Dear Spence - Night 6
spencer reid x fem!reader
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fic summary: Going undercover as serial killer bait was simple. Going undercover as serial killer bait three months after being kidnapped was not so simple. Going undercover with the love of my life and having to pretend to be in love with him while also pretending I was pretending was….well it was about as complicated as it sounds.
chapter summary: There's always a twist when I get what I want.
chapter word count: 4.8k
content: Rated M (16+) fem!reader, mentions of past kidnapping, trauma responses, nightmares, descriptions of past kidnapping, canon-typical violence, fake relationship, friends to lovers, hurt/comfort, angst, fluff, only one bed trope
tw for this chapter: negative self-talk, descriptions of anxiety, slight sexual mentions
read on ao3
[Prologue] [Night 1] [Night 2] [Night 3] [Night 4] [Night 5]
I stood at the window peeking through the curtains out onto the street, the moon illuminating wherever the streetlights didn’t touch. Gripping the window sill, I pressed my forehead into the cold glass, taking deep breaths and trying not to cry.
When I had woken up that morning, Spencer was already in the shower. The bed next to me was still warm, so he couldn’t have been gone long. I sat up with a stretch, bringing a hand to my eyes to rub out the sleepiness there. Both arms fell to the bed after that, and I stared down at my hands as I listened to the shower running.
All I could do was wait for the other shoe to drop. He would figure out my secret soon enough.
I got ready while he was in the shower and went into the kitchen to make breakfast, and once he came out from his shower we acted like the perfect couple. Each touch felt charged in a way it hadn’t before. I didn’t know when exactly he figured it out- but I knew he knew. The way he looked at me, the hesitancy in his touch that wasn’t there before, the way casual ‘I love you’s had slipped out of his vocabulary.
Blinking back tears, I remembered he had feelings for someone else. The hesitancy was probably because it was harder for him to pretend I was them, knowing how I felt. But then he would do something with no hesitation - kiss me or lace our fingers together or pull my legs over his lap - and I would feel the slightest bit of hope. Maybe he hadn’t yet figured it out, and the moments of pause I saw were just because of the secret he knew I was keeping from him.
It wasn’t like we could really talk about it. He only tried to guide me to the bedroom once all day. I reminded him how sick I had been the day before and said I wasn’t in the mood. Behind his eyes he saw through me, but he dropped the subject.
And now I stood here, waiting for the rejection that was certainly coming any second, while he made himself tea before bed.
My melancholic thoughts were interrupted by my phone blaring through the room. It shocked me so much I bounced my head on the window, and my hand flew to it in pain. “Fuck!” I shouted, grabbing my phone and flipping it over. “[Y/L/N].” I answered curtly.
“I thought you’d be more excited to speak with me considering it’s been six whole days!” Penelope’s voice rang in my ear and instantly soothed me. My head was still slightly pounding but it felt like I could breathe for the first time all day.
“I didn’t even check the caller ID, you scared me. I so missed you, Pen.” I confessed. There was no way to conceal the thickness in my voice.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” Her voice became concerned in an instant. “A little birdie may have mentioned some complications-”
“Emily told you?” I asked, shocked she would betray my trust like that.
“Emily? No, Derek told me how nervous Spencer was to do this with you. I thought maybe Boy Wonder hadn’t been the best undercover partner.” Penelope explained. I let out a sigh of relief, but that didn’t go unnoticed by Penelope either. “Is there something else? What does Emily know? Oh I’m going to kill her-”
“Pen! I love you and I swear I’ll tell you when the time is right, but I assume there’s a reason you called?” As I was speaking, Spencer slipped into the bedroom holding a mug of tea. “Spencer’s here, I’m putting you on speaker.”
“Oh hello boy genius!” Penelope nearly squealed, and Spencer’s face lit up when he recognized her voice.
“Hi Pen! What’s going on?” I could tell he wanted to say more, tell her how much he missed her, but he stopped himself. His hands curled into fists in excitement and he rolled slightly onto the balls of his feet before sitting down on the edge of the bed in front of me.
“Yes, yes, I’m calling for business reasons! So we have good news and bad news, which would you like to hear first?” Penelope asked. I looked up at Spencer who shrugged slightly.
Scrambling, I blurted out, “Good news.”
“Well, we have a name on our unsub.” My eyes met Spencer’s instantly. I expected to feel better about coming to the end of everything, but it was laced with all of the anxiety around my inevitable conversation with Spencer. If we went home tonight, it might be easier to avoid. Or harder. It was a mixed bag of emotions, for sure. Spencer’s face reflected the same confliction.
