authors note: I am currently dealing with a lot of stuff, but i'm trying. here's chapter 2 after like... several months of me forgetting.
September 1st- Hogwarts Express.
The rain streaked down the windows in silvery rivers, matching the gray quiet inside the compartment. The three of them - Harry, Ron, and Hermione - had claimed a seat near the back of the train, away from the noise of the other returning students.
But they weren’t alone.
A man was slumped in the far corner of the compartment, cloaked in worn robes that looked more like moth-eaten curtains than anything fit for a wizard. He hadn’t stirred since they boarded - not when the train gave its first jolt forward, not when Ron dropped his cauldron on his foot, not even when Crookshanks leapt noisily onto the luggage rack.
"Do you think he's dead?" Ron whispered, eyeing the man warily. “He hasn’t moved once.”
Hermione leaned over, squinting. “Of course he’s not dead,” she said under her breath. “He’s breathing. Listen.”
They paused. A low, even snore hummed beneath the sound of the train wheels and distant student chatter.
Harry glanced at the man again. Something about him unsettled him - not in a dangerous way, but more like watching someone sleep through a war. The stranger looked too thin under the folds of his cloak, his face gaunt, hollow-eyed even in sleep.
Hermione pointed suddenly.
“Look at his suitcase,” she said, keeping her voice low. The battered case near the man's boots had a tarnished metal plaque, just barely visible beneath a cracked leather strap.
Professor R.J. Lupin
“A professor?” Ron said skeptically. “Him?”
Harry frowned. “D’you think he’s teaching this year?”
“Must be,” Hermione said. “You saw the letter. There was a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher again.”
Ron wrinkled his nose. “He doesn’t look like he can stand up straight, let alone fight off curses.”
“He looks like he’s been through something,” Hermione said, her tone stern. “Don’t make fun of him.”
Harry nodded absently, still watching the man’s face. There was something strangely familiar about him, though he couldn’t place why.
They lapsed into quiet. Outside, the countryside blurred past. Inside, the storm gathered.
Harry was flung forward in his seat, catching himself against the edge of the window. The rhythmic clatter of the wheels beneath them screeched then fell silent.
Outside, the sky was bruised grey, trees flashing past in a blur. But the motion had stopped. The train sat still, humming with strained magic, as if something enormous had just pressed down on it like a hand.
The lights above them flickered once.
Then went out.
For a moment, no one said anything. The sudden darkness pressed close, cool and heavy.
The cold came next.
Not a breeze, not a draft. But cold, bone-deep and ancient, as if the sun itself had been frozen.
Neville appeared at the door.
“Er… d’you mind if I...?”
He didn’t finish. His breath came out in a small white cloud. Behind him, Ginny Weasley stumbled in, eyes wide.
“It’s freezing out there,” she whispered, rubbing her arms. “Something’s wrong.”
They had barely closed the door behind them when the sound came.
A shuffling, dragging motion out in the corridor. Not footsteps. Something else. Like fabric being pulled across the floor. Slow. Relentless.
Then the feeling.
Fear. Real fear, not the thrill of facing a dangerous Bludger, or the jumpy nerves before exams, but a hollow, choking dread that crept up the spine and made you feel like you could never be happy again.
The man in the corner stirred.
Remus Lupin sat up sharply, eyes snapping open. He looked toward the door first, then toward the students. All of them still, wide-eyed, barely breathing.
“Stay in your seats,” he said, voice low but commanding. He rose in one smooth motion, already reaching into his coat.
The door to their compartment slid open.
And there it was.
The figure was tall. A tattered black cloak clung to a skeletal frame that seemed to rot in real time, fleshless hands slick with dew, its face hidden beneath a hood so deep it was more shadow than shape. But where its mouth should be... there was a mouth. A gaping hole, lipless, grey, and hungry.
The cold grew worse.
Harry’s vision blurred. A scream echoed through his skull - a woman’s voice. Familiar. Desperate, like someone truly terrified for their life.
Lupin had already stepped between the creature and the children.
“No one here is hiding Sirius Black-” he said sharply. “Leave now.”
The Dementor did not move.
Harry couldn’t feel his body anymore. The cold was inside him. His lungs didn’t work. The scream grew louder- Then everything went black.
When Harry opened his eyes again, the train was moving.
The lamps had flickered back on. Shadows danced along the walls, but the dark was gone. His hands were clammy. His robes were damp with sweat. His head throbbed.
He wasn’t alone.
Hermione was crouched beside him, her hand on his wrist. Ron hovered just behind her, looking pale and shaken. Neville and Ginny sat together, both huddled and silent.
“Harry?” Hermione asked gently. “You alright?”
“I-” His throat was dry. “What… what happened?”
“You fainted,” said Ron. “Right after that thing came in.”
Harry blinked. “What was that thing…”
“He fought it off,” Ginny said. “Professor Lupin.”
“He stood up right in front of it,” Neville added, “and then he did something—like a spell. There was this… silvery mist-”
“-like fog,” said Ron. “Only brighter.”
“And it worked,” Hermione said, looking at the closed door. “It left.”
Harry glanced once at the other students. “Everyone else alright?”
They nodded, but shared uncomfortable looks. "who was screaming?" Harry asked worriedly.
"No one was screaming Harry" Ron muttered to Harry, Ginny and Neville shared a worried glance. "but I heard screaming-" they jumped to the soft crack of a chocolate bar. Lupin stood in the doorway, He broke the chocolate bar into pieces, passing them around, giving Harry the largest share. He simply stared at it for a second "That, was a dementor" Lupin stated calmly "Guards of Azkaban"
Lupin gets up and takes another quick look at Harry.
“Excuse me, I need to speak with the conductor,” he said. “We’ll be at the school soon.”
And then he left, quiet, efficient, but with a frown on his face.
When the door shut behind him, Ron let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“Well,” he said. “That’s one way to meet your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.”
Rain lashed against the platform in relentless sheets, soaking through cloaks and making the stone slick underfoot. The train gave a final hiss of steam as students began filing out, chattering nervously, bunching together against the storm.
Somewhere to his left, Harry heard Hagrid’s booming voice over the clamor, “Firs’ years this way! Firs’ years!”
He turned, squinting through the downpour just in time to catch the gentle giant waving a massive hand in his direction.
Harry raised his own in reply. No more than that. Hagrid was already herding a cluster of wide-eyed eleven-year-olds down the path toward the boats, his enormous lantern swinging.
And then, above the crowd, something bright cut through the gloom.
A shape, pale and glowing circled once overhead.
A silvery owl, graceful and otherworldly, flew a wide arc around the gathered students. It soared low enough that a few ducked instinctively before it ascended again in a shimmer of moonlight and rain.
It landed on a post near the edge of the platform, perching with unnatural stillness beside a figure wrapped in a long dark coat.
She stood under the owl like a shadow carved out of ink. Arms folded, face expressionless under the hood pulled low. A few students stopped.
“That’s Y/LN,” someone whispered behind Harry.
“No way. From the World Cup?”
“Didn’t she-?”
“Move along,” the woman said flatly. Her voice cut through the mist like a blade, cool, dry, unimpressed. “Ain’t got all night.”
Her Patronus ruffled its feathers but made no sound.
Some students shuffled away quickly, unsure whether to be starstruck or slightly unnerved. Others lingered a moment longer, glancing back even as they climbed into the carriages.
Then came the soft crunch of steps behind her.
Remus Lupin approached with the same tired grace he carried everywhere. Rain dotted his threadbare robes, his wand still gripped loosely in one hand from the train.
“Quite the entrance,” he murmured, glancing at the owl.
Y/N didn’t look at him, her voice sounded almost bored. “Kids need shepherding, I’m just here to keep order.”
He smiled faintly. “We had a run in with some dementors, came looking for Sirius black.”
That got her attention.
"They really think he could've gotten on the Hogwarts Express?" Y/N furrowed her brows in confusion.
"Yes, unfortunately, they had a very strong influence on some students, particularly one: Harry Potter."
Her head tilted ever so slightly. “He alright?”
“He will be. I gave him chocolate, but he looked… rattled.”
A pause. “I thought it best you know.”
Y/N’s mouth twitched, a frown barely forming. She raised her wand, tapped the owl lightly on its head. The Patronus shifted, just slightly and split. A second owl took shape beside the first, smaller but just as silver, just as elegant.
“Go ahead,” she told it. “To the castle.”
The smaller Patronus took off with a blink of light, vanishing into the storm.
She glanced at Lupin finally. “let's not waste more time standing in the rain, I'm starving" She turned on her heels.
He nodded once, already turning toward the carriages.
Rain kept falling.
The last of the students filed past her, wide-eyed and whispering, into the dark shapes waiting to carry them up the winding road.
The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle by the time Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Ginny found one of the carriages waiting at the edge of the platform. The wooden seats were slick with water, but it was the best shelter they had before the steep, winding road to the castle.
“Hey Potter,” a familiar drawl cut through the quiet, “didn’t think you’d be so easy to knock out. What, fainting now? Scared of a little cold?”
Malfoy sauntered over with Crabbe and Goyle lumbering behind him, a smug grin playing on his lips.
Ron, practically vibrating with barely contained excitement, shot back, “Shove it, Malfoy! At least Harry’s got a backbone.”
Hermione opened her mouth to step in, but Y/N’s voice cut across before she could.
“Save your breath, Sweetheart,” Y/N said flatly, her eyes glinting beneath the hood of her cloak as she stepped forward. “This is just the kind of playground nonsense I was hoping to avoid.”
Malfoy raised an eyebrow. “And who exactly are you supposed to be? Groundskeeper in training?”
Y/N smirked, crossing her arms. “Something like that. But you can call me professor.”
The words dripped with amused arrogance, and Malfoy’s smile faltered just for a moment.
Lupin’s calm voice cut in from nearby. “Enough. No need for quarrels on the way up.”
He gave Malfoy a pointed look before turning to the others. “I’ll take the next carriage with Malfoy and his friends. Professor Y/L/N will ride with you lot.”
The group shuffled, Y/N sliding into the carriage beside Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Ginny. The silence was thick for a moment, the steady patter of rain on the roof the only sound.
Ron’s eyes were practically sparkling. “You’re really here. I mean, wow. I’ve read every match report I could find about you.”
Y/N shrugged, bored. “It’s a job. Flying around catching a tiny golden ball. Not exactly rocket science.” that earned her a strange glance from Hermione.
Ginny leaned forward eagerly. “What’s it like? Being the best seeker in the world? Do you ever get scared?”
Y/N glanced out the window, as if the question was faintly irritating. “Scared? Nah. You learn quick that fear’s just wasted energy. You either fly or you fall. Simple.”
Harry exchanged a look with Ron, fascinated but still trying to place her.
Hermione, ever the voice of reason, whispered sharply, “She sounds... arrogant.”
Y/N caught the words and shot Hermione a glance that was almost amused. “Better arrogant than boring,” she murmured.
Neville sat quietly, eyes wide and full of awe, though he said little. He fiddled nervously with his robes but clearly soaked in every word.
Harry finally broke the silence. “So, you’re like a seeker... just like me?”
Y/N turned toward him, eyes narrowing slightly, but her tone softened just a bit. “Yeah. Same job. Different leagues.”
Harry’s smile was genuine, a mix of confusion and excitement. “I didn’t know anyone like you was coming here.”
Y/N leaned back, arms still crossed, clearly unimpressed by the fanfare but letting it wash over her. “Well, here I am. Don’t get too starstruck, I’m here to teach, not to sign autographs.”
Meanwhile, Lupin’s carriage trundled along behind them, muffled sounds of Malfoy’s sneering and Lupin’s quiet but firm warnings drifting back every now and then.
Later, as the castle loomed out of the mist ahead, Y/N caught sight of Malfoy glaring back at them.
The Great Hall shimmered with magic and muted excitement, the enchanted ceiling reflecting a twilight sky streaked with clouds. Rows of students sat in their house robes, eyes glued to the Sorting Hat’s silent judgment.
At the teachers’ table, Y/N reclined in her seat, arms crossed, clearly unimpressed by the whole ordeal. The buzz of the ceremony barely registered as her gaze drifted to the side, where a cluster of butterbeer mugs waited- an indulgence she planned to savor, if only for a moment.
With a flick of her wand, a mug slid toward her, thick froth bubbling up to the brim. Just as she reached out to grab it, the mug sprouted tiny wooden legs and jumped just out of reach, Y/N stretching her arm as far as she could to grab it before anyone noticed. As she tries to grab it again it waddles away quickly across the polished surface of the long table.
“Hey!” Y/N snapped, leaning forward. The professors glanced over, some stifling amused smiles, others raising eyebrows in silent judgment.
The mug hopped like a mischievous creature, skittering past a very unamused Severus Snape, narrowly avoiding Professor Flitwick’s own cup of liquor. Y/N lunged again, nearly tipping over Professor Lupin's goblet of pumpkin juice, but the mug leapt away once more.
Suddenly, mid-sort, as the Sorting Hat was lifted from the head of a nervous little brunette girl, the butterbeer mug made a dramatic leap off the edge of the table, landing with a sharp clatter on the stone floor.
The hall erupted in laughter. Younger students giggled and whispered excitedly, while older students and professors exchanged amused glances.
Y/N’s cheeks flushed a deep crimson as she bent down to snatch the mug off the floor, muttering under her breath.
“That old bag jinxed me,” she grumbled, voice low but sharp. “Not a single sip of alcohol without a scene.”
Professor McGonagall shot her a pointed look, lips twitching with barely suppressed amusement. Y/N met the gaze with a half-smile, the familiar spark of defiance flickering in her eyes.
The Sorting Ceremony rolled on, but Y/N’s mind was absent from the feast. "this is going to be a long year" she thought, stabbing the same potato until it looked like a war crime.
authors note: i can't promise the next chapter will come soon. But if you want to be notified lemme know. Also merry christmas everyone.
September 9th
The crisp summer air had a bite to it - cool and sharp, with a wind that whipped across the grounds like a broom in a hurry. Thin clouds streaked the sky overhead. Hogwarts stood tall and still behind her, windows glinting.
Y/N stood alone at the edge of the Quidditch pitch, her wand in her hand. She’d carved a large white "X" into the grass with precise flicks of her wrist. It pulsed faintly, magic woven deep into the turf. Overhead, her Patronus owl circled once before vanishing into mist, checking the air for possible unwanted visitors.
A sharp whistle broke the silence. Students began to arrive, the third-years, talking amongst themselves, dragging their brooms like dead limbs. Harry, Ron, Hermione… Draco Malfoy and his shadow brigade… Parvati, Seamus, and a few others from Slytherin and Gryffindor. Thirty in all, split from both houses.
They gathered loosely, casting sideways glances at Y/N, like she might suddenly sprout fangs.
She didn’t speak immediately. Just watched them in silence, her gaze distant, unreadable. A few students shifted uncomfortably. Hermione clutched her broom a little tighter.
“All right,” Y/N said at last, voice flat, cool as the wind. “You’re all here, I assume.”
That was it. No welcome speech. No warm-ups. No name roll.
With a flick of her wand, the air shimmered. An obstacle course burst into being across the field: spinning hoops high above the pitch, suspended in midair like golden rings on invisible wires; floating pillars that drifted just enough to throw off your depth perception; small projectiles that zipped past at unpredictable intervals. And, of course, the glowing white "X" far below.
“Mount up. One at a time. Through the course, land on the X. I’ll time you,” Y/N said, conjuring a silver pocket watch that hovered beside her head, ticking softly.
The class hesitated.
Malfoy scoffed. “That’s it? What is this, summer camp?”
“You volunteering to go first, Malfoy?” she asked, not even looking at him.
He bristled. “Of course I am.”
He shot off the ground, broom kicking up dust. He weaved through the first two hoops with ease, then clipped the third as it spun. A projectile zipped by and struck his shoulder, not hard, but enough to throw his balance off. He landed with a thump, two feet wide of the mark.
She scribbled on a floating scroll. Malfoy looked like he might say something, then thought better of it and sulked back into the group.
Next was Dean Thomas. Then Lavender. Then a trembling Neville, who missed half the course but managed to stick the landing. Y/N said little beyond names and times, her voice clipped, noting mistakes without emotion.
When Harry flew, he zipped through the course in thirty-two seconds flat. He landed squarely on the X, his robes whipping around him.
Y/N raised an eyebrow. “Decent. You’ll do fine.”
Ron whooped. Hermione clapped, but Y/N was already moving on.
The rest followed one by one. The obstacles subtly shifted between students, reacting to speed, timing, and even hesitation. No two flights were exactly the same.
When the final student landed, Pansy Parkinson, breathless and red-cheeked, she expected praise. Guidance. Feedback. Something.
Instead, Y/N rolled up the scroll, gave a curt nod, and said, “Class dismissed.”
“What!?” Hermione stepped forward. “But professor, it’s only halfway through class-”
“See you next week,” Y/N called over her shoulder, already walking off the pitch with her hands in her coat pockets.
The wind blew her hair sideways, the only thing dramatic about her exit.
A confused silence followed. Ron looked around like someone had hidden a punchline. “So...That’s it?”
“Apparently,” Seamus muttered.
“She didn’t even tell us what our scores meant!” Hermione snapped, eyes narrowing at the distant silhouette of Y/N disappearing up toward the castle. “How are we supposed to improve?”
“She didn’t say we had to improve,” Ron offered.
“She didn’t say anything!”
Harry, meanwhile, stared thoughtfully at the spot where Y/N had stood. There was something odd about her, the way she carried herself, the way she spoke, like someone used to flying solo.
She didn’t need to explain herself. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t eventually.
But for now, the class trudged back toward the castle, wet grass clinging to their boots and uncertainty heavy in their minds.
The corridor outside the third-year Defence classroom looked like every September corridor always looked, damp hems, flushed cheeks, and that particular Hogwarts sound of shoes squeaking against stone like the castle itself was muttering.
Remus Lupin had arrived early. Not because he was eager, he just happened to have one hour of peace to prepare for the third years. Last lesson had been a great success, the question is, will this one be too?
He’d barely set his battered case on the desk when the door banged open and a stream of students spilled in.
“Professor Lupin!”
They were all talking at once. Not the usual excited babble, either. This was sharper, keyed up. The kind of noise that came with grievance.
Hermione Granger got to him first, looking like she’d been simmering for exactly thirty minutes and had finally found a lid to rattle.
“We’re early because Professor Y/LN dismissed us halfway through Flying,” she said, breathless with outrage. “She didn’t explain any of it. She just timed us and then walked away.”
