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noonew1lleverask · 12 days ago

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AHHH💕💕

FLUORESCENT MERCY ―.✦ s.r. soft animal series ∘ part i

pairing: spencer reid x fem!nurse!reader

summary: spencer reid was never cut out for prison. under the buzz of the fluorescent overheads in the prison infirmary, spencer meets a nurse who sees beyond his inmate number.

genre: hurt/comfort, fluff

w/c: 7.7k (yikes sorry)

tags/warnings: s12 prison arc, mentions of drugs and murder, afab reader goes by she/her pronouns, flirting, banter, probably horribly inaccurate info on medical treatment and prison healthcare, mention of Alzheimer’s/schizophrenia, sadboy spencer, minor sexual tension, fluff, mentions of blood and other injury, spencer gets hurt a few times but he’s okay, reader lowkey kind of cyberstalks spencer but it’s fine she’s sweet

a/n: hello!! first time posting a fic on here eeeep. mostly writing this for myself more than anyone else tbh, but i hope anyone who stumbles upon this mouthful enjoys it. get to know me here. a few disclaimers: I am not a nurse!!! I have never worked in the correctional system or even been inside a prison before!!! there will probably be plenty of inaccuracies as to how that all works, and if that will bother you, this probably isn’t the fic for you and that’s okay. this is just for funsies :-) staying mostly true to the prison arc canon but with some tweaks for the sake of the story. story is told by reader from first person, very very minimal use of y/n (only when it’s absolutely necessary). again, i am very very brand new to posting fics on tumblr (+ writing for criminal minds in general) so I appreciate any and all interactions with this fic and any advice/feedback in my asks is always welcome! if you enjoy, please reblog! there’s really no other way for me to get this thing out there as a brand new blog, so that would mean the world to me 🤍

this is part of a series, but can be read as a stand-alone one shot!

series masterlist

Some days the air inside the infirmary felt heavier than others — thick with stale disinfectant and something harder to qualify. Grief, maybe. Danger, sometimes. Or resignation. Or just the ache of a hundred slow-moving lives, pressed up against metal and concrete.

I’d gotten used to it, mostly. That dull, pulsing ache. But occasionally I still caught myself pausing between tasks and wondering how I’d ended up here. Not in a bad way. Just… reflective. Being a nurse in a prison infirmary wasn’t the kind of job most little girls dreamed about, and it definitely wasn’t the kind of job that made first dates lean in with interest.

But I chose this. On purpose.

I’d seen what broken systems could do. I’d watched people be forgotten because it was easier that way. Being here meant I could be the person who didn’t look away. The person who treated people like people, even when the rest of the world pretended they were less than human.

I never used to picture myself here. Not in a place like this, anyway. But life doesn’t always move in straight lines, and I’ve learned not to fight the curves.

I became a nurse because I wanted to help. Not in some abstract, motivational quote-type of way, but in a way that matters. Out of school, I specialized in trauma for a while. Emergency room work in the city, night shift, a revolving door of chaos. At first, I loved the fast-paced and high-intensity nature of that environment, but I burned out quickly. When the opportunity came up to transfer into the correctional system, most of my colleagues looked at me like I was nuts for even considering it. But I didn’t flinch. People in here deserved care, too. Especially in here. No matter what they’d done to end up in prison.

There’s a different kind of urgency in prison nursing. You see a lot of pain that runs deeper than physical injury — shame, grief, resignation, embarrassment, numbness. Some inmates came in loud, either angry at the world or simply desperate to charm their way into extra pain medication or a reason to sit out of laundry duty. Others were quiet and looked right past you — or through you. Quiet because of shame or misery or as if the simple act of hearing their own voice could beckon danger to their feet. I didn’t blame them. The main goal for most was survival, plain and simple. And sometimes, simply surviving a place like this was hard enough.

—

He came in during the tail end of my shift one Wednesday — tall, hunched a little like he didn’t want to take up any more space than absolutely necessary, with curls still damp from the showers and a bloodied gauze pad pressed sloppily to the side of his left hand. A cut. Not bad, but deep enough to need attention. He sat perched on the edge of the cot like it might vanish under him if he moved too suddenly, his shoulders rounded and his head dipped down.

“Spencer Reid?” I asked to confirm his name, checking the file. He responded with the tiniest nod of acknowledgement, as if he forgot his muscles still worked. I lifted my eyes up from the paperwork to try to meet his, but they remained firmly trained down at his lap.

He was a new inmate, having just arrived at Millburn three days prior. Eerily quiet. Noticeably out of place. Something about his appearance didn’t seem to suit him, either. The patchy stubble peppering his jaw and the unruliness of his hair just looked off, and it was clear that he normally presented himself in a way that was much more cleaned up than this. It took me about 45 seconds to determine that the version of him before me wasn’t an accurate depiction of the man inside the jumpsuit.

