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---------ꨄᥫ᭡ꨄ

“𝓘 𝓴𝓷𝓸𝔀 𝓷𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓸𝓯 𝓶𝓪𝓷’𝓼 𝓻𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓽𝓼, 𝓸𝓻 𝔀𝓸𝓶𝓪𝓷’𝓼 𝓻𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓽𝓼; 𝓱𝓾𝓶𝓪𝓷 𝓻𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓽𝓼 𝓪𝓻𝓮 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓘 𝓻𝓮𝓬𝓸𝓰𝓷𝓲𝔃𝓮.”

Sarah Moore 𝓖𝓻𝓲𝓶𝓴𝓮

“𝓣𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓼𝓱𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓷𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓫𝓮 𝓪𝓷𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓼𝓮𝓪𝓼𝓸𝓷 𝓸𝓯 𝓼𝓲𝓵𝓮𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓾𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓵 𝔀𝓸𝓶𝓮𝓷 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓪𝓶𝓮 𝓻𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓽𝓼 𝓶𝓮𝓷 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓸𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓰𝓻𝓮𝓮𝓷 𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓽𝓱.”

Susan B. 𝓐𝓷𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓷𝔂

#lov3lyl3ttersᥫ᭡#welcome to my blog

spencereidluver

are yoi goikjg to make speencer have a big peempis

this is the funniest ask i've ever recieved holy fuck i'm framing this

lov3lyl3tters

IM CRYING HELP

girllblogging777

summary : two universes collide when spencer has to watch the team meet his workplace crush, called in from another branch for her decryption skills - and he doesn't really like sharing.

word count : 2.3k

pairings : spencer reid x FBI!reader (workplace romance)

notes : there is such thing as the intelligence branch !! spencer is very jealous and it shows, modern romance would say they're at that point in the talking stage where they still won't aknowledge eachother irl

working for the FBI had its perks.

mostly social, you had to admit. certain jobs, tough you weren't exactly sure why, carried prestige. the prestige you felt when over drinks on first dates or small talk with old friends, someone asked what you did for work.

you could've been a linguistic analyst anywhere else, the years of studies and countless research papers you'd worked on would've earned you nothing but eye rolls and judgemental stares.

curiously, with the acronym of FBI came instant gratification. federal bureau of investigation, the magic words that earned compliments and sometimes mocking gasps.

how does it feel to work for the government ?

you're part of the Intelligence Branch ? of course, you're so smart.

the best perk however, apart from the thrilling feeling pulsing through your veins that came with having a purpose, worked three floors above you at the behavioural analysis unit.

with his tall figure and soft cozy looks, spencer reid didn't look like he belonged in this world either. united by the feeling of standing out in the crowd, or rather feeling invisible between individuals with a stern appearance and a sterile heart, you two connected.

a workplace crush, that's all he was.

Heaven, As Far As I Can Tell

Summary: spencer reid has written eleven drafts of his wedding vows. they're all true. none of them are right. so at two in the morning, three weeks before the wedding, he stops trying to write a speech and just writes what happened.

warnings: Fluff, established relationship, wedding, flashback structure, brief mention of a dangerous field situation

word count: 4.4k

author's note: This fic is lowk bullshit, but I spent way too much time on it to not post it, so please do enjoy

Three Weeks

Three weeks until the wedding, and Spencer Reid — a man who had memorized entire textbooks for fun, who could recall the exact wording of speeches he'd heard exactly once a decade ago — had, by his count, started his wedding vows eleven times.

He had eleven drafts. He knew this because they were folded into the back of a notebook he kept in his bag, each one crossed out in his small, careful handwriting, each one a little more polished than the last, each one — and this was the part that bothered him — wrong.

Not wrong in the sense of factually incorrect. Every draft was true. He'd written about her intelligence, her courage, the way she made the impossible parts of his job feel survivable. He'd cited — actually cited, in his head, before he'd caught himself and laughed — the statistical improbability of finding someone who understood him as completely as she did. He'd written a draft that was almost entirely about gratitude, and another that was almost entirely about the future, and one — the seventh, he thought, though he'd lost count slightly — that had gotten so technical about why he loved her that it had started to sound less like a vow and more like a research abstract.

All of it was true. None of it felt like enough.

He just couldn't articulate — not in a way that didn't sound like a list, not in a way that captured the actual, physical, gut-deep feeling of it — what it was like to love her. He kept trying to explain the conclusion without showing the work, and every time, it came out flat. Hollow. Like trying to describe the color blue to someone by reciting its wavelength.

That night, after a date — dinner at the little place with the string lights that had become their place, somewhere along the way, without either of them deciding it on purpose — they'd come back to the apartment they shared now, and fallen asleep tangled together the way they always did, her head on his chest, his hand in her hair.

Spencer did not fall asleep.

He lay there for over an hour, staring at the ceiling, his mind doing the thing it did — running, restless, circling back again and again to blank pages and crossed-out lines, to the date that was now twenty-one days away, to the growing, uncomfortable certainty that he was going to stand up in front of everyone they loved and not manage to say the one thing that actually mattered.

Eventually, carefully, so as not to wake her, he eased himself out from under her arm, pressed a kiss to her hair when she stirred and murmured something sleepy and unintelligible, and padded out to the living room with his notebook and a pen and the small lamp on the desk.

He sat there for a long moment, pen hovering over a fresh page, the cursor of his mind blinking on a blank line.

Stop trying to write a vow, he told himself, finally. Just write what happened.

So he did. He started — for the first time in eleven drafts — not with a thesis statement, not with a structure, not with anything that resembled a speech at all.

He started with the morning he met her.

It was an ordinary Tuesday, which was, he would think later, very on-brand for the universe — that something this important would arrive disguised as nothing at all.

The bullpen had been quiet that morning, the kind of lull between cases that never lasted, and the team had gathered in the conference room for what Hotch had promised would be a short briefing on case files that needed closing out. Spencer had a cup of coffee he wasn't drinking and a folder he wasn't really reading, half-listening, the way he often did when his mind had already wandered three subjects ahead.

And then the door opened.

"Sorry — I was told Agent Hotchner's office was up here?"

He looked up. Everyone did, but Spencer would remember, distinctly, being the one who looked up first — before the words had even fully registered, like some part of him had clocked the change in the room before his conscious mind caught up.

You were standing in the doorway, slightly out of breath, like you'd taken the stairs, with a badge in your hand and an expression that was equal parts professional and faintly apologetic for the interruption. Hotch had stood, recognition flickering across his face — ah, right, the new addition, today — and the next several minutes were introductions, names, handshakes, the ordinary mechanics of a new agent joining the team.

Spencer barely registered any of it.

He told himself, later — many times, for longer than he was proud of — that it was simply interest. New colleague. New variable in a system he understood very well. It made sense that his brain, which cataloged everything, would catalog youa little more thoroughly than usual.

But it wasn't just cataloging. It was the way you'd answered Rossi's first, slightly testing question — quick, sharp, a little dry, with just enough confidence that Rossi's eyebrows had gone up in something like approval. It was the way you held yourself, like someone who'd had to prove things before and had stopped needing to prove them quite so loudly. It was — and this was the part Spencer noticed and then spent a full ten seconds being annoyed at himself for noticing — the way you'd glanced around the room while Hotch talked, taking in details, reading the space the way a profiler did, before you'd even officially been told that's what the job was.

He was still watching you when Morgan said his name.

"—Reid. Reid."

"What? Sorry — yes. Hi." He'd stood up too fast, knocked his knee against the table, and you'd looked at him with an expression that was somewhere between amused and curious, and he'd felt his face go warm and thought, with the particular clarity of someone cataloging a data point they didn't yet understand the significance of: huh.

The case that week had been, by BAU standards, almost gentle — solved within forty-eight hours, no losses, a clean resolution. Spencer could recall every detail of it if he wanted to, the way he could recall almost everything — but it wasn't the case that had stayed with him, not really. It was just background, a frame around the part that actually mattered.

What he would remember — vividly, completely, down to small inconsequential things like the exact shade of the file folder you'd been holding — was working a whiteboard with you for an hour while the rest of the team ran down leads, watching you connect two details he hadn't yet articulated himself, watching you turn to him afterward and say, simply, "you would've gotten there in another minute, I just talk faster than you write," which had made him laugh, surprised, before he could stop himself.

Intelligent. Brave. Quick. He'd filed it all away under a heading that, at the time, he told himself was simply: someone like me.

It would be a long time before he let himself consider that it might be something else.

He wrote the next part faster, because there was so much of it — months, years, woven so thoroughly into the ordinary fabric of his life that it was hard to find the edges of where it started.

It hadn't taken long — a few months, maybe — for "new agent" to become "friend," and for "friend" to become something that the rest of the team had apparently clocked long before either of you had a word for it.

It started with small things. You'd both reached for the same obscure reference in a briefing once — a Doctor Whoepisode, of all things — and the look you'd given each other across the table, somewhere between you too? and oh no, had been the start of something neither of you fully recognized yet. By the end of that month you'd both ended up at his apartment on a rare weekend off, intending to watch "just a few episodes," and instead stayed up well past three in the morning working through an entire season, and Spencer had — for possibly the first time in his adult life — not minded losing an entire night's sleep to something that wasn't a case.

