feeling angsty so could you write one where due to cases, spencer’s keeps missing/is late to dates with reader? like even their anniversaries have to be celebrated on different days because he’s always somehow swooped away from them
Let me tell you how much I loved this, so *angstyyy* Thank you for requesting!
Title: The Days Between
The first time Spencer missed dinner, you forgave him before he had the chance to apologize.
A case in Baltimore had turned into a hostage situation. By the time he called, the restaurant had already brought you the check for the glass of wine you had ordered while waiting.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, breathless beneath the noise of the police station. “I lost track of—”
“Spencer, it’s okay.”
“It isn’t.”
“You were helping save someone’s life.”
There was a pause.
“We did,” he said quietly. “Save her.”
“Then it was worth missing dinner.”
You took your food home in two containers and ate his portion the following afternoon.
The second time, he arrived forty-three minutes late with rain in his hair and an apology prepared. The movie had already started, but you exchanged the tickets for a later showing. He held your hand in the dark and drew absent circles over your knuckles.
The third time was your birthday. He made it before midnight. You told yourself that counted.
By the end of the first year, rescheduling had become part of loving him.
You celebrated Valentine’s Day on February eighteenth because the unsub in Missouri had taken a fifth victim on the fourteenth.
You moved his birthday dinner twice.
Your first anniversary was marked by a three-minute phone call from the jet and a bouquet Garcia had ordered on his behalf after Spencer realized the flower shop near your apartment had closed.
You understood. That was what everyone said when Spencer mentioned you. “She understands the job.”
You did.
You understood that killers did not consult calendars. Missing children did not wait until dessert. Families needed answers more than you needed a reservation honored.
You understood so thoroughly that Spencer stopped asking whether you were disappointed. He already knew you would forgive him.
The second anniversary was supposed to be different. Spencer had chosen the restaurant himself. He had made the reservation six weeks in advance and left the confirmation email flagged in his inbox as though Hotch might personally inspect it.
“No presents,” you had agreed.
Then Spencer bought you a present. You discovered it accidentally when a narrow velvet box fell from his satchel while you were searching for the spare charger he had told you to borrow. You closed it without opening it.
For three weeks, you imagined what might be inside. A necklace, perhaps. A bracelet. Something small and old-fashioned that he had spent far too long researching.
On the afternoon of your anniversary, he texted you at four: Leaving on time. I mean it.
At five thirty, you stood in front of the mirror and adjusted your dress.
At six, you called a car.
At six twelve, Spencer’s name appeared on your screen. You stared at it until the final ring. “Hi.”
His exhale told you everything. “We caught a case.”
You closed your eyes. “Where?”
“Colorado.”
The reservation was at seven. Your car was already outside.
“We’re boarding in twenty minutes,” he continued. “Emily tried to send me home, but the victimology is unusual and—”
“You should go.”
“I don’t want to.”
“But you’re going.”
Silence.
You looked at your reflection. The dress was new. The earrings had taken you twenty minutes to choose because Spencer once told you that green made your eyes appear warmer.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I know.”
“We can go when I get back.”
“Of course.”
“I already checked. They have another opening next Thursday.”
You almost laughed. He had rescheduled your anniversary before missing it.
“Thursday is fine.”
“I love you.”
Your grip tightened around the phone. “I love you too.”
After the call ended, you stood in the center of the bedroom until the driver texted that he had arrived.
You went to the restaurant alone.
You could have canceled. You could have changed out of the dress, washed off your makeup and spent the evening pretending it was any other night. Instead, you sat beneath the soft amber lights while a server removed the second place setting.
You ordered the meal Spencer had spent days studying online. When dessert arrived, there was a candle in it. The server must have seen the anniversary note attached to the reservation. You watched the flame burn for a few seconds before blowing it out.
Spencer returned four days later.
He let himself into your apartment shortly after nine in the evening, carrying his satchel and the velvet box.
The case had ended well. A twelve-year-old girl was back with her parents. The unsub was in custody. He should have felt relieved.
Instead, unease followed him through the quiet apartment.
Your shoes were missing from beside the door. The coat you wore most often was gone. A half-empty mug sat in the sink, but the rooms felt untouched.
He found you in the bedroom, folding clothes into a suitcase. His satchel slipped from his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
You glanced at him.
Spencer had spent the flight home constructing his apology. He had collected statistics about work-related relationship strain and dismissed each one because none of them sounded like something a boyfriend should say. Now every prepared sentence disappeared.
“I’m going to stay with my sister for a while.”
His face lost color.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
He set the velvet box on the dresser. “You said Thursday was fine.”
The words came out wrong. He knew immediately.
You stopped folding. “Do you really believe this is about Thursday?”
“No. I meant—”
“I have spent two years moving every important day in my life around your work.”
“I can’t control when we get called away.”
“I know.”
“We find people alive because we leave when the call comes.”
“I know, Spencer.”
“I don’t understand what you want me to do.”
Your expression shifted. Until then, you had looked tired. Now you looked hurt. “I wanted you to ask me how dinner was.”
He stared at you. “You went?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“I was already dressed.”
He pictured you sitting across from an empty chair. His eyes moved toward the velvet box.
“I should’ve called again.”
“You always should have called again.”
“I text you.”
“You send me updates about the case. You tell me when the jet lands and when you’re heading to the hotel. You don’t ask how I’m doing because you already decided I’m fine.”
“I never decided that.”
“You call me understanding so you don’t have to feel guilty.”
His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
You turned back to the suitcase. “I know your job matters. I have never asked you to choose dinner over someone’s life.”
“Then why are you leaving?”
“Because those aren’t the only choices.”Your voice shook for the first time. “You could call before I’ve spent an hour waiting at a table. You could stop making promises you know you might not keep. You could remember that when you disappear into a case, I’m still here living the part of my life you missed.”
“I remember you constantly.”
“That isn’t the same as showing up.”
Spencer flinched and you pressed your lips together, fighting for control.
“Do you know what I did on my birthday last year?”
“I came over after the case.”
“At eleven forty-seven.”
“I brought you cake.”
“You brought me a cupcake from the airport.”
He remembered the pink frosting crushed against the lid.
He had thought it was sweet.
“I waited all day,” you said. “You told me you would call after the briefing, and then you forgot.”
“I didn’t forget you.”
“You forgot to call.”
“That’s different.”
“It stopped feeling different a long time ago.”
The room went quiet. Spencer looked at the suitcase, then at the gaps in the closet. Panic rose in his chest, fast and familiar.
“What about all the times I was here?”
“I loved every one of them.”
“Then they count.”
“They do. But so do the nights you weren’t.”
He stepped closer. You moved to the other side of the bed. It was only a few feet, but he felt the distance like a locked door.
“Are you ending this?”
“I’m trying to figure out whether I can keep doing it.”
“I can change.”
“You just told me you couldn’t control the job.”
“I can’t.”
“Then don’t promise me something without knowing what you mean.”
He looked down.
You zipped the suitcase. “I don’t need a speech tonight, Spencer. I need space.”
He wanted to argue. He wanted to list every future date he could protect, every missed dinner he could replace. He wanted to open the velvet box and prove that he had remembered the anniversary weeks before it arrived.
Instead, he picked up the box. “Okay.”
You looked surprised.
He swallowed. “I don’t want you to go. But I understand why you are.”
Your eyes filled with unshed tears.
Spencer walked out before he could ask you to comfort him for hurting you.
For two weeks, he did not call. He sent one message the morning after you left:
I’m sorry. I’ll respect the space you asked for. Please tell me if you need anything.
You didn’t answer.
He stopped carrying the velvet box in his satchel. He started seeing his therapist twice a week and when cases took him away, he watched the team call their families. JJ stepped away after briefings to speak with Will. Luke checked in on Roxy. Tara sent messages during the drives between crime scenes.
Spencer had always believed that his concentration made him better at the job. Once a case began, everything outside it became distant.
He had never considered how often he had used that trait as an excuse.
On the seventeenth day, you received a package at your sister’s house. Inside was the dress you had left at the cleaner’s and a small paper envelope. There was no grand letter. Only a folded card in Spencer’s handwriting:
I kept thinking the problem was that the job took me away. The problem was that when I came back, I expected you to be standing exactly where I left you.
I’m learning how to come home.
You read it three times. Still, you did not call.
A week later, Spencer was waiting outside your apartment when you arrived to collect more clothes.
He stood when he saw you.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” you said.
“I was going to leave this.” He held up a paper bag from your favorite bakery.
You looked at it, then at him. “What is it?”
“Dinner.”
“It’s four in the afternoon.”
“I have to leave for a case in thirty minutes.”
Your heart sank before you could stop it. Spencer noticed.
“That’s why I came now,” he said. “I knew I couldn’t promise tonight.”
You stayed near the door.
He placed the bag on the small table in the hallway. “I’m not asking you to come back. I wanted to tell you before I left instead of after you had already started waiting.”
You looked inside the bag. Two sandwiches. Two slices of lemon cake.
“You bought two.”
“I thought you might give one to your sister.”
A faint smile tugged at your mouth. “She hates lemon.”
“I know.”
“Then why two?”
Spencer’s cheeks colored. “I hoped you might eat with me for ten minutes.”
You should have said no.
Instead, you sat with him on the stairs outside your apartment. He did not talk about the case. He asked about your sister. He asked how work had been and listened to the entire story about your coworker accidentally sending a private complaint to the group email.
When his phone alarm sounded, he stood. “I have to go.”
“I know.”
He hesitated. “Thank you for having dinner with me.”
“It was four fifteen.”
“I’ve learned that the date on the calendar is less important than making the time intentional.”
You raised an eyebrow. “Did your therapist say that?”
“Essentially.”
“I could tell.”
He smiled. Then he left without asking when he would see you again.
The changes were small. That was why you trusted them. He stopped scheduling dinners on days when he was on call and calling them promises.
If a case interrupted something, he told you as soon as he knew. He did not ask you to pretend you were not disappointed. Sometimes, from a police station or a hotel hallway, he called for five minutes and spoke about anything except murder.
He mailed you a postcard from Oregon because you had once complained that he visited half the country without seeing any of it.
You began answering his calls. Then you began calling him.
Three months after your anniversary, you invited him to your apartment. The velvet box sat unopened on the coffee table. He looked at it when he entered but did not reach for it.
“I found it in the bedroom after you left,” you said.
“I should have given it to you before the case.”
“Would that have fixed anything?”
“No.”
You sat on the couch while Spencer remained standing until you patted the cushion beside you. He left careful space between your bodies.
“I’m still afraid,” you admitted.
“Of me missing another anniversary?”
“Of waking up one day and realizing I’ve built my entire life around your absence.”
Spencer’s eyes lowered. “I don’t want that either.”
“I can handle the job taking you away. I can’t handle feeling foolish for believing you’ll be there.”
“I won’t promise that I’ll never be late again.”
“Good.”
“I can promise that I’ll tell you the truth about what I can give. And that being busy won’t mean you stop existing to me.”
You studied his face. “What happens when you forget?”
“I apologize. I correct it. I don’t explain it away.”
“And if it keeps happening?”
“You leave.” The answer hurt, but it was honest.
Spencer picked up the box and held it toward you. “This was never supposed to make up for anything.”
You opened it. Inside was a slim gold necklace with a tiny compass pendant. Your throat tightened.
“You once told me you hated not knowing where I was,” he said. “I thought…” He stopped.
“You thought what?”
“That it might remind you I was trying to find my way back.”
You touched the pendant. “That is painfully sentimental for someone who claims to dislike metaphors.”
“I don’t dislike metaphors. I dislike imprecise ones.”
A laugh escaped you.
Spencer smiled, tentative and hopeful.
“Can you put it on me?”
His fingers trembled slightly as he fastened the chain behind your neck. When he finished, you turned to face him.
“I’m not ready for everything to go back to normal.”
“I don’t want the old normal.”
You touched his cheek.
He leaned into your palm but waited.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
The kiss was soft. It tasted faintly of the tea you had made and all the words neither of you had known how to say three months earlier.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.
“What day is it?” you whispered.
“October nineteenth.”
“Nothing special?”
“No significant personal anniversaries.”
“Good.”
Spencer kissed you again.
The following year, your anniversary dinner happened two days late. A case had taken him to Nevada. This time, he called before you left work.
He listened when you told him you was disappointed. He did not ask you to make him feel better about it.
On the actual night, you ordered takeout and video-called him from your couch.
Two days later, he came home. There were no reservations. No candles waiting in a crowded restaurant.
Spencer cooked pasta in your kitchen while you sat on the counter and stole pieces of bread from the cutting board.
The sauce burned slightly because he became distracted kissing you.
You ate it anyway.
Afterward, he handed you a card. Inside, beneath a paragraph about loving you, he had written:
I know this is not the day we planned. Thank you for letting me share the days between.
You looked up at him. “Was that your therapist too?”
“No.” He slid his arms around your waist. “That one was mine.”
You kissed him before his phone could ring.
When it eventually did, hours later, Spencer reached for it. His hand paused. He looked at you first.
You nodded.
“Go.”
He answered the call, but his other hand remained wrapped around yours.
Summary: anonymous notes, borrowed books, and spencer reid slowly realizing that someone has been flirting with him through sticky notes. he just has to figure out who.
Word count: ~850
___________________________________
The first note appeared inside Spencer’s copy of The Brothers Karamazov.
He noticed it immediately.
Someone had placed a pale yellow sticky note beside a paragraph he had mentioned during lunch earlier that week:
You were right. This part is beautiful.
No name.
No explanation.
Spencer looked around the bullpen. Everyone appeared occupied. Morgan was on the phone, JJ was sorting files, and you were standing beside Garcia’s desk, laughing at something on her computer.
He removed the note carefully and slipped it into his pocket.
The second appeared two days later. This one was tucked inside a book about medieval astronomy:
I understood approximately twelve percent of this, but I’m choosing to blame the author.
Spencer smiled before he could stop himself.
“Good book?” you asked from the desk across from his.
He closed it quickly. “Informative.”
“You’re smiling at medieval astronomy.”
“I smile.”
“Not usually like that.”
He studied your face, searching for some indication that you knew about the note. You simply returned to your paperwork.
By the end of the month, there were eleven. Some commented on passages. Others contained questions.
Do you actually believe this theory, or do you just enjoy arguing about it?
This sentence sounds like something you would say after three cups of coffee.
You should lend me something romantic next.
Spencer began leaving specific books unattended on his desk. It was not bait, exactly. It was an experiment.
He placed a collection of Pablo Neruda poems beside his satchel and deliberately stepped away to refill his coffee.
When he returned, a pink note was visible between the pages.
His pulse quickened.
Subtle.
He looked toward you.
You were watching him over the top of your computer monitor.
When your eyes met, you smiled.
Spencer picked up the note.
Are you accusing me of something? he wrote beneath the word before returning the book to the same position.
He spent the next thirty minutes pretending to read a case file.
You passed his desk on your way to the break room.
When Spencer checked the book again, another line had appeared.
You’re the profiler. Figure it out.
He found you alone in the break room shortly afterward. You were stirring sugar into your coffee.
“Do you often write in other people’s books?”
You glanced over your shoulder. “I would never write directly in a book.”
“Sticky notes are still a form of marginalia.”
“Removable marginalia.”
“So it is you.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You reacted defensively, specified the method used and failed to express any confusion about what I was referring to.”
You took a sip of coffee. “Maybe your secret admirer told me.”
Spencer stepped closer and squinted at you. “Garcia would have used glitter.”
“True.”
“JJ’s handwriting is different. Emily dislikes poetry, and Morgan has never voluntarily opened a book I’ve lent him.”
“That still leaves Rossi.”
“Rossi would sign his name.”
You smiled against the rim of your cup.
“That leaves you.”
“And what does your profile say?”
Spencer’s confidence faltered. The notes had made him happy. He had carried every one of them home, flattening them between the pages of a notebook so the corners would not curl.
But confronting you meant learning why you had written them. Perhaps it had only been a joke. Perhaps you simply enjoyed watching him investigate.
“My profile is incomplete,” he admitted.
You set down your coffee. “Which part?”
“Motivation.”
Your expression softened. “I like hearing you talk about books.”
“You tease me whenever I do.”
“Because you forget other people need oxygen between sentences.”
“That’s a physiological exaggeration.”
“There you go.”
He frowned, but you were still smiling.
“I started reading the books you mentioned,” you continued. “Then I wanted to tell you what I thought, but every time I tried, you became distracted or someone interrupted.”
“So you left anonymous notes?”
“I thought you’d figure it out after the third one.”
“The third note only said the author sounded emotionally constipated.”
“I stand by that assessment.”
Spencer laughed.
You stared at him for a second, as though the sound had surprised you. “So,” you said, quieter now, “mystery solved.”
You moved to walk past him. Spencer stepped sideways, blocking the doorway without meaning to.
“There was another question.”
You raised your eyebrows.
“In the note about poetry.”
Realization colored your cheeks. “You don’t have to answer that.”
“You asked me to lend you something romantic.”
“That was before I knew I’d be interrogated in the break room.”
“This isn’t an interrogation.”
“You profiled my handwriting.”
“I recognize your handwriting.”
The words came out more intimate than he intended.
You looked down.
Spencer reached into his pocket and pulled out a small folded piece of paper. “I wrote a response.”
“You carry stationery now?”
“I wasn’t sure when I would have the opportunity to give it to you.”
You unfolded the note.
In Spencer’s narrow handwriting, it read:
Dinner Friday? I could tell you about the book.
Beneath it, he had added:
I’ll remember to pause for oxygen.
You looked up at him. “Is the book romantic?”
“It can be.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It depends on whether you agree to dinner.”
You pretended to consider it.
Spencer shifted nervously.
“Friday,” you said. His shoulders relaxed.
You folded the note and tucked it into your pocket. “I’m keeping this.”
“I kept yours.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
Your smile became unbearably warm.
“Even the emotionally constipated one?”
“Especially that one.”
You rose onto your toes and kissed his cheek. Spencer remained frozen after you left the break room.
A moment later, Morgan leaned around the doorway. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough.” Spencer touched the spot where you had kissed him.
Morgan grinned. “Good book?”
Spencer looked through the glass wall toward your desk. “Very.”
Summary: You surprise Spencer about your pregnancy, only to find out he already knew.
There's no description of reader's body type, weight, skin color or hair.
The plan had been perfect.
You'd bought the tiny pair of socks weeks ago, hiding them in the back of your dresser drawer every time Spencer walked into the room. You'd rehearsed what you were going to say at least a hundred times.
Tonight was supposed to be the night. Spencer just got back from a trip to Ohio, one that'd taken him away from Virginia for over two weeks. You couldn't keep this secret for much longer. Your belly was starting to grow, and who knows how noticable it will be when Spencer comes back from his next case.
