Sooo I have decided to create my own blog and post the stuff I am usually just writing for fun and for myself! For now I am only writing my "Coffee Shop" Series, but I am open to requests for OneShots and Blurbs too!
Series:
Coffee Shop Series Masterlist
Summary: When Spencer finishes one of his guest lectures at a local college he runs into a stressed-out college student that could use a cup of coffee.
Summary: Reader is deep in preparation for her finals, much to Spencer’s frustration. When she creatively incorporates him into her anatomy review, it turns into a pleasurable experience for them both.
Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader
Category: Smut
Content Warning: f!receiving oral, face sitting, face riding, f!masturbation, softdom!spencer, but he's needy and desperate, anatomy terms that may have been used incorrectly (sorry), slight dry humping, overstimulation, yearning.
Word Count: 3.3k
Masterlist
Finals season.
The ever-dreaded, ever-disliked period between the end of April to June where every student you know is scrambling to absorb roughly four months of material in a matter of weeks.
All bets are off in this lawless space of time. Coffee at 2 AM? Completely advised, go right ahead. Hundreds of dollars spent in food delivery? Sure. Anything to keep the grind going, right? Major papers that should’ve taken weeks to write being done in a frantic three hours? It’s a rite of passage, really. And luckily, you get to spend a much-needed summer break afterwards, recovering from all these horrific decisions you’ve put yourself through.
Needless to say, your current setup involved many textbooks, flashcards scattered about, and highlighters in the most random of places, all in the name of preparation for this beast of a week.
And of course, it was all set to the sounds of a very needy Spencer Reid, who’d been begging for your attention since he’d gotten here.
“You’ve studied so much already, I swear. Can’t you take a break?”Spencer questions petulantly, sitting on the bed adjacent to your desk, where you were currently hard at work memorizing the thirty-one pairs of nerves that made up the spine.
You’d been studying intensely for this semester's finals. By making a couple of well-informed choices beforehand, you were actually quite on track when it came to your learning and retention of material.
For the most part, it seemed like you were on track to sail through all your classes without a hitch. That held true, until you brought up Introduction to Anatomy.
Anatomy was fun, by all means. Interesting labs, interesting people, interesting content. However, what daunted you more than anything in pertinence to the material was the enormity of the terms and vocabulary you were expected to know in time for the exam.
“I haven’t studied enough.” Is your quick response, a small smirk finding its way to your lips. Despite loving your boyfriend, there was a certain pleasure in seeing him so desperate for you, a power-rush that felt unbelievably good.
And to your credit, you really were hard at work memorizing these terms. As much as you enjoyed his company (and the sex he wanted to engage in), it simply could not take precedence over the task at hand.
“You know, multiple studies recommend at least twenty minutes of a break for every hour you study, for peak brain efficiency, and you-” He checks his watch, mentally calculating how long you’d been at that desk. “You’re due for at least an hour’s worth of break at this point.”
You finally look up, your finger halting on the paper it’d been tracing over. “Spencer, you know I’d love to take a break but-”
He sighs heavily. “I’m aware. This is important. I get it.” He grumbles, flopping onto the bed in a slightly dramatic fashion.
You giggle at the scene. For all his propriety, there was never a more amusing sight than your boyfriend reduced to base desire and instinct. You take pity on him though, and smile gently at him.
“Look, why don’t you get out? Go have lunch, do whatever, and come back. Hopefully I’ll be closer to finishing then, and we can hang out then?” You offer, hope in your voice.
He sighs and nods, lifting himself off your bed. “Yeah, sounds good.” He murmurs, coming over to the desk to place an affectionate, chaste kiss upon the top of your head. “Good luck.” He says, cracking a half smile as he leaves, which you return with a smile of your own.
The door closes, and you’re left with nothing but silence, and the lateral cutaneous branches looking up at you from their place on the page. Time to work at it, you suppose.
It’s about two hours later, when you hear the tell-tale knock of your boyfriend at your door, presumably back from his excursion away from you. Your place at your desk is momentarily abandoned in favor of letting him in, and there’s instant delight in your eyes, considering the two cups of coffee he presents to you. One is iced, one is not. Without any words exchanged between either party, the iced coffee is grabbed and you grin.
“Thank you.” You say, taking a sip. Of course he’d remember your order perfectly.
“You know, that could’ve been my coffee, for all you know.” He teases, striding into the room.
You roll your eyes fondly whilst you close the door. “Spencer Reid drinking iced coffee? I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Coffee is supposed to be hot!” He protests, immediately, this being an obvious subject of passion for him. “Hot brewed coffee contains far more antioxidants, and doesn’t risk being watered down by ice- oh, and another thing-”
You stifle a chuckle whilst watching him. This had been an ongoing debate for you two, essentially since the day you met. Your first date had been at a coffee shop. When he'd asked for your order, he looked almost appalled at the prefix of “iced” you’d tacked onto your statement.
Nevertheless, he still ordered it, and did his best to educate you on why hot coffee was “clearly” superior.
Somewhere between lecturing you on caffeine effectivity and nutritional information, you were head over heels.
“Anyway.” He says, breaking your thoughts, and seemingly done with his argument. “How far are you into studying?”
You make your way back to your desk, biting your lip as you stand over the material. “Pretty far.” You murmur, reluctantly. “I dunno. I know I know this material, but I feel like it hasn’t solidified in my brain, you know? Like I need to keep hammering it in until it’s basically muscle memory for me.”
He moves slowly to be behind you, his hands coming to rub your shoulders gently, soothing the worn out muscles on your back. His touch is warm and reassuring, a quiet way of saying, “You can rest.”
“You know.” He murmurs, softly. “You’d probably do better with a break. Take a breather, let your brain relax for a second.”
There’s a pause, before he adds in a quiet voice, “Maybe spend some time with me?” His hand comes to move some hair away from your neck, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to the side of it.
You melt into the movement. He always knew exactly where your weak spots were, where you’d falter and give right into his ministries.
But you know you can’t. You force yourself to breathe and look away, as though that simple act might help you forget how his hands had lingered on you just a moment ago.
“I want to, I swear. But I won’t feel good about taking downtime until I’m absolutely sure I’ve got this.” You say, firmly extricating yourself from his grasp.
He gives another one of his heavy sighs, accepting his fate quietly, knowing he won’t be able to convince you outside of your own accord.
“Alright then. I’ll just hang out here then.. For however long that might take.”
You give a small, pained smile. “Thank you. I know I’m being difficult.”
“You’re not. You could never be difficult.” He responds, immediately, returning your smile with one of his own. “It’s just finals season. I know your performance will be wonderful, and we’ll have all the time in the world afterwards to spend time together.”
Your heart melts. You were beyond lucky to have him, and that adoration and knowledge is displayed plainly through your expression. “Thank you.” You repeat, unable to verbalize just how much his support meant to you. “I hate finals.”
“You and I both.” He shoots back, cracking a grin. “You’re going to do great.”
There’s no trace of doubt in his tone at all.
For the next hour or so, you both quietly coexist in the same space, the names of musculature and types of fibers muttered under your breath. After a while, the terms click into place, and with a quiet breath, you let the tension go. The final step in your preparation involved practicing the newly learned terms on a human model. Ideally, it would be one of the fake skeletons in the anatomy lab. Your gaze, however, drifted to your boyfriend on your bed, sprawled out, reading your physics textbook for fun.
Nerd.
An almost evil plan enters your brain, and your voice goes sickly sweet as you call out his name.
“Spence?”
“Mm?” He murmurs, looking over the book.
“Can you strip down to your underwear, please?” A harmless smile plays on your lips as you ask.
Spencer’s all ears as he hears that, and in record time his clothes are shed. “Are you-”
“Lie back on the bed.” You order.
He’s so obedient and eager, immediately complying with what you’ve asked of him without question. You smile, and discreetly grab a washable marker before making your way to where he was laid out.
“God. I’ve been so insanely needy for you all day. I’m so glad you’re done.” He says, his expression reeking of starvation as you straddle him. You can feel him harden under your touch, and choose to ignore that.
You lean down, your head at about his chest. His breathing quickens in anticipation, already so turned on from the minimal contact between you two.
Before he can make a move of his own, you pull out your marker and mark the space between his clavicle and shoulder.
“Brachial plexus.” You murmur, much to his utter confusion and dismay.
“You have to be kidding me.” He says, his look of confusion quickly morphing into one of realization. “I thought you were done-”
“I’m not.” You say, with a small smirk on your lips. “But I will be, if you’re quiet and let me work on you.”
He groans. “You’re evil, this is evil. I won’t-”
“The faster we get through this, the faster I’m all yours.” You interrupt, mostly ignoring him, because you know he’ll do anything if it means touching you by the end of it.
He takes a pained breath and tries to relax while you work on top of him, his obvious erection straining against the fabric of his briefs.
The pen drags down his chest, as you move down on him to better position yourself in accordance to the medial pectoral nerve you were marking.
“Baby, please.” He groans out, his hands fisting in the sheets below him in an attempt to not grab you and take you right then and there.
The slightest bit of friction seems to set him off, and you can tell he isn’t playing it up in the slightest. He truly was, well and gone for you within this moment.
“Sorry.” You murmur. “Just marking your.. anterior cutaneous branches.. of the thoracic nerves.” The pen drags against a spot on his chest, and he shudders.
“Won’t this stain my skin?” He says, a slight whine in his tone, doing absolutely anything to free himself from the absolute torture of this predicament he’d found himself in.
“Nah. It’s one of those pens they use for surgery.” You respond, dragging it along his sternum to mark a few more necessary terms. “It’ll come right off in the shower.”
You know exactly how to push his buttons. You lean in closer and whisper against his ear enticingly, “We can get clean together.”
He squeezes his eyes at that, the feeling of your lips brushing against his earlobe triggering an involuntary response, a low moan escaping him. “This is.. so unfair. I just want to touch you. Please.”
“Not until I’m done.” You fire back. “C'mon. You can be good and wait, right?”
“Easy for you to say.” He grits out. “You’re not the one, half naked and hard and having to watch you be..” He trails off.
“Be what?” You ask, a bit distracted as you mark another nerve of importance.
“Be.. sexy.” He mumbles out, clearly embarrassed by his own musings.
A small, wry smile comes upon your mouth. You lean back, a breath of laughter slipping free. “You think I look sexy?” You say, a teasing lilt in your tone.
He rubs a hand over his face, clearly mortified. “Yes. Yes, okay!” He grumbles out, clearly self-conscious by just how much he’s managed to be affected by you. “You’re on top of me, drawing on me, and I’m aware they’re just anatomical terms, but God the way you say them.”
His voice devolves into a near whimper, pitiful and aching. “It’s killing me.”
You hum, pleased with yourself. “Killing you, huh?”
“Yes.” He mewls. “Killing me. I want you so much, please. You’re so smart. Please. I know you’re going to do so good on this final. Just please, please, let me touch you.”
He collapses into his words, into you. No pride left, just need.
“Yeah? You think I’m smart?” You murmur teasingly, tracing the plastic of your marker along the side of his neck.
“Yes.” He moans, lowly. “So smart. You’re so hot when you’re working so hard. Makes me want you so bad.”
Your head turns back, and you can see the wetness of precum leaking from his cock on his briefs. He wasn’t faking it to get your attention. He yearned for you, plain and simple.
Your eyes find his, and they’re full of need, his expression absolutely shameless and desperate. “Please.” He repeats. “Please let me touch you. I don’t care how. Just- god. I can't do this. Please.”
It’s enough to make you yield. You slide off of him, and he lets out a soft, needy sound, already missing the press of you, until his breath catches at the sight of you stripping, your clothes landing somewhere off the edge of the bed without a second thought.
“You wanna touch me?” You murmur, crawling up the bed a little.
“Yes.” He whispers, nodding.
The way he looks at your naked body, eyes fixed, hungry, reverent.. it’s almost too much. You feel dizzy from the weight of it.
You straddle his face, a thigh on either side of him whilst you hover over his face, and then you look down. “Touch me then.” You murmur.
He practically growls as his hands wrap around your thighs. “With pleasure.”
He pulls you down entirely, effectively forcing your core against his mouth, his tongue lapping against every inch of your wet folds.
You moan, your hands coming to grasp the headboard in front of you. There’s absolutely nothing he could be thinking about, besides the taste and smell of you flooding and overwhelming his senses.
He devours you with a single-minded focus, his tongue expertly alternating between flattening and lapping you in slow, deliberate strokes, and quick flicks against your clit. It’s all done in service to you, Spencer thinking of the fastest way to unravel you, desperate to taste your release against his tongue– to hear you moan his name and shake above him.
He gets his wish when another stroke of his tongue finally causes you to come, your sweet release flooding his face, and him eagerly drinking it in. He moans as he attempts to pull you even closer to his mouth (if that was even possible).
You let out a breathy laugh as he seems to slow down, indicating the end of your session. “Spence.. Oh god. That was so good.” You try to get off him, but his grip on your thighs is iron-clad.
“Again.” He moans.
“What?” You ask, not sure if you heard him right.
“Again, please.” He begs, voice broken. “I need you.”
The absolute depravity and torment in his voice lulls you into complacency, as you assume your previous position above him.
“Okay. Okay, baby. We can go again.” You murmur, soothingly.
He wastes no time going right back in, his tongue albeit, a little slower now, keeping in mind that you’d just orgasmed, and that you were probably still sensitive.
He’s right to do so, little high-pitched moans and drawn out of you as you get comfortable again, despite the overstimulation.
His tongue circles your clit slowly, never properly touching it, delaying your next release. After a while of this teasing, you finally moan out his name, your hips shamelessly rocking against him.
“Spencer, god. Please. Need to come.” You beg, feeling yourself at the edge of a small death.
Spencer responds in kind, rapidly flicking his tongue against your swollen bud, and in record time, you’re coming again, much to his delight. He doesn't let up until he's absolutely sure he's lapped up every single drop, not letting any of it go to waste.
“Okay, baby. I gotta get off. Gotta breathe. So do you.” You pant out, as you get off from your seat on his face.
He shakes his head, tugging you closer.
“Please, wanna keep touching you.” He pleads, eyes teary, your release practically dripping off his chin. His hand digs into your arm with a lustful urgency. “Please. We can go again. I know we can.”
You yield to his request, because honestly, who could deny him right now? His hair messy, lips shiny and his voice, fractured and full of ache, barely held together.
You nod, lying down, on the bed, motioning for him to roll on top of you.
He rolls over and kisses you, and it’s absolutely sinful. You can taste yourself on him, moaning as your lips easily part and make way for him, the wet warmth of his tongue sliding against yours. There’s nothing held back between the two of you as your lips connect and reconnect, as his hand slowly slides down the expanse of your skin, finding your clit and beginning to rub slow circles against it.
“Oh god, Spencer.” You moan bonelessly, feeling the effects of your previous two orgasms and the one you were hurtling towards currently taking over you.
“Yeah?” He mumbles. “That feel good?”
“God, yes.” You moan. “You always know how to touch me, always know how to make me feel good- oh-”
He groans in delight as he dives in for another kiss, his fingers sliding across the slick bud even faster now, determined to make you fall off the edge for him one last time. He humps your thigh, practically desperate for some relief for his aching cock as well.
“Say my name.” He murmurs against your lips.
“Spencer.” You wail out, in response.
“Louder.”
“Oh god, Spencer, please!” You groan, your body beginning to tense up with the tell-tale signs of an orgasm, your body taut like a bowstring.
“That’s right, come for me.” He whispers, placing a sweet kiss against your collarbone, his hips continuing their rut in an attempt to chase his release as well.
And with a shout, you come, your body seizing up and succumbing to his touch, your hands wrapping around his neck in an attempt to ground yourself as you experienced the intense pleasure that could only result from being with him.
He seems to follow shortly after to the sound of your moans, a wet patch appearing on the front of his briefs.
You whimper as you come down for your orgasm, Spencer stroking your skin soothingly, peppering little kisses wherever he could reach.
“You doing okay?” He pants out.
“Better than okay.” You murmur, folding into his embrace, feeling as if you were floating on clouds, or some other poetic description of just how light you felt in this moment.
“I pushed you pretty hard, huh?” He mumbles, his voice tinged with a slight bit of concern.
“Don’t worry. I deserve it for teasing you so hard." You mumble.
"Thanks for helping me study, by the way." You tack on, already feeling yourself drift off into a quiet, peaceful slumber in his arms.
He chuckles a bit, and places a kiss against your forehead. “Glad I could make the lesson... hands-on.”
woah!!! hello!! so unfortunately, much like reader, i have also been swamped by finals :( but, this idea came to me and i decided to write it and try to make my way back to writing even a little bit more regularly. as usual, please like, reblog and comment if you enjoyed this fic. reblogs are basically the lifeline of tumblr, and if you'd like my work to reach more people, i would 10000% appreciate it so much. thank you so much for reading regardless, and i hope it was enjoyable. thank you thank thank you for all your support!!!! <333
Heyyy! I adore your writing, it's so soft and ahhh just obsessed, I can never get enough! Could I request something with shy!reader (maybe non-bau) and Emily where they had a meet cute and are maybe on their first date? xx
meet cute
OMG AN EMILY REQUEST YEASSS!! hopefully this is sort of what you wanted…?!? 💛💛
pairing - emily prentiss x reader
word count - 2.1k
Why did no one talk about the horrendous anxiety that came with first dates?
Your heart felt like it was beating so hard that it might as well be trying to escape your chest and the rest of your body was so shaky.
Normally when you were anxious you could never really pinpoint why, but this was different. The root of your anxiety was so easy to pinpoint and it was because you were going on a date with the prettiest girl you had ever seen.
Emily Prentiss had come into your life like a page out of a meet-cute novel.
She had mistakenly taken your coffee order for hers, even though it said your name on the side of the cup not hers. As shy as you were, you had not been ready to give up your morning coffee. Turns out confronting someone for taking your coffee can lead to exchanging phone numbers. Then phone numbers can lead to arranging a date.
And that date was today.
<.><.><.>
“Why are you in such a rush?” Morgan asked as he watched Emily clear her desk and pack her bag.
Normally Emily was here well past everyone else. Well… Maybe not Hotch, but definitely later than anyone else on the team.
Tonight was different though.
It was already 5PM and she was stressing that she hadn’t left herself enough time to get ready.
“There’s somewhere I need to be.” Emily answered.
Morgan chuckled because he should have anticipated a cryptic answer from his partner.
“Oh yeah? Where?” Morgan crossed his arms.
Spencer popped up from his desk, “I think I know.”
“Go on then pretty boy.” Morgan said.
“Emily rarely leaves work before 7PM, except today she’s been watching the clock countdown the seconds until she can legally leave work at 5PM. That tells us she has somewhere really important to be. Considering there’s no immediate family involved and we haven’t been invited I would suggest that Emily has a date.”
Emily scoffed, both annoyed and impressed that Spencer had managed to deduce all of that.
“Combine that current look she’s giving us with your theory Reid, I’d say you were right.” Morgan smiled and leaned forwards in his chair. “So…?”
Emily raised her eyebrows at Morgan, silently challenging him.
She didn’t deny anything though. Mainly because she knew she had been caught and there was absolutely no point in lying to a duo of profilers. However, that didn’t mean she needed to divulge in the details of her night.
“You two need to get a life and stop spying in on mine.” Emily said.
“You know that’s not gonna happen.” Morgan argued back, Spencer giving an understanding nod of agreement.
“Worth a shot.” Emily shrugged and left it at that. Not only was she eager to get away from this conversation, but she was also really determined to not screw this date up and so that meant leaving now.
“Details tomorrow, Prentiss.” Morgan shouted as Emily left the room.
<.><.><.>
The nerves had gotten ten times worse.
You had felt confident leaving the house, but now you felt somehow both underdressed and overdressed. You felt like you weren’t really meant to be meeting up with Emily this evening, like this wasn’t something that happened to you.
Maybe you’d made a mistake? Maybe this had all been a dream? Or maybe she thought she had been messaging someone else this whole time?
At least you were meeting in a neutral location, so if anything did go wrong then you could both leave and return to your own homes.
You let your shaky hands reach for your phone to check your messages again.
1 hour ago - From Emily Prentiss:
Looking forward to seeing you tonight : )
30 minutes ago - To Emily Prentiss:
Me too xx
25 minutes ago - To Emily Prentiss:
I am at the restaurant now xx
10 minutes ago - To Emily Prentiss:
It was ‘The Olive Bistro’ that we were meeting at right? x
2 minutes ago - To Emily Prentiss:
Just checking you’re okay?
Then your phone started vibrating and you could see that Emily was calling you.
You took a deep breath before answering.
“It’s okay!” You blurted out before she could say anything.
“Y/N?” Emily answered, her breathing sounding laboured.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Sorry, it just sounded like you said ‘It’s okay’.”
“No - I-I mean yes. Yes, sorry, it is okay.”
“What’s okay?”
“I’m assuming you’re calling to cancel?” You questioned.
“Not at all. Why would— Will you please stop walking so slow!”
Who was she yelling at?
“Sorry?”
“Y/N, I swear… Wait, have you been standing outside the restaurant this entire time?”
Emily’s question made you stand alert. Surely the only way she would know that is if she could see you right now.
“How do you…” You said, before being cut off by watching Emily walk really fast paced down the street towards you.
Emily must have hung up the phone so you did too, putting it into your coat pocket. Your attention was solely on her now and you didn’t want any distractions.
And gosh was she beautiful.
Emily was wearing dark boot-cut jeans, a high-neck black jumper and black boots. Her hair was styled perfectly around her face and her makeup looked the same as it had the other day.
You suddenly felt very okay about what you’d chosen to wear; similar jeans, also boots but a white shirt instead.
Your hands got more and more shaky as she approached.
“I’m so sorry.” She said as she stood a few feet in front of you. “You must be freezing.”
“I’m okay.” You gave her a nervous smile.
“I swear I’m not normally like this. I even left work early to avoid being late, but Sergio would not let me leave and then the car park… What?” Emily smiled when she saw the look you were giving her.
You shrugged your shoulders, “You still came here, even after a long day at work plus cat troubles?”
“Yes. Of course.” Emily looked wounded that you’d ever consider anything else.
“That’s kind of… romantic.”
Emily stepped closer to you and held out her hand for you to take. Your hand stopped shaking as soon as you held hers. She grounded you and reminded you that you were completely safe with her.
“No, it’s just basic human etiquette.”
“Not to me.” There was a hint of sadness to your tone, which Emily quickly picked up on and wiped away with the softest kiss to your cheek.
“Shall we?”
<.><.><.>
You hadn’t laughed like this in ages. The kind of laughing that left your belly stitch and your jaw ache. The kind of laughing that came from getting along with someone really well, which was interesting considering you’d only known Emily for a couple of weeks.