You read books together, which was, Spencer would admit, an objectively strange thing for the two of you to do, given that he could finish in twenty minutes what took most people days — but you didn't mind, and he found he genuinely liked it, liked having something to discuss afterward, liked the particular quality of your attention when you argued — passionately, at length — about whether a character's choices had been justified.

You hung out at strange hours. Two a.m. phone calls after bad cases. Diner breakfasts at five a.m. because neither of you could sleep. Long drives with no destination, just talking — about cases, about books, about your families, about the things that had shaped you both into the people who ended up doing this job in the first place.

He learned things about you that he was fairly sure even Morgan and Prentiss didn't know. You learned things about him that no one knew — not because he was hiding them, exactly, but because no one had ever asked the right questions, in the right order, with the kind of patience that made it feel safe to answer.

He never got tired of it. That was the strange part, looking back — Spencer Reid, who found most social interaction at best tolerable and at worst exhausting, who needed quiet and solitude the way other people needed sleep, never once felt that particular drain around you. If anything, it was the opposite. Time with you recharged something in him he hadn't known was depleted.

Someone like me, he'd written in his head, still, at this point. A friend. A good one. The best one, maybe.

He just hadn't yet asked himself the obvious follow-up question.

He paused before this one. Not because it was hard to remember — if anything, it was the opposite. Every detail was still right there, untouched, like it had happened an hour ago instead of years.

It had been a brutal case — the kind that earned its place in the small, unofficial list the team kept of the worst ones, the ones that cost everyone several nights of sleep and left everyone a little hollowed out by the end of it. When it finally closed, Morgan had declared, with the tone of a man who would not be argued with, that the team was going to a bar, and that this was not optional.

You'd ended up in a booth together, slightly removed from the noise of the rest of the team, both of you a few drinks in — not drunk, not really, just loose. Unguarded. The particular state where your defenses lowered just enough to let things through that you'd normally keep carefully filed away.

Spencer had been telling some story — he genuinely could not, even now, remember what it was, some tangent that had wandered far from its original point, the kind of thing that usually got him a fond eye-roll — and you'd laughed.

Not the polite laugh. Not the laugh you gave at office jokes. The real one — sudden, bright, a little too loud for the joke that had caused it, your head tipping back slightly, your whole face lighting up with it.

Spencer felt something in his chest just — stop. And then start again, differently.

He looked at you — really looked, the way he hadn't quite let himself before, not all at once — sitting across from him in that booth, completely at ease, no weight on your shoulders, nothing held back, looking at him like he was the best part of her night — and he felt the floor tilt slightly, in the nicest possible way. Like standing up too fast and feeling lightheaded, except it didn't fade. If anything it got more.

This is bad, he remembers thinking, with the calm, distant horror of someone watching a very obvious conclusion arrive several years late. This is — oh. Oh, no. I think I'm in love with her.

He didn't say it. Of course he didn't — it was a bar, it was loud, it was the worst possible setting for something that significant, and besides, he had absolutely no idea what to do with the information beyond simply holding it, carefully, like something fragile, turning it over in his mind for the rest of the night while you talked, laughed, leaned into him slightly when Morgan said something ridiculous, completely unaware that something fundamental had just shifted in the person sitting across from you.

Spencer didn't believe in fate, not really — too many variables, too much randomness, the universe was chaos dressed up as pattern — but that night, walking you to your car afterward, watching you laugh at something stupid he'd said, he thought, just for a second, that maybe he understood why people wanted to believe in it. Because it felt like that. Like something settling into place that had always, quietly, been waiting to.

He went home that night and didn't sleep, and didn't write a single word down, because he didn't yet have any.

The pen moved more slowly here. Of all the things he'd written tonight, this was the one that still felt like pressing on a bruise — not a bad one, not anymore, but one that reminded you it had been there.

It started with an argument.

You'd been reckless — genuinely, dangerously reckless, on a case that had a hostage, a woman about your age, terrified and out of time, and you'd made a call in the field that hadn't been cleared, hadn't been planned, and had put not just yourself but potentially the whole team at risk. It had worked — the hostage was safe, the unsub was in custody — but it could so easily not have, and everyone on the team knew it, and Spencer had spent the entire drive back from the scene with his hands clenched so tight in his lap that his knuckles had gone white.

He went to your hotel room that night. He told himself he was going to be calm. Measured. He was, after all, a genius — surely he could find the right words, the right framing, something that communicated I understand why you did it and please don't ever do that again and I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you all at once, gently, without it turning into something neither of you could take back.

He had absolutely no idea how to do any of that.

He knocked. You let him in, and you looked tired — not defensive, just exhausted, the adrenaline long since burned off and replaced with the heavy, hollow feeling that came after — and he started gently, he really did. I wanted to talk about today. But it didn't stay gentle. It couldn't. Because underneath the careful words there was something raw and frightened that he hadn't planned for, and it came out anyway — you could have died, do you understand that, you could have died and I—

—and you'd pushed back, because you weren't wrong either, because there had been a woman who was about to die and you'd seen something in her that you recognized, and you weren't going to apologize for that, even if the execution had been flawed, and your voice had gotten louder, and his had too, and somewhere in the middle of it — in the middle of raised voices, in the middle of an argument that was really about fear dressed up as anger —

"—because I love you, and I can't—"

He hadn't meant to say it. It just came out, mid-sentence, mid-argument, the absolute worst possible moment by every measure he could think of — and the room went completely, suddenly silent.

Spencer remembered, with perfect clarity, the way his stomach had dropped. Not because he regretted it — if anything, the relief of finally saying it out loud after months of carrying it was so immediate and so total that he nearly sat down — but because of what came next. Because you were just staring at him, and he had no idea what that meant, and every second of silence felt like an hour, and his mind — usually so fast, so full of words — went completely, terrifyingly blank.

Five minutes. He counted, after, because of course he did — five minutes of silence, the longest five minutes of his life, standing in your hotel room having just confessed the single most important thing he'd ever felt in the middle of a fight, with absolutely no idea what you were thinking.

And then, quiet — so quiet he almost missed it —

"I love you too."

He'd needed you to say it again before he believed it. You did — softer this time, a small, almost disbelieving laugh underneath it, like you couldn't quite believe either of you had managed to get here, of all the ways this could have gone — and then you were both crossing the room at the same time, and the argument dissolved into something else entirely, apologies tangled with relief tangled with the kind of kiss that felt like every unsaid thing from the last several months finally landing somewhere.

Spencer had never put much stock in the idea of heaven. Too many unfalsifiable claims, too little evidence, and he'd made peace with that a long time ago.

But that night, lying beside you afterward, listening to you breathe, he thought — quietly, privately, not quite ready to say it out loud yet — that if heaven existed at all, it probably felt something like this.

He hesitated before this part. Then he kept writing, because it mattered — maybe more than any of the rest.

They were together now — properly, officially, in a way that still occasionally made Spencer feel like he'd won some kind of lottery he hadn't known he'd entered — but the confession had nagged at him for weeks afterward. Not because it wasn't true. Because of how it had happened.

He'd told her he loved her in the middle of a fight. He hadn't planned it, hadn't chosen the moment, hadn't given it the weight it deserved — and even though she'd told him, more than once, that it didn't matter, that she wouldn't trade that moment for anything because it had been so real — Spencer couldn't quite let it go. He wanted to give her something he'd actually planned. Something that showed her — properly, deliberately — exactly how he felt, without an argument attached to it.

So their first official date, he decided, was going to be the confession he never got to give.

He found a drive-in theater an hour outside the city — one of the old ones, still operating, mostly out of nostalgia — and discovered, after some quiet investigation, that it was showing her favorite movie that Saturday. He packed a picnic. He found a florist who carried her favorite flowers and built an entire bouquet around them. He wrote her a letter — actual poetry, which had taken him an embarrassing number of drafts, each one feeling too clinical or too sentimental until he stopped trying to make it perfect and just wrote what was true. And he found, after weeks of searching, a small silver locket, and had a photo of the two of you set inside it — the one from the convention, both of you mid-laugh, unposed, the happiest either of you looked in any picture either of you owned.

The plan was simple: dinner under the stars, the movie, and then — at the end — the bouquet, the letter, the locket, and everything he should have said the first time, said properly this time.

It started raining halfway through the film.

Of course it did.

They'd scrambled for cover under a nearby tree, laughing, soaked through within seconds — and that was when she'd spotted the picnic basket, abandoned in the rush, the bouquet half-crushed beside it, and asked, simply, "Spencer — what is all this?"

And he just— told her. Right there. Soaked, freezing, completely unprepared, every carefully planned word from his letter forgotten the moment she asked — he just told her. About the night at the bar. About the months before that. About every quiet moment that had built, slowly, into the realization that he loved her — not suddenly, but completely, like something that had always been true and had simply taken him a while to notice.

He was a mess. Stammering, flushed, soaked to the bone, gesturing too much with his hands the way he did when he couldn't keep up with his own thoughts — and it was, by every objective measure he could think of, nothing like what he'd planned.

It was better.

She told him later that she'd never felt more loved in her life than in that moment — not despite the rain, but somehow because of it, because it had stripped away every careful plan and left only him, flustered and earnest and completely unguarded, telling her the truth in the middle of a storm. She'd practically tackled him, she said — and she had, a little, laughing, kissing him with the kind of smile that he would spend the rest of his life trying to put into words and never quite manage — and confessed it all back, properly this time, the way he'd wanted to give it to her.

