marginalia
pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader
word count: 5.6k
summary: what starts as an academic crush on your painfully observant professor becomes significantly harder to survive after spencer reid signs a piece of feedback with “I remain yours sincerely.” unfortunately, you make the deeply questionable decision to keep it tucked inside your phone case.
includes: no use of y/n, professor!spencer reid, student/teacher dynamic, mutual pining, slow burn, academic yearning, intellectual intimacy, awkward flirting, emotional repression, praise kink if you squint, small age gap, office hours tension, accidental confession, unresolved sexual tension, humiliation as a love language, reader is down catastrophic, hopeful ending
based on this request
By the second semester, you know three things with absolute certainty.
First: Dr. Spencer Reid writes on whiteboards like he’s racing a clock only he can see.
Second: nobody voluntarily sits in the front row because it’s psychologically exhausting to be perceived by him for extended periods of time.
And third:
You are developing a deeply academic crush that is rapidly mutating into something clinically embarrassing.
The lecture hall hums softly around you with the sounds of backpacks unzipping and laptops waking from sleep. Rain taps against the high windows in restless little bursts, turning the late afternoon light silver at the edges.
At the front of the room, Dr. Reid is already halfway through uncapping three different markers at once.
He’s wearing a charcoal cardigan today.
You notice because of course you do.
Not in a normal way, either.
In the kind of way where your brain stores the information carefully like it might appear on an exam later.
“Statistically,” he says without turning around, “most people remember information better when there’s contextual novelty attached to it, which is why you all remember where you were during emotionally significant events but not what you ate last Tuesday.”
A beat.
Then he glances back toward the class.
“Unless it was tacos. People tend to remember tacos.”
A few students laugh.
You do too, unfortunately loud enough that his eyes flick toward you automatically.
There it is.
That tiny spark of recognition.
Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just enough to say I know you.
Which is worse.
Much, much worse.
Because you’ve taken two semesters with him now. You go to office hours. You answer questions when nobody else will. Once, during your first class, you made an offhand comment about eidetic memory research and his entire face lit up like someone plugged sunlight directly into the national power grid.
Since then, you’ve been doomed.
Utterly doomed.
You try to focus on the lecture.
Really.
You do.
But Dr. Reid teaches like a man accidentally possessed by forty-seven documentaries and an anxiety disorder. He paces when he gets excited. His hands move constantly while he talks, long fingers stained faintly with marker ink. He veers off-topic in fascinating directions and then somehow circles perfectly back without notes.
It should not be attractive.
And yet.
Here you are.
Again.
Second semester.
Same problem.
Maybe worse.
“Now, if we look at the correlation between environmental instability and cognitive adaptation,” Dr. Reid continues, already turning back toward the board before the class has fully caught up, “there’s a measurable increase in hypervigilant pattern recognition in subjects exposed to inconsistent formative environments, which sounds complicated but is actually just your brain becoming an overachieving raccoon.”
Marker squeaks across the whiteboard in frantic slanted lines.
His handwriting is terrible.
Not objectively unreadable, exactly. More like every word is trying to outrun the next one. Sharp angles, crowded letters, arrows shoved into margins as though his thoughts physically cannot remain in a straight line.
You stare at it anyway.
Fondly.
Which feels like a personal failing.
He writes faster as he talks, cardigan pulling slightly across his shoulders when he reaches higher on the board. One sleeve has ridden up near his wrist, exposing the thin line of his watch and a faint smudge of ink against his skin.
You should be taking notes.
Instead, your brain is busy cataloging details like you'll be taking a quiz on his anatomy.
Then he steps sideways to underline something, and your gaze drops completely against your will.
Oh no.
Oh, that’s unfortunate.
Because apparently Dr. Spencer Reid has a nice ass.
Not in a dramatic way.
Not in a “male model carved from marble” way.
Just… unfairly nice for a man who spends most of his time talking about psychology and forgetting to eat lunch.
The slacks help.
