YOU’RE ALL I HAVE TO LOSE ⟢ spencer reid x greenaway!reader
summary: after spencer is exposed to anthrax, the hardest part isn’t being afraid. it’s knowing you love him for the same reasons you’re furious with him.
genre: angst (with a happy ending!) tags/warnings: reader is elle's sister, inspired by 4x24 amplification so tw for a classic CM near-death experience, reallllly whumpy but there’s some comfort, reader is very angry and very stressed and very in love, emotionally devastating phone message, lowkey feels like an undisclosed jello ad oops, title from close behind by noah kahan, no use of y/n. 6.3k words. part of a series but can be read as a standalone!
a/n: writer’s block took me out back & shot me approx 57 times over the past month, but i finally resurrected myself hallelujah so i am back with a bang 💥 (a very depressing bang. not the fun kind of bang. my bad). hat-tip to @slut-for-artists for the song rec that inspired the title!
greenaway!reader masterlist 🥀
You’re angry.
That’s the only emotion you can process when you first walk into Spencer’s hospital room. You’re angry, and you shouldn’t have to be here, and everything about the place feels wrong. It should be louder. There should be sirens or alarms or shouting, something ugly to match the feeling crawling beneath your ribs, but instead there’s only the measured beep of the monitor, the low hum of fluorescent light, the soft shuffle of Morgan shifting in the chair on the other side of Spencer’s bed, and the anxious tap-tap-tap of your foot against the linoleum floor.
There’s also Spencer.
Spencer, pale against the pillow, is sound asleep in a hospital gown with an IV taped to the back of his hand, a cannula under his nose, and his curls flattened on one side. His mouth is parted slightly, his breathing thin but steady. Better than it could be, according to the doctor. Better than it had been, according to a hollow-eyed Morgan when you first got here. Better than dead, which is apparently the standard you should be grateful he’s surpassing now.
You hate this room. This whole entire fucking day.
Morgan is leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped tight enough that his knuckles have gone pale. He looks like he’s aged ten years since this morning.
“He woke up once,” he says quietly. “Couple seconds. Doctor said that’s good.”
You nod without looking away from Spencer. “Good.”
“He’s gonna be okay.”
You try to hum some sort of acknowledgement, some half-hearted agreement you don’t entirely mean because at this point you can’t really know if that’s true, but no sound comes out. Instead, you reach for Spencer’s hand.
His fingers are warm. The plastic hospital bracelet brushes your wrist when you thread your fingers through his, and you feel almost burned by it. Spencer is supposed to have ink smudged on his hands and paper cuts from case files and maybe chalk dust from a man impromptu lecture no one asked him to give. He is not supposed to look fragile under a hospital blanket.
Morgan studies your face for a second, then stands.
“I’m gonna grab some coffee,” he says.
You don’t point out the fact that he already has a half-full coffee cup in his hand. You just nod.
At the door, he pauses. “He was asking about you earlier. Before they brought him here.”
Your grip tightens around Spencer’s hand.
“Just thought you should know,” he says.
Then he leaves, and the room gets even quieter.
You sit there with Spencer’s hand in yours and stare at his face until the anger sharpens again, because anger is a much easier emotion for you to deal with than fear.
“You absolute idiot,” you whisper.
He doesn’t answer.
—
You had been with Rossi and Emily when you found out.
The day had already felt a bit off-kilter since it started. Anthrax in a park in Annapolis. Dead civilians, sick children, hypermasculine military personnel taking over the BAU and breathing down everyone’s necks. Dr. Kimura from the CDC explained the intensity of this strain in a voice so calm it made the information hard to process. The team had swallowed Cipro in a lame attempt at some sense of control, then scattered across the Washington metropolitan area trying to build a profile before the unsub executed another attack.
You went with Reid and Dr. Kimura to the hospital earlier. You noticed the way his inflection turned clinical as he talked about infection rates and symptom onset, the way his eyes stayed focused on the numbers in the patients’ charts because if he let himself see them as people for too long, he’d feel all of it. You saw the way his focus faltered around Abby, a young woman who just wanted to go on a bike ride around the park and was now experiencing aphasia and severe respiratory distress as she tried to stay alive long enough for a cure to be found. You desperately wanted to touch the back of Spencer’s wrist as you walked beside him in the hallway, but you chose not to, because you were surrounded on all sides by sick people and your relationship did not belong in the middle of it.
You regretted that choice later.
Of all the stupid things to regret, that was the one your brain kept returning to. The touch you hadn’t taken. The two seconds of warmth you’d decided could wait.
By early afternoon, you and Emily were with Rossi following a lead away from the rest of the team, chasing down information on Dr. Lawrence Nichols, a disgraced military scientist who’d been downgraded to working on the flu. Emily was having a tough time with the casual deception a case like this required, so you were talking with her beside the parked SUV when Rossi got a call from Hotch. You watched him out of the corner of your eye as his expression changed and his gaze flicked quickly toward you before it shifted away again.
It was small. Practically nothing. A slight narrowing of his eyes. An almost imperceptible shift.
But still, your stomach went cold.
“What?” you asked.
Rossi lifted one finger, still listening to Hotch on the other end.
Your voice came out sharper. “Rossi.”
He lowered the phone. “Morgan and Reid went to check out Nichols’ house.”
You waited.
Rossi’s jaw tightened. “Nichols is dead. The house is contaminated with anthrax.”
For a second, your hearing went thin, and the whole street seemed to drop underwater. Emily shifted beside you. A car passed behind the SUV, tires hissing against pavement, and all of it reached you half a second late. Emily said something, but you didn’t catch it. Your eyes were fixed on Rossi because you knew there was more coming. You’ve been around the block enough times to know that people always pause before saying the worst part out loud, as if a few seconds of silence can soften the impact of devastation.
“Reid discovered the body and the exposure site inside,” Rossi said. “He sealed himself in before Morgan could enter.”
All at once, heat rushed up the back of your neck. Your hand went tight around the car door handle you hadn’t realized you were holding. Somewhere at the edge of your vision, Emily went still.
“Is he in decontamination protocol now? Or is he already at the hospital?”
Rossi didn’t answer fast enough, which was an answer in itself.
You turned away from both of them and walked three steps before bending forward, hands braced on your knees as you searched for breath.
Emily approached cautiously.
“I’m fine,” you snapped automatically.
“That’s not what I asked. I said Hotch wants to talk to you.”
You straightened slowly, smoothed your hands down your blazer, and took the phone from her.
“Tell me exactly what’s going on,” you said too fast as soon as you got the phone up to your ear.
Hotch did. He gave you all the facts he had: Nichols had been dead for days. There was anthrax spilled in the lab and the AC was blasting it through the house. Definitely a homicide, and whoever killed Nichols was likely responsible for the recent attacks. Reid had gone inside and accidentally stumbled upon the scene, shutting Morgan out before he could follow him inside. Kimura and the CDC team were on their way with protective equipment and a decon shower, but Reid was refusing to leave, instead insisting on working the profile from inside since he was already exposed.
Already exposed.
Those words had a sharp, horrible finality to them.
“What do you mean, he’s refusing to leave? You’re his boss, Hotch. Make him leave.”
Hotch’s voice stayed even, but there was strain under it. “He believes there may be an antidote or identifying information on the partner inside the house. He’s continuing to work the scene until one or both of those things are located.”
You pinched the skin between your brows. “Get him on this call for me.”
Emily turned fully toward you then. Rossi was watching with the careful stillness of someone standing near a live wire. Hotch said nothing.
You swallowed hard. “Hotch, transfer me to Reid’s phone, now. I think we all know he won’t answer if I call him myself, and I need to talk some sense into him.”
“He’s working.”
“Hotch. Please.”
The silence that followed was very, very loaded.
Then Hotch said, “Give me a minute.”
You lowered the phone a little and stared at nothing for a second. Your chest felt too tight, your blood too loud, every part of your body braced for impact. Emily came to stand beside you, but she didn’t try to touch you, and you appreciated that more than you could say.
“He’s going to do everything he can to find the cure and track down the unsub and get out of there,” she said.
“I know.”
“He’s Reid. If there’s something in that house to find, he’ll find it.”
“I know.”
And you did know. That was the problem. You knew him so well there was no room to be surprised. Spencer would knowingly stay in a room full of anthrax because people were dying and he had a chance to stop it. He would put his lungs and brain and life on the line to prevent the person responsible for the prior attacks and Nichols’ death from taking any more lives. You’d expect nothing less from Spencer Reid, and right now, you hated him for it.
A muffled voice came through the phone before you could fully catch your breath.
When you lifted it back to your ear, you heard movement first. Then Spencer.
“Hi.”
He sounded too normal.
You gripped the phone so hard your fingers hurt. “Do not hi me right now, Spencer Reid.”
A tiny pause. Then, softer, “Okay.”
“Are you symptomatic?”
“Not really.”
“Spencer,” you said.
“I’m okay right now,” he said, before you could ask again. “Kimura’s team is coming in soon. We’re currently in a limited window where I’m still useful and the scene is still viable.”
“Oh, goodie. Well, as long as you’re useful, everything’s just fine then,” you bit out.
“Sweetheart,” he said softly, “you know what I mean.”
Emily looked away. Rossi did too, like they were granting you privacy by pretending not to hear the sharpness in your voice.
Spencer was quiet for a second. You pictured him inside Nichols’ house, phone held close, hair falling in his face. You pictured powder on the floor, sealed doors. You pictured him alone in there.
“I found a second workspace,” he said. “There’s a bunch of notebooks filled with different handwriting, so it definitely doesn’t belong to Nichols. Whoever this desk belongs to is probably our unsub.”
You wanted to scream.
Instead, you leaned your forehead against the SUV door and forced yourself to breathe through your nose. “You need to go to the hospital.”
“I will.”
“Now, Spence.”
He paused. “I’ll go as soon as I can.”
Your throat tightened.
“You do realize you’re a person too, right?” you asked. “Not just a brain with a badge and a duty to uphold.”
Despite everything, you heard the faintest breath of a laugh. “I’m aware.”
“Great. Then act like it.”
“I am acting like it,” he said, and there it was, his signature stubbornness. “Leaving now wouldn’t make me safer in any meaningful way if we still can’t identify the unsub and still don’t have an antidote for the strain. If I can figure it out from in here, there’s a chance we can save the patients at the hospital, and me.”
You pressed your free hand over your eyes.
“Don’t do that,” you said.
“Do what?”
“Make sense.”
His quiet inhale caught slightly. Maybe from the anthrax, or maybe from you. It was hard to tell.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“But you’re still staying.”
“For now,” he said.
You sighed softly and rubbed your temple with your free hand. “You’re so frustrating.”
“I know.”
“And arrogant.”
“I can be, on occasion.”
“And so ungodly, unbelievably stupid.”
“Well, technically, I’m quantifiably a genius, although I don’t believe—”
“Spencer.”
“I know you’re angry with me,” he said quietly.
“You have no idea how much.”