Penelope kept talking, completely oblivious to the tense energy that had settled between the two of us. “You were both right, of course, a voyeur who became impotent. His name is Timothy Clark, he’s 44, and he recently went on pills for erectile dysfunction. He went to juvie as a child for peeping through windows, but the record was hidden once he turned 18.”
“Th-That’s great!” I said with false enthusiasm. Spencer’s eyes dropped from mine and I diverted my attention to the suddenly interesting ceiling.
“Does that mean the mission is over?” Spencer asked, which was going to be my next question.
“That’s where we reach the bad news. Unfortunately, though this guy fits the profile to a T, and his whereabouts are unaccounted for on the days of the crimes, we don’t have enough to bring him in. All the connections we have are circumstantial, and Hotch wants to make sure that when we get him, we get him.” Penelope explained.
I already knew where this was headed. This unsub always struck on the seventh night after his surveillance started. That was tomorrow. We were going to have to stay until then, and probably let him at least break into the house. Spencer’s eyes snapped to mine as the understanding dawned on him as well.
“Pen, you cannot actually be suggesting-”
“The whole team is going to be running surveillance from around the corner, all you guys have to do is what you’ve already been doing.” She explained, somewhat cheerful. I felt the anxiety of being targeted again crawling up my throat, and I tried to swallow it down. As soon as I felt it, I began to feel inadequate. I had taken this job knowing this was a possibility. Even when I wasn’t undercover I had to face this everyday. If I couldn’t handle this, then what was I even doing here?
Spencer could see the distress on my face, even as I tried to conceal it. “Garcia, I don’t think it’s smart to use us as literal bait. With the listening devices we won’t be able to catch him off guard.”
“I’m so sorry, my love, but there is no other way. Hotch wants you guys to come up with the game plan on your end, as you guys are most familiar with the house and what he can hear and can’t hear. I know they mentioned you guys could possibly wait in the bedroom, but I think they were concerned he would try and peep first which would blow our cover.”
Spencer ran a hand down his face in exasperation and I took in a shaky breath. We were going to have to let this man attack us. I would have my gun on me, of course, but that was it. No other protection, no other contact with the outside world for a warning.
“We know he strikes at night. Have we been able to narrow the time frame other than that?” I asked shakily. Spencer reached out a hand and I grabbed it. His thumb ran over my fingers lightly as I tried to keep it together.
“Unfortunately we haven’t. We know he enters the home after sundown, and kills them right before sunrise, but there’s no indication on what time at night he comes in.” Penelope stated. I bit down on my bottom lip and stared up at the ceiling, trying not to lose myself in flashbacks. The back of my neck felt cold.
Suddenly Spencer stood up. His hand stayed gripped in mine, and we stood basically toe to toe, the phone between us. “Wait, what about the ritual? The peeping? Don’t we think he does that first?”
“Yes, Morgan was saying he was hopeful that it wasn’t a required part of the ritual so you guys wouldn’t have to, well,” I could see her cringing around the next words so clearly it was like she was in the room with me. “entice him.”
Spencer and I locked eyes, and I watched his brain run a mile a minute. “Garcia, can you remind me of the timelines between when the unsub first hacked the smart devices and the murders in each case?” I knew he knew them by heart, and asking for the reminder probably meant he had figured something else out.
“Yes! The first two couples and the last were killed exactly 7 days after their devices were hacked, but couple number 3 was murdered 9 days after.” Garcia read off.
“That’s what I thought.” Spencer sighed, running a tired hand through his hair. “I think that means he won’t strike until he has the chance to spy on them. The Klein’s had conflicting work schedules, so their sex life was probably the least active. The unsub probably came to the house starting on the seventh night, and waited until he had the chance to properly complete his ritual.”
“Oh my god.” The realization hit me the way I assumed it had hit Spencer.
“Wait, so does that mean...” Garcia trailed off.
“We’re going to have to-” I cut myself off, embarrassed to be standing so close to Spencer and holding his hand as I said them. Not to mention that I was certain he was aware of my feelings by now.
“Give him a show?” Penelope said weakly. I closed my eyes shut hard.
“Yea, that’s one way to put it.” My head fell down weakly, the top of it resting on Spencer’s chest as I tried to even out my breathing. The hand that wasn’t holding mine came up to cradle my head, stroking my hair.
“Just throw the covers over you and keep the lights off! Boring, vanilla, newly-married sex is always like that anyway, right?” Penelope suggested lightly. Her voice was tight, probably hearing the discomfort in my voice.