Ron Weasley nodded like his neck was powered by indignation. “She didn’t even tell us what the times mean. She just said I was brave and then… that it wasn’t a compliment.”
Harry Potter stood a little behind them, quieter, but his eyes were focused in that way Remus recognised. Watching, filing away, trying to make sense of the rules so he could survive them.
“That’s not teaching,” Hermione pressed. “That’s… it’s… I don’t even know what it is.”
“It’s her being bored with us,” Ron said, as if that solved everything.
Behind them, a scornful noise.
Draco Malfoy drifted in like he owned the air in the room. Pansy Parkinson and Crabbe and Goyle hovered at his shoulders like decorative knives.
“It’s her making a spectacle,” Malfoy said. “She’s clearly trying to humiliate students who aren’t… naturally gifted.”
Hermione’s head snapped toward him. “You landed wide.”
Malfoy’s ears went pink. “I got hit.”
Pansy crossed her arms, chin tilted. “She called my landing ‘acceptable’ like she was doing me a favour.”
Remus looked at them. All of them. Gryffindors bristling, Slytherins bristling in a different direction, and in the middle, the quiet thread of anxiety woven through the whole bundle.
He didn’t shush them. Didn’t raise his voice. He let the complaints tumble out until they ran out of momentum and started circling back on themselves.
When it finally eased, he said gently, “All right. One at a time.”
A few students blinked, caught off guard by the idea that an adult might actually listen.
Hermione went again, more structured this time, listing exactly what had happened, how the course changed, how the professor gave feedback that sounded like judgment, and then left them standing there with it.
Ron filled in the gaps with commentary that was more emotion than detail, but Remus picked out the useful bits anyway.
Malfoy described the “projectiles” with disdain, but even disdain could be information if you listened for the shape of it.
Pansy, surprisingly, was precise. “She was watching everything. Even when she pretended she wasn’t.”
Remus nodded. “Did anyone get hurt?”
A chorus of “no”s, and then Seamus muttered, “Only my pride, professor.”
Remus’s mouth twitched. “That’s recoverable.”
He moved around the desk, hands folding loosely in front of him, trying to look calm while his mind ran quick, careful circles.
A new professor. A new method. A class full of students who’d just come face-to-face with someone who didn’t try to be liked.
“Professor Y/LN,” he said, testing the name aloud, “is… not Professor Hooch.”
“That’s the problem,” Hermione said.
Remus turned his eyes to Hermione. “Why do you say that?”
"professor Hooch told us what to do, why we do it."
Lupin thought for a second "perhaps she thinks you already know the basics?"
Hermione frowned, as if she hated agreeing with him and also couldn’t deny it. “But she still should’ve explained what she wanted.”
Remus hummed thoughtfully, then offered them a small, tired smile. “You’re not wrong. But sometimes people… teach the way they were taught. Or the way they had to learn.”
Ron scowled. “So we’ve got to suffer because she’s weird?”
“That’s not what I said,” Remus replied, mild. “And you don’t have to suffer. You do have to pay attention.”
He glanced at the clock. They were early. His lesson was ready, the cupboards stocked, the windows half fogged with the lingering damp of the storm.
“Since you’re here,” he said, brightening his tone just a fraction, “we’ll start.”
They shuffled into their seats, still whispering, still casting occasional looks at the door like Professor Y/LN might burst in and time their breathing next.
Remus began the lesson, but part of his attention remained snagged on the complaints like a burr on wool.
Skittish, sceptical. Yes. Understandable.
And if Y/LN truly was careless, if her pride was larger than her caution, Remus didn’t intend to let that become a problem these children paid for.
He taught them about dark creatures and defensive charms. He answered questions. He redirected panic into curiosity, as he always did, as he’d learned to do when the world wanted to make fear feel inevitable.
When the bell finally rang, students flowed out like a released spell, still talking, still buzzing.
He waited until the corridor outside had thinned, until the castle’s noise had shifted away from complaint and back toward lunch.
Then he picked up his worn case, shut the classroom door, and headed for the staff corridor.
He hadn’t been back at Hogwarts long enough to feel like he belonged in the faculty wing. The stone seemed to remember him anyway. Every step felt like echo and memory, like the castle was watching to see what he’d become.
Y/LN’s office was a few doors down from his, tucked into a quieter passage where the air smelled faintly of old parchment and broom wax.
He raised his hand and knocked.
No answer.
He knocked again, harder.
Something clattered inside. A sharp, irritated hiss of breath, and then the door swung open abruptly.
Remus opened his mouth, already holding the careful phrasing in his throat. Calm. Professional. Concerned.
“Professor Y/LN, I’d like to speak with you about your first lesson, some of the students are feeling rather…”
His sentence stopped dead.
Her office looked like a storm had learned to organise.
Scrolls hovered in the air, not one or two, but a small flock, curling and unfurling like pale birds. Pieces of parchment zipped from one side of the room to the other, trailing lines of ink in blue, green, and sharp red. A chalkboard filled most of one wall, already crowded with words and arrows and categories written so quickly the chalk dust still hung in the air like mist.
Several pocket watches floated at different heights, ticking out of sync. One spun lazily in place. Another bobbed as if it was trying to escape.
And in the middle of it all, Y/N stood with her hair half wind-tangled, sleeves pushed up, wand tucked behind her ear like she’d forgotten it was there. She scribbled notes onto a scroll that tried to wriggle away from her quill.
She didn’t look at Remus.
“Close the door,” she said, voice flat. “You’re letting the cold in.”
Remus blinked once, then obediently shut it behind him. The door clicked, and the room instantly felt warmer, not cosy, but busy-warm, like the air had been worked hard.
“I’m sorry,” he said, trying again, “I didn’t mean to intrude, I just…”
A scroll swooped down in front of his face, and Remus leaned back instinctively. The ink on it was still wet.
Y/N flicked her fingers, and it snapped back into formation with the others.
“Careful,” she said without looking up. “They bite.”
“They… bite?” Remus repeated, because his brain needed something simple to hold on to.
Remus stared at her for a moment, then at the chalkboard.
The words were neat enough to read despite the chaos.
Grouses.
Starlings.
Swifts.
Under each heading, names were listed. Some had notes beside them. Times. Short phrases. Observations.
He saw “Granger, Hermione” under Grouses with “overthinks, rigid posture, late corrections.”
He saw “Longbottom, Neville” under Grouses with “panic response, but sticks landing when committed.”
He saw “Malfoy, Draco” under Swifts with “talent, ego, overconfident, not afraid of the ground.”
He saw “Weasley, Ron” under Swifts with “instinctive, brave to reckless, needs discipline.”
And “Potter, Harry” under Swifts with “fast, reads movement, doesn’t flinch, needs enrichment.”
Remus’s chest tightened, not unpleasantly. Just… suddenly aware.
He’d come prepared to scold her for being careless.
This didn’t look like carelessness.
It looked like someone building a map.
Remus cleared his throat, gently. “I wanted to speak with you because the students are… unsettled. They said you dismissed them early. They don’t understand your approach. They’re skittish and sceptical, and frankly, I was concerned you might be…”
“Boring?” Y/N cut in.
Remus paused.
She finally looked at him then, quill still moving, eyes half-lidded as if he’d interrupted something far more important than his feelings.
“No,” Remus said carefully. “Careless.”
Y/N’s mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile, more like a private joke she didn’t intend to share. “I’m many things. Careless isn’t one of them.”
“They got it,” she said, scribbling faster. “They just didn’t like it.”
Remus glanced again at the chalkboard, at the hovering watches. “What are you doing?”
Y/N flicked her quill toward the board without looking. “Learning their names.”
Remus blinked. “You could’ve… asked them.”
She looked at him like he’d suggested she host a singalong.
“I did ask them,” she said. “They answered with their brooms.”
Remus’s eyes drifted back to the categories. “Grouses. Starlings. Swifts.”
“Most first and second years are Grouses,” she said, as if it was obvious. “They can fly. Barely. They grip the broom like it’s a life raft and their brains go blank when the wind changes.”
A scroll wobbled toward her, and she snatched it midair, ink smearing slightly.
“Starlings are your average flock,” she went on. “Decent. Learnable. They’ll follow a pattern if you give them one. They make mistakes because they want to do what they’re told.”
“And Swifts?” Remus asked, though he already knew.
Y/N’s eyes flicked toward the names under that heading, then away. “Swifts fly like the broom is an extension of their body. They get bored if you baby them. They’ll do something stupid just to feel challenged.”
Remus couldn’t help it. His gaze went back to Harry’s name, then to Malfoy’s, then to Ron’s.
“You timed them,” he said softly.
“I watched them,” she corrected. “Timing was just a leash for their ego.”
Remus let out a slow breath. “You could have explained to them that it was an assessment.”
Y/N’s quill paused for half a heartbeat, then continued.
“I didn't feel like it”
Remus stared at her. He tried, gently, “They’re children.”
Y/N’s eyes cut to him, quick as a dart. “They’re wizards on sticks in the sky. If they can’t handle ‘unclear expectations’ in a controlled environment, they’ll die the first time someone actually tries to knock them off.”
Remus’s stomach tightened. He thought of Dementors. Of fear. Of children who carried too much too early.
He kept his voice even. “You don’t have to terrify them to teach them.”
Y/N’s expression didn’t change, but something in her shoulders shifted, like a muscle flexing.
“I didn’t terrify them,” she said. “I made them uncomfortable. There’s a difference.”
Remus looked around again. The floating parchments. The ink. The watches.
“All this,” he said, “is lesson planning.”
Y/N shrugged, one shoulder, still writing. “If I teach the class like they’re all Starlings, the Grouses will fall and the Swifts will get bored and start playing chicken with the hoops. I’m not doing that.”
Her quill scratched faster, and another scroll snapped into place on the wall, joining the others like a pinned butterfly.
Remus’s initial irritation didn’t vanish, but it rearranged itself into something more complicated.
“You realise,” he said, carefully, “that to them, you looked like you didn’t care.”
Y/N finally stopped writing. She leaned back slightly, eyes narrowing as if he’d asked her to grow a conscience from scratch.
“I care,” she said, tone dry. “That’s why I’m doing this instead of giving out compliments like sweets.”
Remus held her gaze. “Then show them. At least a little. Otherwise, they’ll misread you, and they’ll fight you instead of learning from you.”
For a long moment, the only sound was ticking watches and the soft flutter of parchment.
Y/N’s mouth twitched. “Are you always this earnest, Lupin?”
Remus gave a small, tired smile. “Only when I’m worried.”
She stared at him a second longer, then picked up her quill again like the conversation had been filed away under “mildly inconvenient but not wrong.”
“Fine,” she said, as if granting him a mercy. “Next week I’ll give them a speech.”
Y/N didn’t look up. “No. But I’ll tell them what the categories mean. Maybe. If they survive until then.”
Remus sighed, but the edge of it softened.
He turned to leave, then paused at the door. “Be careful,” he said quietly. “Hogwarts doesn’t forgive mistakes gently.”
Y/N’s quill didn’t stop. “Neither does gravity.”
Remus opened the door, and as he stepped back into the corridor, he heard her add, almost too low to be sure it wasn’t his imagination, “But I’m trying.”
And for the first time since the train, the complaints in his chest eased into something like reluctant understanding.
pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader ( no use of y/n )
summary: spencer gets drunk and confesses his feelings to you. in detail. a lot of detail.
content warnings: spencer is very drunk, mention of nausea and headaches, talks of petnames, spencer is so so in love with reader, one very tiny mention of spencer's mom and dad,
a/n: sacrified my studying to post this in time. if i fail, i'm blaming spencer. anyways!! happy birthday to spencer reid !!! ily !!!
One moment, Spencer had been beside you, and the next, he had simply vanished into the crowded bar.
“Looking after Spencer when he’s drunk is like being responsible for a five-year-old,” you muttered to yourself, weaving through the groups of people. You’d checked the restrooms, the hallway near the jukebox, and even the fire escape. Nothing.
Your frantic search brought you past the main bar, where Hotch was settling the tab. His eyes met yours, and with a subtle tilt of his head, he nodded toward a corner booth. You mouthed a relieved 'thank you' as you made your way towards said booth.
There he was. Spencer was seated at a table with a group of people you were certain he’d never met before tonight, a deck of cards in his hand. The last time you’d seen him, he’d been passionately explaining the material behind the rhinestones on Garcia’s favorite hair clip.
You stepped behind him, placing a gentle hand on the center of his back, between his shoulder blades. “Hi, Spencer,” you said, your voice soft.
He turned to look up at you, and the transformation was instant. His eyes were red-rimmed and glassy from the alcohol, but they crinkled at the corners as a genuine smile spread across his face. “Hi,” he breathed, his gaze fixed on you for a precious second before darting back to his cards.
You offered a small, apologetic smile to his new friends. They didn’t look annoyed, per se, but there was a distinct air of resignation about them.
Your eyes flicked down to Spencer’s hand. Ah. Of course. He was holding a straight flush. You’d lost him about thirty minutes ago, which likely meant he’d been unknowingly bankrupting these strangers for the better part of that time.
A young woman across the table caught your eye. Her expression was one of pure desperation. “Please help,” she mouthed, her gaze flicking meaningfully between you and Spencer’s cards, clearly hoping for an insider’s tip.
You gave her a sympathetic little smile and leaned down closer to Spencer, your voice dropping to a murmur meant only for him. “Spencer.”
He looked up again, and his eyes softened, the focus shifting entirely from the game to you. You brushed a stray curl from his forehead, your fingers lingering for a moment. His skin was warm.
“You’re a bit warm. That’s not good,” you chided gently. “How about we get some fresh air?”
Spencer was utterly dazed. What you couldn't possibly know was that his dazed state wasn't solely the product of the alcohol. It was the intoxicating combination of your proximity, your touch carding through his hair and your hand on his back. His long-standing crush was currently fussing over him, and his brain was short-circuiting beautifully.
“Okay,” he mumbled, his agreement pliant. He turned back to the table. “Sorry for not finishing the game.”
A chorus of relieved voices answered in unison. “Oh, no, it’s fine!”
You couldn’t help a small grin as the woman who’d pleaded for help mouthed a grateful, “Thank you.”
One of the men, who looked as though he’d lost a significant bet, shook his head and mumbled under his breath, “How could you ever play cards with him?”
You chuckled, slipping your arm around Spencer’s waist to help steady him as he stood. “Oh, trust me,” you said, “I’ve gotten used to it.”
As you began to guide him away, you heard the woman whisper conspiratorially to her friend, “Well, yeah, he’s cute. I’d also be fine with it if I was dating him.”
You paused, glancing back at her in confusion, but in that moment, Spencer stumbled, his full weight leaning into you. You caught him easily, your attention immediately returning to the task at hand. “Okay, easy there, genius,” you said, steering him toward the door and making sure he waved a clumsy goodbye to the team.
You managed to guide a wobbly Spencer out the heavy door of the bar. But the moment you cleared the threshold, his legs seemed to give out entirely. He simply folded, settling directly onto the sidewalk.
“Spencer!” you called out.
He looked up at you, completely unbothered, propping his chin in his hand with his elbow resting on his knee. “Hm?”
“Don’t sit on the ground. It’s dirty,” you chided, reaching for his arm.
“I don’t care,” he mumbled, his head already beginning to loll precariously in his palm. “The entire bar was dirty. It doesn’t matter now.”
You sighed, a fond exasperation washing over you. Arguing with a drunk genius was a losing battle. So, you gave in. You carefully lowered yourself to sit beside him on the concrete, ignoring the chill that seeped through your clothes. Gently, you took his arm from his knee and guided his head to rest on your shoulder instead. He leaned into the contact immediately, a soft sigh escaping his lips as he nestled against the curve of your neck.
“I’m cold and warm,” he complained, his voice a mumble against your skin.
You chuckled softly. “You drank a lot, and it’s cold outside,” you explained, carefully shifting to wrap an arm around his back to steady him. You pressed your free hand to his forehead again. He was still too warm. “We should get you home,” you murmured, your voice filled with concern.
“Okay,” he agreed easily, nuzzling even closer.
The smile that touched your lips was involuntary and full of affection. Getting him home, however, was where the real challenge began.
The short walk to your car was exhausting to say the least. You half-carried, half-dragged him, his tall frame leaning heavily on you as he offered slurred commentary on the urban planning of the sidewalk cracks. Getting him into the passenger seat felt like buckling a very large and completely uncoordinated child into a car seat.
The drive was quiet. But the grand finale was the stumble up the stairs to his apartment building. It was… an experience. Each step was a negotiation.
“Just one more, Spencer, come on.”
“These stairs are surprisingly loud,” he slurred, clinging to the banister with one hand and your shoulder with the other.
“That’s because they’re old,” you grunted, heaving him up another step. “And you’re drunk.”
“Correlation is not causation,” he retorted, though the argument lost all its impact when he immediately tripped on the next step.
By some miracle, you finally reached his door. Fishing the keys from his pocket, you unlocked it and guided him inside.
Somehow, with a great deal of coaxing and maneuvering, you managed to guide him into the bathroom. You positioned him to lean against the counter, his hands gripping the edge for support. You stepped into the space between him and the sink, gently nudging his knees apart so you could stand closer. He complied without protest, his dazed eyes fixed on you.
The air was thick with a new kind of tension. To break it, you focused on a simple task. Your fingers went to the knot of his tie, loosening it.
"Why did you wear a tie to the bar?" you asked softly, your voice barely above a whisper as you slid the fabric from his collar.
Spencer hummed. "I don't know what else to wear."
"You can just wear a cardigan," you suggested, a soft smile playing on your lips as you folded the tie and set it aside on the counter. "You have nice ones."
"Would you like that?" he asked quietly, his head tilting.
"Would I like what?"
"You said that you love my ties," he stated.
"I do," you affirmed, slightly confused but sensing you were treading on delicate ground.
His next words came out in a rush. "I wanna look good for you, so I try to wear ties as much as I can." There was no shame, no blushing self-awareness. It was a devastatingly honest confession poured straight from his heart, facilitated by the alcohol flooding his veins.
"Spencer!" you breathed, your hands stilling as you stared at him in shock.
His face fell instantly, confusion clouding his features. "What? Do you not like them anymore?" he asked, his voice tinged with sadness. "I can wear something else."
"You can wear whatever you want," you managed to say, your mind reeling. A part of you felt a pang of hurt at the thought that his clothing choices weren't entirely his own. "Why would you wear something just because I complimented it?"