He gave her the locket anyway, later, once they were dry. She wore it every day after that.

Spencer looked down at the page. He'd been writing for almost an hour, and his hand ached, and the apartment was quiet except for the soft sound of rain against the window — of course it was raining, he thought, with something that felt like a private joke between him and the universe — and for the first time in eleven drafts, he didn't feel like something was missing.

It wasn't a list. It wasn't a thesis. It wasn't even, really, a vow, not in the traditional sense — it was just everything. The whole shape of it, start to now, written down exactly as it had happened, without trying to make it sound like anything other than what it was.

He read it back once, then closed the notebook, and went back to bed, and — for the first time in three weeks — fell asleep almost immediately, your hand finding his in the dark without either of you fully waking.

Three weeks later, Spencer stood at the front of a small, sun-filled room, in a suit that Morgan had personally supervised the selection of, with Rossi looking suspiciously misty-eyed in the front row and Garcia openly crying into a tissue before anyone had even said a word, and watched you walk toward him, and thought — not for the first time, but maybe more clearly than ever — there she is.

When it was his turn, he didn't take out a card. He'd memorized it, of course — he could have recited it backward if he'd wanted to — but it didn't feel like a recitation. It felt like just... talking to you. The way he always had.

He told you about the Tuesday morning you walked into that conference room, and how some part of him had known, even then, that something had changed. He told you about the conventions, and the books, and the two a.m. phone calls, and how you'd become, without either of you planning it, the person he most wanted to talk to about everything, always. He told you about the bar, and the way your laugh had rearranged something in his chest that night, permanently, without his permission. He told you about the argument, and the confession he hadn't meant to give, and the five longest minutes of his life, and how you'd said it back anyway, messy and real and exactly right. He told you about the rain, and the ruined picnic, and how he'd never felt more like himself than soaked through and stammering, finally saying it the way he meant it.

And then, at the end, his voice steady in a way that surprised even him, he said:

"My whole life, I've tried to understand things — really understand them. The science of it. The logic. I used to think that was the whole point — that if you understood something well enough, completely enough, you'd have everything you needed. I don't believe in heaven. I never have — too many unprovable claims, not enough evidence, and I made peace with that a long time ago. But I've started to think that maybe it doesn't matter whether it exists. Because however it's supposed to feel — whatever people mean when they talk about it — I think I've already found it. Not somewhere I'll go. Someone I get to come home to. You're it. Whatever 'it' is — the thing people are looking for their whole lives without knowing what to call it — for me, it's just been you. From a Tuesday morning in a conference room, to right now. And for the rest of my life, however long that is, statistically or otherwise—"

his voice caught, just slightly, and he smiled, a little wet-eyed himself now —

"—I just want to spend it figuring out new ways to be sure of that. Every day. With you."

You were crying before he finished. So was Garcia, audibly now, and even Hotch — Hotch — had to clear his throat rather pointedly and look away for a moment.

And when you reached for his hands, your own vows barely steady in your voice, the first thing you said — through a laugh that was half a sob — was:

"Spencer Reid. You beautiful, ridiculous genius. I love you.”

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x reader fluff #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid fanfic #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fluff #lov3lyl3ttersᥫ᭡

hey guys!!! i’ve hit a wall with plot ideas, so if anyone has any requests, i’d LOVEEEEEE to write them!!

The Long Run

summary: You and Spencer can't stand each other... until a case forces you undercover as a newly engaged couple about to elope, the perfect bait for an unsub who hunts couples in love.

warning: Violence/canon-typical case content (kidnapping attempt, gun used, injury), description of a physical assault and resulting injury (sprained ankle, some blood/pain), brief mention of a serial killer's MO (couples found posed/murdered not graphic), hospital setting, mild language, fluff/hurt-comfort with a sweet ending, fake relationship.

word count: 4.1k

Authors note: guys I finally overcame the writer's block! This sorta came to me on a whim after a long time from not writing so it might not be my best work so please bear with me.

If you had to name the single most irritating person at the Behavioral Analysis Unit, you would not have hesitated. You wouldn't have even needed the full three seconds typically allotted for "thinking it over." The answer was, and had been since your first week, Dr. Spencer Reid.

It wasn't that he was unkind. It wasn't even that he was rude, not really — Spencer Reid didn't seem to possess a rude bone in his body, not on purpose, anyway. It was that he had an answer for everything, a statistic for everything, a gentle but relentless correction for everything, and somehow he managed to make being right feel like a personality flaw directed specifically at you.

"Actually, the average response time for—"

"I know, Reid."

"I was just going to say—"

"I know what you were going to say. You were going to say it's statistically four minutes longer in rural counties, and I was going to say thank you, I had already accounted for that, and then you were going to look at me like I'd personally offended Bayes' theorem."

Across the conference table, Morgan didn't even bother hiding his grin behind his coffee cup anymore. JJ had stopped trying to referee weeks ago. Even Hotch, usually a brick wall of patience, had developed a particular tell — a slow exhale through his nose — whenever the two of you were in a room together for longer than ninety seconds.

You didn't actually dislike Reid because he was wrong. That would've been easy. You disliked him because he was almost always right, and he had this maddening habit of being right at you, like it was a competitive sport and you were perpetually one point behind.

For his part, Spencer would have told you — calmly, and probably with a footnote — that he didn't dislike you either. He just found you needlessly combative. You challenged things he said not because you disagreed with the content, he'd pointed out once, but because he was the one saying it, which he found "an inefficient way to conduct a professional relationship."

You'd told him where he could put his efficiency.

So when Hotch stood at the head of the conference table that February morning and said the words "undercover" and "the two of you" in the same sentence, the silence that followed was not, by any measure, a comfortable one.

The case was ugly in the particular, quiet way the worst ones often were.

Three couples in a month, all in the D.C. metro area, all killed during the last week of January and the first week of February. All of them had been out at a bar — different bars, different neighborhoods — before they disappeared. All of them had been found together, posed with a strange, almost reverent care, in remote locations days later.

"He's not killing for anger," Reid said, pacing in front of the screen, hands gesturing the way they did when his brain was outrunning his mouth. "Or not only anger. Look at the positioning — hands intertwined, faces angled toward each other. He's curating something. He believes he's preserving them."

"Preserving what?" Morgan asked.

"Love," Reid said simply. "Real love. Whatever he thinks that is. Two of the three couples had been dating less than a month. The third had been engaged for two weeks. I think he's looking for couples at the beginning of something — before it can go wrong. Before it can become whatever made him angry enough to do this in the first place."

"A relationship that fell apart on him," Prentiss said. "Recently. Maybe permanently."

"February," JJ said quietly. "Valentine's season. He's punishing the holiday by recreating it the only way he can control."

Garcia had pulled surveillance footage from all three bars, and Hotch had spent an hour with a map and three colored pins before he found the pattern — a fourth bar, upscale, candlelit, the kind of place that did a brisk business in proposals and anniversaries, sitting almost exactly equidistant from the first three scenes. February 14th was six days away.

"We need eyes inside," Hotch said. "A couple. New relationship — recently engaged would fit his pattern best, and it gives us a built-in reason for the two of you to be alone together later in the evening, away from the rest of the team."

He didn't look at anyone in particular when he said the two of you. He didn't have to.

You felt Reid go very still beside you.

"Sir," you started.

"I'm aware," Hotch said, in a tone that made it clear the conversation was, as far as he was concerned, already over. "Garcia's pulling backstories. You'll start prep this afternoon."

Prep did not go well.

It did not go well on day one, when the team's profiler-slash-acting-coach — a former undercover agent named Diane with the patience of a saint and the eyebrows of someone rapidly losing it — tried to get the two of you to simply hold hands across a table, and you both reached at the same time, fumbled, and ended up in some kind of half-handshake that made Morgan actually put his head down on his desk.

It did not go well on day two, when Diane had you run through the cover story — Spencer proposed three weeks ago, you're eloping in five days, you haven't told your families yet — and Reid recited the entire backstory Garcia had built, verbatim, including the exact date and carat weight of the (fake) ring, in the flat, bloodless cadence of a man reading a phone book.

"Spencer," Diane said, very slowly, like she was talking to a man on a ledge, "people don't propose like they're presenting a thesis defense."

"I'm aware of the standard romantic conventions," Reid said, a little stiffly. "I just don't have a frame of reference for—" he gestured vaguely between the two of you "—this."

"This being me," you said.

"This being anyone," he said, which, you noted, was somehow worse.

Day three was the argument about the ring.

It was a small thing. It shouldn't have mattered. But when Diane slid the prop ring across the table for you to put on, Reid reached for your hand to do it himself — "for verisimilitude," he said, already going faintly pink — and you pulled back on instinct, hard enough that you nearly knocked your coffee into his lap, and said something about personal space that came out sharper than you meant it to.

"I was trying to help," he said.

"You don't get to just grab my hand, Reid."

"It's a fake engagement."

"It's still my hand!"

"I'm aware it's your hand, I wasn't suggesting it was someone else's hand, I was simply attempting to—"

"Oh my God—"

"ENOUGH."