Dinner had gone really well.
You remembered to go for something that wouldn’t slop everywhere and drink something you knew was safe. Pesto pasta and a limoncello spritz. You had unintentionally impressed Emily with your choices too, which you were counting as a small win.
“Well I’m glad he’s okay.” You laughed.
“Him? Honey, it was me who was under attack.” Emily feigned shock.
“Yes, but he’s a cat. He doesn’t know any better.”
“Wow. Cannot believe you’re taking Sergio’s side over mine.”
You would have fallen for her pouty lips and her sad face if it wasn’t for her hand that held yours across the table. She had reached for your hand after dinner and hadn’t let go since.
It was really nice.
That sounds silly to say that holding a pretty woman’s hand was ‘nice’, but that was the truth. This was new to you and so you were taking everything in moment by moment.
“I’m sorry. How can I make it up to you?” You asked.
“Oh I don’t know.”
“How about…”
“A kiss? You’re so right.” Emily jumped in before you could.
You blushed. She made you so nervous it was ridiculous. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” Emily squeezed your hand.
“Okay.” You said, unsure.
You looked around the busy restaurant and thought about how uncomfortable this room would make you as you tried to have your first kiss.
Emily must have noticed though, because she squeezed your hand again to direct your attention back to her.
“I’m not kissing you here.”
“No?”
“No. It’s not the end of the night yet.” She smiled and your whole body relaxed. You actually felt your body return to the moment with Emily, knowing you could peacefully admire her under the warm restaurant glow for a little longer.
<.><.><.>
The end of the night came quickly.
You stood at your front door and Emily was there with you. She insisted that she came home with you, knowing exactly what kind of creeps are out there late at night.
The night had been so perfect and you could feel yourself becoming slowlh more comfortable with her. She laughed at your jokes, which told you you weren’t making a fool of yourself, and she listened to everything you had to say, which made you feel important. Emily had made you feel special all night.
“I had a good time tonight.” You said, picking out your keys from your coat pocket.
“Me too.” Emily smiled.
“Are we going to see each other again?”
“I hope so. If it wasn’t clear from sharing a lemon dessert with you when I actually hate lemons, then I really like you and I’d love to go on a date with you again.”
“Emily…” You pouted sadly.
“What? Are you upset about the dessert?”
“Yes!” You exclaimed.
“It’s okay.”
“No it’s not, because now when I kiss you all I’m going to think about is how I probably still taste of lemons and you’re going to hate every moment of it.” You frowned.
If you didn’t get your kiss off Emily then it wasn’t literally the end of the world, but it sure would feel like it.
“I don’t mind.”
“But…”
“Y/N, love, I don’t mind.” Emily cut you off firmly. “Okay?”
She took a step towards you, closing the distance, and cupped a hand over your cheek. She hesitantly guided your lips towards hers, ghosting over them to give you the chance to pull away if you wanted.
You closed your eyes as she got close and allowed your other senses to take over.
When Emily kissed you it felt weird.
You’d heard so often you would feel butterflies or fireworks, but in reality it wasn’t anything like that. It just felt natural, like you’d been doing this forever.
You felt right together.
She tasted of lemons so no doubt you did too, but that didn’t stop either of you from kissing each other. She felt so warm against you and you moaned a little in delight at the feeling.
When she pulled away you whined - like, actually whined - from the loss of contact. You watched Emily laugh as you opened your eyes again.
“We have time.” She said softly.
“Yeah, but… we have time now.” You said, trying to initiate another kiss.
“Where’s Little Miss Shy gone from earlier, huh?” She teased.
“You’re mean.”
“And you’re impatient.”
“This is unfair.”
“But it’s the end of the night.”
“Does it have to be?” You whined, probably sounding a lot more desperate than you were hearing.
“Yes,” Emily laughed, pinching your cheek, “C’mon.”
Emily walked you right in front of your door and motioned for you to open it with your key.
You had this intrusive thought that you could just kidnap her and keep her inside your house all night, just to spend more time with her but even that seemed a bit far-fetched.
Right?
You opened the door and stepped inside, leaving Emily standing on your doorstep.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving me.” You said.
The way you were acting all clingy would no doubt cause you to have an anxiety attack as soon as you shut the door, because you had only been on one date and were already acting like you loved her.
No doubt it wouldn’t be hard or long before you did love her, but after one date seemed a little unreasonable.
Emily might even be thinking that you were coming on a bit too strong and this could be it…
“For today.”
“So unfair.” You muttered to yourself.
“Y/N.” Emily said, causing you to look at her seriously.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you, for tonight.”
“Of course. I enjoyed spending time with you. Just don’t make me wait too long before the next one.”
summary - when you’re forced to kiss emily, you’re worried that you’re both kissing for different reasons
pairing - emily prentiss x bau-friend!reader
word count - ~1.5k
It was Friday night and the bar was busy.
‘Woody’s’ was a new bar downtown that was everyone’s new favourite place to go. It was a great place to have a casual drink but it also played great music for people who wanted to dance. There were darts and snooker too.
It was your team’s favourite place to go for post-case drinks, which is why you were currently there.
Hotch and Rossi were currently buying a round for you all. The rest of you were stood at a table, seeing as there were no booths free.
“How many women are going to give you there number tonight then, Derek?” Emily asked, raising her brows in tease.
“More than you’ll get.” He winked back.
“Ah, I’m only counting on one anyways.”
Whilst the rest of the team smiled and laughed over the comical dispute between Derek and Emily, you couldn’t help but feel sad about it.
You didn’t care what Derek got up to tonight, but Emily…
Well let’s just say, it’s hard to encourage someone to get themselves out there and show off when you’re the one you wish they were pursuing. In laymen’s terms; you liked Emily and wished she could like you back.
Feelings were a scary thing to have in your line of work. Even more so when the feelings were for someone on your team.
She looked so pretty tonight.
The white t-shirt fit her perfectly and her hair was in perfect curls framing her face. You couldn’t get over how perfect she was.
Hotch and Rossi came back over with a tray each. There were beers for everyone and a tiny shot of something too - probably a baby Guinness.
“You’re spoiling us, boss.” Derek cheered.
“Well, we’re off the clock and have had a successful week.” Hotch explained.
“Cheers to that.” Emily laughed.
Emily grabbed a beer and a shot off the tray but gave it to you. Only after you’d gotten yours did she grab her own.
“Thank you.” You said and Emily smiled at you. It was one of those smiles you could feel in your own heart that she genuinely meant.
“I know it’s been a hard year but weeks like this remind us why we do what we do.” Hotch raised his shot, making the rest of you copy. “So, to us.”
“To us.” Everyone copied before downing the shot.
It was in fact a baby Guinness, so it was nice enough to not feel ill afterwards.
“Reid, are you even old enough to drink?” Rossi teased.
“Actually yes, the legal age for drinking in the United States is 21.” Reid answered, which made everyone laugh because he had obviously taken Rossi’s question ad literal. It even made Hotch laugh.
“L/N, how are you spending your weekend?” Derek asked.
“Recovering from a hangover, no doubt.” You raised your beer glass.
“Lightweight.” Garcia teased.
“Hey, don’t be mean.” Emily protested, wrapping an arm around your shoulders to pull you into her side. You kept up the charade by pretending to pout as you comfortably fit your head onto Emily’s shoulders for a moment.
“Aw, aren’t you two the cutest.” Garcia smiled, winking at Emily.
Clearly you had missed something.
Emily squeezed your shoulders before letting you go.
“Speaking of cute,” Rossi interrupted, “How did that date go the other night?” He questioned Emily.
You took the opportunity to reach for your drink so you wouldn’t have to watch the excitement take over Emily’s face. You had heard that she’d gone on a date earlier, last week, but you’d never found the courage to chase her up on it.
When you took a sip of your beer, your eyes met Hotch’s from across the table.
He was staring like he was trying to figure something out about your behaviour - or maybe he already had.
“She was nice.”
“Nice?” Reid questioned as if that was it.
“Yeah, Reid’s nice…” Derek pointed out.
“Is that supposed to be an insult?” Reid asked the table.
“Don’t ever change, Dr Reid.” Garcia laughed, giving him a little side hug.
“So she wasn’t… what?” Rossi asked.
“What is this? 20 questions about my love life?” Emily laughed, clearly trying to deflect from answering the question. “Why aren’t we questioning Hotch?”
You were sort of thankful that she didn’t answer, so you didn’t have to mentally list the ways that you weren’t her type either.
Like your boss would reveal anything about his personal life…
“So….” Derek tried again with Emily.
“So what?” Emily asked.
“What was she like?”
You dared to look at Emily.
Even though it was horrible listening to her gush about other people, you didn’t want to seem like a bad friend.
Because a friend was all you’d ever be.
“She was…” Emily’s eyes caught yours and she stuttered for a moment. She cleared her throat and looked back at everyone else, “She made me really realise who I do want.”
“Which wasn’t her?”
“God no.” Emily laughed at the thought.
It was kind of sick how happy you felt hearing her say that.
“So who are you looking for?” Reid asked.
“Classified.” Emily said.
“But there is someone.” Rossi said what wasn’t being spoken.
Emily didn’t verbally answer. She simply looked down and smiled to herself, which was answer enough.
It worked you up a bit.
You tried so hard keep your emotions in check, but the reality of the situation was that it was hard pretending like you didn’t care about Emily’s dating life when actually it was all you thought about.
You thought about how lovely it would be to date her. To treat her. To hold her hand and kiss her in the quiet of night. How lovely it would be to hug her without an excuse or hold her hand just because.
There were all these things that you wished you could do.
But she was wishing them away with somebody else.
“Emily!”
The team lifted their heads to see where the voice had come from. A tall, blonde, girl was making her way over to your table from across the room.
She was having a hard time clearing the floor as there were so many people packed in here.
“Oh shit.” Emily swore under her breath.
“What?” You asked, worried.
“That’s Olivia.” She said.
Olivia.
Her ex-girlfriend who was a borderline stalker.
Everyone knew about her and how she had some serious issues relating to personal space. An ex shouldn’t be as clingy as Olivia was. Emily had confided in you time and time again about Olivia, so the anger bubbling in your veins was very real.
“What can we do?” Hotch asked.
“There’s only one thing to do.” Emily replied, but she wasn’t looking at Hotch. She was looking at you. “Forgive me.” She whispered.
Then her hands pulled on your jaw to bring your face closer to hers and she didn’t stop until that distance was closed with her lips crashing into yours.
You were surprised at first - not really comprehending what was happening - but then you started to lean into it.
Emily’s hands stayed firm on your jaw, guiding the kiss the way she wanted to.
Her lips were so pillowy soft and they tasted of the watermelon chapstick she constantly reapplied.
You heard what sounded like Derek whistling and Garcia cheering like this was the happiest moment of her life.
It was a happy moment.
You were kissing Emily. Emily.
That’s when it hit you, though.
Emily wasn’t kissing you for the same reasons that you were kissing her.
She was kissing you to make her ex jealous and believe that Olivia meant nothing now, but you were kissing her and it was everything.
So you pulled away.
Emily’s eyes looked shocked, like she couldn’t believe that had just happened. Her lipstick was a little smudged and her cheeks flushed red.
You gaped at her like a fish.
You’d forgotten all about Olivia. You’d forgotten about nearly everything thanks to that damn kiss. People often say that when you know, you know, but they didn’t tell you how right it felt when you did know.
“I-I’m sorry.” You said, picking up your bag and shuffling away from the team.
You couldn’t even look at them. It was too embarrassing to see the faces of your team.
They must’ve seen that you were so ready to sink into that kiss, whereas Emily was only using it as a distraction. God, you felt so stupid and blindingly insecure.
“Y/N!” Emily called after you.
You were too busy trying to push your way through the busy crowds of the bar.
The entrance to the door was through the dance floor full of customers.
You felt shaky and confused as you tried pushing your way through. You felt unsettled and uncomfortable.
“Excuse me.” You said politely.
“I’m not interested.” A man replied, thinking that you were trying to get on with him or something.
“No, I just want…”
The man then purposely nudged into you, making you shuffle back a couple of steps, “I said I’m not interested.”
“And she’s not interested in you either, pal. Now fuck off.” Emily appeared behind you, steadying an arm around your waist for balance.
She looked really pissed off with that guy, but made no move to start a bar brawl.
The guy backed off.
“Come with me?” Emily asked and you gave her a small nod.
Her hand took clutch in yours and she pulled you the rest of the way through the dancing crowd. She didn’t stop until you were both in the chill of the outside.
Emily walked down the side of the road so you weren’t right outside the entrance.
“Why are you crying?” Emily asked you.
You didn’t even realise you were until she just asked. You were about to check for yourself, but Emily beat you to it and used her thumbs to wipe under your eyes.
“I feel so stupid.” You said.
“Why, love?” Her eyes looked sad.
“I ruined that for you, I’m sorry.” You were finding to hard to keep your gaze on her, but you knew if you didn’t then she would be able to profile you easier.
“Ruined what?”
“That… thing… And Olivia.”
“I don’t care about Olivia. Nothing was ruined there.”
“No I know, but.. You… It doesn’t matter.” You shook your head, readying to leave again.
Emily took a step forwards, blocking you in against the building wall behind you.
“Talk to me.” She said softly.
“I didn’t kiss you to make Olivia jealous.” You said.
“I didn’t either.” Emily shook her head and you could tell by her eyes that she was being honest. “I don’t want to make her jealous. I’m so done with her, you know that.”
“I do, yeah. I just… I felt like I was taking advantage of you because… because…” Your eyes started to water with tears again. “God! Why is this so difficult?”
“Because you’re worried that I won’t feel the same way you do.” She said and it felt like a punch to the heart.
“Don’t do that. Don’t profile me.”
“Y/N, I’m not.” She shook her head, “I know how you’re feeling because I feel exactly the same way.”
“W-what?”
“I am… crazy about you.” Emily admitted.
“Me.” You said to yourself, like it would help her words sink in.
“Yes, you. I am borderline obsessed with you and it terrifies me to think that you might never have felt the same.. or that I’ve just ruined everything by forcing you to…”
You shut her up by kissing her.
The same way she kissed you. You grabbed her jaw and pulled her into you, kissing her with every ounce of adoration you could. She moaned as you kissed her a little harder, only for her to take control again by pushing you into the wall and kissing you for all she had.
Emily tilted her head to the side and you were forced to follow, not ready to give up this moment yet.
Her hands found the back of your neck, both protecting your head from the wall and keeping you close to her.
She had to pull away for air which you were thankful for, but kissed you a couple more times in between each breath. The little actions caused you to laugh.
You kept close to each other, your hands still on her jaw rubbing small circles with your thumb on her skin
“I really like you, you know?” She said, breathlessly.
“I kind of gathered.”
She rolled her eyes at your teasing.
“Garcia knows. I go to her office at least once a day to rant about how gone I am for you. Like, yesterday, I was so in awe of how you looked in that suit that I had to go and get it all out in Garcia’s office.” Emily confessed and it only made you fall for her harder.
“You’re such a nerd, oh my God.” You chuckled. “Can’t believe you like me.”
“Pretty sure it’s more than just like, but I won’t come on too strong too fast.”
“Aren’t gay couples kind of notorious for ‘too strong, too fast’?” You joked.
Emily nodded. “But I want to take my time with you.”
“Me too.” You smiled, “And for the record. I more than like you too.”
“I figured.”
“So… do we go back now?” You questioned.
“Couple more minutes.”
“Couple more minutes.” You agreed, before kissing her a few times more.
Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!Reader
Summary: You wake up New Year's morning next to your boyfriend, realizing that once you leave, you'll be gone for good. Based on the song "gone" by VÉRITÉ.
Category: Angst
Content: breakup, crying, no explicit smut but it's heavily implied.
Word Count: 1.3k
If you know me at all then you know that VÉRITÉ is easily my favorite artist at the moment. She has been for a while. This song came up on shuffle on my way home from Target on Black Friday, and between the gray snowy skies and the empty road I was on, immediately I had a vision and a feeling, and the closing chapter to Ficmas was here, in a messy, mournful little bow (even if it's one of the first ones you're getting...just work with me here LMAO) . I hope you've enjoyed your holiday! I love and appreciate you more than you know <3 Happy New Year!
-------------
It's not a surprise that the bedroom is dark when I open my eyes. I don't want to open them, but once I realize that he's still beside me, probably asleep, I know it's safe.
Still, it doesn't ease the dread I feel deep in my gut as my vision adjusts to the dark. Blue hues fizzle in around me as Spencer's shape starts to define, his features slowly fading into view. I'm surprised that he's facing me, to tell you the truth. At some point during the night, I would have imagined he'd finalize our end with the metaphoric turning of the back. In some twisted way, it might have been easier to get through this morning that way— not having to face him. But nothing in my life has ever been easy, so why should this be any different?
I don't want to lose him, anyway. I will, that much is certain, but if I can prolong it by committing his peaceful, resting features to memory as the last worry-free moment we share, then maybe it won't hurt as much in the end.
Please don't let that be wishful thinking, I plead in my head, over and over like a prayer. It's hard to imagine what I might find in his eyes when he finally wakes up, though it also occurs to me that he might wake up and refuse to look at me, pretending to sleep until I give up and just leave. Perhaps this is just as hard on him as it is on me...
A quick flashback of the blank look on his face as I came undone underneath him the night before, his name a hushed and desperate longing for redemption on my lips, makes my blood run cold; He didn't even enjoy himself. Last night was merely a formality to him, a parting of ways to leave me satisfied one last time. Whether or not he knows if it worked, I'm positive now—as I regain my memories of the last couple of hours— that he doesn't care. I remember now feeling it in every touch. Where he once was so careful and meticulous, last night he was lifeless. Not necessarily rough and unforgiving, but... indifferent. Talented and mission-oriented still, but that's all it had been— A task.
Still, as I watch him sleep soundly, I pretend that there had been some residual love resting there in our atmosphere amongst the indifference. It's the only way to keep me from bolting in shame.
At least, for now, I have this peace. This quiet and calm. In sleep, Spencer isn't indifferent. In sleep, he is here, with me. He is warm and present and not yet haunting. Here, in sleep, he is mine.
I resist the urge to reach out for him like I always have. I don't want to wake him and risk losing his warmth, though I long to feel it in full force, even if for a second or two. I try to recall his hands on my skin, hot and electric even in emotional stasis, and tears prick the back of my eyelids.
He shouldn't see me like this. I should leave. But I can't. I'm too selfish.
I suppose that's always been the problem.
Our last big fight before last night's events had been unresolved. I let him go to bed angry, too stubborn to apologize, and for days we just... fizzled. At first it wasn't cause for concern; unfortunately it had become routine for us after an argument to just ignore each other for a while until we became too restless, settling for a resolution through tongues and limbs and sheets. Sometimes a hot shower. But our cold shoulders only lasted a day before then.
This time it was three.
Part of me wonders if he wanted to hold on until the end of the year. It wouldn't surprise me. As much of a romantic as he is, I wouldn't put it past Spencer to have made this some sort of symbolic "final act" before purging himself of me entirely, leaving me behind in his past and using the New Year to look forward.
Part of me also wonders, though, if maybe I'm just that cynical.
He stirs beside me then, nearly startling me. My heart leaps out of my chest and catches in my throat. I'm forced to hold my breath, and I can't bring myself to close my eyes.
This is it. It's happening.
Spencer's eyes are warm and soft for a brief moment in time as he registers the face in front of him. My features seem to take a moment to fade into clear view, because once they do, that warmth is simply gone.
I almost start to cry. My breath hitches.
"You didn't leave yet," he says. A curious observation.
"I will... But I don't want to... Not yet."
I want to hold on just a little longer, I tell him with my eyes.
He blinks slowly and somberly. I understand.
When my knuckles brush his, he merely holds still, not reciprocating my search for cold comfort. He's already gone, yet he allows me to stay. He doesn't even look at me like he pities me. He just looks tired, which breaks my heart considering we'd just slept for hours.
I'd done that to him.
Hot pressure forms behind my eyes, and with a harsh blink, the floodgates open.
Tears fall silently down my face as I squeeze Spencer's hand. He lays there and watches me cry, and I feel miserable. I should have just left.
But I didn't.
I should have fought for him, but I didn't. I should have admitted that I was stubborn and wrong and sorry, but I didn't. Slowly but surely, I was getting spoiled thinking we could cure every problem with a kiss. I took advantage of his forgiveness one too many times, and now I'm paying the price as he watches me.
Eventually, I tire, too. My face is hot and my hand is sore from gripping his so harshly. The room has brightened a little more, but it's still quite purple and hazy. It's probably not even 6AM yet. The sun is rising, and yet I feel like I'm being drained of all my life force.
But then, after a few beats of solemn silence between us, I can finally speak.
I whisper it, afraid I might hurt him otherwise. In every other aspect of our relationship, I've been loud. My loving him was aggressive and possessive, my opinions brash and my expectations bold.
After all of that intensity, he deserves a little sweetness.
"Okay."
The word dismisses him— dismisses us. It built a lot of courage for me to muster it, but it had to be done.
Spencer doesn't say a word as he peels the covers away from his body and rolls over, breaking the spell, and my heart, in the process.
As he pads off to the bathroom and takes his warmth with him, I let go of a long, unsteady breath and follow suit, feeling soreness in every limb as I dress.
My legs shuffle heavily towards the door, miscellaneous belongings in hand, and that's when I hear the bathroom door open.
I know I should turn around and say it to his face, but... once a coward, always a coward, I suppose.
Still, for all the weakness and dread that overwhelms my bones, I tell him over my shoulder with sincere strength, "I'm sorry, Spencer."
I'm not even sure he'll respond. But he doesn't have to. He deserves to hear it from me at least once before we part. Not that it will do much, but I feel guilty all the same.
My hand twists the doorknob, and just as I'm about to close the door behind me, I barely hear his voice, warm and gentle as ever.
"I'm sorry, too."
----------------
Love
I should've warned you
I'm a stick of dynamite
Threat of explosion
Constantly strapped to your side
'Cause I'm afraid of losing
Everything I'm ruining
There's no getting used to
The quiet you're leaving
Is louder than screaming
So leave the clothes and mess we made up all on the floor
'Cause when we put them on we're not in love anymore
'Cause I know when we go, we're really gone
in which spencer reid coaxes reader out of an episode of extreme dissociation after a triggering therapy session
angst, fluff
warnings/tags: established relationship, accidental mild injury, blood, unspecified trauma, but at the very least implied past emotional abuse, anxiety, reader has ptsd and is in #denial about it
a/n: I'm hellaaaa chill sometimes I just lose hours of my day if I think about my childhood too hard
It’s normal for you to get home and immediately wash your hands—a habit you picked up from Spencer. So you walk through the door, and you close it, and you take off your shoes and you hang up your coat and he calls hey from the couch.