My cursory read of his file was littered with red flags. Arrested in Mexico? Immediate FBI involvement? Last-minute switch from protective custody to gen pop upon arrival? Something seemed… strange, even for federal prison, where strangeness and corruption were the norm. I shook my head slightly, as if trying to literally clear my mind. Investigating or even knowing anything about his background at all wasn’t my job: I was here to provide medical care, so I turned off the instinctually curious part of my brain and got to work. “So. You cut your hand?”

He nodded once, barely lifting his eyes. “Library. Book spine split,” he replied. “There was a metal strip inside the binding. I wasn’t paying attention.”

His voice was soft but even, the kind of tone you could almost mistake for calm if you weren’t paying attention. He didn’t flinch when I took his hand, but I felt the muscles in his forearm and wrist pull taut like a wire. Clearly this man was uncomfortable with physical touch. I almost felt bad, but I couldn’t do my job without touching him, so I kept my hold.

“Sorry to hear that,” I said, trying to find that tone that falls somewhere between neutral and kind. “The prison library is supposed to be a safe place amongst all the chaos.”

The corner of his mouth twitched ever-so-slightly. Maybe a smile, maybe just a tic.

I cleaned the cut and wrapped it. His tension seemed to fade a bit as I worked, but it was replaced with something sadder — surprise at the genuine care I was showing him.

“Should heal up fine,” I told him. “Just try to keep it clean. If you notice any signs of infection like redness or fever, tell the guards you need to come back. Otherwise, I hope I don’t have to see you back here again. No more cuts, okay?”

He gave a polite nod, still not quite looking at me. “Thank you,” he murmured. He flicked his eyes up to me for a fleeting moment — brown, maybe? Hazel? Somewhere kind of golden in between? Before I could decipher the answer, he dropped his gaze back down to his lap.

And then he was gone, escorted out just as quickly as he’d come in.

It wasn’t anything remarkable. It was the type of patient interaction I’d normally forget before a shift was even over. But something about the way he’d sat so quietly, like he was trying not to leave even a speck of evidence of his existence, stayed with me.

Some inmates at Millburn talked too much. Some didn’t want to talk at all. Spencer Reid was the kind who seemed like he used to talk a lot, but had forgotten how.

—

My apartment was dark and quiet when I got home from work — just the low hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of the air vents as they settled into the night. I shrugged out of my scrubs, tossed them into the laundry basket, wrapped my robe around my body, and tied my hair up, my mind in a post-work fog. Some shifts clung to me longer than others. Today hadn’t been particularly bad, but I still felt the weight of it hanging somewhere behind my sternum. The longer I worked at Millburn, the heavier that weight seemed to get.

I microwaved a cup of leftover soup and curled up on the couch with my legs tucked beneath me, a blanket over my lap, and the TV playing something I wasn’t watching. My body was home, safe, comfortable. But my mind? My mind was somewhere else entirely.

The quiet, sad patient from the other day. Spencer Reid.

I hadn’t seen him again since I’d cleaned out that cut on his hand a few days ago, but for some unknown reason, he lingered in my head longer than most patients ever did. I’d told myself it was just professional curiosity understandably fueled by glaring abnormalities — that strange patchwork of mystery surrounding his intake file, the dissonance between the man and the setting. But if I was being honest with myself, I knew it was more than that.

It was the way he held himself like he was waiting to be punished for existing. The way his eyes, when they finally lifted, looked out from a place far deeper than the moment called for. The way he thanked me like my ounce of kindness caught him off guard.

One thing seemed clear: he didn’t belong there. I didn’t know what he’d done to end up in a federal penitentiary, but everything about him — the tone he used, the posture, the way he moved like someone used to quieter places — made it feel off. Not in the arrogant way that some white-collar criminals carried themselves, no — there was no smugness, no entitlement. Just… misalignment. Like he’d been suddenly dropped into a life that wasn’t his own.

I reached for my phone before I could talk myself out of it.

The search bar blinked at me, empty and expectant. I hesitated. It was a line I hadn’t crossed yet since I took the job at Millburn, but curiosity had always been a close cousin to empathy, and mine were tightly wound. So I typed his name into the search engine.

I was met with dozens of articles. Some recent — bold headlines about his arrest, drug and murder charges, extradition from Mexico, and a leaked photograph of him looking disoriented and bruised, eyes wide with something between confusion and betrayal. I learned he was awaiting trial, denied bail and remanded to federal custody.

I continued to scroll. Older articles populated the page — articles that painted a very different picture of the man in the photo. An FBI profiler with the Behavioral Analysis Unit out of Quantico. Over a decade of service. Genius-level IQ. Multiple PhDs. A polymath, one article said. Another quoted a journalist who referred to him as “a human encyclopedia with a badge.” I found footage of him from an old press conference, standing stiffly beside a blonde woman in a blazer, answering questions with a verbosity of language and a voice that sounded steadier, more self-assured than the quiet one I’d heard in the infirmary three days ago. I breezed through a few more articles, then I stopped scrolling.

I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I did know that the story in the recent headlines didn’t seem to line up with the man I’d met, the man who he appeared to have been prior to his arrest. That nagging feeling in my gut, the one I’d felt since his eyes first met mine, was still there.