Hotch's voice cut through the bullpen like a blade. He'd come down from his office at some point during the shouting — neither of you had noticed — and he was standing at the edge of the room with his arms crossed and an expression that made even Morgan sit up straighter.

"Three days," Hotch said, low and even, which was somehow more frightening than if he'd yelled. "Three days, and you two have managed to turn a counter-surveillance briefing into a daytime talk show. There are two more couples this man is going to find before he finds anyone else, if we're lucky, and the only thing standing between him and a fourth crime scene is whether the two of you can manage to act like adults for four hours."

The room had gone very quiet.

"I don't care if you like each other," Hotch went on. "I don't care if you've never liked each other. I care that three days from now, a man who has killed six people is going to be in a room with the two of you, and he is very, very good at recognizing what's real and what isn't. If he sees through this — if he sees anything — he disappears, and someone else dies in his place. So either find a way to make this work, or I will pull both of you off this case and put Morgan in the suit, and I promise you, neither of you wants that outcome."

He didn't wait for a response. He turned and walked back up the stairs, and the bullpen stayed silent for a long, long moment.

You looked at Reid. Reid looked at you.

"He's right," Reid said quietly. It was the first time in three days either of you had said something the other didn't immediately want to argue with.

"Yeah," you said. "He is."

Something shifted, after that. Not all at once — you didn't suddenly like each other, not exactly — but something about the shape of the antagonism changed. It got quieter. More careful.

You started running lines in an empty conference room after hours, just the two of you, without Diane hovering. Reid stopped reciting the backstory like a deposition and started, slowly, to actually tell it — the version where he'd taken you to the little Italian place you'd gone on your first date (a real detail, lifted from your actual file, which had made you laugh the first time he said it, surprised that he'd noticed), the version where he'd been so nervous he'd nearly dropped the ring into his pasta.

"That's actually not bad," you admitted, the third night.

"I have a good memory," he said, which you both already knew, but it landed differently this time — less like a brag, more like an offering.

You worked on the small things. The way he was supposed to look at you — not staring, Diane had said, soft, like you were something he still couldn't quite believe he got to keep. The way you were supposed to lean into him, not performatively, just naturally, the way people who'd spent a thousand quiet evenings together did. He learned your real laugh, the one that came out before you could stop it, and started, without meaning to, trying to provoke it on purpose. You learned that his hands moved when he talked even when he was trying to hold them still, and that if you put your hand over his, just lightly, just for a second, it grounded him.

By the fourth night, when Diane ran you through the scenario one last time — bar, drinks, the easy physical familiarity of two people who'd been a unit for years — you got through the entire thing without a single argument.

"Better," Hotch said, watching from the doorway. It was the closest thing to a compliment either of you had gotten from him all week, and for some reason it made your chest feel strange and warm.

Reid caught your eye across the table, and — for the first time since you'd known him — he smiled at you like it was easy.

The bar was warm and golden and exactly the kind of place that smelled like candle wax and good whiskey, low lights and lower music, the kind of place where every table held a couple leaning in close. You wore a dress you'd never have chosen for yourself and the prop ring, which Reid had, this time, slid onto your finger without either of you flinching — his hands had been steady, and warm, and he'd looked up at you afterward like he was checking that it was okay, and something about that had settled low and warm in your chest in a way you didn't examine too closely.

The earpieces were nearly invisible. Morgan and Prentiss were two tables over, pretending to argue about a bachelor party. JJ was at the bar. Hotch and Rossi were outside, in a sedan across the street, watching the door.

And Spencer—

Spencer was good at this. Better than you'd expected, better than four days of stilted rehearsal had suggested he could be. He laughed at something you said — actually laughed, head tipping back slightly, and you felt the warmth of his hand find yours on the table, thumb tracing absent careful circles over your knuckles, and for one disorienting moment you forgot it was a performance at all.

"You're staring," you murmured, leaning in like you were sharing something private.

"Occupational hazard," he murmured back, and the look on his face — soft, a little crooked, eyes crinkling at the corners — was so convincing that your stomach did something complicated and unfamiliar.

"Tone it down, Romeo," came Morgan's voice through the comm, dry as dust. "Some of us are trying to eat."

You bit back a laugh. Spencer's thumb moved over your knuckles again, and you let yourself lean into his shoulder, and it was — easy. Comfortable, even. You'd spent three years bracing against this man like he was a personal weather system, and now his arm was warm around you and his voice was low in your ear telling you about the chemical composition of the whiskey you were both pretending to drink, and you found, with some alarm, that you didn't want him to stop.

An hour in, your phone buzzed against the table. A real call — your sister, the screen said, bad timing, she didn't know about any of this.

"I should take this," you murmured, already standing, playing it for the room: I'm so sorry, work, you know how it is."Two minutes."

Spencer caught your hand before you fully pulled away — quick, light, just a press of his fingers against yours. "I'll be right here," he said, and it was soft, and real, in a way that had nothing to do with the case, and you felt it all the way down to your toes as you stepped outside into the cold.

The alley beside the bar was dark, the kind of dark that swallowed streetlight, and you'd barely gotten three words into the call — hey, can I call you back, I'm at— — when a hand closed around your arm from behind and yanked, hard, and the phone clattered out of your grip.

He was big. Bigger than you'd expected from the file photos, all of it muscle and momentum, and he had you off balance before you'd even processed what was happening. You twisted, drove your elbow back into something solid, heard him grunt — but he recovered fast, slammed you sideways into the brick wall of the alley with enough force that your vision went white at the edges and your ankle rolled hard underneath you, pain shooting up your leg in a way that made your knees buckle.

You fought anyway. Years of training kicked in even through the pain — you got a hand free, clawed for his face, twisted against his grip — but your leg wouldn't hold your weight, and every time you tried to get leverage it folded under you, and he was so much bigger, and for one cold, lucid second you thought, this is how it happens, this is exactly how he does it—

"FBI! Let her go!"

Spencer's voice cut through the alley like a gunshot, and the unsub froze for half a second — just long enough for you to see Spencer in the mouth of the alley, weapon drawn, both hands steady despite the way his chest was heaving like he'd run the whole way. "Get on the ground! Now!"

The man didn't get on the ground.

Instead he hauled you in front of him, one arm locking brutal and tight across your throat, and you felt cold metal — hisgun, pressed hard against your temple — and everything in the alley went very, very still.

"Drop it," the unsub said. "Drop it or she's done."

"Okay." Spencer's voice didn't shake. You'd remember that later — how steady it was, how his eyes never left yours, not the gun, you, like he was trying to tell you something with just a look. "Okay, I'm not going to drop it. But I need you to think about this. You don't actually want to do this. This isn't what you've been doing — you've been careful. You've been gentle. This—" his eyes flicked, just once, to the gun at your head, "—this isn't gentle. This isn't what you do."

"Shut up—"

"You're not angry at her," Spencer said, and his voice cracked slightly, just slightly, and you felt the arm at your throat tense. "You're angry at her — the one who left. The one who made you believe none of it was real. But she's not — I'mnot—" his breath caught, "—please. Please don't do this."

For one impossible second, the arm at your throat loosened — just a fraction, just enough —

Spencer fired.

The shot caught the unsub in the shoulder, and the impact spun him backward, his grip on you breaking entirely as he stumbled and went down hard against the dumpster, gun skittering across the asphalt. Your leg gave out the moment the pressure released and you went down too, hard, onto the cold ground, the pain in your ankle white-hot and sudden.

"Shots fired, shots fired, we need EMS to the east alley, NOW—" Morgan's voice, distant, through the comm still clipped to your jacket, and then there was noise everywhere — footsteps, shouting, Spencer's voice closer than anything—

He had the unsub's weapon kicked away and cuffed before you'd even gotten your breath back, and then he was on his knees beside you, hands hovering like he didn't know where it was safe to touch, his face white.

"Hey — hey, look at me, look at me," he said, and his hands found your face, gentle, careful, tilting your chin up. "Can you tell me your name? Do you know what day it is? I need you to follow my finger—"

"Spencer," you managed, half a laugh, half a wince, "I don't have a concussion, I just—" you gestured weakly at your ankle, which had already started to swell against your shoe, "—I think I broke something."

"Okay," he breathed, and some of the white drained out of his face, replaced by something raw and overwhelmed. "Okay. That's — okay. EMS is two minutes out. Don't move your foot, don't try to stand, I've got you—"

He didn't let go of your hand. Not when Morgan and Prentiss came pounding around the corner, not when JJ crouched beside you with her jacket to put under your head, not when the paramedics arrived and started checking your ankle and your pupils and your pulse. He stayed crouched beside you in the cold, your hand in both of his, and every time you looked at him he was already looking at you.

"You're okay," he said, like he was the one who needed convincing. "You're okay. You're okay."

The hospital was bright and too quiet after the alley. They'd confirmed a sprain — bad, but not broken, which the doctor delivered like good news and which you received with the kind of relief that made your eyes sting unexpectedly. They gave you something for the pain that made the edges of the room go soft and slow, and at some point between the X-ray and the brace, you'd fallen asleep.

You woke slowly, vaguely, aware of low voices somewhere nearby and the particular antiseptic hush of a hospital room at night. Your ankle was elevated and wrapped, dull and aching but bearable. The lights had been dimmed.

And there was a hand around yours.