"Because I like it when you compliment my ties," he mumbled, his body swaying slightly. You instinctively steadied him by placing your hands on his waist, the contact sending a jolt through you. He leaned into the touch, his eyes fluttering closed for a second before finding yours again. "Or when you touch them to look at the pattern. It makes me feel really warm on the inside when you do."
The air left your lungs. You stared, utterly speechless. In his inebriated state, Spencer Reid had just confessed his crush on you to you. He had no idea of the magnitude of what he'd just revealed.
Needing a moment to process, you quickly grabbed the cup of water you'd set aside earlier. "Here, drink this," you instructed softly, holding the cup to his lips. As he drank, you used your free hand to gently brush the soft curls back from his fever-warm forehead.
You gently wiped the stray water droplets from his chin with your thumb, your touch lingering for a heartbeat. Needing to do something, anything, with your hands, you began to unbutton the top button of his shirt, just to give him a little more air. He sighed in relief.
In the quiet of the bathroom, his voice was small. "Are you mad at me?"
Your eyes snapped back to his. "No," you said softly. "Not at all, Spencer. I could never be mad at you for that." You cupped his cheek, your thumb stroking his warm skin. "I'm just… worried that you take my words too much to heart."
His response was soft. "I do."
A flicker of that earlier disappointment must have shown in your eyes, because he quickly continued.
"I remember that one time you told me you liked my eyes," he mumbled, his gaze drifting to a spot on the bathroom wall. "And ever since then, I like them more. You were right… they do look nice when the sun hits them."
"Yeah?" you asked, your voice colored with hope.
"Mhm," Spencer nodded, his head lolling slightly before he found your eyes again. "I also like my outfits more. I always hated them." He confessed this with resignation that broke your heart a little. "I didn't know what else to wear. People… people weren't always nice about my clothes. You were the only one who was ever nice to me about them. And you actually meant it." He gave you a tentative smile, one that grew just a fraction when he saw the genuine smile blooming on your own face.
"Well, I do love your outfits," you whispered, your hand moving from his cheek to smooth the collar of his shirt. "They're so uniquely you. It makes you look so handsome."
Spencer blushed, the red somehow deepening beneath the alcohol-induced flush. He ducked his head. "I can't get used to that," he mumbled into his chest.
"Used to what?" you prompted softly, tilting your head to try and catch his downcast eyes.
He finally looked up, his whiskey-colored eyes meeting yours. "Your compliments," he whispered, a confession as potent as any other he'd made tonight.
“Well, get used to them, handsome,” you smiled as you guided the cup back to his lips. He drank obediently, but his eyes never left you, watching you intently over the rim. You held the gaze and it felt strangely intimate.
Once he’d finished, you set the cup aside and turned to grab his toothbrush. The small bathroom cabinet offered two different tubes of toothpaste. You weren't sure which one he liked more.
“Who were you talking to in the bar?” Spencer’s voice was quiet.
“When?” you asked, your hand hesitating between the two options before settling on the mint.
“In the booth. There was a guy… you were laughing with him.” His tone was carefully neutral, but the specificity gave him away.
You looked up from the toothbrush, the paste forgotten in your hand. You gave him your full undivided attention. “I don’t even know who that was, Spencer.”
“You seemed comfortable with him,” he murmured, his gaze fixed on the countertop.
You watched him for a long moment, studying the slight downturn of his mouth, the way he couldn’t quite meet your eyes. Understanding began to warm your chest. “Spencer,” you began softly, leaning a hip against the counter to face him fully. “Were you jealous?”
His head lifted, his eyes searching yours. “Maybe,” he finally mumbled. “You touched his arm… like, five times,” he whispered, as if confessing a grave misdeed.
Your heart squeezed. You tilted your head, your voice dropping to a gentle murmur. “Do you want me to touch your arm?”
“No. Yes,” he stammered, frustration creasing his brow. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to touch me. And I know you touch me a lot.” His eyes flickered down to where your hand was resting on his waist, your thumb unconsciously making soothing circles against the fabric of his vest. “You’re doing it right now.”
You followed his gaze, a soft smile gracing your lips. “Yeah,” you said quietly. “I am.”
He opened his mouth, trying to articulate the tangled mess of feelings, but his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. The alcohol was a thick fog, making it impossible to find the right words.
You understood. “But you want it to mean something,” you supplied gently, your thumb stilling its motion. “When I touch you, you want it to feel special. You don’t want it to be something I do with just anyone.”
Spencer stared at you, his expression a mixture of relief and wonder that you had somehow untangled the knot he couldn't. “I guess so,” he mumbled.
You understood completely. Your casual friendly touch with that stranger had, in his eyes, devalued the currency of your affection. It made the way you cared for him seem ordinary, when to him, it was everything.
He fell silent for a long moment, processing his own words. Then, he shifted uncomfortably against the counter. "That sounded… oddly possessive," he mumbled, a flicker of clarity breaking through the alcoholic haze. "I didn't mean it like that," he corrected himself worried.
Honestly, you hadn't taken it that way at all, but you stayed quiet.
"I just… like you. A lot."
You took a sharp breath at the directness of the words, your heart stuttering in your chest. But you remained outwardly calm.
"And sometimes," he continued, "I think you like me back. Because of your gentle touches and your really nice compliments." He explained it so sweetly, that a smile inevitably formed on your face. "And Morgan tells me you like me," he added, offering a sheepish smile.
"And then I get hopeful," he whispered, the smile fading, "but then I see you compliment Morgan's shoes, or I see you touch that guy's arm in the bar, and then I just think… how could you like me? That you're just kind like that. That you're just nice to people, and that I'm just… imagining it all." He finished with a tired sigh, rubbing his eye.
You had stayed quiet throughout his entire confession, letting him pour out the insecurities he usually kept locked behind a wall of facts and statistics. Now, you slowly placed the forgotten toothbrush on the counter, bristles up to keep it clean. Your hands came up to cradle his face, your thumbs stroking his warm cheeks.
"I do like you," you whispered, the words finally breaking free. "Very much so. And the compliments I give you are genuine, and they are special. They're just for you, Spencer."
Spencer blinked at you, his eyes widening. "You like me?" he asked, his voice full of awe.
"Very much so," you affirmed, your smile softening.
"Oh," he breathed, a dazed smile spreading across his face. "That's good." He leaned into your touch, his eyes fluttering closed for a second, utterly content with the feeling of your hands on his skin.
You smiled, but the expression became more careful, when Spencer's gaze drifted downward from your eyes. He was staring at your lips, his head tilting as he leaned in slowly.
Gently, you pulled back, just an inch.
He froze, his eyes snapping back to yours, now wide with fear and confusion at the rejection.
"You're drunk," you said softly. You kept your hands on his face, brushing over his cheekbones. "I'm not kissing you when you're drunk."
He processed this, then nodded slowly. "That makes sense," he conceded. But his eyes, full of longing, lingered on your lips a moment longer.
You offered a soft reassuring smile, quickly grabbing the toothbrush to give him a task. Applying a stripe of toothpaste, you held it up for him. To your relief, his motor functions seemed to return for this familiar routine. He took it and began brushing, his eyes never leaving you the entire time.
Under his unwavering gaze, you began to feel warm yourself. You weren't sure if it was the intensity of your conversation or the bright bathroom lighting, but you found yourself fixing your hair behind your ear before shrugging off your thin autumn jacket, letting it rest on the counter beside his tie.
Once he was finished, he slumped against the counter. He looked utterly exhausted.
"Okay," you said softly, reaching out your hand. He took it without hesitation, his fingers lacing with yours. "I know you're going to say you're not hungry, but I just want you to eat one thing before bed. I barely saw you eat anything at the bar." You had a feeling you knew why, the mysterious man had introduced himself just as the food arrived, and Spencer had promptly vanished. That's when you had lost him.
"Okay?" you prompted gently.
Spencer nodded, a sleepy smile touching his lips. "Okay," he agreed happily, letting you lead him by the hand to his small kitchen.
There, he simply leaned back against the counter, his hands coming up to rub at his tired eyes again.
"Stop that," you whispered, gently pulling his hands away. "You'll make them redder."
"Sorry," he mumbled as he let his hands drop.
You started rummaging through his cabinets, finally finding a sealed package of cookies. Ripping it open, you handed him one. He took it obediently and began to nibble. Yet, even in his drowsy state, his gaze was a magnet, drifting from your eyes down to your lips once more.
"I can't wait to kiss you," he mumbled around a mouthful of cookie.
The blunt confession made a fond smile form on your face. "Oh, really?" you asked amused.
He sounded oddly flirty, a side of him so rarely seen, and it sent a wave of warmth through you.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. He reached for another cookie, his movements slow. “The first time I thought of kissing you was when you wore that peach lipgloss.”
You thought for a second, a smile playing on your lips. “Lip oil,” you gently corrected.
“Lip oil. Right,” he repeated, filing the information away with a serious nod. “It smelled really nice. And you looked… really pretty.” The simplicity of the compliment, delivered with such honesty, struck you deeply.
You had been honestly at a loss for words throughout this entire conversation. Giddy joy was bubbling up inside you, making you want to jump on the bed, scream into a pillow in sheer delight, and kick your feet in the air like a thirteen-year-old girl with her first crush.
“Well,” you said, your voice soft and slightly flustered, “I’ll make sure to wear that lip oil when we kiss.”
His eyes, which had been half-lidded with exhaustion, widened with happiness. “Yeah?” he asked, his entire face lighting up.
“Mhm,” you nodded, your heart swelling as you watched him. The mere idea of genuinely planning your first kiss was exciting him so visibly, that it was almost too much to bear.
He took another happy bite of his cookie, then paused, his brow furrowing in a look of deep concentration. “Am I still drunk?” he asked. “I ate and drank.” Apparently, alcohol also had the temporary side effect of lowering his iq.
You couldn't help the soft giggle that escaped you. “Yes, Spencer. You’re still very drunk,” you said, your voice fond as you handed him another cookie to keep him occupied.
“Right,” he mumbled, his shoulders slumping in disappointment. The logical part of his brain had confirmed the truth, but the hopeful, lovesick part was clearly impatient for the sober morning to arrive.
You smiled softly, watching the flicker of insecurity cross his face as the initial euphoria faded, replaced by a more sobering self-awareness.
"You do want to kiss me too, right?" he asked quietly. "You're not just going to kiss me because I'm being weird right now. And drunk. And saying lots of things I shouldn't be saying?" Spencer spoke slowly. "I really, really don't want you to feel like you have to kiss me or force yourself to do something you don't want to. I get it if you just wanna stick with us confessing to each other." He stared at you intently, his hazel eyes searching yours for the absolute truth.
"Spencer," you said, your voice full of certainty, "I'd love to kiss you, and I'm not doing you a favor. I really want to kiss you."
"Okay," he quieted down, a relieved smile finally gracing his lips again, the worry melting away.
"Can I hug you?" he asked softly after a moment. "I don't think I'm too drunk to not hug you." His eyebrows furrowed as he tried to gauge his own sobriety for such an important task.
You smiled, your heart feeling impossibly full. "Yeah, come here." You held up your arms, and he fell into them. He tried his best to hold his own weight, but his coordination was still lacking, causing him to lean into you more than he probably intended. You didn't mind in the slightest.
"You feeling better?" you asked softly, your fingers gently brushing through his curls. You were talking about the alcohol, the dizziness and the overwhelming nature of the night.
"Yeah," he mumbled into your shoulder, his voice muffled and content. "Cookies helped."
"That's good, honey," you said, the endearment slipping out naturally as you brushed a hand over his back.
He stood there for a long moment, before he pulled back just enough to look at you. "Are you going to call me that when we're boyfriend girlfriend?" he asked, his tone utterly serious.
You bit your lip, hard, to stop the laugh that was about to come out. You stood there, trying to compose yourself at his adorably formal phrasing. "You mean 'honey'?" you asked, your voice trembling slightly with suppressed amusement.
He nodded, his expression earnest.
"Do you like it?" you asked softly.
"Yes," Spencer mumbled, a faint blush returning to his cheeks.
"Okay," you said, your smile so wide it almost hurt. "Yeah, I can call you that when we're boyfriend girlfriend." You couldn't stop yourself from the fond tease of repeating his chosen label.
Spencer squinted his eyes. "You're making fun of me," he mumbled, though there was no real hurt in his tone.
You giggled out loud as you held onto his waist for balance, both of you swaying slightly. "I'm sorry," you managed between soft laughs. "I just—why did you say 'boyfriend girlfriend'? It's so formal."
Spencer was smiling a bit at the sound of your laughter, but his eyebrows furrowed in genuine confusion. "Isn't that the term?"
"It just sounds a little funny, that's all," you explained, your giggles subsiding into a warm smile.
Spencer chuckled along. "Okay. Yeah, maybe it does sound a bit odd," he conceded. "Is 'couple' a better term?"
"Yeah, honey, it is," you affirmed, your voice fond.
He felt a new kind of warmth spread through his chest, one that had nothing to do with the alcohol and everything to do with the way you said that word.
"Should I call you an endearment, too?" he asked carefully.
You tilted your head, your smile softening. "I don't know. Do you want to?"
Spencer shrugged, a small shy gesture. "It would be nice," he admitted, his gaze dropping for a moment before meeting yours again. "It'd be my special word for you."
Your heart melted. It was clearly very important to him and you found it incredibly endearing. "Well, do you have any in mind?" you asked softly, finally taking the cookie box from his loose grip and putting it away, noticing he hadn't taken any new pieces.
Spencer stayed quiet, staring into the distance as he thought. After a long moment, he looked back at you, his expression nervous. "Would you like… 'sweetheart'?" he said, the word sounding gentle and sweet on his tongue.
You smiled, touched by the old-fashioned sweetness of it. "Would you like to call me 'sweetheart'?" you asked, wanting to hear his reasoning.
He nodded, a little more sure now. "Yeah. I think so. My aunt's husband used to call her that. And she loved it. She would fluster every time." He didn't mention how his aunt and her husband were the only couple he'd ever seen growing up who genuinely seemed to love each other, a beacon of what a relationship could be amidst the chaos of his own parents. He didn't have the words for that yet, but the memory was a good one.
You smiled fondly. "I would love that," you said, your voice sincere.
"Okay," he whispered.
Spencer seemed happy, and utterly exhausted. "Come on, let's get you to bed," you said quietly, leading him by the hand toward his bedroom. He followed willingly, his fingers laced tightly with yours.
In his room, you grabbed a set of pajamas from a drawer and handed them to him, turning your back to give him privacy to change. Once he mumbled a quiet "done," you turned back to find him swaying slightly on his feet. You guided him into bed, gently maneuvering him onto his side, a precaution against the alcohol still in his system. He complied without protest.
Soon enough, you were standing above him, looking down at his sleepy form with a fond smile. His eyes were closed, his breathing beginning to even out. "I'll come by tomorrow, okay?" you whispered, not wanting to startle him.
His eyes flew open immediately. "What?"
"I'll come by in the morning. I'll bring you some food for your hangover," you explained, softly brushing a stray curl from his forehead.
"You're not staying?" he asked, his voice filled with disappointment and surprise.
You looked at him, a little taken aback. "You want me to?"
"Yeah," he nodded. Now that he had you here, he never wanted you to leave.
You watched him, sensing the unspoken thought. Your smile was soft and understanding. "Okay," you whispered. "Well, move aside, sleepyhead."
To your luck, you were wearing clothes comfortable enough to sleep in. You slipped into the bed beside him, turning onto your side to face him. He watched your every movement. Now you were face to face, sharing the same pillow.
"Thank you for taking care of me," Spencer whispered. This time, he was the one to reach forward, his fingers gently tucking a strand of your hair behind your ear. It was a careful touch, one he had been too nervous to initiate all night, the hug being the only bravery he'd allowed himself. His palm cupped your cheek, his hand big and warm, almost engulfing the entire side of your face.
"Any time," you mumbled, leaning into his touch. "I had fun, you know."
He raised a questioning eyebrow.
"I mean," you grinned, "it got my long-time crush to confess his feelings to me."
Spencer blushed but still scooted closer. You let him. The two of you watched each other for a long time. But sleep was clearly trying to claim him. His blinks were becoming longer, his breathing deeper. He tried to fight it, wanting to cherish this new reality of being able to simply look at you, but the exhaustion was winning.
As if reading his thoughts, you whispered softly, "Sleep, Spencer. I'll be here in the morning."
Reassured by the promise of a lifetime of mornings to come, he finally let his eyes drift shut, a smile on his lips as he surrendered to sleep, your hand still resting gently in his.
When morning came, it arrived with a pounding against the inside of Spencer’s skull. He stayed perfectly still, staring at the ceiling of his apartment. Any movement, even the subtle shift of his eyes, sent a fresh wave of nausea through him.
He laid there for long minutes, when the memories of the previous night came rushing back. Your hand on his back in the bar. Your hands cradling his face in the bathroom.
The confession about his ties, his eyes, his…feelings.
His mouth fell open in a silent gasp of horror. He sat up abruptly, a move he instantly regretted as the room tilted violently. He looked to the side of the bed.
It was empty.
A cold dread washed over him. He had done it. He had shattered your perfect friendship. But then his eyes landed on the nightstand. Your hair clips were there, placed neatly beside the lamp. You must have taken them out before bed. A spark of hope flickered in his chest.
He carefully swung his legs out of bed and tiptoed to the bathroom. There, draped over the counter next to his tie, was your thin autumn jacket. You were still here.
And then the terror returned, tenfold. He wanted to run. To flee his own apartment and hide from the vulnerability he had so carelessly displayed. But as he stood there, paralyzed by shame, another memory surfaced.
He had been fumbling with his pajama pants, the fabric seeming to conspire against his alcohol-slowed fingers. You had had your back turned to him, giving him privacy, and your voice had been soft.
"Spencer?"
"Hm?"
"Promise me something. Please don't regret a single thing tomorrow."
He’d been too focused on the monumental task of getting dressed to fully process it, mumbling a quick, "Yes, i promise," just to satisfy you.
He took a shaky breath and splashed cold water on his face, the shock of it bringing more snippets of the night back. "I can't wait to kiss you." "It'd be my special word for you." "Sweetheart." Shame heated his skin, but he fought it, clinging to the memory of your promise and his own.
He grabbed his toothbrush, squeezing a generous amount of toothpaste onto the bristles. The minty taste was a welcome assault. He could hear sounds coming from his kitchen. You were in his kitchen.
He brushed his teeth for ten full minutes. He scrubbed harshly, wanting to erase every last trace of the night's indiscretions, wanting his breath to be perfect.