Spencer was working late on paperwork at the dining room table, glasses sliding down his nose as he typed away on his laptop. You stood in the hallway clutching a small white gift bag, your heart pounding so hard you were sure he could hear it from across the apartment.
"Spence? Do you have a minute, baby?" You ask softly while peering into the room, bag hidden behind your back.
"Hm? Yeah, what's up?" he answered without looking up.
"I got you something." You say stepping into the room and pulling the bag from behind you.
That made him glance up. His brows furrowed a bit in confusion. "A gift? It's not my birthday."
You smiled nervously. "Just open it."
He looked immediately suspicious. "You've been smiling like that for three days."
"I have not." You tried to suppress your grin.
"You have." He chuckled.
"I haven't!"
"You absolutely have."
You rolled your eyes and shoved the bag into his hands. "Just open it, Spence."
Spencer laughed softly and pulled out the tissue paper covering his surprise. Then he froze as his eyes landed on the bottom of the bag. He pulled out the pair of tiny white socks. They looked ridiculously small in his hands as he cupped them tenderly.
For a long moment, neither of you spoke. Finally, his is eyes lifted slowly to yours.
You felt tears already threatening. "Surprise?"
The biggest smile you'd ever seen spread across his face. "I knew it."
You blinked and your jaw dropped. "Wait."
Spencer started laughing.
"Wait!" you repeated. "How did you already know? I've been so careful, so I could surprise you!"
"I suspected." Spencer holds your gaze.
"Spencer!"
"I'm serious."
"No! No, absolutely not. There is no way you knew." You shook your head.
"I didn't know for certain," he corrected. "I suspected."
You crossed your arms. " What? How long?"
Spencer looked almost sheepish. "About a month."
"A MONTH?!" You gasped. You couldn't believe this.
"You started drinking ginger tea every morning." Spencer pointed to the pack of ginger tea packets on the kitchen counter.
"That's not evidence!" You argued.
"You hate ginger."
"I could've changed my mind!"
He gave you an 'are you serious' look. "I very clearly remember you telling me you'd rather swallow tea made from boiled rusted nail water than eat anything with ginger."
"Okay, fair." You grumbled.
He stood from his chair and walked over to you, pulling you into his arms. His touch was warm against your skin.
"You were also nauseous every morning for almost two weeks. That's when I really started wondering if you were okay." He mumbled into your temple.
"Lots of things cause nausea." You pointed out.
"You cried because a dog in a commercial learned how to sit."
Your face burned. "That dog worked really hard."
Spencer laughed. "You've also been taking naps."
"I take naps."
"You've never voluntarily taken naps."
"...Okay."
"And-"
"There's more?!" You turned to look him in the eye. Sometimes you forgot how observant he was.
"There was the day you almost bought prenatal vitamins before realizing I was standing next to you."
Your mouth fell open. "I thought you didn't see that!"
"I notice everything about you. I love you, and I want to know everything that's going on with you."
You groaned and buried your face in your hands. "I spent weeks planning this surprise."
"It was still a surprise. I mean, I wasn't sure. You confirmed it for me." Spencer gently rubs soothing circles into your shoulders. "I knew something was different. I had a theory. But I wasn't going to say anything until you were ready."
Your chest squeezed.
Spencer reached for your hands.
Suddenly the tears you'd been holding back spilled over.
His smile immediately disappeared when he noticed. "Oh no."
You laughed through the tears. "It's happy crying."
"Statistically speaking, people say that right before more crying."
You nodded. "Accurate. I definitely feel more tears coming. "
Spencer gently wiped a tear from your cheek. "You're really pregnant?"
The wonder in his voice made your heart ache. You nodded. "Yeah."
For the first time all evening, he looked genuinely overwhelmed. His eyes became glassy. "You are."
"I am." You grinned slightly. These hormones were seriously throwing you all over the place.
"We're having a baby... I'm having a baby with my best friend." Spencer whispered. A disbelieving laugh escaped him. He seemed a bit shocked. "We're having a baby."
You laughed too. "That's generally how pregnancy works, yes."
Spencer wrapped his arms around you so quickly you nearly stumbled.
The hug was tight, like he couldn't quite believe you or this moment was real. You felt him press his face into your hair. "I've been reading parenting books."
You pulled back. "You WHAT?"
His ears turned pink. "Only six."
"ONLY SIX?"
"I wanted to be prepared."
"You thought I was pregnant and immediately started studying?" You were in disbelief. Of course Spencer would immediately hit the books.
"That's usually how I handle things."
You couldn't stop laughing. "You're unbelievable."
"I know."
"What if I hadn't been pregnant? You would've been wasting your time."
Spencer shook his head. "First of all, learning, no matter the subject, is never a waste of time. Second of all, if you hadn't been pregnant now, I'd be helping prepare for the future when we did get pregnant."
His hand settled gently against your stomach. The gesture was tentative, almost reverent. Neither of you could feel anything yet. It was far too early.
But his eyes softened anyway. "You know," he murmured, "our kid is going to be smarter than both of us."
You snorted. "That's terrifying." You imagined having a tiny genius child running around the house.
"Very."
"Absolutely dangerous."
"Society may not survive."
You laughed as he kissed your forehead. Then he kissed your nose, your cheeks and lips. When he pulled away, he rested his forehead against yours. "I can't wait to meet them."
The emotion in his voice nearly made you cry again.
Spencer noticed immediately. "Oh no."
"It's happening again."
"The crying?"
"The crying."
He sighed dramatically and pulled you back into his arms. "Okay."
"What?"
"I'll go get tissues."
You laughed through your tears. "Good plan."
And as Spencer held you against his chest, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt, he thought that for once in his life, knowing the answer beforehand hadn't made the surprise any less wonderful.
summary: spencer coaxes reader into playing blackjack with him on the way home from a case. the buy in is just what reader needs.
t/w: allusions to smut. good ole fashion flirting.
you can’t tear your eyes away from the way spencer shuffles the deck of cards between his fingers. those long, gorgeous fingers. it should be illegal how good it looks.
“blackjack, who’s in?” he asks, ready to deal cards.
“nah man, i learned my lesson last time,” morgan says from the seat next to you, putting an earbud in before leaning back and closing his eyes for the flight back to quantico.
spencer raises a questioning brow at you. rossi shakes his head next to spencer. “don’t do it, kid.” spencer cocks his head, giving your those puppy dog eyes that would bring the vilest unsub to their knees.
“what’s the buy-in, dr. reid?” the question comes out more flirtatiously than you meant.
“ah, for you? first game is free,” he winks, shuffling the cards between his deft fingers one more time. he deals you a card face up, holding eye contact, then himself. he deals your next card, a seven. he deals himself a ten. you have a seven and a ten. a solid seventeen.
“hit or stay?" he asks.
"i'm going to stay, doc," you reply, deciding seventeen is too high to take a chance on getting four or less.
"a seventeen is perfectly respectable. i'm going to hold as well."
you gesture to his facedown card. those long slender fingers flip the card over with such finesse that the finest dealer in vegas would be jealous.
"twenty-one," he gloats at the ace of spades. a cocky smirk spreads across his face as he looks at you. he looks delicious.
"i told you," rossi says to the novel in his hands.
“again?” he asks, shuffling the cards again. you almost don’t hear him ask with how focused you are on his hands. your mind going through other uses for them. he murmurs your name, and that snaps your attention back to him. a knowing smile sits on his lips.
“you said the first game was free, what’s this one going to cost me?” you ask. rossi’s brows raise at your blatant flirting, but he doesn’t say anything. spencer leans over the table separating the two of you. he crooks his index finger. you lean over, meeting him, your heart beating out your chest.
“you come home with me tonight,” he murmurs. he leans back in his seat as if he didn’t just send your body haywire.
“deal me in,” you tell him.
your first card is a five. his first card is facedown in front of him. the next cards he lays down is a five for you and a ten for him.
“hit me,” you say. spencer holds your gaze and you’ve never been so turned on playing a game of blackjack. he deals you a ten. he deals himself a one.
“you’re at twenty,” he practically purrs across the table. “gonna hold?”
“yeah,” your voice is barely a whisper.
“me too,” he says, matching your volume.
“let’s see what the house has,” you tell him. spencer flips the card over revealing another ten. he doesn’t look away from you as he says, “twenty-one.”
your breath hitches at the back of your throat. he’s cool, calm, and collected, sitting across from you and you’re a complete mess over a seemingly innocent game of cards.
except nothing with spencer can be categorized as innocent. he tucks a long curl behind his ear before returning the cards to the deck box. that sexy nerd knew just what he was doing. he’s from vegas for god’s sake.
“he counts cards, you know,” rossi pipes up from his novel.
CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT ⟢ spencer reid x greenaway!reader
summary: things between you and spencer are perfect, right up until a flirty grad student and a mandatory ethics training force you to decide what, exactly, to call the thing you’ve been pretending doesn’t need a name.
genre: angst, fluff tags/warnings: reader is elle's sister, allusions to the fact that spencer & reader are now sleeping together, spencer gets flirted with lollll, emotional avoidance, commitment issues (reader is terrified of the word girlfriend), finally defining the relationship, Hotch simultaneously being a little shit and a responsible boss, no use of y/n
a/n: ILY, happy december! 🫶🏼 | GIF by @reidgif
greenaway!reader masterlist 🥀
In the weeks after the storm, your relationship with Spencer gets embarrassingly good.
You don’t call it a relationship, obviously. You don’t call it anything at all. But whatever you and Spencer chose that night instead of walking away… it sticks. It settles.
There’s a drawer at his apartment with your clothes in it now. Your eyeliner has a home on his bathroom sink. A mismatched pair of his socks mysteriously migrates to your place and never finds its way back. More nights than not, you end up in his bed, or he ends up in yours. It’s stupidly easy, being with Spencer like this. Domestic, almost.
He makes coffee in the morning while you steal one of his shirts and sit on the counter, bare thighs against the tile, his fingers bracketing your hips as he steps between your knees to kiss you good morning properly. You spend quiet nights sprawled sideways on his couch, legs draped over his lap, a book open and forgotten at his side because he keeps getting distracted tracing slow circles on the inside of your knee (then higher, and higher, and—). You lose track of how many times you’ve gotten lost in each other under the sheets and how many times you’ve fallen asleep with his heartbeat under your ear and his arm curled around you like he’s afraid you might evaporate.
Work is where it gets weird.
On paper, nothing’s changed. You come in separately. You don’t touch in the bullpen. You sit in your usual seats at the round table. But your lives have stitched together enough that the seams will definitely show if anyone looks too closely.
He finds your eyes faster in briefings now. Your chairs drift closer together. You pass each other in the hallway and don’t touch, but you both feel the almost in the space between your hands. You feel that unnamed thing between you, getting louder.
It hits a new decibel on a Wednesday evening in a Georgetown auditorium.
Spencer’s guest-lecturing for a criminology seminar, so you tagged along to sit in the back row and watch him talk about offender typologies in a suit that should be illegal. He’s in his element up there, long fingers sketching invisible graphs, voice steady. Several students are blatantly gone for him, laughing too hard at his nerdy little asides, pretending to take notes while they’re probably just doodling his name paired with theirs inside a heart.
You should be rolling your eyes. Instead, you sit there with your chin in your hand and think, with a clarity that makes your stomach drop, I want him to be mine. Wait, he is mine. Oh, I’m in so much trouble.
Class ends. He’s barely capped his pen before a cluster of students descends, all smiles and eager questions. You stay in your seat with a file open in your lap, giving him space, pretending you’re not blatantly eavesdropping.
One of the female grad students hangs back until the rest clear out, then steps closer. She’s twisting a mechanical pencil between her fingers, leaning in with deliberate, practiced brightness.
“I just wanted to say your lecture was amazing,” she says, breathy. “Some of us are going to Martin’s Tavern after this. If you’re free, maybe you’d like to join? I’d love to buy you a drink. Or just get your number?”
There’s a tiny pause. You don’t look up, but every nerve in your body goes live.
“Oh, uh, I’m flattered,” Spencer says, gentle. Then, without stuttering, like it’s the simplest fact in the world: “But I have a girlfriend.”
The word punches straight through your ribs.
Girlfriend.
He said it easily. Like it’s obvious. Like of course he has a girlfriend, and of course that girlfriend is you. He reached into his chest, pulled the thing you’ve been hiding in the dark, and brought it out under fluorescent lights with one sentence.
The part of you that wants to bask in that feeling melts a little. Then the part of you that remembers every label you’ve ever had — daughter, sister, agent, liability, mistake — bolts for the exit.
You snap your folder shut before you can hear her disappointed reply.
By the time she’s gone and he looks up toward the rows, you’re already on your feet, bag over your shoulder. “Ready, genius?” you call down, casual, because if your voice shakes you’re going to eat your own tongue.
He flushes. “Yes. Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you wait.”
“You’re fine,” you say, meeting him at the bottom of the stairs. “C’mon. If we don’t leave now one of your fangirls is gonna come back in and ask you for some very creative extra credit.”
He huffs a soft laugh and follows you. In the hallway, when no one’s looking, his fingers brush yours. You let them curl around your hand for one stolen second, because despite whatever’s happening in your chest, you still want his touch more than you want to protect yourself from it.
On any other Wednesday, he’d come home with you and you’d ask him to stay the night at your place without a second thought. Tonight, when you reach the curb and he unlocks the car, the word is still echoing in your skull like a gunshot.
Girlfriend.
You manage to get through the drive mostly intact — teasing him about one student's terrible question, letting him ramble about an article the class clearly didn’t read. You even let him walk inside your building with you to your apartment like it’s any other night.
He waits for the usual move: you unlocking the door and tipping your chin in silent invitation.
Instead, you lean against the doorframe and lie. “I’m wiped,” you say. “We’ve got the Memphis consult in the morning, and I still have to finish my write-up. I should probably just crash.”
You watch it hit him. The little hitch. The fraction of a second it takes him to fold the hurt away. The heartbeat of disappointment he swallows so you don’t have to see it.
“Oh,” he says. Then, quickly, “Right. Of course. You should get some sleep.”
You hate how careful his voice goes, like he’s trying not to spook you.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” you add, too bright.
“Yeah,” he says, and gives you a small, real smile because he refuses to make you feel guilty for needing space. “Yeah. I’ll see you then.”
You nod, tell him goodnight, and close the door.
You stand with your back against it for a long minute, listening to the muffled sound of his footsteps retreating down the hall, fighting the impulse to rip it open and drag him inside.
Instead, you sink down on your couch alone, apartment too quiet, skin still buzzing with the phantom feeling of his hand around yours and that word in his mouth like it belonged there.
That night, you fall asleep without his heartbeat under your ear for the first time in weeks.
Everything is good. Stupid good.
As long as you don’t look directly at the part where, in one scared little pivot at your front door, you proved you’re still capable of running from the one thing you actually want.
—
Mandatory ethics training always feels like the most boring form of punishment ever created.
You drop into your usual seat at the conference table. Morgan is already there, spinning a pen between his fingers. Emily’s got a cup of coffee and the dead-eyed stare of a woman facing down forty slides of HR-approved clip art. JJ glances at the ceiling like she’s hoping for the fire alarm to save her.
Garcia slumps down with a theatrical groan. “Why do they do this to my spirit,” she whispers. “My soul is a delicate ecosystem. And so what if I call Morgan ‘chocolate thunder’ every now and then!”
Spencer slides into the chair next to yours, shoulders a little too straight, tie a little too neat. His knee bumps yours under the table, then pulls back like he’s not sure if he’s allowed. Normally, you’d bump his knee back on purpose just to watch him blush. Today, you stare a beat too long at the empty space between you and pretend you don’t notice the way his fingers tap nervously against his thigh.
“My sources say conduct violations are up across the Bureau this year,” Rossi says menacingly, taking the seat opposite you. “Some of us are just good at not being caught.”
His eyes flick to you, then Spencer, then back down to his notes with a smirk.
A woman from Human Resources with a laminated name tag reading STACY and a too-bright smile sets up at the projector. The first slide pops up: BUREAU STANDARDS FOR PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT & ETHICS, with a generic image of diverse coworkers beaming at a whiteboard. It’s the stock photo-equivalent to a tampon commercial.
“Kill me,” you mutter.
Spencer’s mouth twitches. “Statistically, actively enforced ethics policies do actually correlate with a reduction in—”
“Reid,” you cut in. “If you throw statistics at me right now, I’m reporting you to HR for harassment.”
Hotch clears his throat at the front. “This is required,” he says, scanning the room. “I expect everyone’s full attention.”
Garcia lifts her hand. “If my full attention dies of boredom, can I go home?”
Hotch does not dignify that with a response. Smiley Stacy thanks him and launches in.
Harassment examples. Reporting protocols. Conflict-of-interest policies. Power imbalance studies. Quid pro quo. You’ve heard it all before, in FBI Academy auditoriums and field office conference rooms and Bureau-wide email blasts. The vocabulary changes, but the message is always the same: don’t be a fuck up.
You tune in and out. Spencer’s taking actual notes, because of course he is. Every so often, he shifts just enough that his sleeve brushes your arm, which only heightens your awareness of the fact that the two of you are, technically, a walking HR violation.
Then the next slide appears: WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIPS & MANDATORY DISCLOSURE.
The presenter clicks her little remote. “As a reminder,” she says, “while they aren’t encouraged, the FBI does not prohibit consensual inter-Bureau relationships. However, any relationships between agents in the same unit must be disclosed to Human Resources and your Unit Chief. Failure to disclose can be cause for reassignment or termination.”
Her eyes skim the room. “If your personal circumstances have changed since last year, please update your information by the end of this week. Disclosure forms are in the packets you’ve been given.”
Your mouth goes dry.
You imagine checking a box and writing Spencer’s name on a line somewhere, your entire life with him boiled down to a paragraph in a file cabinet. You’ve seen your world reduced to Bureau paperwork before — incident reports, disciplinary memos, Elle’s name next to the word “shooting.” You’re not exactly eager to hand them a fresh variable to circle in red.
Smiley Stacy keeps talking. Rossi’s pen taps once on the table. Emily shifts in her chair. The projector hums.
Beside you, Spencer is very still.
You flip your packet open, eyes skating over sections about harassment and grievance procedures, until you hit WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIP DISCLOSURE.
There it is, in neat, bold font:
Are you currently engaged in a romantic and/or sexual relationship with another Bureau employee?
Underneath, two boxes:
☐ Yes
☐ No
And another line:
If yes, please provide the employee’s name, unit, and position.
Your heartbeat stumbles.
You shouldn’t be surprised. You knew it was coming the second that slide appeared. But seeing the question in black and white, poised there like a lie detector, does something ugly in your chest. It feels less like an administrative form and more like a dare: admit this exists, and see how we ruin it.
Next to you, Spencer’s packet rustles. You glance sideways.
