,” he says gently.
Your stomach drops.
“Sorry,” you start immediately. “I didn’t mean— I just meant like in general, not—”
“No.” He interrupts softly. Not sharp. Just steady. “Don’t apologize. It’s a good question.”
That does something unfortunate to your nervous system.
He takes a step closer to his desk, resting one hand lightly on it as if anchoring himself to the conversation.
“So the original response doesn’t disappear. It becomes less accessible, or it gets reframed by later experiences. But it’s still there. Just… quieter.”
You nod slowly, trying to keep up.
“That’s why certain triggers can feel disproportionate,” he adds. “They’re not creating a new reaction. They’re reopening an old one that’s been reorganized over time.”
Something about the way he says it makes it feel less like psychology and more like confession, even though it absolutely isn’t.
You swallow.
“That makes it sound like nothing ever really goes away,” you say quietly.
A beat.
Dr. Reid looks at you a little more directly now.
“It doesn’t,” he says. Simple. Certain. Then, softer: “But that doesn’t mean it stays the same.”
The room feels warmer again.
Or maybe that’s just you.
You glance down at your notebook like it suddenly contains emergency instructions for being normal.
“Right,” you manage. “That makes sense.”
It doesn’t feel like it makes sense. It feels like it rearranged something in your chest and didn’t bother explaining itself.
Dr. Reid pushes off the desk slightly, as if the intensity of the moment has to be gently contained.
Then, almost like an afterthought, he adds, “Is that what you were thinking about specifically? Or was there another angle?”
There it is again.
That attention.
Patient. Open. Not assuming you’re wasting his time.
You hesitate.
Because the truth is more dangerous than the question.
But you’ve never been very good at leaving things unasked.
“I guess I was wondering,” you say slowly, “if people can… respond emotionally to something they intellectually understand isn’t rational.”
Dr. Reid stills for half a second.
Not much. Most people wouldn’t notice.
But you’ve started noticing everything.
“That happens frequently,” he says after a moment.
Your grip tightens on your notebook.
“Even when they know better?”
His gaze flickers briefly toward you again. Sharper now. Not unkind. Just… more precise.
“Yes,” he says. “Especially then.”
A quiet beat stretches between you.
Too quiet.
Your pulse has started doing strange, uneven things against your ribs, every instinct in your body suddenly screaming that this conversation has drifted dangerously close to something exposed.
Because the problem with Spencer Reid is that he listens too carefully.
Most people let things slide past them. Most people hear the shape of a sentence and move on.
Dr. Reid hears the fracture lines underneath it.
And right now you’re increasingly certain he’s standing one follow-up question away from watching you spontaneously combust in front of the behavioral sciences department.
You tighten your grip on your notebook hard enough to bend the edge slightly.
“Right,” you say quickly. Too quickly. “Okay. That actually answered my question, so I should probably—”
You gesture vaguely toward the door.
Toward freedom.
Toward escape.
Toward literally anywhere that is not this room with this man looking at you like he’s trying to solve something.
But Dr. Reid’s expression shifts faintly before you can move.
Concern.
Not suspicion. Somehow worse.
“Are you alright?”
There’s no accusation in it. Just immediate attentiveness.
Which unfortunately makes panic bloom hotter in your chest.
“Yep.” The word arrives at terminal velocity. “Absolutely. Totally fine.”
You are speaking with the cadence of someone being held hostage by her own nervous system.
His brows pull together slightly. “You seem anxious.”
“Well,” you laugh weakly, “I think that’s sort of my baseline.”
Wrong choice.
Because that earns the smallest flicker of a smile from him.
Soft. Brief. Real.
It hits you directly in the bloodstream.
You need to leave immediately.
“I just remembered I have to…” You motion uselessly with one hand. “Do something.”
Brilliant.
Academic titan.
Dr. Reid opens his mouth like he’s about to say something else, and that tiny moment of anticipation detonates pure survival instinct in your chest.
“Anyway!” you blurt. “Thanks for answering my question. Sorry. Again. I’m gonna go.”
You turn too fast.
Your bag catches against the side of a chair.
The strap yanks violently sideways, dragging the chair with it in one catastrophic scrape against the floor.
You stumble trying to untangle yourself, notebook slipping from your grasp entirely.
Papers explode everywhere.
For one suspended second, the universe goes completely still.
Then Dr. Reid moves instantly.
“Oh, here—”
You both crouch at the exact same time.
Of course you do.
Naturally.
Because God is dead and this is apparently funny to the universe.
Your foreheads nearly collide.
You jerk backward so abruptly you lose balance a second time, catching yourself with one hand against the floor while loose papers scatter farther beneath the desks.
“I’m so sorry,” you say immediately, horrified.
But that's not the end of the torture. Because why would it be? Why would the universe and whatever forces rule it let you get out of this embarrassment that easily?
Your phone.
No.
No, no, no.
Time slows with cinematic cruelty.
The device must have slipped from your bag when the strap caught the chair. The clear case popped loose on impact, skidding separately across the floor.
And there, face-up beside the phone itself like evidence submitted directly to a court of law—
his signature.