“Well, I think I have some idea. I know you.”
“No, you really don’t.” You looked down at your boots. “Because if you did, you’d be walking out of that house right now.”
His voice went softer. “If I thought walking out was the thing most likely to get me back to you, I would. I promise you, I would.”
That took every bit of air out of you.
Spencer didn’t rush to fill the silence. He just let the words sit there, awful and sincere and completely unfair.
Then he said, “I’m not trying to scare you.”
“Well, you’re doing a damn good job for someone who isn’t trying,” you replied. You blinked hard, furious at your body for even considering tears when rage was so much more useful.
“Listen to me,” you said. “Find what you need to find, and then you get the hell out. No extra detours or noble self-sacrificing bullshit. Got it?”
“I’ll be careful,” he said.
There was more noise on his end now. Another voice. Hotch, maybe, through the sealed door closing him inside.
“I have to go,” Spencer said, pausing before he added: “I love you.”
You dug your fingernails into your palm.
“Don’t say it like that,” you whispered.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re only saying it in case it’s the last thing I hear from you.”
He took a shaky breath. “I’m saying it because it’s true,” he said firmly. “And because I want to say it. That’s all, okay? I love you.”
You swallowed, and when you spoke again, your voice was steadier than you felt. “I love you too. Stop being a hero and get back to me.”
“I will.”
The line clicked dead a second later.
You kept the phone against your ear long after there was nothing left to hear.
—
The next time Spencer let himself think about you, really think about you, he was sitting on the floor with poison in the air and sweat cooling at the back of his neck.
By then, his body had started showing signs of distress. The cough had come first, small enough that he tried to classify it as irritation from the environment, from dust, from the pollen in the garden outside. Then came the ache behind his eyes, the heat under his skin, the faint tremor in his hand that he could ignore if he kept it busy, if he kept turning pages, pulling drawers open, reading notes, forcing pieces of Dr. Nichols’ life into order.
He was aware of each symptom with miserable precision. He knew exactly what they meant. He also knew the unsub was still out there with a larger attack planned, so his personal awareness changed nothing. His body could be evidence later. Right now, he had work to do.
Still, there came a point when he had to step back and admit how serious things had gotten.
Garcia’s voice shook through the phone when he asked her to record a message for his mother. She tried to be brave about it. He could hear the effort it took, could picture her sitting at her desk with all that color and joy around her while despair leaked through anyway.
He recorded his message to Diana as steadily as he could.
He said all the things a son should say when he’s trying very hard to say goodbye without sounding like he’s saying goodbye. He kept his voice gentle. He tried not to cough in the middle of it. He nearly failed once, clearing his throat to get the urge to pass. When he finished, Garcia was silent for a few seconds.
“Okay,” she said finally, and he could hear the tears in her voice. “Okay, I got it.”
Spencer swallowed. He was covered in a sheen of sweat. His throat hurt. Everything hurt, actually, in a diffuse, widespread way he disliked for its lack of specificity. “Garcia?”
“Yeah, boy wonder?”
He closed his eyes.
He had been trying not to ask. He had been trying to tell himself that the message to his mother was already indulgent enough, that he did not have the right to take more time away from the case for something that served no immediate operational purpose. But the thought of you never getting to hear his voice again if this went badly kept pressing against the inside of his ribs until it became impossible to ignore.
“Can you, uh, record one more message for me?”
Garcia inhaled sharply.
“Oh,” she whispered, understanding immediately. “Of course. Yeah, of course I can.”
Spencer opened his eyes and looked around the room. Papers were spread across the floor in front of him, Dr. Nichols’ handwriting scrawled across margins and folders and binders. Somewhere outside, people were moving around in protective suits, building a perimeter, preparing to come in as soon as they could. Out in the field somewhere, you were trying to work despite your fury and fear. He knew that with the same certainty he knew his own name, the same certainty with which he could recite the periodic table in order by atomic number. You were angry because you were scared. You were scared because you loved him. That thought — that you loved him — probably should have brought some comfort; instead, it made his chest ache worse than the cough did.
“Ready whenever you are,” Garcia said, softly enough that it almost didn’t sound like her.
Spencer tried to take a breath deep enough to steady himself. It caught halfway down. He turned aside, coughed hard into his elbow, and waited for the room to stop tilting.
Then he looked down at his hands, at the pale dust along his cuffs, at the pulse ticking too fast beneath his skin, and began.
“Hi,” he said simply, because every other possible opening sounded wrong — either too formal, or too casual, or too final. He let out a breath that was almost a laugh and tried again. “You’re going to hate this. I know that. You’re probably already furious with me, and you’ve got every right to be, so if this message makes you even more furious, I’m sorry.
“I just need you to know that I wasn’t trying to be a martyr. I know you’ll think that’s what it was, some ‘noble self-sacrificing bullshit’ like you called it earlier, but that’s not what this is for me.” He paused, eyes stinging. “I keep thinking if I find the right thing fast enough, if I can connect the dots, then maybe we can stop the next attack and everyone at the hospital would have a chance. Maybe I would, too.
“And I keep thinking about you. I don’t know if that helps or makes it worse, but I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I thought about you being mad at me, and about the way you must’ve been rolling your eyes when we were on the phone earlier, and about your apartment, and the coffee you pretend to like when I make it too sweet, and the way you look at me when you think I’m not paying attention.”
A cough broke through him. He bent forward, eyes squeezed shut, one hand braced against the floor. It took too long to stop. When he lifted the phone again, his voice had gone hoarse around the edges.
“I wanted more time with you,” he said. “I wanted more ordinary days. That’s— that’s what I keep coming back to, which is strange, because technically, ordinary days are the least remarkable kind, but I think those are the ones I’ll miss the most. You at my desk stealing pens, and you pretending not to smile when I say something you think is ridiculous, and you falling asleep before the end of a movie and denying it in the morning.
“And if you’re hearing this, I know you’re going to want to do the thing where you decide this proves some terrible theory you’ve always had about what happens when you let people matter too much, but…”
His eyes burned. Because of the fever, maybe. Heartbreak, definitely.
“Don’t do that. Please, please don’t do that. Don’t let this be the reason you shut everyone out. I know it took a lot for you to let me in, and I know asking this is unfair, and I hate that I can’t say it to you in person, but I need you to keep letting people love you. You have to let them stay.”
He coughed again, violent enough this time to make his whole chest seize.
“The team loves you,” he said. “You know that. Garcia will smother you with affection and care packages. Morgan will check on you constantly and won’t even pretend to act cool about it. JJ will know when you’re lying about being fine before you can finish a sentence, so don’t try. Emily will sit beside you casually and pretend she isn’t worried, because she knows you hate being handled.” A faint, broken smile pulled at his mouth. “Rossi will feed you, so get ready to eat a lot of pasta. Hotch will give you space and somehow still make sure you’re never truly alone.”
He swallowed hard.
“And Elle… Call her. Please. She was there once when you needed her. Let her be there for you again.”
The words felt intrusive, maybe, as if he was reaching into parts of your life he had no right to touch. But if this was all he got, if this recording became the last shape his love ever took, he needed it to be honest.
“I don’t want you to be alone,” he said, voice breaking. “I don’t want you to decide that losing me means you were right to keep the door locked. I can’t bear it, so please, do this for me.”
He pressed his thumb into the crease of his palm until the tremor in it settled.
“I love you. I know you know that. I know I say it all the time now, probably too much, and if I get out of here you can complain about that for the rest of our lives and I won’t argue with you. But if I don’t,” he said, forcing himself through it, “then I need you to know that loving you was never something I regretted. Not for one second. And being loved by you was… it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
A sound came suddenly from outside the room. Movement. Voices. The heavy plastic rustle of protective equipment. He looked up and saw shapes gathering beyond the doorway, bright orange suits and face shields and Dr. Kimura’s focused eyes as her team entered the house.
He looked back down at the phone. There was so much more he wanted to say. There would always be so much more. That was the terrible thing about loving you — no matter what he said, it could never be enough to cover it.
“I have to go,” he said. “I’m going to try very hard to make sure you never have to hear this.”
Then, quieter:
“I love you. I really, really love you. Keep letting people in, okay?”
Garcia made a tiny broken sound through the phone, then cut the recording and the call before he could hear her cry.
—
The day stitched together in pieces after that.
Rossi and Emily kept you updated as information moved through the team, and Morgan called whenever there was a concrete update on what was going on in the house. Garcia called once too, telling you they had a name now — Chad Brown — and that Reid had been right about Nichols not working alone. There was a protégé. A student. A man with knowledge and access and ideology and rage.
You remember standing with your arms folded so tightly across your chest that your shoulders started to ache. You remember Emily offering you water and you pretending not to hear her. You remember Rossi telling you to sit down, not as an order, but in that low, paternal way of his that made you want to be even more difficult on principle. You remember staring at your phone until your eyes burned, as if your fear could force Spencer’s name to appear on the screen.
Mostly, you remember waiting.
When Hotch finally called, his voice was steady. They had Brown. The attack on the Metro had been stopped. Reid and Kimura’s team found what they needed. Reid was out of the house and had been decontaminated. Paramedics had transported him to the hospital where the treatment was being prepared, and Kimura was hopeful, and they would know more soon.
“Is he conscious?” you asked.
“Last we heard, yes,” Hotch said, and the words scraped through you. “Morgan is on the way to Walter Reed now to see what’s going on.”
You wanted to ask if Spencer had asked for you, but you didn’t. It felt too naked, somehow. Too pathetic. So you just said, “I’m on my way,” and Hotch didn’t waste anyone’s time pretending he could stop you.
Garcia found you before you made it out of the building.
She looked wrecked. Her mascara had smudged at the corners, and she had one hand wrapped around a cup of coffee she clearly hadn’t touched. She stopped in front of you like she wanted to hug you, then thought better of it, although it looked like that decision pained her immensely.
“He really, really loves you,” she said quietly.
The words were so abrupt, so earnest, that for a second you could only stare at her.
“I know,” you said.
Garcia nodded too fast. “I know you know. I just—” Her mouth trembled, and she pressed it together. “I just needed to make sure. I wanted you to hear it.”
Something about her face made your chest tighten. There was more to it — something she wasn’t saying, something she was holding back. You could see it in the way she looked at you, nervous and guilty and gentle all at once.
But Penelope Garcia, for all her usual glitter and gossip and inability to mind her own business, could keep a secret when it really mattered.
So you let her.
You just reached for her hand, squeezed once, and pushed through the doors to the parking lot.
—
Now, as you sit in an ungodly stiff chair next to his hospital bed, Spencer’s fingers move against yours.
It’s small. Barely anything. An involuntary twitch, maybe. But it’s enough of a movement to assume it could mean something bigger if you’re desperate enough, and apparently you are, because you go still so suddenly Morgan looks up from the cup of red Jell-O he’s been eating with a plastic spoon.
“Reid?” Morgan says.
Spencer’s brow furrows.