You don’t respond. Or do you? You’re not sure. But you’re washing your hands, and then as you go to dry them, you notice your coffee mug from this morning, still sitting on the counter.
I should wash that, you think, and so you pick it up and you take it back to the sink.
Sink. Sink equals washing hands.
You’re washing your hands again.
What did you mean to do?
Dishes? Right. The mug is… gone, seemingly, but there’s a knife in the sink, too—you pick it up, and you’re about to rinse it off, and then it’s clattering from your hands. Somebody is pulling you back from the sink.
Someone is saying your name a whole bunch of times.
You turn, blinking, and there’s Spencer, glowing softly in the yellow light of the kitchen.
He looks so concerned. He strokes your cheek but you feel it less than you seem to observe it from a distance. Says your name one more time, eyes softening a little.
“What?” You murmur, as if in a trance.
He blinks.
“You dropped a mug. You’re bleeding.”
Well, that’s news to you. It seems like a preposterous claim, but you look down, and sure enough—that coffee mug which had disappeared from the sink is in pieces on the floor and the tile is smeared in red.
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? Are you okay?”
“I’m bleeding.”
His brows furrow.
“Yes, I see that. Do you remember breaking the mug?”
The mug. Oh, yeah. Now that you think about it—yeah, you do remember dropping it. Watching it break into a hundred pieces. That noise, of dishes breaking and clattering—suddenly you inhale deeply.
“I broke it,” you whisper. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I broke it—”
The memory of the sound is cacophonous, deafening and completely inescapable.
“Hey, hey. You’re okay. Nobody’s upset at you. It’s just a mug.”
But that doesn’t make it any easier to lower your shoulders from where they’ve tensed to your ears, because once a dish breaks, there’s always a second of terrible, tremulous silence, before it explodes and somebody is screaming, painting every wall in the house with their rage. You squeeze your eyes shut. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, you whisper, wordlessly, just as you did so many years ago.
“It’s just a mug,” he says again like that will help. “I’m gonna clean it up, okay? It’s gonna be like it never even happened.”
And that does provide some comfort—the fanciful idea of undoing. Of closing your eyes against the something terrible and wishing it away like you’ve always done and having it actually be gone when you open them. Spencer must be magic.
“I’m gonna clean it up, but I want to make sure your foot is okay first. Is that okay?”
You take a deep, shuddering sniffle and nod, but that warm fog is pouring down the corridors in your brain like smoke in a maze. It obscures everything. Your feelings. The pain. The fear, thank god. There must be shards in your foot. Spencer apologizes from below as he peels off your bloodied sock, where he’s pulling the first aid kid from under the sink and working on you, but you don’t feel the pain. You don’t feel anything except the pressure of the bandage around your foot as he stands.
He says your name again.
“Hm?”
You’re scaring him. That much is evident from the look on his face. You wish you could stop, but it’s like you’re in a dream again. The brief clarity that moment of panic had provided is gone.
“Can we just—can we go sit down?” He asks, already putting a hand on your waist. Sure. Why not. He supports your weight as you hobble around the broken mess on the ground and all the way to the couch. Oh. It’s too soft. Too forgiving. You sink into it too deeply, like you’re being swallowed, or breathed into a pair of monstrous lungs.
Spencer is crouching in front of you, pushing hair from your face.
“What’s going on, baby?”
“Nothing,” you murmur. “I’m fine. I just… dropped… a mug.”
“You didn’t remember or notice that you dropped the mug until I pointed it out. You washed your hands twice. You were about to try and wash a knife without a sponge.”
“No, I’m just… I’m tired. It’s…”
You trail off again, any further attempt at a meager excuse walled off a thick swirling fog. It’s like you’re trying to walk but you can’t see more than a few feet ahead of you. You can hardly think, let alone speak.
Spencer frowns deeper.
“It’s what?”
You pause for a long time.
“Um… Don’t remember.”
“You’re scaring me,” he whispers, and again you wonder why, only you can’t really wonder at the moment. “Did you hit your head? Where did you come from?”
“When?” You ask.
“Just now. When you came home, where were you coming from?”
“Diane. I was, um—I was at therapy.”
“No stops on your way home?”
“No,” you say. You’re pretty sure. You actually have no memory of what happened between leaving Diane’s office and walking through the front door.
“Did you feel okay before you started therapy?”
“… Yeah.”
“So this started after?”
“What?”
“Your inability to put a sentence together, honey. You’re really out of it.”
“Oh.” Your eyes sting. It feels like an insult. “‘M fine.”
He reaches up to cup your cheeks.
“What did you and Diane talk about?” He asks gently, a little less anxiously, like he’s figured out what’s wrong with you.
At this, your mouth goes dry. What was before swirling fog has become a hulking black wall of solid obsidian. There’s nothing.
“Um…”
“Can you remember?”
Something hot traces the length of your cheek from your eye.
“No,” you whisper, sounding utterly distraught. “No, I can’t remember. I can't remember anything.”
More tears are coming now. How could you forget? You’re trying so hard to remember. How did you even get home?
“Okay. That’s okay, angel. You don’t have to remember.”
“I’m sorry. Something’s… wrong…”
“Don’t be sorry. I think you just got really overwhelmed at therapy and now your brain is trying to protect you. Can you tell me what you’re feeling in your body?”
Your… your body?
Nothing. It feels like nothing.
“Why don’t you try and take a deep breath? I’ll do it with you.” He brings your hand to his chest, and your finger twitches against the hard abalone button. His chest expands, and you try to do the same, letting the cool rush of air down your throat. The room spins.
“Woah,” you mutter, suddenly hyper aware of your breathing.
“Slow down. We’re okay. You’re safe.”
He leads you through a few more deep breaths and you manage to get to a place where they don’t feel so precarious and unsteady. Your head sparkles with fresh oxygen and everything is too much. After a moment you’re settling your elbows on your knees and burying your face in your hands. Spencer rubs soothing lines up and down the side of your legs.
“How do you feel now?”
“Not good,” you whisper. “My foot hurts.”
He hums.
“Technically I shouldn’t let you take Ibuprofen because it’s a blood thinner and you have an open wound, but I think it’ll be okay just this once. You okay if I go get some?”
You nod, rubbing at your eyes with your palms until you see stars. The brain fog hasn’t lifted, but it’s thinned considerably.
He comes back a few moments later with two round pills and a glass of cold water. The shock of it in your hand zaps your brain and you almost drop it but Spencer seems to have anticipated this so he hadn’t let go of the glass yet. He administers the pills once your hand is steady and you take them, feeling the river of ice down your throat and into the pool of your stomach. It seems to travel outward, extending into every reach of your body, bringing the sensorial world back to the forefront of your consciousness. Spencer must notice the goosebumps because he’s unfolding a blanket and wrapping it around you tightly, before pulling you into his arms where he sits and tucking your head beneath his chin. You let your eyes flutter shut, embracing the warmth, the pressure, the soft fabric against your skin.
“I don’t know what happened,” you murmur. “I don’t… feel right.”
“That’s okay. I know it feels scary, but nothing’s wrong. I think you maybe talked about something that’s really hard to talk about when you weren’t quite ready. Sometimes when that happens, your brain tries to protect you from perceived threats by dissociating. It makes thinking straight really difficult.”
You frown.
“How did I… How’d I get home?”
He strokes your hair.
“The parts of your brain responsible for procedural memory aren’t as impacted during episodes of dissociation. But it’s actually not uncommon for people who don’t have PTSD to forget their commutes. It’s called highway hypnosis.”
“I don’t… I don’t have PTSD,” you insist. When Spencer doesn’t answer for a long moment, only continues stroking your hair, you swallow.
“We don’t have to talk about this right now, angel.”
“Okay,” you whisper, like a child too weary to argue. He kisses your head.
“It might be good for you to take a nap,” Spencer says, like he can read your mind. “I bet you’re tired.”
“How’d you know?”
“Because I know everything,” he says simply—a line borrowed from you. “Here’s what we’re gonna do, okay? I’m gonna order from Tandoori, and you’ll fall asleep, and I’ll wake you up when it’s time to eat, and we can watch your show.”
You smile despite yourself.
“So assertive.”
“I’m thinking I can get away with it right now.”
He’s only teasing. You cuddle closer. He holds you tighter.
“I’m the boss. And I want Thai food.”
“There she is,” he murmurs, rubbing your back over the blanket. The warm saccharine sweetness of his tone dizzies you, muddles your mind more pleasantly this time. Your heart rate slows. Your breathing goes back on autopilot. The rise and fall of his chest rocks you like the sea. Just at the cusp of sleep, he whispers one more promise. Of safety. Of love.
When you wake up, you’ve forgotten all about it.
But there's pad Thai on the table, and the kitchen is devoid of blood or broken glass.
Hey everyone, I’m back with another monthly challenge! For the months of November AND December, I am formally challenging any willing writer to take a stab at writing fanfiction including a Wrong/Mistaken Recipient using their choice of Criminal Minds characters! Reader, Original Character, Character/Characterships, Gen/Platonicfics are allowed! Please check out the Rules below the Keep Reading.
There are a LOT of prompts below the cut, so keep going!
(**This is NOT a request list for me—this is a prompt list of other writers! Feel free to request from someone else, and be sure to let them know about the challenge!)
SFW Prompts 🙈
The BAU arrests the wrong person
The flower delivery guy really messes things up
Character grabs the wrong person to kiss at NYE
Character leaves a voicemail for the wrong person
Character grabs the wrong person’s hand in public
Character receives an awkward text from an unknown number (or one they haven’t spoken to in a long time)
Character throws a snowball at their friend… but misses (and hits their crush/an attractive stranger instead)
Talking to different people on multiple phone lines can get really confusing
Somehow Character got on someone's super silly Christmas Card mailing list
There’s a mixup of notebooks and Character finds writings/drawings... of them
Character receives a package they weren't expecting and finds an even more unexpected item inside
The team recounts all the times Penelope said something inappropriate to the wrong person on the phone
Character has been sending messages to their loved one after they passed (they never expected a response)
Character pulls a prank against a fun-loving coworker, but their significantly less playful coworker triggers it
Character leaves an anonymous letter confessing their love, but the recipient insists it can’t be for them
Character enlists Penelope’s help in hacking into someone’s device to delete an unintended message
Keep Reading for more Prompts and the Challenge Rules!
Dialogue Prompts 🙉
“Oh, God. Wrong house.”
“New phone, who’s this?”
“So… who is (intended recipient name)?”
“Baby, I can be whoever you want me to be.”
“Any chance we can pretend you didn’t see that?”
“No matter what you do, do NOT open that.” “Too late.”
“I’m not complaining, but I don’t think that was for me.”
“What’s the point of the unsend button if it tells them that I unsent something?!”
“This is definitely the wrong number but, seriously, did you think that line would work?”
“I actually can come to the phone right now with a very special message that your mother is a—!”
NSFW Prompts 🙊
Character is a stripper at the wrong party
Character receives scandalous selfies from a coworker
Characters buy books together but take the wrong ones home (at least one of them is erotica)
Character wanted to gift a friend a sex toy as a joke and they used the same wrapping paper for their crush’s gift
Character sends their friend a detailed review of their recent sexual encounter… and accidentally sends it to the person they’re reviewing
There’s confusion and two BAU members end up with the same hotel room (Character walks in to find their coworker completely nude)
Character is waiting for an unsub in a confessional booth (the unsub doesn't show, but someone else confesses unholy thoughts)
Rules
Your fic can be a Reader insert, an Original Character, a character/character ship, a platonic ship, or a Gen fic. It can feature any Criminal Minds character. AUs and crossovers are more than welcome.
Tag me in the fic, or send the link to me in a Direct Message. It can be already written, or you can write it for the challenge - I collect both! You can also tag “#mentioningmargins”
The fic can be any genre, but ONLY send me smut if your bio states you are 18+. I DO NOT WANT smut written by minors. Ever. At all. I will check. Platonic ships and pure, fluffy fics are 100% allowed. Please also include some indication of rating if it is NSFW.
Please include Content Warnings and a one-sentence Summary of the fic in your post. For xReader fics, PLEASE specify if your reader is Female, Male, or Gender Neutral.
Have fun!
The Masterlist of fics will be posted around December 30 If you finish after that, no problem - just send me the fic once you’re done and I’ll add it after-the-fact!
Feel free to message me if you want help developing a plot, have any questions, or just want to gush about your fic. I’m happy to help, and I’m happy you’re here ❤️
it's the morning after. spencer reid suspects you’re left with some doubts after losing your virginity to him. he has to figure out why—which is hard when you're keeping secrets.
series masterlist
this series is 18+
warnings/tags: fem!reader, blood related to losing virginity (dramatized for the drama duh), super vague allusions to the BAU being hungover, mild blasphemy if anyone even cares, pondering god bc am I really a fanfic writer if I don’t get a little religious w it, emily AND hotch are here and nobody knows why pls don't pay attention to that bc we are imagining like season 11/12 spencer and I'm inconsistent w who is unit chief in this series apparently, spencer slut lore, spencer emotional wounds lore, Spencer is a traumatic situationship survivor
a/n: DADDYS HOMEEEEE (me and dybmn not spencer) anyway missed these little guys and am happy to be writing for them again!! idk what my upload schedule will becoming back to this but pls lmk what u think of this part, I have no idea how you will respond but I'm being brave and ily
Friday morning Spencer comes into the office fifteen minutes late (he tried his best), in yesterday’s suit (everything in his go-bag had been too wrinkled), hair messy (no doubt from your fingers), coffee cold (he’s exhausted) and overall, in an excellent mood.
The rest of the team isn’t faring quite as well—Spencer gathers they stayed at the bar celebrating Derek’s birthday a lot later than he had. It shows through sallow skin and dark circles and the grimaces he receives on the way to his desk that are probably supposed to approximate good morning’s.
Honestly, he doesn’t mind the dull mood—he doesn’t need the teasing and the prying questions that would be sure to come if his co-workers were at peak performance and were able to put together his unusually perky demeanor and disheveled appearance. At least Prentiss doesn’t appear to be paying him any mind. She’s always the one who can read him like an open book and has no shame in doing so aloud. Echoes from years of, ‘so who was the lucky girl, last night, Reid?’ Still ring through his mind and it’s like he can feel her finger prodding at his side.
The Emily of it all makes him smile, though the rest of the memory leaves a metal tang in his mouth. Back in those days, there were sometimes a lot of girls, but even then he was consciously aware he wasn’t necessarily doing something he enjoyed. He spent a lot of time, actually, staring at his bedroom ceiling, psychoanalyzing himself. Repetition compulsion. The insatiable desire to repeat or reenact emotionally painful experiences. Maybe he thought if he could teach himself to subsist off of emotionless hookups, he could in some way heal from his experience with Elle. Though, he’s hesitant to think of it now as healing—it’s not like he didn’t know what he was doing when a few nights after she said I don’t feel the same I’m sorry he opened up his front door for her. It’s not like he didn’t know what he was doing every time after that. So, maybe heal isn’t the right word, when one doesn’t have the right to be injured. Or when the injuries are, in a manner of speaking, self-inflicted. At the very least he could tell himself that this time around, meaningless sex was a choice he was making for himself. Spencer hates when things just happen to him.
But you—you’re different. You were a complete surprise. At first, a cute and unexpected complication. After a few painful and short-lived attempts at real relationships, Spencer decided he was simply not to be trusted with emotional intimacy of any kind, including that which inevitably develops from physical intimacy, and would resign himself to a life of celibacy. He tried not to like you, but you were just so damn likable. Magnetic, to use a trite and perfectly honest turn of phrase. All that to say: he doesn’t regret you at all. There is no filter of putrid shame or anguish over his memories of last night.
Just you. Perfect. Starlit. Glowing softly around the edges like you’re not even real.
I love you I love you I love you. A hymn with no melody. You, always reminding him exactly why he is decidedly not a man of faith. At least, not in the typical sense of the word.
How God became the idol and not Mary is lost on him. That’s why, Spencer supposes, tapping an eraser on his desk, marriage and sex were forbidden for so many ecclesiastics. After all, if they knew what it was to love a woman, specifically to love you, he doubts they’d feel like spending much time in the pulpit. Love. Humans had that long before they had any gods. It’s primeval. It’s the most natural manifestation of devotion and worship. It will always have come first. Isn’t it a better kind of religion when a man realizes he can kneel in front of a woman rather than an altar?
A heavy hand falling on his shoulder jolts him from his theological musings—which are in all practicality useless. What’s that saying about blasphemous thinking on the FBI’s dime? Right. There isn’t one.
“I’m scared to ask,” Morgan says as Spencer jumps slightly in his chair.
“What?” He mumbles, looking up from the document he’d only sort of been reading.
Morgan just looks at him, strong brows furrowed and a ditch between them, angles his head and glances to the side as if Spencer is missing the obvious. He almost follows Derek’s eye-line. When that doesn’t work, Derek just says your name. Like your status is somehow in question.
“Did you two work things out, or not? It looked pretty bad when you guys were leaving last night.”
People often misunderstand an eidetic memory. It’s not like things can’t slip his mind—Spencer can actually be quite forgetful. It’s made worse by the fact that last night at the bar feels like months ago. For a moment, he has no idea what Derek is referring to.
“Oh. Oh! Right, we—right. Yeah, we, uh—we worked it out.” Before Derek has a chance to read his face, no doubt as incriminating as his fumbled speech and an ill-timed throat clearing, he turns back to his paperwork. “Thanks for keeping an eye on her at the bar. I appreciate that.”
It’s quiet for a moment, and Spencer’s lips twist as he can feel the incoming inappropriate comment.
“Is that the same suit you were wearing last night?” Morgan quips, his wide grin audible. Spencer can practically hear the cartoon gleam of his friend’s bleached teeth.
“No.”
“You dog.” Derek is still smiling as he claps Spencer’s shoulder again. “What did you say to her that worked so well?”
Spencer clears his throat again and tries to look extremely involved in logging onto his computer, speaking quickly as if he’s beyond disinterested and can’t wait for the exchange to be over.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m actually trying to work so if you wouldn’t mind going back to your desk that would be great.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll let you work. But I see you, pretty boy.”
Spencer tries not to blush like a teenager as he refuses to look up.
Naturally the rest of the day is a slow descent into dread and madness as all those good feelings with which Spencer had started his morning begin to harden into something much worse, chilled by your lack of response to the text he sent you earlier. Which was essentially a rehashing of the note he left on your bedside table.
Maybe it was too much. It should’ve been one or the other, but not both. He’s overwhelmed you.
Okay, so maybe this is what religion is for. A last ditch effort when you can’t talk to your girlfriend so you have to try talking to God.
But Spencer knows you, and he knows something is wrong. You wouldn’t just ice him out so blatantly if everything was okay. He catches himself glancing up toward Hotch’s window to see if the blinds are drawn, and considers faking an illness to get out of work early and go check on you. But he powers through the remaining hour and a half that he is obligated to stay at work, he bounces a pencil between his fingers, drums at his desk, and gets nothing else done. As soon as 4:59 rolls around, he’s out.
Spencer can hear shuffling on the other side of your door as he stands in the hallway. A pot clatters. The walls hum with the rush of water through the pipes to your sink. He knocks, relieved that you’re okay and at the same time struggling with that weight on his chest—something cold that leans over his shoulders and whispers into his ear—so she just didn’t want to talk to you.
Suddenly all sound from inside your unit ceases. For a few long seconds, Spencer’s confusion only grows exponentially.
“Who is it?” You finally call, voice wavering. Also odd. Usually you just open the door.
“Um… Spencer?”
“As in my boyfriend Spencer?”
He frowns, bottom lip jutting out ever so slightly as he tries to decipher your sudden paranoia. “I hope so?”
The click and jingle of several locks precipitates your much-anticipated reveal.
“Come in,” you say breathlessly, more harried than usual and not giving him the tender greeting he’s selfishly become accustomed to—barely even giving him a second to look at you. But he steps inside, watching on in concern as you do up every single lock—the one on the knob, the deadbolt, even the chain. Is this really all because of his little comment last night about anyone being able to get in? He certainly hopes not. He didn’t mean to terrify you.
When you finally turn, he takes stock of your appearance. Big hoodie, pajama pants patterned in little hearts. Hair pulled back hastily. Your skin is sort of dull where you normally glow. But you’re beautiful, like always. It always aches just a little bit to look at you. Spencer’s always been like that. Going breathless at a particularly good piece of art or pretty girl. Like yourself. Mostly you.
You quickly turn to hurry back into the kitchen. “I was trying to make dinner, I—”
“Hold on,” he interrupts, stopping you with a hand on your stomach that is so non-demanding it’s really mostly a suggestion. He tries to clear his head, though you make it hard. “You didn’t talk to me all day. Not that you have to, but… I was worried.”
You glance at the floor and mumble, “I lost my phone,” with so much embarrassment he believes you’re telling the truth. “Did you, um—did you text me?”
Insecurity. Spencer knows well what it looks like on you. He softens. You weren’t ignoring him—but you’d been left in a vulnerable state without any ability to contact him or anyone. That couldn’t have been comfortable.
“Of course I did.” He pauses to observe you. Still anxious. Still prepared to run at any second. Something, and he’s not sure what, did a number on you today. Maybe it’s sheer exhaustion, maybe it was the anxiety of not having your phone. But he has to figure out what it is so he can undo it. “What? What’s wrong?”
He watches your breathing pause—watches your eyes gloss over with tears and a frown contort your features. Oh, god. He’s done something terribly wrong. It’s been thirty seconds and he’s done something wrong.
“Can we sit down? I don’t feel very good.”
“Yeah. Yeah, we can. Whatever you need.”
You cast a baleful look at him and now he has to wonder what that means. Spencer sets his bag on a pulled out dining chair and follows you to the couch where you settle on opposite sides—you’re curled up in the far corner, hugging a pillow to your chest with your legs folded in front of you. Spencer’s heart is beating fast. He doesn’t know what’s going on with you and he can’t figure it out just by looking and you don’t seem eager to tell him.
He’s exhausted all his typical ways of collecting information, and now he’s at a loss.
Eventually, the anxiety comes bubbling up.
“Please talk to me,” he pleads. And you do. Almost instantly, like he stepped on some sort of landmine.
“I know it’s my own fault for not having my phone on me and not being able to see your texts, but it really sucks that I had to find out from my creepy neighbor that you snuck out in the middle of the night without saying goodbye.”
The whiplash is so strong it’s almost a broken neck. Spencer reels, frowning deeply as he tries to process your impromptu speech, the sudden confrontation. What creepy neighbor?
“I… didn’t. I went to grab my stuff from the car around one, but I came right back. I left at 7:30. You don’t remember me saying goodbye?”