He’s already on the same page. His pen is uncapped. He doesn’t even hesitate at first — it’s automatic. The tip of his pen drops toward Yes.
Then his eyes flick, quick, to you.
You’re not sure exactly what your face is doing, but whatever he sees makes him stop. His hand stills. The pen hovers a fraction of an inch above the paper and his fingers tighten around it like he’s physically holding himself back.
For a second, you see it: the hurt he’s trying very hard to swallow. The quiet, careful question under it — are you really about to pretend this isn’t something real?
You look away fast.
You force your own hand to move and check a different box on a different page, something meaningless about previous ethics trainings attended. You do not touch the relationship section. You flip the packet closed like you’ll deal with it later, like the question will somehow evaporate if you don’t look at it too hard.
At the front, the presentation winds down. “…and again, if you have any questions or concerns, please come to HR or your Unit Chief directly.”
Stacy smiles another bland, borderline creepy grin as Hotch steps up beside her. “All forms need to be returned by end of day tomorrow,” he says.
Chairs scrape. Morgan stretches with a groan. Garcia yawns and fans herself with her packet. JJ and Emily fall into quiet conversation, flipping pages as they walk out together.
Spencer exhales next to you, slow and careful, like he’s afraid of blowing something over. You don’t look at him right away. You tuck your own packet under your arm like it’s just paperwork, nothing special, not a lit fuse you’ve decided to sit on.
“Busy afternoon?” you ask, because small talk is safer than anything else banging around in your skull.
“Couple of consults,” he says. His voice is steady, but there’s a new caution wrapped around it you haven’t heard in weeks. “You?”
“Catching up on after-action reports,” you lie.
You stand. So does he. For a second you both just… hover. There’s too much you’re not saying in the space between you, and you can feel the new crack you put there with one unchecked box.
“See you tonight?” you ask quietly, like it’s an optional thing, like you don’t already know exactly where you’ll end up when the sun goes down.
He looks at you, really looks, and for just a heartbeat you can see the question there: What are we doing?
“Of course,” he replies instead. “We can order Chinese food for dinner.”
You nod, clutching the ethics packet a little tighter under your arm and heading for the door, knowing there’ll be a lot more to discuss than just egg rolls — and that this time, if you flinch too hard, you might not be the one who walks away.
—
Spencer’s apartment smells like sesame oil and garlic when you walk in. Cartons of food from your favorite Chinese place are spread out on the coffee table, chopsticks lined up too neatly.
“Hey,” he says from the kitchen. Tie gone, sleeves rolled, hair a little mussed like he’s run his hands through it too many times.
You drop your bag by the door. “Smells good. Please tell me you remembered dumplings this time or I’m walking right back out.”
He nods. “Pork and chive with extra chili oil.”
“Look at you. Growth.” You shrug off your jacket. “Very sexy.”
Color creeps up his neck. He steps closer like he wants to kiss you and then hesitates, just a fraction, as if he’s not sure what he’s allowed to do tonight.
You close the distance because you know what you want, even if you’re busy pretending you don’t. You press your mouth to his and he kisses you back, soft then deep, hands hovering at your waist like he’s afraid to hold on too tight.
It would be so easy to let it melt into the usual — your back hitting the wall, your fingers in his hair, both of you forgetting how to breathe. You break away before you allow yourself to fall into that kind of distraction.
“Hi,” you say.
His eyes search yours, careful. “Hi.”
For a second, things feel normal. Takeout, post-work exhaustion, the hum of his fridge. You could almost pretend disclosure forms and words like girlfriend don’t exist. You could almost pretend you didn’t close your front door on him last night and a metaphorical one in the conference room this morning.
When you migrate to the couch, you don’t sit in your usual spot pressed against his side. You take the opposite cushion instead, cross-legged, fried rice carton held like a shield.
It lands. You see it. The brief flicker in his face — surprise, then a quiet recalibration. He picks up the lo mein and sits, leaving just enough space between you that you could close it if you wanted to.
You don’t. Not yet.
You talk about nothing: traffic, Agent Anderson’s new haircut, paperwork Rossi dumped on you. None of it sticks. The silence between topics gets heavier every time.
You’re halfway through the last dumpling when he asks, finally, “Did I do something wrong?”
You keep your eyes on your food. “You ordered lo mein instead of chow fun. Grave error.”
“I’m serious.” His voice catches. “Did I?”
You set the carton down and scrub a hand over your face. “No,” you say finally. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
He nods once, like he wants to accept that, but it doesn’t quite land. “Is this about what I said to that grad student yesterday?” he asks. “Or is it about the HR form? Or both?”
You stare at a grease stain on the takeout menu. “You really want to do this now?”
“I don’t really want to do it at all,” he admits. “But I don’t like… this.” He gestures vaguely between you. “The… distance. It feels like I’m waiting for something bad to happen and I don’t know if I caused that.”
That lands in your chest with sick, precise blow. Truth is, he didn’t cause it. You did.
“Okay,” you say, because you did promise him in a motel room once that you were done running. “Which part do you want to start with? The part where you told a stranger at a lecture you have a girlfriend, or the part where the federal government wants a written statement on my sex life?”
His ears go pink. “We can start with the lecture.”
“It was…” You try to find words that don’t make you sound insane. “It was a lot.”
“In a bad way?” he asks, small.
“In a… loud way,” you correct. “First it felt… good. Like. Stupid good.” You grimace. “I liked hearing it. More than I thought I would.”
His shoulders loosen a fraction. “Okay,” he whispers. “And then?”
“And then my brain threw up,” you say bluntly. “Because you just… said it. Out loud. To a stranger. In public. Like it was settled law. Like you didn’t even have to think about it. Meanwhile, I can’t even get the word out in my own head without feeling like the walls might cave in.”
You finally look at him. He’s watching you like every word matters.
“I didn’t say it to pressure you,” he says, and you can tell he means it. “I didn’t even think about it, honestly. She was flirting with me, and the idea of seeming available felt wrong, and explaining what we are to each other would’ve taken forever and probably confused her. So the word just… came out.”
“Yeah,” you say quietly. “I noticed.”
“If it made you uncomfortable, I’m sorry. I just—” He searches for something; finds it. “It felt true. In my head, that’s what you are to me.”
You lean back into the couch, heart doing something ragged. “I know. It felt true for me too. That’s what freaked me out.”
He goes still again, like that admission is both a relief and a new kind of terror.
“And the form?” he asks.
“The form is its own special little nightmare.”
“I saw you freeze,” he says. “You turned the page like it was radioactive.”
You huff out a dry laugh.
“Is it…” He frowns. “Is it just the idea of HR knowing? Or is it… labeling it at all?”
You pick at a stray grain of rice on your jeans. “I don’t like the idea of some stranger in a cubicle having an opinion about who I sleep with,” you say. “I don’t like the idea of my life with you being a checkmark in a file next to the same forms that cover every mistake I’ve made at this job.”
He listens. Really listens.
“And I hate,” you add, quieter still, “the idea of giving the Bureau one more thing it can take away. They’ve already taken enough. My time. My sanity. My… my sister. If I put this down on paper, suddenly it’s theirs to fuck with.”
Spencer’s hands flex on his knees like he’s resisting the urge to reach for you. “It won’t be theirs,” he says softly. “It’s always going to be ours. But… I get what you mean. It’s possible that mistakes we make in the future could get blamed on our relationship, and one of us could end up reassigned.”
You swallow. “Yeah. Something like that. I don’t like the idea of handing someone a loaded gun and hoping they just… don’t use it.”
He nods slowly, like puzzle pieces are clicking into place. He shifts closer, not touching yet, just near enough that you feel the heat of him.
“Can I tell you what got to me?” he asks. “About today? And yesterday?”
You nod, throat tight.
“It scared me,” he says quietly, “that my first instinct was to check yes and yours was to close the packet. And it scared me that last night you heard me use the word girlfriend once and decided to send me home.” His mouth pulls, self-conscious. “Obviously we don’t have to spend every night together. That’s not what I mean. But…I knew the timing wasn’t a coincidence. It felt like we’d been moving in one direction for a while, and then all of a sudden you were… pulling back. It’s hard for me not to worry that this is the start of you deciding this was all a bad idea.”
You open your mouth to speak, but he goes on, words rushing a little like he’s afraid if he stops he won’t say them at all.
“I don’t mean that like an accusation. I know it’s complicated for you. I just—” He exhales. “I’ve been all in for a while. You know that. And most of the time, especially since the motel, I feel like you’re all in with me. But then something like this happens and I realize there’s still a line in your head you haven’t crossed, and it’s… hard not to shake the feeling that maybe I’m the only one who thinks of us as—” His mouth twists. “As real.”
“Spence,” you say, voice breaking a little. “You’re not the only one.”
“You say that,” he says, voice soft. “And I believe you. I do. I know you want to mean it. But I also can’t get it out of my head that you could still look at one question on a form and feel like admitting we’re together is an insane idea. Or look at your doorway and decide letting me in is suddenly…”
“Dangerous,” you offer. It tastes like guilt. “That’s what it felt like. Not because of you, though. Because of me. Because of them.” You drag a hand through your hair. “It’s not because of you. My hesitancy has never been because of you. You know that, right?
He nods, but his eyes say not entirely.
“I just…” You force yourself to keep going. “Every time I’ve let someone put a label on me, it’s gone to shit spectacularly fast. Either I fuck things up, or the world does, or some cruel combination of both. So yeah, letting the Bureau stamp ‘girlfriend’ on me feels a little like volunteering for disaster. Like I’m putting a countdown clock on the one thing in my life that doesn’t feel like an accident.”
He swallows. “What about when it’s just me using that label?” he asks, small. “Is it different if I say it? If I think it?”
You hate how his voice sounds — like he’s braced for you to say no. Like he’s already preparing to start untangling his life from yours if that’s what you need.
“It’s always different when it’s you,” you say, honest and low. “I just don’t know how to be good at this. Being a girlfriend has never exactly been my strong suit. But I know that I like waking up with you more than I like waking up alone, and I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to lose…” You gesture weakly between the two of you. “Any of this.”
Something in his face softens, but he doesn’t rush to reassure you. He sits with it, which is somehow worse and better at the same time.
“What if,” he says slowly, “we stop worrying about what HR calls it. Or anyone else. What if we just decide what we call it? You and me.” Then, quieter: “But if you tell me we need to slow down, or that you want less, I’ll do that. I’m not going to push you into something you’re not ready for.”
That hits you harder than anything else all day, because there it is: the choice. Not an ultimatum, but an exit ramp. Him saying if you want to pull away, I’ll let you. I’m putting your needs above my own, yet again. I always will.
Before you can respond, he goes on. “Whatever we call this, I need you to understand it doesn’t change anything. We…we already act like a couple. I know you know that, even if you won’t let yourself think about it long enough to admit it. So I’m not going to suddenly start looking at you differently or expecting more from you if we put a label on things. I like this—us—exactly the way it is.”
The room goes very quiet. The TV hums. The city murmurs outside. You can hear your own pulse in your ears.
You realize, in slow, stupid stages, that he’s right: nothing will actually change between you if you call this what it is. You already spend your nights in his bed and your mornings in his kitchen. He already knows what you look like when you cry and what you sound like when you laugh and every ugly, sharp edge you usually try to hide. He’s still here, not because you tricked him by pretending to be someone you’re not, but because he keeps choosing you. He wants you. You, exactly as you are.
The only difference would be a label that’d tell him you’re choosing him back just as hard as he’s choosing you.
The Bureau can call it whatever it wants. HR can put it in a file. None of that feels as terrifying anymore as the new image that flashes through your mind: Spencer slowly pulling away from you because you were too scared to say one true word.
“Spence,” you say, because saying his name has always helped you anchor. “Look at me.”
He does.
You take a breath that feels like standing at the edge of something high and finally letting yourself fall:
“One true thing: You’re… you’re my boyfriend.”
The words come out small and hoarse and absolutely honest.
For a beat he just… stares. Like you’ve spoken in some rare dead language he’s studied his whole life and never heard aloud.
“Say it again?” he asks.
You roll your eyes, because you’re you, but you lean in anyway. Your hand finds his knee, squeezes. “Don’t get greedy,” you murmur, then repeat it anyway: “You’re my boyfriend.”
His laugh comes out half-choked. He reaches up like he’s not sure where to put his hands and then finally settles one against the side of your neck, thumb brushing your jaw like he’s confirming you’re real.
“I am,” he says, a little wrecked. “And you’re my girlfriend.”
You make a face. “That title sounds so ridiculous on me.”
“No it doesn’t,” he says immediately. “It sounds right.”
You would normally mock him for being cheesy, but his eyes are too earnest in that way that always makes you melt, and it does sound right, so you lean in and kiss him instead.
It’s not the eager, pull-each-other-apart kind of kiss you’ve fallen into so many nights lately. It’s slower, weighted. His hand slides to the back of your head, fingers threading into your hair. You shift closer until your legs slot between his, the whole world narrowing to the press of his mouth and the quiet sound he makes when you tilt your head and open to him.
When you finally pull back, his forehead rests against yours. You can feel his smile, small and disbelieving.
For a few breaths, it’s just that. Warmth. The steady press of him. You could stay here forever and not think about anything outside these four walls.
But then he swallows and ruins it, very gently: “We should probably talk about that other deeply romantic part of this now. You know, the whole… ‘telling the federal government’ part.”
You groan against him. “You really know how to kill the mood, Spencer.”
“I know,” he admits, wincing, squeezing your hip softly with affection to soften the blow. “It’s just— at some point we have to stop pretending. On paper, I mean. The forms, Hotch… all of it.”
You make a face because he’s right and you hate that he’s right. “Yeah,” you say quietly. “I know, you’re right. The FBI wants signatures.”
His brows knit. “Tomorrow, maybe we could fill them out. Together. Check yes, write each other’s names down, then go talk to Hotch ourselves instead of letting the news show up in his inbox from HR. Besides, he likes both us, even if he’s too stoic to show it. He’s gone up against HR and Strauss before, I’m sure he’d do it again if he had to.”
You sit with that for a beat, thumb brushing his wrist. “It does feel riskier to let work find out by accident,” you admit. “At least if we do this, we get to say it our way first.”
He studies you like he’s trying to memorize this moment. “We don’t have to tell everyone else yet,” he offers. “Honestly, it might be better if we don’t. I don’t think I’m mentally prepared for the incessant teasing Morgan is going to throw at me.”
You nod. “And we’re absolutely not telling Garcia yet,” you say. “She’ll commission matching couple’s sweaters and attack our desks with confetti.”
He laughs, real this time, the tension finally cracking. “So… Hotch. HR. Rossi already knows.”
“Yeah. Everyone else can mind their business until we’re ready to be the number one topic of bullpen conversation.”
He nods, relief and something like wonder moving through his face. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
You lean into him, tucking yourself against his chest like it’s the most natural thing in the world. His hand settles on your shoulder, fingers sliding absentmindedly along your collarbone.
Your ethics packet is still in your bag by the door, waiting, but it feels… smaller now. Less like a bomb, more like a step you’ve already started taking.
Whatever the Bureau ends up calling you on paper, it doesn’t matter, because you know what you call him:
Boyfriend.
—
You’ve faced serial killers with less dread than you feel on the walk to Hotch’s office.
At the end of the day after everyone else cleared out, you and Spencer signed the disclosure forms together at his desk, shoulders brushing, pens moving in parallel. It felt stupidly anticlimactic for something that’d been rattling your ribcage for months. The real part is what comes next.
Your form is folded once in your hand, creased right through the little checked Yes box. Spencer’s got his copy tucked into a folder like that makes it less humiliating.
“Last chance to fake our deaths and move to Canada,” you mutter.
“Canada would just extradite us back here,” he says.
“You’re killing the fantasy, Reid.”
He gives you a quick, nervous half-smile and knocks on Hotch’s door.
“Come in.”
Hotch is behind his desk, jacket off, tie tight as always. Case files in a neat stack. Coffee that’s probably gone cold.
You step in first, and Spencer closes the door behind you.
“Everything alright?” Hotch asks. His eyes go from you to Spencer and back again, taking in the forms you’re each holding.
You clear your throat. “We, uh.” Great start. You swallow. “We’re here about the… ethics forms.”
Hotch just waits.
Spencer’s voice goes careful and professional. “We wanted to disclose a… change in personal circumstances,” he says. “Officially.”
You hold out your folded form. He holds out his.
Hotch takes them both, glances down just long enough to register the matching answers and names, then sets them on the desk. When he looks back up, his expression is mostly neutral, with the faintest hint of I am very tired and I clocked this months ago.
“How long?” he asks.
You exchange a look with Spencer. “That’s, um… kind of a complicated question. Officially? Brand new. Unofficially? Uh… a while.”
Hotch nods once, and you swear you almost see the ghost of a smirk. “I appreciate the disclosure,” he says. “I had a feeling this was coming.”
You try not to visibly combust. “I— what?”
“Well, I’m very good at what I do. Plus, Rossi may have suggested that I should ‘keep those workplace relationship forms handy’ several months ago.”
You’re going to kill Rossi.
Hotch folds his hands together on the desk. “Your personal lives are up to you,” he says. “I only care about whether it impacts the work. So here’s what I expect: no favoritism on cases or letting your feelings affect your decision making. If one of you feels compromised, you come to me immediately so we can sort it out. If I think your relationship at any point is affecting your judgment, I will separate you on cases, and if I have to, I’ll recommend reassignment.” His gaze sharpens, then softens by a degree. “I’d rather not have to do that. You’re both good at what you do, and I don’t want to lose either of you. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Spencer says immediately.
You nod. “We know how to be professionals,” you say. “Total tight-ass professionals.”
That wins you the faintest flicker in his eyes that might, on a looser man, qualify as amusement.
“Good,” Hotch says.
“We’d like to keep it private from the team. For now,” Spencer adds.
Hotch nods. “You can tell the others when you’re ready. Just don’t make me find out anything important from anyone but you.”
“Deal,” you say.
He nods again, already turning back to the paperwork he’d been working on when you walked in. “Then we’re done here. Get out of here, it’s late.”
You and Spencer mumble your thank-yous and back out before Hotch changes his mind and hands you another case file.
Back in the bullpen, you both exhale at the same time.
“That went… better than it could have,” Spencer says.
You glance at him, at his still-slightly-flushed face, the way he’s looking at you like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to be relieved yet.
You bump your shoulder into his. “Come on,” you say, low so it doesn’t carry across the bullpen. “Take me home, boyfriend.”
He stumbles over absolutely nothing, smile breaking slow and helpless.
“Okay,” he says, eyes sparkling. “Yeah. Let’s go home.”
ᝰ.ᐟ
→ next part
this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️
PSA: likes do very little for promoting posts on tumblr! if you'd like to support a fic, please reblog!
