jordan @thewrldisyrss - Tumblr Blog

0898 HEARTACHE ˚꩜｡ spencer reid x reader

── .⟢ "...if your calling me's a mistake, then tell me why we're both still on the line?"

In a desperate attempt to regain control over his life post-prison, Spencer Reid enters a "no strings attached" arrangement with a younger woman. Unfortunately, keeping things casual is a skill he has yet to master.

GENRE: smut, angst (MDNI) | WORD COUNT: 6.5k

TAGS: fem!reader, post-prison!dom!spencer, age gap (23 & 35), daddy kink, protected p in v, doggy style, fingering, multiple orgasms, sex as a coping mechanism, crying after sex, pet names (angel), situationship that runs on existential dread and a deep-rooted fear of being Unloveable, guilt galore, they're in love but won't admit it, spencer's an avoidant king, title from a los campesinos! song

NOTES: he’s old! he’s miserable! he’s fucking a woman twelve years younger than him! godspeed, spencer reid.

Spencer makes mistakes. There isn't a person on earth who doesn't. It's an integral part of being human, the capacity for error; you will inevitably mess up, be it a small misstep, or…worse.

Don't be mistaken (no pun intended), Spencer's tried quite ardently to prove himself the exception to this rule, but his efforts all but backfired; it seemed that the more he tried to perfect his existence, the more mistakes he wound up making. In an attempt to make himself smaller, less bothersome, he inadvertently became a bigger problem.

The team like to think he's sagacious, especially as he's gotten older. They aren't exactly wrong; his experience has sharpened his senses, allowed him to become a better profiler, he'll never deny that. But being a better profiler doesn't always equate to being a better person. That's something his predecessors have proven time and time again, and it's something he is now perpetuating. When Penelope compares him to Gideon, she means it in an endearing sense ("Oh, they grow up so fast", "You're just like daddy"), but Spencer has always seen it as a personal failure.

Trauma changes people, ergo this job changes people, and in his time at the BAU Spencer Reid has endured worse than the rest of his team combined (factually, this isn't true, but it's how he feels; Emily and co have never had to serve three shitty months in prison).

Long story short, Spencer is lost, and he might possibly be going through some kind of early-onset, stress-induced midlife crisis, but his experiences haven't made him senseless. Sure, he makes mistakes, but you'd be hard-pressed to find him making the same one twice.

Unfortunately, as with any standard, there's an exception.

You.

You're the flaw in his programming. The anomaly that keeps him guilty. The mistake that he just keeps making, no matter how many times he tries to stop.

You were the girl in the library, the one he had no intention of flirting with. Not until he was at your side, cracking poor jokes about long-dead authors you'd likely never heard of. It was out of his control, as though his mouth had developed a mind of its own, and a remarkably stupid one at that.

It wasn't a conscious choice to stop and talk to you, nor was complimenting your outfit, nor asking for your number—it all just happened. To say that Spencer had approached you with a plan of action, a grand scheme to get you into his life, into his bed, would be giving him far too much credit.

—

You were too young, for one, or he was too old. He certainly felt too old, but feelings aren't much of a reliable metric, especially not his own.

Thirty-five isn't old, anyway, objectively speaking. It isn't exactly young (he let go of his young adult title when he turned thirty), but it certainly isn't old. If thirty-five is old, then what's forty? Fifty?

But what's thirty-five compared to twenty-three, if not old? What's a man with enough baggage to sink a ship compared to a wide-eyed woman twelve years his junior if not painfully, undeniably old?

The guilt he feels from being with you is the kind that sits behind his ribs, pushes up against them when he's desperately chasing sleep, builds and builds until he's sure the bones'll crack under the pressure. It'll shrink during the day, when he can distract himself with work, but it'll leave him with this hollow feeling. An ache that he can never quite give words to. One that, ironically, only you seem to be able to ease.

But it's only a temporary fix. Being with you alleviates the ache, but it exacerbates the guilt. Leaves him feeling worse. Needing more.

It's a paradoxical craving. A torturous feedback loop. An addiction, in layman's terms. One of those lovely self-destructive spirals that won't let up until you hit rock bottom.

You'd think he'd know better by now; he's been through this before, seen the seven wonders of the addiction world, yet he made no effort to stop himself from falling back into old habits.

He'd argue that it's different this time; he isn't using, you're not a narcotic, this isn't going to kill him, but he knows that's no excuse for what he's doing. He may be on a different branch of the path, but he's still using.