Which feels hostile, honestly.
You blink hard and jerk your attention back to your laptop with the violent internal energy of someone trying to slam shut fifty browser tabs at once.
Focus.
Academic environment.
You are a serious student.
A serious student who absolutely did not just spend several seconds staring at her professor’s ass while he explained trauma responses.
Jesus Christ.
“Repeated exposure to unpredictability,” he says, still writing, “can create compensatory behaviors centered around control, organization, or information gathering.”
A few tired chuckles.
Then the clock clicks over.
Immediate chaos.
The lecture hall empties like someone pulled a drain plug.
Students flood toward the exits in clusters of conversation and damp jackets, the noise swelling briefly before dissolving into the hallway outside. Within less than a minute, the room goes from crowded to echoing.
You stay seated.
Not intentionally.
At least that’s what you tell yourself.
Your laptop suddenly needs to be shut very carefully. Your charger has apparently tangled itself into a knot requiring advanced engineering. Your pens must be arranged with the precision of ceremonial artifacts.
At the front of the room, another student has stopped to ask Dr. Reid something about the midterm.
You try not to stare while pretending not to listen.
It’s difficult.
Because listening to Spencer Reid explain things is like accidentally falling into a Wikipedia rabbit hole narrated by a very pretty insomniac.
“…the issue isn’t the terminology,” he’s saying, already rifling through papers again while the student nods along. “It’s application. Most people can memorize diagnostic criteria. The harder part is recognizing behavioral variance in context.”
His sleeve slips down slightly as he gestures, revealing ink smudged along the side of his hand again.
God.
You wonder briefly if there’s a psychological term for being attracted to a man who looks like he's constantly five minutes away from a lecture.
Probably.
He’d know it.
The student thanks him and heads out, disappearing into the hallway with everyone else until suddenly it’s just—
You.
And him.
The room feels different when it empties.
Too large. Too quiet.
Rain patters softly against the windows.
Dr. Reid glances up from stacking his notes, clearly registering your continued existence only now. “Oh, you're still here. Perfect.”
Your stomach drops so fast it’s honestly impressive.
Perfect?
There is no version of “perfect” that has ever ended calmly for a student being addressed by a professor after class.
Your brain immediately begins cycling through possibilities at medically concerning speed.
You plagiarized accidentally somehow.
You cited the wrong edition.
You hallucinated an entire journal article in APA format.
You’ve been academically excommunicated.
“Me?” you say brilliantly.
Dr. Reid blinks once. “Yes?”
Excellent start.
You shove your charger into your bag and stand quickly enough that your chair squeaks against the floor.
The sound echoes.
Violently.
You briefly consider walking directly into the rain and starting a new life elsewhere.
Instead, you manage a strained little, “Sorry. Uh. Yeah. What’s up?”
Dr. Reid gathers a few loose papers into a stack before pulling one free.
Your paper.
You recognize the bent corner immediately because you spent three straight hours staring at it last weekend in a caffeine-induced fugue state.
“I finally finished reading these last night,” he says, tapping the packet lightly. “Your section on adaptive masking behaviors was particularly good.”
The panic in your bloodstream stutters awkwardly. “…good?”
“Yes.” He looks faintly surprised by your surprise. “Very good, actually.”
There’s something deeply unfair about receiving praise from Spencer Reid specifically. He says things too earnestly. No performance to it. No academic politeness. Just direct sincerity delivered with terrifying eye contact.
You feel your nervous system fold like cheap lawn furniture.
“You made an interesting connection between hypervigilance and social mirroring,” he continues, flipping through the pages. “Most students approached the assignment from a purely diagnostic perspective, but you framed it as a survival adaptation first, which is considerably more accurate.”
Your heart does an embarrassing little cartwheel.
Because this is the problem.
Not just that he’s attractive.
It’s that every time he talks to you, it feels like he’s opening a secret door in your ribcage and switching on all the lights.
“Oh,” you manage intelligently. “Thanks.”