I closed out of my phone and sat in the quiet a while longer, my vision blurred and out of focus, wondering what it must feel like to go from that kind of life — traveling around the country, solving impossible crimes, saving countless lives — to a place where everything is taken from you. To become the type of man that people only see as the charges on a rap sheet.

Whatever he’d done (or hadn’t done), he was still a person. But it was obvious to me that he no longer really felt like one.

I shut off the TV and let the darkness settle around me. I took a long, warm shower in an attempt to clear my head, but his name and his face still hovered around the hazy edges of my thoughts. I’d met a lot of inmates who wore guilt like a second skin. Spencer Reid didn’t. Whatever his story was, I had a feeling it hadn’t been fully told. And part of me — the quiet, stubborn part — wasn’t quite ready to let that go.

—

The second time I saw him, it was raining. Not the kind of rain that makes people pause at windows, but the kind that soaks the world in gray and turns everything sluggish.

Inside the infirmary, the ceiling buzzed faintly with humidity and fluorescent fatigue, and the consistent pitter-patter of rain against the barred windows made it easy to forget there was any world outside these walls at all. I was restocking gauze when I noticed his name on the intake log, two and a half weeks from his first visit.

Reid, Spencer. Mild cough. Lightheadedness. Possible fever.

My fingers paused over the clipboard, barely grazing the pen. I wasn’t sure what I expected — or why it mattered at all. He was just another patient. Just another inmate. Still, I felt something shift when I walked up to his cot. He was noticeably pale, a little drawn, like the weight of something invisible had pressed down on his bones. The weight of this place, of his situation.

“Hello again,” I said softly. “Guess we’re making this a habit. Thought I told you I didn’t want to see you back here?”

He looked up at that — actually looked up. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes stayed on mine for a beat longer than they had last time.

“I didn’t plan on it,” he said, voice quiet.

“I believe you.”

I moved through the usual steps: gloves on, vitals checked, a listen to his lungs. He wasn’t running a high fever, just something low-grade. His breath hitched slightly on the inhale, but there was no wheeze, no crackle. Probably viral. Should clear itself up in a week at most.

Still, he looked… frayed. Like someone who hadn’t slept properly in days. His hands were clean, but his nails were shorter than last time, bitten down. His face appeared sunken and his under eyes had a distinctly purple hue to them.

“Have you been sleeping?” I asked gently.

He tilted his head. “As much as possible. So, no.”

I didn’t push. Sometimes the answer wasn’t what mattered — it was how it was given.

We were quiet for a while as I documented the basics. I could feel his eyes drifting across the room, landing briefly on the supply shelves, the bulletin board, the sink. Avoiding mine, but not out of defiance. Out of caution, maybe. Or simple awkwardness. He coughed, and I handed him a paper cup filled with water.

“I read once,” he said suddenly, “that coughs often get worse when you’re trying not to think about them.”

I offered a small smile. “Sometimes trying not to think about something just leads you to focus on it even more. And thinking about a cough can trigger the reflex, even without physical cause. So I would say try not to think about it, but, you know…vicious cycle.”

His mouth twitched — a shadow of amusement, there and then gone. The air between us felt a little less still.

“You’re not what I would’ve expected from someone who works here,” he said after a moment.

I arched a brow, clipping my pen back onto my clipboard. “What did you expect?”

He shrugged. “Less… human.”

I offered him a small, empathetic smile. “Well,” I said after a beat, “lucky for you, I don’t know how to be anything else.”

I handed him some Tylenol and told him to keep hydrated. As I wrote out the discharge slip, I instructed him to come back if the fever feels like it isn’t breaking, and to try and get as much sleep as is possible in a place like this.

“Thanks,” he said before he left. Just like the time before, the word landed like he really meant it.

He walked up to the guard waiting for him, stepped out into the corridor, and was gone. I found myself wondering, again, who he really was — beneath the headlines, beneath the polyester prison uniform, beneath whatever pain had hollowed him out into a shell of who he used to be.

—

The infirmary was chaos.

Not the full-blown ER chaos of my past — just the slow, stomping, institutional kind. Raised voices, the occasional drop of blood, too many bandages unrolled across the counters. There had been some sort of fight in the cafeteria, supposedly over a stolen piece of cornbread. Or maybe a slur. Or a look. No one ever really knew for sure how these things started. By the time the inmates were dragged in — limping, cursing, sweating, sometimes screaming — it didn’t matter anyways.

I was elbow-deep in a butterfly bandage on one man’s eyebrow when I noticed him: Spencer, sitting quietly near the far wall.

He didn’t look as badly hurt as the others. His posture was too upright to suggest anything broken. He was holding a wad of gauze to his arm.

I clocked him on the low-priority end of the triage sheet: Laceration, superficial. Minor bleeding. Stable.

Sandra, the other nurse on duty, eventually crossed the room to him once we’d worked through the others. I could hear her asking him to remove the gauze.

“Clean cut,” she said. “Might need a few stitches.”

“I’ve had worse,” he replied, voice flat.