You didn't open your eyes right away. You recognized the hand before you even fully registered it — the long fingers, the careful way they were holding yours, like you were something that might bruise if he held on too tight.

"—and statistically, response times like that, in an alley, in those conditions—" Spencer's voice, low, talking to no one, the words coming faster the longer he went, the way they did when his thoughts were running ahead of him and he couldn't quite catch up. "I should have been faster. I was faster, the data says I was faster than ninety-six percent of agents in comparable scenarios, but it didn't feel — it didn't feel fast enough, it felt like — "

He stopped. You heard him exhale, shaky.

"I keep thinking about what would've happened if I'd been thirty seconds later. I do the math and I keep getting answers I don't want." A pause. "I don't — I don't really know how to say this, and you're asleep, so I suppose this doesn't really count, which is — which is probably why I can say it at all." Another breath, unsteady. "I think I've spent three years arguing with you because it was easier than admitting I think about you more than I think about almost anything else. And tonight, when he had that gun on you, the only thing I could think — the only thing — was that I hadn't told you. That I might not get the chance to. And I just — I love you. I think I have for a long time. I just didn't — I didn't know how to—"

Your fingers tightened around his.

He went absolutely still.

"I love you too," you said, quiet, your voice rough with sleep, eyes still closed, because some part of you wasn't ready to see his face yet — wasn't sure you could handle whatever was on it. "For the record. In case that — in case that helps the math."

There was a long, stunned silence.

"You're — you're awake," he said, faintly.

"Mm. Was. For most of that, actually."

"Most of it—"

"Spencer."

"Yes?"

You opened your eyes. He was so close — he'd pulled his chair right up to the bed at some point — and he looked exhausted and rumpled and so achingly hopeful that something in your chest just... gave, all at once, like a held breath finally let go.

"I meant it," you said softly. "I really do. I—"

The door swung open.

"—okay, the doctor said we could come in for five minutes, and I swear if you've fallen asleep again I'm taking a picture for blackmail purposes, Garcia's been dying for—"

Morgan stopped dead in the doorway. Behind him, Prentiss, JJ, Rossi, and Hotch all piled to a halt in various states of crowding, and all six of you — well, all of them — went very, very quiet, staring at the bed.

At your hand. In Spencer's. Both of you frozen, both of you very obviously caught in the middle of something.

"...I'm gonna need everyone to back up," Morgan said, very slowly, a grin spreading across his face like sunrise, "and somebody needs to call Garcia, because she is not going to believe this—"

"Oh my God," you said, dropping your free hand over your face, even as Spencer, beside you, made a small strangled noise that was somehow both mortified and — you peeked through your fingers — absolutely, helplessly delighted.

"It's about time," Prentiss said, and JJ was already grinning, and even Rossi looked like Christmas had come early, and Hotch — Hotch, standing slightly behind the rest of them, arms crossed — allowed himself the smallest, driest almost-smile.

"I believe," he said, "I told you to find a way to make this work."

The teasing went on, gleeful and merciless, for a solid hour — Morgan re-enacting the hand-holding from the doorway no less than four times, Prentiss extracting a promise that she got to be the one to tell Garcia in person, JJ threatening, fondly, to frame the betting pool slip with both your names on it. Through all of it, Spencer didn't let go of your hand once, and every time you glanced at him he was a little pink, a little dazed, and smiling like he couldn't quite stop.

Eventually — mercifully — Hotch herded them all back out, with strict instructions that you needed rest, and the door clicked shut behind the last of them, and the room went quiet again.

Spencer turned back to you. The teasing-flush hadn't quite faded, but underneath it was something steadier — something that had been there, you realized now, for a long time, just waiting for either of you to stop being too stubborn to see it.

"So," he said softly. "Just to be clear. The part where you said you loved me — that wasn't the pain medication talking?"

"Spencer."

"I'm just confirming the variables—"

"Spencer."

He laughed — that real laugh, the one that crinkled his eyes — and leaned in, slow enough that you had every chance to stop him, which you didn't. His hand came up to brush gently against your cheek, and then he kissed you — soft, careful, like he still couldn't quite believe he was allowed to — and you felt that warm, settled feeling from the bar rush back tenfold, and you kissed him back, and somewhere in the back of your mind you thought, distantly, that you owed Hotch's irritation a great debt.

When he finally pulled back, he didn't go far — just rested his forehead against yours, breathing slow.

"For the record," he murmured, "I've wanted to do that for a lot longer than four days."

"Yeah," you said, smiling, eyes already drifting shut again, his hand still warm in yours. "Took you long enough, Reid."

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid comfort #spencer reid hurt/comfort #spencer reid hurt #spencer reid x reader fluff #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid fanfic #criminal minds fluff #criminal minds fanfic #lov3lyl3ttersᥫ᭡

sunsetbbg

yeah hold me back

#boybandreid is something else

When the world stops turning

summary: When a serial killer targets your best friend in your hometown, Spencer refuses to let you fall apart—even when you try to push him away—proving that sometimes the person holding you together is the one you’ve been falling for all along.

warning: angst, minor panic attack, kidnapping, mentions of serial killer/murder, gun violence, emotional distress, physical struggle (reader hitting Spencer while panicking), blood mentions, trauma, hurt/comfort, best friend in danger, fear of loss, crying/sobbing, guilt, references to violence against women

word count: 4.3k

(i’m open to requests!!)

The familiar streets of your hometown looked different now—tainted by fear, shadowed by death. What should have been a nostalgic return had become a nightmare you couldn’t wake from.

Five women. All between the ages of 22 and 28. All brunette. All found in abandoned buildings throughout the city, staged like dolls, their lives stolen by hands that moved with terrible precision.

You’d walked these streets as a child. You’d laughed in the diners where some of these women had last been seen. You’d driven past the buildings where their bodies were discovered, never knowing that one day you’d return as a profiler, hunting the monster who’d turned your hometown into his hunting ground.

The BAU had been called in three days ago, and every hour that passed felt like sand slipping through your fingers—precious time you couldn’t afford to lose.

“The victimology is consistent,” you said, staring at the crime scene photos spread across the conference table in the local police precinct. Your voice was steady, clinical, but your hands trembled slightly as you rearranged the photos. “He’s choosing women who fit a specific type. Brunette, petite, early to mid-twenties. They’re all college-educated, all working professional jobs.”

“He’s also choosing women who live alone,” Reid added from beside you, his fingers tracing connections on the map pinned to the wall. “No roommates, no live-in partners. He’s watching them, learning their routines. These aren’t crimes of opportunity—they’re meticulously planned.”

You nodded, trying to ignore the cold dread settling in your stomach. Because Spencer was right—these were planned. And you knew exactly who fit that profile perfectly.

Your best friend, Maya.

You’d tried calling her six times since arriving in town. She hadn’t answered once.

“Maybe she’s just busy,” JJ had said gently when she noticed you checking your phone for the dozenth time. But the worried crease between her brows told you she was thinking the same thing you were.

“Local PD is doing extra patrols in neighborhoods where single women matching the profile live,” Hotch said, entering the conference room with Morgan close behind. “But we need to narrow down the geographic profile. This unsub is operating within a specific comfort zone.”

“Based on the dump sites, I’d estimate he lives or works within this radius,” Spencer said, circling an area on the map with red marker. The circle encompassed half the city—thousands of potential locations.

Your phone buzzed. Your heart leapt.

But it wasn’t Maya. It was your mom, checking in for the third time that day.

Stay safe, sweetheart. Call me when you can.

You typed out a quick response and pocketed your phone, trying to refocus on the case. But the anxiety was there, a living thing coiled around your ribs, tightening with each passing hour.

It was nearly midnight when you and Spencer finally retreated to one of the smaller rooms in the precinct, surrounded by boxes of old case files and cold coffee cups. The rest of the team had dispersed—Hotch and Rossi to interview a potential witness, Morgan and Prentiss to check out another scene, JJ coordinating with the media to control the public narrative.

That left you and Spencer to dig through the tedious details, searching for the one puzzle piece that would make everything else fall into place.

“Did you know,” Spencer said suddenly, breaking the comfortable silence, “that the earliest known detective story is generally considered to be Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ published in 1841? Though some argue that Voltaire’s ‘Zadig’ from 1747 contains early elements of detective fiction.”

You looked up from the file you were reading, a smile tugging at your lips despite everything. “Are you really giving me a literature lesson at midnight while we’re hunting a serial killer in my hometown?”

He had the grace to look slightly sheepish, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I just thought you might want a distraction. You’ve been checking your phone every four minutes for the past three hours.”

“Four and a half minutes,” you corrected automatically, then sighed. “And yes, I know. I just… I can’t shake this feeling, Spence.”

“Your instincts are usually right,” he said softly, his expression growing serious. “Have you tried calling her again?”

“Eleven times today. Nothing.” You rubbed your eyes, exhaustion making them burn. “She’s probably fine. Probably just has her phone off. Maya does that sometimes when she’s working on a big project—she’s a graphic designer, and when she gets in the zone, she kind of disappears into her work.”

“That’s understandable,” Spencer said, but you could see the concern in his eyes. He knew you too well—knew that you were trying to convince yourself as much as him.