“And your question here.” He points suddenly to a paragraph halfway down the page. “About whether prolonged masking eventually alters baseline identity perception?”
You nod slowly.
He looks delighted.
Actually delighted.
Like you handed him a particularly interesting puzzle and not a half-panicked essay written at two in the morning while eating stale pretzels.
“That’s the kind of question people usually don’t ask until graduate-level behavioral analysis,” he says. “There’s still ongoing debate about it, especially regarding prolonged trauma adaptation and identity diffusion.”
You try very hard to remain normal about the fact that Spencer Reid is complimenting your intelligence in an empty lecture hall while rain taps softly against the windows like a movie determined to make things worse for you personally.
“Most current models oversimplify the distinction between performed identity and integrated identity,” he continues, already slipping fully into Lecture Mode again. “Humans are actually much more context-dependent than people like to admit. Personality isn’t nearly as fixed as we pretend it is.”
He flips another page absentmindedly.
“You also cited Dr. Nakamura’s 2018 paper, which almost nobody finds unless they’re specifically looking for it.”
Your mouth opens before your brain catches up.
“…you noticed my citations?”
Dr. Reid looks up.
There’s a tiny crease between his brows now, confused in the gentlest way possible. “Of course I noticed your citations.”
Well.
That’s going to live in your skull forever now.
He says it like it’s obvious. Like naturally he paid attention. Like naturally he read your work closely enough to recognize specific research choices.
Meanwhile you’re trying not to ascend directly out of your body.
“You’re one of the strongest writers in the class,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Your arguments are usually more structurally complex than your peers’, even when you seem unsure of them.”
The room abruptly feels too warm.
You grip the strap of your bag tighter. “I didn’t know you thought that.”
Because there’s something unbearably intimate about being understood academically by someone you admire. It feels dangerously adjacent to being seen naked. Like he’s looking directly at the shape of your thoughts with careful hands.
Dr. Reid glances back down at your paper again, seemingly unaware he’s currently causing neurological events.
“I did mark a few places where your transitions got rushed,” he says, pulling a pen from behind his ear. “Mostly because I think you were thinking faster than you could physically write.”
You laugh softly before you can stop yourself. “That does happen.”
“Yes,” he says immediately, almost too quickly. “I know.”
Silence.
Tiny.
Strange.
His expression shifts a fraction afterward, like maybe he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Rain rattles softly against the windows again.
And suddenly you become acutely aware that you are alone with Spencer Reid in an empty lecture hall while he holds your paper like it’s something fragile.
Dangerous situation, truly.
Then he uncaps the pen and scribbles something quickly across the last page.
His handwriting slants wildly across the margin.
Fast. Crowded. Ink-smudged.
You watch his hand move despite yourself.
When he finishes, he folds the packet once and offers it back to you.
“There,” he says. “I added a few additional reading recommendations if you want them.”
You step forward to take it, fingers brushing briefly against his.
Electricity.
Actual cinematic electricity.
You almost drop the paper.
Humiliating.
“Thanks,” you say, quieter now.
“Mhm.”
But he doesn’t let go immediately.
Not enough to mean something.
Just enough to notice.
Then he seems to catch himself and releases the pages all at once, clearing his throat lightly before stepping back toward the desk.
You look down automatically.
At the bottom of the final page, beneath a cluster of notes and arrows and recommended articles, he’s signed off absentmindedly in cramped blue ink.
Excellent work here. Keep pushing this line of thought.
I think you’re asking the right questions.
— I remain yours sincerely,
Spencer Reid, PhD
Your pulse trips over itself.
Because who signs feedback like that?
Who writes I remain yours sincerely like a Shakespearean poet accidentally trapped in modern academia?
And worse:
Why does it make your stomach feel like it just fell down an elevator shaft?
The walk back to your apartment is a blur of rainwater, campus lights, and psychological deterioration.
Your umbrella keeps tilting sideways in the wind.
You barely notice.