For a second, nothing happens. Then his eyes open slowly, heavy and unfocused at first. He blinks up at the ceiling like he’s trying very hard to decipher what type of room the ceiling belongs to.
Morgan moves, relief breaking over his face. “Hey, kid.”
Spencer’s gaze shifts toward him. It takes effort. Everything about his movements right now looks like it takes effort.
His voice comes out rough. “Are you eating Jell-O?”
Morgan cracks a wide grin. “Man, you almost die from a bioweapon and this is what you wake up concerned about?”
Spencer blinks slowly. “Is there any more Jell-O?”
Your laugh escapes before you can stop it. It’s small and wet and humiliating, and Spencer’s eyes move immediately toward the sound.
The drowsy confusion in his face shifts, turning into something so relieved and so sorry that all the air you just got back leaves you again.
“Hi,” he says.
You swallow. “Hi.”
Morgan looks between the two of you for half a second, then pushes himself out of his chair. “I’m gonna go tell Dr. Kimura that Sleeping Beauty here is awake,” he says. “And apparently find more Jell-O.”
Spencer’s mouth twitches faintly. “Green, if they have it.”
“You’re lucky I’m pretty much obligated to be nice to you right now,” Morgan tells him sarcastically, but his hand lands on Spencer’s shoulder for a second before he leaves, firm and warm and full of things he’ll probably never say out loud.
Then the door closes behind him and the room is quiet again, but it isn’t the same quiet as before, because Spencer’s awake now. His eyes are open. His fingers are caught between yours, weak but there, his thumb making the smallest attempt to move against your skin.
There’s too many feelings to parse through. Relief, first. Relief so enormous it can barely fit inside your body, but somehow it does, pressing against the anger and terror and frustration you also feel, against all the miserable little aftershocks of the day.
For a moment, you just look at him.
He looks terrible. Pale, sweaty, hair mussed, lips dry, throat probably raw from coughing and whatever else his body has been through. He also looks alive.
You want to kiss him.
You want to hit him.
You settle for tightening your hold on his hand and saying, very evenly, “I’m so mad at you.”
Spencer closes his eyes for a second.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t,” you say, because the calmness is already slipping. “You really, truly do not. I possess levels of anger right now that are previously unrecorded in modern psychiatry.”
His mouth curves faintly, but it fades almost immediately. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
Spencer looks at you for a long second, too tired to dress the truth up into anything gentle. “I’m sorry for what it did to you,” he says. His voice is rough and low, dragged out of a throat that still isn’t ready to cooperate. “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, and I’m sorry that when I did, I couldn’t tell you what you wanted to hear.” He pauses, breathing carefully. “But if I had left before we found what we needed, people could have died.”
You stare at the bed rail.
You know the exact reason behind the choice he made, because you’ve made choices with the same bones. Spencer’s been on the other side of this with you before. Not with anthrax in your lungs, obviously, but in basements and alleys and warehouses and too many places where you put the job before your own safety without a second thought.
You hate that. You hate him a little for making it impossible to be purely angry.
“I know,” you say, voice quieter now. “I know you’re right. Or close enough to right that I can’t even enjoy being mad at you properly.”
Spencer gives you a weak, exhausted almost-smile. “I’m sorry for that too.”
You look back at him, and the sight of him ruins you all over again.
“You could have died, Spencer,” you manage to say in a hoarse whisper.
His expression changes. The humor disappears, what little there was of it. His fingers tighten around yours with visible effort.
Your voice shakes, and that irritates you enough to make your eyes burn. “I know you. I know you weren’t actually trying to be some self-sacrificing hero, even though you have a very irritating talent for landing there by accident. I know I probably would’ve done the same thing, which is frustrating because it makes my moral high ground very unstable.” You inhale, careful and shaky. “But I was so scared, Spencer. I was so scared I couldn’t pretend to be normal about it.”
He looks at you like that sentence hurts him worse than anything else.
“I thought about that too much,” he says.
You frown. “About what?”
“You. Being scared.” His eyes drift down to your joined hands. “I thought about you being angry, and about you pretending you weren’t afraid because Rossi and Emily were there. I kept thinking…” His brow creases faintly, concentration pulling through the haze. “I kept thinking if I could just find the answer, then maybe I’d get back to you before anyone else could see your fear. I knew you’d hate it if they could.”
You let out a breath that breaks in the middle. Your free hand lifts before you really decide to move, fingers hovering near his face. He watches you do it, quiet and trusting, and that almost makes it worse.
You brush his hair back from his forehead, and his eyes close.
The simple trust of it dismantles you a little. You had spent the whole day imagining him behind sealed doors, breathing poisoned air, making logical arguments while his body betrayed him by degrees. Now he’s here, under your hand, alive and exhausted and still somehow trying to be gentle with you when he’s the one in the hospital bed.
“I love you,” you say. “And I genuinely hate you right now.”
Spencer’s eyes open again, slow and soft. “That seems pretty fair.”
Your laugh comes out wet. You look away, but he squeezes your hand before you can get far.
“I love you too,” he says. “And I know it doesn’t make it better, but I was trying to make sure I could get back to you. That was the point. I know it looked like I was choosing the work over everything else, but I wasn’t. The work was my way out.”
You turn back toward him.
He looks exhausted by the length of his own words, breaths a little uneven, but his eyes stay on yours.
“I know,” you whisper, because you do. “I know, Spence.”
You lean forward carefully, giving him time to shift away if he needs to, but he doesn’t. He tilts his face up the smallest amount, and you press your mouth to his.
The kiss is soft by necessity. There’s no heat in it, not really — not the kind the two of you are used to. His lips are chapped and warm and careful beneath yours, and for one long, holy second, all you can focus on is that you get to do this again. You get to kiss him in a hospital bed and hate the reason for it, but you still have him here to kiss. You get the fragile press of his mouth, the weak squeeze of his fingers around yours, the proof that his body is still a living thing and not a memory you’ll spend the rest of your life surviving. It isn’t enough to undo the day, but it gives your fear and love somewhere to go. It’s a promise made with whatever energy he has left.
When you pull back, your forehead rests near his temple.
“You scared the hell out of me,” you murmur.
“I know.
“If you ever do that again, I will murder you myself.”
“I know.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I know.”
You pull back enough to glare at him. “Normally you’d argue with at least one of those.”
His tired smile is tiny and perfect. “I’m conserving my energy.”
The door opens after a soft knock, and Dr. Kimura steps in with Morgan hovering behind her, a green Jell-O cup in one hand and a fresh coffee in the other.
“Look who I found,” Morgan says.
Spencer nods at Dr. Kimura before his gaze flicks to the Jell-O. “Is that for me?”
Morgan chuckles. “Yeah, kid, it’s for you.”
You wipe quickly under one eye with your thumb and try to regain whatever dignity you can scrape off the floor.
Kimura checks Spencer over. Vitals, pupils, lungs, cognitive questions he answers with enough impressive precision to make Kimura’s eyebrows lift. Morgan stays near the doorway, and you don’t let go of Spencer’s hand the entire time.
Eventually, the room settles again.
Morgan leaves the Jell-O on the tray and tells Spencer not to be a pain in the ass to you or any of the nurses. Dr. Kimura tells him he’s on the mend but needs a lot of rest, and Spencer nods, probably because he knows you wouldn’t give him a choice anyway.
Once it’s just the two of you alone in the room again, your anger has gone a bit quieter. It’s still there, and knowing you, it’ll probably stay there for a while, tucked stubbornly behind your ribs, ever-present but currently overshadowed by disgusting amounts of relief and love.
Spencer’s eyes are already slipping closed.
“Sleep,” you say.
“Will you stay?”
You sit back and wrap both hands around his. “Yeah, genius, I’ll stay. Obviously.”
The corner of his mouth turns up into a crooked, sleepy smile. “Good.”
It takes less than a minute for him to fall asleep again.
This time, watching him sleep doesn’t feel like waiting for the floor to disappear beneath you. His breathing is still rougher than you’d like, and his face is still too pale, but the monitor keeps a steady rhythm. Alive. Alive. Alive. His fingers are warm under yours, and there’s a green Jell-O cup sitting unopened on the tray because, apparently, even near-death experiences cannot kill Spencer Reid’s bizarre snack preferences. You know he’ll ask for a spoon as soon as he’s awake again and his appetite comes back.
You do not know about the recording.
You do not know that somewhere, locked carefully behind Garcia’s cyberdefenses, there is a version of his voice trying to love you through the worst possible outcome. You do not know that he spent the better part of what might’ve been his last hour on earth trying to make sure you would be okay.
But maybe it’s better you don’t know.
You don’t need the version of him that said goodbye. You need this one: alive, stubborn, fever-warm, breathing steadily with Jell-O waiting untouched beside him.
His fingers twitch against yours again in sleep.
You keep holding on. You hold on, and you stay.
ᝰ.ᐟ
this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️
PSA: likes do very little for promoting posts on tumblr! if you'd like to support a fic, please reblog!
in which confusing hallways, disloyal class partners, exercise sheets, and hypothetical atoms all work towards forming some new, hardly scientific and entirely incomprehensible, kind of bond
tags: pre relationship / fluff ! high school au !! fem cheerleader reader !!! teeny tiny mention of a scar / wound; spencer reid is the loserest of all losers; reader is like really bad at chemistry and so am i, if u cant tell; i also should note i have never been in an american high school chemistry class before; The Hotchners mentioned and jemily propaganda if u squint; i swear initially this was gonna be a slow burn; gif by @/reidgif !!
w/c: 2.5k
a/n: how is it possible that every time i tried to lock in on this something insanely time and energy consuming happened to me irl. if i told u you wouldnt believe it i swear ANYWAY i wrote this thru the most stressful time of my life and edited while surrounded by children so ignore any errors and defects pobody's nerfect AS ALWAYS thanks to my lovely eliza 4 proofreading this <3
prev part | universe masterlist | meet the reader
You give the door the quickest and quietest pair of knocks before opening it slow and hesitantly — the sound ricochets off the walls of your near empty head and you grow to mourn it as soon as Mr. Wilson's nasal monotone comes into your hearing instead.
Something, moles, something, atoms, something this, something that, is all you can understand from the lesson as you interrupt it with your head low and your breath long since lost somewhere between the way-too-many corridors you ran through in a futile attempt at getting to class on time. He (thankfully) stops talking as soon as you start walking into the classroom, but he's only quiet for a second and only to highlight the mean look he sends your way — your shoes are a sight much more interesting (or, at the very least, much less oppressive), you decide, so you keep your eyes down as you walk past his desk with a mumbled apology. “Sorry, sorry.”
He sighs. “I'll mark you tardy before you leave. Just go find a partner… or sit by yourself, I don't care.”
You scoff. Almost subconsciously you look to Jj's direction only to find her already paired up, darker hair and darker eyeliner beside her, your friend mouthing something along the lines of I didn't think you'd come today only somewhat apologetically. It's not so hopefully that you look for Haley, and she doesn't seem to notice your presence when you do find her table — Aaron's shoulder presses into hers, and she giggles between pretending to write on the worksheet they've been leaning over.