I was just finishing with discharge paperwork for a dislocated shoulder when I heard Sandra say, “We’ll get you patched up quick. Hang tight.” I glanced over, and he was already watching me. He quickly flicked his gaze to the floor.

“I’ve got that one Sandra,” I said over my shoulder, peeling off my gloves and tugging on a fresh pair. “Can you finish up this discharge for me?”

She raised a brow but didn’t question it, just nodded and switched places with me.

“Lucky me,” he murmured. It wasn’t quippy or sarcastic. It actually sounded genuine.

“You say that like you’re not sitting on a lumpy cot with your arm bleeding.”

He tilted his head, lifting his eyes to meet mine. “Well. Silver linings, I guess.”

I sat on the rolling stool beside him and started cleaning the wound. It wasn’t deep, but it ran a jagged path just beneath the curve of his bicep — a random flying lunch tray, I guessed. Wrong place, wrong time.

“You weren’t involved in the fight,” I said, phrasing it as more of a statement than a question.

“No,” he confirmed quietly. “Just passing by. I ducked too slow.”

I smiled without looking up. “Ah, classic mistake. You’ve got to learn to duck before the tray gets airborne.”

That actually got a laugh out of him — a soft, surprised sound, as if he hadn’t expected it from himself. He blinked down at me, momentarily disarmed. “You make jokes now?”

“Only in life-or-minor-laceration situations.”

The edges of his mouth twitched again. The usual shadow in his eyes was still there, but it seemed to thin out when he looked at me. A veil, instead of a wall.

“You’ve done this before,” he said as I threaded the suture needle.

“Stitches?” I asked. “Well, yeah. Hundreds of times.”

“No. I meant…this. Calming people down.”

I paused for just a second, then resumed. “Part of the job too, I guess.”

He didn’t reply, but his breathing had slowed. I worked quickly, neatly. The room was almost empty now. Just one CO near the door, arms crossed, barely paying attention. When I finished, I handed Spencer some gauze and medical tape. “You’ll want to keep this dry, at least for twenty-four hours. Try not to lift anything heavy. Or start any cafeteria fights.”

He shot me a shy, lopsided smile. “No promises.”

The guard called his name then — sharp, abrupt. Spencer stood, moving more slowly than necessary, tucking the gauze into the pocket of his jumpsuit. He looked down at me one last time, and for a second, neither of us said anything.

“Thanks, y/n.”

It was the first time he’d said my name. He must’ve read it on my badge, clipped to the pocket of my scrubs.

“You’re welcome, Spencer. Try not to need to come back if you can help it.”

He followed the guard out without looking back, but something lingered in the air after he left — the smell of antiseptic mixed with something warmer underneath, just a faint trace of something hard to name.

—

It had been a long morning — nothing dramatic, just a steady stream of minor injuries and chronic complaints. Small cuts that somehow still bled too much, headaches no amount of ibuprofen could touch, an older inmate who claimed chest pain every Tuesday at the same time he knew my shift started like clockwork. I was halfway through restocking the suture tray when a CO came in with another patient. I looked up and fought back a smile at who it was.

The new cut Spencer was sporting wasn’t too bad — a scrape along his forearm, probably from another cafeteria scuffle or a hallway shove — but it was deep enough to bring him back.

Fourth visit to the infirmary in the two months since he first arrived at Millburn. Enough visits that I didn’t need to check the intake clipboard to remember his name, or his face, or his voice.

Spencer sat in the same cot as last time, waiting quietly, hands folded like he was at a lecture instead of a prison clinic. When I walked over, he looked up and nodded in greeting. No smile this time, but not cold either.

“You again,” I said, slipping on gloves.

“Apparently I’m accident-prone.” His tone was deadpan, but there was a flicker of warmth behind it. He offered his arm without being asked.

The scrape was shallow, red around the edges but clean. I could’ve just sent him off with a bandage and a warning, but I didn’t. I pulled over the tray and got to work slowly, methodically cleaning the wound slower than I usually would.

After a moment, I said, “So, Spencer. If you’re going to be a repeat visitor, we might as well get to know one another.”

He looked up at me blankly, blinking.

“Where’d you grow up?” I asked.

He looked back down at his arm while I ran an alcohol pad across it. “Las Vegas.” He winced a little — whether at the words he was saying or the sting of the disinfectant, I wasn’t sure.

I nodded like I didn’t already know. Like I hadn’t read three different articles and an old symposium transcript with his name on it one night after my shift, sitting at my kitchen table in the dark.

“Have you always lived there?”

“No. My mom’s still there, but I moved away when I went to college and left permanently for work. I live here in DC now.”

“What kind of work?” I asked.

He hesitated, just for a second. There weren’t any other inmates in the infirmary, but he dropped his voice to a near-whisper. “I, uh, I’m with the FBI. Behavioral Analysis Unit. Or I was, at least.”

I kept my expression neutral. “That sounds intense.”

“It is.” A pause. “Interesting, though. Never boring. Lots of travel.”

I wiped the scrape clean, letting the silence stretch for a beat before I spoke again. “Do you miss it?”

Another pause, this one a little heavier. “Yeah,” he replied quietly.