He's using you, and you're letting him. Sometimes it's that fact that bothers him more than anything else.

You've no business with him, really. You're young, ambitious, attractive; you could have anything you wanted, but you choose him, repeatedly.

There's a part of him that resents you for it, and it's at a constant war with the part of him that so adores the attention you give him.

He's projecting, he knows he is, but he truly doesn't understand how you can waste so much of your time, and your youth—things that have such an impossible value to them—on him, when you could be with someone better. Someone who isn't as damaged. Someone who can stomach something more than just casual sex.

The sex is another prison thing (he's dubbed every uncharacteristic behaviour that's emerged following his time at Millburn a "prison thing"). Meaningless sex was never something he was interested in before his arrest; he valued emotional connection above all else, and he had found it, briefly, before it was torn from him. Spencer's desire for intimacy, be it emotional or physical, died with Maeve. He was fine with that.

But his three months at Millburn left him with an acute, sickening awareness of his own mortality. Time was something he was already used to feeling slip through his fingers, no matter how hard he tried to hold on to it, but prison took his pre-existing anxieties and multiplied them tenfold. Twisted them into something that bordered almost on obsession.

Somewhere along the line, sex stopped being so sacred. He no longer saw the point in treating it as such; a lifetime of saving himself had earned him nothing and, with his emancipation affording him a second chance at life, he wasn't going to take what time he had remaining for granted.

So yeah, maybe he was desperate, but who could blame him? Anyone would be if they had as little relationship experience—as little life experience—as he did, especially at his age.

And there you were, over a decade younger than him with ten times the life lived, a poignant reflection of the very youth he felt he had wasted. He was jealous of you, the same way he was jealous of anyone—anything—that wasn't himself. He'd envy the birds for their wings, the insects for their inability to form conscious thoughts, and you for…everything.

You think he's a bitter old man, and he supposes you're right; his jokes are sardonic, his attitude is dry, and apparently he had a major case of "resting bitch face" (your words, not his. He prefers to call it his "resting thinking face"). He hasn't given you reason to believe he's anything other than a morose pessimist, a ghostly shell of someone you never had the privilege of knowing.

Prison soured his temperament, cracked his ribs and stuffed his gaping chest cavity with rocks, sharp-edged and saturated with all the nasty feelings he refuses to put a name to, because then they'd be real and he'd have to face them head-on and he really, really doesn't want to do that.

He wonders sometimes if you'd still like him, had you met him last year, or if it was all of that nastiness in him that drew you in. Maybe you're attracted to baggage. It's not like he'd be able to judge you for it, if you were; your entire relationship is built on Spencer's need to expel his frustrations, and the masochistic enjoyment you get out of bearing the brunt of it all.

It isn't the healthiest foundation, he'll never try to claim otherwise, but it's something. And that's all he needs right now. All he can handle.

—

He only calls you when times get hard (which sounds like a decent plan, except times are always hard); he'll dial your number like a prayer, hold his breath whilst the phone rings, ask if you're busy like a dog begging for treats.

Without fail, you'll say no, you're not busy. You'll keep up the lie even when he can hear the club music and the chatter in the background, and you'll always be back at your apartment by the time he arrives.

Like tonight, when you were out with friends, enjoying the freedom of your early twenties, but you were still there in time to let him in.

He doesn't know how you manage it, and he never asks—it's one of those things you've conveniently left unaddressed, for both his benefit and yours. If he were to question it, you'd be forced to admit to caring about him more than you let on. The carefully maintained illusion of casualness would be shattered, and Spencer doesn't have the strength to bear the weight of the truth. He isn't sure you do, either.

The first thing he sees when you answer the door is your dress. Tight, black, clearly something you didn't have the time to change out of before he arrived; you don't dress up, not for him. But today, by total coincidence, you are: your hair is styled, your makeup is perfect. You look like something straight out of a dream. Straight out of his dreams, the few he has nowadays.

He's staring. You're smiling. You both know, yet neither of you comment on it. You let him in without a word, and the silence persists for as long as it takes you to close the door.

You're moaning after that. Back pressed up against the wall, fingers tangled in his hair as he kisses you senseless. His hands map your body like he doesn't already have it memorised, hikes up your dress as he tells you just how pretty you look. You respond by hooking your leg over his, canting your hips so there's no questioning what you want.