And Dr. Reid is staring directly at it.
There’s no plausible explanation for this.
None.
You cannot even pretend it’s accidental.
Who accidentally stores a professor’s signed feedback inside their phone case?
No one, that's who. Just you.
Your soul begins exiting your body through your ears.
Don’t panic, your brain says uselessly, while panic fully consumes the landscape.
Dr. Reid reaches for the paper slowly.
You want the floor to open and swallow you whole like a tectonic event.
“Oh my God,” you whisper.
Dr. Reid looks at the note for one suspended second longer.
Then another.
His expression changes in tiny increments you only notice because you’ve spent months studying him with the intensity of a graduate thesis.
Recognition.
Confusion.
Realization.
And then something else. Something softer. Something that makes your pulse stumble violently against your ribs.
Very slowly, he lifts his eyes to yours.
You have never known true psychological horror until this moment.
“I can explain,” you blurt immediately.
Can you?
Absolutely not.
But the sentence launches itself out of your mouth anyway with all the grace of a car accident.
Dr. Reid’s brows lift slightly. “You can?”
“No,” you say honestly. “Actually, not in a way that helps me.”
Excellent.
Wonderful.
You briefly consider faking your death.
He glances back down at the paper again, thumb resting lightly near the edge where the fold has started softening from use.
And then, very softly:
“You kept it.”
Not teasing.
Not judgmental.
Which almost makes it harder.
Heat floods violently into your face.
“This was,” you say immediately, “so much less creepy in my head.”
A tiny crease appears between his brows like he’s trying not to smile.
“I didn’t say it was creepy.”
“It’s objectively creepy.”
“I don’t think objectively means what you want it to mean there.”
“That’s worse somehow.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. Actually twitches.
You stare at him in horror.
“Please don’t laugh at me,” you whisper.
“I’m not laughing at you.”
“You’re visibly experiencing amusement.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It absolutely is.”
The smile threatens again, smaller this time, restrained at the edges like he doesn’t fully trust himself with it.
And then, disastrously, his gaze drops once more to the signature.
His own handwriting.
His own absurdly formal sign-off.
When he speaks again, there’s something almost embarrassed threaded through his voice now.
“In fairness,” he says, “I probably shouldn’t have written ‘I remain yours sincerely.’”
You make a strangled sound halfway between a laugh and cardiac arrest. “No, you really shouldn’t have.”
“I wasn’t thinking about how that sounded.”
“That somehow feels less reassuring.”
His eyes flick back to yours then.
Warm amber under fluorescent lights. Too attentive. Too intelligent.
“But you noticed it,” he says quietly.
There’s no ego in the statement.
Just observation.
You swallow hard.
“Yes.”
The room goes still around the answer.
Not awkward exactly.
Just aware.
Dr. Reid looks down briefly, almost thoughtful, before carefully placing the paper back atop your fallen notebook instead of immediately handing it over.
“You know,” he says after a moment, “historically, formal academic correspondence used possessive sign-offs fairly often.”
You stare at him.
“Are you trying to academically explain away my crush on you right now?”
The sentence escapes before you can stop it.
Silence detonates instantly afterward.
Your entire nervous system flatlines.
Because you did not mean to say that.
You meant to think it privately and then carry the shame forever.
Dr. Reid goes completely still.
His lips part slightly like his brain lost the next page of the script.
“Oh my God,” you whisper, staring at the floor. “Forget I said that.”
But the problem with Spencer Reid has always been this:
he never ignores important things.
And when you finally force yourself to look back up, he’s watching you with an expression so carefully controlled it almost hurts to see.
“You have a crush on me,” he says.
Not mocking.
Not smug.
Honestly, he sounds more astonished than anything else.
You squeeze your eyes shut briefly. “I am asking respectfully for the earth to open beneath me.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I currently have.”
You expect discomfort.
Distance.
Professional correction.
Instead, Dr. Reid exhales softly through his nose and sits back slightly against the leg of a desk beside him, still crouched across from you among scattered papers and your exploded dignity.
And then, to your complete horror, he says:
“I thought there was a possibility.”
Your head snaps up.
“What?”
A faint flush has appeared high on his cheekbones now.
Tiny. Visible.
It rearranges the architecture of your entire universe.
“You’re very attentive to me,” he says carefully.
You choke immediately. “I need you to stop observing things.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“You’re a behavioral analyst. This is abuse of power.”
That almost earns another smile.
Almost.
“But I wasn’t sure,” he continues more quietly. “And I didn’t want to assume something that would make you uncomfortable.”
You stare at him.
“You noticed,” you say faintly.
Dr. Reid tilts his head a little.
“You keep every note I give you.”
Well.
When he says it out loud like that, it sounds medically concerning.
“I didn’t think you knew that.”
“I didn’t,” he admits. “Not conclusively.”
His gaze flickers briefly toward the paper beside your phone.
“I do now.”
You cover your face with one hand.
“This is the worst day of my life.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“That’s because you’re not experiencing it from inside my body.”
A pause.