If your eyes had taken a different path while looking for another option, you might have sat with that new girl who rarely ever wants to be with anyone else or with some weirdo who rarely gets to be with anyone else; your sight, however, recognizes the face of lonely Spencer Reid first, and when you see the glasses held together by hope and crooked tape, perched on top of those hesitantly curious eyes, you decide you've found your partner for the day.
So you give Mr. Wilson the politest yet fakest of smiles and you strut across the room with all the grace of an 18-month-old, towards the table he's filled to its capacity with notebooks and notes and books. He's twirling a pen around his fingers and staring intently at nothing in particular when you reach him — startled and/or confused, his head perks up as soon as your shadow stretches into his perimeter, for a second you'd swear you were a pair of headlights facing a fawn.
“Hey, Spencer,” you all but croon, neck bending at an angle just as the corners of your lips do.
His hand stills, his shoulders straighten up, his eyebrows knit themselves closer. “Hi.”
You chuckle before the joke and you inwardly curse yourself. “All my friends hate me just because I was a little bit late,” you gesture vaguely behind you. “Is it okay if I sit with you?”
“Yea— yes. Yes. Of course,” he whispers, he hums and he nods and he drags his chair an inch to the side as if to take up even less space.
“Thank you.” The chair scrapes the floor just as loud as your speech, which grows longer while you sit, “It's, like, totally not my fault. This time. The building rearranged itself overnight, I swear, this classroom was on the other corridor last week.”
He huffs out some air and it might as well be a giggle. “The building's actually designed on a mirrored floor plan,” he says, and your silence seems to make for enough of a please elaborate. “The repetition makes it harder to orient yourself without visual anchors, and there's barely any of those standing out in this department.”
“Right. Yeah, no, totally,” you nod, elbows sliding onto the desk as your head tips into your palm. “It's still not my fault.”
“Not your fault, no,” he echoes.
You twirl your hair around a finger and the moving strands become the only source of sound then — silence grows steady as it seems Mr. Wilson has finally mastered the art of shutting the fuck up, unfortunately so at such a moment. The light is bright and blue and it bounces off Spencer's glasses in a way that would make a bling if portrayed in a cartoon. He tucks a strand of overgrown hair back before turning to fidgeting once more, his gaze now somewhere among his words in graphite, on paper.
His own worksheet, now yours as a pair, sits pretty between his hands, you have to squint for a chance at reading what he's written down so far — actually understanding it, however, is a whole other topic, and one you will worry about much, much later. “Oh, sorry,” he mumbles at your peeking, using two fingers to slide the paper across the desk. “This is, uh… we're working on stoichiometry.”
Not because of the distance anymore, nor because of his less than decent handwriting (though it certainly doesn't help), you still frown when trying to decipher it — you would've understood it all the same had it been written in proto-indo-european.
“Totally. Question.”
He nods, open to any.
“What is that?”
“What, stoichiometry?” his face contorts in what could be either judgment or concern when you move your head in confirmation. “We've been studying that all semester.”
“Oh, shut up, the semester's barely started,” you giggle almost defensively.
For a second, he looks as though he's about to argue — that changes in his expression when you pout in his direction, though. In that usual nerd fashion, his index pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose before he speaks, endearingly so. “It's the relationship between the masses in reactants and products throughout chemical reactions, basically,” he starts, and despite your best efforts, you're lost by the fifth word. He doesn't seem to realize it. He also does not stop.
No one really cares about these molecules, now, do they? You find much more interesting Spencer himself, and you can't help but notice, think about, and admire, with a sense of unprocessed and undisclosed fondness, his inadequacy and the state of discomfort he's sort of always in. His eyes twitch and hands gesture as he speaks, and he speaks like he's reading straight from a book, though his gaze never strays far enough to reach those papers. You'd swear the slit on his brow was purposeful if only you hadn't seen it when it was an open wound — it cuts across the tail of hair smoothly, in a way almost pretty, though that might just be you and your peculiar way of judging pretty. It is, at least, enticing. Admirable.
You nod and hum like the attentive listener you've always been good at pretending to be, and when he finishes his lesson with a “got it?,” you shoot back a quiet, shamefully dishonest “totally.”
His response comes barely audibly, an “okay” or a “great.”
He turns towards the teacher again, who now seems to be holding, as if it were something to dispose of, one of the excercise sheets some student has already filled out and turned in. Not in any way subtly, Mr. Wilson insults most if not all aspects of the work and tries to hide it as constructive advice for the rest of the class. You've found within yourself the ability to block out entirely the frequency of this man's voice, so long as you immerse yourself somewhere else. You choose to do so in the shallow first few levels of Spencer's head, now.
“Another question, though.”
“Yeah?”
You smile when he faces you again, even if in his own anti eye contact way. He looks just about prepared to give you an in-depth lecture on the subject. It stays undecided whether you find it sweet or borderline patronizing.
Between trying to phrase the thought and to show appreciation for the sympathy he shows toward your case (of the academic charity kind), your nose scrunches in a motion you couldn’t describe as either subconscious or entirely purposeful. Your words come out before you straighten them out better, it sounds mumbled if nothing else. “How are you?”
Spencer’s eyes jump across your expression for a second or two, you can't tell if his ears couldn't catch it or if he thinks they should not be trusted. Then he's mumbling, “What?”
“How have you been?” You tuck a leg up the chair, knee against your chest as you tilt to the side. “You know, with, uh… since the stuff with Jason and shit.”
“Oh, don’t— no, don’t worry about that,” he replies as if by instinct, voice shaking almost as much as his head. “I'm okay. He— that wasn't the first time he did that. It's fine. I'm used to it. I'm fine.”
You huff. “You are way too smart to be saying that. You know he’s, like, a fuckin—”
“Yes, I know,” he cuts you off all but harshly, his words followed by a sigh. He leans down, now looking only at his hands where they lay restless on his lap, fidgeting with his fingers, wiping his palms against the rough fabric of his jeans. He looks at you once again, though in a quick, shy glimpse now, as if making sure you're still listening. “He likely has some problem with his self-esteem and he hides it by pretending to have a sadistic kind of superiority complex. Everyone knows that, and the fact that I pretend not to be bothered by it has no impact on it whatsoever.”
“But you are bothered by it…?”
He breathes in once, twice, and then it all pours out, slow but loud and tired, through his nose. “Who wouldn't be?”
The hesitance in his voice says more than the words themselves. Empathy and pity are distinct and distinguishable feelings, you tell yourself as you decide to move away from the subject — empathetically so, of course. You look away then. You move abruptly enough to shoo the matter away, most likely to be brought up again sometime within the near future, and you pair it with a mumbled, “Yeah, right. Sorry.”
He frowns. “Why are you apologizing?”
“Because, it's— I brought up the subject and you didn't like it. It, like, fucked with your mood, I feel.” You almost laugh softly.
The white tape drags down the bony, cooked bridge of his own nose, following the movement of his nodding head. He fixes his glasses by their end pieces, this time. “Don't worry. You don’t have to apologize, it's fine.”
You wrap your hands around your legs, tap your fingers against your calf to a made up rhythm. You feel your pulse in your temple as you rest it upon your knee, your face turned fully to Spencer, smiling. You keep your eyes fixed on him as if your goal was to off-put the poor boy, which it isn't per se, though it's something somewhat related to such. They're met with Spencer’s nervous side glance a few times, and he takes a breath like one does before talking. He stays quiet a while. He breathes in again. “What is it?”
“Hm?” your brows furrow in sync with the barely honest curious sound.
“Why are you— why do you look like that? Is something wrong? What is it?”
“Look like what?” leaves your lips in a soft giggle. He stutters and you have mercy on him then. “I'm, like… I dunno, really. ‘m just bored and I feel like just being in your presence makes me smarter. It'll, like, go in through my eyes towards my brain. I can feel it already.”
He smiles and his head leans even lower. He could talk about the benefits of being surrounded by people smarter than yourself or about the embarrassing uselessness of it. He could tell you everything you see is, indeed, going through your eyes and towards your brain, and you would say you knew that, and he would make you look like a fool by pretending to believe it. With all the words, he could say you are a fool, and you wouldn't dare to refute it.
But, “okay,” he whispers.
Your bottom lip, caught between your teeth, makes a quiet clicking sound as it frees itself from their tight, painful hold, before you soothe it with a soft chuckle. Insufferably incapable of sitting in silence, you find yourself murmuring again after only so long. “You just look like you'd be a really good friend, I feel.”
A beat goes by and he doesn't show any deliberate response, the only proof of his acknowledgement being the pink slowly but surely staining his cheeks like pigment dropped and spreading onto water. Tinted the same shade and value, his mouth arranges itself with overwhelming effort into a crooked shape, half a smile and a quarter grimace.
“I can’t think of anyone beside my mother who would agree with that statement,” he whispers soon enough.
“Well, then, I'd say your mom is a very reasonable person,” you say in a chuckle. “More so than anyone else in this school.”
“Oh, I wouldn't say so, no.”
“No, sorry, no, I just meant— I could totally be… I wanna be your friend. I'd like to be your friend. If you'll have me. That sounded weird. Sorry. I don’t usually speak so weird.”
Spencer goes silent. He moves his hair away again. He moves his nose like he wants to sniffle, but it stays silent anyway. He'll stay silent. He will, at some later point, nod, and he’ll finally smile then. He'll look you up and down, mumble some kind of pleading gratitude or grateful plead, and you'll shake your head in dismissal.
He will, with immense consideration, redirect both of your attentions towards the paper — the atoms of sulfur and oxygen and iodine and carbon that, for some reason beyond your comprehension, were or are or will be unbalanced and need your help with that. He'll be nicer than he should about the confusion that'll manifest itself between your brows and he will clear his throat before starting over, saying something smart and gross like, “So, here, on your left side, see? These are your reactants.”
You'll frown. You'll laugh. You'll smile, proud and smug, in a week or two, as you show Spencer the paper when Mr. Wilson hands it back to you with a question and an exclamation mark scribbled beside the 95 percent. You'll smile and wave the next time you see him around the halls, and he'll only raise his hand, as if trying and failing to wave back, and you will not be annoyed or offended when he looks away anxiously.
OPERATION MYSTERY GIRL ⟢ spencer reid x greenaway!reader
summary: when the team realizes spencer has a secret girlfriend, garcia launches a glitter-covered investigation that’s equal parts profiling and meddling. the problem? their “mystery girl” profile is so wrong it hurts — and then the case cracks wide open, whether you’re ready or not.
genre: hurt/comfort, fluff tags/warnings: reader is elle's sister, accidentally suggestive comment from spencer lol, garcia being the office gossip, BAU team shenanigans, reader has insecurities over if she’s wrong for spencer/how she’s perceived/her entire personality basically, team dinner at rossi’s, reader is warm fruit’s #1 hater, kissssing, purposely suggestive comment from reader, they’re so down bad it’s gross, no use of y/n
a/n: i feel like this hopefully goes without saying, but zero offense is meant to the type of girl described in this fic — i just needed a contrast to greenaway!reader! anywho, this one has been a loooong time coming so I hope you enjoy (and plz appreciate the silly goofy visual aid I made on canva that you’ll find below lol) | GIF by eva @reidgif 🫶🏼
greenaway!reader masterlist 🥀
Spencer’s alarm goes off at 6:15, but you’re pretty sure he’s been awake for ten minutes already and just pretending not to be so he can keep his arm around you.