The break in the kiss arrives sooner than either of you would have hoped, punctuated with a potent wet sound, shallow breaths, and a saliva string that refuses to break.

His lips venture to the side of your neck, just below your jaw, and he breathes in your perfume as his palms trace the soft curves of your exposed thighs. He pulls you in by your hips, pressing them against his as he whispers a muffled "I missed you" into your skin, words unapologetically earnest. Almost delicate.

Your response comes in the form of a sigh—light and breathy, simmering with need—as you lean your head back, allowing him better access to your neck. "You saw me last…week— God…"

Two fingers press up against your panties, massaging your clit through the already sodden fabric as he brings his lips to your ear, and you can't help the little yelp that escapes you when his teeth nip at your lobe.

"Still too long," he murmurs, breath hot against your skin as he nudges the shell of your ear with his nose, and he can feel the way he makes your knees go weak. "You have no idea how badly I've needed this. Needed you."

"Mm…" You're rocking your hips now, grinding against his fingers as you turn your face to meet his gaze, and fuck, the way you look up at him with this kind of quiet, tempered reverence, like he hung the very stars visible through your window, is unlike anything he's ever seen. "Rough week?"

He leans down to kiss your lips, once, twice, before softly answering, "Something like that."

You nod along with his words slowly, almost thoughtfully, and trail your hands down his chest, over the freshly pressed fabric of his shirt. "Want me to make you feel better?"

As tempting an offer as it is, Spencer shakes his head. He catches both of your wrists with one strong hand, preventing you from advancing any further, and brings his lips to your forehead. "Not tonight," he says. "I don't want you to do anything."

"But—"

"Shh." He cuts you off with another kiss, fingers dipping under the elastic of your panties. "Just let me make you feel good, okay?"

Whatever protests you have lined up ("That's not fair", "What about you?") are silenced by the feel of his calloused fingers parting your slick folds. He keeps his touch light and slow, and you respond with a petulant whine; he knows what you want, what you can handle, yet he insists on being a tease.

His gaze doesn't stray from your face, and when you try to look away he's quick to grasp your chin so he can continue studying you, watching the twitches in your expression as he circles your entrance. The pressure, however gentle, seems enough to drive you mad.

The pad of his thumb brushes your lower lip, sinks into the plush as he tilts your head up. "Is that what you want, angel?"

"Spencer…"

"Hm?"

He raises an eyebrow as his name leaves your lips, and he shakes his head before leaning down to kiss your cheek.

"Not Spencer," he says softly. "Try again for me."

You roll your hips against his hand, shameless in your desire for more of him as you correct yourself with a smile and murmur, "…Daddy."

He has to bite his lip, withhold a guttural groan, like the sound of your voice alone is threatening to finish him off. "There we go," he says, maintaining that calm, measured tone as he trails his lips along your jaw. "You want Daddy to take care of you, hm?"

If this weren't your established dynamic, Spencer would be on his knees. The look on your face as you nod along with his words, whispering "yes, please", could bring down mountains, part seas, he's sure of it.

And God, the way you moan for him when he finally gives you what you want leaves him feeling lightheaded; it's paradisal, far too good to be true. He's never been a religious man (he's too logical, too ruined), but the electricity that surges through him when he has you like his is almost enough to drive him to worship. Like he could find God in you, if he only allowed himself to take that plunge.

Your fingers are in his hair, bringing his face to your neck as you rock your hips, desperate for him to take you further, and you're clenching, walls fluttering around his slender digits, like you're trying to suck him in. His teeth graze the delicate skin of your neck, and you let out this unholy whine that goes straight to his groin, almost shatters his composure entirely—all soft and needy and perfect, just aching to be taken care of.

Every curse that falls from your lips feels like some depraved reward as Spencer pumps his fingers with calculated precision, working you like it's second nature; he knows exactly what to do, what pace you love, what angles drive you crazy. He's perfectly tuned to your body, yet it never feels mechanical or boring—God knows it could never be boring, not with you. Spencer gets off on your pleasure almost as much as you do, the times he's finished untouched are proof of that.

He's determined to not let tonight add to his tally of premature finishes; as much as you enjoy knowing what you do to him, he would much rather make it to the main event, take his time, finish in you, or on you—or both, if he's feeling particularly greedy.

But it's hard, in a number of ways, to keep his composure when you're like this, and by the time you're teetering on the brink of your first orgasm, he's half-convinced he'll follow suit, that this will be another instance of him being too into you for his own good.