He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t push. Just taped down the bandage and asked, “What’d you study before the FBI?”

“Mathematics. And chemistry. And engineering.” He paused, then added, “Also psychology. Sociology. And philosophy, more recently.”

I looked up at him, eyes wide. “All of those?”

He gave a tiny shrug, like it wasn’t worth mentioning. “I finished my first PhD when I was seventeen.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Show-off,” I said with a breathy laugh.

That got a smile. A real one this time. He looked almost sheepish. “You?”

“What about me?” I asked, pausing my work on his arm to meet his eyes. Hazel in this light. Golden brown in others, definitely.

“Where’d you grow up?”

“Philadelphia,” I said. “Still have the accent when I’m tired or drunk, I’ve been told.”

He nodded like he could hear it already, even though I wasn’t sure I’d ever let it slip around him. “Did you always want to be a nurse?” he asked.

“No,” I admitted. “I never knew what I wanted to be when I was growing up. I actually started college as a literature major before I switched to nursing. I worked in the ER for a while before I ended up here. This job just kind of…fit.”

He didn’t ask what I meant by that. Most people didn’t. He just nodded again, like he understood anyway. “Do you like it?” he asked.

Somehow it felt like a bigger question than it was. “Sometimes,” I said with a quiet sigh. “Some days are harder than others.”

He looked at me for a long moment, and it oddly felt like he knew exactly how I was feeling, like he could see the way the job was wearing me down. Now it was my turn to feel intimidated by his gaze. I turned awkwardly to look at the clock then busied myself tidying up the tray, pretending that the eye contact didn’t linger.

“There you go,” I said, gently patting the gauze I’d taped to his arm. “Try to avoid any more cafeteria collisions, please.”

“I’ll do my best,” he murmured with a shy smirk. He stood when the CO came to collect him, but before he turned to go, he paused.

“Thanks. For this,” he said as he tilted his chin to his arm, “and for… treating me like a person. Just…thanks.”

It wasn’t just polite. It sounded like he meant it. Like it mattered to him, that I called him by name and asked about his life. “You’re welcome, Spencer.”

This time, he did smile at me before he left.

And this time, I watched him walk away a second longer than I meant to.

—

I’d barely clocked in when the alert came through: inmate altercation, multiple injuries, possible head trauma, ETA three minutes.

Not exactly an unusual start to a shift. Fights were as common as bad coffee at Millburn, and most days followed the same dull rhythm — triage, patch-up, repeat. But one name on the intake list made my pulse hiccup: Reid, Spencer. Stab wound to the thigh. Suspected concussion.

I barely looked up at first — just long enough to confirm it was him, sitting upright on the cot, jumpsuit leg soaked with blood and torn a little above the knee. He didn’t look scared, but he didn’t look fine, either. Sandra moved toward him with a clipboard, but I touched her arm before she could speak. “I’ve got this one.”

“Of course you want the cute one,” she grumbled under her breath, but then she just nodded and headed over to tend to another waiting inmate.

I crossed the room slowly, cataloging him: alert, steady breathing, pale but not shocky. His gaze wasn’t confused, just… disconnected. Like he’d already run the numbers in his head and decided exactly how bad it was and whether it had been worth it.

He turned his head when I got close. There was blood on his temple — superficial. The leg was worse. Deep, clean. Too clean for it to be the result of a chaotic brawl, which meant it wasn’t chaos. It was personal. And the angle of it appeared to be possibly self-inflicted. I wondered if he’d done it to himself in an attempt to get moved into solitary.

“Hey,” I said. “Rough day?”

Spencer gave me a humorless half-smile. “Story of my life lately.”

I pulled a stool beside his leg, gently peeling back the torn fabric to assess the wound. “You’ll need stitches. At least ten. You take a hit to the head, too?”

He hesitated. “Not really.”

I met his eyes. I hesitated too, then dropped my voice. “But you could say you did.”

He blinked. Just a flicker. I pressed on, quietly. “If you did, I’d have to put you on observation. Infirmary bed. Eight hours minimum. Away from the block.”

A beat of silence. Then a soft, “Yeah. I definitely got hit in the head.”

I nodded once, then clicked my pen and wrote it down. Possible concussion. It wasn’t a complete lie — not exactly. But it wasn’t about the protocol either.

As the infirmary quieted and the other inmates cycled through, I stitched his leg in silence. Sandra kept to the intake desk. I led Spencer to the far corner, away from the fluorescent overhead lights, and dimmed them slightly. I pulled a tray table between us and sat down across from him like we had all the time in the world.

“Brain games,” I said, gesturing to the shelf behind me. “Helps me assess cognitive function.”

“You’re making that up,” he said, almost smiling.

“Of course I am.” I smirked, setting up the chessboard. “You play?”

“I used to. Not as much anymore,” he said quietly.

We played in silence first, but slowly, words started to fill the spaces between our moves. He told me about his eidetic memory and the languages he could speak. I told him about my time working in the ER, about the burnout, about why I took this job. He mentioned someone named Gideon — an old friend, mentor maybe — who taught him to play. I lost three games in a row, and on the final checkmate, I groaned. “Let’s take a break.”