Because he remembered, with agonizing specificity, the conversation about kissing. And he was determined to be ready.
Spencer slowly tiptoed towards the kitchen once he was done, hovering in the doorway as he silently watched you. You were at his stove, humming softly as you flipped a golden-brown pancake.
Soon enough, you felt his presence and turned, a warm smile immediately gracing your features. Spencer’s eyes darted instinctively to your lips, then away, a flush creeping up his neck.
“Good morning,” you said, turning off the stove.
“Morning,” he whispered, his voice rough with sleep and regret. He stood there, awkward and embarrassed, but trying his best to hold his ground.
“How’s the headache?” you asked, your tone sympathetic.
“Bad,” he admitted, scrubbing a hand over his forehead. “Like, really bad.”
You nodded and moved to the counter, grabbing a glass of water and some vitamins. “Here, take this.”
As you handed them to him, your fingers brushed against his. Spencer froze slightly at the contact, a difference from the way he’d leaned into your touch just hours before. He took the vitamins and swallowed them quickly, his eyes darting everywhere around the kitchen, anywhere but at you. Unlike yesterday
“I made you pancakes!” you announced, trying to cut through the tension.
Spencer glanced at the small stack on the plate. “Thank you,” he said with a weak, strained smile. “You really didn’t have to do that. I’m so sorry for… for last night.” He stuttered over the apology, the words heavy with shame.
You gently took the empty glass from his hands and then, before he could retreat, you took his hands in yours. They were trembling slightly.
“Spencer,” you said, his name sounding so sweet coming from you.
“Hm?” he mumbled in response, still looking determinedly at a point over your shoulder.
“What did I tell you yesterday?” you prompted, your voice patient.
He looked away, his jaw tightening. He remained silent, the weight of his embarrassment seeming to press him into the floor.
“Spencer,” you said again.
He finally relented, the words a defeated mumble. “Not to regret what I said.”
“Exactly!” you said, your voice brimming with warmth. You released his hands, only to bring your own up to gently frame his face, guiding his gaze until he had no choice but to meet your eyes.
His worried hazel eyes finally locked with yours. And what he saw there wasn’t pity or regret. He saw your happy eyes, shining with affection. The tension in his shoulders began to dissolve.
“So, will you please listen to me?” you asked, your voice soft.
Spencer hesitated for a fraction of a second, the ghost of his embarrassment still lingering, but then he nodded. “Okay,” he sighed, the sound full of relief. “I’ll try my best.”
He saw you open your arms slightly and he let himself fall into the hug, his own arms wrapping around you tightly. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, closing his eyes. “God,” he mumbled, his voice muffled against your skin. “I can’t believe I said all of that.”
You held him close, one hand rubbing soothing circles on his back. “It’s fine,” you whispered. “Honestly, it progressed our relationship in ways it hadn't in the past few years.”
Spencer let out a genuine chuckle, the vibration rumbling through his chest and into yours. “Guess so,” he conceded, finally pulling back just enough to look at you. His eyes immediately darted down to your lips, and a knowing grin spread across your face.
“Peach lip oil,” he whispered as he noticed you were waiting for him to acknowledge it.
“Yup,” you confirmed, your grin widening. “Had it in my bag. Thought I could put it to good use.”
A deep blush colored his cheeks, but he didn’t look away. “Right. Yeah,” he breathed, his gaze locked on yours.
Your hands slid down his chest, smoothing the soft wool of his cardigan. “So,” you began, your own voice dropping to a slightly flustered whisper. “You’re sober.”
Spencer nodded, watching you. “Completely.”
“If you’d like,” you said, your heart hammering against your ribs, “you can kiss me now.”
A slow, wondrous smile spread across Spencer’s face. “Yeah,” he breathed. “I’d like that very much.”
His hands came up to frame your face, his touch infinitely more sure than it had been last night. His thumbs stroked your cheeks as his eyes flickered down to your glistening lips and back up. He smiled fondly, and then, gathering his courage, he finally pressed his lips to yours.
It was nice. More than nice. It was soft, and warm. A happy hum vibrated in his throat, and you echoed it with one of your own. The kiss broke several times, because neither of you could stop smiling. When you finally parted, you rested your forehead against his, both of you simply smiling.
"I've wanted to do that for two years," Spencer breathed.
You felt your heart swell, your smile widening. "Yeah," you whispered back. "Me too."
A look of pure wonder crossed his face, and he leaned in to capture your lips once more in a sweet affirming kiss. When he pulled back again, his expression was slightly dazed. "I'm not dreaming, am I?" he asked softly, his eyes searching yours.
You shook your head slowly, your hands coming up to cradle his jaw. "No, honey," you whispered. "You're not."
The term of affection had an immediate and delightful effect. A charming blush spread from his cheeks all the way to the tips of his ears. You couldn't help the wide grin that spread across your face.
"Yeah," he mumbled, a blissful smile finally breaking through his flustered state. "Definitely not dreaming."
Overwhelmed by happiness, he pulled you tightly into his arms, burying his face in your hair. You held him just as close, feeling the last of his tension melt away.
His embarrassment was completely forgotten, washed away by the simple joy of the moment. All the awkwardness and worry of the night before had led him here and it was worth every single second.
Post-prison!Spencer remembers you perfectly from your BAU internship over a decade ago. The timid way you carried yourself, the way he wanted to be noticed by you and never was. It stung. Now you’re different; once reserved, now freer and more open. He tries to play it off like it doesn’t matter, but his distance hides the truth: he’s grown colder, convinced that who he is, exactly as he is, isn’t worth knowing now.
(fem!reader, FBI-adjacent!reader, p in v, car sex, naughty daydreams, yearning, slow burn, dominant!Spencer, I wrote too much)
Spencer didn’t like the archive room. It smelled too much like dry rot and old toner, and it reminded him too much of solitary and forgotten things.
Unfortunately, and a bit ridiculously, Penelope had flagged a metadata discrepancy, something about a sealed file from ‘97 that had been partially digitized and corrupted mid-upload. She’d said, “You’ve got the longest arms, and I already bribed Morgan to do something else. Don’t make me go down my list. Go grab the hard copy from Records while I ping the contractor.”
Off he went without fuss. His very useful, very important long arms swayed the whole way there.
The fluorescent lights sputtered awake, flickering through a few dying pulses. Spencer blinked at the sudden glare before his vision settled. The room looked the same as always; uncomfortably narrow with dusty surfaces, but something had already disrupted the order.
A single file waited on the counter near the back by the microfilm readers, the tab aligned just so, like whoever left it had been particular, but in a hurry. One of the pages had slipped slightly out of its clip.
The way it was just barely off bugged him, but he didn’t reach for it.
He just went to the third filing cabinet, the one with the peeling label. The drawer groaned when he pulled it open. Folders leaned sideways in a tilt, tabbed in dates and brittle colors. His fingers stopped just short of the one he’d come for.
Maybe he should straighten that page.
His molars met with a faint clack, tension creeping down his neck as he moved toward the counter, like a tic he didn’t want to have.
He reached for the page, meaning only to slide it back into place, but before his fingers even made contact, he saw it.
A slant in the margin. A loop on a capital F, too slim, and the cross of a t that cut high through the stem. You used to write like that. Upside-down in the corners of briefing packets, reading them from across the table like it didn’t matter that the text was backwards. Spencer used to tilt his head trying to catch the words, and you’d smile softly and never stop writing.
You were there…in Quantico, at the BAU?
He hadn’t seen you, and that couldn’t have been right. He would’ve noticed, of course he would’ve. He noticed everything.
The handwriting, fine. It was distinctive, but not entirely unique. The looped F could’ve been anyone’s, and plenty of people cross their t’s high. Even writing in the margins upside-down, that wasn’t unheard of. Odd, sure, but not impossible. Around 2% of the population exhibited nonstandard spatial habits.
It didn’t mean anything, it didn’t have to be you. Even if he wanted it to be.
…Unless Penelope had meant something by what she said earlier and just last week. An offhand comment about the new contractor handling the sealed juvenile cleanup. Spencer hadn’t asked her to clarify. He’d just nodded. It hadn’t mattered then.
That didn’t mean anything either. He was spiraling, and for no good reason.
Penelope talked constantly. Half of what she said was nonsense or nicknames, the other half borderline illegal, so he’d long ago learned not to take every word to heart. ‘Contractor,’ ‘juvenile cleanup,’it could’ve meant anything. Anyone.
He doubted she even remembered you. Too much time had passed, and you hadn’t opened up to just anyone. Only with people who gave you the time to. Penelope had started to, back then. He remembered she had made you laugh once and it was a real, belly laugh, the kind that made your whole posture change and face light up.
Spencer had wanted to be the one to do that.
He’d almost managed it, until you vanished like most interns eventually did.
He was being ridiculous. Making ghosts out of ink and paper. It wasn’t your handwriting. It couldn’t be. Even if it was, so what?
He wasn’t that fawning boy anymore.
The one who tried to look busy when you walked in, but kept glancing up anyway. Who spoke too quickly when you addressed him, then spent the rest of the day thinking about it. The one who lingered by the coffee machine longer than necessary, just in case you passed by.
He stopped trying to be seen after realizing no one really looked. Not unless he was bleeding or brilliant.
Now, he kept his distance. Made eye contact when necessary, stayed quiet when it wasn’t. No more reaching. No more hoping someone might reach back.
He plucked Penelope’s file from the cabinet like it didn’t matter, like he hadn’t just wasted ten minutes thinking about the past. His grip left a bend in the tab.
No hesitation and absolutely no second glance at the page you might’ve touched. Just right out the door, like it hadn’t rattled something tender in his chest. That stupid mushy place that never hardened right.
He walked out faster than he needed to; his footsteps sounded too loud in the near silent hallway. He adjusted his pace and straightened his shoulders.
Then stopped.
You were coming down the hall, not even ten paces ahead, backlit by the fluorescents, and the sight hit him hard enough to hurt. He rubbed the heel of his palm on his chest as he blinked rapidly. Walking toward him, not actually to him, of course, with something tucked under your arm and your gaze low, reading as you moved. With that exact same walk, the same tilt in your step.
His pulse spiked so suddenly it made him dizzy. What were the odds? No, he thought, don’t calculate them. Don’t give the moment logic.
You looked up just before passing him, probably sensing the shape of something wrong in your path.
For a moment your face didn’t know him, and that stung more than it should have. Then your eyes moved, flicked across his cheeks, his hair, his mouth, and recognition lit across your features like dawn.
“Spencer?” You said it like you didn’t mean to say it out loud just yet, like it slipped out before you could think better of it.
He blinked, mouth parting, and then hoarsely managed, “Hi.”
You didn’t smile, something in his voice must’ve caught you off guard. He didn’t blame you. It sounded different even to him these days.
“Hi,” You said back evenly, and there was something unreadable in it. “It’s been a long time.”
“It has,” He said, and didn’t say how long.
What would be the point? You’d either counted too, or you hadn’t thought of him at all.
You nodded slowly as if you were going to leave it at that. Let the weight of his words settle and drift past, because Spencer wasn’t exactly making conversation easy and he knew it.
Then you paused and frowned slightly as you canted your head.
“Can I ask how you’ve been?” You said carefully, almost reluctant.
He looked at you, then away, something closing off behind his eyes.
“I’ve had better decades.”
His eyes found the framed print across the hall, something abstract with harsh lines and grayscale geometry. Nothing worth looking at, which made it perfect. He focused on the soulless details, not on your pouting mouth or the faint crease near your eye he didn’t remember.
You nodded again, picking up on a signal he hadn’t meant to send. He wasn’t trying to push you away. It just came out that way. If you said it was good to see him, he might actually flinch. He didn’t want a lie, even a kind one. Even if he was the one making himself hard to read.
You moved like you were about to leave with a goodbye on your lips, and he should’ve let you, but the words slipped past his walls anyways, “How have you been?”
You blinked like you hadn’t expected him to care or ask, or maybe you just hadn’t prepared for what you’d say.
“I…I’ve been--” You paused, eyes flicking to his face again. “Good. Busy as a beaver, but that’s good too, I guess.”
Still with the idioms. He remembered the morning you told Morgan not to cry over “spoiled milk,” and he’d corrected you with a laugh. You’d said it right the next day. Spencer had smiled at his desk like a lunatic. You probably forgot, but he certainly didn’t.
The memory warmed something he didn’t want warmed. His mouth twitched, then tightened, and he focused on his breath, on the file label still clutched in his hand, on not feeling it.
The tension in his hand must’ve snagged your attention, your eyes tracked the worn tab between his fingers.
“Wait, is that one of the botched sealed cases? Penelope just told me about a few that hadn’t finished uploading.” You exhaled, like you’d been on that trail too long. “I’ve been trying to match the physicals.”
He shrugged, handing it over without ceremony, but his traitorous fingers didn’t let go right away. They skimmed yours, and it lit his nerves like a flare and instant heat rocketed down his spine.
He didn’t look at you when he let go. Just flatly said, “Penelope didn’t say it was…you.” When your eyebrow raised, he signed as he added, “She should’ve.”
“And why’s that?”
There was no bite in your words, but no tentativeness either. Just unfiltered and simple curiosity, and it disarmed him so thoroughly he couldn’t look anywhere else. His eyes dropped to your mouth and stuck there. He didn’t want to stare, but he just…couldn’t stop. Just waiting to see what else might come out.
The moment you wet your lips, he croaked out, “It would’ve made this easier.”
“Easier how?” You mused.
“Forget it. Doesn’t matter.” He dismissed, just as someone rounded the far corner.
A junior agent with a takeaway cup and a distracted look, clearly trying to slip past without getting involved. You shifted half a step to make room, and so did Spencer, instinctively. His shoulder brushed yours as he moved in front of you. The agent barely glanced up as he passed, gone in seconds, but Spencer didn’t step back.
He just stared…at you, finally.
Your face, that devastatingly sweet face. He used to steal glances, convinced you never noticed. Once, in a dream, you'd let him trace every feature with his fingertips, like a precaution against some future where his sight might fail him.
His hand moved purposefully from your cheekbone first, then chin, then the softness beneath your mouth. You didn’t stop him, just looked at him like you already knew and you’d been waiting.
Your lips parted. He slid his thumb inside, your tongue pressed lightly to the pad of his finger.
He swallowed hard, but the damage was done. His abdomen tightened, a reflex he couldn’t outthink, and he loosed a ragged breath. Shame rushed in behind the thought like floodwater. His jaw clenched as he stepped back.
You traded your weight from the left foot to the right, clearing your throat.
“I used to be easier to talk to, huh?”
Spencer forced his eyes up, only to catch your first smile at him, and, of course, it was lopsided and a little sad. It looked the same and yet completely different. It had grown up without him.
“No,” He said honestly. “I think I got harder to talk to.”
He didn’t think he could’ve smiled anyway, but if he had, it would’ve been sadder than yours.
His, he understood. Yours, he didn’t.
You both hadn’t talked much back then. Well, not often and not deeply. A few scattered conversations over lunch breaks or case files, mostly you asking questions and him rambling through the answers until he’d catch himself and apologize.
Once, you’d asked him if he thought criminals were ever actually remorseful, and he’d talked for eleven straight minutes while you ate pretzels out of a vending machine bag. When he stopped to breathe, you’d just said, “Thank you for taking the time to explain all that for me. I mean it,” like he hadn’t just dominated the whole conversation and overloaded you. He’d gone home warm for days.
So it just made sense you both wouldn’t really talk now, after all this time.
For all his degrees, he’d never quite figured you out the first time, so he doubted he'd do any better this time around.
“I don’t know,” You clasped your hands behind your back, then offered, “I’m still talking to you, aren’t I?”
The fact that it wasn’t flirty made Spencer's mouth dry out.
Flirting, he could’ve ducked or dodged or disbelieved...but sincerity had no handles. Nowhere to hold it and no way to deflect, so it just landed, and it landed violently.
“You are,” He almost left it there. “You’re…different. Not in a bad way.”
Spencer immediately wished he could rewind. He should’ve known better than to try sincerity with a mouth like his. ‘Different’ wasn’t the wrong word. Just empty without the rest of what he meant and hadn’t managed to say.
“You seem different too,” You said, voice mild and sure. “And not in a bad way.”
You shifted slightly, and the fabric of your skirt moved with you, brushing up just enough to expose the cap of one knee.
Spencer saw it and wished he hadn’t.
Years ago, you used to rub your palms there when you were nervous. He remembered it vividly: the way your hands would sweep over the smooth arc of your knees during briefings. Back then, it made him want to comfort you or perhaps just catch your eye and offer a smile, if he was brave enough that day.
Now, he wanted to watch that same hand lift the hem of your skirt slowly. He wanted to see the fabric pushed higher, inch by inch, and not stop until you were open under his stare.
Don’t go there, he thought. Don’t think about your thighs. Don’t think about his hands on them, or worse, his head between them, your fingers in his hair. Don’t think about the way you might whine if he--
He wiped a hand down his face roughly, like he could scrub the thought out.
“Well, that’s generous of you to say.”
He knew what arousal did to the brain: the flood of dopamine, the narrowed focus, the reckless firing of neurons, but science couldn’t explain why it was you. Spencer himself couldn’t explain it. You hadn’t looked at him like that before, you hadn’t really looked at him at all. Somehow it was all different now. He wanted more than a simple glance, meek smile, or the chance at a seat beside you in the briefing room.
He wanted to be wanted by you, by the once-timid girl now with a stronger voice and a straighter spine. The craving made his chest feel tight.
He tore through his chances without sympathy, which implied, foolishly, that there had been any.
You offered a small, closed-lipped smile and stepped aside. “I left a file in the archive room,” You said, gesturing toward the space he’d left only minutes ago.“I should go get it. It…it was nice seeing you again, Spencer.” The moment his brows drew together, you quickly added, “I mean it.”
He didn’t flinch like he thought he would've, but it was hard to imagine you meant it. With how distant he’d been, he wouldn’t have believed himself either.
It felt like you couldn’t wait to get away from him. He couldn’t blame you, but a new crack formed along his heart.
“Yeah, you too. Take care,” He muttered, but hoped you heard more in it than he meant to give away.
As you stepped past, your hand lifted, just lightly, to his wrist. A parting gesture to show you meant what you said.
His pulse jumped, but he kept his eyes forward.
He didn’t watch you go, but he heard the sound of your steps down the hall, as if you hadn’t stopped to break his ribs in the middle of it.