He used to blame this little problem of his on prison, and on the life he led before it; he'd argue that his years of minimal sexual experience, of being married to his job, made him overly sensitive, too starved of touch to last as long as he wanted to. And maybe that was the case, at the time, but now it's something else entirely.

Now it's just you.

He's found his weakness in you; one he never knew existed at all.

Spencer's had crushes in the past. He's been in love. He knows how it feels to be so struck by someone he forgets his own name, but this…this is different.

This isn't anything he's felt before, and he's spent every day since meeting you wondering how he had lived so long without it.

It's a feeling he'll be sure to bury once he's left your apartment; the weight of this rotten infatuation isn't something he has any use for when he's away from you, it'll only cause him pain.

But, for now, he lets it overcome him. Face pressed to your neck, he inhales your scent as he curls his fingers, guides you over the edge in a matter of seconds—and he has to close his eyes, bite his lip, to prevent himself from coming apart, too.

When you slump back against the wall, he sets his free hand on your waist, keeping you grounded as he eases his other hand out from between your trembling thighs. He brings his slick fingers to his lips, sucks them clean as you watch in a breathless haze, expression coloured with all shades of lust—and, looking past it, adoration. Spencer would be lying if he said it didn't make him feel a little smug, knowing that you're as besotted with him as he is with you.

He wastes no time before he's picking you up, hands planted firmly on the backs of your thighs, gripping the soft skin tight as you yelp in surprise.

"It's okay," he murmurs, "I've got you."

You press your face to his neck, eyes shut tight. "You're supposed to warn me."

"And you're supposed to trust me," he counters, craning to press a kiss to the top of your head before moving to the bedroom. "I'm not going to drop you, angel, I promise— whoops!"

The way you squeal as he dips forward, pretending to lose his grip, has him cackling—full-volume, loud and whole in a way he hasn't laughed in a long time. You kick your feet in protest, heels coming loose and clattering to the floor as you whinge about how you "hate him".

"Hate me?" Spencer parrots the notion with a grin as he sets you down on the bed. He hurries to take off his shoes before joining you, mattress sinking under your combined weight as he settles between your legs. "You hate me?"

Your response, no doubt full of snark and sarcasm, is quelled by the quiet, distinct sound of a zipper. Spencer's undoing the back of your dress, exposing your skin to the warm bedroom air as he awaits your answer with patience, but you bite your tongue, and you turn your face away to avoid his perceptive gaze.

His mouth finds your collarbone, trails slow, sensual kisses along your skin whilst his hands skim over your sides, wandering down to the bottom of your dress. You lift your hips without needing to be asked, inviting him to take it off. But he doesn't.

Instead, he raises his head, brown eyes searching your face for an answer he already knows—he's just buying time to look at you; to admire how gorgeous you look in this light, soiled with the need that palpates between you.

"You hate me?" he repeats. Softer, this time.

He wants you to look at him. Not out of his desire for dominance, though it's certainly there, but because he wants you to see the way he's looking at you. He needs you, in that moment, to see him, and all the things he can't say.

But when you do meet his gaze, he regrets it almost instantly.

"…no," you breathe.

Spencer can hardly hear you over the blood rushing in his ears. The seizing of his nerves as that familiar pang strikes him right in his gut. All of his lust turns cold, bitten by the frost of a split-second nervous response.

And the thought of you seeing him, really seeing him, is terrifying. More than anything he sees on the job. More than prison.

He fidgets with the fabric of your dress, trying to kill the urge to pull away before it overwhelms him and grappling, stupidly, with the thought that you should hate him; that you would hate him, if you knew him.

You see it, he knows you do. The way his mind turns into a war zone the second the fog clears. He's waiting for you to speak up, to ask if he's okay, to smother him with concern he doesn't deserve, but you don't. You just wait. Quiet. Patient. Beautiful.

"…I don't hate you."

It's entirely likely that he's imagining things, clinging to whatever false hope he can find, but your words, as soft spoken as they are, are laced with something meaningful. A promise, maybe. Is he selfish for thinking that way? Stupid?

You've always been careful not to veer too close to the sensitive parts of him. The volatile, unhealed parts. You don't acknowledge the unease that runs through his veins, not outright; that would only do more harm than good.