Your brow furrows, and your eyes dart over the design on the rug like you’re watching memories go by. He sees it in your eyes when you recall some hazy image of him holding your face, kissing your cheek more times than was necessary and whispering sweet things against your lips before he had to go. You shrink into the couch, clearly struggling under the combined weight of relief and embarrassment.
“I forgot. I thought… he said…”
A moment passes and it’s clear you’ve abandoned the sentence. Spencer is concerned about this shadowy male figure who put malicious untruths into your head. He slides his hand under yours and twines your fingers together. Finally, finally you meet his gaze.
“Someone made you believe I left without saying goodbye.”
And he almost wishes you weren’t looking at him as more tears pool before falling down your cheeks. You nod, and don’t make a sound.
“No, honey. I didn’t do that. I’m sorry that’s what you’ve been thinking all day.”
“I was worried that you… or that I wasn’t…”
His chest aches. You’d woken up alone, no recollection of his goodbye, and without the comfort of even a text.
“You didn’t see my note?”
The way you look at him then is heartbreaking. Eyes wide and wet and sad, lip trembling.
“You left a note?”
Murphy’s Law. Anything that can go wrong, will.
It must’ve fallen off the bedside table, or maybe he just hadn’t positioned it obviously enough.
A lost phone, a missed note, and not even a memory of his departure. While none of these things are verifiably Spencer’s fault, he feels so, so guilty.
“I did,” Spencer says gently, scooting closer and pulling you into him, head pressed to his shoulder as you try not to cry, and he rubs your back slowly.
Your sulky words are muffled by his shirt. “I didn’t see it. What did it say?”
“A lot of very nice things about you,” he whispers. Spencer thought maybe he could get away with giving you all the sincere compliments you can’t accept face to face through a note you could read while he wasn’t around. That way you couldn’t refute them or stop him. It was a good plan.
He feels the sigh of relief leaving your body against his neck.
“I didn’t know.”
“I know. I’m sorry. That’s not… I should’ve just stayed. This is my fault.”
You keep your cheek pressed to his shoulder as you speak.
“It’s not. You have a job. A really important job. You can’t just call out whenever I want you around.”
Logically he knows you’re right, but he doesn’t always think logically around you.
“I could’ve made it work. I could’ve come in late, or the team could’ve called me if there was a case, which there wasn’t—”
“Spencer, it’s okay. It’s not your fault. Don’t worry about it.”
He pulls back slightly, frowning at your tone. You do look relieved, much less plagued than you’d been when he arrived minutes ago, but something heavy still weighs you down. The burden of it darkens your eyes and dulls your expression. When he cups your cheek, you glance up at him, and then away once more.
He speaks softly. “Is that all you wanted to tell me?”
Again he earns a moment of your eye contact, but it’s fleeting. He watches the words spin around your head as you try to figure out what to do with them—and then choose to remain silent.
There is in fact something you’re keeping from him.
Spencer hates to use work tactics on you, but he doesn’t speak either, hoping that you’ll feel compelled to fill the silence with the truth. Knowing how you’re not entirely comfortable with quiet.
And you try, lips parting and the sound delayed as you wrestle with something you clearly don’t know how to talk about.
“I… my neighbor,” you say, frowning like you don’t quite know why you’re speaking. “The one who told me he saw you leaving in the middle of the night. He also—he said…”
Spencer brushes hair away from your cheek with a thumb, stroking the high point in gentle passes as your words taper off. Now that he’s thinking about it, he did encounter a man in a dumpy robe standing in the courtyard and smoking a cigarette when he left you tangled in sheets and dozing contentedly to get his bag from the car. In fact, they rode back up to your floor in the elevator in mostly awkward silence. Spencer was sure his outfit told a story—shirt untucked and hastily buttoned only partway, no belt, shoes barely tied, duffel slung over his shoulder—he wasn’t really expecting to run into anyone at such an hour, to be honest, but he hadn’t particularly cared what this man thought of him, so it didn’t cross his mind again.
Now he remembers.
Long night, huh? I remember those days.
It was an inappropriate comment, but given his job he’s used to ignoring those. Mostly his mind had been preoccupied with the idea of returning to you, who gave him such a warm and sleepy welcome when he climbed carefully back into your arms several minutes later that it was like he’d never known anyone else at all.
Now he resents that he hadn’t said anything, he hates the idea that you spoke to this man and he said something to upset you and Spencer wasn’t there. Usually he tries not a judge a book by its cover (metaphorically, of course) but he’s been around enough bad men to know when he’s looking at one. Last night he hadn’t even been cognizant enough to realize they got off on the same floor.
“What did he say, angel?” Spencer whispers, incapable of being anything but soft with you at the moment. Even though he senses something a lot like a tide of preemptive anger rising in his chest, painted over with layers of anxiety and guilt. He should’ve found a way to stay with you this morning.
You sniffle and let your head fall again, forehead resting against his collar. Instinctively his hand slides to the back of your neck and even at the awkward angle he finds a way to press his lips to yours hair. “Can we talk about it later? I don’t feel good.”
If it’s making you this uncomfortable, Spencer really wants to know what passed between you and this neighbor. In fact, he’d be willing to bet a lot of your strange behavior this evening stems from something that occurred which you don’t feel comfortable telling him yet. But he manages to bite back anymore questions. He doesn’t want to make you feel interrogated.
“Yeah, you mentioned that,” he says eventually, kindly, hand tracing down the length of your back and up again. “Why don’t you feel good?”
He doesn’t miss the way you reach up to discreetly wipe your cheek. But he won’t make you talk about anything you don’t want to talk about until you’re ready, and it seems like you’re already having a rough day. Which is not what he wanted. This is so far from what he wanted for you. He’s cursing himself for how he handled this whole situation.
“Um, I just… I don’t know. I feel… bad. I’m sorry I’m being so weird.”
“You’re not being weird, honey. You had a hard day. You’re having a normal reaction to an abnormal set of circumstances.”
You sit up, sniffing and wiping your tears like you can just make the whole thing go away.
“No, I am. I am. It’s all okay now, right? So I don’t know why I feel like this. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
He watches helplessly. “Nothing is wrong with you. We’ve… it’s been a big couple of days. Mostly good, but I think you’re probably really tired. Emotionally and physically.”
You bury your face in your hands and nod silently. He still feels like he’s shooting in the dark, but you’re not entirely comforted yet, and it’s killing him.
“Whatever you’re feeling is okay. If this is… about last night, or this morning, or something entirely different—regardless of what it’s about, you’re not going to be… in trouble with me if you’re having complicated feelings. And you can talk to me. But it doesn’t have to be right now. We don’t have to figure it out all at once, okay?”
You press the heels of your palms into your eyes, and for a moment, his words sink into silence. When you do raise your head, nodding, the evidence of your discomfort is all over your face—reddened eyes, cheeks polished with wiped tears. But you take a deep breath and try to project whatever it is you think he wants to see.
The back of your hand is soft under his thumb as he sweeps it, as if he could draw forth more information that way. People speak when they’re ready.
“Is there anything I can do?” He tries, all ramped brow and soft spoken.
You’re looking at where he’s tracing swirls on your hand as you swallow and blink the last of your tears away.
“Um… you can say no, but—do you think it would be okay for you to maybe stay again tonight?”
Spencer sucks in a breath, painfully aware that he’s about to let you down.
“I… I haven’t been home in a week. I’ve been wearing this suit for two days straight and I don’t think I would want to share a bed with me again until I shower.” He watches you wilt and lifts a hand to stroke your hair. “But I do want to spend time with you… do you maybe want to come stay with me instead? No pressure—”
“Okay. Yes. Is that okay?”
Spencer’s brow knits. You seem even more enthused about the idea of going to his apartment, like now that the opportunity has presented itself you can’t wait to get out. Maybe you have some sort of black mold problem.
“Of course. Do you wanna grab a few things and then we can go?”
“Um—I also haven’t showered today. Do you mind waiting?”
“Sure. Or you could use mine. With supervision, this time.”
Spencer is attempting to make a joke about your unplanned (and unmoderated) stay at his apartment last week after he left—but looking at your face now he’s wondering if he touched a nerve.
“Like… one at a time? Or…”
He thought maybe you’d be more comfortable around him after last night—and it’s not like he hadn’t seen you naked before then, either.
“Do you wanna do it one at a time?” He asks gently.
There’s this sparkly sort of longing in your eyes that he’s seen before, but you tamp it down like always. You’re so cautious. About everything. Even the things you’re curious about. It’s sweet and a little sad.
“I’ve never… showered with anyone.”
The corner of Spencer’s mouth twitches as he pushes hair over your shoulder. “I know. You don’t have to. We could save like 100 gallons of water depending on how long your showers typically last, but—”
“Spencer—”
“Sorry, sorry—I didn’t—I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not trying to pressure you. You absolutely can take your own shower. You can go first so you get the hot water.”
“No,” you laugh, and it’s like a sparkling cloud of gold has settled around you, fractals bouncing off the shine of your cheeks and eyes—the sound of your laughter, the look of it, is such beautiful relief he can’t believe how good it feels, but it fades from you quickly. “It sounds… I think I want to, I just… I don’t wanna, like… do… anything.”
For a split second your veiled language mystifies him and then he realizes what you’re trying to say without saying. Something has changed since yesterday, when you brazenly referred to it as fucking, and today, when you can’t even say sex. He’s gotten as far as it being something your creepy neighbor said. Maybe. He needs to know what.
But that’s not the topic at hand.
“We don’t have to. I didn’t mean to imply that we would do anything like that. I don’t expect anything from you.”
You swallow.
“Okay. I wasn’t sure.”
About what?
He says your name. No response.
“Can you look at me, please?”
It takes you a moment, and your head raises like you might need some oil in your hinges, but eventually you manage. Spencer hopes the way he’s rubbing your leg is comforting.
“You know I’m never, ever going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, right?”
To his horror, your answer isn’t an immediate and resounding yes. Instead you look back down and cover his hand with your own, fiddling nervously with his fingers.
Eventually, you reply, “Yeah… I know. I just thought… I’m not sure. Maybe it’s supposed to be different now.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Nothing has to be different. We’re still doing everything on your schedule, okay? And as for the next few days, at least—I think it might be a good idea to take sex off the table altogether.”
Your eyes narrow and you hesitate. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want you worrying about it. And I don’t think it would feel good for you right now. I think there are things we need to talk about, but… we’ve probably tried enough for a while, hm?”
You give him a shy nod and hum your agreement. For a moment he lets his hand linger on your leg and then pulls it back.
“Okay. Do you want my help packing a bag, or should I wait out here?”
“You can wait. It should only take a minute.” You pause, halfway up to look pensive. “Um, Spencer—do you think it would be okay if maybe I… if I stayed tonight and tomorrow? I just—I wanna get out of here, for a bit.”
He frowns but doesn’t hesitate. “Of course. Can I ask why?”
“It’s just… suffocating sometimes,” you call as you turn and hurry down the hallway to the bedroom. “Feels like my neighbors are on top of me, like they’re… breathing down my neck, half the time.”
Sure, bigger apartments exist—but it’s not like you’re in a studio. And you’ve never mentioned feeling that way before. That bad feeling is starting to come back—like you’re not telling him something he needs to know. But is it worse to let you deal with it yourself until you’re ready to talk or to force it from you?
A few minutes later you return, a duffel of your own over your shoulder and full to bursting.
“So I’m an idiot. My phone was literally in the pocket of my jeans on the floor.” You drop the bag as you bend down by the door to pull on your favorite slippers. “Oh—I think I forgot my charger, can you grab it? It’s by my bed.”
Spencer of course obliges, and is secretly pleased to be in your room again, in the light this time, so he can see better. It’s sweet. The pictures on the walls, the plants and the knickknacks and the sticky notes scrawled with messy reminders on every surface and the sweater hanging over the back of a chair—the one you’d been wearing at the cafe all those months ago—it all feels so you. He wonders why the two of you don’t spend more time here.
He lets himself linger for only a minute before remembering his task, but as he reaches down to unplug your charger, whatever dopey smile he’d been wearing evaporates. The sheets have been stripped from your bed, and he can see why—there’s a striking stain of dried blood, and several surrounding dots, soaked into the mattress. Not much, but enough to make him feel horrendously guilty. He cringes, imagining what it must’ve been like to wake up all alone to nothing but your own blood. Poor girl. Of course he’d noticed some, last night when he was doing his best at cleaning you up, but it had been dark, and he was exhausted, and he hadn’t done enough.
“Where’d your sheets go, baby?” He asks once back by the front door with his own bag on his shoulder, setting a gentle hand on your lower back and holding out your charger for you. You jump slightly, and he makes circles on your back, wishing there was something he could do to settle you.
“Oh! They—they got ruined. I threw them out. It’s fine. I have others.”
So you didn’t have enough energy this morning to walk a few feet to your shower, but stripping your bed, getting dressed, and walking down to the trash chute at the end of the hall had been top of your priority list.
You swallow as he undoes the locks and holds the door open for you, and pretend like you’re not doing surveillance to either side as you stand in the hallway, locking your door again like you can’t get out of here fast enough.
Spencer casts a sidelong glance at you and wonders if you’re intentionally avoiding eye contact. He tries not to think like a profiler. He tries not to assign meaning to your actions, but he can’t help it. He can’t not notice.
He can’t not worry.
And he can’t not wonder what you’re not telling him.
in which you are at the age you never thought you'd live to.
genre: hurt/comfort + fluff!
tags: established relationship. (very brief) mentions of r not eating. depression. non sexual nudity. mention of a past suicide attempt. reader is codependent on spencer #anxiousattachment!! mini argument not really because he loves you a lot!!! please know your triggers ♡
word count: 2.2k
a/n: this was a vent write. LOL! i think i switch tenses a lot in this? i tried to fix it. this is why we don't write fanfiction while we're crying!!! i love u i love u i love u and i am so so glad you are the age that you are!! continue to grow please!! life will become beautiful!!!
Depression is a funny thing.
Sometimes you are forgetting there has ever been a version of you out there that fantasised about death and longed for an escape from this world you deemed so cruel, so invasive. Other times, you are sat naked on the cold floor of your bathroom rocking back and forth, clawing at your skin and ripping hair out of your scalp because you are sobbing so ferociously. The world spinning around you and your cries, so violent, are making you lightheaded and you wonder if you pass out here if anyone will ever find you.
Clearly, tonight, you are the latter.
It started as a small pit in your stomach that morning, that you braved through and ignored to the best of your ability, even as you said gentle 'no thank you's' to food offered by your co-workers and forced your brain to focus on work and not the never-ending abyss of dread in your abdomen. Then, it became a tear or two on your way home, that you vehemently wiped away and pretended was never there because it couldn't be.
Then you were showering to get your mind off things — a stupid decision, really. For your brain was latching on to every awful emotion it had felt thus far today, and you were stepping out of the shower with an even heavier heart, and your hands were wrapping around your now goosebump riddled body, as you were sinking to the floor in a ball.
And maybe hours passed by you. Maybe days — it certainly felt that way. Maybe it was only a mere five minutes. But your loud sobs felt like they took an achingly long time to slow and quiet down, until they were falling into ugly sniffles of the snot on your face, and a raging headache behind your eyes.
Loud sobs — scream sobs, really — had a lot of disadvantages. The aftermath feeling of embarrassment of screaming at your brain that refused to simply shut up, the scratch at your throat from every sound you ripped from it. The audio block it gave you from the rest of the world. For you truly were in your own universe when you were howling alone in the comfort of your bathroom walls.
So much so, that the familiar sound of a door opening and closing, and a bag being placed down by the side of it, went entirely unnoticed to you. Footsteps against your apartment's wooden flooring weren't picked up, nor were the first two knocks on your bathroom door. By the third, you were blubbering through saliva and snot, and you had heard it. Followed by a very gentle calling of your name, that had your heart clenching within your chest for a new reason.
He had said he was coming home tomorrow. Which almost always meant he wouldn't be home for another three days, and so, in your mind, you thought bawling that night could be a secret kept between you and your tiles.
Apparently not.
He called your name again when you didn't reply, an added hint of desperation in his voice. Trembling, you stood, your limbs feeling as though they were creaking while you straightened them out. And you didn't bother about the towel sitting in a crumpled heap on the floor, nor the pile of your clean clothes sitting on the countertop. In fact, you didn't bother about anything as a shaking hand twisted the doorknob and pulled it open.
In an instant, his worried frown deepened, and eyes that might usually drink in the sight of your naked body beautifully, now didn't wander further than the scarlet scratch marks along your neck — blood vessels risen to the surface from how fragile that part of you was. He exhaled, and took a hesitating step towards you. One you welcomed by remaining planted in your spot — you didn't know if you could move, though.
"Can I ask what's wrong, or do you simply want a hug?"
Both, you wanted to say. Both, but also neither.
You didn’t say that. Instead, you said, "Hug."
He hardly took a second to register what you'd said before his arms were wrapping around you. If he found the slightly damp state of your skin annoying, he didn't comment on it. He didn't say much at all, as he enveloped you into his body, a hand securing itself on the back of your head, and his chin resting atop your head.
Water dripped uncomfortably to the floor, splattering on the tiles and his shoes, being the only sound aside from your irregular hiccups and sniffles. His button-up was wet from your tears and your body, and you could almost hear his complaints about it, if this were any other day.
Minutes passed, and even though you didn't want to, you pulled back, feeling his hands slip around to your waist and hold you benevolently. Your own hands reached up to your face to wipe away tears, an embarrassed laugh escaping your lips.
"This is pathetic," you said, fingers digging into the corners of your stinging eyes.
"How?" he asked you.
"I didn't think you'd be home to see me having a mental breakdown."
A smile that didn't quite reach his eyes appeared on his lips. "Well, I am." Fingers squeezed your waist reassuringly. "Do you wanna talk about it?"
You shrugged, wordlessly, your eyes dropping from his face to the damp spot on his chest from where your face had once been, heart stuttering.
"We don't have to, honey," he said. "But it might help."
"I know it might," you muttered.
He was silent, as were you. A few more beats passed between you two, before you were turning around to pick up clothes you had left for yourself on the counter. You didn't really feel any different under his watchful gaze as you dressed yourself. Accustomed to the act, or simply too overwhelmed with another emotion, you didn't know.
He followed you into the living room when you walked out there, and he sat down next to you on the couch you curled up on. You opened and closed your mouth a few times, and he lifted his head on each intake of breath you had, as if about to say something. But you never did.
So, he took over.
"Did something happen today?" You shook your head, and he nodded his own. "Okay. This past week?" You shook your head again, because other than missing him while he had been stuck in Texas for a case, nothing had actually happened.
You wished it had. Truly, you wished you had experienced a murder on your way to work, or a distant family member had passed away so you could blame this feeling on something other than memories simply resurfacing.
You sniffled again. "You know," you began, voice thick and wobbly from the lump lodged in your throat. "When I was fourteen, I didn't think I'd ever be this old."
Your gaze lifted from your lap to look at him, and you let a helpless tear fall from one of your eyes when you locked eyes with him. He was confused, unsurprisingly so.
So, you continued. "I tried to kill myself. When I was fourteen."
He readjusted his posture, eyebrows falling into a more concerned state, and he was silent for so long you wondered if this was when he decided you were too much and too complicated for him to deal with.
He didn't. "I didn't know," he said, instead.
"I don't exactly advertise it," you replied, and even if it was an attempt at being light hearted, it fell flat. "I just realised I never thought I'd be this age," you continued when he hardly reacted, "and I've been really anxious and down all week, so I think that realisation kind of sent me over the edge."
"Are you happy you're at this age?"
Hesitantly, but surely, you nodded your head. "I got to meet you."
His lips twitched, but a smile never crossed his face. "You should be happy for reasons more than just me."
"You are my reason for being happy," you argued.
"And I'm glad to hear I make you happy, but I cannot be your only reason."
"Why not?"
"Because that's dependency."
You short-circuited, and he sighed upon realising the way you were taking his words — maybe not the smartest thing he could've said to his still tear-stricken-faced girlfriend.
"What I mean is you should have other areas in your life that make you happy. Not just me."
"I like my job," you mumbled, gaze relocating to your lap. "And my friends."
"Great," he said, and you could feel his weight shifting on the couch as he nudged closer to you. "As long as I'm not your reason for living."
Your eyebrows furrowed. "You've been my reason for living since we started dating. Why is it different now?"
"I didn't know I was your reason for living until now."
"So if you are, then what? You leave me?"
"No," his response was so immediate you were sure you could feel the whiplash, and he ran a hand down his face with an exasperated sigh. "I don't want to fight with you when you're like this."
"I don't want to fight with you either," you agreed, fidgeting with your fingers in your lap. "I'm sorry I'm co-dependent."
He didn't respond for a while, mulling everything you two had shared and now, your apology, over in his head. You sat, anxiously, as minutes ticked by until he was puffing his cheeks to let out air, and standing up from the couch.
He turned to you. "I love you, you know that," he began, and even before he had a chance to finish, you were already drowning him out, world crumbling around you as tears welled back up in your eyes. Maybe if you weren't as emotional as you were that night, your vision wouldn't have already gone blurry, and your heart wouldn't be shattering in your chest already.
"But?" you countered, a sob escaping you at the end of the word.
He froze at the sound of it, his eyebrows turning in to each other, "Sorry?"
"You love me, but?"
"I don't understand."
"I'm sitting here, sobbing really violently and I look hideous, and you've just discovered I'm co-dependent, and you don't like that about me, so now you're telling me that you love me, but this isn't going to work out, and I need to work on myself before I get into another relationship, and you hope I can find happiness, and—"
"—What are you talking about?" he cut your ranting off, blinking a few times, confused.
"Is that not what's happening?"
"No?"
"Oh."
You stared at him, and he stared at you, and you felt your heart slowly pick itself back up from the pits of your stomach, each piece mending itself back together. He wasn't breaking up with you.
"I wasn't going to say that at all. Please don't put words in my mouth."
"Sorry," you said, though it wasn't very sincere. He crouched down in front of you, hands finding your fidgeting ones to hold them.
"Can I finish what I'm going to say before you cut me off this time?" Wordlessly, you nodded your head, and so he continued. "I love you, and you know that, and I don't want you to think I'm upset or mad at you for being codependent. You're allowed to not know how to navigate a relationship. But—"
"—There it is—" he glared with no real heat at you, and your lips twitched "—Sorry."
"But I need you to communicate with me. I'm going to inevitably do things that upset you, because you're co-dependent. We need to figure those things out, because a lot of the time you will respond unhealthily, and knowing what I know now, I don't want to be a trigger in any way."
"You won't be a trigger," you mumbled, and he shot you a pointed look, and your shoulders deflated. "I just feel stupid communicating things like that. Like, oh, I'm sad because my boyfriend is out of state for work and he's super busy and not responding to my messages so I think he might hate me."