Because every functioning part of your brain is currently occupied by one singular, catastrophic detail:
I remain yours sincerely.
Who writes that.
You clutch the paper tighter inside your bag every time the rain picks up, irrationally terrified the ink might smear. Which feels insane. Deeply insane. The behavior of a woman one inconvenience away from being studied in a laboratory.
By the time you get home, your shoes are damp, your hair is frizzing at the edges, and your nervous system is fried.
You lock the apartment door behind you and immediately pull the paper back out.
Like an addict.
Like a widow rereading war letters.
“Oh, this is bad,” you mutter to yourself.
Your apartment offers no judgment. Just soft lamplight and the hum of the refrigerator and rain whispering against the windows.
You drop your bag onto the couch.
Then sit at the kitchen table with the paper spread carefully in front of you.
You read the signature again.
And again.
And then, because apparently humiliation is now a recreational activity, you trace the letters lightly with your thumb.
Spencer Reid, PhD.
The ink catches faintly against the pad of your finger where he pressed harder on certain strokes. You can almost see the speed of him in it. The impatience. The intelligence outrunning the mechanics of handwriting.
God. You're so weird. You're unhinged. You're obsessed.
Your phone buzzes with a text from your friend Maya.
did u survive reid’s lecture or did he accidentally make eye contact and kill you instantly
You stare at the message for a long moment before replying:
worse
Three dots appear immediately.
what happened
You look down at the paper again.
At the stupid signature.
At the devastating little yours.
Then, against every survival instinct evolution ever gifted humanity, you take a picture of the bottom half of the page and send it.
There’s a full thirty seconds of silence.
Then:
OH YOU ARE DOWN HORRENDOUS
You groan aloud and drop your forehead directly onto the table.
The phone buzzes again.
“I remain yours sincerely”????? WHAT IS HE A PROFESSOR OR A MAN WRITING YOU FROM THE CRIMEAN WAR
Another buzz.
he wants u biblically
“HE DOES NOT,” you say aloud to the empty apartment, scandalized.
Your phone immediately lights up again.
u kept the paper though didnt u
You freeze.
Slowly, guiltily, your eyes drift toward your desk drawer.
Because inside that drawer already sits: one graded response paper, two annotated reading packets, and a sticky note from three weeks ago where Dr. Reid had written:
Your interpretation here is excellent. Come see me during office hours if you want to discuss further.
The sticky note currently lives tucked inside your favorite book like a pressed flower.
You close your eyes.
“Jesus Christ,” you whisper to yourself.
Another text arrives.
DID U KEEP THE PAPER
You type back:
not officially
Maya responds instantly.
that is the most incriminating answer ive ever heard
You abandon the conversation entirely and toss your phone onto the couch before she can escalate further.
Then you sit there alone for a moment.
Quiet apartment. Rain outside. Spencer Reid’s handwriting beneath your fingertips.
The thing is, you know this crush is ridiculous.
He’s your professor. Technically not even that much older than you, but enough that it matters. Enough that your brain keeps trying to file this under impossible and failing spectacularly every single time he looks at you like your thoughts are worth listening to.
That’s the real problem.
Not the cardigan.
Not the hands.
Not even the objectively offensive existence of that signature.
It’s the attention.
The terrifying sincerity of it.
Spencer Reid listens to you like he’s carefully placing your words somewhere safe.
And you don’t think anyone has ever done that before.
Your chest aches unexpectedly at the thought.
Too honest.
Too close to something real.
You exhale slowly and pick the paper up again, intending to finally put it away somewhere normal and reasonable.
Instead, your gaze catches on the folded edge of your clear phone case sitting beside you on the table.
No.
Absolutely not.
You stare at it.
Then at the paper.
Then back at the phone.
“This would be a humiliating choice,” you inform yourself firmly.
Silence.
Rain taps softly against the windows.
Five minutes later, you are sitting on your couch with Spencer Reid’s signature folded carefully behind your phone.