SHELTER FROM THE STORM ⟢ spencer reid x greenaway!reader
summary: in the cold aftermath of a fight left unresolved, you & spencer get stranded as a storm rolls in. with the roads underwater and only one vacant room at the motel, you’re left with nowhere else to run but straight into him.
genre: angst, hurt/comfort, smut tags/warnings: 18+ MDNI. reader is elle's sister, big argument, panic/anxiety, forced proximity, one bed trope, long conversation with lots of genuine apologies, reader admitting to Big Feelings, making out, and…drumroll please…SMUT! dry humping, brief nipple play, fingering, oral (f receiving), protected p in v, lil sprinkle of size kink (he’s got a big dick and reader likes that. sorry not sorry), spencer reid is Not A Virgin. pet names (sweetheart, angel girl, good girl), convo mid-sex scene about intimacy issues, no use of y/n.
a/n: request | the long awaited one-bed fic is finally here! this is a 10.7k word monster (longest fic I’ve ever written), my apologies lol — I’ve been working on it little by little since I first started greenaway!reader and had a lotttt I wanted to cover. I hope it lives up to all of your expectations 🥲 ily xo | GIF by @reidgif 🫶🏼
greenaway!reader masterlist 🥀
Rain pins the world to the windshield in sheets, wipers ticking like a metronome set a hair too fast. Two-lane blacktop. No shoulder. Pines crowd the edges and spit their needles into the air like confetti for a parade no one asked for.
You keep your hands at ten and two because it feels like control, like you can muscle the weather into behaving if you hold onto the wheel hard enough. Like you can fix more than just the weather.
Spencer’s sitting shotgun with a paper map because the GPS keeps losing its mind — “Recalculating. No satellite signal. Recalculating.” His knee isn’t bouncing in that annoying way it usually does. He’s gone eerily still. You hate that so much more than the bouncing.
“Next turn is in approximately two-point-three miles,” he says evenly.
“Got it,” you reply.
Silence hums along to the rain. Somewhere, miles back, is the easy, bright version of the two of you — the version that traded coffee sleeves and private jokes and secret kisses in parking lots. You can feel its ghost in the car, sitting in the backseat, arms crossed, refusing to look either of you in the eye.
A deer jumps out of the treeline and freezes in your lane. You brake — hard — and the car skids to a stop. The deer stares, flinches, bolts. Your heart lodges in your throat and hangs there, choking you.
In the middle of the panic, Spencer’s left hand slapped to the dash. Not to your knee to steady you. Not across your chest to hold you back. Not to you at all.
The sound of his palm hitting plastic lands louder than the storm.
“Sorry,” you say, because apologizing for a deer feels easier than touching anything else going on between you. Your voice comes out flatter than you meant it to.
“It’s not your fault,” he answers.
He means the deer. At least you think he does.
You swallow. Your throat tastes stale, like the bad coffee you didn’t finish because the mug smelled like old pennies. You ease your foot off the brake and the car crawls forward again.
—
(48 hours earlier)
You burned out of the precinct on a hunch and didn’t come back for four hours. Your phone went from one bar to no bars and stayed there. You told yourself you’d only be gone twenty minutes. You told yourself if you left a note on the whiteboard or gave the team a heads up, someone would try to talk you out of it, and then you’d have to stand there and defend yourself, and that would slow you down. You told yourself confidential informants bolt the second they smell an entourage. You told yourself, Move. Think later. That trick usually saves you. Sometimes it slices you open.
But you were right. The CI did show. He talked. He gave you something usable.
So you came back with grit on your boots and adrenaline in your chest, already halfway through composing the I told you so in your head.
Spencer was waiting where the asphalt met the chain-link, his lanky silhouette tensed, phone white-knuckle clenched in his hand.
“Where were you?” he asked, stepping out in front of you to block the path from the parking lot to the sheriff’s office.
Not how did it go? Not are you okay? Not even hi.
“Following a lead,” you said.
“The lead Hotch specifically told you was too dangerous to follow alone?” His voice was low and controlled in a way that made the air around you feel thin. “The lead you were supposed to bring me in on tomorrow, with a tactical team in place, in case things went sideways?”
You rolled your shoulders back, irritated at the tone. At the implication. At him, of all people, acting like you couldn’t be trusted with your own job. “I got something we needed,” you said. “The CI might’ve just given us a major break in this case. We don’t get that if I show up with a battalion.”
“I am not a battalion,” Spencer replied, and it came out cracked. You heard the edge of panic under the anger. Then, quieter: “You don’t always have to do everything alone.”
The sentence hit you low, right in the part of your spine that convinced itself long ago that asking for help means showing weakness.
“I can handle myself,” you said. “And I never asked you to worry about me.”
“Yeah, well, I did it anyway,” he snapped, and the snap was so un-Spencer-like that it stunned you into stillness. He let out one small, humorless breath of a laugh and dragged a shaking hand through his hair. “I called you seven times. Seven. Hotch was five minutes from sending Morgan and two sheriff’s units to sweep the city looking for you. Do you—do you understand what it felt like to look up and you were just—” His jaw worked. He swallowed hard. “Gone?”
The word hung there between you — gone.
It wasn’t theatrical, or manipulative. It was just naked.
And then he added: “In the middle of a case like this.”
You knew exactly what this meant. This meant six women in four weeks. All in their twenties and thirties, roughly your height, your build, your coloring, all physically capable of fighting back but knocked unconscious before they had the chance. All abducted and killed and horrifically mutilated in the same neighborhood as that warehouse you’d gone to.
“I thought you were hurt,” he went on, steamrolling through his own panic now that it had found a crack. “Or—or worse. We got a call about a body in an alley, in the unsub’s comfort zone, but it was too mutilated for a visual ID, and—”
“You assumed I was dead,” you said for him. “Breaking news: I’m not.”
“That isn’t the point,” he said instantly.
“The point is I did my job and it paid off.” You shifted like you were going to step around him.“If you can’t handle—”
“What I can’t handle is not knowing where you are when we’re hunting a guy who kills women who look exactly like you,” he cut in. “He’s smart, and he’s dangerous, and we don’t have him yet. And I—You’re—” He caught himself on the edge of saying something too raw and too obvious and too big. “You’re too important to me to lose,” he said instead.
It was too intimate. Way, way too intimate. Way more than you could hold in the open air like this. So you did what you always do with things that threaten to rearrange you: you knocked it out of his hands before it could stick.
“I’m not your fucking girlfriend, Spencer.”
You heard the words leave your mouth and couldn’t pull them back. You felt them hit him.
He froze. You watched it happen in real time — the way his face went from heartbreak to self-defense to anger, all in one brutal flicker.
“That’s not—” His voice cracked. He swallowed it down and tried again. “Christ,” he said, finishing the sentence with your name like an angry punctuation mark. “We’re—” He cut himself off and pressed the heel of his hand between his eyes. When he looked at you again, his tone was lower. “Don’t pretend that we’re strangers. At this point, the word girlfriend is just semantics that terrify you, and I’ve been too polite to push you on the labels thing, even though it’s starting to eat at me. Don’t act like you don’t know what you are to me. Don’t act like you don’t know what I am to you.”
Heat rose under your skin so fast it almost made you sway.
He wasn’t done.
“And don’t make it sound like I’m trying to put a leash on you, because you know I’d never want to control you,” he said, softer but somehow more intense. “I just can’t keep doing this thing where you disappear for hours in the middle of a case and I have to stand there pretending I’m fine while my chest feels like it’s being crushed in a vise. I mean, seriously, you do this constantly. Constantly! You show zero regard for your own safety and you don’t seem to care at all what that does to me. I’ve seen what happens when the line between instinct and impulse gets blurry. I watched it happen to Elle. I won’t watch it happen to you.”
You felt your face go hot. Shame and anger and something almost like guilt crackled in you, sparking in every direction at once.
The worst part was, you heard the truth in it. You heard the care, and the fear, and the feeling you won’t let either of you name.
But under all of that, you also heard one unforgivable word: Elle.
“Don’t,” you warned, and your voice didn’t even sound like yours. “You don’t get to compare me following a lead—a lead that got us what we needed, by the way—to what Elle did just because you’re pissed off and scared and your giant genius ego is bruised that I won’t stamp a label on us.”
He flinched. You hated yourself for how good that felt for half a second.
“And you sure as hell don’t get to weaponize my sister’s actions against me like that,” you went on. “You don’t get to use her name to scare me, or guilt me, or punish me.”
“I wasn’t—” He broke off. “That’s not what I was trying to do.”
“Felt like it.”
He exhaled, shaky, losing some of the fight left in him. “Next time, just loop me in,” he said quietly. “Please.”
It would’ve been so easy to say yes. It was sitting on your tongue: Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you because if you’d asked me not to go I would’ve stayed. I didn’t bring you with me because I care about you too much to force you into danger you don’t have to be in. I can’t lose you. I can’t lose you. I can’t lose you.
But the yes was stuck in your throat like a fish bone. You couldn’t get it out without bleeding.
“Yeah, sure. Next time,” you said instead, sarcastic and shitty on purpose, shouldering past him and through the station door before you could hear him answer.
You and Spencer barely spoke for the rest of that day. Or the next. You only talked when it was about the case, and even then it was like you had gloves on.
Then Hotch assigned the two of you to drive hours out of town to interview a key witness the following morning.
That authoritative, meddling bastard.
—
Back in the car, the road narrows around a fallen tree branch. You take it slow. Spencer checks the time, then turns to look out the window again. His profile is all clean lines and tension. You want to lick your thumb and smudge those lines, just to prove you still can.
“The bridge might be dicey,” he says. “The river last crested a few hours ago, but that was before this new storm cell moved in.”
“Mhm.”
He clears his throat. “If the bridge is under water, we’ll cut over across Route 11. Adds twenty minutes.”
“Fine,” you say.
If this were you from three days ago, you’d poke fun at him for carrying an actual paper map like it’s 1979. You’d tell him to hit you with a county road fun fact. You’d let him light up. You always liked watching that happen. You’d pocket it and carry it like a handwarmer.
But this is you today, so you keep both hands on the wheel and keep your mouth shut.
Another mile swallows itself. Pines. A billboard for a fireworks warehouse that probably violates six state laws. A dented mailbox shaped like a trout. The sun dipping below the horizon.
Spencer’s phone buzzes in the half-second when service returns—flash flood warning—then dies back to black. He sets it in the cupholder and clutches the map between his fingers again.
He used to put his hand palm-up on his knee, a quiet invitation you’d take without thinking. You used to lace your fingers with his and rest there like you’d always have this.
You want to tell him you’re sorry about the four hours you disappeared. You want to explain that you didn’t tell him because if he’d asked you not to go you would’ve stayed, and that scared you more than the CI did. You want to tell him you’re sorry for saying “I’m not your fucking girlfriend” and for pretending this thing between you is undefined when there’s barely been a single night in weeks that didn’t end with one of you asleep on the other’s shoulder.
You want to be honest and you want to be kind but you don’t know how to be both at once, so you settle for just being quiet.
Outside, the rain keeps coming. Inside the car, you’re already under water.
—
The witness’s house is the color of wet cardboard and wrapped in a porch that sags. You flash your badges and get ushered into a living room that smells like mothballs.
The job slides over both of you like a uniform you don’t have to think about. You take the chair closest to the witness, angle your body open, let your voice go warm. Spencer hangs back a foot to the left — non-threatening, softened posture, eyes careful. You ask the simple questions; he gently pulls out more details. It’s an old rhythm that fits so well it almost hurts.
Back at the car when you’re done, you barely look at each other.
“Good work,” he says, quiet.
“You too,” you mumble.
You radio the team the broad strokes. They radio back a clipped “Copy, drive safe.”
The rain gets louder as you pull back onto the road. The job is taken care of. Nothing else is.
—
The river you crossed earlier has officially eaten its bank. Two police cruisers block the bridge; a deputy in a poncho waves you down with his flashlight.
“Closed both ways,” he shouts through your cracked window. “Route 11 is washed out, too. County’ll reassess at dawn, try to get things reopened.”
“Any other routes?” Spencer asks.
“Not unless you got a boat. Best bet is to wait the storm out ‘til morning and try again at sunrise.” The deputy jerks his chin toward a side road you hadn’t even noticed through the rain. “Pioneer Motor Lodge is about a quarter mile that way.”
You nod and thank the officer. You do not look at Spencer, and he does not look at you. You just U-turn in slow motion and follow the road to the motel.
—
The Pioneer Motor Lodge looks like the set for a movie titled “Places To Go When Your Life Falls Apart.” Single-story horseshoe, doors that open to the parking lot, soda machines on one side. A clerk sits behind the counter, watching the weather try to peel the world from its edges.
“Two rooms,” you say, and it sounds brisk enough to pass as professional.
“Wish I could help ya there,” the clerk says, sympathetic. “We’ve only got one left. Storm’s filled us up with stranded travelers.”
You feel Spencer tense beside you.
“We’ll take it,” you both say in the same miserable tone. The clerk slides over a key that’s seen better decades and a blue pen. Spencer signs; you swipe your card and pretend not to feel your pulse in your ears.
The walkway is slick. Your room is last on the strip, next to the ice machine and water fountain with an “out of order” sign that looks permanent. When you walk in it’s pitch black, and all you can smell is damp carpet, lemon cleaner, and the faint linger of years-old cigarette smoke.
Spencer finds the light switch, and that’s when you see it:
Only one bed.
Fucking fantastic.
He does a much better job at pretending to be unaffected than you do — while you’re frozen in place, he’s performing a routine sweep of the room the way he does in every hotel — checks the functionality of the smoke detector, makes sure the windows are latched, scans the mattress for bedbugs. You force your feet to work and set down your go-bag, which you miraculously had the forethought to throw into the trunk.
You both go through the motions: unzipping duffels, taking out toiletry cases, finding your pajamas. It’s silent and tense and the air feels like it’s made of pea soup.
After a few minutes, Spencer points his chin at the dilapidated armchair in the corner. “I can sleep—“
“No. That’s stupid,” you cut in, too fast. You don’t know if you mean his chair offer or this whole arrangement or the way your heart is acting like it absorbed caffeine intravenously. “We’re adults. It’s a queen size. It’s fine.”
He nods once, too drained to start another argument. You watch his throat move as he swallows.
“Do you want to shower first?” he asks, neutral, an olive branch disguised as logistics.
You shake your head. “You can go ahead.”
You listen to the water beat the tile, then sputter for a moment when someone flushes a toilet in the room next door. You stand at the window and watch the rain thrash the parking lot like it has a grudge. Your phone coughs out a single bar just long enough to text the team an update before it collapses again.
Spencer emerges in the world’s most modest t-shirt and flannel pajama pants, hair damp, contact case in hand and glasses fogged. He keeps his eyes carefully on the carpet when he says, “All yours.”
You take the fastest shower of your life and still feel like you’re in borrowed skin you don’t know how to wear. When you come back out, he’s sitting on the far side of the bed on top of the covers, watching the weather report on mute.
You sit down on the mattress (as far away from him as 60 inches of width will allow), and your weight dips his side just enough that you both feel the shift. He clicks the TV off. You reach for the bedside lamp. It hums, then gives up, plunging the room into the kind of darkness that feels thick.
“Goodnight,” he says to the ceiling.
“Night,” you say to the wall.
You lie very still. The storm hammers at the windows, the heater rattles, and somewhere under all that is whatever you’re not saying. You wait to see what’ll give first — the power, the storm, or your ability to pretend you don’t want to roll over and ask him for one true thing.
—
You hold out as long as you can.
You lie on your side, facing the wall, hands shoved under the motel pillow because you don’t trust them not to reach for him in your sleep. The rain hammers the windows, steady and mean. You count the seconds between the lightning and thunder.
It doesn’t work. Your thoughts keep circling the same place.
Meanwhile, Spencer is glued to his half of the bed like someone drew a chalk line down the middle of the mattress and ordered him to respect the boundary. His back is to yours, one arm folded under his head. You can hear him not sleeping. His breaths are too measured. You know he only breathes like that when he’s trying not to unravel.
“Spencer?” you whisper.
“Yeah?” he answers, quiet and wrecked and awake. The reply was immediate, like he was just waiting for you to speak first.
Your chest does a dumb little stutter at that.
You’re still staring at the wall when you say, “I can’t sleep.”
“Me neither,” he admits.
Another few beats go by. You realize you’re holding your breath and let it out slowly.
“Can you—” You stop. The words feel huge, like lifting something heavy. “Can you look at me?”
There’s a pause, and then he rolls.
You feel the mattress move under you, the dip of his weight pulling you a fraction closer. You roll to face him, and now there’s maybe eight inches between you. It feels like standing at the edge of a cliff.
His glasses are off. His hair is still a little damp and curling at the ends. The light from the parking lot sneaks in through the curtains and cuts a faint line across his cheekbone. His expression is sad in a way that says I’m barely keeping it together.
“Hey,” he whispers.
You swallow. “Hey.”
You sit in that for a second, just looking at each other in the dark.
Then you say, because if you don’t say it now you’re going to choke on it, “I hurt you.”
He exhales slowly. “Yeah.”
“You hurt me too.”
His eyes flicker. “I know.”
Your pulse is in your throat. You pull in a breath. “You compared me to Elle.”
He flinches; it’s tiny, but you feel it because you’re close enough to, and something bittersweet twists under your ribs at the proof that he still cares what you think of him.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says.
“I know you didn’t mean it like that,” you say. Your voice comes out tight, too sharp. “But you still said it. I’ve told you so many times how much I hate being compared to her. I trusted you enough to tell you that, and you still did it. I can’t—” Your throat closes, just for a heartbeat. You push through it. “You don’t get to hold her over my head like a threat. You don’t get to take one of the worst days of her life and aim it at me because you’re scared.”
He’s very still. You can hear his breathing. You can hear your own.
Then he says, quiet: “You’re right. I shouldn’t have brought her into it. That was wrong.”
You were braced for him to explain himself, defend himself, anything. The simple that was wrong disorients you.
“It wasn’t fair,” he continues quietly. “What happened with Elle was not the same thing as you going after a lead. I wasn’t—” He breaks off, swallows. His voice goes softer. “I wasn’t trying to say you’re like her.”
You breathe out slowly. “Then what were you trying to say?”
“Knowing that you’re walking toward something dangerous and not being allowed to go with you makes me feel like I’m going to throw up,” he says. “And that’s not… rational. I know that. I know what our job is, and I’d never want us to get in the way of it. But it’s like—” He winces at himself. “It feels like the universe has its hands wrapped around my throat and they’re just… holding. Not squeezing yet. Just taunting me, letting me know they could.”
The picture hits you so hard you actually feel it, phantom fingers pressing up under your jaw.