"That isn't stupid."
"Yes it is!"
He said your name, eyebrows risen, and he shook his head. "You're upset about something. That isn't a stupid thing at all."
"It feels stupid."
"Okay, well, how about the next time I'm away on a case and not replying and you miss me, which is what that crazy, sad, completely reasonable phenomenon is called, by the way, you communicate that with me, and you see how I respond?"
"What if you tell me to go fuck myself?"
He didn't even need to verbally deny your words for you to know that that response was completely out of character for him. All it took was one simple look, and you were diffidently smiling and averting your gaze, mumbling a quiet, "Okay."
And yes, the next time he was out of the state and you missed him, as he so kindly put it, you told him. And he spent three hours on the phone that night with you, reassuringly expressing how much he loved you, and how little he hated you.
Pairing: Spencer Reid x female reader (best friends to lovers)
For @imagining-in-the-margins FWB Challenge!
Prompt: "I'm your boyfriend without the benefits." "Do you want the benefits?" "Yes- No... I'm your fluffer!" (Inspired by New Girl) (yes, I suggested this prompt, bo idc if that's cheating)
Warnings: Mentions of BDSM, unprotected vaginal sex, oral sex (f receiving), fingering, choking, mentions of spanking, and butt worship, slight Dom Spencer, bratty reader, creampie. The classics, yk.
A/N: I'm back!!!! I took a break because I couldn't bring myself to even look at a word document for about a month, but there's nothing like a Pom challenge to get me writing again! I did have a lot planned for my 1 year anniversary, but because I was sick, and then busy, and then work got hectic, I had to put it off. I still am going to try to finish my kink bingo Carr, though, even though its a month late, but I had two fics left iirc, and I have both of them plotted, so I may as well! I will, however, be abandoning the final epilogue of I Can't Help Myself, because I wrote myself into a depressed corner with that one, and honestly, some people were getting very pushy about it, and it wasn't fun anymore. Anyway! This one was fun to write, so I'm going to stick to one shots for the foreseeable future, or incredibly limited series.
Masterlist
Spencer was your friend. A good friend. Your best friend, perhaps. A really good, very best friend.
Obviously, you were good friends because he always knew when you were feeling down. He bought you flowers regularly when he passed by flower shops. He came over to your place and helped you build every piece of flatpack furniture you had, which, as a single woman in your mid-twenties, was every piece of furniture that you owned.
You really looked forward to the movie nights the two of you had weekly. The popcorn, the blankets, the cuddling, his lips by your ear, in-time translating the foreign movies word for word as you watched it, the shivers down your spine as you pressed further into the heat of him.
Spencer was the best best friend you could ask for.
He was also the most frustrated.
“Kid, what are you doing this weekend? I'm thinking of hitting some clubs, you know, getting my groove on, maybe meeting A few ladies,” Morgan smirked, rubbing his hands together as he gently moved side to side, already dancing to himself as he anticipated his big weekend out. “You in, or are you in?”
“I can't. I promised Y/N I'd help her with some document digitalisation. We're going to order pizza and watch Star Trek while backing up her entire paper trail.”
The smile on Spencer's face was so stupid that Morgan had to stop himself from wiping it off of him immediately.
“Man, you are so down bad for that girl,” he mused, shaking his head.
“What? Down bad?”
“You like her. It's okay to admit it.”
“We're friends. I'm happy being friends,” Spencer said, picking up his bag and walking to the elevator desperate to escape a repeat of a conversation he'd already had three times that week.
“You know everyone thinks you're dating.”
“Well aware. Despite the number of times we've both stated to the contrary, people don't seem to accept ‘we're just friends’ when they hear it.”
“That may be because you're doing things that just friends don't do.”
“Everything we do is totally platonic.”
“You buy her flowers-
“I buy my mother flowers,” Spencer said, turning on the man and raising his hands in exasperation.
“You know that's different. Do you buy Emily flowers?”
Silence.
“What about JJ?”
“I bought JJ flowers!” He grinned triumphantly until the other man spoke again.
“When she was in the hospital. Giving birth. Okay, what about the movie nights?”
Rolling his eyes, the younger man walked on, pressing the bell for the elevator and allowing his friend to keep bothering him.
“Friends watch movies together, Morgan. We've watched movies together, are we dating?”
“One, you are not my type, pretty boy, and two, you didn't exactly have your dick pressed against my ass the entire time we watched a film now, did you?”
“Be q- be quiet. I don't have my dick against her ass ever.”
“Oh, I'm sorry, was it pressed against her stomach instead? I know she likes to lie on top of-”
“Derek!”
The elevator arrived, and the two quickly jumped in, to Spencer's relief.
“All I'm saying, kid, is-”
“Hold the elevator!” You shouted, running to it quickly with Penelope Garcia on your heels.
“Thanks, Spence!” You said, smiling at him as you entered the small space.
And continued your not too unsimilar conversation with Penelope.
“So, as I was saying Penelope,” you shot her a look that told her you were finished with the conversation. You were not dating Spencer Reid, and you were unlikely to in the future because of his total and complete lack of interest in you.
“You can set me up this weekend, right? It's been an age since I've been on a date, and I would really like to-” you glanced around the elevator and whispered the end of your sentence, suddenly mindful of your company. “You know.”
“If you're absolutely sure, I have a few men in mind that could throw you about, but-”
You squealed and squeezed the woman as the elevator landed on your floor and jumped out of the elevator quickly, cheeks burning.
“Thanks, Pen, you're the best!”
“Y/N, wait,” Spencer called out behind you, desperately holding the elevator open for a few more seconds.
“I thought we were doing your papers this weekend? Star trek, pizza, remember?”
You stared guiltily at the floor as you forced your voice to sound as casual as possible, not sure you could make any excuse that didn't sound pathetic.
“Oh, sorry, Spencer. I totally forgot. We can rain check, right? I… I really need this.”
Spencer was aware of what disappointment felt like, but it never hollowed out his chest like your lack of eye contact in that moment did.
“Yeah. Sure, of course. We can do that whenever.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Spencer. You're the best… friend.”
He smiled and let the door finally shut, aware of the two sets of eyes now watching him.
It took a surprisingly long time for the ‘I told you so’ to come, but come it did, as if Morgan were unable to help himself.
“You're telling me that you're not into her at all?”
“I'm…not into her like that at all.”
“And you're fine with me setting her up on a date with a man that'll do somewhat empowering, somewhat disgusting things with her?” Penelope piled on.
“What? That's…that's not my business,” he ground out.
“No. Of course it’s not. Because you're not her boyfriend.”
“Exactly, I'm not her boyfriend-”
“You're her fluffer.”
With a pat on the shoulder, the elevator hit its last stop, and Morgan exited, leaving Spencer scrambling after him as Penelope waved the two of them off.
“What? No, what's a fluffer?”
Morgan chuckled and waved him off, walking to his car.
“Come on, what's a fluffer, and why am I hers?”
“You've seen porn before, right?” The older man asked, pausing as he opened his driver side door. “Actually don't answer that. The fluffer is the person who keeps the actors and actresses… ready between takes. Prepares them for the good stuff.”
With a bright flush across his cheeks, Spencer tried his best for an indignant look, landing somewhat closer to a petulant child.
“I am not her fluffer. We have never-”
“I know you've never. If you had, we wouldn't be standing here right now having this conversation. What I'm saying is you should.”
“We're friends!”
Climbing into the car and closing the door, Morgan dismissed the younger man quickly, but he wasn't finished.
Knocking on the door, Spencer waiting a beat, then two for it to open again.
“I'm not her fluffer.”
“You build her furniture and cuddle with her. You're doing everything a boyfriend would do, without any of the boyfriend rewards.”
“What rewards?” he gasped, exasperated.
A single look was all the reply he got before Morgan out his keys into the ignition and started driving.
Spencer never made the decision to turn up at your house later that night. He just found himself all of a sudden at your front door on a Friday night, pulling out the key from the plant pot by the front door and letting himself in. Unlocking his shoes, he called out through the apartment, letting you know he was there as he slipped into the house shoes you'd bought him after the first of many movie nights.
“Spencer? We cancelled earlier, remember?” you said emerging from your bedroom, fitted in the tightest dress he'd ever seen you in. He already had no answer for your question, but seeing you like that, getting ready, he had no answer to any question at all. If you'd have asked him his name, he wouldn't have known it.
Well, he would've, but only because you'd said it only three seconds ago and had reminded him that he was, in fact, standing in your apartment when he should've been literally anywhere else.
“Um. I'm…I'm just-” he scratched the back of his neck, waiting for something to come to him.
“Spencer, I'm leaving in like an hour, so there's no time to watch a movie, and I have to get ready, so-”
“I'm… I'm angry?”
You raised an eyebrow at his questioning tone, unsure where this conversation was going.
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah..yes. I'm sure. I'm angry. We, we had plans, and you gave me like an hours notice and cancelled them to go do something stupid-”
“Spencer! I'm going on a date. That's not stupid.”
“It is when you have me!”
He half shouted, half murmured the words, as if he himself were unsure of how confident he was in making that statement.
“That came out wrong-”
“Yeah, I think it did.”
“What I mean is- I mean…Morgan said that-”
You crossed your arms and sat yourself on the arm of your sofa, looking forward at him and waiting for him to get through whatever this was. You hoped the entire time that he was saying what you'd wanted him to say for the last year and a half.
“Have you ever watched porn?”
Not what you were hoping for, but a start, at least.
“Spencer!”
“That came out wrong, I- don't throw the couch cushions at me. I have a point, I swear!”
You lowered your next projectile and gestured for him to go on, not fully relinquishing it just yet.
“I'm your fluffer! I get you…in the mood for dates, and- and- I do all the boyfriend stuff without any of the boyfriend benefits!”
He stood in front of you, red-faced, and you stared him down a second or two as you collected your thoughts.
“Do you…want the boyfriend benefits?”
“Yes! No, wait - wait a second. I- I- What are the boyfriend benefits exactly?”
You threw the pillow down and turned your back on him, not entirely sure what you were expecting from the most oblivious genius on the planet.
“Y/N, wait. Wait-”
With a hand wrapped around your wrist, Spencer spun you around, and, tripping over your feet, you landed hard on your sofa. Your fall should've been relatively pain-free, but for the 6-foot man that landed directly on top of you.
“Get up.”
“What are the boyfriend benefits?”
“You should know if you're saying you want them! Now, get up!”
“Not until you tell me.”
“Spencer!”
“Y/N!”
You groaned and writhed under him, but he just dropped his weight onto you, unmoving, hands pinning your wrists lazily, leg poking between your two, hips pinning yours.
It certainly wasn't the closest you'd ever been, but in those circumstances, during that conversation, you felt more flustered than you had before.
“What are the benefits.”
“You really want me to say? You're not afraid it's going to throw off our friendship, ruin whatever good thing we have going?”
“I think that if you go out tonight, and enjoy your date, and get a boyfriend, that he's going to feel weird about this good thing we have going and it's going to be over anyway. Tell me.”
You desperately searched for a way out of this situation, but a stronger part of you wanted to simply wrap your legs around him and let him take as much advantage as he could.
You settled for disturbing him.
“Fine. A boyfriend would be able to spank me.”
“Y/N, be serious.”
“I am. I like it. A boyfriend would pull my hair back and make me count as he hit my cute round ass until it turned all red, and I couldn't sit down comfortably anymore. A boyfriend would then kiss it better.”
You'd never spoken about sex with Spencer, and you hoped the vulgarity would force him back to his senses. Instead, he didn't stir, and you had no choice but to continue.
“Another boyfriend benefit would be choking me. I like that, too. Are your hands big enough to wrap around my throat, Spencer?”
“Yes.”
The answer came so quickly and do confidently, you weren't sure you actually heard it outlook until he spoke again.
“What other benefits, Y/N?”
“A… boyfriend would get to cum inside me,” you whispered, suddenly aware of hips rocking into yours slowly as his cock poked up, listening intently to the promises spilling from your lips that you likely should've regretted.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I want the benefits.”
Your body was hot everywhere he touched you, but he didn't move, didn't follow through on anything just yet. But you were aware of his head moving closer and closer to yours and panicked.
“And what have you done? As my fluffer? To deserve those benefits?”
“What have I done?” He asked, pulling back an inch. Even as his chest rested, flush against yours, your breasts pushed up against him as his hands held yours over your head.
“I-I bought you flowers-”
“Emily buys me flowers, too. So does Penelope. Should I let them be my boyfriend?”
With your hands in use, you took advantage of his distraction and wrapped your legs up and around his waist, rolling your hips up into him.
“I suppose I do like flowers, though. What else?”
“I… We're always t-together?”
“We work together.”
Using the leverage of his weight against yours, you rolled up harder into his hips, grinding into him slowly as you watched his resolve melt away.
“The m-movie nights are-”
“The movie nights where you rut your cock into me while we watch a movie? Friends do that all the time. You're just translating the movie for me after all.”
“Y/N, please don't-”
“Don't say that? Okay. I'll just let someone else hump against my thighs to get off because you're too proud to admit you want to sink your dick into me and pound me?”
“Y/N-”
“Maybe that's why you don't have the boyfriend privileges, Spencer. Because I'm waiting for something, you're too much of a prude to try-”
His lips meet yours before you can finish the thought, and you're not sure whether it's a triumph or a defeat.
After precisely five seconds of his lips on yours, though, you no longer cared.
Releasing your hands gently, he lifted his hips an inch, distracting you enough to force his tongue into your mouth as his hand found its way between your legs.
“Did you really mean it?” He asked between kisses as you rake your hands through his hair, getting lost in him. “About the benefits?”
You allowed yourself to imagine it for a second, Spencer's hands on your throat. His hands on your ass. His mouth buried between your legs.
You moaned into his kiss, and he laughed - actually laughed - as he pulled away.
“Spencer!”
“No, no, please, don't let me keep you from your thoughts, I'll just be down here.”
His fingers reached your clit and he wasn't surprised to find you already wet, legs spread. Snaking another hand to your neck though, he wasn't exactly as opposed to the ideas you'd flung at him as he'd acted.
You gasped as his hand closed around your neck, the prettiest necklace you'd ever worn. You grabbed a hold of his hands as he pulled your underwear off, pushing them down your legs as he gently pushed your legs open wider and replaced his fingers with his tongue.
You curled up on yourself, craving your body to watch him devour your pussy as you tried your best to keep your breaths shallow, to keep breathing entirely as he squeezed your throat.
His tongue licked and flattened, his head bobbing up and down and then stilling as your hips began moving by themselves, letting you ride his face as you moaned and whined and desperately ran towards your climax.
You wrapped a leg around his shoulder, pressing down on his back to keep him in position, grabbing a handful of hair as you jerked against his face, fucking it as he looked up at you through hooded eyes, drinking down every drop of you.
His hold on your neck tightened, and you felt your body shudder as you squeaked out his name, not wanting this to end so soon, needing to feel more of this. He let you ride it out until you were whining in frustration again, hips twitching from the friction of his tongue against your cunt.
Then he pushed away.
He wasn't gone long, but you followed him up. You thought about pushing him down to the couch again, thought about sitting on his pretty boy face and doing it all over again. You thought of turning over and presenting your ass to him, letting him punish you like you'd promised. Your thoughts ceased as quickly as they came when he pulled his cock free of his pants, not even bothering to pull them off fully before pulling you into his lap, lining himself up, and pushing you down onto his hot, hard, lengthy cock.
You swear you would've screamed if his to guess hadn't already claimed your mouth. A good scream. A “holy shit holy shit holy shit” scream. Definitely a “I didn't know it was that big, and honestly I'm a little scared” scream. But overall, a “god that feels so good” scream.
From the lack of movement, you were sure that Spencer was giving you a moment to adjust to his intrusion, and you were thankful as you clung to his neck, hands balling in the material of his shirt on his back.
Although he was bigger than expected, he wasn't uncomfortably large, and you calmed quickly, giving him a quick nod as you buried yourself in his neck, hiding your face to stop yourself from drooling, mouth wide as he tipped you back against the couch pillows, lifting your legs slightly and slipping his hands underneath yous thighs, and began his steady pace of thrusts.
You were sure your world was imploding on itself, that all your senses had ceased except that of touch, and his touch was fire. But you heard the wet, slutty sounds of your pussy welcoming him, you smelt the sweat against his skin, and, opening your eyes, you saw the absolute pleasure blasted against his features as he groaned in your ear.
And before you could form another coherent thought, he'd claimed another boyfriend benefit, as, rocking his hips against yours, he slowed to a stutter as he emptied himself inside you.
“Spencer!!” you moaned, but he wasn't done, spitting on his fingers and finding your clit again as you squealed, twitching and turning and milling his cock with your movements as you found your second release.
You moaned his name again, though it sounded less like his name this time, and more like a definite noise complaint from your neighbours in the morning.
“Spencer?” you asked, still trying to regain your breath as he, once again, collapsed on top of you.
“Mhmm,” he said, slowly pulling out of you, watching the mess you'd made together drip out too, and resisting the urge to push right back into you and go again.
“Was that a friendly fuck, or a boyfriend fuck?”
His eyes snapped to yours again as you continued.
“I just want to give Penelope the correct reason for cancelling on her friend when I text her-”
“I came inside you.”
“So you did.”
“Y/N!”
“.... So that wasn't a fluffer thing, but a boyfriend thing, got i-”
With a kiss, he shut you up again, and you realized quickly that you probably wouldn't have the time to send that text anyway.
I was wondering if you could maybe write a story where gf!reader has anxiety and decides to spend night at spence's but constantly keeps apologizing cause she is like afraid to be inconvenience but he keeps hugging and comforting her just some really fluffy story
Love yaaaa🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶💕💕
-🍓
A/N: FINALLY getting back to some classic requests! Thanks for this cute one 🥰 I love fluff where Spencer is so caring and considerate, so I hope you like this one, too!
Summary: After a traumatic experience, you avoid confronting new fears with your new coworkers until a late invitation lets you find comfort in Spencer's arms.
Warnings: mentions of kidnapping, guns, other cases details etc.
If any other member of your team had so bluntly asked you the question ‘are you okay?’ you'd have lied to their face, convincingly, and not felt bad about it for even a second.
It had been, after all, long enough since your kidnapping to have become comfortable with new surroundings again. You went on cases fine. You dealt with similar unsubs perfectly, and you were absolutely a professional.
But with Spencer Reid in front of you asking you that same question, you felt like you were one slight breeze away from crumbling entirely.
The night had grown old as you sat with Spencer looking over some case files. You weren't shipping out for this one, thankfully, but you still wanted to be sure you knew every detail of the case so you could help find your guy and get him off the streets.
But having worked from 6 pm to 2am, your eyes were growing bleary, and you had to finally look up to the clock to see how long you'd been zoned out for.
“Shit,” you murmured, wiping the sleep from your eyes.
“I have to go, Spence,” you scrambled for your keys, pulling your bag onto your shoulder as your heart started beating.
It was okay. You'd be okay. It was dark outside, but you'd driven in the dark before now. The roads were clear anyway, and you weren't on a job. You could drive home, get some sleep, and forget anything happened.
“Y/N, it's late, you’re tired,” Spencer said gently from opposite you, grabbing your bag from your hands and gently placing it down again. “It's okay, you can just… stay over tonight.”
In the few weeks since you'd been kidnapped, you'd told everyone you knew that you were okay and doing fine and that it would take a lot more than that to get you down. And then you'd go home to an empty apartment, triple check every lock, barricade yourself into your room, and sleep with a gun on your bedside table and a knife under your pillow.
You didn't drive in the dark. You didn't eat or drink anything you hadn't personally prepared, and you didn't dive head first into cases anymore. A few people had remarked about how you'd matured as an agent. They didn't understand that bile rose up in your throat every time you thought about being alone in a room with men.
Being alone with Spencer was different. He was your Spencer. You'd seen him kill unsubs, but you'd more often see him peacefully trap and release spiders instead of killing them. You'd seen him fumble talking to women by pulling out magic tricks, just as often as you'd seen him be approached by every single working girl you'd interviewed on a case.
You'd slept over before. This wasn't any different.
“Yeah… yeah you're right. It's probably not a good idea to drive this late.”
He smiled at you as you abandoned your path to the door, and went to grab you some clothes to change into. You paused, and tried to breathe deeply as you assessed the situation.
You'd been to Spencer's apartment before. If you slept in the living room, your best route out would be the front door. The kitchen didn't have any good exits. The bathroom window didn't open wide enough. The fire escape was connected to both the living room and the window in Spencer's bedroom. If anyone came through the front door, it would be safer to sleep in the bed and jump out the window before they had a chance to pursue you.
But if they came up the fire escape, they could choose between which window to come through. Without a second thought, you crossed to Spencer's window and checked the locks. They worked, but they were old. They could easily be forced open.
You checked, and you still had your gun on you, thinking about where the best place to store it would be. Next to the bed, under the sofa, somewhere it'd be easy to grab and shoot.
You worked yourself up walking yourself through your plan that when Spencer came up behind you again, without thinking, you turned the gun on him.
“Whoa, Y/N!”
“I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, I don't - I was just thinking about what I would do in a h-home invasion, and it seemed safer to have the gun close, but-”
Slowly taking the gun from your hand, Spencer pulled you towards him and into his arms.
“Are you okay?” he asked again, and though it was the 100th time you'd heard the question in the last few weeks, you finally, finally broke down and told him the truth.
“N-No.”
Stroking your hair, Spencer held you as you began to quietly sob, not pulling away as you clung to him for dear life, letting the fear slowly drain from your body.
“It's okay. It's going to be okay, I'm here,” he whispered. After a few minutes, you gathered yourself and pulled away, wiping your eyes as you looked up at him again.
“I'm sorry, I must just be really tired. I'll just crash on the couch-”
“No, Y/N, you can't do that.”
“It's fine, I'm fine now. I've crashed on your couch before, and-”
“And the couch is next to the door. You're going to sit there all night with your gun in your hand, waiting for the door handle to turn. You won't rest.”
You opened your mouth to retort, but he grabbed your hand and led you to the bedroom again.
“I know what it's like, not being able to sleep at night. Feeling anxious and alone and scared all the time.”
He handed you a pile of clothes and let you sit on the bed as he began to untie your shoelaces.
“Sleep in the bed. The window has a secure lock, and it's covered by the alarm system. The bedroom door locks as well." Finishing, he looked up at you from the floor, smiling weakly before standing up and pressing a kiss to your temple.
Your heart, which had been resting comfortably with the new details of your security, flared up into a fast-paced drum beat again as he left for the bathroom. You weren't sure if you were scared still, or if somehow a small kiss and care he'd shown you were enough to have you flushed like a middle-schooler.