“Turn it off,” you mumble into his chest.
“I got it,” he says as he reaches for the clock.
You crack an eye open. “Too early.”
He ignores your complaint in favor of dipping his head to kiss your forehead, then your temple, then the corner of your mouth. You kiss him back, slow and lazy, one hand curling in the soft cotton of his t-shirt.
“If we don’t get up now, we’ll be late,” he says, very much not moving to get up.
“You say that like you didn’t design your alarm timing around a twenty-minute buffer,” you reply, sliding your leg over his.
“Sixteen-minute buffer, actually,” he corrects. “We typically spend an average of seven minutes kissing before I spend the other nine between your—”
“Spencer!” you shriek, cutting him off before he can finish a statement like that at six in the morning.
He smirks. “I was just providing data.”
You pinch his side. “Provide less.”
He laughs again, sleepy and warm, and grins like he’s proud of getting you flustered.
You kiss him again. It’s easier now that the part where you pretend not to want to stay has worn off. You just want to stay, and you let yourself.
When you finally peel out of bed, it’s with mutual groaning and the kind of reluctant separation that would be disgusting if it were anyone else. He presses a quick kiss between your shoulder blades as you swing your legs over the side of the mattress; you pretend it doesn’t make your chest do something stupid.
By the time you’re dressed and make your way out of the bedroom, Spencer’s apartment smells like coffee and toast. He’s in the kitchen in a button down and slacks, tie draped around his neck, reading something in the newspaper with a little furrow between his brows. There’s a mug waiting for you — your mug, chipped on one side, living here now without discussion.
You snag a piece of toast off his plate, bite into it, and lean your hip against the counter while he wrestles with his tie. It’s a new one — navy with small, neat polka dots.
“Come here,” you say, setting your mug down.
He steps closer automatically when you hook two fingers in his belt and tug him in. You untie the knot and redo it, straightening it with careful precision. He watches your face like you’re doing something much more interesting than fixing his tie.
“What?” you ask.
“Nothing,” he says. “I just… like you here.”
You roll your eyes because the alternative is something mushy, but then you lean in anyway and let your lips find his.
The kiss is soft and familiar and still somehow manages to make your knees a little shaky. He tastes like coffee and toothpaste and home, which is a terrifying thought you refuse to examine this early in the day.
He breaks away first, forehead resting against yours. “We should go.”
“Yeah,” you say, not moving.
A beat passes, then another long kiss. Eventually you both laugh, step back at the same time, and pretend you’re ready for reality to hit.
You grab your jacket and badge off the hook, he grabs his satchel and keys, and you walk out the door together.
—
By the time you pull into the Quantico lot, the radio is off and his hand is resting, casual and warm, on your thigh. You let it stay there until you’re close enough to see the building, then you nudge it away and give him a look that says later.
He gives you one back that says I know.
The practiced routine kicks in — you get out and head inside first, he waits three-and-a-half minutes before doing the same.
Spencer barely makes it to his desk before Rossi appears beside him like a well-dressed shadow.
“Ready to go?” Rossi asks, coffee in hand, already halfway turned toward the bullpen doors.
They’re headed to the academy building across campus, today’s guest lecturers for a criminology training. Spencer always pretends he’s indifferent to that sort of thing, but the second he’s in front of a whiteboard, he lights up.
Spencer blinks, then nods. “Yes. I just need—”
“Your notes are in your bag,” Rossi says. “You sent me five drafts already. Come on, kid, the cadets await.”
Spencer glances in your direction automatically. You lift your eyes just long enough to catch his and tip your chin, a small, private acknowledgment no one else would notice.
He smiles — barely there, but there — and then heads out with Rossi. You watch them go, then drag your focus back to the report in front of you.
You get maybe three minutes of peace.
“Greenawaaay,” Garcia sings, appearing at the edge of your peripheral vision like a colorful mirage.
You don’t look up yet. “If this is about your whipped cream experimentation with Kevin, I already told you I’m not certified in exorcisms.”
“It’s not about the whipped cream,” she says. “It’s much more important than the whipped cream. Which should tell you the stakes here are astronomical.”
You sigh, close the file, and finally turn. JJ and Prentiss are hovering behind her with matching she-already-recruited-us-but-we-don’t-know-what-for expressions. Morgan leans against the nearest desk, arms folded, clearly already in on whatever this is.
“What did you do?” you ask.
“Me?” Garcia bats her lashes. “Nothing. But we’re about to make history. Come on.” She jerks her head toward the hallway. “Top secret meeting in my office.”
You narrow your eyes. “I’m on the clock, Garcia. I have work to do.”
“As do I,” she says. “This is… related to work. Trust me.”
You should say no. You should go back to your paperwork. Instead, curiosity wins and you slide out of your chair.
Garcia herds the four of you down to her lair like a cheerful, bedazzled sheepdog. The door closes behind you with a heavy thud, the lights of her monitors bathing the room in neon. On the far wall, there’s a corkboard you don’t remember seeing before.
At the top, in big, bold letters outlined with glittery tape, it says:
OPERATION MYSTERY GIRL - O.M.G.
Garcia plants herself in front of the board, hands on hips. “Welcome, my beloved profilers and communications liaison, to the inaugural briefing of O.M.G.!”
JJ presses her lips together, clearly trying not to laugh. Morgan isn’t even pretending to not be thrilled. Prentiss looks like she’s just been handed front-row tickets to a train wreck.
“Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is,” you say.
“This,” Garcia announces, pointing dramatically at the corkboard, “is a fully serious, very important investigation into the case of Dr. Spencer Reid’s mysterious secret girlfriend.”
You blink. “You’re kidding.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” She gestures dramatically to the board again. It’s already populated with printed photos, sticky notes, and colored yarn connecting pins like you’re standing in front of a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream.
At the bottom is a sheet of paper featuring a stick figure of a woman with a giant question mark over her face. Around it: headings that read EVIDENCE SO FAR, POTENTIAL OCCUPATIONS, and VIBES in Garcia’s handwriting.
You step closer despite yourself.
Under EVIDENCE:
Suspiciously happy like all the time
Volunteering for less overtime than usual
New clothes??!!
His aura just screams I’M IN LURVVV
“Some of this is actually pretty accurate,” Prentiss says, leaning in.
“I’ve been monitoring his behavior for weeks,” Garcia says proudly. “The data doesn’t lie. Our boy genius is smitten, and he is hiding her from us.”
Morgan shakes his head. “He’s definitely hiding something. We’ve been saying that for a while. And at O’Keefe’s the other week, he didn’t exactly deny it. He just said ‘no comment,’ which means there’s definitely a girl.”
“He has a right to privacy,” you point out, mostly because you’re trying not to gnaw through your own tongue.
“Absolutely,” Garcia says. “He has the right to privacy, and I have the right to gossip with my friends about our other friend. Both things can be true.”
Prentiss snorts.
Garcia taps the POTENTIAL OCCUPATIONS column, where there are several options listed already:
Kindergarten teacher
Librarian
Baker
Social worker
“Seriously? You think he’s dating a kindergarten teacher? A librarian?” you ask.
JJ lifts a shoulder. “He does like to read.”
“And he’s good with kids,” Morgan adds. “Makes sense he’d go for someone sweet and gentle like that."
“It’s probably someone outside the FBI,” Prentiss proposes. “Normal job. Normal hours. No guns.”
“She definitely wears super cute colorful cardigans,” Garcia adds, already scribbling it down under VIBES. “And I’d venture to guess that she bakes cupcakes when she’s stressed. Smells like vanilla!”
“Vanilla,” you echo, deadpan.
JJ tilts her head. “You don’t think he’d be into someone like that?”
You shrug like it’s theoretical, like your heart isn’t doing something unpleasant in your chest. “He might be, I don’t know. But I think he needs someone who can actually handle the job. The hours. The… everything. This kind of life isn’t exactly gentle.”
“Exactly,” Garcia says. “Which is why she’s gotta be gentle. She provides a counterbalance. Yin and yang, crime and cupcakes. It’s poetic.”
She writes CUPCAKES under VIBES.
Morgan points his pen at the pinned drawing of the stick figure woman. “Come on, Greenaway. You spend a lot of time with him. Help us out.”
“I do not spend a lot of time with him,” you deny automatically.
Four pairs of eyes look at you.
You lift your hands. “Fine. I spend an appropriate amount of professional time with him. Not my fault Hotch pairs us together a lot.”
“Point is, you know him. So, from a purely hypothetical standpoint,” JJ says, “what kind of person do you think he’d be happy with?”
You stare at the board for a moment, at the fake girl they’ve built out of cardigans and vanilla extract. Then you pick up a pen.
“Someone smart,” you say. “He’d need that. Someone who doesn’t treat him like a walking encyclopedia but also doesn’t get lost or zone out when he goes off on a tangent. Someone who doesn’t flinch when things get ugly,” you continue. “You all know what this job does. You don’t get to just… opt out of the darkness. If you’re with him, you’re in all of it.”
You tap the pen against the board, then force your tone lighter. “And yeah, okay, probably someone nice.”
Garcia grins, scribbling down NICE under VIBES and functionally ignoring the rest of what you said. “See? This is why I invited you. You have insight!”
Morgan grins. “So we’re in agreement. She’s smart, sweet, likes kids, bakes.”
“And probably has no idea how lucky she is,” JJ adds.
You swallow back the instinctive no, she definitely knows she’s lucky and say instead, “Can I go back to work now, or are we building a composite sketch?”
Garcia swats the air. “This is just Phase One, my fine furry friend. We will reconvene later. In the meantime, I expect you all to investigate.”
You roll your eyes, but there’s no real bite in it. “Great. Can’t wait to see what Phase Two has in store.”
As you step back, your gaze catches on the stick figure again. On the glitter, the stickers, the ridiculous heading — O.M.G.
According to the board, Reid’s mystery girl should be someone who wears cardigans. Smells like sugar. Teaches kindergarten.
Definitely not someone like you.
You shove that thought down where it belongs, under seven layers of scar tissue and denial, and head back to the bullpen like nothing in here touched you at all.
—
The rest of the morning unfolds like any other day at the BAU, if you ignore the fact that one of your coworkers has unknowingly built a conspiracy wall about you.
You try to ignore it.
You work a consult. You write up a report on last week’s case. You argue with a detective over the phone until he backs down, and when you hang up, Morgan’s watching you like: damn, remind me to never piss you off.