You’d been best friends for three years now, ever since you joined the BAU. He’d been the first person to make you feel welcome, to treat you like an equal rather than the rookie who had to prove herself. Long flights had been spent sharing book recommendations and obscure facts. Late nights working cases had been punctuated by terrible jokes and shared takeout. Somewhere along the way, friendship had started to feel like something more—something neither of you had been brave enough to name.

You caught him watching you sometimes, his gaze lingering a second too long. And you knew he caught you doing the same.

But friendship felt safer than the alternative. Safer than risking everything on the possibility that what you felt might be reciprocated.

“Okay, so let’s think about this logically,” you said, forcing yourself back to the case. “Our unsub is organized, patient, intelligent. He’s watching these women, learning their patterns. But he’s also escalating—the time between kills is decreasing. Eleven days between victims one and two, eight days between two and three, six days between three and four, and only four days between four and five.”

“Which means he’s building toward something,” Spencer finished, standing and moving to the whiteboard. His hair was disheveled from running his hands through it, and his tie was loosened—you tried not to notice how good he looked even exhausted and stressed. “The question is what. Is he building toward a specific victim? Or is the escalation itself the point—the thrill of the hunt becoming more addictive?”

“Garcia said all the victims had some online presence—Instagram, Facebook, dating apps. Maybe that’s how he’s selecting them?”

“Possible, but it doesn’t explain how he’s learning their routines well enough to abduct them without witnesses. Social media might be where he identifies potential victims, but he has to be conducting physical surveillance too.”

You were about to respond when Spencer suddenly laughed—a soft, surprised sound that made you look up in confusion.

“What?”

He was staring at the evidence board, but his expression had shifted into something almost fond. “Do you remember the first case we worked together? That serial arsonist in Oregon?”

“The one where you accidentally set your own jacket on fire trying to demonstrate the accelerant pattern?” You couldn’t help but grin at the memory. “Yeah, I remember. Morgan didn’t let you live that down for months.”

“It was a controlled demonstration,” he protested, but he was smiling too. “And my point is, you were the one who figured out the unsub’s real target—you saw the pattern everyone else missed.”

“That was luck.”

“No, it was good profiling. And you’re going to figure this out too.” His eyes met yours, warm and certain. “I know you’re scared right now. I know this case is personal. But you’re brilliant, and we’re going to catch this guy before he hurts anyone else.”

Something warm bloomed in your chest—gratitude and affection and a dozen other things you couldn’t quite name. “Thank you, Spence. For staying up with me. For… everything.”

“Always,” he said simply, and the weight of that word hung between you like a promise.

You were both smiling at each other—just smiling, in a way that felt more intimate than it should—when the door suddenly burst open.

Morgan stood in the doorway, his expression grim, his phone clutched in one hand.

The smile died on your lips.

“We found him,” Morgan said. “Garcia traced a series of credit card purchases to an abandoned textile factory on the east side. Security footage from a nearby gas station shows a van matching our profile at the scene.”

Relief flooded through you so quickly it was almost painful. “That’s great! We can—”

“There’s more.” Morgan’s eyes found yours, and the sympathy in them made your blood run cold. “One of the patrol units noticed a car parked outside an apartment complex on their watch list. They ran the plates—it belongs to Maya Hartley.”

The world tilted.

“The apartment was empty. Signs of a struggle. Garcia confirmed her phone’s last ping was at that location three hours ago.”

You couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The room spun around you in sickening circles.

“No,” you whispered. “No, no, no—”

Spencer’s hand was suddenly on your arm, steadying you. “We don’t know anything for certain yet. We need to—”

But you weren’t listening. You were already moving, grabbing your jacket, your gun, your vest. Your hands were shaking so badly you could barely fasten the velcro straps.

Morgan was already on his phone, coordinating with the rest of the team. “SWAT is meeting us there. ETA fifteen minutes.”

Fifteen minutes. Maya had been missing for three hours, and this unsub killed his victims within the first six.

You had time. You had to have time.

The drive to the factory was a blur. You sat in the backseat of the SUV, Spencer beside you, Morgan driving with the kind of controlled urgency that meant he was breaking every speed limit. Your knee bounced frantically, your fingers drumming against your thigh in a staccato rhythm that matched your racing heart.

“Hey,” Spencer said softly, his hand covering yours, stilling the nervous movement. “Breathe. You need to breathe.”

You hadn’t realized you were hyperventilating until he said it. You tried to slow your breathing, but it felt like there wasn’t enough air in the car, in the world.

“She’s going to be okay,” you said, but it sounded like a question. “Right? We’re going to get there in time, and she’s going to be okay?”

Spencer’s thumb traced circles on the back of your hand. “We’re going to do everything we can.”

It wasn’t the reassurance you wanted, but it was honest. You loved that about Spencer—he never lied to make you feel better. Even when a comfortable lie would be easier.

The factory loomed ahead, a dark hulking shape against the night sky. Police cars were already there, lights flashing, SWAT setting up a perimeter.

The second Morgan put the car in park, you were out, striding toward the entrance with single-minded focus.

“Wait—” Spencer was beside you suddenly, his hand catching your elbow. “You can’t just run in there.”

“Watch me.” You tried to pull away, but his grip tightened.

“Stop. Think about this. You’re emotionally compromised, and if you go charging in there without a plan, you could get hurt. You could get Maya hurt.”

You knew he was right. God, you knew he was right, but logic had no place in the storm of panic consuming you.

“I can’t just stand here—”

“You won’t be. We’ll go in together. But we do this smart, okay? We follow protocol.”

Hotch materialized out of the darkness, already wearing his vest, his expression set in those hard lines that meant he was in Unit Chief mode. His eyes flickered to you, assessing.

“I need you to stay outside,” he said, and your heart dropped.

“No. Hotch, please, I can do this—”

“You’re too close to this. You know the rules.”

“I’ll stay out of the way. I won’t compromise the operation. Please, I just need to—” Your voice cracked. “I need to be there.”

Hotch studied you for a long moment, and you could see the conflict in his eyes—the leader weighing risk against compassion. Finally, he turned to Spencer.

“Reid, stay with her. Don’t let her enter the building.”

Spencer nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“No!” The word tore out of you desperately as Hotch walked away. “Hotch, please! I can help!”

But he was already gone, joining Morgan and Prentiss and Rossi as they moved toward the entrance, SWAT falling into formation around them.

You tried to follow, but Spencer stepped in front of you, his hands on your shoulders.

“Move, Spencer.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Get out of my way!” You tried to push past him, but he held firm, his fingers gentle but unyielding.

“Stop. Just stop.” His voice was calm, steady, cutting through the chaos in your head. “I know you’re scared. I know you want to help. But Hotch is right—you’re too close to this, and going in there in this state will only make things worse.”

“She’s my best friend!” The words came out as a sob. “She’s in there with a serial killer because of me, because I didn’t call her enough, didn’t warn her, didn’t—”

“Hey, no. This is not your fault. None of this is your fault.” Spencer’s eyes were fierce, demanding you believe him. “The only person responsible for this is the unsub. Not you.”

You wanted to believe him. God, you wanted to. But the guilt was a living thing, clawing at your insides, making it hard to think about anything except Maya’s face, Maya’s laugh, Maya bleeding out in some dark corner of that building while you stood uselessly outside.

The team disappeared into the factory, swallowed by shadows.

And then there was nothing to do but wait.

The night was cold, the kind of biting cold that seeped into your bones and made everything feel sharper, more real. You wrapped your arms around yourself, staring at the entrance like you could will the team to come back out, safe, successful, with Maya alive and whole.

Spencer stood beside you, close enough that you could feel the warmth radiating from him, could hear the steady rhythm of his breathing.

Minutes passed. Five. Ten.

You started muttering under your breath—a litany of desperate prayers and bargains with a God you weren’t sure you believed in.

“Please let her be okay. Please. I’ll do anything, I’ll—”

“Hey.” Spencer’s hand found yours in the darkness, his fingers lacing through yours. “She’s going to be okay. The team is the best at what they do. If anyone can save her, it’s them.”

“What if we’re too late? What if he’s already—”

“Don’t think like that. Don’t go there.” He squeezed your hand. “Stay here. Stay with me.”

You nodded, trying to focus on the feeling of his hand in yours, the solid warmth of his presence beside you. He was real. He was here. You could hold onto that.

“Thank you,” you whispered. “For staying with me.”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

The words were simple, but the way he said them—soft and honest and full of something you were afraid to name—made your chest ache.

You stood there together in the cold and the dark, waiting. Hoping. Praying.

And then—

A gunshot.

The sound split the night like thunder, echoing off the factory walls, and everything inside you went silent and still.

“No,” you breathed. “No, no, no—”

You were moving before you could think, running toward the entrance, toward that terrible sound, but Spencer was faster. His arms wrapped around you from behind, holding you back, anchoring you in place.

“Let me go!” You struggled against him, but he was stronger than he looked. “I have to—she needs—”

“Stop! You can’t go in there!”

“She’s dying! Maya is dying and I’m just standing here!” Tears were streaming down your face now, hot against the cold air. “Please, Spencer, please let me go!”

“I can’t.” His voice was strained, anguished. “I can’t let you run into an active scene. I can’t watch you get hurt.”

“I don’t care!” You twisted in his grip, trying to break free, but he held on. “Let me go! LET ME GO!”

You were hitting him now—wild, desperate blows that he absorbed without flinching. Your fists connected with his chest, his shoulders, but he didn’t release you, didn’t stop murmuring your name like a prayer.