You quickly slipped on the pajamas, which you recognised as old FBI training clothes, and hopped into the bed before your brain could decide to investigate any further.
Spencer returned quickly and climbed into bed right beside you, turning off the lights beforehand.
“Thank you,” you whispered, looking at him as you laid on your side.
“What for?”
“For not making this awkward.”
“Awkward? Is it weird for us to share the bed? Should I have taken the couch? I should have taken the couch, let me go-”
You leant over the small space between you and wrapped your arms around him.
“Thank you for not letting me spiral. Thank you for letting me be not okay.”
He relaxed into your touch as you spoke and pulled you into him for a hug quickly. His hands rested awkwardly still on your shoulders and waist, as if he were scared to touch you more, to seem inappropriate somehow.
“Spencer?”
“Hmm?”
“I think I'd feel safer if you just held me a bit tighter.”
With your head on his chest, you heard the short rumble of laughter that popped out of him as he relaxed into your hug, closing your eyes and falling asleep to the sound of his heart beating.
could i request an Emily xfem!Reader fic where they end up sharing a room while out on a case? and maybe there’s a couch or something and somehow reader falls asleep with her head on Emily’s lap? i just can’t stop imagining Emily playing with reader’s hair to help her sleep 🥺 love how you write Emily 🩵
Tysm 🫶🏼 I write gn reader, hope that's ok <3
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Fall right into me | emily prentiss x reader
Tags: room sharing, fluff, pining (so much pining), reader has enough hair for emily to run her fingers through—length not specified, no use of yn
Word count: 1.8k
It’s cold. You’re rubbing your skin through the wool of your sweater, stifling a yawn as Hotch walks into the motel lobby. Four keys are clutched in his hand.
“There’s only four rooms available, we’ll have to double up.” He says, and you bite your lip to keep a groan from escaping. The cold seeping in through the thin walls has made you cranky, and after a whole day spent on your feet, the thought of sharing your precious alone time with someone makes you want to slam your head into a wall.
Amongst the seven of you, three of the rooms would be occupied by pairs. That leaves one spare room.
Everyone reaches that conclusion the same time you do.
Immediately, they start squabbling over who gets the spare room, Morgan and Reid protesting sharing with each other. Emily ignores them and turns to you, gently bumping your shoulder with hers.
“Roomies?” She whispers, her dark eyes wide.
Well, shit.
It’s not that you hadn’t shared a room with Emily before, but rather, you hadn’t ever since you’ve realized—quite inconveniently—that you’re in love with her.
It’s hard not to be. Against your better judgment, you’d fallen for her. For the soft way she teases you, the sturdy way she has your back. The curve of her lip and the darkness of her eyes have enchanted you, swarms of butterflies turning your stomach when you get a glimpse of dimples, when you see her swoop her bangs over bottomless irises.
Her shoulder is still pressed against yours, a warm weight that seeps heat through your sweater. Sharing a room with anyone right now is an egregious thought.
But Emily isn’t just anyone.
You can’t help but give her a small smile, even as your heart jumps against your ribs. “Sure.”
Emily returns it, a dimple creasing in her cheek as she turns and snatches a key from Hotch, walking past him while the others continue their arguing over the spare room. You trail after her and catch up on the rickety stairs, the cold in your skin chased away at the thought of rooming with her again.
“Promise you won’t snore this time?” Emily turns to you, a teasing glint in her eyes as you walk up the steps together. They’re so narrow your shoulder has no choice but to knock into hers.
“Hey!” You complain as she lets out a low chuckle. “I was sick, I told you.” A frown drags your lips downward, but when you spot Emily’s smile, it’s all you can do to keep it in place.
You step onto the landing as she hums, twirling the key around her finger, “You did have a pretty cute sick voice.” She muses thoughtfully as her eyes skip over the few doors lining the hallway, looking for the number that matches the one etched onto the key.
Heat simmers in your cheeks. Your skin grows tight and itchy under your sweater, the sudden flush of warmth in your body making you pull your lip between your teeth.
“Ah, here it is,” Emily murmurs and approaches the door, casually fitting the key in the lock as if she didn’t just blow your whole world out of proportion with a few words.
You’re hardly looking as you follow her in, distantly taking in the two twin beds and couch while your brain replays her comment in the hallway. The thud of the door behind you doesn’t register, your blank gaze just barely taking in Emily as she claims the bed on the right.
Snap out of it, you firmly tell yourself. She’s just saying your voice was nasal. Hardly a compliment.
But your stomach is still in knots.
“I’m taking the bathroom.” Emily says.
She’s going to take an eternity, you know, so you hum, drop your bag on the floor, and sag onto the bed next to hers. The bathroom door clicks shut and you sigh, kicking off your shoes and curling your legs into your chest as you turn sideways, your eyes catching the TV.
Exhaustion is heavy in your bones, mingling with the cold. A yawn escapes past your lips as you stare at the dark screen, distantly listening to the sound of the sink running as Emily gets ready for bed. Even as your body screams for sleep, your eyes are wide open, jumping from couch to desk to TV, restlessly taking in your surroundings as you run through the case in your head and allow the disquiet of your thoughts to run rampant.
It takes the better part of ten minutes before Emily finally walks back into the room and murmurs, “Bathroom’s free.”
Rather sluggishly, you drag yourself off the bed and into the bathroom with another yawn. The first thing your eyes fall on is the sink, and Emily’s assorted skincare products littered around it.
The sight makes you smile. There’s glass bottles with droppers and smooth, expensive looking creams and glossy tubes with soft, pastel colored caps. You’re used to this display; serums and cleansers and moisturizers, each that she presses into her skin with a diligence that makes you wait for an upward of fifteen minutes outside the bathroom door. Your own routine is much simpler—washing your face and brushing your teeth and changing into another sweatshirt that serves as pajamas.
When you finish getting un-ready and walk back out into the bedroom, you find Emily on the couch. She’s in a worn t-shirt and sweatpants, channel surfing as she nibbles on her bottom lip. You sit next to her and try to conceal the hitch in your breath when her warm eyes slide to meet yours, the intense darkness of her gaze forcing you to look somewhere else. The freckles on her cheeks catch your attention; warm sprinkles of cinnamon that dust her skin, tiny spots nestled in the curve of her nose and the folds of her under-eyes, softly standing out against her pale complexion and bringing out the darkness of her irises.
“Any suggestions?” She murmurs as she turns back to the screen. The overhead lights are dimmed, the room blanketed in a low glow from the bedside lamps. Light from the TV washes over the two of you, throwing Emily’s features into sharp relief as she skips over channel after channel, not yet finding what she’s looking for.
“No.” You say. Forcing your gaze away from her, you turn to the TV and watch her restless browsing instead. She flips through the channels and a yawn leaves your lips, making your eyes water as you sag further into the couch.
By some force of nature, your head falls against Emily’s shoulder.
She tenses for the briefest second before relaxing again, her shoulder collapsing beneath your head as she breathes in and out. Heart thudding wildly in your chest, you gnaw on your lip and steadfastly keep your eyes on the screen as Emily pauses on a showing of When Harry met Sally. You barely see the movie, too preoccupied with the places your body touches hers.
In the cold room, the air between you two buzzes with shared warmth. Your arm pressing against her arm, your sweatshirt rubbing against her skin; shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow. Emily exhales again, heavy enough that you feel it in your body.
Shit, you freeze. What if I’m making her uncomfortable? She probably wants me to get off—
Her hand finds its way into your hair. The muscles in your body turn into liquid as she scratches your scalp, gathers some strands of hair around her index finger.
“You’re tired, aren’t you?” She asks softly. Her voice vibrates through her skin; you feel it in your bones.
When you turn your head to slot under her jaw, you smell honeysuckle. Your eyes flutter shut. “How’d ya know?”
Stupid question.
“Well,” Emily starts, and again the vibrations of her voice travel to your heart, “you’ve yawned like ten times in the car and since we’ve gotten out.” She scratches her short nails against your scalp, “Those pretty eyes of yours have started to grow distant, and you’re walking like a lifeless zombie.”
“Hmm.” You hum, latching on to the word pretty. The more she plays with your hair, twirling it gently around her finger, the more incoherent you grow, your eyes getting heavier by the second. Shit, that feels good.
“I think that’s a yes.” Her voice is amused. You can almost picture the smile on her face, gently tugging at her lips. You’re thinking you should move—by this rate you’ll definitely fall asleep on her shoulder, numbing it beyond belief—when Emily slides her fingers out of your hair.
A disappointed frown draws your brows together. The feeling doesn’t last long before she gently places her fingertips on the back of your neck, pushing carefully down until your head is in her lap.
In her lap. Your head is in her lap—
“I don’t think my shoulder’s the most comfortable place to sleep.” Emily says apologetically. Her nimble fingers slide back into your hair and she drags her nails against your scalp.
You sigh involuntarily, fog growing thicker in your brain when you feel the soft cotton of her sweatpants, the tangible warmth of her thighs beneath your cheek. You want to at least try to protest, but then her other hand lands gently on your shoulder, pinning you in place.
Well, you can’t really complain.
But you can’t fall asleep here; there’s a perfectly good bed two feet away. Forcing your heavy eyes open, you’re met with Harry and Sally at the karaoke. They’re blurry, splitting into two, but you persist.
“You a romcom kinda girl, Em?” You slur. You don’t have the energy to speak out her full name; lips growing heavy, you snap off the last two syllables and keep one sweet on your tongue.
The hitch in her breath gives her away. “No.” She says quietly. Combing over your scalp, she scratches against a spot over your ear. Goosebumps break out on your skin.
“This one’s special, though.” Her voice is hushed. Crushed velvet, you think deliriously, wrapping yourself up in the warm comfort of it, “I saw it in the theater the summer before I left for Yale.”
She starts saying something, something about popcorn and the heat and—weirdly—Hotch, but you can’t ask any questions, can’t get your eyes to open after they’ve fallen closed. Emily twirls another strand around her finger and you’re gone, sinking into the darkness of sleep faster than you can stop it.
The last thing you hear is her voice, a golden incandescence in the darkness as she lulls you to sleep.
taglist: @suckerforcate
Reblogs and comments mean the world! Lmk what you thought <3
Summary: Spencer makes a serious promise he has every intention of keeping.
Tags: pregnant!fem!reader, established relationship, angsty/sad fic, open ended fic, mentions of birth, broken promises
You had asked him not to go. Practically begged him in fact.
Your due date was a measly ten days away, and he himself was the one who told you that only 4-5% of babies were actually born on their due date. That due dates were more of a guideline, not a guarantee.
His paternity leave was technically suppose to start the day after the team had left to go on the case. It’s the point he used to argue with you that he had to go - if he didn’t, he would be in derelict of duty. You can hear the earnestness in which he spoke when you recall his words.
“Angel, I will not miss the birth of our child. I promise, I will be there. Please, trust me. I promise.”
I promise.
Part of you hates how easily you agreed, how easily you were swayed by his doe eyes and the way he cupped your cheek. How easily you’d let yourself believe him.
(As if he hadn’t broken promises before.)
Maybe part of you had thought this time would be different. That while you knew his job took priority over your wants, it would take a backseat for his own child.
But instead of being with you, holding your hand, helping coach your breathing, kissing your forehead, or sprouting off facts, he’s on the other side of the country, chasing after someone his team could have handled on their own.
You called him 3 separate times.
The first time when the contractions had started. The second, when they were close enough together that you knew you had to get to the hospital. The final time when you’d arrived at the hospital to be informed you were dilated and in active labor.
He hadn’t picked up any of your calls.
Nor had he answered any of your increasingly frantic texts. You tried not to worry, knowing he often kept his phone on silent when working a case. But your mind couldn’t help but go to the worse possible scenario.
It was with that in mind you broke down and called Penelope. Begging her to tell you he was alright. To promise. You were still trying to hold on to the hope that he’d be there at any moment.
When she’d learned you were in labor, she had leapt at the information- stating she could work from your hospital room. But you’d asked her not to come, asking her to please get Spencer here where he promised he’d be. Where he belonged.
You didn’t want your newborn to meet anyone before they met their dad.
But it didn’t matter what you wanted. If it had, he wouldn’t have gone with the team, would have worked from home to help them and you.
When Penelope calls you back, patching Spencer through using a satellite phone, you stop pretending he’s going to keep his promise.
A large storm - tornadoes - making it impossible for any airplane to take off. He kept apologizing, saying he’d be back the moment he could, that there was still a chance he’d make it in time. You cried silent tears, already knowing there wasn’t a chance - that there hadn’t been one the moment he decided to leave for work.
The head nurse told you that you could scream - that you were allowed to use her hand as each contraction caused immense pain to wrack through you. The chance for an epidural had long since passed but you welcomed the gut wrenching pain with open arms, biting the inside of your cheek til you tasted your own blood. The tears kept streaming down your exhausted face and even though you knew it was hopeless, your eyes kept darting to the door. His voice a repeating record in your head,
“I promise, I promise, I promise”.
14 long, agonizing hours of labor later, the terrifying moments of your baby being in distress, and you felt your heart crack. Your precious newborn was laid on your bare chest by hands that were not Spencers.
The plan had always been for him to be the first person your child had contact with, for it to be him who caught them, him to cut the cord, and him to initiate skin to skin.
Another promise he’d made to you both, facts about the importance of the father being the first human contact a newborn had interspersed throughout.
After, the nurse informs you that Penelope is in the waiting room, and you politely ask for her to be sent away, claiming exhaustion. The nurse tells you she will give Penelope the details, and make sure Spencer is on the phone to hear as well, telling you to rest while you can.
You pretend to sleep and she pretends to believe you.
Spencer still isn’t there by the time you’re released just over 24 hours later. Technically, you’re supposed to be released into the care of another but you somehow convince the nurses that you have to learn how to be on your own at some point, so you might as well start now.
You don’t hear the door when Spencer arrives home, his hair a mess and a large bouquet of your favorite flowers in hand. He’d begged Penelope to pick them up for him, wanting to rush home as soon as physically possible, passing off his paperwork to his willing teammates, promising they’d get photos soon, but first he needed to apologize.
It isn’t very late but he comes in quietly, scanning the living room for you. He sees your cup of tea on the coffee table and notices the baby monitor lying nearby. His heart skips a beat as he hangs up his bag, starting down the hall to the nursery when the monitor crackles, and for the first time, he hears his newborn baby cry.
The noise stops him in his tracks. He doesn’t know why he pauses to listen to your gentle shushing instead of continuing down the hall but he wishes he hadn’t when he hears your next words.
“Don’t worry, little one. I’ll love you enough for us both, you’ll never doubt that. I promise.”
TLDR: reader suffers with post-coital dysphoria after her and Spencer's first time - it's fluff, but like, emotionally i did just butcher myself for tumblr - 3969 words
Warnings: they had sex before but no smut, it is sort of depressingly written tbh, talk of bad past sexual relationships, reader has low self worth - please let me know if anything else
Notes: Second Person, no y/n because it's 2024 and I can't keep reading about Yename. He's listed as being thirty-one so we are hovering around mid-Crim-Min-Spence x
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You are not broken.
You know this. Every Google search, WebMD article, and Reddit thread you’ve ever stalked tells you this over and over. There’s nothing wrong with you. It just happens sometimes. It’s the way it is. The brain is weird. Funny. Easily wired. So, maybe your brain made connections in the wrong places, or you hit your hardware, or were born with switches facing the opposite direction. It’s not you, it’s… it’s your brain. There’s peace in that, you tell yourself. There has to be. Everybody says it like there is.
How you handle it though – that part – is all you.
Because guys don’t typically mind when the girls they sleep with stalk off for some alone time. It gives them a hot minute to find their clothes and pack their things and plan their best excuse – I have work tomorrow, or I actually have someplace to be, or I just remembered I need to be at home for the – uh – electrician. You let them go easily enough; a lie doesn’t change the fact that they don’t want to be here with you any longer than they have to. Maybe that part is you – the reason why they leave – but… the feelings that you have aren’t your fault. Maybe you’re not cut out for casual sex, or serious sex, or any kind of intimacy at all.
But you want intimacy. You want to be known. To be felt. To be understood.
Spencer knows you.
He has known you romantically for five months, and for two years you’d known each other as friends – coworkers, people who trade glances across cluttered desks and offer coffee and restrap bulletproof vests because you didn’t do it tight enough, are you asking to get shot? – and, well, in the modern age, you guess five months is a long time to not sleep with somebody you’re dating.
And it’s not that you didn’t want to sleep with him.
He’s gorgeous. Obviously. And completely unaware of how gorgeous he is.
It’s just that things change afterward. You wonder if there’s a certain je ne sais quoi that burns up after you’re intimate like that with somebody. Is it about seeing people in a new light? Is it… that it was all they wanted anyway? You’re not sure.
So, you held off. You wanted him to see you like this. The version of you that he asked out for coffee.
But then, one night, after your first day off in two weeks, you’d spent it lazing around in pyjamas and eating snacks instead of meals and watching old reruns from television shows you hadn’t seen since you were twelve, the moment had felt right with Spencer, and you’d slept together at his apartment.
Then, you were holed up in his bathroom, fifteen minutes into a toilet-seat slouch wondering how he was going to kick you out of his home; how you were supposed to face him when your heart was in your stomach and your brain was grey and foggy.
Spencer wasn’t going to do that, surely… he’s Spencer, he’s nice, he’s… he’s too kind for his own good, and that’s what drew you in in the first place. Nobody is just that nice, right? But he is. He was.
But he’s also a guy. And you did just sleep with him. And you are you.
There’s nothing with you. Reddit says so.
About five minutes into your toilet-seat slouch, you remembered this was Spencer’s first time with anybody, and you were being cruel by leaving him out there, all alone, probably wondering if he’d done something wrong and if you were trying not to lose your cool.
Ten minutes in, you feared the sound of two delicate, rhythmic knocks on the old oak door, followed by the gentle cadence of his voice as he mutters you okay?, heart pounding, brows creasing, palms sweating and rubbing against his briefs that he’d found fallen behind his chest of drawers. It never happened, but for every second that passed where it didn’t, you feared every other second where it might. You splashed your face with cold water. You smoothed your hair. You used the toilet and left it so that, in all your genius, you could flush it just a few seconds before you walked out, and you had some story built into the fake look on your face.
Fifteen minutes in, you know you have to leave. It’s getting brutal. It’s getting weird. Even Reddit would call you the asshole with Spencer lying in bed, picking at his fingernails, glancing at every micro-noise echoing from colliding dust particles and creaking floorboards as though it might offer answers to the silence emanating from the door.
You splash your face again and smooth your hair, and you scrub yourself ‘clean’, as though if you look your very best you can bury this feeling.
This horrible feeling.
The… end of the world and you don’t care… feeling.
No amount of cold water rubbed into your murky eyes can clear their heaviness, and how you can’t meet your own gaze in the mirror. You’re not sure if it’s shame. WedMb suggested shame – they said you might have pent up feelings of guilt around sex and intimacy, and maybe that’s true, you’re not sure, but like hell are you going to approach a therapist and tell them you feel sad after sex. WedMd also said trauma. You don’t think it’s trauma. Nothing’s… nothing’s happened, right? Like you can’t have trauma if nothing bad like really happened. You’re just delicate. You’re… too… old-fashioned for the modern world. You don’t casually date. You don’t hook up. You tried it. It left you empty.
So, fifteen minutes and forty-two seconds into your hiding away, you flush the toilet and wash your hands and give yourself a last once over. One of your old t-shirts hangs loosely on your frame. In the movies, in the right book, you’d have found Spencer’s and put it on instead, but you know that means you have to take it off when you get hit with the ‘I had a work call’ and it feels far more embarrassing than it needs to. Fifteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds into hiding away, you open the door, and coil your hair about your ear, and put your best profiler forward.
Smile softly, you tell yourself, shoulders back and straight, form not too stiff, and try to look at him or he’ll think you’re weird – weirder than you already are – and your body language has to be open, like you’re not hiding something.
Spencer’s eyes are on you the moment you come into view. Hair messy, brown puppy-eyes searching for something wrong, brows stitched in quizzical thought, his lips part to speak, but then he says nothing. It’s not you that says there’s something not quite right. It’s the air. Amongst the scent of old books and clean sheets, there is the rotting corpse of words left unspoken. It hides under the bed like all good monsters do, and so, you hover beside it, feet away from the shadows.
“Hi,” you call – why you say this, you’re not sure.
“Hi.” He gulps, voice all raspy, one hand coming to run through his messy curls, the other still firmly planted on the bed to keep himself upright, “Are you okay?”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
He’d had the question charged from minute three, and now it ached with all the moments passed. His gaze kindly scrutinised your form – perfected, you think, in the art of ‘everything is blissfully okay’ – and then searched your face, from your half-lidded eyes to swollen lips and flushed cheeks.
“Yeah, yeah, I am all good.” You force a smile as you peer at him, “Are you okay?”
Spencer’s taken aback by the question, though tries not to show it.
From the moment you excused yourself a little faster than he expected and hadn’t looked back, he’d been running through the ordeal, trying to work out what he’d done wrong or if he’d missed some obvious social cue. He hadn’t had much a chance to think about what this experience meant for him – losing your virginity at the ripe old age of thirty-one is… well… something to think about.
But it had happened. Eighteen-year-old Spencer would be losing his mind over this.
And with you, of all people – you with the snappy tone and expressive eyes and delicate hands and cloak of daggers worn to keep people far away from you. You, who gazes into space for far too long, watching the wavering of trees as the leaves caress the breeze, from dawn to twilight, like they’re talking to you – like they have answers. You, who, underneath all the sarcasm and avoidance, is soft and warm, and, knowing of your tenderness, understands best how to keep it safe from harm.
“I’m fine.” His tone is shy and bashful, and he peers away to his creased bedsheets and clothes strewn about the room.
He doesn’t know how to act around you – he’s waiting for you to get closer, to tell him what you’re thinking behind those furrowed brows – and, in turn, you hover, waiting for the next words that will leave him.
“Did I-,” his eyes flick back to yours for a brief moment, “did I do something wrong?”
“Huh? No, no, no…” you say a little too quietly.
“Oh… okay…” his lips flatten, “it’s just, I get this… feeling, like… like I did something wrong.”
And then the guilt drowns you. It doesn’t change those initial feelings of shame and sadness that swallowed you whole but adds another tone of blue to the already sea-swamped canvas.
How could Spencer ever do anything wrong?
You know you have to speak now; offer some cheap, shit excuse that’ll at least make him feel better. Just something not as vulnerable as, I just get really sad after sex. In essence, those words are easy enough to say. They’re a string of simple feeling. But they’re… electrified with so much more than the letters that form them.
It’s all too close.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Spence.” You rasp, “You’re such a worrier.” You force that façade again – the smug, the aloof, the all too cool for heavy emotions version of yourself that Spencer asked out for coffee – that has carried you since you were young.
