the cold moon
pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader description: the blossoming of love on porch steps and couches genre: can pining be its own genre? fluff? tags/warnings: first kiss, like sort of suggestive comments but in my opinion they're devastating more than anything else, no y/n, mentions of the very very slightest amount of alcohol, autistic spencer because always, longing spencer and reader because always w/c: 3.5k a/n: i feel like if i ever wrote smut it would just make people (myself) cry. do people like that or
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"Can I see you right now? Is that illogical to ask?”
"It might be."
"I agree."
"Come over, Spencer."
He doesn’t tell you why he called. You don't ask. It doesn't really matter, not now. It might matter in the future, when it’s allowed for you to pry, to tear open, to map. In this moment, though, the only tangible thing is the black, enveloping, infinite night sky, Cassiopeia, and your empty porch step.
When he arrived, he found you sitting on the step, a wine glass in hand. Pretty, so terrifyingly pretty. He adored you in every form, but he figured he adored you most in your unguarded, unkept, raw form, with the day warmed on your cheeks and your shoulders rested.
You say you have been waiting for him and that you like the chill. You scoot over on the step and make room for him. He is overwhelmed and suddenly—but always—aching to pour himself into you, to touch, and take, and give until you rightfully own what’s yours, and what has always been yours since the day he learned he had anything at all. Something light and rushing inhabits him as he shares your space.
His elbow keeps brushing against you, even as he tries to fold in on himself. He feels awkward, filtered, but content. He likes your house. It's small, with warm-colored brick and wooden doors, tables, bookshelves. It reminds him of his apartment, but a little brighter. Kinder. It’s somewhere he likes to be. His eyes constantly search for corners where parts of you live, and being here was like being in a treasure cove.
One of your arms wraps around your knees, pulled tightly against your chest. It's cold, but you're warm. Your other hand swirls the last few ounces of wine in your wine glass. It's been quiet, save for the occasional car passing or dog barking, but it’s been nice. More than nice. He’s wanted to hold your hand all night, and you’ve wanted to rest your head on his chest, push his glasses up a little higher on his nose. He wants to say, “thank you for letting me be here, in your space, next to you. Thank you for picking up the phone when I called at 10 p.m. I think I’m in love with you, and I think I’ve never been more certain of something all my life.”
Of course, his lips stay shut, and his fingers continue twitching. He breathes when he hears you speak. It’s graceful; it glides with the wind and settles in the crooks of his brain.
"Why don't you ever drink? I mean—something besides water or coffee. Or tea. I've seen you drink tea."
He hopes you don’t think he’s odd. He is, but maybe not odd in a horrible, unlovable way. He thinks you know him well, with the amount of himself that he’s shared with you.
"It can lead to liver damage. High blood pressure, cardiomyopathy, stroke, memory loss, cancer, peripheral neuropathy... Should I go on?"
It's a Reid answer; clinical, calculated, factual. Above the surface.
"If you want."
He loves you for that. He loves you for a lot of things. He loves you for everything. But at this second, he especially loves you because of that.
"Heart arythmias, dyslipidemia." His eyes flicker over as you move to set your wine glass beside you on the concrete ground of your porch. He doesn’t mean for you to stop; he doesn't want you to change any part of yourself on his account, on any account.
"You don’t… You don’t have to do that. I’m sorry. Those are all extreme cases, statistically rare, anyway. I don’t judge you for drinking. I’m the one who imposed on you, so I can’t judge. Not—Not that I would, or that it should matter if I did, or—“
"Spencer." He's grateful when you interrupt then. He only cherishes you. Why must his words come out wrong invariably?
"Sorry." He half-smiles and wrings his hands on his knees. "Do you understand what I'm trying to say, though?"
Lately, you feel like you can read him inside out; awkward grins, bouncing knees, and all. You know everything he's given you the opportunity—willingly, or unwillingly—to witness.
"I understand." You don't reach for your glass again. "It's not because you said that. I just... Want to be here the same as you, is all."
"One glass of wine isn't going to take you anyplace different."
You laugh and shake your head, knocking his shoulder with yours, setting his heart running. Your touches are always surprising, and when they arrive, he is left to kneel before you. His heart and shoulders and fingertips are entirely yours. He doesn't turn his eyes away from you, and he doesn't understand what he's done to make you laugh, but he wants it to continue. “What?”