It's as much a part of him as his red blood cells and his platelets, that constant, thrumming discomfort. The fraught static that's been there all his life, crackling around the edges of his vision. Building and dissipating, never truly going away.

He's scared.

He doesn't remember a time where he hasn't been.

So when he kisses you, it's desperate. Unapologetically so, like he's trying to expel it all before it kills him. Poorly coordinated. All teeth and tongue and a breath he doesn't even realise he's holding until he's gasping into your mouth, grasping at your dress like he's seconds away from tearing it from your body.

It's equivalent to screaming into the void, he supposes; pouring his feelings, his frustrations, into something that accepts them so willingly. And it's another thing he'll regret once he leaves, as he always does.

He tugs your dress off and tosses it aside, and he's on you again before it hits the floor. On your neck, your shoulders, your chest. Every inch of skin that isn't covered, claimed by his demanding mouth.

Your bra is the next to go. Discarded, replaced by large hands that suit you so much better than any lace. His tongue dips between your tits, leaves a glossy trail of saliva in its wake as you shudder under the intensity of his affections.

"God…" he groans into your skin, lips pressed to your left breast like he's speaking directly to your heart. "I missed you."

"You said that already."

You're smiling. Laughing, almost. He can hear it in your voice; your words have this warmth to them, one that settles in his stomach, makes him feel as though he's floating on air. He doesn't dare steal another glimpse of your face; he'd never be able to look away, if he did.

"And?" His hands drop to your hips, and he pulls you forward until you're lying flat on your back. He takes your leg, presses a kiss to the inside of your knee as he says, "I mean it."

"Uh huh." He can feel your eyes on him. The weight of your gaze burns. "Careful, I might start thinking you like me."

He looks at you then. He can't help it. That smile makes him queasy, but not in a bad way (which is weird, because he isn't sure such a thing as "good nausea" exists; maybe he's the first to discover it).

He feels very much like a deer in headlights when he's caught in your line of sight like this. That kind of vulnerability isn't something he's felt in years, but that, too, isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Lips now pressed to your thigh, he lets out a soft scoff. "Like you?" he asks, barely suppressing a smile of his own now. "What gave you that impression?"

"Oh, I don't know." You reach for his tie, giving it a gentle tug as you pull him closer. "Just a…hunch, I guess."

As he leans over you, he tilts his head to the side, eyebrow raised. "A hunch?"

"Are you going to keep repeating everything I say as a question?" you ask. "It feels a little patronising."

"Patronising?"

"Oh my God—"

He cuts you off with a kiss, cradling the back of your head as you work on loosening his tie. You hook your legs over his waist, and he feels you cross your ankles to prevent him from scurrying away—as if he'd ever dream of it.

"You missed me, too," he murmurs, grinning against your lips.

All you give him in response is a low hum. Your hands tremble slightly, impatience curdling with adrenaline, as you fumble with the buttons of his shirt.

Tutting, he breaks the kiss, and as he pulls away he catches your wrists once more.

"Say it," he says, taking on a firmer tone as he looks down at you.

Biting your lip, you cast your gaze to the side, playing coy for as long as you can stomach before you quietly admit, "I missed you."

Whether you mean it or not doesn't matter (of course, he hopes you do); it elicits the same response either way. Spencer latches onto your jaw, releases your wrists, lets you remove his shirt as he tries to swallow the urge to bite, to leave marks on the sensitive skin—symbols of ownership that no amount of makeup would be able to cover up. But that would be reckless, if not a little cruel, so he just settles for kisses. Possessive ones, simmering with the desire for something more, something real, be it hickeys or…more.

"Oh, I know, angel." His voice softens, but the words remain hot against your skin as he nips at your neck. "You missed your daddy, didn't you?"

You answer with an eager nod, nudging his belt with the heel of your foot as you grow increasingly desperate. "Please…"

Spencer lifts his head, brows raised like he doesn't understand what you're asking of him. "Please what?"

"You said you'd take care of me," you say.

"Is that not what I’m doing?"

His faux display of cluelessness does not amuse you as it does him. You're pouting now, fingers tangled in his hair as you try your best to withhold a smile. "You're gonna make me ask?"

"I believe communication is an important—"

"I need you to fuck me," you interrupt.

Need.

How many times has he told himself that's all this is? Base need. A carnal void that needs filling. Nothing more.

There's so much certainty behind your words, like you're stating scientific fact. You need this, the same way you need food and water.

You need him.