“You good?” he asks.
“Peachy,” you say, tossing the file onto your desk. “Please tell me Garcia found a new hobby in the last hour.”
He grins. “Not a chance. She’s real committed to this one.”
You roll your eyes and open your email.
There’s a subject line from Garcia that reads: “O.M.G. – Phase Two Meeting Tomorrow - Agenda Enclosed!” with three heart emojis.
You don’t open it. You’re not that masochistic.
Around noon, your phone buzzes against your desk. You assume it’s another follow-up from Garcia and flip it over, already cringing. Instead, it’s Spencer.
Spencer: Cadets have already asked 3 questions that make me concerned for the future of law enforcement.
You huff out a quiet laugh before you can stop it, shoulders loosening.
You type back under the desk.
You: important news from the home front: i am currently the unsub in an unsanctioned profiling experiment being conducted out of garcia’s lair
There’s a long enough pause that you can imagine him reading it twice, brow furrowed.
Spencer: …What?
You: penelope has formed a task force
You: codename: operation mystery girl
You: acronym: O.M.G.
You: there’s glitter. so much glitter
You: and specific instructions not to tell you about it. oops
This time, his reply is almost immediate.
Spencer: Why can’t I know?
You: because you’ve been “suspiciously happy” so they’ve decided that gives them grounds to reverse-engineer your love life
You: they’re profiling your “type.” your mystery girl.
Another beat. You can practically feel him flushing through the screen.
Spencer: What have they concluded so far?
You: that you’re dating a bubbly, perfect kindergarten teacher who smells like vanilla
There’s a full minute of silence this time. You picture him in some Academy auditorium, phone in his hand under the desk while Rossi lectures about offender typologies.
Finally:
Spencer: I don’t even like vanilla that much.
You laugh under your breath and stare at that for a second, heat curling low in your stomach for absolutely no good reason as his second text comes through.
Spencer: I prefer more complex flavors.
You roll your eyes at your phone, because of course he somehow made that sound unintentionally sweet and slightly filthy without even trying.
You: stop flirting with me during class
You: you’re supposed to be educating the next generation of the fbi
As if on cue, Hotch’s door opens and he steps out into the bullpen, scanning the room. You turn your phone face-down on your desk.
By late afternoon, O.M.G. has evolved. Every so often you catch someone making a note — Garcia walking by while scribbling on a sticky, JJ whispering something in her ear, Prentiss and Morgan analyzing Spencer’s desk from a distance.
It’s fine. It’s all stupid and harmless and fine.
Your phone buzzes again around four while you’re in the hall heading back from the bathroom.
Spencer: Wrapping up here, should be back soon. Any further developments on the O.M.G. front?
You glance down the hall towards Garcia’s office. The door is closed, a faint glow spilling out from beneath it like a witch’s cave.
You: more of the same
You: i’ll fill you in tonight
You hesitate, then tack on one more message before you can talk yourself out of it:
You: miss you
It’s reckless and feels entirely too honest, but your thumb hits send anyway.
The reply comes before you’ve even locked your phone.
Spencer: I miss you too. See you soon.
You swallow, looking around like the words might be visible in the air, but no one’s looking at you. No one has a clue.
Yet.
—
By the time you make it to Spencer’s apartment after work, your brain feels like it’s humming inside your skull.
You kick the door shut with your heel, toe your shoes off in the entryway, shrug out of your jacket and scarf and hang them on the hook you’ve claimed as your own. Spencer drops his satchel by the couch and heads for the kitchen.
“Dinner,” he calls, opening the fridge. “Option A: leftover lo mein. Option B: grilled cheese. Option C: both.”
“C,” you pick.
He smiles faintly and pulls out the takeout container. It’s all so normal — him moving around the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, you leaning your hip against the cabinets as you watch him. This is your life now: FBI agent by day, domestic lovergirl by night.
You watch him butter bread and portion out noodles like he’s solving a complex equation. He glances up.
“You said you’d fill me in,” he reminds you. “On O.M.G.”
You snort. “Right. Your fan club.”
He raises his eyebrows. You sigh and attempt to pick the least sharp version of the recap you’ve been brewing in your head all day.
“Garcia built a case board,” you say. “There are doodles and glitter tape and stickers. She has lists pinned to it for ‘Evidence So Far,’ ‘Potential Occupations,’ and ‘Vibes.’”
He blinks once. “…Vibes.”
“Vibes,” you confirm. “And according to our coworkers, apparently the ‘vibe’ is that you’re secretly dating a kindergarten teacher slash librarian slash cupcake baker who smells like vanilla and wears colorful cardigans and definitely doesn’t carry a gun or have years of trauma to work through in therapy.”
He pauses in the act of flipping a sandwich. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” You pick at a chip in the countertop.
“And what did you contribute to the investigation?” he asks.
You shrug like it doesn’t matter. “That whoever you’re with would have to be smart. And able to handle the job. And not treat you like you’re made of glass. Clearly, my influence was minimal.”
The grilled cheese sizzles. The lo mein goes in the microwave. Silence fills in around it, heavy and familiar.
You eat on the couch, plate balanced on your knees, a National Geographic documentary playing low on the TV.
You make jokes at first. You tell him about Prentiss and Morgan’s intense study of his desk for “data collection” and Garcia’s email subject lines. Spencer laughs in all the right places. He looks at you more than he looks at the screen.
But by the time the plates are empty, the jokes have dried up.
You stack the dishes and take them to the sink, rinsing them off like the hot water might scald the thoughts out of your head. When you look up, he’s still on the couch, watching you with that careful focus of his.
“What?” you ask.
“You’re doing that thing,” he says.
“Please specify which thing,” you say. “I have a lot of things.”
“The thing where you brush something hurtful off like it’s funny but then go really quiet and your shoulders get all tense.” He pats the cushion next to him. “Come here.”
“I’m fine,” you say automatically.
“I never said you weren’t.” His voice stays soft, but there’s a thread of seriousness underneath it. “I said to come here.”
You sigh and drop onto the couch beside him with more force than necessary. He shifts closer, thigh warm against yours. His hand finds the back of the couch behind your shoulders, not quite touching you yet.
“So,” he says. “What’s bothering you? And don’t say ‘nothing,’ because we both know that’s not true.”
“It’s stupid,” you grumble, staring at the coffee table.
He gently lifts your chin with his finger. “Okay. Tell me anyway.”
You chew the inside of your cheek, throat tight. You’ve been replaying it all day — the board, the stick figure, the list of traits that are a complete juxtaposition to your entire personality.
“I…” You trail off and try another angle. “The team loves you. They just want you to be happy. It’s sweet, honestly. A massive overstep and an insane invasion of privacy, but still sweet. I understand their curiosity.”
“But,” he prompts gently.
You exhale, sharp. “But… they built you a perfect imaginary ideal girlfriend, and she’s nothing like me.”
He’s quiet. You push on before you can lose your nerve.
“Like, not even a little bit,” you say. “She’s soft and gentle and bakes when she’s stressed and doesn’t know what a glock looks like. She smells like vanilla.” The word tastes bitter on your tongue. “And the thing is, Morgan and Garcia and JJ and Prentiss know you. Like, really well. They’re your best friends. So if that’s the woman who pops into their heads when they think about who’d be good for you—” You break off.
When you look up, his eyes are still on you, open and steady.
“When they eventually find out it’s me,” you go on, forcing the words out, “they’re going to look at you like you’ve lost your mind. Like you traded in a cupcake for… I don’t know. A Molotov cocktail or something.”
“You don’t honestly think,” he says, “that they sat there and consciously decided, ‘Reid should be with someone who is the total opposite of Greenaway.’”
“No,” you say. “I think they didn’t think of me at all.”
The words hang there, more naked than you meant them to be.
He goes very still.
“Not that I wanted them to think of me and figure it out, but still.” You stare resolutely at the coffee table. “And, like, I get it. I’ve spent a long time cultivating a vibe that says ‘do not perceive me unless you want to get bit.’ I don’t exactly radiate ‘nurturing life partner’ energy. It would almost be funny if it didn’t feel like—” You motion helplessly at some vague point in front of you. “Like confirmation,” you say. “That I’m wrong for you. That when they do eventually find out, they’re going to wonder how badly you hit your head.”
There’s a prickling behind your eyes. You blink hard, once, twice. It doesn’t help much.
“And I hate that it’s getting to me,” you say. “I don’t care what people think. That’s, like, my whole thing. I have built an entire personality around not giving a shit. But I…” You flex your hands, fingers curling against your knees. “I care what they think of you. And of you with me. And apparently that’s enough to scramble my brain, because now I’m sitting here wishing I could be some fucking vanilla-cupcake-librarian for you because you deserve someone that sweet and soft and kind, but that’s— that’s not who I am. I don’t know how to be that girl. And I am so fucking tired of being the wrong kind of girl in every room.”
There’s a long moment where the only sound is the TV and your own breathing, too loud in your ears.
Then Spencer moves.
He reaches over, gently pries your hand away from your knee, and laces his fingers through yours. His palm is warm. His grip is firm without being possessive.
“Look at me,” he says.
You do. It feels like standing on the edge of a roof and choosing, deliberately, not to step back.
“You’re right, they do know me,” he says. “But they don’t know what it feels like to be in my apartment at three in the morning when my brain won’t shut off and you stay up with me just so I’m not alone. They don’t know what it’s like to sit in a car with you at a crime scene and have you make the darkest possible joke at exactly the right moment. They don’t know how it feels when I start spiraling and you say, very firmly, ‘Reid, eat something,’ and shove a granola bar into my hand.”
You start to object. “That happened, like, one time.”
“It was three times,” he says. His thumb strokes along the side of your hand absentmindedly.
“They’re still a bit stuck on the version of me that existed before… a lot of things. Before Tobias Hankel. Before Gideon left. Before losing people changed the way I look at everything. They still see the kid who needed to be protected from himself.”
“Sometimes you still are that kid,” you say softly.
“Sometimes,” he agrees. “But I’m also a man who knows what he wants. Who he wants.” His eyes are steady on yours. “And it’s you. It’s been you for a long time.”
Your throat tightens.
“They want me to have someone gentle,” he says. “And I get why. But gentle doesn’t necessarily have to mean cupcakes and vanilla and kindergarten.” He tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. “You’re gentle with me in all the ways that matter. You know when to challenge me and when to just… be here.”
“So you’re saying you don’t want a cupcake,” you say slowly.
“I’m saying I don’t want to be handled,” he corrects. “I don’t want to be someone’s fragile project. I don’t need to be saved from my own life by a nice woman in a cardigan.”
He leans in a little, eyes not leaving yours.
“I chose you,” he says. “Not because I’m convinced you’re secretly soft underneath it all and one day you’ll transform into their idea of what my life should look like. I chose you, completely as you are. Sharp and stubborn and infuriating and the only person who’s ever told me to shut up not because you didn’t care what I had to say, but because you wanted to kiss me so badly you couldn’t wait."