"Nothing." You smile softly, resting your chin on your knees. "You just always have to argue with me, don't you?"
"What?—No, that's not... That's not what I was trying to do, either." His eyebrows pinch towards the ground. Is he horrible?
A soft gust of wind hits your face as you turn your head to look at him. He's close. The step you're sitting on is small, and his long limbs force him to stay adjacent to the railing. Even with his efforts, the opposite side of his body hovers a centimeter away from yours. You wish he wouldn’t be so careful.
"I'm joking, Spence."
Your voice rings in his ears, soft, parallel to the breeze. His head turns to look at you once again. He can see your face in pristine detail; every imperfection (or perfection) on clear display. Laugh lines, bitten lips, a small smudge of mascara on your lower waterline. This moment, this second, will stay in the forefront of his mind until he convinces himself he's being weird, and another, equally lovely piece of you adds to it.
"Joking, right. I'm beginning to believe Morgan was correct. Sarcasm is not my forte." He laughs at himself, his nose crinkling slightly.
It's alarming how resolutely you want to kiss him. His lips, his cheek, his nose, his eyelids, back down. Everywhere that his skin flushes.
“Weren’t his words, ‘You wouldn’t recognize sarcasm if it slapped you in the face and screamed, “I’m sarcasm!”’?”
"Yes. They were."
You're smiling again, and he's smiling again, and he wonders if he will ever be in a better place than here. You shift just slightly, and the whole length of your arm presses against his. No one moves, no one even has the thought to. Heaven is on earth.
"That's okay, I think. Even geniuses have their weaknesses."
Oh, he has more than just that weakness. He's weak now, weak in his body, weak in his mind. Maybe a bit stronger in his heart, though.
You look up at the sky so you don't have to look directly at him. "I wish the moon were out tonight." The only illumination comes from the almost dead lantern that sits beside you. Everything is always warm. "The next full moon is on December 4th. The Cold Moon. Did you know that?"
He did. Last month, on October 6th, you had entered the office and declared it was the Hunter's Moon that night. He researched it later so he could discuss it with you another day.
He hums softly. "The Cold Moon, otherwise known as the Long Night Moon, or the Moon Before Yule, Oak Moon, Drift Clearing Moon." He points up towards the sky, to your left. "Right there. That's where it'll be."
You turn your head towards him again, and he doesn't quite know what to do with himself. He burns under your gaze, your observation. What do you see when you look at him?
"Does it ever get crowded?" You ask.
"Crowded? The moon?"
"Your mind. With all that knowledge in there. Does it ever feel like too much?"
Too much. He knows that concept well. He quickly feels vulnerable, his heart in his throat, or maybe in your open palm. It's strange; he doesn't mind it at all. "Yes. I guess it does sometimes."
You want to kiss him again; you never stopped wanting to kiss him; you want him to let everything out with you.
"What do you do?—When it is too much?"
He rolls a small, stray rock underneath his shoe. He shrugs. "I read. Work."
You frown softly, and the wind blows against you again. He wants you to take him inside.
"You just continue filling your brain with more?"
"Well, not always."
"What do you do then?"
There's a faint tug at one corner of his mouth, not quite a smile, more like a thought forming. He picks off a stray leaf that lands on his lap.
"I call you."
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It is twenty degrees warmer inside, yet Spencer feels colder now. You sit cross-legged on the couch opposite him.
"Hey, Spencer?"
He doesn't know how something as little as the letter "r" can send him spinning. He's not sure which version of his name he prefers more: the shortened one that you entirely own, or the one that fully belongs to him, which he has the full pleasure of hearing you speak. The fact that he passes your lips at all sets parts of his brain off.
He looks up at you attentively. Your fingers fiddle with a loose thread of the blanket. "Hm?"
He is frozen still, and you move freely. Your body shifts, and your head falls against the side of the couch, face and front to the ceiling. You hold a blanket against your chest. You are living in front of him, loose and comfortable and inviting.
"Do you know much about love?"
Love. Does he? He supposes so. He is a being of love born from you. He used to be something walking, and now he is something beating, breathing, smiling, alight with the force of tenderness and caution. There is nothing he wishes to be more than to be something digestible by you.