He nodded, then opened his mouth like he might say something else, but he didn’t. I waited. Sandra disappeared into the break room.

After a few seconds, I spoke. “Can I ask how you ended up here?” My voice stayed soft, careful. Not clinical — I wasn’t asking as his nurse.

His whole expression shifted, and he looked guarded. I regretted asking instantly. “Sorry. You don’t have to—”

“No, no. It’s okay. I want to tell you. I just don’t know where to start.”

“Start at the beginning,” I suggested with a shrug.

He looked away, pausing. He took a long breath, and for a moment before he spoke, I thought maybe he never would. “My mom,” he finally said. “She’s schizophrenic. And… about a year ago, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”

The words knocked something loose in me. I felt it, sharp and instinctive. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

He blinked like he hadn’t expected sympathy. “Thanks. I didn’t really handle the diagnosis well. Started looking into treatments — trials, compounds, oils, anything that might help. I found a woman in Mexico making something that worked. Nothing illegal, but the specific compound isn’t FDA-approved. So I started traveling down there every few months, in secret.”

I watched his leg bounce slightly under the table. Not from pain, but from nerves.

“The last trip… someone drugged me. Planted narcotics in a car and somehow I ended up behind the wheel in the desert. The woman I’d been getting the medication from, Rosa — she was murdered. They blamed me. I was arrested. Framed. I know that probably sounds like what every guy in here says, but…it’s true. My team and I think it was a serial killer we arrested a few years back — he escaped custody last year.”

His voice got quieter as the story stretched out. Thinner, like it was costing him more and more to keep talking. “My team got me extradited back to the U.S. They helped find me a good lawyer. But I was remanded to custody without bail. So… here I am.”

I let it settle, allowing myself to feel the full weight of it. I’d read bits and pieces online, after that first cut I’d stitched months ago. But hearing it like this? It was different. Sadder, somehow. “I believe you,” I said softly.

He blinked. “Why?”

I tilted my head, considering. “Because…well, I’ve seen guilty. This isn’t it. Plus, if your team’s still backing you, that means something.”

He looked down, fiddling with a chess piece. “I think most people want to believe I’m guilty. That I snapped or something. It’s easier than believing the alternative.”

“Easier doesn’t mean truer,” I said simply.

He looked back up and smiled. It was small, but real. “Can we play something else now?”

We pulled out Scrabble, and the conversation drifted with it — books, places, bad camping trips. He laughed at my story about a raccoon stealing my breakfast, and the sound surprised both of us.

“I haven’t laughed in a while,” he said.

I poked the back of his Scrabble tile rack. “You’re welcome.”

Sometime during our third game, he asked: “Why aren’t you married?”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t wear a ring. I just assumed.”

I shrugged. “You first.”

He laughed quietly. Told me about his failed attempts at dating. The woman he lost at the hands of her stalker. The job that got in the way.

I gave him my version. How the hours I worked scared people off. How guys never seemed to call back after finding out I worked in a men’s prison. How I’d rather be alone than explain myself yet again to someone who wouldn’t get it.

“Honestly,” I said, “most men want someone who makes their life easier. Not darker.”

“That wouldn’t stop me,” he said quietly.

I stilled, the statement catching me off guard. I waited a moment to process what he’d said, to make sure I’d heard it correctly. “What?”

His cheeks flushed. “I mean, it…it wouldn’t stop me from wanting to know someone. If they worked here. If they were like you.”

“Like me?”

Spencer nodded. “Smart. Honest. Beautiful.” His voice cracked shyly on that last one. “Brave. A little scary.” He chuckled, then took a breath. “If they were you,” he finally clarified softly, his eyes awkwardly flicking down to the board before meeting mine again.

We didn’t move. Didn’t touch. But something shifted — a soft tilt in the air between us.

He swallowed hard. “That was inappropriate. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“Technically, yeah, it was inappropriate. But I’m not uncomfortable.” A moment passed. My knee brushed his under the table — light, accidental. “It was an unexpected comment, but it wasn’t unwelcome,” I finally added.

He paused for a few beats, absorbing what I’d said, the way I’d reacted, the brush of my knee. “Hypothetically,” he said, “if I got out of here… would you want to try meeting again? On the outside.”

I let the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding leave me slowly. “Hypothetically… yeah. I’d like that. If you’re talking about a date, that is.”

He blinked, like he hadn’t expected that answer. “O-okay. Cool,” he stammered. A sheepish smile tugged at his lips. “Cool.”

I grinned. “So, Spencer. On this hypothetical date, what would we do?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he looked up, very seriously, and asked, “Are we flirting?” It looked as if his brain was mid-calculating risk and probability, like he couldn’t dare answer my question until I answered this one.

I stared back at him. “Do you want to be?”

He coughed, surprised I’d thrown the question back at him. “I…don’t not want to be. I just didn’t think you’d want to flirt with me.”