“I always worry about you.” He admits in this beautiful, delicate way.
The ghost of your smile still lingers.
You keep your distance as you gather clothes from the floor, feeing the icy brush of Spencer’s gaze as you move about the room. You shake the wrinkles from his shirt and hang it on the corner of his door so it might straighten out a little, and then fold his trousers and find his socks.
“You’re stressed.” He mumbles.
“Hm?”
“You always clean when you’re stressed.” He straightens a little more then, “You – uh – you clean your environment because you think it’ll help you think better, o-or you’re compensating for the mess in your head by dealing with the mess right in front of you. The physical is easier to deal with the mental, but… you probably knew that already because you… you always clean when you’re stressed.”
You lay his trousers on the edge of the bed alongside his socks, balled together, and then clasp your hands in front of you.
“’m not stressed.” You say.
“You’re upset.”
“’m not upset.” This one comes out snappier than you mean it to – like a growl before a bite.
“You can tell me if something’s bothering you, you know,” his head slightly cocks to the side, “I… I know I’m not… I mean, you’ve obviously been with guys who know more than me-,”
“It’s not you, Spence.”
Gentle. You manage the gentleness in this one.
“But there is an it.”
Your jaw tenses and you look away.
You wonder if you should just show all your cards and let him decide for himself if he wants to deal with that. With you. There’s nothing wrong with you, so there’s nothing to be ashamed of, even if that heavy feeling tells you differently.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” He says then, “I don’t know if that’s what you’re thinking, but… just in case.” he scratches the nape of his neck, “I… did you- do you… wanna go, I don’t…”
You preferred it when this happened in your apartment. At least then, you weren’t edged out. Guys leave easier.
But there’s a lot on the line.
You can’t just leave and never speak to him again – well, at least, not easily – and, at some point, you’d have to deal with this. He would coax it out of you one calm day at your desk, or you’d admit it drunk and stumbling out of a bar. That would likely be worse. What about your relationship? Do you never sleep together again? Do you do this song and dance every time? Or do you separate to run from it – from the shameless shame?
You try to be honest.
“I just…”
But honesty – vulnerability – does not come easy.
“I… sex is just… a weird subject for me.”
Spencer straightens now, hands in his lap, sitting in the mess of bedsheets and odd pillows, the tender glow of his lamp emphasising golden threads weaving his hair. His gaze is always so intense, and you do best to avoid it when it comes to matters of the heart – of the serious, emotional kind.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“You couldn’t have known, I don’t really talk about it.” you rush to say – don’t blame yourself, you’re not wrong, Spence, how could you be wrong? It’s me, or, it’s not me because Google says that this happens sometimes because of shame or trauma but I’m not ashamed of you, a-and nothing happened, I just… fuck, Spence! – but you shrug and say none of that.
“Well, I…” he blinks as he glances around the room, cheeks rouging, “I… need to know about this kind of stuff,” he says your name so gently, you could sob – he always speaks to you like he’s mid-prayer, “I… need to know if you’re okay, and what I can do to make sure you’re okay.”
“I am okay.”
“If you were okay, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“It’s not… it’s not really a… thing you do something about.”
A moment of quiet.
“I’m sorry, angel, I don’t really understand – can you… what kind of thing is it?”
You know he thinks something happened in your past. His gaze screams of it so loudly that you think back and wonder if being abandoned every time you showed the most intimate parts of yourself could be classified as a somewhat traumatic experience. You wonder if you cloud your skin with indifference so that it’s easier to hide your disappointment – like the leaving might hurt less if you’re already prepared, or if you’re expecting it, if you look like you don’t care.
Spencer, however, has made no move to leave just yet, and his offer for you to leave was more for your sake than his own. He is different, you guess. He’s always hummed at a different frequency to the rest of the world, like some… extraterrestrial that knew the universe better than anyone else.
His brows flick up and you realise you’ve been quiet in thought for far too long.
“I…” stop, your body yells, “nothing, nothing.” your head shakes, and you emit somewhere between a self-effacing laugh and a cry of terror at how close you’d gotten to showing your cards.
“Baby…” his voice is low and calm and all-too-patient and so much nicer than you probably deserve, “I need to know about this.”
And God, if he didn’t say it so sweet, you might’ve had the edge to snap back and tell him to leave it well enough alone.
He reaches out and his fingers gesture you to finally sit on the bed, instead of remaining planted on your bare feet, ready to run. You watch him, as though half-expecting his touch to be aggressive or painful or burning, but cave under the weight of such wide, brown eyes, searing into yours with their heaven-sent leniency and infinite understanding.
You think about leaving.
You could be alone, then, and you’d rather be alone when you feel like this – like someone could hold a gun to your head and you wouldn’t even flinch. You’d close your eyes just to make it easier for them.
And yet, as his fingers stretch outwards, you swallow the wretchedness, and you crack. Not meeting his gaze, you settle on the bed, legs still hanging off the side, in distance enough for his calloused hands to grasp your forearm and for his thumb to trace your skin in a rhythmic back-and-forth that grounds you far more than a violent grip ever could.
Some people are born temperate.
“Talk to me.” he urges.
“I don’t like talking.”
“I know you don’t,” his lips quirk at the corner, “but, your feelings, they’re safe with me. I just wanna understand you – I wanna help, you know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t believe you. Fuck, you don’t even believe yourself.
Instead of pointing out the lie, his smile ghosts his lips again.
“You’re so stubborn.” He murmurs in this nostalgic way, as though the stubbornness – the lying – isn’t all that bad.
“It’s why you’re obsessed with me.”
His head softly shakes.
“What’s going on in there?” his fingers trace your hairline and coil around your ear, and then his thumb grazes your cheek, and it’s all too painful with its featheriness, and your teeth grit in a bitter attempt to not let it show.
You didn’t know you could feel such light touches.
Your brows, however, aching now, reveal your thoughts all too well.
You decide to show your cards. At the end of any game, every player exhibits their hand out of morbid curiosity.
Your gaze shifts away. Cool air prances around your feet, raring to take you anywhere else.
“I…” you stammer, “erm… sex… is…” you bite your cheek as you think, “I get sad… sometimes. ‘nd I don’t know why.”
“Okay.” he says, and for a moment, that’s all he says – just quiet acceptance of the truth.
His hand drops from your hair. Your heart’s electric beat shocks innocent parts of yourself and you struggle to keep the panic from reaching your face. Instead, his grasp returns to your forearm.
“What kind of sad?”
“Just…” you shrug, “sad… like… really sad.”
“And what are you thinking?” he asks, “When you’re sad like this, what kind of thoughts do you have?”
“Uh…”
It feels a little easier to speak now the threshold into your shadow has been crossed, but that doesn’t mean the words come any easier.
“Just… wanna be alone, I guess. Not that… not that I want to be alone, not that I want you to lea- or I would leave, I guess, it’s your place, it’s- I-I just… figure… if I’m going to be a crying mess, I’d rather do it in private.” You swallow, “I’m sorry, I’ve… I’ve never talked to anyone about this before.”
“Nobody? What about – you know – guys before me, you never had this conversation?”
You think about telling him they’d already left by this point, but instead you shake your head and hope he understands.
He does. In the delicate scrunch of his brows and wandering of his eyes to your forearm as he traces those soothing lines, you know he knows.
“I’m…” he sucks in a breath, “not… gonna ask you to leave or anything like that, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I know.”
You’re on fire tonight. Every other phrase out of your mouth is littered with an attempt to pacify his mind and hide your own.
He calls your name.
“It’s… normal sometimes-,” here we go, you think, “to have complicated feelings after sex. It’s intimate. It’s vulnerable. And the chemicals released during sex can really confuse any pre-existing emotions. Right now,” his fingers return to trace the lace of your hair around your ear, “your serotonin and dopamine levels, having skyrocketed, are plummeting fast… and that, combined with any – uh – intricate feelings about sex can really mess with your mood. It’s called – uh – post-coital dysphoria,” you know this, but he’s trying to help, so you let him talk – it sounds much better coming from him than any medical research website anyway, “really, at its root, it stems from some kind of idea or feeling, like… resentment… anxiety… or if something happened-,”
“Nothing happened.” you breathe quietly.
“Okay,” he lets you have it, but you’re not sure if he believes you, “you know, physical contact and talking are actually ways to help regulate the emotional crash you receive post-intercourse.” You cringe at the use of the word, and he smirks, “So… what I’m saying is,” his thumb traces your cheek, “I love you, so… come back to bed… and let me take care of you.”
Your gaze is glassy as they flick about his features. His shadowy eyes. The bump on the bridge of his nose. His lips, curved into a sympathetic smile, gently perking at his cheeks.
“You don’t want to feel like this, do you, angel?” he asks.
“No.” you whine quietly, like a shot dog.
“You deserve to be taken care of.” His brows pinch, “Just because you haven’t been doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it.”
You realise that no number of Google searches or WedMD articles or Reddit threads could soothe that restless worry constantly stirring beneath your skin, and you probably did need the intimacy that comes from being told by somebody you love that you deserve softness. You are more than the way your body moves. You are more than the chemical crash coursing through your brain.
“Something’s wrong with me.” you say it just to say it.
“There could never be anything wrong with you.”
“People don’t typically feel like killing themselves after sex.”
It comes out much sharper than you intend, but it doesn’t stab Spencer at all.
“I don’t really… believe… in a typical or a normal. I think we’re both far from it, anyway. The brain is a strange thing.”
“The strangest.” You mumble.
There is this soft, quiet moment, as a stream of light breaks through the drawn curtains from a streetlamp outside, as Spencer’s skin runs across yours with its only purpose being to soothe your aching heart and busy mind, where you realise completely that there is no leaving or being left tonight. It scares you a little. You don’t know if you will weep when your head hits the pillow and if your cries will be charged by the inexplicable, or if you will opt for sleep and hope that your unconscious brain can unscramble the twisted tracks guiding your thoughts from one assumption to another.
Either way, you decide very much that you would probably prefer doing that someplace warm, someplace safe, someplace familiar like the crook of Spencer’s shoulder as his fingers brush your groomed hair and his lips dust kisses over your forehead.
“Can-,” you swallow the question, and look away.
“What?” he asks.
“I – uh -,” how can you ask to be held? “you’re probably right about… about how to – erm – deal with this.”
Spencer smirks.
“You think so?”
“Stop it.”
“I never hear you say I’m right-,”
“I said probably.”
“What’s the probability – seventy-thirty?”
“Spencer.”
He challenges you back with your name and a raised brow, a soft grin crossing his sleepy face.
“Well, I’ll take any sort of win when it comes to you, my… sweet, stubborn girl.”
𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬 the time where you had just a little too much to drink after a party at rossis and spencer takes care of you
𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 alcohol intoxication, drinking, reader gets sick, emetophobia, a bit of suggestiveness (?), lots of pet names, spencer’s a sweetheart.
𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 2.2k
𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 suffering a bit of a writers block but i am on a roll lately. it’s like ive got all these unfinished drafts and i can’t seem to finish them ugh. im going through my request, slowly but surely!
𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | 𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭
“Come on,” Spencer urged, wrapping a tight arm around you as you clung to his shoulder as if your life depended on it. God, your head was pounding and your own body felt like dead weight as you continued carrying yourself around.
You stumbled on your feet, too intoxicated to walk straight. The sharp stiletto heel that accompanied your dress was not working in your favor either, and they were frankly becoming quite painful.
“I need to sit down,” You slurred in a hushed yet collected manner.
“One second angel,” He whispered, reminding himself not to disrupt his neighbors.
It wasn’t your fault that Rossi's parties always consisted in a very sweet, very endless supply of the most exquisite cocktails you’d ever tasted. It’s not everyday you got to taste such bougie liquor and given your big sweet tooth, and Garcia’s pesky persistence to get you to follow along her alcohol tasting spree, all those free drinks were dangerous at your disposal.
Penelope had passed over this tart but perfectly sweetened strawberry drink she had encountered and you made the grave mistake of trying it. Just when the flavors melted in your mouth, you immediately made your way to the bar in search of your own, downing that one and three more in less than fifteen minutes.
In hindsight, that was a horrible decision. Spencer knew that if he had been glued to your hip, just like he usually was at these or any social event for that matter, he’d never let you drink as much and as fast as you did. He had nagged about something with rapid absorption and rapid increase in BAC— you were too drunk to remember any of the information he was dumping your way if you were being honest.
You began slowing down once the nausea and severe dizziness settled in. Usually, you knew your limits with alcohol. You knew how much got you drunk enough to loosen up, and you knew how much was too much, thanks to a few situations where you had to learn the hard way. However, something about the sweetness and the inability to taste any alcohol whatsoever threw you off your radar.
And here you are, dragging yourself against Spencer’s body and back into his apartment, too drunk to even walk and feeling like you were about to literally throw up any and every thing in your system.
Spencer pushed the door open, managing to balance you in his other arm as he unlocked the door swiftly. He walked in with you by his side, throwing the keys into the small metal dish by the door and now using both hands to keep you steady.
You remained quiet, trying desperately to focus on keeping the nausea down and not throwing up. “Spence,”
“What's wrong?” He asked, looking down at you as you dug your forehead into his chest, grappling at his shirt with a rough tug.
“I feel really sick,” The world around you was spinning and that pit in your stomach was getting harder to push down. He matted down the top of your tousled hair, tucking a few stray strands behind your ears.
“Do you need to throw up?” He asked, voice soft and comforting.
“I think so,” The nausea seemed to hit like a tidal wave, and all you needed was to lie down. You needed to lie down. Just the mention of puking was enough to get you to gag. Immediately freaked out and panicked, you gave a persistent nod, already pushing yourself off of him and making a very crooked B-line for the bathroom, knowing you were going to throw up.
Once past the bathroom door, you fell to your knees opening the lid of the toilet and hurling the contents of your stomach into it. You gagged, retching loudly while tears pricked the corners of your eyes and everything around you hurt.
Spencer followed closely behind, crouching beside you and pulling up your hair into a messy makeshift ponytail while his other came to rub comforting circles on your back, sitting through your discomfort by your side.
It was ironic really. Spencer had always been extremely opposed to anything germ related and this seemed to be his worst nightmare. If anyone knew about this, they’d probably not be able to believe how Spencer didn’t run in the opposite direction and quite literally ran right towards you and your germ related issues. Since he started dating you, he let certain things slide. He shared more of his personal space and didn’t mind if that included sharing things he wouldn’t tend to share around others.
He never thought twice about it if it brought you comfort. It came to him naturally, putting you and your comfort and happiness first.
You spit out the remaining acidic taste of bile into the toilet and groaned heavily. Your nostrils burned and so did the back of your throat, but all of the nausea was immediately alleviated from your system.
“Mhm, sexy,” You said, reaching over for a piece of toilet paper and wiping down your mouth. Spencer huffed a laugh through his nose, pressing a kiss to the back of your head. “This is embarrassing.”
“This?” He said, voice jumping into one of fake shock. You threw a glare over your shoulder and his face immediately melted into a sweet smile, rubbing your back with just a bit more clarity. “I’ve seen you in worse predicaments,”
“How do you feel?” You turned, resting your back against the toilet after flushing the contents away and turning towards him.
“I feel better,” You mumbled, screwing your eyes shut and attempting to blink away the tears and the burning sensation of your nose.. “But I probably look very disgusting.”
He tilted his head with a shrug, wholeheartedly answering. “You don’t look disgusting,”
“Liar,” You said with narrowed eyes, smiling playfully.
He shook his head with one of his signature smiles, those that tugged slightly to the right and crinkled the corner of his eyes just perfectly. He reached up, grabbing the empty glass cup that sat on the side of his sink, and was now filled with water. He handed you the glass which you took without complaint. “Drink,”
You drank down the whole glass, wanting to get the disgusting aftertaste out of your mouth. “Better?”
“Much,” You nodded, smiling up at him, feeling instantly better but still dizzy. “I feel like, rejuvenated or something,”
You reached back to push yourself up off the ground, only for Spencer to set a firm hand on your shoulder keeping you still.
“Give yourself a minute,” He told you. “You feel better after vomiting following excessive alcohol consumption mainly due to the removal of alcohol and its irritating effects on the stomach, but you need a few minutes.”
You hummed, picking at a rhinestone on your dress. “Does that mean I should expel all my stomach's contents everytime I overdrink to feel better?”
“No,” He narrowed his eyes at you. “You shouldn’t even drink enough to get to the point of having to throw up in the first place, love,”
“But those strawberry drinks were so good Spence,” You threw your head back with a pout.
“Yeah, yeah,” He dismissed with a playful tone. He hooked his fingers around your elbows. “Up,”
You steadied yourself with a tight grip on his shoulders and winced at the bright white light of the bathroom. He pushed you back, knocking the back of your knees into the toilet and forcing you to sit down on it with a soft thud. He crouched down and reached over to knead at the straps of your heel and promptly remove them.
He set them to the side and wordlessly moved into his room, grabbing one of his spare t-shirts and making his way back into the bathroom, where you watched him with weary eyes and a very sleepy but adoring smile.
Everything felt fuzzy but just seeing him work his way around you with such ease made your heart beat insanely.
“It’s not fair that you’re so pretty,” You voiced. Spencer opened his mouth to answer but could only mustered a stammered chuckle, blushing profusely but trying to resist laughing at the slurring in your voice.
“I’m pretty?” He asked. You nodded.
“Very,” He reached his hands out, grabbing yours and pulling you up.
“Is it okay if I take your dress off?” He asked, turning you around so your back was facing him. His fingers skimmed across your already exposed shoulders and back and everything felt so heightened that you shuddered at the ghost of his touch.
“Thought you’d never ask,” You said, shooting him a suggestive smile over your shoulder. He said your name with a warning, not faltering in the slightest.
“I’m kidding!” For the most part at least.
“Well, given since you can’t sleep in this dress,” His calloused fingers traced your shoulders in a soothing rhythm. “I brought you one of my shirts but I need to take off your dress in order to put it on,”
Your body seemed to feel magnetized to the floor, pulling your every movement down with a huge weight. Which was probably the alcohol having its effect on you. You felt stupefied but all you could think of was just how tired you were.
“That’s fine Spence,” You murmured, allowing his fingers to skim down your shoulders and towards the dress's zipper. Your eyes fluttered shut, trying to rest them while his hands moved around your back.
He pulled it down, all so gently and smoothly that you were growing even dizzier than you were with more than three cocktails in you.
“I love this dress,” You stated, watching as the sleeves loosened from your shoulders and began sliding down. The cold air hit your bare skin and you merely shivered as it fell and rested on the plush flesh of your hips.
“So do I,” He smiled, slipping his own shirt over your head. You huffed as he pushed the dress down your hips, allowing his shirt to fall over your upper body and cover you as best as it could while picking up the pool of fabric from the floor and laying it out against the toilet. “You looked very beautiful.”
You really did. The way that specific black sequined dress hugged your figure in every single angle and crease possible, flaunting off your body shape perfectly, made Spencer weak at his knees. He didn’t know how he didn’t drop everything the second he saw you to pull you elsewhere private and kiss you until neither of you could breathe.
“Looked? As in past tense?” You turned, facing him with a fake betrayal plastered across your features. “That’s rude,”
“You are insufferable,” He reached back, grabbing your spare toothbrush and putting a nice amount of toothpaste on it. “Now let me brush your teeth so I can kiss you,”
You surrendered your never ending teasing with a sigh, grabbing the hem of his shirt as he held your chin tenderly, brushing your teeth. Throughout the whole three minutes, you couldn’t hold back from allowing yourself to re-learn every single scratch and line on Spencer’s face, engraving its every detail and beauty into a small space in your brain.
Once he was finished and you had rinsed your mouth out with water, you were eternally grateful that the acidic taste in your mouth and lips had been replaced with a fresh minty one. “There,”
You hummed, pulling Spencer in by the said hem of his t-shirt and tilting your chin up towards him, smiling at him like an idiot. “Hi,”
“Hey,” His hands reached up, cradling your face tenderly in his palms, pouring any and every ounce of love he had in him onto you with a firm kiss.
“My legs are killing me,” You said, nuzzling your nose into his cheek and hugging his torso. He rubbed your back with a kiss on the top of your forehead. “I want to lay down,”
“I know but I need to get your makeup off, angel,” He murmured.
You groaned, needing to just get to bed or else you’d literally collapse “You specifically know that if you leave it on overnight, the buildup of makeup, along with dirt, oil, and pollutants that you collect on your skin throughout the day accumulates on its surface and can cause skin issues and breakouts.”
You narrowed a glare. “Yeah, yeah, I guess you’re right,”
“I always am,” He smiled proudly.
“Okay now you’re just pushing it,” He reached back, grabbing a makeup removing wipe from its respective package and dragging it very smoothly across your cheeks, lips, eyes and forehead— any part of your face he could get at. You shivered at the chilliness it gave your flared up cheeks.
Spencer was so gentle with you it made your heart swell in size at just how much attention and care he put into everything he did for you. If you weren’t as tired—and as out of it— as you were right now, you really would pull him down and kiss him anywhere (and everywhere) until your heart stopped beating as much as it was. Although realistically speaking the kissing would probably cause your palpitations to worsen.
He managed to get as much mascara off as he could but the waterproof substance stuck to the bottom of your eyes with a fierce grip. He tossed the wipe into the trashcan and quickly swiped his thumbs across the bottom of your eyes with a very docile brush.
“How do I look?” You said, narrowing your eyes with humor, knowing you probably looked absolutely disheveled. Spencer cocked a brow at you, reaching back and undoing the tie that held your hair into the gorgeous updo thing you had going on.
“Absolutely breathtaking,” He still said, pressing a chaste kiss to the bridge of your nose. His hands continued working at your hair, to which you let your eyes flicker close, resisting the uncontrollable urge to moan out loud as the pads of his fingers rubbed your irritated scalp soothingly.
“I’m sorry,” Your voice came out way more breathier than intended.
“What for?” He asked, letting his hands rest on the side of your neck.
“This,” It wasn’t exactly flattering— the state he had seen you in. And for some reason you felt embarrassed at the thought of him seeing you so exposed and in some shape or form. “I don’t know I feel like I made a fool of myself,”
He furrowed his brows. “I don’t know— I feel guilty that you have to take care of me.”
“But I love taking care of you,” He murmured, instilling such a delicate tone with you that it was impossible to feel uncertain about anything. “Don’t say sorry,”
He kissed you, perfectly, just like he always did. “If you say so,”
It was true. Spencer loved, absolutely treasured, moments where he could take care of you in his own special way. Be gentle and remind you just how much he absolutely loved you.
“Am I done now?” You huffed, slumping forward as all the bones in your body begged to sleep.