“We’ll figure out a way to do it where we can both be comfortable. How are we meant to alert the others once he breaks in?” Spencer asked. He was asking the important questions, the ones I should have been asking. But my brain was elsewhere. It was wrapped up in the fear and anxiety of being confronted with an unsub again, and the fear and anxiety from having to pretend to have sex with Spencer. My mind was racing through all the different possible repercussions.
There were the obvious ones - death, mortal injury, Spencer’s death or mortal injury, general trauma - the risks and fears we faced everyday with this job. Those had all been amplified since my kidnapping; being so close to death makes each step back towards it far scarier. And then there were the personal consequences. Now that Spencer knew my feelings, there was no doubt in my mind he would be incredibly uncomfortable with what we had to do tomorrow night. We could both be professional, and we would finish the mission for sure, but there was no coming back from that.
Not to mention the way it would crack my heart into two whole pieces, having to lay under him, and pretend, and know he was thinking of someone, anyone else.
I was so lost in my head I didn’t even notice Penelope saying goodbye, tears blurring my vision and a lump forming in my throat. Spencer pulling the phone out of my hand was the only thing that snapped me back into reality, out of my spinning thoughts. His arm wrapped around me and pulled me into his chest, but the contact made my mind race more. Suddenly conscious of all points of contact between us, I pulled away quickly and practically ran to the other side of the room.
Loud sobs wracked my body, but I tried to bite them back into my fist as I faced the wall away from Spencer.
“[Y/N]?” He asked hesitantly. I couldn’t bear to look back at him.
“I’m so sorry.” I responded, voice thick with tears and shoulders shaking from anxiety.
“What? What do you have to be sorry for?” He was closer to me, approaching me apprehensively from the sound of his footsteps.
“Just- everything. You don’t have to keep pretending to be okay with everything. I know you know, and I can’t imagine how much you hate me-”
“Hate you? Why would I ever hate you?” He sounded genuinely distressed, and I turned around to find him only a few feet from me, his face more confused than I’d ever seen it. My face was surely a mess, red and blotchy and wet from my crying.
“Because I’ve been- because of this week. And especially because of tomorrow.” I admitted, sniffling and wrapping my arms around myself in a weak form of protection. His confusion only grew.
“I wouldn’t have agreed to this mission if anything we had to do was going to make me uncomfortable. Tomorrow night isn’t ideal, of course, but we won’t have to do anything too different from what we’ve already been doing.” Spencer explained, running a hand through his hair.
“You hadn’t read the letter when you agreed to the mission.” I said quietly, finally getting to the point. To what we had been dancing around.
“This is-you think I would hate you because of the letter?” He sat down on the edge of the bed, overwhelmed, and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “You still won’t even tell me what the letter is about, and I thought I’d figured it out today but-”
“You still don’t know?” I interrupted. He glanced up at me and swallowed.
“I-I thought I did but this reaction has me second guessing.” He admitted, “I don’t know why I would hate you.” He said the second part under his breath, as if he was still trying to work it out. I rubbed my hands over my upper arms in a small attempt to comfort myself.
“What did you think it was?” I dared to ask. His eyes met mine in an instant, his mouth fumbling around his words.
“I don’t want to be wrong.” He said. I knew he wouldn’t be, I knew he knew the truth. But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.
“Please, Spencer.” I said, biting down hard on my bottom lip. He wrung his fingers together in front of him as he stood up, only slightly closer to me but it felt like he had traveled a mile.
“I thought that the secret was that you loved me. Not-not as a friend. Not the way I always thought but-but the way that I love you.” He said the last part so quietly, I almost didn’t catch it.
It felt like everything froze. Those three words stuttered time to a halt, my heart stopped beating, everything except for him and his voice disappeared. I blinked rapidly. I couldn’t believe it, that I had actually heard him say that. “What?”
“Am I right?” He asked, very hesitantly, staring at his hands and only stealing glances at me. My brain caught up with reality, I had actually heard him say that. Spencer Reid was standing in front of me saying he loved me. And he was clearly quite nervous about it, despite how much I had done to show him I loved him. He was in denial in the face of such a blatant confession like my letter, and I couldn’t leave him in the dark any longer.
I crossed the short distance between us and pulled him in by the neck, kissing him soundly. His hands found my hips as our lips molded together, running up over my back to pull me in closer. My hands weaved into his hair, our lips slotted together, passion pouring through us. We had kissed before, countless times this week, but it had never felt like this. It had never been with knowledge that it was real. That it was because we both wanted it.