“And I hate it. I hate not being in control of it, and I hate that I’m putting it on you. You’re not responsible for what my nervous system does when I worry about you. That’s on me. But I—” He swallows hard. “When you were gone, I was standing in a parking lot thinking, ‘She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone,’ and then you walked up all smug, and my brain just—” He makes a helpless little motion with his hand. “I said something unfair, and I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to hurt you intentionally. I was just terrified.”
You stare at him in the dark and your chest aches in a tight, unhelpful way. You hate how much you needed to hear that.
“I know you were,” you say quietly.
“Do you?” His voice frays a little. “Because I don’t think you do. I honestly don’t think you can understand how it felt. You were just doing what you always do — you had a lead, you trusted your instincts, you thought you’d be fine. And, to your credit, you were. You weren’t wrong about that.” He takes a breath. “But for four hours, twenty-one minutes, and thirty-seven seconds, I thought you could be dead. I was genuinely terrified that they were going to tell me the mutilated body in the alley was yours.”
“Oh,” you whisper.
He laughs, broken and humorless. “Yeah. Oh.”
You’re quiet for a full, solid beat, letting that sink under your skin and settle.
“I should’ve told you where I was going,” you say finally. The words scrape on the way out, but you say them. “I just—I knew if I told you, you’d ask me not to go, and if you’d asked me not to go, I wouldn’t have gone.” You pause, then add: “No one else holds that power over me.”
Something shifts under his expression, fast and deep and not at all subtle.
“But we needed that CI. I thought putting the case first was… I don’t know. Noble, or something. Professional.” You shake your head against the pillow. “But it wasn’t only that. It was me trying to prove to myself that how much I care about you doesn't have to mess with the job. And I thought if I didn’t tell you, then you couldn’t interfere with me being ‘objective.’”
Spencer swallows. “And how’d that work out for you?”
You let out a weak little breath that’s almost a laugh. “Well, you spent four hours thinking I was dead, so… not great.”
He exhales through his nose.
“And for the record,” you say, quieter, “I know I scare you. I know I run too hot. I know I move first and think later, and that I act like I’m never afraid.” You swallow. “I am afraid. I just… I don’t know how to show it without feeling weak. And I hate feeling weak in front of anyone.”
He nods, eyes locked on you. “I’m not just anyone.”
“No,” you whisper. “You’re not.”
“I know you thought I was mad at you for doing your job, but I wasn’t,” he says. “I just can’t keep being put in situations where I have to pretend I’m fine while I’m picturing you covered in blood on a metal slab. I need you to try to be a little less reckless on the job. I’m not asking you to not be you, but you can’t keep operating like you’re indestructible, or like no one would miss you if you were gone.” His breath catches. “And I know I didn’t say it right. I know I made it sound like I was trying to control you, but I swear, that’s not what I meant. I just— I can’t lose you. I can’t. Not before I’ve even told you—”
He cuts himself off.
Your pulse trips. You nod, steady. “I know, Spencer. I know.”
He shifts a little closer. It’s barely anything — just an inch, maybe two — but it might as well be an earthquake.
“I shouldn’t have said I’m not your girlfriend,” you force out. “That was mean. I knew it would hurt you and I said it anyway because I panicked and needed to get the attention off the fact that you—” Care about me. Like me. Maybe even…more than like me. You swallow the words and change course. “—the fact that you said I’m important to you.”
Spencer’s eyes go very shiny for a second, and you have to look down at the cheap motel duvet to keep talking.
“And you’re right,” you add, barely above a whisper. “We’re not strangers. We haven’t been strangers for a long time. I know what we are to each other. But I keep thinking if I just don’t call it anything, I can’t break it. Which is… stupid. I know it’s stupid.”
“I didn’t like hearing it,” he admits, voice small and honest.
“Yeah,” you say. “I know.”
He bites his lip. “I—I know you’re not mine in the way I want you to be. I’ve gotten used to that, mostly. But… I’m yours.” His voice wavers, then steadies. “You may not realize it, or want to hear it, but I am. I don’t know how to be okay pretending I’m not yours when I am. When that's all I want to be.”
Oh.
Something inside you — some stubborn barricade you’ve had up for years — gives a little under that.
“Spencer,” you whisper, and your hand moves before you can second-guess it. You slide your palm over the mattress, find his wrist in the dark. “I know you are.”
He closes his eyes like relief is physically painful.
“And I’m—” You breathe. Swallow. You owe him this much. “I’m yours, too. I just don’t know how to do it out loud yet.”
His eyes snap open. He looks wrecked and stupidly happy and still terrified all at once.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
Your thumb presses gently where you’re holding him, like you’re warning him and soothing him at the same time. “But you can’t expect me to know when you want something without saying it. I’m a good profiler, but I’m not a mind reader. I didn’t know the title thing was eating at you. We could’ve talked about it earlier.”
“Is it really all that surprising?”
You sigh softly. “No,” you admit. “But I’m already so far out of my depth here. So unless you say otherwise, I’m going to assume everything’s fine, because I need it to be fine. I don’t let myself think about the alternative, because then I’ll have to deal with the fact I can’t give you what you deserve—yet. I’m working on it, I promise, but… I’m not there yet.”
He nods. “I know. I should’ve said something. But—for the record, I’m not trying to push you into something you aren’t ready for. I’m just…hoping you will be ready for it, one day. On your own time. But I do want that. I want to call you my girlfriend. I want you, and I can’t pretend I don’t. I can’t be casual about you.”
The word — girlfriend — pops and fizzles beneath your skin.
“I’m glad you still want that,” you whisper honestly. “I kind of spent the last two days thinking you were done with me.”
His eyebrows pull in, and he reaches out to brush his thumb along your cheekbone. “I could never be done with you, sweetheart.”
God.
You feel it hit low, dizzying. Under any other circumstances you’d chastise him for the pet name, but not now, not when he said it like that.
“Okay,” you breathe. “Okay. Good.”
For a second you both just lie there, staring at each other, breathing the same air. The hurt is still there, but under it, something else finally breaks through the surface — relief, hot and bright and shaking.
His voice drops, barely audible over the rain. “Can I—”
“Please,” you whisper, already moving, already finding his lips with yours.
The first kiss isn’t hungry — it’s overwhelmingly tender. It’s you’re here pressed mouth to mouth. It’s I’m sorry / I’m sorry too / Don’t ever do that to me again / I promise I won’t / I forgive you / I missed you so much I thought I’d crawl out of my skin / I missed you more / Impossible.
The second pass of his mouth over yours goes deeper without either of you meaning to. The sound you make is embarrassingly needy; the sound he answers with is worse. Your hand slips from his wrist to his jaw, then to the back of his neck. He inches closer across the sheets until his chest is pressed to yours, warm through cotton.
You break just long enough to breathe, foreheads touching. You’re both shaking.
“Spence,” you whisper.
He exhales like he’s been waiting days to hear you say his name like that. He whispers yours back.
There’s a beat where you could stop. You both know it’s there — you feel it hover between you like a hand on the brake.
Neither of you takes it.
Instead, your noses brush. His thumb is on your jaw. Your knee slides forward under the sheets and bumps his thigh.
When you kiss him again, it’s with intent, with gravity, with every hour of silence and every unsent apology and every inch of want you’ve been starving out of yourselves.
The night tilts.
—
You keep kissing because relief tastes like oxygen and you’ve both been underwater for two days. You kiss because you can. You kiss because stopping would feel like cutting off circulation.
You edge closer, and he meets you halfway like gravity. The mattress dips, and your knee slips between his thighs, and all at once you’re half over his hips, half draped across his chest, not even pretending to be polite about it.
“Need you closer,” you breathe.
He makes a noise that sounds torn out of him and moves under you — a slow roll of his hips up into yours that drags his cock against the heat between your legs through all the thin, flimsy layers in the way. The friction is instant and indecent. Your mouth stutters open on a gasp, and for a moment, you’re suspended like that.
“Hi,” Spencer whispers against your lips, bringing you back into yourself, voice so stupidly tender you could break.
You answer by kissing him messier. Less careful. You fist both hands in his t-shirt, straddle him completely, and roll your own hips this time.
He slides one palm down, grips the back of your thigh and starts to rock you, slow and filthy, helping you grind against the hard line of him. You whine into his mouth and feel him swallow it like it’s holy.
The rain outside is hammering so loud you couldn’t hear the voice in the back of your head if you tried. You give up on keeping quiet and let out desperate little breaths every time the pressure hits just right; he falls apart in soft curses that sound new in his mouth. He’s warm and solid under you and you can feel his pulse everywhere you’re touching him.
He pulls away just enough to breathe. “Can I—” His fingers hover at the hem of your top. “Do you want me to… Can I take this off?”
Everything in you goes still. You’re bare under the shirt, and you know — bone-deep know — that if you say yes, you’re not coming back from it. This is you stepping across the line and letting him see all the parts of you no one else gets to see without armor.
You hear yourself say, very small and very sure, “Please.”
He slides his hands under the fabric, palms warm against your ribs, like he’s telling your body what’s about to happen. Then he eases the cotton up, slow, reverent, knuckles ghosting over your stomach, the undersides of your breasts. You sit back on his hips to help him, arms raised, and he pulls the shirt off over your head and drops it somewhere you’ll worry about later.
Cold air hits your skin. You feel it pebble over you, and then you feel him looking at you.
Spencer goes silent in that awed, scientific way of his, like he’s staring at a comet that only passes by once a century. “I am trying very hard not to ruin the moment by telling you the precise number of milliseconds I’ve spent thinking about seeing you like this,” he admits. Then, simpler: “You’re so beautiful.”
Something warm blooms in your chest. You want to deflect the compliment — you’re wired to deflect — but the earnest look on his face won’t let you. It would feel cruel not to accept it.
“Spence,” you whisper. “Touch me.”
He makes a sound you feel in your spine as his hands come up to cup you with both palms, thumbs brushing over you in slow, reverent circles. You arch into him without a second thought.
“God,” he murmurs. He leans up to kiss your throat, the thin skin where your pulse beats high, then lower, his mouth tracing the line of your collarbone, the soft slope of your breast. He mouths at you like he’s grateful, like he’s starving.
“I need this off,” you whisper, shoving at his shirt like it offended you by existing.
He sits up on instinct, letting you push it up over his head. Underneath he’s all long lines and unfair softness — collarbone and sternum and that ridiculous waist you’ve thought about way too many times. You smooth your hands over him, just to feel. His chest jumps under your palms and he sucks in a breath through his teeth.
“This okay?” you murmur, tracing down, following the thin trail of hair below his navel, familiarizing yourself with skin you’ve only ever stolen touches of through clothes.
His eyes flutter. “Yeah,” he whispers, a little ragged. “Yes. Anything you want.”
Your heart does something dangerous at that.
You lean back in to kiss him and lose time for a while. Everything turns slow and greedy, unhurried but inevitable. Your nipples drag against his chest in a way that makes him groan into your mouth and makes you chase more just to hear it again. He sucks gently at your lower lip, and you answer by rolling your hips in a way that makes the both of you gasp into each other’s mouths.
Then his hands move, one at your waist and one at the back of your neck. You feel a shift in him — something steadier, more intentional settling in his shoulders.
“Lie back for me?” he asks, almost nervous, voice rough.
You let him roll you underneath him, your spine meeting the mattress. He hovers over you on his forearms, and you’re already breathing too hard, already slick, already trembling a little with adrenaline and want.
His mouth is on you again immediately, trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses down your throat, along your collarbone, down to your breasts. His tongue drags slow over your nipple and you arch clean off the bed, fingers diving into his hair. He groans against you like your reaction hit him straight in the spine.
“Spence,” you gasp.
His hands slip lower, following the curve of your waist, the flex of your stomach, reverent and a little shaky. He pauses at the waistband of your pajama shorts. Looks up. Waits.
You nod so fast you’re almost embarrassed.
He slides his fingers under the elastic, drags them down, and it’s so careful you could cry. There’s no hurry in it. No desperate ripping. Just his hands easing your shorts and underwear down your thighs, over your knees, past your calves. He discards them somewhere, and then he’s just looking at you.
You know that should make you feel vulnerable enough to crawl out of your own skin, but instead, you feel… wanted. Worshipped. Safe.
He touches you, finally. Long fingers tracing the outside of your thigh, then up, higher, higher, until he’s cupping the heat of you, feeling the way you’re already so, so wet for him.
“Oh,” he whispers, like you’ve just answered a question he’s been too polite to ask. “Here?” he murmurs, thumb circling your clit, featherlight at first, letting your reactions guide him. His middle and ring finger slip through your slick and gather you, just testing, just mapping.
“Spencer,” you say, needy and unpretty and not ashamed, and that’s his answer. He slides one long finger into you, slow.
Your hips chase it immediately, your body taking him deeper. He curves his knuckles and you gasp, eyes squeezing shut, and he makes a soft, reverent sound that should not be as filthy as it is.
“Like that?” he breathes.
“Yes—oh—yes.”
He doesn’t talk a lot after that — he just listens.
Every time your breath catches or your thighs tense, he adjusts. He slides a second finger into you when he feels you stretch for him, and the fullness makes your mouth fall open, your back bow off the mattress. His thumb finds your clit in these slow, tight circles that turn into perfect pressure when you whimper please, please, please without even realizing you’re saying it.
“That’s it,” he whispers, quiet encouragement that goes straight to your center, and for a moment you think any ounce of praise from him could probably make you come on the spot.
Your heel drags up the back of his calf, trying to get him even closer, pulling him into you. Your hand is in his hair because you need to hold on to something, need to ground yourself in him.
He starts kissing his way down your body while he works you. First the soft space between your breasts, then the underside of your ribs, then lower, down your stomach, slow enough to make you dizzy, giving you a hundred and one chances to tell him to stop.
You’re not going to tell him to stop.
By the time he settles between your thighs and looks up at you — curls mussed, pupils blown — you’re wrecked.
He waits, and you nod.
His mouth closes over your clit and you swear you see actual stars behind your eyes. His fingers keep fucking into you, curling up, finding that sensitive spot he located unbelievably quick (such an overachiever, as always). You’re babbling again without meaning to — yes, right there, fuck, don’t stop please don’t stop — and he just groans against you and does exactly what you ask like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to do.
You feel it build: warmth into need, need into pressure, pressure into please.
The coil in your stomach tightens, tightens, tightens—oh.
You come hard around his fingers, his mouth still on you through it, and you say his name the way you never say anything, like it’s the only word you know. Your whole body goes white-hot, shaking, and he holds you through it, stays with you, working you gently through the aftershocks until you’re trembling and over-sensitive.
He doesn’t stop until you ask him to. He withdraws slow, presses one more kiss to your inner thigh, and moves back up your body.
It hits you then, square between the ribs, just how stupidly beautiful Spencer is. It’s catastrophic.
The plush of his mouth, still a little swollen. The uneven stubble along his jaw that rasped against the inside of your thigh a minute ago. The long lines and soft edges of him — chest and shoulders and that ridiculous waist. The little crinkles at the corners of his eyes. The single freckle over the arch of his brow. All of him, right here above you, chin and fingers still slick with you, looking at you like you’re the best thing he’ll ever look at in this life.
You’ve always thought he was handsome. Even on day one, when he couldn’t hold eye contact with you for longer than three seconds, your stomach still did that humiliating, dizzying little swoop. But this is different. This is not just attraction. It’s not just god, you’re hot. This is… too much to process. This is no one has ever looked at me like this before but you’re somehow doing it like it’s the most natural instinct in the world.
You’re peeled open in a way you don’t normally let happen. Not with anyone. Not ever. But here you are: naked, breath uneven, nerves still buzzing where his mouth had you, and he’s above you, steady, eyes blown and soft and full. He’s bare for you, too — not just his skin, but all the careful, controlled parts of him, wide open and offered.
And then there’s the way he’s looking at you.
If you could bottle that look and take a swig anytime you needed it, you could fix yourself forever. Your worst days, the spiral ones where you’re convinced you’re hard to love / too much / too sharp / a liability — one taste of the way he’s looking at you right now and poof. Gone. It’s ridiculous and infuriating and dizzying all at once. It lights up under your breastbone like someone struck a match in all the places you thought were doomed to stay damp and dark forever.
It’s too much. You have to look away.
You turn your head into the pillow, gaze skittering to the wall, his shoulder, the wrinkle in the motel sheet by your hip — anywhere but his eyes, because if you keep feeling that much tenderness you’re going to do something irreversible like cry or tell him every secret you’ve ever had.
“Hey,” he whispers, tenderly nosing at your cheekbone and pulling you back into your body. “Where’d you go?”
You blink. Then blink again, and again, until you can force your eyes back to his. “‘M here,” you whisper, voice embarrassingly thin. You reach for him to ground yourself, fingers curling around his forearm.
He kisses your cheek before lifting his head to look at you again. “Physically, maybe. But your mind went somewhere else just now.” He studies you, concern knitting his brows together. “Was that… not okay?”
You snap back to him so fast your neck almost twinges. “What? God, no. Wait, I mean — yes, of course it was okay.” You groan, covering your face with your hand for half a second. “I’m screwing this up. Sorry. Let me try again.”
His mouth curves, worried and amused all at once. “Take your time.”
“It was more than okay,” you tell him. That part comes out clean. “Spencer, that was—you were unbelievable. Like, so good it’s insulting. I didn’t ‘go somewhere else.’ I just…” you trail off, searching for the right word and not finding one big enough. “I think I’m feeling more feelings than I’m used to feeling in…this particular situation, and my mind doesn’t quite know what to do with all of them.”
Smooooth. How many times can you possibly use the word “feeling” in one sentence? New record!
His eyes search yours for a few quiet moments before he speaks, confusion washing through his features. “Feelings like…?”
You blow out a slow, shaky breath. You hate this part. You hate saying the quiet thing. But you do it anyway, because it’s Spencer, and this is, apparently, what he’s turned you into: mush. Emotional, honest, vulnerable mush.
“I can’t remember the last time something like that felt so… intimate,” you admit. You feel the word catch in your throat on the way out. “I mean, I know the act itself is intimate, obviously. I’m not a robot. But I mean… you. You, doing that. Looking at me like that while you’re doing it. I haven’t— I don’t…” you swallow. “That was the first time in a long time I’ve done anything like that with someone I actually care about. And I’ve never done that with someone I care about the way I care about you.”
Spencer’s breath hitches so sharply you can feel it against your ribs. He looks as if all the oxygen in his body has been knocked out of him, and his face does that thing that half looks like he wants to laugh and cry and thank you and swear and maybe throw a parade, and half like he’s still terrified he messed something up.
“Is that a bad thing?” he manages.
“Of course it’s not,” you say immediately, a little too fast. “No. Just different. It’s a good thing, at least it’s supposed to be.” Your laugh scrapes out, self-conscious and breathless. “It’s just new for me, letting my feelings touch the rest of me. I usually put them in a box, shove the box into a dark corner and pretend that corner doesn’t exist. I’m very high-functioning that way, in case you haven’t noticed.”