That isn't what you said, but it's what he hears. And it sends him fucking reeling.

"…that's not very polite."

He has to force the words out around the lump in his throat, around his own need that's scorching his insides. Singing every nerve, every cell, until the only thing his debauched body can process is you. Your legs around his waist. Your hands in his hair. Your perfume mixed with the stench of sweat. Yours, and his.

And then you go in for the kill. Tilt your head to the side. Bat your eyelashes. Like you don't already have him wrapped around your finger.

"Please."

…and that's good enough for him.

He springs into action without thinking. Deft fingers unbuckle his belt as he sits up, and he ignores your whines as he untangles himself from you. He sheds his trousers, his underwear, and casts them aside with a warrior's confidence, only to pick them back up again when he realises he forgot the condom in his pocket (but come on, no one's perfect).

When he rejoins you on the bed, he wastes no time in getting you into position. He flips you onto your front, manipulates your body like a doll's, and you let him; face pressed to the mattress, knees folded, ass in the air right where he wants it. The stitching pops and tears as he tugs at your panties, and the head of his cock is pressed snug against your entrance before you can get a word in—and by that point all you can manage is a low, anticipatory moan and an impatient wiggle of your hips.

"Oh, fuck—"

There's something holy in the way you curse in unison as he sinks into you; your words muffled by your hands, his grunted through his teeth as he channels his focus into not finishing too soon. But you're clamping down on every inch like you'll never let him go, and he has to close his eyes, dig his teeth into the inside of his cheek, to keep himself in check.

He bottoms out with a whimper, fingers pressing into the soft plush of your hips, oblivious to the bruises he'll leave behind as he tries to steady himself. He allows both of you some much needed time to breathe, enough time to press his lips to your shoulder, ask in a whisper if you're "doing okay?" before he goes any further. Your response is physical; a shift of your hips, making you both moan as you take him that little bit deeper.

"Shit…feel that?" He trails a hand down to your lower stomach, presses his palm flat against the skin before giving a tentative roll of his hips, and he isn't sure what he gets off on more; the fact that he's buried so deep inside of you he can feel the slight bulge when he moves, or the noise that escapes you when he presses a little firmer. It's animal. "You feel how fucking deep I am?"

He punctuates the question with a thrust, one that pulls another filthy moan from your lips, and another, and another, as he settles into a rhythm, making sure he hits that sweet spot each time he pushes into you.

Keeping one hand anchored on your hip, he runs his fingers across the expanse of your arched back, drags his nails across the soft skin, makes you whine into the mattress as he marks you up. You'll no doubt complain about the red lines that bloom in his wake, how they'll get in the way of any backless outfit you have planned, but Spencer thinks they're beautiful. In fact, if he were any more wicked, he'd scratch his initials into your skin and tell you to wear those clothes anyway—that way, when you go out to all those clubs and bars, there'd be no doubt about who you really belonged to.

Ragged breaths and the hypnotic sound of skin against skin fill your dimly lit bedroom as Spencer's hand slips down the side of your neck. He grasps your jaw from behind, encourages you to lift your head so he can better hear how he's ruining you, and God, it's intoxicating.

He'll ride this high for the rest of the week, when he isn't letting the guilt churn in his stomach, safe in the knowledge that he'll always have some semblance of purpose, even if it's just in bed. After all, it's better than nothing, especially when his life has felt so…devoid of it. Purpose. Meaning.

It's weird, if not downright depressing, but in the time that has passed since prison (since well before then, if he's being honest), the only time Spencer has felt any semblance of peace has been with you. Using you. Partaking in this obscene give-and-take. Leaving claw marks in something that isn't his.

It's catharsis. It's a backwards cleansing for all of his foulness. A perverse ritual to satiate his desperate need for control. It was a quick fix, uncharacteristically selfish because he felt he had earned the right to be. It was superficial, and it was simple.

He isn't sure when it stopped being simple. If it ever was to begin with.

You're grasping at the sheets, arching your back and calling him Daddy through sinful, broken moans, on the cusp of another orgasm, and all he can think about is how much he likes you. It's pathetic. Worse than that, it's dangerous.

"Fuck…"

But he can't help it.

"Come here…let me see you."

He flips you onto your back, holds you by your jaw so you've no choice but to look at him as he fucks you. Your leg over his shoulder, knee pressed almost to your chest. Teary-eyed and drooling, looking like everything he's ever dared to want.