He adjusted the collar of his shirt as he stepped inside, fingers grazing the fabric like it might still be wrong. It was the third one he’d tried…wait, no, the fourth, and he’d ended up back at the first. A pale blue button-down, too nice for a place with sticky menus, but it was the one he didn’t hate the most.
The bar was dimly lit, only softened by amber sconces and laughter. Some kind of music blew through the space, a low-volume mix of late-90s indie rock, if he wasn’t mistaken. It was loud enough to make people lean in to be heard.
Someone jostled past with a drink and a lit cigarette, and Spencer’s body pulled in on itself just slightly.
He could’ve stayed home, should’ve stayed home, but you were there. He didn’t know what he expected from it, if anything, just that he wanted to be near you.
He spotted Penelope first, her hair was unmistakable even in a crowd, and JJ beside her, mid-laugh. They hadn't seen him yet.
You hadn’t noticed him yet.
And for a second, it felt like nothing had changed. As if time had folded in on itself and left him right where he started: unseen.
Then your whole face lit up with a kind of smile he didn’t remember you ever wearing.
It lit some damp, dark chamber in him. It wasn’t just how you looked, but how it felt, like being caught in a warm patch of sun.
Yet, it wasn’t for him.
Whatever Penelope had said, it made JJ laugh behind her hand and shake her head.
He wasn’t sure if he was ready to go over yet, but standing there like a lost coat rack felt worse. It made him feel obvious, like people could tell he didn’t know where to stand or who to be, or that he didn’t belong.
So he moved, cautious and crooked, shoulders too square and jaw too loose.
You were still smiling when he reached the edge of the table, hands tucked into his pockets, eyes drifting across the lineup of half-finished drinks. JJ had something golden with a salt rim, Penelope’s was pink and fizzy with too many garnishes, and yours was just water, a wedge of lemon sliding down the side. For some reason, that made his chest ease a little.
Penelope beamed as she said, “There he is! We were starting to worry you bailed.”
We, he thought. You? Did you worry he wasn’t going to show up?
“What do you want to drink?” Penelope asked, already flagging the server. “They have mocktails, and like, this really weird cucumber soda thing I think you’d secretly love. Or water, obviously. Or--”
He barely heard her after that because there was only one empty seat...right next to you. Statistically, it wasn’t that improbable. Emotionally, it felt like a cosmic dare.
He sat before he could think better of it.
“Sorry I’m late,” He muttered. “Water’s fine.”
The server came over with a polite nod, pen already poised.
“One water for the gentleman,” Penelope said brightly, like she was ordering champagne on his behalf.
Spencer gave the faintest incline of his head, a thanks he couldn’t quite get into words. His hands stayed on his thighs, resisting the urge to tug at his shirt hem, or to glance at you.
That was when he realized JJ was watching him.
He felt the weight of it like a pin between his shoulder blades. He pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth before he turned, meeting her eyes at last.
Her expression didn’t switch, not much, but her eyebrows raised the faintest degree. The smallest acknowledgement. She knew, and he knew she knew. He just wouldn’t say it, not even to himself.
He swallowed, unease crowded behind his sternum, and forced his gaze back down to the condensation already slipping down the side of his glass that had just been dropped off.
Penelope swirled the straw in her drink like it might jog her memory as she tried to push past the tension he knew was his fault. “Oh! You were saying something about how you ended up in records, right? Before Mr. Tall-and-Troubled walked in.” She said, eyes landing back on you.
“Actually, you didn’t really let her explain before you jumped in asking about hotties.” JJ's voice was mellow, faintly amused.
Penelope said with a wave, not looking the least bit sorry, “Okay, fine, I got curious, geez. But I was going to circle back.”
Spencer took a drink, though it didn’t help the heat crawling up his neck. He didn’t want to picture your job, your building, the people who saw you every day. He didn’t want to think about the way they might look at you, or worse, what they might imagine: your voice caught in your throat, your back arching if someone’s mouth touched the skin just above your waistband.
He had no right to that thought either, but it was his regardless, and it made him feel sick to think someone else might be chasing the same one.
His gaze lifted before he could stop it, scanning the bar in pieces. No men were looking, not at you and not at JJ or Penelope, but he kept checking anyway.
“In my defense,” You said graciously, glancing between them, “It’s hard to compete with that level of curiosity.” You adjusted the straw in your drink, then added, “I think I was saying that I did some state records work? Nothing glamorous. Then my mentor moved over to a DOJ preservation project and brought me in. Mostly forensic crosswalks, retention anomalies, that kind of thing.”
Penelope perked up almost instantly.
“Wait, so do you ever find, like, weird gaps? Stuff that got buried?” Her eyes widened. “Tell me someone’s hidden a whole second identity somewhere. I live for that.”
Spencer spoke before you could, “That kind of thing doesn’t really happen in federal records. Not in sealed holdings, at least. Everything’s cross-indexed.”
He turned slightly, spotting your small nod, then your eyes. There was a twinkle there, like you were in on something with him.
“But,” You added, voice easy and light, “I did flag a series of legacy files once that turned out to be tied to a contractor with two aliases. Nothing criminal, just sloppy merging, but I still think it’s sorta weird.”
Penelope gasped. “See? I knew you found buried treasure.”
JJ tilted her head, “I don’t know how you keep your focus with all that data. I’d go cross-eyed in a week.”
You gave a small scoff, shaking your head. “Says the profiler. You can track the inside of someone’s mind with nothing but a few interviews and case notes. That takes more focus than I’ll ever have.”
JJ reached over and gave your hand a squeeze, smiling in a way that was open and sincere. You returned it without hesitation, your mouth curving gently as your fingers curled back around hers.
A faint warmth sparked under his ribs, tangled with an ache he didn’t want to name, tightening before he could press it down.
Penelope lifted her glass, eyes darting around the table. “Okay, but where’s my compliment? ‘Cause I feel like my computer sorcery is going wickedly unappreciated here.”
Your smile went straight to Penelope, “Honestly, I don’t know anyone who makes the impossible look easier.”
A small part of him braced for you to turn next, to let that sweetness land on him. The thought itself made him flush with shame, and when it didn’t come, he swallowed hard, pretending he hadn’t expected it.
He turned toward the noise of the bar. Everywhere he looked, people leaned close, brushed lips, shared something private in the middle of the crowd. A cruel reminder of what belonged so easily to others, and never to him.
Out of the corner of Spencer’s vision, he saw Penelope’s eyes narrow playfully.
“You’ve hardly said two words since you sat down. Talk to us, long arms.”
He shifted in his seat, not quite looking at anyone. “I like listening to you guys talk.”
“Aw, see? He does love us. I knew it.” Penelope leaned toward JJ, grinning like she’d won something.
JJ gave a quiet laugh, tilting her head just slightly. “Of course he does.”
That was all it took for the two of them to slip into an easy back-and-forth, laced with years of shorthand. Spencer picked up pieces here and there until he noticed your attention settle on him instead.
He wondered if his collar looked wrong again, if his hair was sticking up at the back, if he was sitting too stiff, since he couldn’t relax into the chair at all.
You didn’t look away. “I picked up The Left Hand of Darkness a while back. It reminded me of you, probably because I remember you with Dune once.”
His head tipped in your direction after a beat, slower than it should’ve been. You, meanwhile, had already turned fully toward him, shoulders angled his way, showing that you were ready to listen to only him.
Running from you, at least inside himself, was getting harder to manage, less convincing every time he tried.
“What’d you think of it?”
You leaned into your palm, chewing at your lip, deciding how to put it.
He stared longer than he should’ve at your mouth, tongue dragging over his own lips before he even realized. He imagined lemon still fresh on your tongue from the wedge in your water, cut through with the wax-sweet of cherry, maybe strawberry, from the tint on your lips. The thought burned through him before he could shove it away.
He wanted to taste it for himself, he wanted to kiss you so, so badly.
As you spoke, he didn’t tear his eyes away from your mouth, “I thought it was going to be more…I don’t know, sci-fi? Spaceships, laser guns, but it was just these two people trying to understand each other.” You gave a sheepish smile. “I didn’t expect it to feel so slow. Or so sad.”
“Le Guin wasn’t interested in technology as much as she was in people.” He paused. “A lot of people miss that the science is just a container and not the point.”
You nodded earnestly, tapping your nails lightly against your jaw like you were thinking something through.
“Yeah,” You said, “I thought it was leading somewhere else. Like there was going to be some big reveal or twist or…something.” You laughed under your breath. “When it ended, I just sat there thinking, ‘Great, so I read the whole thing wrong.’”
The corner of his mouth pulled up just a bit, and he didn’t fight it that time.
“Have you ever read The Dispossessed?” He asked as he rearranged himself in his seat, pulling his legs from under the table so he could face more toward you.
To be casual and comfortable, he told himself. Just so he wasn’t half-twisted anymore. In the process, his knee knocked into yours, and the contact drew his attention away from what he was about to say next. He looked down for a second, cleared his throat as heat rushed up his neck.
“Sorry,” He muttered. “It’s still Le Guin, but a, uh - different tone. You might like it more.”
You opened your mouth like you were about to say something, and maybe you were, but before you could, the song changed and Penelope rejoiced across the table.
“Oh, my god! This song,” She said, waving toward the speakers like she couldn’t believe it had taken this long to hear something decent. “Spencer, this is the one that used to be on that awful diner jukebox in New Mexico, remember? The one with the green tile and the chairs that stuck to everything?”
One Headlight by The Wallflowers. He blinked and for a second, he could smell the place; the burnt coffee, fryer oil, the lemon cleaner they used on the booths.
She leaned across JJ, eyes bright. “You made us stop there three times in one week. All for that sad little peach pie.”
He blinked again, pulled back into the sound of her voice before he could register the loss of yours.
“It was good,” He said, then his gaze flicked to you, then back down to the damp napkin on the table. “The crust was actually laminated. You don’t see that in diners.”
Whatever you were about to say, it was gone.
“I remember you asking if they made it from scratch.” JJ said, half-smiling. “And didn’t the waitress say something sarcastic like, ‘We churn our own butter too’?”
The music just barely hid your laugh, and something in him eased at the sound of it. Enough to make him recline back in his chair. His arm shifted with him, draping along the back of yours without much thought.
A moment later, you leaned into the backrest. He saw the change but missed everything beneath it; how your hands clasped tightly in your lap and the breath you didn’t quite let out all at once.
Penelope gripped the edge of the table with a theatrical sigh. “Okay, well now I want pie, or fries, or something. I’m starving.” She looked around the table. “Is it weird to order food this late? I need something fried and shameful. Anyone else?”
JJ nodded without hesitation. “Fries. Always fries.”
You reached for your water for a sip, then set it down again. “Oh, no. Nothing for me.” Then, with an easy motion, you stood. “I’m actually gonna run to the bathroom. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
Spencer didn’t even move, his arm stayed where it was; resting behind an empty chair.
He could still feel the slight warmth in the wood under his hand. His fingers moved without meaning to, drifting over the grain like he didn’t want to lose what little was left.
Penelope and JJ were debating between fries and nachos. He heard the word "sriracha" and the clatter of a menu being folded, but none of it landed.
Nothing was wrong, he told himself that over and over again. You’d said you’d be right back, but something about the way you’d left, so quickly after the ease between you two.
It burst a seam in whatever calm he'd managed to hold together.
His brain kept replaying it, like there was a cue he’d missed and couldn’t quite rewind to find. Or maybe there wasn’t anything to find, and that was the problem. He didn’t know what had happened, if anything.
Penelope asked the passing server if they had truffle oil, just to “put it out into the universe,” she said, and JJ laughed. Spencer sat there, trying to school his face into something neutral, something not inward and broken.
That familiar, ridiculous feeling of trying so hard not to mess something up and somehow doing so anyway.
“Spence,” JJ said, cutting clean through the commotion.
Her stare didn’t waver, not even when a stool scraped across the floor behind her and a drink tray wobbled past at her back. The look wasn’t particularly harsh, but it didn’t leave him anywhere to hide either.
He shifted, and met her eyes almost reluctantly.
“You gonna tell me what that was?” JJ nodded toward the empty seat. “Because it wasn’t nothing, so don’t try to say otherwise.”
His arm recoiled before he could think about it, as if the chair had gone hot under his skin.
“It was nothing,” He said quickly, fast enough to make it obvious it wasn’t.
“Then why do you look like someone drop-kicked your favorite first edition?” Penelope asked, almost cooed with a sympathetic frown. “I mean that lovingly.”
He didn’t respond, he only shook his head rashly and exhaled quietly through his nose.
Spencer let his eyes drift across the room; past the tables, past the bar, past every patron. He didn’t mean to look toward the hallway where you’d gone, but his fixation went there anyway.
It felt like he was trying to summon you with nothing but focus. To draw you back to him. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted you to save him from the conversation, or if he just wanted to see your face again.
Not until JJ tapped her knuckles against the table, grabbing his attention once more.
“You like her.” JJ said it like a fact he couldn’t deny. “Does she know that?”
He truly didn’t want to say anything. Mostly because he didn’t know what he’d say, or if saying it would make it worse, or make things somehow real.
But would that be so bad? Making it real? It wasn’t like he hadn’t already made a fool of himself tonight, one way or another. It wasn’t a crime to like someone, or to want something. Even if he didn’t know what, exactly, he wanted.
He couldn’t even tack on “if anything” anymore. He did want something.
“No,” He said finally, and it came out quieter than he meant it to, under all the noise.
He hoped, almost desperately, they didn’t hear him.
Unfortunately, they did hear, and JJ didn’t smile, but she nodded, understanding more than he wanted her to.
“You don’t have to say anything you’re not ready to. Not to us, at least. Just don’t pretend there’s nothing you want to say to her.” JJ said.
The thought of saying something, anything, to you made his heart falter. What would he even say? That he remembered how kind you’d been, even back then. That your voice still sounded the same, a little deeper now, more certain, but still warm. That you’d always given people time to talk, even when they didn’t deserve it. He surely didn’t.
That your full laugh had split him in two. That it hurt a little, in the best way, of course.
That you looked different, but not really. Your hair had changed. Your mouth hadn’t. Your lips still pressed together the same way when you were thinking. You even had smile lines now, and they were small but permanent, like you’d finally felt free enough to smile more often.
And your body--
He pressed his palm into his thigh, felt the muscle displace under the pressure.
He thought about your body more than he wanted to admit. The shape of it, the weight of it, the imagined heat of your skin beneath his unruly hands. The ridiculous, aching need to kiss along the curve of your hip, your stomach, the soft skin just behind your ear. Every inch he wanted to touch, out of reverence, out of some dumb, dizzy hope to be allowed that close to someone who made him feel so alive…so completely.
It embarrassed him, the sheer detail of his own memory. How vividly he “remembered” things he hadn’t even experienced. Places he hadn’t touched, but still longed to anyway. He had to be insane. Had to be, without a doubt.
“Well, when you do figure it out,” Penelope said, leaning in a little. “Can you make it at least a little swoony? Some girls like to swoon. I think she might. She seems like the type.”
He didn’t even know how to talk to you, let alone how to make you swoon.
“I don’t know,” JJ said, her laugh mellower now. “She doesn’t seem like the swooning type. Maybe when we first knew her, but not now.”
“What? Yes she is,” Penelope replied immediately, mock-offended. “You’re telling me she wouldn’t melt if he did something heartfelt? Please.”
They kept going, blurring into the background. He couldn’t focus on their back and forth while he was having his own internal debate, rewinding every moment he’d had with you over the last few hours, even that brief exchange by the archive room. Trying to pin it all against the version of you he used to know. The quiet intern with too many notebooks and the long silences.
Would you want something swoony? Would that feel too forced? Too obvious? Did you even want anything at all?
He hadn’t a clue what you expected from him. Worse, he wasn’t sure what part of him you were even seeing. He’d been trying to offer the least shattered version of himself, hoping that would be enough, but fearing it only made him seem lifeless.
The questions kept relentlessly circling, tripping over each other and making even more of a mess. He couldn’t sit with them any longer.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he pushed back from the table and stood.
“I’ll be right back.”
He wove through the crowd, dodging half-full beers and the aimless stumbles of men who’d been drinking since before the sun went down. The hallway near the bathrooms was narrow and dim, tiled in that way-too-clean fake marble.
He stood stupidly in line for the men’s room, pretending he was waiting his turn as he eyed the door across the way. A minute later, an older woman stepped out, purse clutched tight.
Not you.
His eyes lingered on the door even after it shut. You weren't there, which meant - what? That you’d slipped past him, the entire group? He watched you walk in this direction. He turned slightly, scanning the narrow hallway. There was a service door at the end, half-shadowed and unlabeled. Would you sneak out without saying goodbye? That didn’t track. Or did something bad happen?
His eyes lingered on the exit, more shadow than shape the longer he looked. Something bad, something bad, something bad. The thought rooted before he could pull it up.
He tried to reason with it, to flatten the rising noise in his head, but the cases started flashing through anyway; reports of women disappearing between the bar and the parking lot, assaults in back hallways, just out of view. He’d read them, had studied them, and interviewed families after the fact.
He tried to tell himself it was nothing. That you were fine, that he was being irrational, but that’s what the wrong people always said after the fact, and Spencer wasn’t built for after the fact.
He hated how easily he could picture it. Hated that he couldn’t tell if the panic rising in him was rational, or just his own selfish fear.
His feet moved before his thoughts could catch up. A push through the emergency bar on the service door, the hollow metal clattered behind him, and suddenly the night was impossibly louder than inside, too wide and obscure.
He scanned the alley: random bricks, overflowing garbage bins, grease-stained cardboard. Absolutely nothing important, nothing he cared about.
Maybe behind the dumpster at the other end? He walked over, eyes adjusting to the flickering light. Just fleeting shadows and roaches. No shoes, no figure, no you.
Then his head turned toward the employee cars, all lined like teeth in the back lot, and his chest tightened. He checked between the bumpers, looking for a shape too still, a coat crumpled, just anything.
Then he rounded the corner of the building, heart already pitching sideways, toward the front lot…
…and stopped.
You, finally. Thankfully.
There were a few people loitering near their cars, laughing way too loudly, the glow of cigarettes painting little arcs in the dark. Spencer eyed them wearily as he approached you.
You were off to the side, leaned against the brick wall of the building like you’d been there a while. Arms crossed, head bowed slightly, eyes fixed on a pebble.
An invisible pressure released in his chest, enough to let him breathe, but it was immediately replaced by something else. Something heavier and murky, because if nothing bad had happened…then why were you out there, alone?