“Please,” you sobbed. “Please, Spencer, I have to go to her. I have to—”

“I know. I know. But you can’t.” His arms tightened around you, pulling you back against his chest. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The fight drained out of you all at once. Your legs gave out, and Spencer sank down with you, still holding you, keeping you from collapsing entirely. You buried your face in his shoulder and sobbed—ugly, wrenching sounds that tore from somewhere deep inside you.

“She’s dead,” you choked out. “She’s dead and it’s my fault.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t—”

“I heard the gunshot!”

“That doesn’t mean—” He broke off, his arms tightening around you. “Just breathe. Please just breathe.”

But you couldn’t. The world was ending, splintering into a thousand pieces, and you couldn’t do anything but hold onto Spencer and cry and wait for the confirmation that your worst fear had come true.

Time lost meaning. You didn’t know if seconds passed or hours. There was only the cold, the dark, Spencer’s arms around you, and the horrible certainty that you’d failed.

And then—

Voices.

The squawk of radios.

Movement at the entrance.

You looked up through blurred vision and saw them emerging—Morgan first, then Prentiss, then—

Maya.

Alive.

Walking on her own, supported by Rossi on one side, paramedics hovering close. There was blood on her shirt, a bandage on her arm, but she was alive. She was breathing. She was okay.

“Look,” Spencer said urgently, his hand on your face, turning you toward the entrance. “Look!”

The sob that came out of you was half laugh, half cry. You scrambled to your feet, Spencer’s steadying hand on your back, and ran.

“Maya!”

She looked up at the sound of your voice, and despite everything—despite the blood and the fear and the trauma written clearly on her face—she smiled.

You crashed into her, nearly knocking her over, your arms wrapping around her so tightly the paramedics protested.

“I thought—” You couldn’t finish the sentence. “I thought you were dead. I heard the gunshot and I thought—”

“I’m okay,” she said, her voice hoarse but steady. Her arms came around you, holding on just as tightly. “I’m okay. The team got there just in time.”

“Thank God. Thank God.” You were crying again, but these were different tears—relief so profound it was almost painful. “I’m so sorry. I should have warned you, should have made you stay somewhere safe—”

“Hey, stop that.” Maya pulled back enough to look at you, her hands on your shoulders. “This wasn’t your fault. You saved me. Your team saved me.”

The paramedics were trying to check her over, and you reluctantly stepped back, letting them work. But you didn’t go far—couldn’t bear to have more than a few feet between you.

Hotch approached, his expression softer now than it had been before. “She’s going to be fine. Some bruising, minor lacerations. The unsub fired when we breached, but the shot went wide. Morgan took him down before he could fire again.”

“Is he—?”

“Alive. In custody.” Hotch’s hand landed briefly on your shoulder. “You should ride to the hospital with her. Take the time you need.”

You nodded, not trusting your voice.

As the paramedics loaded Maya into the ambulance, she caught sight of something over your shoulder and smiled—a knowing, slightly smug smile that you recognized all too well.

“So,” she said, her voice carrying a teasing note despite everything she’d just been through, “are we going to talk about your very attractive, very concerned FBI agent who looks like he wants to wrap you in a blanket and never let you out of his sight?”

You blinked. “What?”

“Don’t ‘what’ me. I saw the way he was holding you. And the way you were holding him.” She raised an eyebrow. “That’s not just friends behavior.”

“Maya, you were just kidnapped by a serial killer. Maybe this isn’t the time—”

“This is exactly the time. Life’s too short, and I just had that proven very thoroughly.” She caught your hand. “You like him. He clearly likes you. What are you waiting for?”

“We’re friends,” you said weakly. “Best friends. And he’s—Spencer’s just being Spencer. He’d do the same for anyone on the team.”

“Uh-huh. Sure.” Maya’s eyes flicked past you again, and she smiled. “Turn around.”

“What?”

“Turn around.”

You did, and found Spencer standing a few feet away, hands in his pockets, watching you with an expression that made your heart skip. There was relief there, yes, but also something deeper. Something tender and raw and utterly unguarded.

When your eyes met his, he didn’t look away.

“Go talk to him,” Maya said, giving you a gentle push. “I’ll be fine. The nice paramedics will take good care of me.”

“I should come with you—”

“You should go talk to the man who just spent the last hour keeping you from falling apart. I’ll see you at the hospital.”

Before you could argue, she was being loaded into the ambulance, the doors closing, the lights already starting to flash.

Which left you standing in the parking lot, exhausted and emotionally wrung-out, with Spencer Reid watching you like you were something precious.

He approached slowly, carefully, like you might bolt.

“Hey,” he said softly when he reached you. “You okay?”

“I don’t know.” It was the most honest answer you could give. “I will be. Eventually.”

“Maya seems okay. Strong.”

“She is. She’s the strongest person I know.” You wrapped your arms around yourself, suddenly aware of how cold you were. “Thank you. For earlier. For staying with me. For not letting me do something stupid.”

“You weren’t going to do something stupid. You were going to do something brave and reckless because someone you love was in danger. There’s a difference.”

“Still. Thank you.” You hesitated, Maya’s words echoing in your head. Life’s too short. “Spencer, I—”

“The team’s heading back to the hotel,” he said, and you couldn’t tell if he was interrupting or saving you from saying something you might regret. “I’m supposed to give you a ride. If you want. Or you can go to the hospital first. Whatever you need.”

“The hotel,” you decided. “Maya will probably be in the hospital for a few hours anyway, and I—I think I need to just… decompress.”

“Okay.”

The drive was quiet. Not the comfortable silence you usually shared, but something heavier. Charged. You were hyper-aware of him beside you—the way his hands gripped the steering wheel, the set of his shoulders, the way he kept glancing at you like he was making sure you were still there.

When you reached the hotel, he walked you to your room, hovering in the hallway as you fumbled with your keycard.

“Spencer,” you said, turning to face him before you could lose your nerve. “I don’t know how to say this without it being weird, but—thank you. For everything. For being there tonight. For… for being you.”

His cheeks flushed slightly, and he pushed his glasses up his nose in that endearingly nervous gesture you’d come to love. “I didn’t do anything special. I just—I couldn’t let you face that alone. I couldn’t…” He trailed off, his eyes meeting yours. “I care about you. A lot. More than—”

He stopped himself, but the words hung in the air between you anyway, shimmering with possibility.

“More than what?” you asked softly.

“More than I probably should,” he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. “More than is maybe wise for partners. But I can’t help it. I care about you, and seeing you in pain tonight was—it was—”

He couldn’t seem to find the words, but you understood. Because you’d felt the same way watching him try to hold you together while you fell apart.

Before you could second-guess yourself, before fear could stop you, you stepped forward and wrapped your arms around him.

He stiffened for just a second—surprise, probably—and then his arms came around you, holding you close. He smelled like coffee and the mint soap from the police precinct bathroom, familiar and comforting and safe.

“Thank you,” you whispered against his shoulder. “For caring. For being the kind of person who cares so much it probably hurts sometimes.”

“It does,” he admitted, his voice muffled against your hair. “But I wouldn’t change it.”

You pulled back just enough to look at him, and the expression on his face—soft and open and full of affection—made your heart race.

And then, before you could overthink it, you leaned up and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

It was brief, chaste, but the effect was immediate. Spencer’s entire face flushed red, his eyes widening behind his glasses, his mouth opening and closing as he tried and failed to form words.

“I—you—that was—” He was adorably flustered, and despite everything, you couldn’t help but smile.

“Goodnight, Spencer,” you said gently, stepping back toward your door.

“Goodnight,” he managed, still looking dazed. “I’ll—um—I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow.”

You slipped into your room and closed the door, leaning back against it with your heart pounding. Through the door, you could hear him still standing there, could imagine him touching his cheek where you’d kissed him, trying to process what had just happened.

Finally, you heard his footsteps retreat down the hall.

You smiled, exhausted and emotionally drained but somehow lighter than you’d felt in hours. Maya was safe. Spencer cared about you—maybe in the same way you cared about him.

Tomorrow you’d have to deal with the aftermath of the case, the paperwork, the debriefing. You’d have to visit Maya in the hospital and probably have a very long conversation about feelings and what came next.

But tonight, you let yourself hold onto this moment—the memory of Spencer’s arms around you, the sound of his voice saying I care about you, the promise of something that could be.

Tomorrow could wait.

For now, that was enough.

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid angst #spencer reid hurt/comfort #spencer reid hurt #spencer reid fanfic #panic attack tw #content warning #x reader #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds #criminal minds fandom

spencer reid finds out the people are eating the cats and the dogs 😣 (this is satire)

HELP??

Hey guys!!!! I’m so sorry I haven’t posted anything I’ve been all over with school, and I’ve been having such bad writer's block like holy shit. Anyway I’d love it if you’d guys send me requests for fics!!

The Earth is sending us distress signals that grow more urgent with each passing day. Yet despite the mounting evidence of environmental collapse surrounding us, we remain caught in a dangerous paradox: the planet that sustains all life is deteriorating at an unprecedented rate, while many continue to deny the very crisis threatening our survival.