“I don’t usually flirt with inmates,” I said slowly. “I mean… I don’t ever.” I held his gaze. “You’re a special case.”

Spencer tilted his head slightly, watching me like he was trying to decode a particularly complicated puzzle. “Special how?”

I met his gaze, letting the moment stretch between us. “You’re…different. You don’t walk in here full of swagger or venom. You don’t talk down to anyone. You’re very attractive. You’re nice to me even when you don’t have any reason to want to be. You don’t…you don’t belong here.”

His throat worked as he swallowed, then glanced toward Sandra before returning his eyes to mine. “Some days I’m not sure where I belong anymore.” There was a quiet honesty in his voice that hollowed something out inside me. That sharp, aching awareness of how deeply alone someone could feel, even in a room full of people. Especially then.

I reached across the little table and nudged the corner of the Scrabble board closest to him with my fingertips. “Well, for the next few hours, you belong here. With me. Under ‘observation.’” I gave him a tiny, conspiratorial smile.

He smiled back, the edges of his lips tugging up in that crooked way I was beginning to associate with him. “You’re a very thorough observer.”

“It’s in the job description,” I said with a shrug. “Besides, I like to be sure.”

Spencer leaned forward a little, elbows the table, fingers laced together. “What are you sure of?”

I thought for a moment before responding. “I’m sure you didn’t do what they say you did. I’m sure you’re extremely intelligent. I’m sure you care about people more than you let on. And I’m sure that I haven’t looked forward to a shift like this in a very long time.”

Spencer looked down, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing, or didn’t know what to do with it. “You’re going to get in trouble for being nice to me.”

“I’m not being nice,” I said. “I’m being… honest. Besides, no one’s listening.”

We sat in silence for a moment, letting that word — honest — hang in the air. It meant something different here at Millburn. It was rare. Sometimes costly. But with Spencer, it didn’t feel dangerous.

Sandra’s voice cut through the stillness, calling out a question to me from the front desk. I stood, my hands brushing the front of my scrubs.

“I’ll be right back,” I told him, heading over to help.

When I returned a few minutes later, Spencer was still seated in the same spot, but his posture had shifted slightly — more relaxed, more open. He’d turned one of the Scrabble tiles over in his fingers, tracing it absently, as if lost in thought.

“You didn’t swap the tiles to cheat while I was gone, did you?” I teased as I sat back down.

He grinned, shaking his head. “I’m too much of a perfectionist. Cheating would ruin the whole point.”

“Good to know,” I murmured, reclaiming my spot across from him. “So. You never answered my question.”

He tilted his head.

“Hypothetical first date. What would we do?”

A small flicker of hesitation crossed his face — maybe uncertainty, maybe just the weight of imagining something he wasn’t sure he should allow himself to hope for. But then, he spoke.

“I’d take you to the planetarium,” he said. “They do these night shows on Thursdays. There’s music — actual curated playlists — and they project constellations onto the dome. You can lean back and look at the stars without all the city lights getting in the way.”

I blinked, caught off guard by how perfect that sounded.

“That’s…actually kind of dreamy,” I said.

He gave a small, bashful shrug. “It’s quiet. We wouldn’t have to talk unless you wanted to. And afterward, there’s a diner around the corner that makes really good pie. We could split a piece or two.”

“Pie and stars,” I said. “I could go for that.”

“I’ll remember,” he said quietly. “For after. If there is one.”

And just like that, the atmosphere shifted again — still soft, still tentative, but edged now with something more electric. Hope. A thread of connection thick enough to feel, even in a place that was never meant for anything tender.

The game slowed, and we didn’t look at the board as much. Our conversation stretched out between moves. I told him how I like old Hollywood movies and hiking when I could get out of the city. Spencer mentioned classical music, science fiction, the smell of bookstores. We sketched out a series of hypothetical first dates like kids killing time — a Sunday at the museum, a night at a trivia bar, a coffee place with mismatched mugs and not enough chairs.

“Do you always win at Scrabble?” I asked, knowing the hours had dwindled away.

“Almost always,” he said, then added with a smile, “Unless I get distracted.”

I raised a brow but said nothing. I thought for a moment, then carefully placed a series of ten tiles along the edge of the board in front of him — each one selected for the small score number etched into the corner. It spelled out gibberish, but it’s not the letters that mattered. When he looked up, I met his eyes.

“That’s a phone number,” I said softly, “not a word.”

He looked down at the tiles, then back up at me again, a soft smile curling at his lips.

“I figured you could try to remember it for when you get out.”

“I will,” he said, his knee brushing mine under the table again — this time, I knew it hadn’t been accidental.

Suddenly, the loud buzzer of the door cut through the atmosphere we’d been so perfectly curating. A CO walked in, indicating the end of Spencer's observation period. I stood up and walked to him. “I need a minute to finish the assessment, then he’s all yours.” The officer nodded then leaned against Sandra’s desk to make flirty small talk.

I padded back to Spencer and noticed the shift in his demeanor — he was scared. Sad, too, for this to end, but the fear in his eyes at the prospect of going back to his cell was evident.