He shoved his hands in his front pockets as he stepped off the lot, onto the narrow concrete stretch by the wall.
The scuff of his shoes nabbed your attention.
You looked up, and gasped, hand flying to your chest like your heart had leapt all the way up to your throat.
Then, seeing it was him, your shoulders dropped.
It shouldn’t have meant anything to him, but it did. He’d been so sure you wouldn’t want him to be the one who found you out here.
“I just needed some air and some quiet. I was about to come back in - I was, I just--” You trailed off, gave a helpless sort of gesture, then smiled; small, sheepish, and a little guilty.
“I thought you left.” The words came out flat, a bit too honest. He shook his head, frustrated with himself. “Sorry. That’s not fair. I just...didn’t know where you were.”
His voice caught on the last word, and he looked away, embarrassed and ashamed.
You blinked so quickly a lash landed on your cheek as you said, “I wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. I just needed a minute. That’s all.” You looked down, then back up at him, more serious now. “I’m sorry I worried you guys - you, I’m sorry if I worried you.”
He gnawed at the inside of his cheek as he stood across from you. Both of you watched the other wholly, like a single glance held too long could give something vital away. Breath shallow, eyes way too full.
He wanted to say something. Anything. A confession, a question, just enough to close the distance, even if the answers stung.
But it wasn’t him who spoke first.
“Spencer,” You said gently, “Have I done something to make you uncomfortable? You’re kind of all over the place with me, and I just - I don’t want to make you feel weird.”
He closed his eyes for a second. It touched the nerve he’d been avoiding: the fear that he was hurting you without meaning to, and the worst part, he couldn’t say for sure that he wasn’t. And how maddening it was, because he liked you, he wanted you close, but wanting someone and knowing how to handle that want were two entirely different things.
Right then, he only knew one thing for certain: he wanted you, and he couldn’t deny it anymore.
Entirely. Terribly. Sincerely. He craved you.
“No, never,” He said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “I haven’t been handling things that great lately.”
For a very long time actually, he thought, but you threw another wrench in the works.
He could tell you were trying to make sense of his pitiful explanation by how your brows pinched briefly, but couldn’t, so you only gave a defeated nod. It made him feel even farther from you than before, that he’d just created another unspoken mess neither of you knew how to unspool.
With the smallest, kindest smile, enough to soften the space between you, you whispered, “I hope things get better, or just easier.”
Spencer lowered his eyes, the movement almost ceremonial, as if to bow before your words rather than risk breaking them with his own. His head bent toward you with mute appreciation.
The spell cracked when the lot roared alive again. A group of men burst out. All sweat and swagger, laughing over some indecipherable joke no one would remember in the morning.
“Not much difference between inside and out the bar, huh?” You said wistfully as you pushed off from the wall. “I guess we should head back in.”
He didn’t move, not an inch, as you lingered there in the low light, waiting for him. He felt it, the expectation that he’d fall in step, that he’d make the choice simple. He just couldn’t, not yet, at least. He wanted to move with you, every instinct pulling him forward, but his body refused.
Because stepping back inside meant breaking that precious bubble, that fragile pocket where it was only the two of you.
He only wanted more of this, more of you to himself, though he knew it was selfish with Penelope and JJ waiting inside.
“We don’t have to go back in yet. We could sit in my car for a few minutes, if you want.”
You went silent, eyes on the pavement, your hands moving like they didn’t know where to go; fussing at your cuticles, then twisting the fabric of your dress, then behind your back in a restless clasp. It wasn’t a no, but it wasn’t an easy yes either.
Spencer stood there, still not moving, suddenly afraid that his offer had cornered you somehow, that it put pressure where there wasn’t meant to be any.
Maybe he should take it back, he thought. Say he hadn’t meant anything by it.
Before he could, you took one step to him and said, “Yeah, okay. Just for a bit.”
You said it so simply he almost didn’t process it. His thoughts kept running, kept planning how to backtrack, how to unmake the stilted moment, but now there was nowhere to put them. The words were already out there. You’d stepped past him and off the curb.
So he did too.
Both of you fell into step without speaking. Not perfectly, not all at once, he took a few strides too slow at first, then picked up half a beat, just as you adjusted to match him.
He scanned the lot along the way, reading everything around him. The parked cars with fogged windows, taillights that were still warm, snippets of sloshed conversations carried on the breeze. One man leaned against his hood, talking to someone out of sight. Another man, standing near his car, looked up as you passed and didn’t look away fast enough.
Spencer’s hand rose, light against your lower back as he guided you.
His car waited a few paces from the far end of the lot, tucked in a patch of dimness where the last streetlight had long since burned out. The sedan was older but clean, silver dulled slightly by time.
Spencer pulled his keys from his pocket, and unlocked the car with a chirp. He stepped forward, not saying anything, and opened the passenger door like it was instinct.
You murmured a quiet “thank you” as you ducked inside, and though he didn’t speak, he lingered there for a second before making his way around to the driver’s side.
The door shut with a muted thud that made the car tremble just slightly, and then the silence spread between you, so sudden and almost ironically overwhelming. There was no longer any music, no voices and no street noise leaking in. Just the hush of the cabin and the faint sound of your breathing that he could tell you were failing to steady.
He was too, especially as you moved, smoothing the bottom of your dress as you scooted back against the seat. The burnt umber linen flowed over your legs.
Spencer kept his eyes forward. Well, he really tried to.
But he could see the way it settled mid-thigh. Shorter than anything he’d ever seen you wear. The hem inched higher when you folded one knee over the other, baring the plush slope of your upper leg, and Spencer’s breath hitched before he could stop it.
He hadn’t meant to look, and definitely hadn’t meant to keep looking.
But it didn’t even matter when he forced his view out the windshield, he couldn’t unsee that image. Couldn’t unfeel the pull of it, the foolhardy thought of sliding down into the narrow space at your feet, pressing himself between your legs until you had no choice but to touch him finally, to tell him everything he’d never been brave enough to ask before.
He wanted to know what you’d thought of him all those years ago, when you were mousy and reserved, tucking yourself behind casefiles and ill-fitting clothes, and he was the one fumbling over coffee lids, speaking too fast, trying too hard. Back when his hair was too long, his ties too wide, and his eagerness came out sideways until it embarrassed even him.
He wanted to hear you say what you’d meant back by the archive room: You seem different too, and not in a bad way.
He wanted to know what you saw in him now, after everything.
The thought knotted all ugly in his chest, tight enough he had to clear his throat, and his legs shifted, knees spreading as he tugged at the fabric of his trousers. Such a clumsy attempt at looking casual when every nerve in him was anything but.
Maybe you saw the jitter in his hand, or maybe he’d already fractured the peace so badly you let it go when you said, “I like your shirt. Light blue is one of my favorite colors.”
He didn’t turn toward you. He kept his vision pinned to the dark glass of the window, his fingers tugging at the cuffs, working the button loose and fastening it again, needing the distraction.
“I remember that,” He murmured after a beat. “That light blue was your favorite.”
“You did?”
“Yeah,” He said, I remember the cornflower blue mug you kept at your desk. In some of the socks you wore, just peeking out above your shoes. Just little flashes of it everywhere.
“I remember your collars used to be slightly crooked sometimes,” You said, voice loaded with fondness. “I always wanted to fix them, but I couldn’t muster up the courage to even tell you.” With your pause, he slowly turned his head toward you again, and there it was, a wry smile tugging endearingly at your mouth. “It’s doing it again, it’s crinkled on the left.”
It had been fine when he left the house, he remembered checking. Twice. Then again, he’d fussed with his reflection the whole drive over. From his collar, to his hair, his cuffs, back to his hair. As if it really mattered, like any of it might make a difference.
Instinctively, he reached up to smooth it, fingertips grazing the edge, but then he stopped, his hand stalling mid-air as you spoke…
“Would it be okay if I…?” You asked, already starting to lift your hand, but slow enough that he could stop you. “You know, just…eleven years late.”
At first, he just looked at you, and you looked right back.
It was as if time itself had circled in on that moment, tightening the loop until it touched down in the middle of the car, until it found the first glance you’d ever shared, long ago across a cluttered bullpen, and layered it over this one.
Neither of you dared move yet, not even a breath too loud, only the look, and the thousand things it carried: over a decade of almosts, of silent moments, of what ifs folded neatly into what now.
He didn’t trust his voice not to splinter, so he only angled his head toward you. Not a full turn, but enough to expose the fold on the left, enough to say yes without saying anything at all.
You leaned in with such care that it made his stomach twist as your fingers found the ruffle and pressed the fabric back into shape. He could feel your breath, humid and uneven and gentle, stroking the cords of his neck, and he couldn’t help it, the way his pulse surged hard behind his ribs.
If he turned now, just a little, his lips would find your cheek. If you looked up, if you tilted your chin, he could kiss you.
He thought he’d know what your lips felt like after all this time wondering.
“Done,” You murmured, but didn’t move away as your hand slowed against his collar until it rested completely.
Please please please don’t pull away, he thought, the words between plea and panic. Every blink of your lashes felt like a warning, like the flutter of something waking up and realizing where it was, what it had done. Like the twitch of a fawn’s ear right before the brush moved.
He wanted, no - needed - to keep you close, even if he was the monster in the overwood.
Before he could second-guess himself; gently, his fingers closed around yours as he guided them to his cheek, and held them there with a light press. The warmth was immediate, sinking in so deep and too fast. He hadn’t meant to want it so much, especially hadn’t meant to show it so impulsively, but it was there and utterly undeniable. It embarrassed him how little resistance he’d managed.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.” He said above a whisper.
“I don’t even think I can put it into words.” You said, and your thumb swept gently along his jaw as if that might explain it better.
It didn’t.
“Try,” He held your hand tighter.
“I…what about you?” You asked instead, voice almost inaudible. “What are you thinking, Spencer?”
His head dipped, fingers slackening around yours, just shy of letting go.
His voice barely surfaced, “I was thinking about kissing you,” He said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”
Long enough that saying it out loud would’ve made him sound like a man who’d built some ridiculous fantasy, all starry-eyed and grasping at things that never really belonged to him.
He’d never really been inside your world. He wasn’t then and wasn’t now. Just a background figure, a name in passing, maybe a fleeting glance here and there, and yet, he wanted you with a force that didn’t quite make sense.
How do you say that out loud? How do you admit that you’ve spent years aching over someone you barely got to know, someone who left, lived a life without you, and then reappeared like a ghost you never stopped seeing?
It was outrageous, gravely unfair, and somehow all-consuming at the same time.
“And I’ve wanted you to kiss me for a long time.”
His mind scrambled to calculate what your “long time” meant. Years? Months? Since tonight? But his body didn’t wait for an answer.
He leaned in too fast, too desperate, and his lips caught the corner of your mouth instead. You gasped, before your hands rose to either side of his face and kept him level and steady, right where you wanted him.
Right where he wanted to be.
The second kiss found your mouth perfectly, guided into place, and it was nothing and somehow everything like he’d imagined. It was slower, so much sadder, and infinitely sweeter.
He hadn’t expected your lips to be that soft. Well, maybe he had. He certainly imagined them as tender and unreal and devastating, but the truth was worse, because now he actually knew. Now he knew how they felt, how you tasted - raspberry, not strawberry or cherry. How you kissed him like you wouldn’t ever have another chance to.
He’d never, ever be able to forget it.
Because all that wanting terrified him, with how sharp it was and how full. Perhaps the night would end and you’d forget it all, or that your mouth had been some trick of the light and your fingers on his collar had never really happened.
He deepened the kiss with a cautious, devotional press of his tongue, like he thought maybe if he kissed you thoroughly enough, the years wouldn’t matter. That maybe your soul would meet him halfway.
A guttural, helpless sound slipped from him the moment your tongue met his.
His hand rose to cradle the back of your head. He needed you to stay exactly where you were, no floating away.
The whimper that left you pulled him under, then your fingers curled into the longer strands at the back of his head and gave a slight tug.
Your lips barely parted from his. The space between you wasn’t even a breath wide. Foreheads pressed together and noses bumped as you panted, visibly wrecked, like the air couldn’t find your lungs fast enough.
He should’ve been satisfied. That one kiss should’ve been enough to last him another decade, but it wouldn’t.
“Please,” He sighed, lips grazing yours. “That wasn’t enough, just one more.”
You gave him a simple peck, lips barely touched his for more than a few seconds. A kiss too brief, too petal-soft, too careful. It unjustly tormented him with how small it was compared to everything he felt.
He leaned in before he could help it - not that he would’ve - seizing your mouth again with more intensity, spates upon spates of crushing desire.
He couldn’t see the smile so much as feel it; a gentle tilt of your mouth into his, like you’d just unlocked some long-buried myth of Spencer Reid. That you finally saw it: how badly he wanted you, how ruinously close he was to falling apart.
‘One more’ would never be enough.
You fisted the fabric at his chest, drawing him closer until the console pressed hard against his ribs and you couldn’t pull anymore. He bent anyway, content to let the plastic edge dig into him. As if it was proof you wanted him close enough for it to hurt.
His free hand closed around your wrist where it gripped his shirt, thumb resting over your pulse, as his mouth changed. Wetter, sloppier, with no real shape to it anymore. Just breath and tongue and the throaty sound it pulled out of him as he dragged you closer too.
You hit the console with a jolt, belly first, and it only made him grab harder after hearing you whine.
“Spencer, Spen--” You stammered between his incessant kisses.
You squirmed, trying to ease the angle, hip twisting against the console as you murmured something under your breath. Probably ow, or maybe hold on because he was being way too bold and ambitious, borderline unforgiving.
He didn’t let you go. Not an inch or a millimeter if that comfort wasn’t closer, and it wasn’t.
“No, come here,” He rasped, voice frayed.
He pulled you straight into his lap, your knees bracketing his, arms draped loosely around his neck. Your dress gathered high at your thighs, the hem bunched where his palms curved underneath, holding the backs of your legs.
Like he needed to feel every inch of your weight to believe you were real, not just in one of his daydreams, where nothing had mass and he could never quite quantify a single thing. Where he could never get the shape of your body absolutely right, never accurately remember how your voice sounded, never once imagine the exact way you’d taste.
He buried his face in the crook of your neck, needing one more proof point; scent.
Something floral and sugary, likely jasmine and pear, the kind of perfume that clung to sweaters and pillowcases. Underneath it, the real you bled through; warm skin, faint shampoo, a trace of salt. Something he’d never be able to replicate in his memory.
Your head turned slightly, shoulder shifting beneath his cheek. He felt the swivel before you spoke.
“Spencer,” You crooned, eyes flicking toward the glass on each side. “Someone could see us.”
He didn’t pull back, didn’t lift his face. Just let his fingers press into the plush curve of your thighs.
“Next time,” He murmured, “We’ll be somewhere no one can see.” His voice cracked as he added, “And I’ll take my time then.”
The second the words left him, his whole body tensed. Wanting was one thing, but wanting again, the suggestion of after, that was too much. That was greedy. That was a boy’s hope, and he didn’t get to be that anymore.
You pressed both hands to his chest, trying to lean back far enough to see him. Your spine hit the steering wheel with a dull thunk, but you didn’t flinch or reposition yourself again, but his hands loosened instinctively, senselessly.
He tried not to look right at you as he turned his face toward your shoulder, toward the heat he already missed, but you found his chin and lifted. He didn’t even resist, he just blinked up at you with shallow breaths and repentant eyes.
“You want a next time?” You asked, like it hurt to say.
He didn’t understand why your voice broke like that, why asking him that question sounded like a wound ripped open.
Unless you didn’t believe he meant it. Unless you thought he’d take what he wanted and vanish. That the whole thing had been a fluke, some lapse in his otherwise sound judgment. Maybe you thought he only wanted you right there, not after, not anywhere else.
He searched for a better reason, anything other than that, and found nothing but guilt.
He saw it, clear as day. How every moment up until now had written a different story, one where he was closed off, unreadable, at arms-length. Always just out of reach.
In the hallway, at the bar, and on the sidewalk outside.
He hadn’t offered you comfort when you reached for it. Hadn’t met you emotionally, even when you’d tried to crack him open. He’d watched you smile so freely now and hadn’t even smiled back, watched you hesitate and hadn’t soothed it. And now he’d kissed you like he couldn’t function without it, and expected you to believe that meant something.
That was so very cruel, and he hadn’t meant to be cruel.
The burn behind his eyes hit hard, but he didn’t blink it away. He wouldn’t let himself look away either. He held your stare.
“I want a lot of things when it comes to you.”
You shook your head, eyes suddenly fixed on the line of buttons at his chest as your fingers toyed with one.
“You want a lot of things when it comes to me…” You said slowly, testing the shape of the words, then your lips twisted before you added, “Show me one of them then?”
It was mercy you weren’t pulling away, that you weren’t done with him.
He should’ve said something better and way sooner. He should’ve done a lot of things.
Should’ve asked you questions in the hallway, real and sincere ones, instead of pretending he wasn’t desperate to know what had changed. Should’ve joined in at the bar instead of sitting off to the side like a shadow, listening without adding a single thing.
Yet, you were still there, asking him to show you what he hadn’t been brave enough to say, and that time, he wouldn’t fail you.
“Anything for you. Anything,”
He smoothed his hand along the side of your face first, taking in the warmth of your skin again, the curve of your cheekbone, the texture of the tiny hairs near your ear. Down your neck, where he paused, his thumb brushing once over your pulse. To your shoulder, then your arm. Where goosebumps lingered from the very first second he’d touched you. He smoothed them down, wanting to calm the reaction the same way he wished he could calm the ache in your eyes. With nothing but care.
His other hand drifted lower, skimming the back of your thigh again with his fingertips, then the front, noticing the jump of your muscles there. The skin there was softer, thinner somehow, like the sun hadn’t touched that part of you in months. A few loose threads clung there too, static-welded. He brushed them off gently, careful not to press too hard, worried even that could leave a mark.
He needed to remember every detail, and he would. If his memory ever gave out, he’d relearn you with his hands. Again and again, until he got it right.
Your legs shifted wider without thought, a reflex you didn’t seem to notice or correct, like your body had decided for you. So, he followed wordlessly, his touch traveling inward, across the delicate skin of your inner thigh, then just beneath the hem of your dress.
He wanted to go higher, but he held himself where he was, letting the want stretch deliriously long between his fingertips and the place he hadn’t yet touched.
His hands ached with the want of more, but he gave it to his mouth instead as he leaned in a little too quickly, lips finding the side of your throat to place a tender open-mouthed kiss. Then another, lower, and then one just beneath your jaw, longer and hungrier.