When I pulled away I only left enough space for us to breathe. “When have you ever been wrong, Spencer?” I asked, and he laughed brightly, arms wrapping around my waist and lifting me off the ground from elation.
“Apparently I’ve been wrong for a while. I never thought you loved me back.” He admitted, spinning me around once before setting me back down and brushing my hair behind my ear. “I can’t believe how much time we’ve wasted.”
“Don’t think like that. Think about how much time we have now.” I answered, unable to contain my grin as I thought about what this meant. How much this changed things, for the better. How many fears this relieved, how long I had been waiting for this despite never believing it would come.
Spencer caught my lips in his again, our grins not quite fading as we tried to kiss through our happiness. “I love you. So much.” I whispered in between kisses. He hummed, hands running down my arms to grip at my hands on his cheeks.
“I know. The letter- I can’t believe I was so in denial. I just couldn’t believe that after all this time, you were right here, and my fear was the only thing standing in between us.” He explained. “I think I knew right away, when I read it, but I just couldn’t accept it until today.”
“What finally clicked?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“It was surprisingly mundane. You brought me my coffee, and it was made perfectly, and I realized I’ve never even told you my coffee order. You smiled and kissed me and I just knew. You looked at me the way that I look at you. I don’t know how I never saw it.” He held my waist again, and my arms fell to rest against his shoulders.
I smiled and giggled, so happy I didn’t know how to express it. “Don’t feel bad, I didn’t realize you loved me until you said it about five minutes ago.”
“And here I was thinking I had been so obvious. Derek never lets me forget it when I embarrass myself in front of you.” He chuckled. I pulled him down for a short kiss, unable to stop myself now that I could do so whenever I wanted to.
Or at least I intended it to be a short kiss, but Spencer clearly had other ideas. His arms wrapped tightly around my back, keeping our bodies pressed together as our lips danced, small nips and sucks only emphasized by the way our hands roamed over each other’s bodies. His lips trailed from my own down the side of my neck, biting lightly.
“Fuck, Spence.” I threw my head back, exposing more skin that Spencer immediately nipped down and then soothed over with his tongue. Using a grip on his hair I pulled his lips back to mine, hitching a leg over his hip to try and get closer than we already were. His hand came down to support my thigh, shuffling us backwards slightly so my back was pressed against the wall of the bedroom.
As soon as we were pressed tightly together, I could feel his bulge pressing into my own clothed core, and I whimpered against his mouth. Spencer pulled back slightly, pressing our foreheads together and taking a deep breath.
“If you keep making noises like that, I’m not going to be able to stop. And I don’t want our first time to be here, like this.” He admitted, panting slightly. I bit my lip and rolled my hips up, giving him enough pressure that he groaned, dropping his forehead to my shoulder. “Please don’t tempt me.”
I giggled at his reaction, but grabbed his cheeks so we could look into each other's eyes. “I agree, but we’re going to sleep in the same bed and I don’t think I’ll be able to keep my hands completely to myself.”
At the mention of the bed, his eyes dropped to the floor. “We have to. With-With tomorrow-” My heart sunk, the elation from learning Spencer loved me had momentarily distracted me from the overwhelming anxiety about tomorrow night.
“I’d nearly forgotten.” I admitted quietly, catching his eyes again. I dropped my leg from Spencer’s hip, but kept my arms around his neck and played with his hair. “I kind of zoned out when Pen was explaining the actual game plan. How are we alerting everybody else?”
Spencer’s mouth twisted. “There’s a smart device right next to the back door, and Penelope will be listening in so she’ll alert everybody the moment he steps inside. They’re all going to be nearby but we’ll have to do the initial ambush.”
My breath hitched as I thought about lying in wait for someone to attack us, to attack Spencer. He reached a hand up to my cheek and caught my lips in a tender kiss. “I’ll be right here. We’ll be safe. Our guns will be under the pillows the whole night, and we’re expecting him. We have the upperhand.” My eyes shut and I took a shaky breath.
“What about-What are we gonna do before? How are we going to fake it?” I asked. If the circumstances were different I had no doubt we would be in bed together right this second, but of course we had to deal with this first. There was no way that the first time I was with Spencer would be with even the slightest risk of some whack job listening or watching.
“I figure, we just don’t go any further than we already have? I don’t want to- not like that.” Spencer said.
“Of course not. When I get to have you, I want to have you to myself. No looming threat of death above my head.” I said what we were both thinking. Spencer nodded solemnly. “Though, there’s a small part of me that keeps saying we should do it now, because who knows what will happen tomorrow,” I admitted. Sharing my fears with Spencer came easily, easier than I expected. We had always been close, but now that our feelings were out in the open, it was like the last wall was shattered.