Then, very gently:
“No,” he says. “I don’t think I am.”
Something changes in the room after that.
Tiny shift. Tectonic consequence.
The humor softens at the edges, leaving behind something quieter. Something breathing carefully between the two of you.
Dr. Reid reaches down first, gathering the scattered pages into a neater stack before offering them back to you properly this time.
Your fingers brush again.
And this time neither of you jerks away immediately.
It lasts maybe half a second longer than it should.
Enough to feel intentional.
Enough to ruin you permanently.
His eyes lift to yours again, thoughtful in that dangerous way he gets when he’s turning something over carefully in his mind.
“You know,” he says slowly, “there are ethical complications here.”
You let out a startled laugh. “That’s one way to put it.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
His fingers tap once against the edge of the paper still resting between you.
“You’re my student.”
The words land carefully. Reluctantly.
Like he hates them a little.
“Which means,” he continues, “that regardless of how I feel about this conversation, there are boundaries I’m responsible for maintaining.”
Your pulse stumbles.
Regardless of how I feel about this conversation.
That’s the moment the floor drops out from under you.
Because that’s not rejection.
It’s worse.
It’s possibility wearing a seatbelt.
“But there are also only six weeks left in the semester.”
Your breath catches.
The words land between you with astonishing softness.
Not a proposition.
Not quite.
Just a door left cracked open in the dark.
Dr. Reid seems to realize exactly how that sounded one second after saying it, because a flicker of alarm crosses his face immediately afterward.
“I’m not implying,” he starts quickly. “I mean, I am implying something, technically, but not inappropriately. I just meant that institutional boundaries are temporary in specific contexts and I thought transparency was preferable to pretending I hadn’t noticed the situation and now I’m explaining this badly.”
You stare at him.
Then laugh suddenly.
Not nervous this time.
Real.
Because Spencer Reid, genius profiler, has gone visibly flustered sitting on the floor of his own lecture hall.
The sound seems to catch him off guard.
His shoulders loosen a fraction.
And for the first time since this catastrophe began, the panic ebbs enough for something else to bloom beneath it.
Something warm.
“I… I can wait six weeks,” you say softly.
Spencer’s smile is small enough that someone else might have missed it entirely.
You don’t.
Because of course you don’t.
It changes him in tiny ways. Softens the sharp concentration he usually wears like armor. Pulls warmth into his face until he looks less like Dr. Spencer Reid, terrifyingly intelligent guest lecturer, and more like a man trying very hard not to look too happy about something.
Gambit
noun. an act or remark that is calculated to gain an advantage, especially at the outset of a situation.
Summary: Ten years after you first met Aaron Hotchner, you're placed on his team at the BAU. Ten years apart isn't nearly long enough to cool the hatred that began when you first met. In fact, it seems to have only gotten worse -- and the feeling is mutual.
General themes/warnings: enemies to lovers (these two HATE each other y'all), typical level of violence and cases for the show, depictions of panic attacks, eventual smut, chapter specific warnings will be given as well of course!
you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
meanwhile the world goes on.
- mary oliver, wild geese (1986)
spencer reid never expected to end up in prison. even more unexpected than that was finding her there. in the shadow of his darkest days incarcerated at millburn correctional, a nurse in the infirmary became his lifeline — a steady presence in a world unraveling around him. after his release, what began as survival turned into something deeper — a life built slowly, unevenly, through grief and grace and the kind of love that learns to stay.
a 13-part story about trauma, love, and all the quiet spaces in between.
my mind is at it again… answer these questions as your character. these questions come from the book “3000 Questions About Me” and will be randomly generated, if you give me a number throw 1-3000, I’ll give you the question to ask as your character.
10 Random Questions
1. Question 1003: Who or what challenges you?
2. Question 1202: What makes you feel unsafe?
3. Question 18: If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
4. Question 2985: Were you voted “most likely” for anything in your class yearbook?
5. Question 2130: Do you think some people in certain situations might be more valuable than others?
6. Question 1338: If you were to enter food-eating contest what would you want the food to be?
7. Question 1017: What type of journalist would you be?
8. Question 1401: Have you ever rescued anyone or anything?
9. Question 1986: Do you blame someone or something for the way your life is turning out?
10. Question 717: What wild animal deserves our protection?
***
If you have a random number for me and want to answer that question as your character, feel free to put them in my asks!
2. I think.... I don't know! maybe when someone on my team gets hurt? yeah I'm gonna go with that *laughs*
3. I'd want to come back as one of those weeds that look like flowers for sure. something invase too! always a menace but I gotta look great doing it yknow!
4. what's a yearbook? sounds like something Everett would write
5. Obviously, everyone has different skills? I dont get what those questions is supposed to be asking *giggles*
6. Cookies. no competition there.
7. I don't know what a journalist is???
8. I basically saved Nolan from dying at least 5 times. *snorts* cocky asshole
9. The village ruined everything. the tried to rip me from Athena.
The boy who is tough on the outside but melts for her, The boy who's knuckles are always bleeding, the boy with a small obsession with fire, the boy who blames himself