You look at it through the clear plastic.
Immediate stomach flip.
“Oh, you absolute loser,” you whisper to yourself.
But unfortunately:
you’re smiling.
By the time midterms crawl across campus like a biblical plague, your situation has not improved.
If anything, it’s evolved.
Dangerously.
Because now there is routine.
Now there are office hours conversations that accidentally become forty-five minutes long. Now there are moments where Dr. Reid pauses to ask, “You read the article I mentioned, right?” already knowing the answer before you nod.
Now there are tiny things.
Tiny, lethal things.
The way he automatically hands you printed articles first when passing materials down the row. The way his face brightens with visible recognition every time you speak in class. The way he says your name like he enjoys the shape of it.
It’s become less like a crush and more like being slowly haunted.
Which is why remaining after lecture today feels less unusual than it probably should.
You don’t mean to time it like this.
It just… happens.
The room empties in that familiar way, like the building exhales and forgets to inhale again. Chairs scrape. Jackets zip. Someone laughs too loudly in the hallway like they’re trying to prove they’re still human after all that thinking.
And then it’s just you again, hovering at the edge of the aisle with your notebook pressed a little too tightly to your chest.
Dr. Reid is still at the whiteboard.
Erasing.
Relentless little motions. Wrist flicking. Chalk dust or marker residue or whatever ghosts lectures leave behind drifting faintly in the air. His cardigan is pushed up at the elbows now, like it’s given up on behaving properly.
He doesn’t look over immediately.
Which, somehow, makes it worse.
Because you’ve started to associate his attention with a kind of internal weather shift. Like the room tilts slightly toward you when he notices you’re there.
You clear your throat.
Soft. Careful.
“Dr. Reid?”
The eraser pauses mid-swipe.
Then stops completely.
He turns.
And there it is.
That subtle recalibration. Like a radio finding your frequency without meaning to.
“Oh,” he says. Not surprised exactly. Just… pleased in a quiet way that feels too personal to name. “You’re still here again.”
Again.
Like it’s a pattern he’s noticed.
Like he’s been waiting for it.
You nod, suddenly hyper-aware of your hands, your posture, your entire existence. “Yeah. I had a question about today’s lecture.”
“Of course.” He sets the eraser down on the ledge beneath the board and steps away from it fully now, giving you his attention like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “What about it?”
Your brain, traitorous thing that it is, briefly offers you ten different ways to phrase this more intelligently.
None of them survive the trip to your mouth.
“It was about emotional responses,” you say. “Like… how people react differently to the same stimulus depending on context and prior experience.”
He nods slowly, like he’s already tracing where this is going.
You continue anyway, because stopping now would be suspicious and also physically impossible.
“You said something about adaptation shaping perception. And I was thinking about whether emotional responses can… overwrite themselves? Like, if enough context builds up, does the original reaction still matter, or does it get replaced entirely?”
Dr. Reid tilts his head slightly, studying you the way he studies everything he respects—carefully, like it might shift if he blinks wrong.
“That’s a more complicated question than it sounds like you intended it to be,” he says gently.
Your stomach drops.
“Sorry,” you start immediately. “I didn’t mean— I just meant like in general, not—”
“No.” He interrupts softly. Not sharp. Just steady. “Don’t apologize. It’s a good question.”
That does something unfortunate to your nervous system.
He takes a step closer to his desk, resting one hand lightly on it as if anchoring himself to the conversation.
“So the original response doesn’t disappear. It becomes less accessible, or it gets reframed by later experiences. But it’s still there. Just… quieter.”
You nod slowly, trying to keep up.
“That’s why certain triggers can feel disproportionate,” he adds. “They’re not creating a new reaction. They’re reopening an old one that’s been reorganized over time.”
Something about the way he says it makes it feel less like psychology and more like confession, even though it absolutely isn’t.
You swallow.
“That makes it sound like nothing ever really goes away,” you say quietly.
A beat.