He huffs a little, fond, because yes, he has noticed.
You don’t look away from him this time when you go on. “But I can’t do that with you. I’ve tried. Like, my god, I have tried.” Your voice drops. “But I can’t compartmentalize the way you make me feel. Especially not with this,” you say, gesturing weakly between your bodies. “You don’t belong in a box. You never have. I can’t get you to stay put.”
You watch him process that, calculus and probabilities firing behind his eyes. He swallows, nods, and when he speaks next, his voice is softer than you’ve maybe ever heard it. “Do you want to stop? I know it’s a lot for you right now. We don’t have to keep going.”
Another realization hits you at that moment: no, god no, you don’t want to stop. It’s not just that you’re turned on and want to keep going — it’s that the idea of going back to before makes something inside you bare its teeth. You have this sudden, terrifying clarity that you never, ever want to go back to starving yourself of him on purpose. You don’t want to go back to wearing a straitjacket you strapped on yourself. All the months of careful waiting, of kissing on couches but stopping when it got too real, of touching yourself after he’s gone just to try (unsuccessfully) to soothe the ache the restraint left behind — all of it has led here, to this.
You reach for him, both arms looping around his neck to pull him back down over you.
“No,” you breathe. “No. I don’t want to stop. I really don’t want to stop.”
You find his mouth in the dim — soft, grateful, a little ruined — and kiss him in hopes you can give him that answer in a language you’re actually fluent in.
When you finally part for air, you hold his face there, inches from yours. “I want you,” you whisper. “All of you. If you’ll have me.”
Spencer makes a sound that is not polished, not composed, not anything but yours. You feel his forehead settle against you like he had to bow just to keep from coming apart. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah, I’ll have you.”
Thank the fucking universe.
You push his pants eagerly down his hips and they catch at his ankles, sending you into a fit of giggles. He laughs with you until he finds the strength to kick them all the way off, and for a second he’s just there, gorgeous and flushed and shaking over you.
His boxers are still on, tented and marked by a small damp spot where the tip of his cock rests. You gently palm him through the cotton because you need to feel him, need to know him in your hand. His forehead drops to your shoulder with a strangled “oh,” but you’re the one who goes a little dizzy.
He’s big. Much bigger than you’d expected.
“Oh my god,” you blurt, and he makes a mortified noise before starting to apologize. You cut that off immediately with a kiss, your hand stroking firmer, letting your thumb trace the shape of him through the fabric. “Don’t you dare be sorry,” you say against his lips. “You’re perfect.”
You feel him shudder. Then you feel him believe you.
He fumbles one hand blindly toward the nightstand, still kissing you, and comes back with his wallet. He fishes out a foil packet with shaking fingers.
You blink at him, breathless and fond. “You would keep a condom in there. Did Derek teach you that?”
His cheeks flush. “Preparedness is—”
“Sexy,” you finish.
He huffs out a broken laugh and pushes his boxers down. You help, because you want to, because you need his skin on your skin. The fabric slides away and then he’s bared to you for the first time and god, you’re overwhelmed.
He’s thick and flushed and leaking at the tip, and the sight hits you so hard you actually whimper. You wrap your fingers around him and he groans like you shorted out all of his higher brain functions on contact. You stroke him once, slow, and watch his mouth fall open, feel the way his hips twitch. You grin, high on the power of it, and help him roll on the condom. He’s concentrating so hard on not embarrassing himself that you could die from how much you adore him.
When he’s ready, he looks back up at you. He swallows. “Still okay?”
“Yes,” you promise, plain and sure. Your hands frame his face like you’re swearing on it.
He settles between your legs, one hand braced by your head, the other smoothing down your thigh, guiding your knee up around his hip. The first press of him against you is all heat and anticipation and stretch.
“Hey,” he murmurs, voice right there with you, low and steady. “Look at me.”
You open your eyes back to his. You didn’t even realize you’d squeezed them shut.
And then finally, finally, he starts to push in.
It’s a slow, claiming slide that makes your lungs forget how to function. Your nails bite into his shoulders, not to stop him, just to hold on. You feel every inch, feel your body make room for him, feel yourself give.
“Spence,” you gasp, half laugh, half prayer.
“I know,” he gets out, equally wrecked. “I know. You feel—” He loses the end of the sentence like his entire vocabulary disappeared and just kisses you instead, as if that’s the only method of communication left.
He bottoms out with a low groan, hips flush to you, and just stays there. He’s shaking. You’re shaking. You can feel his pulse inside you, and it’s obscene how good it feels. It’s obscene how right it feels.
“You okay?” he whispers, forehead pressed to yours.
You nod, desperate. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Please move.”
Something like relief punches out of him. “Okay,” he breathes. “Okay.”
He doesn’t start pounding. Of course he doesn’t — you knew he wouldn’t. He rocks into you slow, controlled, deep, like he’s memorizing the way you take him. It’s the kind of steady, dragging rhythm that makes you feel every inch of him, every withdrawal and push, sparks jumping low in your belly.
Your hand finds his forearm and holds, like you need him right there. His thumb strokes your cheekbone, so gentle you could almost sob.
You can hear yourself. You’re not quiet. You’ve admittedly never really been quiet in bed, but this is different. You’re making all these desperate, needy little sounds into his mouth every time he hits that spot, and you don’t care, you don’t care, you don’t care. You feel wild with it — not just the physical, but the fact that it’s him, that this is you and him, and no one else has ever had exactly this.
He’s not quiet either. You catch the soft curses he usually seldom uses, the reverent little oh my god, the way he whispers your name like it’s gospel. Every time you roll your hips up to meet him, he chokes on air.
“Just like that,” he pants into your mouth when you catch a rhythm that makes both of you see stars. “Yeah, just like that, that’s perfect, you’re— God, you’re so perfect.”
You clench around him and he nearly collapses.
“Jesus,” he gasps, burying his face in your neck for a second like he needs a safe place to fall apart. He rasps a strained “good girl,” but it isn’t filthy like that phrase normally would be. It’s just praise, pure and wonderful, straight from his heart.
After a few slow, rolling minutes like that — sweat sticking your chest to his, his hair damp at the nape, your legs wrapped high around his waist — something hungry wakes up in you.
“Spencer,” you whisper, smiling against his mouth, sweet and breathless. “Switch with me.”
His eyes go dark at that. He moves willingly, immediately, rolling onto his back and bringing you with him, hands steadying you at your hips like he’s afraid you’ll float away. You sink down onto him and both of you make a sound you’re pretty sure would get you evicted if anyone could hear you over the storm.
“Oh, fuck,” he blurts out, head tipping back, eyes squeezed shut. His hands flex hard at your waist, like he has to physically restrain himself from gripping you hard enough to leave marks.
You plant your palms on his chest and start to move.
It’s slow at first, exploratory. He’s flushed, mouth open, eyes glassy and desperate every time he blinks up at you. One of his hands slides up, cups your breast, thumb circling your nipple, and you whine, moving faster, chasing more.
“Yeah,” he pants, encouraging, voice so raw it barely holds shape. “Like that. You look—” He swallows hard. “You look unreal. You’re so beautiful.”
You find a rhythm that grinds you down where you need it and pleasure spikes, white and hot. Your head tips back. A sound falls out of you, loud and unpretty and honest.
He groans like you just took him apart molecule by molecule. “Angel girl. That’s it, just like that.”
Angel girl hits you like a train. You practically sob from how good it feels in your ears.
Your thighs start to tremble. He feels it instantly, hands slowing your hips to steady you. He sits up, chest to chest with you for a heartbeat, kissing you like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your mouth from the inside.
Then, with a gentleness that guts you, he murmurs, “Let me take care of you,” and flips you once more.
It happens so fluidly it doesn’t even register. One second you’re on top; the next you’re on your back again and he’s above you, braced, eyes blown, hair a total disaster, looking exactly like every dream of this moment you’ve ever had but better. So much better.
You wrap one leg around his waist. He pushes your other knee gently up toward your chest, opening you, and then thrusts in deep.
You see stars.
Your breath leaves on a noise that’s half moan, half plea. “Spence—please—”
“I’ve got you,” he whispers, and you believe him down to the bone. He slides one of your hands up over your head and laces your fingers with his, pinning it there against the pillow, holding you down in the sweetest way possible, owning you but only because you offered.
His other hand slips between your bodies, finding your clit without fumbling, circling with the exact pressure he’s already learned you like. It’s devastating. It’s perfect. It’s him, focused and shaking and so, so determined to make you fall apart again.
“That’s it,” he says, voice low and steady even though you can feel how close he is, how much he’s holding in. “That’s it. Let go.”
Your body answers before your mouth can. Your climax slams into you, a bright, overwhelming crest that arches you up against him, clenching tight around his cock. The moan that rips out of you is helpless and raw, and you barely even register you’re saying his name like a prayer until he groans at the sound of it.
He doesn’t stop. He works you through it, through every shaking aftershock, whispering it’s okay, I’ve got you, god you’re so pretty when you come, that’s it until the pleasure rolls and ebbs, leaving you ruined and open and panting.
You’re dimly aware that he’s falling apart above you. His rhythm goes ragged, hips stuttering like he’s right at the edge and trying to hold himself back just to be sure you’re all the way there.
“I’m—” he chokes, voice breaking. He’s so close he can barely talk.
You pull him down into a kiss and roll your hips up to meet him, giving him everything you have. “Please,” you whisper against his mouth, dizzy and wrecked and happy. “Come for me, Spence.”
He does.
His whole body locks, then shudders, and he lets out this strangled, gorgeous noise you feel all the way in your cells. He buries his face in your neck and gives himself to you, hips pressing deep as he spills into the condom. You hold him there, arms wrapped around his shoulders, fingers in his hair, murmuring his name while the last pulses work through him.
He goes heavy in a good way, boneless and trembling and laughing into your skin like he can’t believe any of this is allowed.
Then he remembers himself. Of course he does. He’s careful the second his brain comes back online.
“Hold on,” he murmurs, sweet and apologetic, easing out of you slow, like he’s afraid to hurt you now that the edge is gone. You hiss at the sensitivity and he winces in sympathy, kissing your cheek like sorry, sorry, sorry, and you cut it off with a lazy kiss because stop apologizing for my favorite thing that’s ever happened. He gets out of bed—much to your chagrin—and slips off the condom, tying it with the same precision he applies to solving homicides. You might laugh at that if you weren’t still actively floating.
He’s back almost immediately with a warm, damp washcloth from the bathroom. He cleans you up with this soft, focused tenderness that makes your eyes sting, checking in with a quiet “okay?” every time you twitch.
His boxers go back on. Your t-shirt comes back over your head. He helps you into it, like he can’t stop taking care of you now that you’ve finally let him.
And then you’re back under the covers, both of you loose-limbed and wrecked and stupidly gentle. You end up half on top of him without discussing it — your thigh slung over his hips and head against his chest, his palm splayed across the small of your back and nose tucked into your hair like he’s decided that’s just where it goes now.
He tries three times to speak before anything comes out. “I—” He laughs softly at himself, breath still uneven. “Are you okay?”
You tip your face up and kiss along his jaw, lazy, affectionate. “So okay,” you murmur, voice hoarse and happy. “You?”
“Same,” he says, and the word comes out so full you feel it in your chest. He nudges his nose against your temple. “You were—” He shakes his head, abandons it, finds something braver. “Thank you. For trusting me.”
Something warm and liquid rolls through you at that. “Thank you for making it worth the wait,” you whisper.
He makes a helpless sound that’s half laugh, half groan, and tightens his arm around you.
You lie there, too giddy to sleep and too wrung out to have another Serious Talk, so you don’t. You talk about stupid, safe things instead. How the rain sounds like a thousand people sprinting on a high school gym floor. How this motel has the worst wall art you’ve ever seen. How one day you’re absolutely going to make him tell you the number of milliseconds he spent thinking about seeing your boobs.
You admit, smug and sleepy, that you’re going to remember the way he called you angel girl for a month and use it against him whenever you want something. He blushes in the dark, the heat of it against you.
He asks if you’re warm enough. You are, because you’re basically plastered to him like a second skin, but he still hauls the thin motel quilt higher around your shoulders and tucks it in like a cocoon.
You make a lazy promise to act totally normal at work once you make it back to town. He makes a lazier promise to try not to stare at you like everyone should know you’re his. That makes your stomach flip in a way that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the part of you that’s finally, finally letting itself be his.
Eventually your bodies go heavy in the right way. You’re still tangled — his hand at your waist, your fingers laced in his hair like you plan to keep him — both of you buzzing with the good kind of ruin.
You fall asleep mid-smile in a room that feels like it belongs to both of you.
Outside, the flood keeps the world shut. Inside, you’re his and he’s yours and there’s nothing between you but heat and breath and the slow, steady fact of tomorrow.
ᝰ.ᐟ
this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️
PSA: likes do very little for promoting posts on tumblr! if you'd like to support a fic, please reblog!
summary: you finally say yes when spencer asks to take you on a real date, but work interrupts the night before the entrées arrive.
genre: fluff, a lil hurt/comfort tags/warnings: reader is elle's sister, spencer being adorably nervous, forensics/crime scene-related convo (blood & guns mentioned), kissinggg muah muah, possibly incorrect use of the italian language, several suggestive lines from reader but nothing crazy, reader actually being soft & thoughtful woah, incredibly corny slow dance, no use of y/n
a/n: hiii i don’t really know how i feel about this one but it was time for me to stop agonizing over it and put it out into the universe anyway. hope u guys like it! sorry it’s so long lmao I couldn’t stop writing. the next greenaway fic is one I’ve been working on for a veryyy long time and is a departure from all the fluff from the last few parts so stay turned for that coming soon 😉 | GIF by @reidgif 🫶🏼
greenaway!reader masterlist 🥀
You trace your lipstick in the mirror and tell yourself to breathe, then click your hoop earrings shut. The click is crisp and decisive, the opposite of how the paperclips skittering across your desk on Wednesday night sounded while Spencer tried, and failed, and failed again to start a sentence.
three days ago:
“Reid,” you’d said, clicking your pen shut.
He startled like you caught him tampering with evidence.
“Yes.” He straightened. “Hi. Yes.”
“Are you trying to build a jump rope out of office supplies?”
He looked down at the paperclip chain he’d been hooking together like he didn’t remember doing it then dragged a palm down his tie, trying to iron his nerves flat.
Five minutes later he led you discreetly to the supply closet in the east corridor and closed the door like he was worried the sound would carry.
“Spooky,” you murmured, leaning back against a filing cabinet. “Either you’re about to murder me, or this is some weird new foreplay game.”
“What? N-no. Nothing like that.” He shook out his hands, wired tight in a way he usually isn’t with you anymore.
“I’m going to ask you something,” he said. “And I need you to know before I ask that you can say no.”
“…Okay.”
“And I mean it, because I know if you feel cornered or rushed you’ll just…” He trailed off. “You know.”
“Run?” you offered.
He flinched. “Yeah.”
“Why’s the word ‘run’ suddenly impossible for you to say?”
“Because I don’t like thinking about you running from me, much less saying it.”
Oh. That hits you square in the chest.
“Hey,” you said softly. “Just ask whatever you need to ask, and I promise I’ll hear you out.”
“I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” he said, eyes wide and devoted. “I told myself I’d wait until you felt—” He searched for the right word. “Steady. With me. Which is why I thought, maybe, I could ask you now.”
He was right — you are steadier now. You don’t pretend not to want his hands on you. You don’t pretend you don’t sleep better with his heartbeat beneath your ear on his couch than you do alone in your bed. He knows that.
“Ask me what, Spencer?”
He swallowed hard. “I would like to…to take you out. For a date. Not a night hidden in my apartment or a walk we don’t label. I mean a real, proper date where we both wear something nice and I pick you up and we eat in an actual restaurant and it’s—” a nervous pull of his mouth, “—just us being on a date. Together. Because we want to be.”
You stared at him.
The first thing that hit was a familiar panic, because dates mean something official. Dates are tangible and meaningful and real. But the second hit, right behind the panic, was a deep, quiet ache. This is Spencer, who brings you coffee the way other people breathe. Spencer, who falls asleep sitting up because your head is on his shoulder and he’d rather get pins and needles than wake you. Spencer, who never assumes, never takes, always asks. Spencer, who looks completely wrecked right now because the idea of pushing you too fast physically hurts him.
You could have run. Or said “not yet,” and he would’ve nodded and smiled understandingly and you’d’ve gone home hating yourself for making him wait for something you already know you want.
“Okay,” you heard yourself say before you could even realize you were saying it.
He blinked. “Okay what?”
“Spencer,” you laughed. “Okay. As in, yes. You can take me on a date.”
There was a beat where he went sincerely, scientifically stunned into silence. “Saturday?” he managed eventually. “Can we do it this Saturday?”
“Mhm,” you hummed. “It’s a date.”
Spencer’s face did something you weren’t prepared for. Relief, obviously, and joy, yeah, but also a grateful softness like you’d just granted his every wish.
You looked away because if you held that look any longer you would’ve done something reckless, like kissed him in an FBI supply closet.
“Saturday,” you said, reaching out to straighten his tie before heading to the door. “Don’t be late.”
—
You smooth your dress, check your lipstick once more, and grab your bag just as three careful knocks land on your door.
Spencer is five minutes early.
Of course he is. You knew he would be and factored it into your getting ready timeline.
You watch from the peephole as he shifts his weight in the hallway outside your apartment, fingers flexing like he’s working up the nerve to knock a second time.
You open the door before he has to.
“Hey,” you say, casual.
He looks at you and absolutely forgets how to be alive.
His whole system just… shorts. His eyes go wide, drag down, come back up slowly like he can’t decide where to land.
You’re wearing a dress, which is not unheard of for you, but isn’t your default outfit choice either. It hits high on your mid-thigh and clings like it was made for you, with a neckline that would definitely not pass Bureau dress code. Your usual leather jacket’s draped over it. Sheer black tights—not fishnets this time—with pointed-toe stiletto boots. Your lipstick is your classic vampy red and you did your eye makeup a tad more shimmery than usual.
“Hi,” Spencer manages to choke out.
You lean against the frame, pretending your pulse isn’t in your throat.
“You look—” He swallows. “Wow.”
That shouldn’t hit as hard as it does, so you smirk to cover it. “Gonna finish that thought?”
He blinks, gaze dropping again — slower this time, more shameless. “You look beautiful,” he says. “Really, really beautiful.”
Your stomach drops in a way that feels a little like vertigo. It’s not that you don’t know you’re hot, because you do. You’re well aware of the effect you have on people. But the way Spencer says it makes your heart twist.