Heat flickers under your skin at that memory. Your eyes sting again. You blink hard.
“They love me,” he says with a nod. “You’re right. But they also love you. They trust you with their lives. They’ve seen you bleed for this team. Do you really think that when they find out I’m with someone who understands all of that, who gets it down to the bone, they’re going to… what? Stage an intervention? Tell me I should hold out for someone better?”
You look away, jaw tight.
“If I didn’t want you,” he says, voice even, “I wouldn’t be with you. If I thought you were wrong for me, I wouldn’t let you into this part of my life.” He squeezes your hand. It’s grounding, the pressure. “I’m not going to look at Garcia’s corkboard and suddenly decide I made a mistake. I’m in this because I want to be.”
You swallow, hard. A traitorous tear finally escapes despite your best efforts; you swipe it away with the heel of your hand before it can go rogue.
“This is so embarrassing,” you mutter. “I’m mad at a fucking bulletin board.”
He smiles, small and fond. “You’re not mad at the board.”
He shifts closer, finally letting his arm drop around your shoulders, pulling you in until you’re halfway in his lap.
“I just don’t want to be the wrong choice,” you whisper.
“You’re not,” he says. No hesitation. “You’re the right one. And if that conflicts with our friends’ wild imaginations, then that’s their problem to solve. Not ours.”
You swallow, breathing uneven. He’s so close you can count his eyelashes. You let your head tip against his shoulder as his thumb draws idle circles on the back of your hand.
“Okay,” you say eventually, almost too quiet to hear. “But if they look at me like I’m a bad idea when they eventually find out, you’re in charge of reminding them I’m not.”
“I can do that,” he promises.
You stay like that for a while — documentary murmuring in the background, the universe shrunk down to the circumference of his arm around you and the steady rise and fall of his chest. At some point, he turns his head and presses a kiss into your hair.
“You know Garcia’s going to put glittery heart stickers around my face if she ever adds me to that board,” you mumble against him.
“I know,” he says. “And I’m so keeping it if she does.”
You pinch his side. He yelps, then laughs, then presses another kiss into your hair.
Let them have their glitter for now, you think to yourself. Let them build their wrong profile. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re here, and he’s here, and you’re choosing each other.
—
Rossi’s email hits your inbox on Thursday morning, wedged between a case update and a training memo.
BAU Pasta Night at Villa Rossi: Saturday. 6pm. Mandatory attendance.
You read it twice. There’s something about dinner at Rossi’s that feels less like an invitation and more like a command.
Your phone buzzes with a text five minutes later.
Spencer: Did you see Rossi’s email?
You stare at the screen longer than you need to, then type back:
You: yep
You: guess we’re having pasta this weekend
Once Saturday night hits, Garcia is on Spencer before he can even take his coat off in Rossi’s foyer.
“REID,” she announces, planting herself in front of him with the kind of intensity she usually reserves for hacking and cross-referencing. “You came alone.”
Spencer’s mouth opens. Closes. “Hi, Garcia.”
Morgan appears behind her with a glass of wine, already grinning. “No plus-one, man? C’mon.”
Emily lifts her eyebrows in amusement. JJ’s smile is softer, more sympathetic than nosy.
You keep your face blank and slip past them toward the kitchen, waving awkwardly to Hotch as you pass by the living room, because if you have to stand there and listen to this, you will commit a felony.
Rossi intercepts you with a dish towel over his shoulder and a look that says I got you, kid.
“If you’re looking for a way to escape Penelope’s witch hunt, go ahead into the cellar downstairs and pick out another bottle of red,” he says mercifully. “Barolo or Chianti preferably, but it’s your choice."
“Yes, sir,” you say sarcastically, and take the out.
The basement is cooler, quieter. You let yourself breathe for a minute, fingers trailing over labels, pretending you’re here for the tannins.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Spencer is doing his best impression of a man who is not currently being cornered by three BAU agents and one extremely glitter-motivated tech analyst.
Garcia doesn’t even bother easing in.
“Okay,” she says, clasping her hands. “We have respected your privacy for—”
Morgan coughs. “We have attempted to respect your privacy.”
Garcia glares at him, then refocuses on Spencer. “—for a completely appropriate amount of time. But I simply cannot wait any longer. In my heart of hearts I know you’re seeing someone, and I’m DYING to know who she is.”
Spencer rubs the back of his neck. “This is, uh… really none of your business.”
Emily leans against the counter, entertained. “You’re surrounded by profilers, Reid. Being in other people’s business is kind of what we do best.”
JJ steps in a little. “Look, Spence, you don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,” she says, and she means it even though Garcia’s threatening her with dagger eyes. “But we’re your friends. We notice when something changes, and we just want the chance to be happy for you.”
Spencer’s ears go pink. “I—I know. It’s just— It’s private.”
Garcia’s eyes widen theatrically. “So she IS real! Private means real!”
Morgan tilts his head. “C’mon, fess up. You seeing someone, pretty boy?”
Spencer hesitates for an awkward beat, running through the options in his head. He supposes that confirming the existence of a significant other isn’t the worst idea in the world, considering they’ve already pretty much figured it out, and it’s not like he has to tell them who the “mystery girl” is. That’s a boundary line he can draw and stick to. Plus, maybe they’ll chill out on O.M.G. and leave you some room to breathe if they at least have a few nuggets of information to hold them over for a bit.
“Yes,” he admits finally. “I’m…seeing someone.”
Garcia makes a sound like she’s about to ascend. “OHHH MY GOD. I KNEW IT.”
“So,” Emily says. “How long has it been?”
Spencer exhales. “A… while. Things started slow, so it’s somewhat hard to quantify.”
As if he doesn’t know the exact amount of time down to the minute that’s passed since you first kissed him in Ohio.
Morgan’s cheeky grin softens as he claps Spencer’s shoulder. “I’m happy for you, man,” he says.
Spencer nods and looks down, like he doesn’t know what to do with that. JJ’s expression brightens in a way that’s genuinely excited for him.
“Well,” Garcia says, leaning in like she’s about to jump into full-on detective mode. “Tell us about her! I want to know everything.”
Spencer’s eyes flick up. “I—”
“Not actually everything. We’re not asking for her social security number,” JJ clarifies. “Not even her name. Just…are you happy? Is it going well?”
Spencer nods, the corner of his mouth tipping up despite himself. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “It’s…good. Really, really good.”
Garcia’s voice turns unexpectedly soft. “Is she good to you?”
Spencer doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
Emily taps her fingernail against the counter. “What sorts of things do you two do? Do you go out? Stay in?”
“Both,” Spencer says. “We do, uh, normal things.”
Garcia squints. “Define ‘normal,’ because your normal includes reading hundred-year-old Russian novels for fun.”
He gives a small, helpless shrug. “We… we go on walks. Run errands. Go out to eat. There’s this little Italian restaurant in Georgetown she really likes. But… we also stay in a lot. We cook together sometimes. Talk. Read. Watch movies.”
“What kind of movies?” JJ probes.
Spencer thinks of you engrossed by a classic horror film or picking apart some terrible romcom with surgical cruelty, pointing out every dumb decision while somehow still being fully invested. He does not say that out loud.
“Uh, anything, really,” he says instead. “She made me watch Pulp Fiction recently, and I showed her a documentary about black holes last weekend. She… likes indulging my interests.”
Emily’s eyes flicker with satisfaction at that. JJ files it away. Garcia is practically vibrating.
Morgan jumps in next. “So, you planning on bringing her to one of these things eventually?”
Spencer’s throat bobs. “…Eventually.”
“In the meantime, I need more. What does she like?” Garcia presses. “What’s her favorite—food, music, whatever. Give us something, Reid! One harmless little detail.”
Spencer’s brain scrambles for something that feels safe. Something that won’t point to you. Something small.
“She… she has a bit of a sweet tooth,” he admits. “Brownies, cake, cookies… you know. But she hates warm fruit. Something to do with the texture. We went to a diner once where the waitress gave us free slices of pie, and she picked out all the fruit and just ate the crust and ice cream.”
Emily laughs. “That’s unhinged.”
Garcia clutches her heart. “Oh, a woman with a quirk! I just know I'm going to adore her already.”
Spencer’s eyes flick toward the cellar door for the briefest of seconds — instinctively, as if his gaze is trained on you like a magnet — before looking back at his nosy friends with his signature awkward, tight-lipped smile.
“Yeah,” he says. “I have a feeling you will.”
—
When you come back upstairs with a bottle of Barolo, the evening has already moved into that easy, warm groove: plates clinking, voices overlapping, Rossi refilling wine glasses.
You laugh at something JJ says. You argue with Emily about her taste in horror movies. Spencer watches you like he’s trying to memorize your face. As if he hasn’t already committed every inch of it to memory.
By the time the pasta plates are cleared and Rossi heads into the kitchen to grab dessert, you’ve almost forgotten about O.M.G. entirely. The team has, mercifully, taken it easier on Spencer after the conversation you missed while seeking refuge in the wine cellar.
Whatever he said to shut them up, it must’ve worked, you think to yourself.
Rossi returns to the dining room and sets a slice of apple pie in front of you. “Made from scratch,” he boasts.
You eye it. The apples are glossy and soft. Wrong texture. Wrong temperature. But the crust looks deliciously sugary and flaky and you’re not about to insult Rossi in his own home mansion, so you manage a polite “Thank you” and pick up your fork.
Across the table, Spencer freezes.
Not a subtle freeze — no. It’s a full, wide-eyed, deer-in-headlights freeze.
He clears his throat too loud. Knocks his fork against his plate. His foot finds your ankle under the table with a series of frantic little nudges.
You glance up, confused, eyes clearly asking what the heck is your problem.
He’s staring at your plate like it’s an unpinned grenade.
His mouth opens. Closes. He tries again, smaller, more desperate: “Uh—”
What? you mouth, eyebrows raised.
His eyes flick back and forth — pie, you, pie, you — like he’s trying to telepathically beam a message directly into your skull. But there is, unfortunately, no universal signal for if you eat your pie like a feral raccoon our coworkers are 100% going to figure out our secret so please just be normal this one time, so you just stare at him blankly.
Weirdo.
You gently kick his foot away — more confused than annoyed — and turn back to your plate.
And then you do what you always do.
You begin to push the warm apples to one side of the dish with the edge of your fork, methodically separating fruit from crust like you’re field-stripping a firearm.
Spencer’s face goes beet red in anxious anticipation, but the room doesn’t go silent all at once.
It’s staggered. Like a line of well-spaced dominos, toppling one after another in perfect succession.
Garcia notices first. Her whole face lights up, brows practically shooting up to her hairline. A strangled noise catches in her throat, and her hand clamps over her mouth like she’s trying to keep herself from screaming.
JJ freezes mid-bite, fork suspended, eyes wide and snapping to Spencer.
Morgan’s grin falters into disbelief. “No way,” he says, like he’s arguing with reality.