He needed to leave a trace somewhere you couldn’t brush off.
He kissed the other side of your throat, then nipped at the skin just beneath your ear, a flick of tongue and the faintest pressure from his teeth.
“I want to show you another one,” He drawled, each word slower than the last. “Of the things I want.” He kissed your jaw once more. “Let me make you feel it.”
The turn of your head nudged his jaw, a pivot that pulled him away before he meant to stop, and he felt your gaze flick outward again.
“Tell me if you want to stop,” He said quietly. “Just say it and I will. I promise.”
He’d have done anything you asked him to right then. Anything. Said it, proved it, dropped it.
He didn’t care that you both were in a parking lot, didn’t care about the hour or the press of the world beyond the windows. All of it faded, unimportant and colorless, so long as no one took this from him, so long as you stayed.
But he cared if you cared.
Silk-light fingers trailed down his arm to his wrist until they reached his hand still resting at your thigh. You guided him higher and higher, like you knew exactly what he wanted but wanted it more.
“I don’t care about anything else right now.” You murmured, needy and sure. “I just want you.”
The sound of it, the certainty and urgency, punched square through him. His breath caught, his hips jerked up before he could stop them. A low groan tore from him as your gaze dropped, landing on the thick press of him straining through his pants.
His hand didn’t need to be led anymore; his thumb traced along the center of your underwear, where the fabric clung to you with heat and dampness. Even through it, he felt the plush seam of you underneath…so soaked, so sensitive, and parted just enough that the pad of his thumb skimmed every curve and dip of your core.
That told him everything - how much you wanted this and wanted him, and it shattered the last of his restraint.
He gripped your thighs tight, dragging you forward in his lap, mouth snatching yours in a kiss that was all tongue and shameless longing. He rutted up into you tentatively at first, then his breath hitched as he swore he could feel the slick drag of your panties through his pants. He thrust up again, harder that time, needing more and more.
Your hands clutched at his shoulders, nails digging through the blue linen as you rocked against him, gasping into his mouth like you couldn’t get close enough either.
Want, when it came from you, wasn’t just arousing; it was unbearable because he wanted to devour it, to coax every tremble out of you and feel it in his own bones, to lose himself in what you’d let him give you.
He brought both hands to your face, cupping it fully, palms warm against your cheeks with your hair trapped flat beneath them.
The kiss stopped so he could whisper a confession, “I don’t want to want you like this,” Forehead to forehead. “So much it scares me, so much I don’t think I’ll know how to stop.”
“How do you want me?” Your voice was mild and curious as you cupped his face like he was cupping yours. “We don’t have to stop.” You pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, one under his eye, his temple, then to the crease between his brows. “I don’t want to.”
The corner of his mouth twitched and he worried he might break. Then, reverently and deeply, he kissed you so he wouldn’t. It felt like you’d just offered him something he’d spent his whole life pretending not to need.
“I want you here,” He admitted, nudging your nose with his. “And after this…I-I’ll never stop wondering how I ever got this lucky. I’ll give you everything I have, if you’ll let me.”
Your hips slowly rolled down over his, forcing a broken sound from deep in his throat.
Spencer’s hands slipped from your face to your waist, only to grip hard, holding you in place. His erection pressed firm against your center, the contact nearly too much.
His voice broke close to your ear, “If you do that again, I’ll take you right here like I said I wanted to. I don’t care who sees.”
You didn’t answer with words. Instead, you leaned in and snatched his bottom lip between your teeth, a sweet little bite that made him groan, before grinding down on him the best you could under his hold.
Once again, his mouth was on yours, capturing you in a kiss so bruising, so desperate, it made your head tip back. One hand flew to the back of your head, fingers threading into your hair, pressing you deeper into it like he needed to feel your mouth from the inside out.
Something inside him gave out, his sanity or his control. Maybe both.
His other hand bunched the skirt of your dress up high on your hips, fisting and wrinkling the material in a rush to get to you. When his fingers found the edge of your panties, he didn’t hesitate; he tugged them aside with a rough breath, then dragged his fingers through your arousal, smearing it across your folds.
With a whimper, you pressed yourself into his touch. Hips bucked without thought, chasing his hand, trying to shift him, guide him, anything to make his thumb land exactly where you needed it.
Then he felt your hands fumbling for his belt, clumsy and frantic, fingers trembling as they worked open the buckle, then the zipper, like you couldn’t get to him fast enough. He felt it too, that same desperation, that it wasn’t fast enough. So he helped with the rest, shoving the waistband of his boxers down just far enough to free himself, thick and flushed and aching only for you.
You looked down, breath catching at the sight of him, then glanced back up with a look he couldn’t place. He tilted his head, trying to name it: passion, maybe awe, or something that was too sentimental to name…until your thumb swept over the head of his cock, gathering the slick there and spreading it, just like he did for you moments ago.
Every thought faded into oblivion.
Your hand was soft. Too soft for what he’d done to you. He knew it, he’d gripped, ground, groaned into you like a man possessed. While you touched him like he deserved care, when he really didn’t. For one disorienting second, he felt bad. Then you rolled your hips, slick and needy, and it knocked every ounce of softness right out of him.
He helped you find him, helped you angle just right, and then froze, because the moment your body started to take him, he stopped breathing. You were so warm, so tight around him already, and he knew…he just knew there’d never be anything - anyone - else after that.
Your eyes stayed locked on his the whole way down. He held them as long as he could until it became too much and he tipped his head back, jaw clenched, fighting not to come already.
“Talk to me,” He begged, casting shame to the wayside. “Tell me what this means to you, tell me I’m not just some fuck to forget.”
He’d already said it twice, that he wanted a future, wanted to try for one. Either time, you hadn’t answered, and now, with your body wrapped around him and his heart wide open, he needed something, anything.
Because you were unforgettable, and he didn’t think he could survive not being the same to you.
Your voice wobbled, meek against his cheek. “What if the real me isn’t what you’re hoping for?”
A beat passed, somehow too short and too long, before your body sank down fully onto his cock, burying him to the hilt.
Spencer’s head jerked up, eyes fixed on yours as he rolled up into you, letting his body meet every inch of where yours had taken him. Where he felt the flutter of your muscles, inside and out.
“I know this,” He said, hips shifting deeper. “I know how you feel around me. How I feel with you. Let me learn the rest.”
“Spencer--”
He heard the worry in your voice, the tremor beneath his name.
“Then let me find out,” He said, voice cracking. “Whatever’s real, whatever’s you, I want it. Even if I don’t know you yet, I...I want to.”
You reached for the buttons of his shirt, undoing the top few to press a kiss to his chest, right over his heart.
“No, you’re not someone I’ll forget,” You promised, peppering kisses over his collarbone. “You never were.”
He just kissed you, his tongue worshiping yours; wet, rhythmic, and endless, with everything he couldn’t say. A hand slid down from your waist, trailing over your stomach until his fingers found the place just above where your bodies met. He circled his fingertips over your clit, gentle and completely attuned.
Then he moved inside you again fully, each thrust deliberate and deep.
The windows fogged, breath and body heat curling into the glass, just as tightly as you curled and clenched around him.
He was losing himself, fast. Every sound you made, he tasted. Every shift of your hips to meet his, pushed him closer to the edge. He tried to slow down, tried to savor it, to make it last, but each time he did, you whimpered in protest, and his resolve crumbled.
He couldn’t deny you. Not in that moment and not ever. If you wanted more, he’d give you everything and then some.
Your mouth parted from his, but didn’t go far, lips still brushing disjointedly. The kiss wasn’t a kiss anymore, just a blur of open mouths and needy sounds as your pleasure started to build.
Spencer’s eyes fluttered open, dazed. He couldn’t help it, he had to see you, and what he found unraveled him even further: your eyes shut tight and brow creased like you were being pulled apart in the best possible way.
He felt like the luckiest man alive to be the one undoing you, and to have you undoing him.
His own climax crept up his spine like a fuse catching flame, spreading outward through his body until he could feel it in his fingertips, in the trembling of the hand still lovingly between your legs.
But he refused to let go before you, not when you were that close. Definitely not when your body thrummed around him like you were already half there.
He leaned in, mouth dragging down your jaw to your throat. His kisses turned hungrier as he searched, desperate to find that spot that would tip you over.
Spencer found it in no time; the bend where your neck met your shoulder. He knew, without a doubt, that was the place. That was where your pulse thudded too hard, too fast, where your hips shook just so. He began to nip and soothe, to tongue that spot with dreamy loops.
“Right here?” He whispered into it, his voice hoarse. “You’ll come for me if I stay right here?”
You only turned your head, offering more of your throat in silence, but silence wasn’t enough.
“Don’t do that,” He encouraged as he blew air over your sweet spot. “Don’t go quiet on me, I need to hear it.”
“Yes, please. Please,”
Spencer let out a ragged groan at the sound of your voice, at that breathless please.
He pressed a kiss to your throat again, open-mouthed and shaking, before bringing his tongue back to that spot with renewed devotion. Slow, precise circles, just like before. Exactly how you needed it.
You clung to him, quivering as your hips stuttered against his, every breath snagged on his name as he worked you closer and closer.
“Spencer, Spencer, Spencer--”
He didn’t stop, he didn’t dare. He felt it, that tension building inside you, tightening around him in waves. His hand remained between your legs - as if it had anywhere else better to be - tempting you, syncing with the movement of his tongue as your body began to quake.
Then you broke.
Your walls fluttered tight around him, spasming with your release, and the sound you made…it was high and wrecked and sensual. Something he’d never forget, something he’d seek again and again, as many times as you’d let him. He could live off the sound of it.
You slumped forward into him, boneless, your face tucked into his neck as if your body couldn’t hold itself up any longer. He fretted that it really couldn’t.
So, Spencer caught you instantly; arms winding tight around your back, one hand sliding up to cradle the back of your head. His hips slowed and softened, the rhythm gentling into something more tender. Less urgency and more devotion.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” He said as his lips brushed your hairline, then your temple.
He didn’t stop moving inside you, not completely. He just rocked with you now, more comfort than craving, trying to soothe you from the inside out.
He couldn’t remember the last time he felt that full. Like he was right where he was meant to be, with someone who trusted him enough to fall into him, not away, and let him stay, like he’d always wanted to.
And somehow, that was what finished him; the weight of you folded into him, your heartbeat ticking in front of his own. The sound of his name still echoing in his ears, and the unbearable gift of knowing you let him have this, have you.
It rippled through him before he could brace for it. That hot, sharp, and all-consuming pleasure that had him coming with a gasp, still buried deep and holding you tight enough to shake.
Neither of you moved.
There was only the rise and fall of heavy breath, tangled together in the thick, quiet air between you. His chest rose beneath yours, yours stuttered above his.
Everything else fell away: the fogged windows, the cooled sweat, the ache in his thighs. All of it dulled beneath the warm press of your body.
He didn’t want to let go, but the moment the haze cleared, guilt settled in. There was absolutely no guilt for touching you, for wanting you and needing you like that, but for where it happened. For how fast and how exposed he let you be.
That wasn’t how he wanted your first time to be, not crushed between his body and the steering wheel as the seatbelt buckle dug into your kneecap.
You deserved a bed, a real one. Sheets pulled back, time unspooling slowly, every inch of your body seen and praised the way you deserved.
“You should’ve had more than this,” He said remorsefully against the crown of your head. “I don’t regret you, not for a second, but I hate that this is the memory I gave you.”
You straightened with soft insistence, and cupped his face in both hands. Your thumbs brushed the stubble at his jaw.
“You could say the same about yourself,” You said thoughtfully. “You deserved more than this too, Spencer. You deserved time and comfort and adoration.” His throat worked around something thick, unspeakable. “But I wanted you. So badly I couldn’t stop, and nothing you say will make me regret that or wish I had more.” Your thumbs pressed firmer, urging him to believe you.“This wasn’t a mistake. It was us, and I’ll remember that, not the car.”
Spencer’s eyes darted away, lashes low. Your words had touched something he wasn’t ready to face head on just yet. You’d answered his deepest fear so plainly, so willingly, that it frightened him with how easily you saw through him and how unflinchingly you chose him anyway.
So he busied himself with what his hands could do.
Without a word, he reached down and carefully pulled your panties over your center with respectful hands, then gently smoothed your dress back over your thighs. He tugged the hem into place, as if reassembling you meant keeping you safe.
Then he reached for the seatbelt buckle that had pressed into your knee, shoving it aside, and caressing his knuckles over the mark it left.
He still didn’t meet your gaze.
As he reached to tuck himself back into his underwear and trousers with his free hand, his movements slowed by the weight of everything unsaid and you gently nudged his hand aside.
“I got it,” You mumbled.
Spencer froze, letting you take over.
You handled him with the same care he’d given you as you guided the fabric back into place, then zipped up his fly. Next, your fingers found his belt, buckling it with ease, and when you saw the rumpled edges of his shirt, you didn’t hesitate to smooth it down and tucked it back into his pants. One hand pressed lightly to his stomach as you made sure everything was neat again.
Then you reached for the buttons you’d undone earlier. One. Two. Three.
You fastened each one with calm fingers, as if sealing something in, or keeping something precious from slipping away. He didn’t know.
Only once you were done did you look up at him again, eyes kind and open.
His mouth opened like he wanted to say something heavier, something big and permanent, but what came out instead was:
“Did you drive yourself tonight?”
It sounded awkward even to him, but the need beneath it was plain. After everything, he wanted to be useful in some way, somehow.
You shook your head no, pressing your lips together to keep a smile at bay.
“Would you let me drive you home?” His shoulders relaxed, but his voice was still tentative.
He wanted to make sure you were okay, to stay near you for as long as he was allowed.
“If Penelope will let you,” You said, a glint of humor in your eyes. “She might not forgive you for ditching her and JJ.” Then you swiftly added, “Well, us. I ditched too.”
Spencer let out a soft, almost breathless laugh. “She’ll survive.”
“Will she?” You teased. “I’m not so sure.”
Your playfulness hung in the air, and it melted any remnants of his armor. The way you looked at him, like that moment was the beginning of forever. A glimpse of the woman he already yearned to understand fully, even if it took the rest of his life.
His heart swelled, his affections poured over.
Before he could talk himself out of it, Spencer leaned in and kissed you. So gently and so slowly, and with so much gratitude and wonder that it felt like he was trying to thank you without saying a word.
His hand held your jaw, thumb brushing beneath your ear, and when he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.
“Thank you,” He murmured, barely audible.
It didn't feel like enough, not nearly, but it was all he had without collapsing in on himself again.
You smiled so full and bright, so wide it reached your eyes and crinkled the corners. You looked happy. Truly and deeply happy.
And Spencer…he smiled back. Slow at first, like his face had forgotten how, then it grew into a small, crooked thing, but it was real.
“You know,” You said, still close enough that your noses almost brushed, “We should probably head back in…before they come looking for us. If they haven’t already and seen the windows.” You nodded toward the fogged glass and grinned.
His smile twitched wider, sheepish and a little bashful, the tips of his ears pinking.
You reached for his hand and lifted it to your lips, placing a kiss to the back of it.
It floored him, how romantic you were without even trying. It turned his spine to smoke. If that was how you expressed want, that openly and sweetly, then God help him, he’d spend all of eternity trying to deserve it and return it twice over.
“Come on,” You whispered against his skin, then released him and opened the car door with a click.
Cool night air spilled in, breaking the heat between you, but Spencer still felt warm all over. Warmer, maybe. Warmer in a way that wouldn’t fade.
He exhaled, then followed, determined to reach the bar door before you, if only to reclaim a scrap of chivalry after having sex in a car and the humbling kiss to the back of his hand.
authors note: I had this one in my drafts but it just would't come together which is why I put the other part out first. These two are supposed to be taking place at the same time so you can read them in any order.
Series summary: When Y/N, the world famous pro seeker makes a dumb decision, she has no choice but to do anything to clear her name. Even if that means becoming a teacher at hogwarts.
Chapter summary: Y/N is dealing with the concequences of her actions, until Albus Dumbledore offers her an easy way to salvation... on one condition.
warnings: nothing really, Y/N is in pain??
Approximately two weeks after the Quidditch World Cup:
Light burned.
It seeped in past her closed lids like wildfire. Her throat was dry like sandpaper, ash, and regret. Her body felt heavy and hollow all at once. A deep, pounding ache throbbed behind her eyes, and there was a rhythmic croaking nearby, steady and slow like a metronome in a dream.
She peeled her eyes open.
White walls. Pale green curtains. The familiar stench of antiseptic and spell-burned linen. Saint Mungo’s. Y/N tried to sit up but pain stabbed down her spine like a lightning curse. A soft groan escaped before she could stop it.
“Well, look who’s finally awake.”
The voice struck her before the face. She turned her head-slowly, stiffly-
and there was Rowan Maxwell, arms folded, jaw clenched tight enough to crack.
Her lips curled automatically into a lopsided grin. “Maxie,” she croaked. “Tell me I caught it.”
He didn’t return the smile.
“You did,” he said, voice flat. “Snitch got stuck in your robes. Game-winning dive. One hundred and eighty-point lead. We made history.”
She laughed, or tried to, it came out more like a wheeze. “Then why do you look like you just buried your Gran?”
“You were hit by a bludger, hard. You crashed into a goalpost, passed out with the damn Snitch clutched in your fist like a lunatic. You’ve got a fractured ribcage, a torn ligament, and a reputation that’s crumbling faster than your last broomstick.”
Y/N blinked. The grin fell.
“Oh, come on,” she said, more defensive now. “You knew I wasn’t drunk. Not really. It was one bottle, Max. I was fine.”
“You weren’t,” he hissed. “You haven’t been fine in years, and I was an idiot to let it slide. You were reckless, unhinged, and bloody arrogant. This-” he gestured vaguely toward her body, the bandages and bruises and tubes, “-this was a long time coming.”
She stared at him. “You’re really doing this now?”
“I am.” He leaned forward. “You’re off the team, Y/N.”
Silence.
Her pulse roared in her ears, louder than the croaking toad in the next room over, louder than the ache in her chest.
“You’re kidding,” she said flatly. “I caught the snitch.”
“You nearly died. That’s the problem.”
“I won us the Cup.”
“And now you’ve lost your spot. End of story.”
She sat up straighter despite the pain. Her voice rose. “Fine. Fine. Any other team would beg me to join them. I’ll be on the cover of every magazine by next week. Spain, Brazil, Japan will be lining up at my bloody door-”
Maxwell threw something on the side table. A stack of papers—no, not papers.Tabloids.