It doesn't take much from there to push you over the edge—a little pressure on your stomach, his breath hot on your face—and as your body contracts around him Spencer finally reaches the end of his rope. His vision blurs, and he gives a few more weak thrusts before he collapses on top of you, reduced to little more than a sack of leaden limbs and shaky breaths.

Moments pass before he's able to process the wetness on his cheeks, the two narrow rivers finding the path of least resistance through his stubble, and it takes even longer for him to process what really should be obvious: he's crying. Face buried in your neck, probably crushing you under the weight of his trembling body, and crying.

That kind of realisation should be enough to snap him out of it. He should have the sense to pull it together before he humiliates himself in your arms, but he doesn't. Something has messed with his brain chemistry, be it his heightened emotional state, or the adrenaline crash, or whatever else, and Spencer is helpless against it.

Even his efforts to stay quiet are thwarted by a rogue sniffle, wet and pathetic and full of all the things he doesn't want you to know. But as he lays there holding his breath, heart hammering against his ribs, dreading your reaction to his wretched state, all he feels is a hand gently smoothing out his hair. And that, as innocuous as it is, is almost enough to break him completely.

He counts each steady beat of your heart, matches the rise and fall of your chest until he can breathe on his own again. Your warmth seeps into him, keeping him grounded with unspoken promises—and a silent invitation, equal parts irresistible and impossible.

The only thing more powerful than Spencer's desire to stay is the is the crushing feeling that he has to leave. That to stay would be to open doors he'd never be able to close again; to nail himself to a cross for you to watch. To judge. Or maybe, if you're a fool, to love, even though it would be wasted on him.

So he forces himself up, excuses himself to your bathroom, and disappears before you can call out after him. He finds comfort in the cool ceramic of your sink, so different to the warmth of your pliant skin, and safer. So, so much safer.

He splashes his face with cold water and forces himself to think of anything but you, lying in that bed, alone with no one to keep you warm. He reviews cases in his mind, avoids his gaze in the mirror as he mops himself up with one of your soft towels.

The knock comes eight minutes into his self-imposed solitary confinement. The door isn't locked, so you push it open when he tries to ignore you.

You're already in your pyjamas, Spencer's clothes clutched to your chest. The weak smile you offer falters when he refuses to look you in the eye, and you hand over his crumpled clothes without a word, opting instead to chew and choke on the dense silence as he gets changed.

His movements are mechanical. Shirt, boxers, slacks, shoes. He stuffs his tie into his pocket, and half of it comes spilling right back out, dangles from his hips like his own scarlet letter, and he's mumbling his half-hearted goodbyes before he can dare to have second thoughts.

"I—"

He has one foot out the door when you speak up. You've followed him back into the living room, arms crossed in a poor show of confidence that starts to waver as soon as he meets your gaze.

"You'd, um—" You clear your throat, shrugging as you don an ironic smile. "You'd tell me if this was…it, right?"

Spencer blinks at you, bewildered, but you barely allow him to take a breath before you continue.

"I know I sound stupid, asking that. But…I'm kind of sensing something here, maybe? And I—" You sigh, but your smile remains intact. "I'd just prefer it if you told me outright, that way I won't waste my time, you know…sitting by the phone. Waiting on a call that'll never come."

What isn't betrayed in your expression is visible elsewhere; your eyes, the drumming of your fingers against your arms, the tension in your shoulders that makes you look cold even though your thermostat is always turned up. As far as facades go, though, you've got a pretty decent one; anyone who wasn't a profiler might think your nonchalance was genuine. But Spencer knows an illusion when he sees one, he's spent too long wrapped up in ones of his own not to.

So, when he does eventually speak up, he does so earnestly. He studies your face, your smudged mascara, the desperation hiding behind those sharp eyes, and he tries to swallow all of the undesirable notions clawing at his throat when he says, "I'll call you."

His words barely penetrate your smile. It thins, struggles, but its cynicism persists. You don't believe him.

"Tomorrow?" he adds, letting a small, reassuring smile of his own cross his face.

After scrutinising him for a moment longer, your shoulders drop, and you concede. "Sure. Sure."

Spencer nods, and he takes an instinctive step forward before thinking better of it; nothing good could come from kissing you goodbye, not tonight.

So, with nothing left to do, he flashes you one last parting smile, repeating "I'll call you tomorrow" before stepping out into the hall.

But not even he can be entirely certain he's telling the truth.