“I feel that way too. But I’d rather wait, and get to do it right, then rush it tonight because of fear.” Spencer explained. “So we can, uhm. Throw the covers over us, maybe take off just our shirts? Or have extra under the pillows to throw out to make it look like we stripped. Then it’s just- the motions.” I nodded in agreement, taking a deep breath and leaning my head back against the wall.
“We’ll lock the front door tomorrow, but not the back. We’ll come in here, take our showers, and then have boring fake sex completely under the covers with the lights off, and when we hear the back door open we get into position. When he tries to break in here, we ambush him and catch this fucker.” I said it all monotonously, running through it without the emotion I was feeling. If I laid it out rationally maybe I could deny the panic that was setting in, the way my lungs didn’t seem to fill, the way my hands were beginning to shake.
I brought my hands away from Spencer’s neck, down to cover my face and press into my eyes. Spencer must have seen the loss of contact as the end of the moment as he went to pull away. My hands quickly reached for his waist and tugged him closer, burying my face in his chest. His arms wrapped tight around me, stroking over my sides. I took a deep breath, breathing him in. “I don’t know if I can do it.” I whispered, the fear of not living up to what was expected of me taking over. When I thought for more than a moment about being face to face with an unsub again, my heart raced and my vision went fuzzy. How would I hold up when there was no choice but to face it?
Spencer’s large hands stroked up and down my back. “I’m not going to lie to you and say that it’s going to be easy. But I know you can do this. And if you can’t, then that’s okay - I’ll be right here the whole time.” His words barely registered as I began spiraling again, barely able to get a full breath.
“But what if I can’t do it and then you get hurt. Spencer if something- If you ever-” I choked on my words, gripping him tighter. The feeling of his solid body was the only thing grounding me, the rhythmic up-and-down of his hands on my back, his chest rising with his breath, the thud of his heartbeat against my cheek.
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep, and I can’t promise you that nothing bad will happen. What I can promise you is I will be doing everything in my power to keep us both safe, and I believe that you’ll be able to do it too. You’re strong, you’re powerful, and you’re one of the most resilient people I’ve ever known. Your ability to get the job done was one of the first things I admired about you.” As he spoke I pulled back to look at him, still trying to catch my breath and blink back tears. “I love you. We can do this. And after this, if you never want to go undercover again, or if you want to quit the team, or whatever you need to do to feel safe, you can do it. And I will be right there with you.” His eyes bore into mine, deadly serious.
I bit down on my shaky bottom lip, overwhelmed with love for this man. I didn’t know what I would need after this. I had been ignoring the lingering effects of my kidnapping for so long, and I knew recovery wouldn’t be easy. But it wasn’t as scary knowing he would be there with me.
“I love you.” I whispered, my voice still shaky and cracking, my breath still not completely regulated. He pulled me back into him, cradling my head in his chest.
We stood there until I could breathe again, until my racing thoughts fell away and I could handle being away from him. Not that I wanted to be. We got ready for bed in tandem, only inches from each other the whole time. He had an arm wrapped around my waist as we brushed our teeth, giggling together as he spit over my shoulder. I pressed a sticky toothpaste kiss to his cheek before I wiped my own mouth, which made him groan and chuckle.
He washed his face while I climbed into bed, pulling the covers tight around myself and curling into a ball. When I stayed in one position for too long my body still shook, anxiety coming out in small tremors across my whole body. I took deep breaths in my nose and out my mouth, trying to ground myself.
I didn’t even notice Spencer in the room until his arms were wrapping around me. They snaked around my waist, hands pressing into the skin of my stomach under my pajama shirt. My arms and legs were still trembling, but the warmth of his chest against my back relaxed me slightly, and I settled back into him.
Warm lips pressed into my shoulder. “I love you.” He whispered. “I can’t believe I finally get to show you how much.”
I turned over in his arms, wrapping a leg around his hips. My arms found their way around his neck, my hands cradling his face. “I love you too.” Our lips pressed together tenderly, my hands now the only part of me shaking. When we separated, our foreheads pressed together, I took a deep breath. “I’m scared.” I admitted quietly. Of so many things, I thought, of the unsub, of myself, of losing you. Everything feels fragile.
His hands traced the line of my spine, pulling me so I was resting against his chest. I settled my cheek against his heart, and felt his chest vibrate as he spoke. “Me too, but I’ll keep you safe.”
In the quiet of the night, with his arms wrapped tightly around me, I could almost believe it.
Night 7
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