Dr. Reid looks at you a little more directly now.
“It doesn’t,” he says. Simple. Certain. Then, softer: “But that doesn’t mean it stays the same.”
The room feels warmer again.
Or maybe that’s just you.
You glance down at your notebook like it suddenly contains emergency instructions for being normal.
“Right,” you manage. “That makes sense.”
It doesn’t feel like it makes sense. It feels like it rearranged something in your chest and didn’t bother explaining itself.
Dr. Reid pushes off the desk slightly, as if the intensity of the moment has to be gently contained.
Then, almost like an afterthought, he adds, “Is that what you were thinking about specifically? Or was there another angle?”
There it is again.
That attention.
Patient. Open. Not assuming you’re wasting his time.
You hesitate.
Because the truth is more dangerous than the question.
But you’ve never been very good at leaving things unasked.
“I guess I was wondering,” you say slowly, “if people can… respond emotionally to something they intellectually understand isn’t rational.”
Dr. Reid stills for half a second.
Not much. Most people wouldn’t notice.
But you’ve started noticing everything.
“That happens frequently,” he says after a moment.
Your grip tightens on your notebook.
“Even when they know better?”
His gaze flickers briefly toward you again. Sharper now. Not unkind. Just… more precise.
“Yes,” he says. “Especially then.”
A quiet beat stretches between you.
Too quiet.
Your pulse has started doing strange, uneven things against your ribs, every instinct in your body suddenly screaming that this conversation has drifted dangerously close to something exposed.
Because the problem with Spencer Reid is that he listens too carefully.
Most people let things slide past them. Most people hear the shape of a sentence and move on.
Dr. Reid hears the fracture lines underneath it.
And right now you’re increasingly certain he’s standing one follow-up question away from watching you spontaneously combust in front of the behavioral sciences department.
You tighten your grip on your notebook hard enough to bend the edge slightly.
“Right,” you say quickly. Too quickly. “Okay. That actually answered my question, so I should probably—”
You gesture vaguely toward the door.
Toward freedom.
Toward escape.
Toward literally anywhere that is not this room with this man looking at you like he’s trying to solve something.
But Dr. Reid’s expression shifts faintly before you can move.
Concern.
Not suspicion. Somehow worse.
“Are you alright?”
There’s no accusation in it. Just immediate attentiveness.
Which unfortunately makes panic bloom hotter in your chest.
“Yep.” The word arrives at terminal velocity. “Absolutely. Totally fine.”
You are speaking with the cadence of someone being held hostage by her own nervous system.
His brows pull together slightly. “You seem anxious.”
“Well,” you laugh weakly, “I think that’s sort of my baseline.”
Wrong choice.
Because that earns the smallest flicker of a smile from him.
Soft. Brief. Real.
It hits you directly in the bloodstream.
You need to leave immediately.
“I just remembered I have to…” You motion uselessly with one hand. “Do something.”
Brilliant.
Academic titan.
Dr. Reid opens his mouth like he’s about to say something else, and that tiny moment of anticipation detonates pure survival instinct in your chest.
“Anyway!” you blurt. “Thanks for answering my question. Sorry. Again. I’m gonna go.”
You turn too fast.
Your bag catches against the side of a chair.
The strap yanks violently sideways, dragging the chair with it in one catastrophic scrape against the floor.
You stumble trying to untangle yourself, notebook slipping from your grasp entirely.
Papers explode everywhere.
For one suspended second, the universe goes completely still.
Then Dr. Reid moves instantly.
“Oh, here—”
You both crouch at the exact same time.
Of course you do.
Naturally.
Because God is dead and this is apparently funny to the universe.
Your foreheads nearly collide.
You jerk backward so abruptly you lose balance a second time, catching yourself with one hand against the floor while loose papers scatter farther beneath the desks.
“I’m so sorry,” you say immediately, horrified.
But that's not the end of the torture. Because why would it be? Why would the universe and whatever forces rule it let you get out of this embarrassment that easily?