The first headline read “World Champion Seeker or Firewhiskey Fiend?” Under it, a moving photograph of her plummeting mid-air, robes wild, eyes glazed.
Another: “Y/N (Y/L/N) Spirals at World Cup: Was She Drunk on the Pitch?”
And another: “Former Irish Quidditch Star Falls From Grace: How a Bottle Cost Us a Star.”
Each one louder than the last.
She looked down at them, silent. Her fingers curled into fists in the scratchy hospital sheets.
“No one wants a liability,” Maxwell said, quieter now. “Not even if she’s the best fucking seeker in the world.”
The cold stone of her small home felt more unforgiving than the chilly hospital bed she’d just left. She peeled off the hospital gown, tossed the crumpled clothes in the laundry basket, and stared at her reflection in the mirror. The woman staring back was a mess... bruises fading, eyes heavy with exhaustion and something fiercer: defiance.
Y/N’s fingers trembled as she pulled out her wand and duplicated her application forms tenfold. She sent the stack through the usual channels, contacts, team managers, and even whisper networks she once thought beneath her.
Days stretched like shadows. Replies trickled in, polite but firm: “Thank you, but no.” “We’re full.” “We can’t risk it.” The weight of every refusal settled deeper in her chest. Even the small, scrappy local teams she’d thought might welcome a world champion seeker looked away.
Her name, once a beacon of glory, was now a stain that no broomstick could outfly.
Then, on a damp morning when the sky threatened rain again, there came a knock at her door.
She opened it to find a familiar figure framed by the dreary light, long silver beard, twinkling eyes behind half-moon spectacles, and that ever-present mischievous smile.
“Professor Dumbledore,” she breathed.
“Miss Y/L/N,” he said warmly. “Might I come in?”
Without waiting for an invitation, he stepped inside, carrying a calm confidence.
“I’ve heard of your... problem,” he began gently, “and I’m truly sorry to hear of the recent...incident... But I come with an opportunity.”
Y/N crossed her arms, skeptical. “I’m listening.”
“Madam Hooch has decided to travel the highlands with her wife. She wishes to take some time away from Hogwarts, and the position of flying instructor will be open.” Dumbledore's eyes glistened.
She blinked, surprised.
“...And I believe you would be perfect for it.” he continued.
Her heart fluttered in a cautious hope.
"And who says I want to teach a bunch of snotty brats?" she snaps back before straightening her posture again.
“I’m not here to offer charity, Miss Y/L/N. This is a chance to reclaim your name, to rebuild what has been broken. But,” he paused, eyes sharp and kind, “there is one condition.”
She swallowed.
“No alcohol. None. You will be expected to uphold the highest standards, both on and off the broomstick.”
The words settled heavily in the air.
She looked away, the old spark in her dimming slightly.
“And if I refuse?”
Dumbledore smiled gently.
“Then I will have lost one of the finest seekers the world has ever known.”
She met his gaze, steady now.
“Alright, Professor. I accept"
He took his wand and spoke a strange incantation, something that's definitely not taught at Hogwarts.
"Just a little precaution" he winks at her and turns toward the fireplace "I'll see you in September... professor."
Look pookie I finished the next chapter @unconventional-lawnchair.
authors note: on a more serious note, i'm sorry for not posting sooner. I've been really busy with school (i'm graduating in 3 days) and moving out.
Series summary: When Y/N, the world famous pro seeker makes a dumb decision, she has no choice but to do anything to clear her name. Even if that means becoming a teacher at hogwarts.
Chapter summary: Remus Lupin returns after a difficult transformation only to find Dumbledore and McGonnagal in his living room with an offer.
warnings: Descriptions of scars and the overall aftermath of transforming.
It was a rainy day, the grey skies stretching for miles. Every so often the heavens rumbled ominously, but despite the dreary weather, someone limped through the muddy soil in the forest in Yorkshire. Barefooted, shirt ripped, and blood clumping in his hair. Remus had hoped he wouldn't have woken up so far from his cottage, it was nearly noon when his run-down home came into view.
As he stumbled onto the front steps, he took in the condition of what he called his home. The roof slumped inwards, puddles forming in the empty spaces where there once was a beautiful stone path leading up to the front door. He grabbed the doorknob with a shaky hand, swinging the weathered door open and stepping inside the cottage.
Even as a human, Remus felt the presence inside. He never locked the door, why would he? His closest neighbors lived at least an hour away. Cautiously yet unarmed, he snuck inside. The sound of cheap porcelain cups and hushed voices was muffled by the closed living room door.
"Are you coming in or would you rather stay in that cold hallway mister Lupin?" The voice ever so familiar asked bemused. Now fully inside the living room, Remus could see who had intruded into his home. At the small dining table sat Albus Dumbledore, drinking a cup of tea with a stern-looking witch. "Professor Dumbledore, professor Mcgonnagal, what brings you to my humble cottage?" Leaning against the doorframe he attempted to hide his discomfort, crossing his arms over his ripped button-up shirt.
"Sit down Remus" Mcgonnagal gestured to the empty chair next to her, She still had that edge to her voice that brought him back to his years at Hogwarts “Sit” McGonagall said, her expression stern but not unkind. That particular edge in her voice — the one that turned even the most defiant Gryffindor to stone — hadn’t dulled with time.
He hesitated only a second longer before crossing the room, barefoot steps soundless on the warped floorboards. The chair creaked in protest as he sank into it, folding his hands tightly in his lap to hide the tremor still dancing in his fingers.
Dumbledore offered him a porcelain cup — mismatched from the rest of Remus’s cupboard, undoubtedly conjured. The tea inside was steaming and faintly floral. Chamomile, if he had to guess. Soothing, calming. Intentional.
“We wouldn’t be here unless it was important,” McGonagall continued, her eyes fixed on him with that sharp, no-nonsense glint she reserved for students who’d dared to test her patience. “You’ve kept to yourself these last years.”
Remus smiled thinly. “There’s not much reason not to.”
Dumbledore stirred his tea slowly, the silver spoon clicking gently against the rim. “We’d like to offer you a position at Hogwarts.”
Remus blinked. “A… what?”
“Defence Against the Dark Arts,” Dumbledore said. “We believe you’re more than qualified.”
Remus’s first instinct was to laugh, but it caught in his throat. Instead, he stared down at his tea, watching the reflection of the fire flicker across the surface.
“I haven’t taught a day in my life,” he murmured. “And the last time I walked Hogwarts’ halls as a student was—well. A lifetime ago.”
“All the more reason,” McGonagall said crisply. “You know what’s out there, Remus. You’ve lived through it. Survived it. You can teach them things books can’t.”
He didn’t answer right away. The fire crackled softly behind them. Somewhere, water dripped in a slow rhythm from the leaky roof. He was keenly aware of the state of himself — the blood, the filth, the months-old injuries that never quite healed properly. He was aware, too, of how easily Dumbledore said those words, as if Remus hadn’t spent the better part of the last decade hiding from the world.
“What about the full moons?” he asked, eyes still fixed on the tea. “You expect me to lock myself in the dungeons once a month and hope for the best?” “We’ll provide Wolfsbane,” Dumbledore said. “Severus has agreed to brew it.”
That startled him. “Snape? Voluntarily?”
“He didn’t exactly volunteer,” McGonagall said, a faint smirk playing at her lips. “But he’ll do it. Albus convinced him.”
Remus snorted. “I never thought I'd live to see the day…”
A silence settled between them again. McGonagall’s features softened. Dumbledore, still stirring his tea, finally looked up and met Remus’s eyes.
“Harry is in his third year now,” he said, with practiced lightness. “I thought you might like to see him.”
And there it was.
The wound still hadn’t healed. Probably never would.
Remus leaned back in the chair, pressing his thumb into the rim of the cup. “You think it’s wise… for me to be around him?”
“I think it would do him some good,” Dumbledore said. “And you as well.”
Remus closed his eyes for a moment.
Memories flickered unbidden — Lily’s laugh, James’s smirk, Sirius’s bark of mirth just before they did something reckless. And Peter, quiet but eager. Always one step behind. Always watching.
All of it gone.
Only Harry remained. And the thought of seeing those familiar features twisted something inside his chest.
He sighed.
“I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all we ask,” McGonagall said, already rising, adjusting her cloak with brisk efficiency. “You’ve got until September first.”
Dumbledore stood as well, smoothing down his long robes, the scent of lemon and old paper following him like a ghost.
“Until then, Remus,” he said, and for the briefest moment, his voice held something fond — something that reminded Remus of safer times.
They left without further ceremony, leaving the half-full teacups on the table and the door swinging quietly in their wake.
Remus sat there for a long time, long after their footsteps faded and the rain began again in earnest, tapping like curious fingers against the windows.
Outside, the forest still breathed around his crooked little house.
And inside, Remus Lupin sat still as stone, caught between the weight of the past and a future he hadn’t dared to imagine.
Okay, SO CUTE LOVE THIS. I decided to do a civilian reader for a change, I wasn’t sure if you wanted avenger reader, I can def do an alternate one with that later on hehe
Warnings: FLUFFFFF
Word count: 2.8k
A lil drabble
A lil part 2
-
“Have y’all noticed how he’s less grumpy? He hasn’t threatened to kill me all day, and quite frankly I’m a little upset he hasn’t paid attention to me” Sam mused, whispering to Steve, both men eyeing Bucky suspiciously while he mindlessly scrolled through his phone, sans his signature grumpy pout.
Bucky tried his best to keep his face neutral, but on the inside, he was giggling like a school boy. Just a few more hours and he’d be able to see you, hold you, kiss you; he had to keep his hand on his knee from bouncing in excitement.
sexual orientation : bisexual (leaning towards guys but i love goth girls)
ur guilty pleasure fanfic trope: opposites attract
preferred fandom; mha
favourite first date idea: (based on my first date) cuddle sesh
favourite album: honestly i listen to a bit of everything
ur screen time: 8 hours
and the current status of ur love life: been in a relationship for 5 months now
name : Marlene
“your perfect match is...”
...EIJIROU KIRISHIMA
“to all days we were together,”
wc: 460
"what are you looking at?"
you huff as your face glows with a smile.
it was movie night at sero's flat and the first time you'd been invited as eijirou's girlfriend rather than just his classmate. his face is fixed on yours, his dreamy eyes and soft smile, as you reach up and cradle the left side of his face in your palm. your fingers card through his soft hair and you squeal as he nips at your fingertips with his sharp teeth.
you were sat in the living room, the others dotted around the house and someone was in the kitchen making popcorn, eijirou crinkles his nose at the smell. you place your other hand on his forehead. "you feeling alright sweetie?"
the redhead sighs and leans into your touch, closing his eyes and taking in the feeling of your nails itching at his scalp. "hmmm," his dark eyelashes flutter, "yeah my headache's gone down."
your expressions are mirrors of each other, the dreamy smiles that come with finally getting the person that you want. eijirou leans down and places a kiss on your forehead.
"are you ok?" he's always been good at reading you.
"yeah- i'm just," you pause as a crash followed by a yelp resounds from the kitchen. "….."
his eyes don’t depart from yours even as the commotion in the kitchen amplifies. "nervous?"
you nod gently, almost embarrassed, it's not like you haven't met sero or bakugou or his other friends before but eijirou is extremely precious to you, to all his friends. you can tell. they all take his opinion and emotions very seriously, he's got the kindest soul, and the sweetest smile, and you want his friends to like you as his girlfriend.
"don't be." he tilts your chin up slowly and gently. "i know they're-" another crash, this time followed by a shriek of laughter. "…abit much sometimes, but they all really like you."
you hum and avoid eye contact, but he insists, "i'm not joking like katsuki told me not to fumble you yeah, he really respects you." that brings a smile to your face and you wrap your arms around his torso and bury your face into his chest. he smells like the earth and your strawberry scented body wash.
"and even if they don't, that doesn't really matter."
he leans down to plant a kiss on the side of your neck, and you squirm and swat his shoulder as his hair tickles your ear, "baby stoppp."
“let me love on my girlfriend," the term makes both of you slightly giddy and he smiles shyly. “it doesn't matter, because i love you.”
"oi lovebirds, would ya stop 'macking on my couch and come help us with this."
hi sweeties !!! some more should be coming today cos im working close so i have some time to write and edit @otterlockholmes i hope you likeeee ☺️☺️☺️
Steve's ending. There are so many other ways to give him that happy ending, even retirement, than undoing all his character development, retconning Peggy's life, and doing a 180-degree turn after he's spent past three movies fighting for Bucky.
He'll they could have made thanos use the stones to reverse the serum. Pre serum Steve on the battlefield, stubborn af to still fight. Pre serum Steve being worthy and lifting mjölnir! The crowds would have gone feral as shit! Plus he could have still gave the shield to Sam. He could have decided to finally enjoy life! But noooo they have to destroy his character arc
I saw a post once, unfortunately I don't have a link to it, about an idea of Steve going back to Vormir to return the stones, and sacrificing himself to get Natasha back - and coming back as pre-serum Steve.
That would've been a beautiful ending, and I would've loved the idea of seeing him still work with the Avengers but maybe having a more of a 9-5 job, combined with the white picket fence life if the movie still wanted to give him that.
Also pre-serum Steve can 100% lift Mjölnir and that would've been even better strike down of the 'Everything special about you came from a bottle.' line.
Btw it wouldn't have been possible for old steve to come back the way he did... Professor Hulk explained that travelling through time creates a new branch in the timeline. It doesn't affect their original timeline meaning without using the machine, old Steve could NOT have been able to get back and sneak up on them. And this has bothered me for years now.
Santa is on strike due to global warming. All presents this year will be delivered by Sasha the Christmas Tiger. Milk and cookies may not be sufficient.
I'm looking for a movie. It's a horror or thriller or smth
Basically this couple is going somewhere and they come across this sketchy guy or smth in the woods. I don't remember much except the sketchy guy breaks the boyfriends wrist and when the girl tries to escape her car won't drive and she finds out that her boyfriend was taped with his mouth on the exhaust pipe and she Basically killed her own boyfriend.
I would like to watch it again with my boyfriend but I can't find it anywhere
the way this looks like a sick oc?? i fuck with it
npt: @regkitblack @nightsmarish @sun-kissy @hyunielover @amiableness @butt3rnugg3t @juniorlore @poetichibiscus @just-here-for-ff @juleswritesstuff and any others who feel like it 🫶🤍
Somehow, some way, a human managed to acquire both a pomegranate from the underworld and fruit from the realm of the Fae, then made a smoothie out of them. Now, Hades and the Fae are in a fierce argument regarding who the human belongs to.
fluff ꕀ husband kirishima! x fem!reader ⸝⸝ established relationship
husband kirishima! who is always determined to make your mornings special. no matter how tired he is from patrol, he always wakes up extra early to cook you something nice before you head off to work. although he’s not the best cook, it’s the effort that counts—at least that’s what he always tells himself. he’s all about the little things: leaving sticky notes with doodles or loving messages on top of your lunchbox,, which is always paired with your favorite drink. “Don’t worry about the burnt toast, it adds a bit of crunch to it! Good luck at work today, I love ya!” you giggle as you read the cute note, slipping the lunchbox into your bag before heading out for the day.
husband kirishima! who is determined to become a great cook, even if his enthusiasm often leads to chaos in the kitchen. one time he nearly set the oven on fire trying to bake you a birthday cake—the kitchen filled with smoke, the fire alarm blaring, and him flailing with an oven mitt to save what was left of the cake. it ended up completely charred and inedible. now every year, he’s determined to get it right, spending days watching tutorials and hyping himself up. but somehow, something always goes wrong—whether it’s mixing up salt for sugar or forgetting to grease the pan. still, when he presents the lopsided, crispy-edged cake, his face lights up with pride. “Happy birthday, babe! I worked extra hard on this one!” and every year, you smile and reassure him it’s perfect, slicing into it with over-the-top excitement just to see him smile.
husband kirishima! who loves to give you random gifts. he always comes home with little things that remind him of you—sometimes it’s a keychain shaped like your favorite animal, other times it’s a flower he picked during his walk back from patrol. occasionally, it’s a snack that caught his attention while shopping during his break, though it’s often already opened because he couldn’t resist the temptation to try it first. no matter what it is, he always manages to pick things you absolutely adore. “I saw this and thought of you.” he says with a sheepish smile, his hand rubbing the back of his neck.
husband kirishima! who always insists on helping with anything around the house. need help tidying up the living room? done. cleaning out the garage? he’s in there before you can even ask, sleeves rolled up and a determined grin plastered across his face. what about the laundry piling up? he’ll fold it while humming one of his favorite songs. the dishes in the sink? he’s already halfway through scrubbing them, insisting, “You’ve had a long day, babe. Let me take care of this.” even if it’s something he’s never done before—like fixing that squeaky cabinet door or assembling the new furniture—he doesn’t care. whatever it is you need help with, he’s always the first one on the job.
husband kirishima! who is an absolute sweetheart when it comes to helping you through your period cramps. the moment he notices you curling up in discomfort, he’s already grabbing his keys and heading to the store. he comes back with your favorite snacks along with a heating pad, some pain relief pills, and even a plush blanket because, "Comfy vibes help, right?" he’s also a pro at massages—whether it’s your back or your feet, he gets right to work without a single complaint. if you tease him about going overboard, he’ll just grin and says, “Hey, I want you to feel your best. You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?” even when you’re cranky or tired, he’s patient and understanding, he always makes sure you feel as loved and cared for as possible.
husband kirishima! who after a long day, loves nothing more than collapsing onto the couch with you. he wraps you in his strong arms and pulls you close, whispering, "This is the best part of my day." sometimes, he falls asleep mid-cuddle, snoring softly into your hair, his grip on you never loosening. other times, he’ll quietly ask about your day, his voice low and soothing as he listens intently. he traces lazy patterns on your back, murmuring how much he missed you while you were apart. if you’re scrolling on your phone or watching a show, he’ll sneak little kisses on your forehead or temple, chuckling softly when you pretend to be annoyed. and when the exhaustion finally catches up to him, and he starts drifting off, he’ll mumble something sweet like, “I love you so much.” his breathing slows, and soon enough, he’s snoring softly.
a.n — i had to repost my first fanfic since my main blog has been terminated for unknown reasons (つω`｡). but i thank you for reading my first ever post. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed creating it (๑>ᴗ<๑) ! im still pretty new to sharing my work so, im honestly kinda freaking out a little LOLOL ! but it means so much to me that you took the time to check it out. until next time, thank you again for reading XOXO 💕
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