“Yeah?” you say, trying for light. “You don’t look so bad yourself.” You’re underselling it, if you’re being honest. His suit is black, not brown or gray like usual, and the difference is obscene. His shirt is also dark, paired with a deep burgundy tie. His hair is actually tamed like he tried, but not enough to hide the curls completely. He smells like soap and something faintly warm that you determined long ago is just how his skin smells close up.
You let your gaze drag, slow, just to watch him flush.
“Trying to impress me, Reid?” you ask.
“Yes,” he says automatically, smiling sheepishly.
You laugh. “Okay. Points for transparency.”
He exhales, shoulders dropping in that way you’re addicted to. The tension in his jaw eases.
“Ready?” he asks.
You step out, locking the door behind you. “Ready.”
He offers you his arm as you walk down the hall. It’s such an old-fashioned, earnest gesture that for a second you just stare at it before sliding your hand into the crook of his elbow.
Finally, you feel him breathe.
—
It’s not just a casual night at the museum. You figure that out the second you see the line out front.
The building glows. The facade is lit up in warm gold against the evening sky, banner flags hanging off the columns. People in suits and dresses mill under string lights, badges on lanyards. There’s a registration table, which cements even more that this night isn’t just to “wander around the Smithsonian.”
You glance at Spencer as you walk up. “You brought me to a gala and I didn't even get a warning?”
“It’s not a gala,” he explains nervously. “It’s a fundraiser-slash-preview for a new exhibit. Guest list is by invitation, but it’s not— it’s not black tie, it’s—” He catches your expression, swallows, and recalibrates. “Is this okay?”
You bump his arm. “Yes, Spence. I like it when you show off.”
He swallows. “Right. Okay. Good.”
You tip your chin up to squint at the banner over the doors. FORENSIC SCIENCE ON TRIAL: FROM CRIME SCENE TO COURTROOM.
His eyes spark, quick and pleased. Nerd.
You huff. “You brought me to a homicide exhibit.”
“It’s a historical forensics exhibit,” he corrects. “They’re debuting a collection of crime evidence and investigative tools like autopsy photography, ballistics comparisons, blood spatter analysis, courtroom transcripts — those kinds of things — from across the last century.” He pauses, then adds, quieter, almost shy: “I thought you’d like it.”
You stare at him.
Because he picked this, for you.
Not dinner and a movie. Not “I heard normal couples go bowling.” He picked an after-hours event full of weapons evidence, postmortem bruising documentation, and archaic crime lab methodology because, in his brain, that’s romance for you.
And he’s right.
“Spencer,” you say. “If this is an attempt to seduce me with photographs of blunt force trauma, it’s disturbingly effective.”
He makes a desperate little noise like he just swallowed a live wire. “I— that’s— I didn’t— that’s not—”
You grin. “Relax. I’m kidding.”
“I really did think you’d like it, though,” he says, softer.
You can’t deal with the way he says that, so you nudge him forward. “Well. Are we going in, or are we just loitering on the sidewalk so all the rich donors can judge us?”
“Right. Yes.” He reaches into his jacket, pulls out two badges on lanyards, Your name is printed on one — your name, not “Guest,” which means he must’ve set this up long before he worked up the nerve to ask you on this date three days ago.
You blink at it. “Did you register me in advance?”
“Yes,” he admits. “Otherwise you would’ve just gotten a sticker badge, and I know you hate the way they always roll at the edges. And everyone else has these ones, so I didn’t want you to feel—” He falters. “—out of place.”
It hits you, stupid and hot, that he really did think of everything. You hook the lanyard over your head before you can say anything dumb about it.
Inside, it’s all low light and glass cases and soft instrumental music. There’s a roped-off display under a spotlight featuring a lined-up series of early police-issue sidearms, each labeled with case numbers, photographs of recovered bullets, and blown-up comparison images of rifling patterns.
You whistle under your breath. “Sexy.”
Spencer laughs softly. “Right? Look at that one. Analysis of the land & groove impressions helped scientists to identify exactly who fired it during a 1923 standoff between—” He stops himself and glances at you, almost sheepish. “Sorry. Too much?”
You shake your head. “Keep talking.”
You drift together through the first room, then the second. He doesn’t lecture at you — it’s not like that. He just leans in close, mouth near your ear, and shares details like he’s letting you in on secrets.
You hate how your skin reacts to the warmth of his breath. You also shift a fraction closer. Accidentally, obviously.
The next gallery is framed black-and-white morgue photos — bruise mapping, pattern analysis, angle-of-impact diagrams with neat arrows.
You linger on a forearm mottled with crescents. The placard under it explains inaccurate bite-mark comparisons done in the 1980s.
“Ask me how many convictions based on bite marks have been overturned,” he says, voice low.
“How many?”
“Thirty-six, at least.”
His knuckles brush the back of your hand where it rests on the case glass — barely there, and somehow everything. Your pulse gives you away.
“This is good,” he says quietly.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” His eyes stay on you. “It feels like a date.”
A soft laugh slips out. “That’s because it is one.”
Before you can spiral at your own honesty, you push off the case and nod toward a side hall marked Restricted: Staff Only.
“C’mon.”
You can practically hear him internally litigating trespass statutes as he follows you into the dark.
The little alcove you duck into is out of sight from the main gallery, lit only by the glow at the end of the hall. You can hear the murmur of voices from the exhibit space, but it’s hushed.
Spencer steps in after you and, for a second, just looks.
He takes you in from this new proximity like he’s cataloging a miracle. His gaze flickers down slowly, then drags back up, and by the time he hits your mouth again he looks a little wrecked.
“What?” you ask softly.
He swallows. “Nothing.”
“Liar.”
He huffs. “You’re just— very distracting.”
“Good,” you murmur.
Something in his face flickers, then he does that thing you still haven’t built up immunity to: he lifts one hand and touches you like you’re precious. Just a gentle thumb along your jaw, a question he still asks even though you’ve already answered it a hundred times.
You lean into it before you can pretend you won’t.
It’s almost absurd, you think — barely ten yards from autopsy photos and here you are in an off-limits corridor with Spencer Reid looking at you like you’re the most exhilarating thing that’s ever happened to him.
Your voice comes out low. “Are you gonna kiss me, or are you just planning to stare at me like I’m Medusa until I turn to stone?”
A corner of his mouth lifts. “Medusa didn’t turn herself to stone, she—”
You pull him down by his tie. “Spencer.”
He grins, hovering a breath from your lips. “Yes. Yes, I’m going to kiss you.”
His mouth is warm and careful when it finally meets yours, then warmer, then just on the edge of not careful. His free hand slides to your waist, and yours stays in his tie without thinking. You like the feel of it against your knuckles, and you like the way his breath catches when you pull.
When you break, it’s only because you need air and not because either of you wants space. He stays close — forehead almost against yours, breathing a little uneven.
“I can’t believe I convinced you to kiss me in the restricted section,” you murmur, just to hear him laugh. “It’s like Harry Potter if it wasn’t a kids’ movie.”
Spencer breathes a chuckle against your cheek. “I think you could convince me to do almost anything.”
A shiver runs through you at that, and you turn your head to steal one more kiss. “Telling me that is a dangerous game,” you tease.
He pulls back just far enough to meet your eyes, and you see that look again — the glassy, stunned, happy one he gets when you show affection like this. You’re almost getting used to seeing it. Almost.
“Dinner?” he asks, soft. “I, uh, I made a reservation.”
You nod. “Lead the way, genius.”
—
The restaurant looks like somewhere you only get into if you “know a guy.” Low light, white tablecloths, real candles, wood-paneled walls crowded with black-and-white photos, quiet jazz. It smells like garlic and butter and something slow-simmered with wine.
Spencer is trying so hard to act normal.
You can see it in the way he hovers half a second like he’s debating whether to pull your chair out — he wants to, you can feel it — then aborts at the last second, second-guessing himself.
“You can pull it out, you know,” you murmur, tilting your head up at him. “It’s not gonna bite.”
He exhales, embarrassed. “Right. Yes. Sorry.”
He moves the chair for you and you let him, because you are soft for him in disgusting ways you refuse to examine. When he takes his own seat across from you, you watch him fold his napkin once, too precisely, and line his fork up like symmetry might steady him.
There’s already water at the table, bread, a saucer of olive oil that smells peppery and clean.
“Spence,” you say, leaning back a little, crossing your legs under the table. You let your heel graze up his calf to watch him almost drop the bread knife. “Traditionally, on dates, you’re actually supposed to talk.”
His mouth twitches. “I know, I’m just— I believe I have about a seventy-three percent chance of saying something right now that’ll make you roll your eyes at me.”
“Mm.” You tear off a piece of bread and drag it through olive oil. “And what’s the percent chance of you saying something that makes me want to make out with you in the bathroom?”
The tips of his ears go pink. “Seventy-eight.”
You grin. “Seems accurate enough.”
That gets the first real exhale from him since you left the museum. His eyes go a little soft as they settle on you in the candlelight.
“I like this,” he says quietly.
“Yeah?” You pick up a menu mostly to avoid having to look directly at the way he’s looking at you.
“Yes,” he says simply. “I like… you here.”
Against your will, heat climbs up your throat.
“You feeding me pasta is a strong survival strategy, I’ll give you that.”
“In my defense, it’s excellent pasta.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Once,” he admits, a little shy. “With Rossi.”
That tracks. Rossi “knows a guy” everywhere up and down the mid-Atlantic.
“He said if I ever brought someone here that I ‘actually gave a damn about,’ I should ask for Giuseppe,” he adds, looking down at his napkin like he didn’t just say that sentence out loud in front of you.
Your pulse stutters, but you try for casual. “Will Giuseppe judge me if I order something with enough garlic to kill a man?”
“He’s Italian. I think he’ll judge you if you don’t.”
That earns a real grin out of you.
A server appears at your elbow, and the way he greets Spencer — “Dottore Reid!” — tells you this is definitely Giuseppe.
“Can I start you two off with anything to drink?” he asks with a robust Italian accent.
Before you can open your mouth, Spencer answers for you. “She’ll have a martini, extra dirty. Grey Goose if you have it.”
Your eyebrows go up.
Giuseppe claps once and winks at you. “And Signore, for you?”
“Just club soda with lime, please.”
You glance at him across the table, one brow still arched.
“Antipasti?” Giuseppe asks. “Chef Bruno is doing arancini tonight, and we also have a—” he pauses to kiss his fingers “— burrata with roasted figs and balsamico.”
“Both,” Spencer says without hesitation. “Please.”
When he leaves, you lean in, elbow on the table and chin in your hand. “So,” you murmur. “You planning to order for me all night like we’re in a mafia movie, or was that a one-time performance?”
Color blooms high on his cheekbones. “I just— you love martinis, and I know you always ask for them extra dirty and get annoyed if they use cheap vodka because you say it tastes like floor cleaner. And you always want to order appetizers for us to share when we get takeout, so I— I thought it would be easier. Not in a weird ‘I speak for you’ way.” His mouth quirks. “I wanted you to know I pay attention.”
“Hey,” you say, and he looks up quick, like he’s braced for teasing. “I like you knowing what I like.”
He goes a little wide-eyed, like you just palmed his heart. His thumb traces a slow circle in the condensation on glass, like he needs sensory grounding.
“I like knowing,” he says quietly.
Okay. Well. Now your pulse is in your throat.
Your martini arrives — cloudy, salty, cold with three plump olives — and his club soda in a short glass with extra lime. You clink a tiny “cheers” without making it a big production. His eyes crinkle when you do.
He watches your lips wrap around the rim of your glass when you take a sip and immediately looks down to pretend he’s studying his napkin again.
You could laugh, but you don’t. You’re too busy staring at him and having a small internal crisis.
Because sitting across from him like this is doing something to you that you weren’t prepared for. You knew you were in trouble, but you didn’t realize how much until he recited your drink order like he’s been rehearsing it for weeks.
“Tell me something,” you say, mostly to get air.
He looks up fast. “Anything.”
“How long have you had this planned?” You swirl the stem of your glass between two fingers.
“A while.”
“A while,” you echo, amused.
He glances down at the table, then back at you. “I, uh, made the dinner reservation two weeks ago,” he admits. “The museum took longer. Those passes were… not easy to get.” His smile tugs, crooked. “Rossi might have helped.”
Of course Rossi did.
“So you were just… sitting on this? For over two weeks?” you ask. “What would you have done if I said no?”
“Canceled the reservation and the passes,” he says, earnestly confused as to how that isn’t the obvious answer. When you raise your brows, he scrunches his and adds, “I’m… not really sure I understand the question.”
“You put all this effort into tonight and would’ve been perfectly okay with canceling if I’d said no?”
“It wasn’t that much work,” he mumbles shyly. “But yeah. If you weren’t ready, I would’ve just canceled and waited to plan something else when you were.”
It blows you a little sideways, the simplicity of it. He spent days developing a plan for the perfect first date, asking Rossi for advice and begging to use his connections for the museum passes, making restaurant reservations and arranging for the owner to be your waiter and getting his best suit drycleaned, but he would’ve canceled it all in a heartbeat if you told him you needed more time.
You try to play it off. You really do. You nod, lean back in your chair, cross your legs so your boot slides along his calf again. It doesn’t matter. You can feel it in yourself anyway. The slide. The fall.
This is what scares you — this exact feeling. Sitting across from someone who looks at you like you hung the stars and realizing in real time you’re losing ground because you want him, and you trust him, and that trust is starting to come easy. You don’t usually get easy. Easy, historically, has cost you.
Your stomach is in a knot and it still feels… good.
Disgusting.
“Spencer,” you say, just so you can feel his name in your mouth.
His eyes flick to yours, helpless, and you wonder what you look like to him right now. You wonder if he’s thinking about your mouth from the museum hallway. You wonder if he’s imagining you in his bed. You’re imagining you in his bed.
“Yeah?” he says softly.
You’re about to tilt this deeper — say something you can’t unsay, slide your foot higher, lean across the table and tell him you’re going home with him after dinner — in the real way — when both of your phones start buzzing on the table at the exact same time.
You don’t move for a beat. Neither does he. You both just stare at each other like maybe, if you wait long enough, the world will do you a favor and stop existing.
It doesn’t.
You reach for your phone. Spencer reaches for his.
Hotch’s voice hits your ear: “We’ve got a case. Serial in Florida. We’re wheels up in ninety, so I need everyone in Quantico within the hour.”
JJ’s voice is audible from Spencer’s side of the table, low and urgent. “Sorry to interrupt your night, Spence. We’ve got a case. How soon can you get to the BAU?”
You keep your own voice steady. “I’ll be there,” you tell Hotch.
Spencer hasn’t said a word into his phone yet, and you hear JJ through his line after you hang up. “You good?” she asks.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good,” he says softly into the phone, but you can hear the lie in it, see the devastation written all over his face. “I’ll be there soon,” he adds before ending the call.
“Okay,” you say. “Here’s what’s gonna happen. You’ll take me to my place first, then we’ll swing by yours so we can each grab our go bags, and then we’ll drive in together.”
He blinks. “Together?”
“Yeah, together,” you say. “We’ll just stagger a few minutes between our entrances. You’ll go in first, I’ll come in five minutes later. No one will know.”
His mouth twitches. “Rossi knows.”
“Well, he hasn’t ratted us out so far, so we’re fine,” you say. “Point is, you’re not just dropping me at home and then brooding alone like a sad Romance-era poet. We’re riding in together. Got it?”
“Got it,” he says, quiet.
You stand. He’s on his feet instantly, hand already on his wallet. He flags down Giuseppe with an apologetic wave.
He’s moving with his usual efficient purpose, and trying very, very hard not to believe his one shot at this got ruined.
You hate that for him so completely it scares you.
You step close while he tucks his wallet away, close enough that your arm brushes his sleeve.
“Hey,” you say.
He looks at you.
“Don’t look so defeated. We’ll just raincheck the rest of the night, okay?”
He nods tightly. “Okay,” he says, clearly not convinced he’ll ever get a real chance to redeem that raincheck.
In the car, when you slide into the passenger seat and he reaches over to rest his hand on your knee — just enough pressure to say I’m still here, are you still here? — you cover his hand with yours and squeeze.
—
Quantico on a Saturday night always feels hollow.
JJ’s standing with a half-open folder at Emily’s desk, Morgan’s braced over the briefing table, Rossi’s tapping a pen. No one’s smiling. No one looks surprised to be here.
Spencer’s talking to Hotch, and if you didn’t know him the way you do, you’d think everything was fine. But the thing is, you do know him. You know the tell in his mouth when he’s holding something back, the way he goes a hair too still when he’s quietly upset.
He’s wearing that stillness like a pressed shirt.
JJ looks up as you round the corner and hands you a folder. “Victims so far: three men, thirties to forties, bodies dumped near interstates.”
The briefing takes five minutes, then you scatter: Emily grabbing her go-bag, Morgan snapping his file shut, Rossi sliding his notebook away. You sweep your hair back with an elastic from your pocket.
Spencer doesn’t move though — not right away at least. He’s standing at the end of the table with his bag strap across his chest, folder in hand, eyes dropped to the case notes.
“Walk with me,” you murmur, angling your body so it’s private.
He falls in at your side like it’s gravity. You talk through the case, and by the time you hit the main doors and push out into the night again, some of the edge has worn off. Not gone, just softened.
Good. You can work with softened.
—
The hotel is the usual Bureau special: anonymous beige, humming AC, bed that looks fine from the doorway but will feel like you’re lying on plywood in three hours.
You put your bags down, sit on the edge of the mattress, and pull your phone from your pocket to send a text:
my room, 20 minutes. mandatory attendance. don’t ask questions
Spencer types back almost immediately:
Okay.
Well, it’s not the most enthusiastic response, but he’s coming, so that’s enough for you to get to work.
First thing: lights. You kill the overhead and turn on the bedside lamp instead. It throws the room into a hazy amber that can almost pass for mood lighting if you don’t look too hard.
Second: table. The sad little round one in the corner with two even sadder chairs gets dragged to the middle of the room. You pull the chairs in close, almost touching.
Third: centerpiece. There’s a vase with a single plastic lily in the hallway by the elevators. You steal it and set it in the middle of the table.
Fourth: food. You raid the lobby vending machines: two bags of chips (plain for him, spicy for you), a sleeve of Oreos, mini M&Ms, one little pack of shortbread cookies, a Kit-Kat, two cans of Ginger Ale, and one of those vacuum-packed “charcuterie snack packs” with four sad salami coins and six baby cheese rectangles.
You plate your vending machine haul as nicely as you can manage and pour the ginger ale into glasses, then you step back and look at the setup.
It’s tragic, and it’s perfect.
You’re still re-centering the stolen flower vase when you hear a soft knock.
Spencer’s suit jacket’s a little rumpled from travel, tie loosened. He must’ve combed a hand through his hair at some point; one curl has fallen loose in a way that makes your fingers twitch.
He gives you a half-hearted smile, but then his eyes slide past you and land on the table.