Your phone.
No.
No, no, no.
Time slows with cinematic cruelty.
The device must have slipped from your bag when the strap caught the chair. The clear case popped loose on impact, skidding separately across the floor.
And there, face-up beside the phone itself like evidence submitted directly to a court of law—
his signature.
And Dr. Reid is staring directly at it.
There’s no plausible explanation for this.
None.
You cannot even pretend it’s accidental.
Who accidentally stores a professor’s signed feedback inside their phone case?
No one, that's who. Just you.
Your soul begins exiting your body through your ears.
Don’t panic, your brain says uselessly, while panic fully consumes the landscape.
Dr. Reid reaches for the paper slowly.
You want the floor to open and swallow you whole like a tectonic event.
“Oh my God,” you whisper.
Dr. Reid looks at the note for one suspended second longer.
Then another.
His expression changes in tiny increments you only notice because you’ve spent months studying him with the intensity of a graduate thesis.
Recognition.
Confusion.
Realization.
And then something else. Something softer. Something that makes your pulse stumble violently against your ribs.
Very slowly, he lifts his eyes to yours.
You have never known true psychological horror until this moment.
“I can explain,” you blurt immediately.
Can you?
Absolutely not.
But the sentence launches itself out of your mouth anyway with all the grace of a car accident.
Dr. Reid’s brows lift slightly. “You can?”
“No,” you say honestly. “Actually, not in a way that helps me.”
Excellent.
Wonderful.
You briefly consider faking your death.
He glances back down at the paper again, thumb resting lightly near the edge where the fold has started softening from use.
And then, very softly:
“You kept it.”
Not teasing.
Not judgmental.
Which almost makes it harder.
Heat floods violently into your face.
“This was,” you say immediately, “so much less creepy in my head.”
A tiny crease appears between his brows like he’s trying not to smile.
“I didn’t say it was creepy.”
“It’s objectively creepy.”
“I don’t think objectively means what you want it to mean there.”
“That’s worse somehow.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. Actually twitches.
You stare at him in horror.
“Please don’t laugh at me,” you whisper.
“I’m not laughing at you.”
“You’re visibly experiencing amusement.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It absolutely is.”
The smile threatens again, smaller this time, restrained at the edges like he doesn’t fully trust himself with it.
And then, disastrously, his gaze drops once more to the signature.
His own handwriting.
His own absurdly formal sign-off.
When he speaks again, there’s something almost embarrassed threaded through his voice now.
“In fairness,” he says, “I probably shouldn’t have written ‘I remain yours sincerely.’”
You make a strangled sound halfway between a laugh and cardiac arrest. “No, you really shouldn’t have.”
“I wasn’t thinking about how that sounded.”
“That somehow feels less reassuring.”
His eyes flick back to yours then.
Warm amber under fluorescent lights. Too attentive. Too intelligent.
“But you noticed it,” he says quietly.
There’s no ego in the statement.
Just observation.
You swallow hard.
“Yes.”
The room goes still around the answer.
Not awkward exactly.
Just aware.
Dr. Reid looks down briefly, almost thoughtful, before carefully placing the paper back atop your fallen notebook instead of immediately handing it over.
“You know,” he says after a moment, “historically, formal academic correspondence used possessive sign-offs fairly often.”
You stare at him.
“Are you trying to academically explain away my crush on you right now?”
The sentence escapes before you can stop it.
Silence detonates instantly afterward.
Your entire nervous system flatlines.
Because you did not mean to say that.
You meant to think it privately and then carry the shame forever.
Dr. Reid goes completely still.
His lips part slightly like his brain lost the next page of the script.
“Oh my God,” you whisper, staring at the floor. “Forget I said that.”
But the problem with Spencer Reid has always been this:
he never ignores important things.
And when you finally force yourself to look back up, he’s watching you with an expression so carefully controlled it almost hurts to see.
“You have a crush on me,” he says.
Not mocking.
Not smug.