"It depends on which 'love' you are referring to. The Greeks invented eight different words because there were so many variants of 'love.'"
"Passionate love." You pause, and he pauses, and you turn your head to look at him. "I feel it right here." You rest your palm flat over your stomach. "I'm not sure that it's normal to feel passion somewhere specific in your body, but I do. Have you heard of that before?"
He has never before heard or known anything like you before. "No, I haven't. That's interesting." He worries you can hear him swallow.
Your eyes are trained on the ceiling, and his are trained on you, and he can't feel his pulse from his wrist.
"Sometimes, it moves up." You drag your hand up your stomach and stop it at the base of your throat. "It'll get stuck here occasionally. I can't talk, can't do anything but feel it inside of me." The words aren't coherent or relevant, and they probably aren't appropriate. You're not entirely sure why you say them. They just feel heavy, like weights pulling your jaw downwards.
"Is that weird? Now that I'm saying it out loud, I feel like I sound a little bit crazy."
He clears his throat, and he reminds himself of what letters, syllables, and words are. "No, I don't—I don't think any part of you is weird."
You hum quietly. "It's okay if you did, you know."
"I don't think of you and think of 'weird'. I just think of you. I'm not really sure of much else."
There, right then, it was so strong inside your throat you could barely breathe. Desire is so deeply in you, so entangled, so alive. It's forgiving and gentle, slowly sticking its hands out to be taken hold of.
"Do you feel it anywhere? Love? Passion?"
Why are you asking him this? Do you want him to burst into flames, set your house on fire, set you on fire, set everything you've ever owned on fire? It would be a cruel thing to ask if it wasn't from you. You are not cruel.
"I'm not—I'm not entirely sure?"
He meets your eyes, slightly scared of himself and the situation and what might fall from his lips. He feels you everywhere, behind his eyelids, between his teeth, underneath his fingernails. Passion is not an occasionally occurring feeling, but a creature that has sunk its claws so deep into him that he is as much it as he is himself.
You sit up quickly, and he is spooked. "Come here." You pat the cushion next to him.
His eyes flicker, and he will do anything you ask. He steps over your foot and plants down beside you.
"Okay, close your eyes."
"Close my eyes? Why—?"
"Just do it, Spencer."
He can't see your bright grin as he heeds you quickly.
"Think of someone you love. Or did love." It is not long before you feel this is a horrible idea, and that you have never wanted to know what he is thinking more than right now. "Someone you loved passionately, reverently."
He doesn't have to focus his thoughts. They're already on you, as they typically are.
"Keep your eyes closed, okay?"
"Okay."
It takes a moment for his brain to register the touch, the soft fingertips pressed against his forehead, the warmth that travels between.
"Do you feel anything there? Like a heaviness, or a fullness that's settled there and nowhere else?"
What he feels is a wanting that is settled so deep into his bones he doesn't know anything else. But, oddly enough, he does feel something more in his head, something uniquely you, something that curves into the shape of you. "Actually, I think... I think so?"
His breath hits your wrist, and you’re overtaken, possessed, utterly soft. His eyes closed, left vulnerable to you and your gaze and whatever you feel to inflict upon him, makes you feel grateful for his trust in a way you haven’t yet experienced.
"Hm, that was quick. Are you sure? What about here?" You can feel the goosebumps on his skin as you trail your fingers down. They settle underneath his jaw, and his Adam's Apple works as he swallows hard.
Do you notice what you are doing to him? Are you playing with him? Just tell him, and he'll let you. But don't torture him unknowingly.
"Do you feel anything there?"
"I—Yes. I do."
He is blazing.
"Okay." You lead a path down his arm and press your fingers against his pulse. His heart is running away from him. "And here?"
"Definitely there."
You take your hand off, and he peeks at you through one open eye. "What?"
"If you feel it everywhere, I'm not sure you're really feeling it at all."
He's suddenly feeling very honest, very desperate to be true to you. "I think right now I just feel it everywhere."
You don't know if you are jealous or just stupid. It's hard to know yourself when you have someone in front of you who knows you better. "I see." You are mindless, caught in the throat, burning in the stomach. "Who were... Who were you thinking about? If you—I mean, only if you want to tell me. You don't have to."
He watches you in a way he hasn't allowed himself to. You are smart. So, so smart, much smarter than him. He is feeling very honest.