For a second, he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even breathe.
You feel weirdly naked, which is hilarious, because you are fully dressed and the most indecent thing in this room is a two-dollar meat-and-cheese kit.
“Reservation for two,” you say, because if you don’t talk you might actually start vibrating. You tip your head toward the setup and let yourself smirk. “Dr. Reid, your table’s ready.”
“Did you—” His voice comes out rough. He clears his throat and tries again. “You did this? For me?”
You shrug, casual, but your heart’s doing sprints. “It’s called improvising, Spencer. You should try it sometime.”
Then it really hits him — the stupid flower, the chairs pulled way too close, the ginger ale. You watch it wash through him: surprise, then delight, then something else that just about guts you: shaken, stunned gratitude.
“Hey,” you say lightly. “You coming in, or are you planning to stand out there in the hall so Morgan can walk by and see you making heart eyes at me?”
That jolts him. He steps in fast, closing the door behind him.
Up close he looks a little dazed. You like that more than you should.
“Sit,” you tell him. “The sommelier recommends the ginger ale. Notes of corn syrup and airplane.”
He huffs a laugh and sits. “You’re ridiculous,” he says softly.
“You’re welcome,” you reply.
He looks at you then — really looks.
“You did this for me.”
“Yeah,” you say. You clear your throat and immediately ruin the sincerity with attitude because that’s who you are. “You were being a sad little puppy about our ruined evening. Couldn’t just let you mope.”
He laughs under his breath, eyes dropping. When he looks back up, he’s still pink. “Thank you,” he says.
You reach for the ‘charcuterie.’ “So. We left off right before you got to tell me how long you’ve been pining over me. You were about to say ‘a while,’ and then Hotch cockblocked us.”
He drags a hand down his face, fingers hooking over his mouth in that trying-not-to-smile way you’re addicted to. “That’s not exactly where we left off, but…yeah. I had… talking points.”
You almost choke. “You had talking points?”
Spencer makes a face. “Not a script or anything,” he says, embarrassed. “I just— I thought… if you got nervous, or if you thought you should run, I wanted to make sure that the things I actually needed to tell you got said.”
Your voice comes out softer than you mean it to. “Okay. Tell me, then.”
He blinks. “What?”
“We’re here,” you say, gesturing at the table. “We made it to dinner. So. Talk to me. Say your things.”
You watch his throat move.
“Spencer,” you add. “I’m not gonna bolt.”
He nods once, slow. He takes a breath.
“I was going to tell you,” he says quietly, “that tonight wasn’t about… proving anything. Or locking you into anything. I didn’t want you to feel like you owed me because I made a reservation and put on a tie.” He keeps going, eyes low, words careful like he’s laying them down for you to pick up at your own pace. “I just wanted to give you something that wasn’t reactive. Because… we’re always reacting, you know? To the job, to whatever gets thrown at us, to—” he huffs out a breath, “—near-death experiences, occasionally. So I wanted something you could step into on purpose. Something that was just… ours.”
You feel floaty for a second. Untethered.
He doesn’t notice. He’s looking down at his hands now, thumb rubbing over his knuckle. “And then,” he says, softer, “I was going to ask you some things. I—I read up on a lot of lists of good first date questions, but most of them were terrible so I made my own list and thought I’d try a few.”
You stare at him. “You made a list.”
Color climbs back up his neck. “Yes.”
“Of first date questions,” you say.
“Yes,” he says, shy. “Adjusted for the fact that I obviously already know you, of course. I just…” His mouth pulls. “I really wanted it to feel like a normal date between two normal people. We could ignore all the complicated things for one night and just…talk.”
You swallow. “Alright, Doctor. Hit me with a question.”
He draws a breath. “Okay,” he says, almost to himself. Then: “What was your favorite part of today? Before the call.”
“Wow,” you chuckle. “Starting light, huh.”
He looks worried. “I can do a different one.”
“No,” you say quickly. You reach under the table and put your hand on his knee, palm warm through his slacks. It shuts him up mid-panic. “No. I like that one.”
You could say the hallway at the museum, because obviously. You could say the few minutes at the restaurant you did get, because watching him across that table felt incredibly right.
What comes out instead is, “You at my door.”
His eyes flicker. “When I picked you up?”
You nod. Your thumb rubs once, slow. “You in that suit, looking like you were gonna throw up because you thought I might bail. You were… happy, and nervous, and so stupidly handsome I almost shut the door just to collect myself for a second.”
He just stares at you. You don’t usually hand him things like that.
“Okay,” he says after a second. “Okay. That’s… that’s a good answer.”
You squeeze his knee and take a sip of your ginger ale. “Next question.”
“If you weren’t doing this — the BAU, I mean — and you couldn’t pick law enforcement at all, what would you do? What would you be doing on a Saturday night if you weren’t about to go interview a coroner at seven in the morning?”
You lean back a little in your chair, but you leave your hand on him because it’s as much for you as it is for him at this point. You let your eyes drift to the sad little plastic lily.
“I don’t know,” you say honestly. “That’s a bad answer, but I don’t. I’ve spent so long doing this and bleeding for it and being good at it that it’s kind of… part of me. I don’t know who I am without it.”
He nods. He doesn’t try to fix it. He doesn’t say you could do anything. He just listens. Which is… worse. Or better. You don’t know.
“But,” you add, softer now, “if you mean like tonight — like what I’d want to be doing if I wasn’t on the clock? That’s easier.”
His gaze sharpens. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” you say. “That answer is I’d still want to be with you. No guns. No jet. No serial killers. You and me and nowhere to be in the morning.”
For a second he looks so undone you almost look away for him, just to give him cover.
“Spencer,” you say quietly. “Breathe.”
“Okay.” His voice is so soft you barely catch it. “One more?”
You nod.
He wets his lips. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come back to my place afterward. Not—” He rushes that part, flustered. “Not… not like that. I wasn’t— I wasn’t expecting anything, obviously, I just— it’s Saturday, and on Saturday nights we usually hang out at my apartment, and I thought maybe I could ask you to stay on purpose this time. Not like you ‘fell asleep on my couch by accident,’ just… do you want to come home with me and stay until tomorrow.”
That lands so stupidly you actually have to laugh, soft and breathless, just to keep from making a sound you’ll regret. “You romantic menace,” you tease. “Trying to take a girl home on the first date.”
His ears go pink. “It’s not— that’s not—”
“I know,” you say, and your voice cuts under his, low, honest. You lean in, crowd his space a little. “I know what you meant. I get it. And for the record, I would’ve said yes.”
You hold his gaze and just let it sit there, let him feel it.
“Well,” you add after a second, clearing your throat. “You said your things. You asked your date questions. You didn’t combust. See? Totally nailed it.”
He huffs out a soft sound that’s not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh, and you feel yourself smiling.
Silence settles again, but it’s not awkward. Your knees are still touching. Your hand is still on his leg. You’re so close that you could lean forward and kiss him from here.
“Can I ask for one thing back from tonight?” he says, breaking the quiet.
You tilt your head. “Depends what it is.”
His eyes flick briefly to your mouth and then back up. “I know it’s stupid,” he rushes. “It’s just — after dinner, before we went back to my place, I was planning to ask you to walk down by the river with me, and then I was going to ask if I could… uh, dance with you.”
You stare at him.
He winces. “That sounds ridiculous out loud. Never mind, please forget I said that, that’s—”
“Spencer.”
He goes quiet.
“That is, without a doubt, the corniest shit anyone’s ever said to me.”
“I know,” he says miserably, hiding his face in one hand.
You pull it away gently and tilt his chin up to look at you. “I didn’t say no. I just said it was corny.” You smirk a little, then hold your hand out for him. “C’mon, Romeo. Before I change my mind.”
His face does something you’ve never seen it do before. He stands too fast and almost trips on his own feet, because of course he does. “Graceful,” you tease, and he huffs a quiet laugh.
You meet him in the narrow strip of beige carpet between the table and the edge of the bed.
There’s no music, and you don’t bother putting any on. The lamp throws warm light across his jaw, his collarbone, the loose line of his tie.
He hesitates a second, like he’s not sure what the protocol is. You save him from short-circuiting by stepping in first, sliding one hand up under his open jacket and flattening it against his dress shirt.
His breath stutters.
“Here,” you murmur, lifting your other hand.
He takes the cue. One of his hands finds your waist, fingers warm and careful. The other laces your fingers with his.
You start to sway.
It’s not even really dancing. It’s just the two of you moving slow in this ugly room, pressed close enough that your body lines up against his. You lean your head against his chest, right over his racing heartbeat. His chin dips until it grazes your hair.
“This is so cheesy,” you mumble into his shirt.
His laugh rumbles against you. “We can stop if you hate it.”
“Shut up,” you tell him, which is code for I don't hate it and don’t you dare stop.
His grip tightens the tiniest bit, and you feel his thumb stroke once along the curve of your waist. He breathes you in and you let your eyes slip shut because it’s suddenly too much to look up at him looking at you.
This is the part that scares you more than any gun in your face ever has: this stupid slow sway, your cheek against his chest, his heart under your ear, his hand holding yours. It’s terrifying.
You let yourself have it anyway.
“Hey,” he says after a while. His voice is low, muffled in your hair. “One true thing?”
You feel yourself smile against him.
“Yeah,” you say softly. “Hit me.”
He’s quiet for a second. When he speaks, it’s barely above a breath. “I was happy with you tonight,” he whispers. You squeeze his hand. “At the museum. At dinner. In the car. Here. All of it. I was just… happy.” His voice catches, then steadies. “This sort of thing doesn’t happen for me a lot, not like this. I really, really needed you to know that.”
Your fingers curl in his shirt and you breathe him in.
“My turn.” You swallow. “I didn’t say yes to this date just to make you happy or because you were nervous when you asked me or anything like that. I said yes because I wanted to.” Your voice drops. “I wanted tonight. With you. I wanted all of it.”
Spencer doesn’t move for a long beat.
Then you feel it — the way the tension bleeds out of him. The way his shoulders drop. The way his grip on your waist tightens, just slightly, like he’s fighting the urge to pull you closer.
“Okay,” he whispers. It comes out wrecked and grateful in a way that makes your throat sting.
You tip your head back because you need to see his face. He looks undone in the lamplight. Soft at the edges. Warm-eyed. His mouth is a little parted, like you keep catching him right before a confession.
You go up on your toes and kiss him.
He makes a soft, helpless sound in the back of his throat that you’re going to replay in your head for the rest of your life. His free hand slides up, fingers spreading between your shoulder blades. And when you finally break, you don’t step back right away. You just rest your forehead against his jaw and breathe him in.
“This counts,” you tell him quietly. “First date. I know it wasn’t entirely what you planned, but it still counts.”
“Yeah,” he says, voice low and rough and honest. “It does.”
You let yourself sit in that for one more long, slow breath.
“Alright, Romeo,” you murmur, stepping back. “We’ve got, like, four hours before Hotch starts banging on doors. You should go back to your room and get some sleep.”
He doesn’t move at first. He just looks at you.
You cross your arms, pretending your pulse isn’t still in your throat. “Spence.”
He smiles. Small. Wrecked. Yours. “I’m going,” he says, and his voice is warm in a way you’re going to feel later, alone, when you’re lying in bed staring at the ceiling. “I’ll— I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Yeah,” you say. “Bright and early, Dr. Reid. Don’t be late.”
He lingers one more second at the door. You almost think he’s going to say something else, but instead, he just reaches out, takes your hand, and brings your knuckles to his lips. It’s barely even a kiss — just a press, a gratitude thing — but it hits you so hard you actually forget to breathe.
“Goodnight,” he murmurs softly.
Then he’s gone.
You stand there in the dim lamplight for a second, barefoot on ugly carpet, his warmth still on your skin. It’s terrifying, how full your chest feels. It’s also steady.
You know, certain in a way that’s getting harder to deny, that you’re in deep with this man.
And you’re kind of okay with that.
ᝰ.ᐟ
this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️
PSA: likes do very little for promoting posts on tumblr! if you'd like to support a fic, please reblog!
out of the doghouse ⟢ spencer reid x greenaway!reader
summary: your neighbor’s shy, sweet dog doesn’t trust men, and she definitely doesn’t trust spencer when he shows up to your place like he belongs there while you’re dogsitting for the weekend.
genre: fluff tags/content: this fic takes place before raincheck (in the “oh shit this is real” era) // reader is elle's sister, dogsitting, spencer is adorable about wanting the dog to like him, kissssing muah, no use of y/n. 1.1k words
request: here a/n: it’s greenaway!reader marathon day 4!! thanks for being here to celebrate 2k with me 🤍 | GIF by eva @reidgif 🫶🏼
Large, flat head. Broad, muscular chest and shoulders. The kind of silhouette that makes people who don’t know any better cross the street.
You’re dogsitting for Mrs. Martinez in 4C — it was a last-minute, frantic, impossible-to-refuse request. You’re not exactly known for being the friendliest neighbor on the hall, but you make exceptions for former shelter dogs and harmless old ladies. Besides, Daisy is sweet. She may look intimidating on the outside, but she’s actually a gentle, timid thing who loves to cuddle and hates loud noises.
She also happens to deeply distrust most men.
Smart girl.
She’s hovering near your feet when a knock sounds, making her whole body tense.
“Relax,” you say while giving her a comforting pet on the top of her head. “Don’t be so dramatic, Daze.”
You open the door to find Spencer standing there with two paper bags in hand, the smell of Indian takeout filling the air. He looks like he always does when he shows up to your place — hair a little messier than he probably intended, eyes bright in a way that makes it obvious he’s happy to be here and no longer feels the need to hide it.
“Hi,” he murmurs before his gaze drops to the dog tucked behind your legs. “Oh. Um… hello there.”
“Sorry, I probably should’ve warned you. I’m dogsitting for the next couple of days.” You shift the door open wider. “Meet Daisy. Daisy, this is Spencer.”
Daisy peeks out from behind your knees. She doesn’t growl, or bare any teeth. She just stares, wide-eyed and rigid. You can feel her shaking slightly against you.
“Hello, Miss Daisy,” he says gently. “I brought dinner. It’s not for you, but… that’s why I’m here. Well, I mean, I’m here for a lot more than just dinner.”
You cock a brow teasingly, and Spencer’s eyes widen.
“Wait, no, I— I didn’t mean for that to sound suggestive. I just meant—” He cuts himself off with an awkward laugh and starts over, still speaking directly to the dog. “I’m, um, just going to hang out with your sitter for a bit, if that’s alright with you, Daisy?”
Your mouth twitches. “She’s shy,” you tell him. “And not the biggest fan of men. She’s very sweet, I promise, but it’ll take her a minute to warm up to you.”
Spencer nods. “That’s okay. She can have more than a minute.”
You take the bags from him and let him step into the apartment. Daisy stays glued to your side as you walk into the kitchen.
“I feel like I’ve never been judged this intensely in my life,” Spencer remarks.
“Lies.” You smirk over your shoulder. “I definitely judged you harder than this when we first met.”
He huffs a quiet laugh. God, you like it when he laughs. It does something annoying to your chest, which results in you leaning against the counter and watching him for a second too long.
He looks back at you, expression soft. “Should I… sit? Or not sit? I just— I don’t want to seem… large to her.”
You snort. “You are decidedly not ‘large,’ Spencer.”
Well, that’s only half true. He IS tall. And his hands… god, he’s got stupidly big hands, which, by extension, probably means his—
Nope. Now is not the time for that train of thought.
You lean down, holding out your hand. Daisy rests her snout on your palm immediately.
“She trusts you,” Spencer says softly.
“Yeah,” you agree, rubbing Daisy’s back. “She’s got good taste.”
His smile goes crooked. “Yeah, she does.”
Daisy freezes up again. You calm her with a scratch behind the ears before crossing the short distance to Spencer as she tracks you curiously with nervous eyes.
You loop an arm around his waist and tug him into your side, pressing your cheek to his shoulder.
“See?” you say to Daisy. “Nice Spencer. We like Spencer.” You gaze up at him for a moment before looking back at Daisy. “You can trust this one, Daze, I promise.”
Spencer goes still at the unexpected affection — just surprise, not discomfort — then his hand settles at your hip below the hem of your top. His thumb instinctually strokes a slow circle against your skin.
His breath hits your hair. “Am I getting your official endorsement?”
“Yes,” you reply simply. “Try not to let it inflate your ego.”
“Too late,” he murmurs, mouth twisted in a poorly suppressed smile.
The tension in Daisy’s body seems to loosen a fraction, like a rope pulled slightly less taut.
There. Progress.
—
Dinner is… not effortless, but close.
You eat on the couch, knees bumping. Spencer hands you napkins without you having to ask; you pretend not to notice how easily he fits into your space. Daisy circles the living room twice, then settles by your feet with a heavy sigh.
Spencer keeps his voice low. He doesn’t reach for her, doesn’t try to win her over with enthusiasm. He just exists quietly, giving her room to decide.
At one point, you toss Daisy a treat. She crunches it quickly and looks at you like she’s expecting a second.
Spencer glances at the treat bag. “May I?”
You arch a brow. “May you what, offer her a bribe to get her to like you?”
“It’s not a bribe. It’s… positive reinforcement.”
“You’re adorable,” you say before you can stop yourself.
Spencer goes pink. “I— thank you?”
You hand him the bag and he gets up from the couch to sit down on the rug, palm open, waiting patiently for Daisy to decide how she feels about this.
Daisy stares at him a long moment, then edges closer in slow, careful steps. She takes the treat, backs away, and, after a beat, walks up to him again.
Spencer stays still, eyes soft. He’s definitely holding his breath, which is stupidly endearing.
Daisy takes another treat from his palm, then circles the room once more before curling up at — to both of your surprise — his side.
Her eyes flutter shut. Her breathing evens out.
Spencer looks up at you like he’s both thrilled and terrified to move at the same time.
A quiet laugh escapes you. You slide down off the couch and sit on the other side of him, looping your arms around his neck.
You watch Daisy for another second — sleeping, heavy and peaceful — and then you murmur breathily, mouth near his ear, voice warm and smug, “See?”
Spencer’s shoulders tense up in the best way.
“Nice Spencer,” you coo. “We like Spencer.”
His breath catches. He turns his head, half-lidded gaze dropping to your mouth.
You lean in to kiss him — soft at first, then just the tiniest bit deeper — because you can, because he’s here, because Daisy is finally relaxed and you love the way he always melts against your lips.
Daisy huffs out a satisfied breath in her sleep, as if she’s officially decided she’s in agreement:
Nice Spencer. We like Spencer.
ᝰ.ᐟ
this fic was written for my 2k celebration event, greenaway!reader marathon, and is part of the larger greenaway!reader universe! you can read more here ♥️
PSA: likes do VERY little for promoting posts on tumblr! if you'd like to support a fic, please reblog!
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