Emily’s jaw goes slack. “Oh,” she breathes. Then her eyes sharpen, bright with dawning glee. “Ohhh.”
You look up at the sudden weirdness and find four faces locked on your plate like you’ve just confessed to arson.
“What,” you ask carefully, “is happening. Why are you all staring at my pie.”
Morgan points his fork at your dish and turns to Spencer. “Reid,” he says, voice pitched with amusement, “didn’t you literally just tell us your girl does that? That she won’t eat warm fruit?”
Spencer shuts his eyes for a second — brief, pained — like he’s watching himself die in third person. When he opens them, he looks straight at you.
Pure apology. Pure guilt.
He winces. “I… I didn’t know there was going to be pie.”
Something in you goes cold and then hot at the exact same moment you catch up to what’s going on.
For half a second, your brain offers you the classic Greenaway solution: vanish. Run and never look back. You can practically feel the panic trying to crawl up your throat, because this is what you were dreading — the second everyone knows, they get to have opinions. They get to look at you and Spencer like a math problem and decide you don’t add up.
Except… they’re not at all looking at you like you’re wrong for him.
You scan the room. Garcia’s smiling so big it looks painful. JJ’s gaze is warm, not sharp. Emily looks like she just won a bet she never told anyone she made. And Morgan is staring like he can’t believe you got one over on him, but there’s no anger in it — just that big-brother okay, show me you’re serious energy. The only person in the room who looks horrified is Spencer, who’s clearly just trying to cope with the fact he accidentally revealed your relationship in maybe the stupidest way possible.
You take a breath, feel your pulse in your throat, and then — because you’re not going to let all of your control over this situation be ripped out of your hands — you say:
“Congrats everyone, you cracked the code. Yes. Reid and I are together.”
Garcia explodes.
“MYSTERY GIRL IS YOU,” she shrieks, half out of her chair. “It’s been you this ENTIRE time. Oh my GOD. I made a board! I made assumptions! I said cupcakes and cardigans when in reality, Mystery Girl was right in front of me in boots and a leather jacket and—”
“Garcia,” Hotch warns.
JJ’s earnest expression is the first thing that cuts through the chaos. “This makes so much sense,” she says.
“Yeah,” Emily agrees. “The second you say it out loud, it’s like— of course. How did we miss that?”
Morgan sits back, still staring between you and Spencer like he’s recalibrating. Then he lets out a laugh — half disbelief, half delight. “Man,” he chuckles, shaking his head, “I thought you were cuddled up with a librarian or something. Meanwhile you’re out here dating the most terrifying Greenaway sister,” he says, then winks at you like he’s trying to make sure you know he means it as a compliment.
You lift your chin. “Say that again and I’ll throw this pie at you.”
Morgan grins, hands up. “See? Exactly what I mean.”
Rossi sips his wine with a chuckle. “About time you bozos figured it out.”
Garcia whirls on him. “You KNEW?!”
Rossi’s mouth quirks. “What can I say, I’m good at my job.”
Hotch sets his fork down with the resigned patience of a man who has filled out a lot of paperwork on this exact subject already. “I’ve also been aware for some time,” he says evenly.
Garcia makes a noise that sounds like she’s dying. “BOTH of you knew?!”
Spencer clears his throat, still pink, still looking like he wants to apologize to you in six different languages. His eyes don’t leave your face.
Garcia’s hands clap together like she’s calling court to order. “O.M.G. never stood for Operation Mystery Girl,” she announces, breathless with triumph. “It stood for OH MY GREENAWAY all along.”
JJ’s gaze meets yours. “For what it’s worth,” she says, "I'm really happy that Mystery Girl is you.”
Emily lifts her glass in a small toast. “Me as well,” she adds. “This is good. This is really, really good.”
Morgan’s grin softens into something fond and protective. “As long as you’re both happy and nobody’s getting hurt,” he says, “I’m happy for you. Both of you.”
Garcia’s voice goes thick, emotional, and she tries to bulldoze right through it with dramatics. “I’m so happy,” she declares. “I’m also a bit devastated I wasn’t included in the secret circle of knowing earlier, but mostly I’m happy because you two are…” She gestures wildly. “You’re you. And it’s perfect.”
Something in your chest steadies instead of cracks.
“Okay,” you say, exhaling. “Cool. Great. Everybody get it out of their system?”
Garcia points at your pie plate, still half-disassembled. “Not even close. I’m sorry,” she gasps, “but I can’t get over that THIS is what did it.”
You deadpan. “My beef with pie is never-ending.”
Rossi claps once, satisfied. “Alright. Now that the children have finished screaming, eat your dang dessert.”
Laughter rolls around the room again, warmer now, less sharp.
Under the table, Spencer’s shoe nudges yours.
You nudge back.
And when you finally escape an hour later, the night air is cold and quiet, and Spencer grips the steering wheel like he’s trying to drive his guilt into the pavement.
You watch him from the passenger seat, heart weirdly calm.
He doesn’t say much on the drive. Neither do you. The secret is out, the world didn’t end, and for now, that’s enough.
—
Back at Spencer’s apartment, the quiet hits you like a soft wall.
No Garcia shrieking. No Morgan cackling. Just the click of the lock, the hush of the hallway outside, and Spencer standing there with his keys still in his hand.
“You okay?” you ask, toeing your shoes off.
Spencer exhales — sharp, like he’s been holding it since the pie incident — and sets his keys down with exaggerated care. Then he turns to you, eyes wide in that way they get when he’s trying not to catastrophize and failing.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
You blink. “You don’t need to be.”
He shakes his head. “But I am. I’m so sorry. For all of it. For telling them the fruit thing. I didn’t realize I was outing us. I—I didn’t know there was going to be pie.”
“I gathered that,” you say.
He steps closer, hands hovering at his sides like he wants to touch you but doesn’t want to assume it’d be welcome.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he continues, words tumbling now that the gate’s open. “It was stupid. I thought giving them a hyper-specific detail would give them something to fixate on and shut them up, and that one seemed harmless enough, but then I saw the pie and I—” He swallows. “I really did try to warn you.”
“You did,” you say, leaning back against the wall. “You were practically doing Morse code against my ankle.”
“I panicked,” he admits, cheeks flushing. “And then it all happened so fast and you looked—” He stops, eyes flicking over your face like he’s searching for hurt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I know you hate being… perceived.”
He takes one more step. You can feel his warmth now, close enough that it seeps into you.
“I keep thinking about the other day,” he says quietly. “How scared you were for them to find out.” His throat bobs. “And then I was the one who—who basically handed them our secret on a silver platter.”
You tilt your head. “On a pie platter, actually.”
He looks pained. “Please don’t make jokes right now.”
“Spencer,” you say seriously. “I’m not mad at you.”
He lets out a breath, but it’s not quite relief yet. He’s still braced for impact.
“And I’m not mad that they know,” you add, watching him closely. “I mean, I’m a little embarrassed that my downfall was pie of all things, but—”
His mouth finally lifts, small and uncertain.
“But,” you repeat, “it’s okay. I’m fine, really.”
You push off the wall and close the space remaining between you, because you’re tired of him hovering at the edge of you and want him to feel how not-mad you are.
His hands find your waist the second you’re close enough, careful at first, then firmer when you lean in like you belong there.
“Are you sure?” he whispers.
You nod. “I’m sure.”
“Because you could—” He swallows. “You could decide this is too much. Too exposed. And I wouldn’t blame you, but I’d…” His voice cracks just slightly. “I’d miss you.”
Something in your chest goes tight and hot.
You slide your hands up his arms, feel the muscle under his sleeves, the faint tremor he’s trying his best to hide. You clasp your fingers behind his neck and pull him down until his forehead nearly brushes yours.
“I’m not going anywhere,” you murmur.
His eyes flutter shut for half a second, like the words physically steady him.
“You’re not?”
“No,” you say, and you let yourself mean it. “I told you, I’m not mad. I’m not running. The worst thing that happened tonight is that our coworkers found out I have psychopathic dessert habits.”
He huffs a laugh.
“Besides,” you add, because you can’t help it, “you looked kinda hot when you were trying to telepathically get me to eat my pie like a normal person.”
His eyes open, startled. “I— what?”
“You did,” you insist, deadly serious. “Somehow, panic is a good look on you. Big fan.”
His cheeks go pink, but now it’s in a good way.
“You’re unbelievable,” he murmurs, shaking his head like he’s trying to hide the smile.
“And you,” you say, sliding your thumbs along his jaw, “are catastrophizing.”
“I know,” he admits. “I just… I care about you.”
The words hang there, heavy and honest and dangerously close to a bigger truth, but you don’t let it scare you. Not tonight.
You kiss him instead.
It’s slow at first — soft, testing — like you’re proving something to him with your mouth: I’m here. I’m fine. Then it deepens, because Spencer never stays soft for long once you give him permission. His hands tighten at your waist, pulling you in until there’s no space left to misunderstand.
His mouth is warm, familiar, and still somehow new every time. You feel him exhale against you, a quiet sound that sinks into your skin.
When you pull back, he looks at you again and cups your cheek like you’re something precious.
“I’m glad you’re okay with this,” he says.
“I’m okay,” you say, and kiss the corner of his mouth. “I’m… actually kind of relieved.”
His brow furrows. “Relieved?”
You roll your eyes, because you refuse to be poetic about it. “Yeah. It’s out, and they didn’t—” You falter, just a flicker. “They didn’t look at you like you were making a mistake.”
His expression softens.
“No,” he agrees. “They didn’t. I told you they wouldn’t.”
You nod once. “And you were right. So, I’m good.”
“Good,” he echoes, but his thumb keeps stroking your cheek like he doesn’t want to let the moment go.
Your gaze drops to his mouth again. His eyes follow it, and his breathing changes — subtle, but you know him by heart now.
You smirk and lean in closer until your lips are brushing with every breath. “And hey, now that the team knows, we don’t have to pretend we’re not together every second of the day anymore,” you tease.
His voice goes a little rough. “We still shouldn’t, uh, do anything at work, you know.”
“Obviously,” you say, like you’re offended he even suggested it. “But we’re not at work right now, are we?”
He shudders softly as his hands slide from your waist to your lower back, drawing you closer like he’s been waiting all night to do this without consequence.
“No,” he murmurs. “We’re not.”
You kiss him again, deeper this time. He gives in completely, following your lead with that sweet, earnest hunger that always makes you feel a little wicked and a little adored at the same time.
When you finally break apart, you’re both breathing differently. He rests his forehead against yours, eyes half-lidded.
“I’m still sorry,” he whispers.
“Don’t be,” you say. “It’ll make a good story someday.”
His throat works. His hands tighten on you like he needs the confirmation in his bones.
You press your mouth to his once more, slow and sure, just to make the point stick.
“Case closed,” you murmur against his lips.
Spencer’s smile turns soft and helpless. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Mystery solved.”
ᝰ.ᐟ
→ next part
this fic is part of the greenaway!reader universe/series! you can read more about this pairing here ♥️
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