Honestly, he sounds more astonished than anything else.
You squeeze your eyes shut briefly. “I am asking respectfully for the earth to open beneath me.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I currently have.”
You expect discomfort.
Distance.
Professional correction.
Instead, Dr. Reid exhales softly through his nose and sits back slightly against the leg of a desk beside him, still crouched across from you among scattered papers and your exploded dignity.
And then, to your complete horror, he says:
“I thought there was a possibility.”
Your head snaps up.
“What?”
A faint flush has appeared high on his cheekbones now.
Tiny. Visible.
It rearranges the architecture of your entire universe.
“You’re very attentive to me,” he says carefully.
You choke immediately. “I need you to stop observing things.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“You’re a behavioral analyst. This is abuse of power.”
That almost earns another smile.
Almost.
“But I wasn’t sure,” he continues more quietly. “And I didn’t want to assume something that would make you uncomfortable.”
You stare at him.
“You noticed,” you say faintly.
Dr. Reid tilts his head a little.
“You keep every note I give you.”
Well.
When he says it out loud like that, it sounds medically concerning.
“I didn’t think you knew that.”
“I didn’t,” he admits. “Not conclusively.”
His gaze flickers briefly toward the paper beside your phone.
“I do now.”
You cover your face with one hand.
“This is the worst day of my life.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“That’s because you’re not experiencing it from inside my body.”
A pause.
Then, very gently:
“No,” he says. “I don’t think I am.”
Something changes in the room after that.
Tiny shift. Tectonic consequence.
The humor softens at the edges, leaving behind something quieter. Something breathing carefully between the two of you.
Dr. Reid reaches down first, gathering the scattered pages into a neater stack before offering them back to you properly this time.
Your fingers brush again.
And this time neither of you jerks away immediately.
It lasts maybe half a second longer than it should.
Enough to feel intentional.
Enough to ruin you permanently.
His eyes lift to yours again, thoughtful in that dangerous way he gets when he’s turning something over carefully in his mind.
“You know,” he says slowly, “there are ethical complications here.”
You let out a startled laugh. “That’s one way to put it.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
His fingers tap once against the edge of the paper still resting between you.
“You’re my student.”
The words land carefully. Reluctantly.
Like he hates them a little.
“Which means,” he continues, “that regardless of how I feel about this conversation, there are boundaries I’m responsible for maintaining.”
Your pulse stumbles.
Regardless of how I feel about this conversation.
That’s the moment the floor drops out from under you.
Because that’s not rejection.
It’s worse.
It’s possibility wearing a seatbelt.
“But there are also only six weeks left in the semester.”
Your breath catches.
The words land between you with astonishing softness.
Not a proposition.
Not quite.
Just a door left cracked open in the dark.
Dr. Reid seems to realize exactly how that sounded one second after saying it, because a flicker of alarm crosses his face immediately afterward.
“I’m not implying,” he starts quickly. “I mean, I am implying something, technically, but not inappropriately. I just meant that institutional boundaries are temporary in specific contexts and I thought transparency was preferable to pretending I hadn’t noticed the situation and now I’m explaining this badly.”
You stare at him.
Then laugh suddenly.
Not nervous this time.
Real.
Because Spencer Reid, genius profiler, has gone visibly flustered sitting on the floor of his own lecture hall.
The sound seems to catch him off guard.
His shoulders loosen a fraction.
And for the first time since this catastrophe began, the panic ebbs enough for something else to bloom beneath it.
Something warm.
“I… I can wait six weeks,” you say softly.
Spencer’s smile is small enough that someone else might have missed it entirely.
You don’t.
Because of course you don’t.
It changes him in tiny ways. Softens the sharp concentration he usually wears like armor. Pulls warmth into his face until he looks less like Dr. Spencer Reid, terrifyingly intelligent guest lecturer, and more like a man trying very hard not to look too happy about something.
“Okay,” he says quietly.
Then, after the smallest pause:
“Good.”