"You know who I was thinking about." He's low, and your name leaves him easily. You are wonder. You know.
Maybe you do know. But you are delicate and doubtful of everything good.
"I don't know."
Big brown eyes meet yours, and god, yes, you do. He doesn't have to say anything more, and he doesn't. Neither do you. You pick at your nails, and he orbits around you.
"I'm glad you called, Spence."
You're quiet, your voice barely making a disturbance in the air. He can feel you everywhere. He is passion personified.
"I wasn't sure if it was a good idea or not."
"It was." You nod to yourself, and yes, you want to kiss him, but more than that, you want to feel his palm against yours, some patch of skin against yours, something oozing and flowing and biteable. "I like you being here."
"That's good. I'm glad that you… You feel that way. I like being here, too."
It is most likely unconventional to need someone so devastatingly; to want for another to possess you entirely, to engrave their name on your ribcage, and leave small traces of them everywhere inside of you. He knows it’s not healthy; he’s seen what this level of adoration can do to someone, but he’s always been excessive, and now, with you, he’s something worse, and something more than devoted. Is he bad for that? He assumes he can be worse. You can do anything to him. He will tie his own hands. He knows 208 different knots.
He is split into two ways, composed of two things: there is something that makes him itch, curl against his bed in the morning, and something far more worrying. He is entirely soft.
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You call him a week later.
Tonight, it's a little bit heavier, the wind biting and harsh as it whips against the outer walls. It's motionless in the house, but not still. Something is always being exchanged.
Nothing much has to be said about feelings. They are as alive and solid as anything else, and you and he know it. It doesn't need to be grand. It's a solid fact, something he might've read in a book: He loves you, and you just might love him back. A "might" is all he could possibly ask for.
It lives vibrantly in the silence. The television plays, and you are making love as you sit next to each other, the side of your leg pressed against his as you watch some old documentary he had saved so he could experience it with you.
When the credits roll and you're settled in your last position, leg draped over his, his hand still—after thirty minutes—reluctantly lying on your ankle, it's communicated then. Were either of you really paying attention to what was playing? Doubtful.
You don't know what it is, whether it is the darkness that suddenly fills the room, or the credit song ending, or the red light that indicates the TV has turned off—but you can hear it ring.
You are it for me. I want you close. Are we allowed to touch?
It doesn't happen quickly, or with a dramatic love confession with tears and big, meaningless words. It's been happening for months.
When your lips meet, fireworks don't go off, and the world doesn't stop around you, and neither of you is overtaken with destructive hunger. It has all been intimate from the very beginning. You have been naked with each other for a long time now.
You are sweet. Not artificially so, but sweet, as in you. He is slow. He kisses you as Spencer: gentle, nervous, ardent. He wants to live forever when you take his face in between your hands. He's been doing a lot of wanting lately.
His breaths are heavy and quick, like he's trying to spend as little time as he can doing something so meaningless: taking in oxygen. His nose bumps against yours and sometimes his forehead, and he really, really has no idea at all what to do with his hands. They shakily rest on your shoulders, and glide down your arms, and hang on your wrists, and he can’t be anything other than softly greedy.
You breathe his name against his lips. He doesn't know if the oxygen is yours or his.
When you lick the inside of his mouth, he feels you all the way to his toes. You are all-consuming, and he is served on a platter. That is not to say he is timid or completely yielding; in fact, he can feel the fire on his tongue as it reaches into you. He saves a whole corner of his brain to capture just this moment, from how you feel in his arms to how you kiss him just as you’ve talked to him. It’s secret, and it’s holding on to the top lip for far too long, and it’s the more important touches: fingers curling, noses bumping, words no longer solely being heard, but being tasted as well.
He is pushed against the back of the couch, and he realizes he has never felt anything in his life; nothing has come close to the power of hearts beating and meeting through the mouth. He is nothing extraordinary when living alongside the magnificence of everything else. He's clumsy with you, and you don't seem to mind.
He kisses you until he's drunk with you, overflowing, paralyzed, pouring rain.
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You're gone as quickly as you came, and he's left to whisper your name to the ceiling. Moonlight pools through his window; he has never liked sleeping in the pure darkness. You've stained his lips. He hopes you're watching the moon, too. It's full tonight.