“Mhm,” He pulled back, scanning you entirely. “Good to go.”
A/N: me posting twice in the same month?? someone do a welfare check
warning: age gap mentioned (bc I’m a slut) but not extensively or in a weird way bc Spencer’s not a pervert lol
Moth To A Flame
Closing the bathroom door with your own back, you slide down it until you’re sitting on the floor, bringing your knees to your chest and taking a shaky breath. You shouldn’t call him while crying, you know better than that, but you know your own tells enough to hope you can mask them; a futile effort considering who you intend to call at 3am.
Lifting your phone to your ear, you hear it ring no more than twice before your prayers are answered, and you breathe a sigh of relief.
“Hey, Spencer.” You greet him quietly, smiling from just saying his name.
“Hi, sunshine. How are you?” Spencer’s voice is calm and collected, but it’s clear through the phone he’s delighted to hear from you.
There’s no question raised regarding the time at which you’re calling. But no matter how many times this happens, Spencer always enquires after your wellbeing.
“I’m okay, thank you. Just…you know. How are you?” The question is returned, though neither of you are a fan of small talk.
“Yes,” Spencer responds specifically to the insinuation he knows, because he does. Then, he continues, “-I’m well, too, thank you.”
His words, and what goes left unsaid, makes your smile grow.
“What’re you reading?” You ask, and the quiet chuckle you hear from Spencer is enough to prove you right in your assumption of his reason for being awake at this hour.
“Pride And Prejudice. How did you know I was reading?” He wonders aloud with a fondness in his voice that he reserves only for you.
“When aren’t you reading?” You roll your eyes playfully, and Spencer can practically hear it.
“When I’m sleeping.” He quips, his own smile evident in his voice.
It’s enough to have you laughing softly into the phone, which only serves to make Spencer’s smile grow.
“Read me some?” You request quietly.
Like you ever need to ask.
Spencer clears his throat into the phone.
“After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began, ‘In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’ Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her immediately followed. He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness…” Spencer reads aloud, and the smile on your face is almost as soft as his voice sounds through the phone.
By the end of the chapter, your eyes have drifted closed and your head is tipped back against the bathroom door behind you. Hearing how calm your breathing has become, Spencer pauses, and you hear him close the book.
“See you in the morning?” He always asks because on the rare chance you’ll say no, at least he has time to mentally prepare for your absence. Tonight is not the night for that.
“Yeah, see you tomorrow…Thank you.” You reply, already feeling close to sleep.
This stumps Spencer momentarily, and he falters before he replies, “For what?”
And there’s only one thing you can say to that.
“Being you.”
Spencer chuckles sheepishly, “I don’t know how to be anyone else.”
Of course he doesn’t. Perhaps, if he was anyone else, you’d stand a chance.
“Goodnight, Spencer.” You tell him gently.
“Goodnight, sunshine.” There’s a second of warm silence as you savor the sound of each other’s quiet breathing, and then you both hang up the call.
Standing up from where you’d been sitting on the bathroom floor, you take another deep breath before reaching for the door handle. Walking through a house that isn’t yours, into a living room where the sound of snoring from the couch makes you want to tear your hair out, past a kitchen where a cheap measly pile of four red roses lie limp on the counter with a post-it note in place of any kind of meaningful card, up the staircase where framed photographs filled with eyes that aren’t on your side stare down at you judgmentally, until you’re safely confined in the bedroom you feel doomed to. Crawling into your side of the bed, you adjust the pillows that occupy the other side, filling the space in a shape long enough to resemble the shape of someone under your bedcovers. And with Spencer’s voice still in your ears wishing you a good night, you close your eyes and drift off to sleep.
Meanwhile, Spencer adjusts his alarm clock to wake him an hour earlier than necessary, and awakens from a peaceful slumber with a determined mission in mind. Once his normal morning routine is complete, instead of driving to the office, he drives to his preferred florist, who greets him with a knowing smile when Spencer walks in.
“Another dozen?” The florist guesses.
“Please.” Spencer nods, smiling politely.
Retrieving his wallet from his back pocket, Spencer pays for the flowers and graciously thanks the florist, taking the flowers and then leaving the establishment to return to his car. He drives back home, placing the dozen flowers in a glass vase that he keeps pristine for this very purpose, with the perfect level of water for optimal growth for this specific species of flower. Very carefully, Spencer inspects them until he determines which has the prettiest bloom today, and that is the one he elects to remove from the vase, carefully securing its stem in seran wrap and placing it in the pocket of his suit jacket, then continuing on his normal journey into work.
Purposely, Spencer arrives earlier than the rest of the team, so that he can execute his plan without interruptions. From the staff kitchen, he chooses the most elegant looking glass he can find and again pours the perfect level of water - this time for just one flower, specifically - unwrapping the single bloom in his suit jacket and setting in the glass. He then walks to your desk and positions it in an aesthetically pleasing location, but already knows it is not enough. The picture is not complete. It must be perfect for you. Briefly visiting his own desk, Spencer opens the drawer to take a piece of his own parchment paper, from which he cuts a small section that he then folds in half. On what appears to be the front of the folded piece, he maps out a constellation in a dot-to-dot sketch, then inside the fold of paper, he writes the story behind it. After several attempts, Spencer finds the perfect angle at which to place the folded piece of paper next to the flower on the desk, and only then does he return to his usual morning routine of making himself a coffee in the staff kitchen. Counting down the minutes.
By the time you get to the office, you’ve pushed the thoughts of your home from your mind and have a bright smile on your face, looking forward to a day spent working with your friends and not thinking about-
“(Y/N)! I just saw! He got you roses! That’s SO cute! You have, like, the best boyfriend!” Penelope squeals as she runs up to you the very second you walk through the glass doors of the bullpen.
Your heart sinks and your eyebrows furrow.
“You saw?”
Penelope nods excitedly, gesturing to her phone, where she shows you the post your boyfriend had made on social media: a picture he had taken of the four red roses he’d bought you that he filtered to high heaven to make them look more grand than they were, with a caption that said ‘happy four and many more, babe x’. If it weren’t for the sake of keeping your business private - something he clearly cares for about as much as he does you - you’d scoff.
“Oh, yeah. Must’ve missed that he posted that.” You plaster a smile on your face that doesn’t reach your eyes, walking side by side with Penelope towards your desk.
“It was your four year anniversary, right? Did you do anything fancy?” She’s giddy on your behalf.
“No, just had a quiet night in.” You provide an excuse, the most generous blanket statement you could have given to the shambles that were your boyfriend’s anniversary plans.
Your dejectedness, however, is abruptly cut short when your gaze lands on your desk. A single bloom of your favorite flower, with a neatly folded handwritten note of a constellation placed next to it. In a microsecond, you’re turning to where Spencer sits at his desk, hiding his smirk behind his cup of coffee.
“You didn’t!” You feign chastisement, but your giddiness is obvious.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Spencer shrugs, his smile as obvious as yours is.
You’re practically bouncing on the spot when you bring the little glass and the delicate flower within to your face to breathe in the sweet scent.
“These aren’t even in season anymore, Spencer, how did you-“
The question is cut short by a magician who never reveals his secrets.
“I played no part in this, but perhaps someone happens to know somebody else who is equipped to grow them on request.” There’s a teasing lilt to his otherwise matter-of-fact tone, and you are shaking your head in absolute disbelief.
Setting the glass back down on your desk, you pick up the constellation, admiring it carefully before folding it and placing it in your desk drawer, in amongst another 30-something hand drawn constellations. The smile is still lingering on your face when you sit down at your desk, and from where Spencer sits at his, his chest feels warm. So much joy from you at the cost of only an hour’s less sleep and a few more dollars than the asking price of your favorite flowers. Perhaps, tonight you won’t call him trying to hide that you’d been crying again, he hopes. Whether that comes to fruition or not, he has another eleven blooms waiting in his apartment to gift you at random intervals to surprise you and keep your tears at bay for as long as he can, without you ever telling him there was a chance of them falling. He knows.
For the rest of the day, Spencer catches you glancing at the flower on your desk while you work through various reports and paperwork, an almost shy smile lighting up your face every time you see it there.
It’s only when the team begins packing up for the day that Spencer thinks to look into what Penelope had referenced that morning- a post of some kind? Easily enough, Spencer finds your boyfriend’s social media on his computer, and what he discovers makes him borderline violent. Four years together, encompassed by four measly roses and what you called a ‘quiet night in’ that was so beyond underwhelming you ended your evening by calling Spencer from your bathroom. A celebration of that scale warranted only four red roses, while the mere hint you’d been crying was enough for Spencer to visit the florist he pays specifically to keep growing your favorite flowers for you, to buy another dozen that he intends to deliver to you one by one at irregular intervals. Still, it isn’t Spencer’s job to compensate for what is clearly absent from your relationship; at least, not consciously.
“Babe!” A voice calls out that has Spencer using every ounce of strength he possesses to withhold from rolling his eyes. Shutting down his computer, he stands from his desk just in time to see your expression fall where you pack away your things at your own desk.
Turning to face your boyfriend, you give him a tight-lipped smile.
“Hey, what’re you doing here?” You ask shortly.
Excellent question, Spencer thinks.
“Just came to surprise you and drive you home!” Your boyfriend exclaims like it’s some kind of achievement, opening his arms in a big gesture as he approaches your desk.
How considerate, ambushing you at your workplace under the guise of it being a nice surprise, Spencer scoffs internally, deliberately slowing the pace at which he readies his satchel to leave the office.
“Oh. Thanks.” You don’t know what else to say. “I’ll be ready in a second.” You add, feeling like you’re defaulting to basic lines of dialogue to avoid awkward silences.
“Great!” Your boyfriend exclaims, looking around the bullpen like he’s never seen the place before - he has, twice, and Spencer wishes his eidetic memory would allow him to erase the memory of your discomfort during both instances - until his eyes land on a face he recognises, and he grins.
“Spencer! My man!” Your boyfriend yells, and your eyes widen as you watch him walk right over to Spencer and pull him into a bro-hug that immediately has Spencer rigidly uncomfortable.
“I’ve told you-“ You implore, shooting Spencer an apologetic and pleading look before your boyfriend starts talking over you.
“Oh yeah! Sorry, man, forgot you’re weird about touching people.” He laughs, throwing his hands up in mock surrender.
You scowl, parting your lips to bite his head off, but Spencer steps in to prevent you from saying something that’ll only cause more arguments for you when you go home.
“I have an acute awareness and disliking towards unfamiliar germs and contact.” Spencer corrects your boyfriend firmly, aware that only you and him realize what he means by a germ in this context.
“Yeah, man, no worries.” Your boyfriend laughs, like he’s the funniest man in the world to himself. “Ready to go, babe?” He asks you.
“Mhmm.” Another tight-lipped smile, and that’s apparently convincing enough for your boyfriend, who wraps an arm around your waist in a careless action rather than something that should be treasured, and would be treasured by the man you look over your shoulder to give one last apologetic expression to.
That is, until Emily steps out of her office and calls over to you, “Don’t forget about Rossi’s party!”
And you literally wince.
“A party?! Oh man! Can’t wait! Thanks, Emmers!” Your boyfriend answers for you, regarding a party you had deliberately neglected to mention to him, and then he’s all but dragging you out of the office.
Once out of earshot, Spencer actually does scoff.
“Emmers?” Emily asks him with a frown from where she stands on the raised walkway, leaning on the railing.
“A shocking breach of social etiquette to assume a nickname for someone he barely knows.” Spencer clarifies, to which Emily nods.
“You still not coming to Rossi’s tonight?” She elects to ask him, a smile curling at the corner of her mouth.
Spencer sighs heavily. He looks down at his desk, then lifts his head to look over at the elevator doors closing, snatching the view of you away. He knows what will happen tonight. He knows.
The mirror stares back at him. If someone told Spencer a year ago that he’d be attending a work related get together he’d initially rejected the invitation of but went back on himself solely in the hopes that his suit of choice would impress a coworker just over half his age who has a boyfriend, Spencer would have walked right out of prison and request a psych eval. Still, the thought at the forefront of his mind is that 6 months and 8 days ago he had worn an all-black suit on a case that you had complimented. It is a foolish dream to think you would compliment him for it again, but for you, Doctor Spencer Reid is a proud fool.
Much to your own embarrassment, you and your boyfriend knock at Rossi’s door an hour late, and based on your expression it is not difficult for Spencer to deduce it’s not your fault. Or, it wouldn’t have been difficult if his brain hadn’t short-circuited at the sight of you wearing a thin strapped, floor length purple silk dress that hugged your every curve to the extent that when Spencer rose from his seat in a gentlemanly gesture at your entrance, his knees very nearly buckled beneath him to a position of worship. Your boyfriend’s arm is careless around your waist again, and he drops it not to pull your chair out for you at the table, but to bro-hug David Rossi, who looks at him like he spat in his bowl of pasta. In your disgruntled state, it takes you a second to acknowledge that Spencer is standing, and in between greeting the rest of the team, your eyes continually flit back to him, his heart skipping a beat each and every time in a way that only further convinces him he is in the midst of a medical emergency. Finally, your gaze lingers on him, and he doesn’t waste the opportunity.
“Can I get you a drink? Rossi’s minibar has some of your favorites.” Spencer gestures with the hand not holding his own drink, and without so much as looking to your plus one, you nod and walk around the table.
His large hand ghosts the small of your back, fingers flexing, but he doesn’t allow himself to make contact until he counts the microseconds to cross the distance that takes you both away from every other pair of eyes in this house. The heat of Spencer’s fingertips meet the purple silk of your dress, barely there, but oh, do you feel it.
Once safely standing at the minibar, Spencer only needs to watch your face to see which bottle your eyes light up at, and as soon as he notices, he pours you a glass without you having to ask. In a gesture that feels like a secret, the two of you clink your glasses together and lock eyes to take a simultaneous sip.
“Nice suit.” You nod at Spencer, a shy smile forming behind your glass.
“Thank you.” He tries not to choke on his drink, then nods back at you. “Pretty dress.”
You have to bite your lip to prevent your smile from growing any bigger.
“Thank you. The color reminded me of your scarf.” You remark quietly, and if you weren’t a profiler, you probably wouldn’t notice the almost imperceptible widening of Spencer’s eyes at your words.
“It is a similar shade.” He agrees, his heart in his throat.
Comfortable silence settles between you. Eyes locked, nursing your drinks, your free hands hanging idly at your sides. Standing just a little too close. Fingers almost touching.
“I’m sorry about earlier.” You say eventually.
Spencer shakes his head dismissively. “I appreciate it, but his oversights aren’t your responsibility.” Or your burden, he so badly wants to add.
You sigh. “If he overstepped the boundaries of a guy who was less of a man than you, he could’ve got his face caved in.”
And what a shame that would have been, Spencer muses in his own mind.
“I didn’t escalate the situation, but not because I’m a man- because it wasn’t a worthy cause.” He amends.
“So if there was a worthy cause, you’d have clocked him?” You giggle at the idea.
“Possibly.” Definitely, Spencer smirks.
“What constitutes a worthy cause in the mind of Doctor Spencer Reid?” You tease, tilting your head to look up at him with a curious twinkle in your eyes.
“If he made you cry.” Spencer chooses his words very carefully, and inspects every micro expression on your face in response.
Because your boyfriend has made you cry, you know that, and you know Spencer knows too, despite the fact you haven’t ever stated as such. He knows. All you’d have to do is say the word, and Spencer would walk right back into the dining room, grab your boyfriend by his collar in front of the entire team, drag him outside and beat him to a pulp in the street.
If Spencer wasn’t a profiler, he probably wouldn’t notice the almost imperceptible widening of your eyes at his words.
“Babe! There you are! Rossi’s served us up a couple plates of something with a name I can’t pronounce- Spencer! Hey, man!” Your boyfriend’s agitating, grating voice cuts into the peaceful bubble you and Spencer had been existing in.
Sharing an equally irritated glance, you both turn to face him.
“Linguine alla Puttanesca.” Spencer drawls.
“Yeah, something like that, for sure!” Your boyfriend laughs, loudly, and without you saying a word, his arm is thrown around your waist again, stealing you from Spencer - who trails behind with a scowl fixed on your boyfriend’s arm - and returning to the dining room.
At the table, you sit opposite Spencer, with your boyfriend sitting on your left. You’re grateful for the casual conversation in the room taking his attention away from you for the most part, allowing you the peace of eating without him saying something that makes you want to vomit.
“Been thinking of getting some sleeping pills myself, not been sleeping too good on the couch!”
Nevermind.
Your eyes close in a pained blink, and you lift your napkin with an unnecessarily firm grip to wipe at your mouth.
“Oh. You’ve not got…comfy cushions?” Penelope tries to save the conversation, but the awkward silence has already descended upon the table at your boyfriend’s blatant overshading at your expense.
“Nope, barely been sleeping a wink! I miss my own bed, I’ll tell you that!” Your boyfriend laughs.
Setting your napkin down, you keep your gaze fixed on your half empty plate. You can feel eyes on you. Everywhere.
“A dinner party with your partner’s friends is not the social setting for discussing your relationship.” Spencer quips, releasing enough tension in your chest to allow you a breath.
“Don’t worry, bro, she doesn’t mind!” Your boyfriend nudges you with his arm, and you are rigid.
“Nobody at this table requires a profiling skillset to determine that (Y/N) does mind.” Spencer’s protective nature is bristling.
“Oh yeah, bet you profilers can just look and tell exactly what her problem is, huh?!” Your boyfriend laughs. “Go on, guess!” He demands of the table, like he’s prepping a joke with the greatest punchline in human history.
The table is silent. You close your eyes in a pained blink, begging any god that may exist, please, please-
“She won’t sleep with me!” Your boyfriend roars with laughter, and time slows to an agonizing halt.
The only accompanying sounds are cutlery clattering against plates, then two chairs scraping against the floor.
“That’s enough. Get out.” Rossi points at the door.
“With pleasure.” Spencer’s tone is cool as ice. In a fraction of a second, he rounds the table, grabs your boyfriend by his collar and drags him out of Rossi’s dining room, to the front door.
While the rest of the team crowd around you to check you’re okay, you’re shaking your hand and scrambling to stand, running outside. Spencer’s fists grip your boyfriend’s collar, pinning him to the side of his car.
“-and if I ever find you within a five mile radius of her, I’ll ruin your life without breaking a single law.” He seethes.
“She’s barely even my girlfriend, man, she doesn’t even put out! You can have her!” Your ex boyfriend holds his hands up in surrender while signing his own death warrant.
Spencer’s right hook sends him hurtling against the sidewalk, and Spencer is on him in the blink of an eye. Trapping him under his legs, Spencer delivers punch after punch, hearing bones crack with the force but only seeing red, until Rossi and Luke physically pull him off, and even then he tries to fight past them to carry on.
“Kid, kid, take a breath- you got him!” Rossi gently pats Spencer’s back, and with wide eyes like a deer in headlights, you appear in front of him.
“Spencer.” You breathe his name with an unnamed emotion, reaching up to cup his face in your hands, and his glazed over eyes that hadn’t been able to look anywhere but the bloody mess on sidewalk, find you in an instant.
Emily is already calling in some favors with the local police department to get this resolved with minimal assault charges, if possible.
“C’mon, inside.” You tell Spencer gently, taking one of his trembling, bloody hands in yours and guiding him back into Rossi’s house.
Taking him past the dining room, you find the kitchen and lead Spencer to lean against the empty counter beside the sink. Very carefully, you hold both of his hands under the cold water to wash them free of blood. It doesn’t take you long to realize the blood doesn’t just come from your ex-boyfriend. He’s running on adrenaline, breathing heavily, half watching you and half watching the doorway, as if expecting someone else to walk in that he has to take out to protect you.
Once his hands are as clean as you can get them, you retrieve some ice packs from Rossi’s freezer and hold them to Spencer’s swollen, bloody knuckles. You can’t look away from them.
“Are you in any pain yet?” You ask in a small voice.
“None.” Spencer answers sharply, gaze fixed on the doorway now because he can keep you in his peripheral vision, mind locked in fight or flight mode with an obvious winner.
“This is all my fault, Spencer, I’m so sorry- if I’d have broken up with him…” Your forehead drops to Spencer’s chest, pressing against the fabric of his black tie.
Those words catch him so off guard that he falters, and then frowns.
“None of this is in any way your fault.” Spencer states bluntly.
“If I’d broken up with him already, he wouldn’t have been here, wouldn’t have said those things in front of y- Spencer!” You cut yourself off when your reminder of what your ex had said has Spencer trying to move past you to go back outside and start right where he left off, having no choice but to grab his arm in an effort to stop him.
Realistically, you are not strong enough to hold Spencer in place. If he wanted to, he could push past you easily, but your hand on him could disarm a nuclear bomb if he was its power source.
“Don’t. Please. Stay.” You plead.
Like you ever have to ask.
Spencer settles back against the counter, one of his cold, bloody hands lifting to cup the back of your head, tilting your forehead back to his chest hold you there.
“By the same token, I could have prevented this, had I said what’s been unsaid.” Spencer murmurs into your hair.
“That’s way less fair than the point I made.” You remark, which has him smirking against the top of your head.
“Don’t get smart with me when I’m running on adrenaline.” Spencer warns playfully.
“Don’t get flirty when you just beat a guy to a pulp for disrespecting me.” You counter, causing him to scoff quietly.
“That reminds me, I must amend a previous statement.” Spencer says, and you can’t resist tilting your head back to look up at him, his hands immediately shaking free of their icepacks to cup your cheeks.
“Mhmm?” You press.
“I said all it would take for me to clock him would be him making you cry, this has proven to be incorrect. Based on my actions tonight, I can safely say if he made you cry, I would kill him.” Spencer speaks with a tone so soft you’d think he was complimenting you, his thumbs caressing your cheeks so tenderly while he threatens your ex’s very life.
“Wow. Big words for a man who hasn’t even taken me out on a first date.” You smirk.
“Moving a little fast, aren’t we, sunshine?” Spencer quips teasingly, his own smirk forming.
“A year of tiptoeing around each other while I was in a relationship is only moving a little fast by the standards of the romance novels you read, Doc.” You joke.
“Touché.” Spencer laughs fondly down at you. “Does this mean I can finally attempt to court you, fair lady?”
Butterflies that he singlehandedly commands, fly free in your stomach.
“I’d say so.” You answer softly, and Spencer breathes the deepest sigh of relief.
He leans down to rest his forehead against yours, ever so gently bumping his nose to yours in the most tender gesture of affection.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Spencer whispers, his breath fanning your lips.
“Anything.” You murmur.
Spencer smiles at the breathlessness he can already hear in your voice, solely caused by his proximity. Time slows to the most beautiful halt as he leans in, leaving the softest kiss at the corner of your mouth, barely even touching your lips.