Our planet’s vital signs are failing. Species are vanishing at rates not seen since the last mass extinction event 66 million years ago, with current extinction rates estimated to be 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background rates. The magnificent biodiversity that took millions of years to evolve is disappearing within human lifetimes. From the smallest insects that pollinate our food crops to the largest mammals that maintain ecosystem balance, countless species teeter on the edge of oblivion.

The lungs of our planet—our forests—are being destroyed with relentless efficiency. Every minute, an area of forest the size of 20 football fields is cut down. The Amazon rainforest, once thought too vast to significantly impact, has lost nearly 20% of its coverage. These ancient ecosystems, which took millennia to establish, are reduced to stumps and ash in mere decades, taking with them not only biodiversity but also our planet’s capacity to regulate climate and produce oxygen.

Meanwhile, our oceans have become a toxic soup of human waste. Massive gyres of plastic debris swirl in every major ocean, with microplastics now found in the deepest ocean trenches, in Arctic ice, and even in human bloodstreams. Chemical pollutants create dead zones where nothing can survive, while ocean acidification—caused by absorbing excess atmospheric carbon dioxide—dissolves the shells of marine creatures and disrupts entire food chains.

Perhaps most visibly alarming is the rapid retreat of glaciers and polar ice caps. These frozen reservoirs, which have existed for thousands of years, are melting at rates that shock even climate scientists. The Greenland ice sheet loses approximately 270 gigatons of ice annually, while Antarctic ice loss has tripled since 2012. This isn’t just about polar bears losing habitat—it’s about rising sea levels that will displace hundreds of millions of people and fundamentally alter coastlines worldwide. Despite this overwhelming evidence, climate change denial persists with stubborn tenacity. The very phrase “climate change is a hoax” echoes through political rallies and social media feeds, often promoted by those who benefit most from maintaining the status quo. This denial isn’t born of ignorance—it’s a willful rejection of scientific consensus that spans decades and involves thousands of researchers across the globe.

The consequences of this denial extend far beyond mere debate. When those in positions of power prioritize short-term economic gains over long-term planetary survival, policy decisions reflect this dangerous calculus. The push to extract every possible drop of oil, every chunk of coal, and every cubic foot of natural gas from the Earth continues with renewed vigor, even as the climate crisis accelerates. The planet becomes a commodity to be exploited rather than a home to be protected.

This extractive mindset reveals a troubling hierarchy of values—one where the accumulation of wealth by a small elite takes precedence over the survival of entire ecosystems and the wellbeing of future generations. The same voices that dismiss environmental concerns often advocate for policies that concentrate power and resources among the already wealthy, as if a habitable planet were a luxury only the privileged deserve. Humanity stands at a crossroads that will define not only our species’ future but the fate of countless others. We have become the most influential force on Earth—a geological power capable of reshaping the planet’s systems. This power makes us responsible for a choice that will echo through geological time: will we be medicine for our ailing planet, or will we continue as parasites consuming our host until nothing remains?

As medicine, humans have demonstrated remarkable capacity for restoration and stewardship. We can rewild damaged landscapes, develop clean technologies, and create sustainable systems that work in harmony with natural cycles. We have the knowledge and tools to transition to renewable energy, to protect and restore forests, to clean our oceans, and to live within planetary boundaries. Communities around the world are already proving that another way is possible—one where human prosperity doesn’t require environmental destruction.

But as parasites, we are devastatingly effective. Our current trajectory shows what unchecked consumption and environmental disregard produce: a planet stripped of resources, poisoned by waste, and pushed beyond its capacity to support the diversity of life that once flourished here. The window for meaningful action grows smaller each day. Climate scientists speak of tipping points—thresholds beyond which changes become irreversible and self-reinforcing. We may have already crossed some of these lines. Yet even in the face of such daunting challenges, the choice remains ours to make.

Every election, every policy decision, every individual action represents a choice between these two paths. When we vote for leaders who prioritize corporate profits over planetary health, we choose the parasitic path. When we support those who understand that environmental protection and social justice are inseparable, we choose to be medicine.

The Earth has endured mass extinctions before and will likely endure them again. But this time, we are both the asteroid and the only species capable of changing course. The question isn’t whether the planet will survive—it will, in some form. The question is whether we will choose to be part of the solution or the final cause of our own extinction.

Our home is crying out for healing. The choice of whether to answer that call with wisdom or continue down the path of destruction remains ours to make—but not for much longer.

#global warming #climate change #climate crisis #we need to change #debate #protect the earth #environment #protect the environment #pollution

bellsamorelle

“perhaps in another life”

bellamy blake x reader ᭡༄

summary: a diary entry by gf!reader, wishing the love her and bellamy shared for each other was normal “like in the movies”, and hadn’t been formed on bonded trauma.

cw: heavy angst, jasper being struck by a spear, talk of trauma (the agony the 100 had to experience)

perhaps in another life, fear would be foreign, a phrase we envy. possibly in another timeline, we would have exchanged glances—a flash of remembrance of the reverence and ache we once knew. a flicker of understanding, a chance to salvage the connection we had before.

or perhaps, we’d be hesitant to approach one another. if we were to close our eyes and flicker to another time, another universe of our lives, we’d linger a gaze, but turn, diminishing the fleeting feeling of deja-vu.

unlike now, where limited time dissolves hesitation. for at any moment, danger could arise, and worry would build our walls. for if we imagine this separate life, we meet, and the paranoia we shared seeps through—our new selves mistaking it for danger, not for what it is—an endless connection we once had, lingering. a connection formed from the bonds of trauma.

for if we were never sent to the ground—to earth—a dream we once had, we would have never had to bear the unwavering sense of paranoia, sorrow, ache, torment, or salvage. if it had never started with jasper being mauled by a spear, many had never died, massacres had never occurred, and we never knew of the city of light, perhaps we could reminisce about our love without the reminder of the unavoidable, chest-tightening, shared memories of agony forming our bond.

we wish we could relish our connection, without the pain of enduring havoc and torment. only if our past ancestors had prepared the future for us. instead of destroying any path we pursue. the city of light, and alie, i refer.

pixelcats

Why is it “be free have sex be slutty” until a straight woman does it and then it’s a crime against humanity? Like, maybe Sabrina Carpenter likes sucking dick? Ever think of that? Just let her be a cheeky campy tart that’s her whole thing..

lov3lyl3tters

like god forbid a woman is comfortable in her own sexuality

romantichopelessly

Are we seriously at the point where we’re saying that a woman comparing herself to a dog is powerful? Past women’s movement save us

I’m not saying it’s powerful. At least not inherently. But it’s not not powerful either. It’s neutral. To get anywhere with the women’s movement, we need to regard sex and sexuality as neutral. Wanting to have sex with men should not invite violence or diminished value on a woman. That idea is textbook misogyny. Slut-shaming, victim blaming, etc.

And specifically wanting to have kinky sex—to be submissive—is not something that should indicate a woman’s value. If the album cover was the exact same but the legs standing over her were traditionally feminine looking, wearing heels or something, would your reaction be the same? Submission in the bedroom is not indicative of how you want to be treated in your life as a whole, and it does not set anyone back. Saying that it gives men permission to act/think about women as objects DOES, however.

Also the idea that this album cover “centers men” is hilarious when you can’t even see the man’s face. He is nothing. He’s a place holder and a symbol.

I guess what I’m saying here is that I don’t expect it to be a feminist masterpiece. I expect it to be a Sabrina Carpenter album. And it is not setting women’s rights back by being that.

saintchroma-deactivated20250827

The Sabrina Carpenter discourse is just Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus 3.0.

These ladies NEVER posited themselves as role models for young women. People foisted that upon them, and Britney Spears quite notably fought back against that and stated it's not her responsibility to be a saintly role model for young girls, that's the parents' job.

It's also just full circle coming back around to Women are not allowed to be overtly sexual in any capacity because it's just to suit the male gaze. Like, girlies? Maybe you're the one with the conservative, fear-mongering principles if you're telling a gorgeous 20-something popstar that she's now allowed to be sexual in The Wrong Way TM if you don't believe there's even a RIGHT way to be sexual outside of repression.

strawb3rrixg0rl

yall we're ab to go to war i think we have bigger fish to fry then Sabrina Carpenter's album cover

myprettymyfunnymytouch

like i think its weird that your gut instinct is to interrogate whether or not abuse can be hot when i am talking about literal artistic photography techniques on how the final product came to be and how the decisions made invite a feminist analysis of said content.

like, it kind of seems like YOU find the content sexually arousing and are trying to point the finger at everyone else at an attempt to deflect from how disgusted you feel with yourself for doing so????

because i have never once said that this photograph is intended to be sexually arousing and more importantly, sabrina carpenter herself has never said that the photograph is intended to be sexually arousing.

you whining about how it can "potentially" "influence" the audience to view it as sexually arousing is a self-exposé on how aroused YOU personally get seeing this photograph.

the most that i have said is that sabrina carpenter looks attractive,because she *always* looks attractive because she *is* attractive, in this photograph which is just true. she has make up on and the lighting is flattering on her face.

but i never said the photograph makes me "sexually aroused" or that i view it as saying "abuse is hot."

sabrina is a hot woman. she is also being degraded on her album cover. neither one of these things is telling the viewers to be sexually aroused by the album cover.

YOU HAVE DONE THAT YOURSELF AND BLAMED SABRINA FOR IT.

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