I looked over my shoulder to make sure the guard was distracted, then placed a hand on his knee under the table. “I think I can help,” I said quietly. I stood and grabbed the assessment sheet, filling in my “findings.”

“Patient remains alert and oriented. Mild fatigue consistent with post-concussive recovery. Observation window uneventful. While current concussion symptoms appear mild and improving, patient is at increased vulnerability for subsequent severe head trauma.”

I paused, then lowered my pen, pressing the tip to the page just a little harder.

“Recommend reevaluation for protective custody placement based on frequency of injury and heightened vulnerability. History of recent trauma and exposure suggests increased risk of harm in general population. Further monitoring advised.”

I stared at the paper for a beat, listening to the low hum of the overhead lights. My eyes flicked up to Spencer, who looked at me with some confusion on his face, then back down to the sheet. The language was clinical, common, nothing dramatic. But I knew what it could do for him.

It wouldn’t get him out. But maybe it would give him a little more space. A little more safety. A little more time.

I signed my name at the bottom and flipped the file closed. I motioned for Spencer to get up. “Stay safe,” I said quietly, giving him a look only he could decipher before I waved to the CO to come over.

“Here’s my assessment for the warden,” I said as I handed the file to the CO. “Make sure he gets it tonight, please.” The officer nodded — I had good rapport with the COs here — and he led Spencer out. Spencer looked over his shoulder at me for just a moment, and I saw something deeper in his expression, something he hadn’t shown since I’d met him.

Hope.

—

A week after his concussion observation period, he came in holding his head like it hurt.

It was the first thing I noticed — the way his fingers pressed into his temple, his expression pulled tight in manufactured pain. I’d seen patients genuinely suffering from migraines, seen them blink and tense and wince and faint. This wasn’t that. This was a performance, and not a very good one. He should stick to his day job, I thought to myself. Not cut out to be an actor.

I stifled a giggle and walked up to his cot, looking up from my paperwork and smiling at him softly. “Hey. Back so soon?”

Spencer lowered himself onto the cot with a dramatic sigh, hand still braced against his forehead. “Migraine,” he said, wincing dramatically. “Started last night. Light sensitivity, nausea… the works.”

“Mmhmm,” I hummed, standing and reaching for the small penlight in my coat pocket. “You want to tell me why your pupils look perfectly normal and your blood pressure’s textbook perfect?”

He smiled, just barely. “I missed your voice.”

That stopped me cold. Just for a second, but long enough that I had to pretend to be very interested in the pulse oximeter in my hand.

“That’s…not usually a billable symptom,” I murmured.

He chuckled softly. It was the first time I’d heard him laugh like that. It was warm.

I stepped closer, wrapping the pulse oximeter around his finger even though I already knew what it would say. The tips of his fingers were cold, but his skin was soft. I held it a second longer than necessary, just watching the numbers rise on the tiny screen.

“Looks like you’ll live,” I said.

He tilted his head, looking at me more closely now, and the moment stretched between us — full of unspoken things that couldn’t be said in a place like this. His eyes scanned my face like he was memorizing it.

“I wanted to say thank you,” he said quietly. “For the report you wrote. The recommendation. I’m not stupid. I know that was you.”

I didn’t answer. I just looked down and reached for the thermometer instead. His hand was still resting on his thigh, twitching slightly like he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“It was medically sound,” I said, voice low. “Repeated head trauma and high-stress environments can—”

He interrupted me with my name. Just my name, nothing else.

I swallowed.

I pretended to take his temperature, the plastic probe tucked beneath his tongue as if any of this still resembled medicine. My fingers grazed his jaw. When I pulled it back, I reached for his wrist to take his heart rate again, manually this time. My fingertips slid over his skin too gently, too deliberately.

The CO by the door shifted his weight with a faint grunt, and I blinked, heart jolting back into rhythm. I pulled my hand back and stepped away, jotting something on the clipboard that didn’t matter. “I’m prescribing you sleep. Go take a nap, FBI boy.”

He smirked at the nickname and stood slowly, like he didn’t want to. “Wasn’t really about the migraine,” he admitted, voice low but steady. “I just… I wanted to see you.”

The truth of it landed heavy between us, no performance, no pretending. Just honesty — stark and bare and strangely brave.

I felt the words settle into my chest like a secret I was glad to keep. I nodded, barely. “I know.”

He gave me a small, crooked smile — softer than the last, tinged with that same look in his eyes I saw last week - hope.

ᝰ.ᐟ

part ii.

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noonew1lleverask · 12 days ago

Text

Violently Happy

WC: 726

Author’s Note: pardon my French, but I think this fucking sucks. Enjoy it if you want😘

I rest her legs on my lap, and somehow, this makes me feel complete. This brief, unassuming moment of intimacy between us. It’s intimate. Kind of on the nose, right? But it is. It’s so intimate, just touching her, so having this weight across my thighs is something like— ecstasy. The kind nestled in pills and hiding in needles. It’s a pleasure I didn’t know before her. She glimpses over her copy of Macbeth, and her eyes crinkle at the edges, so I know she’s smiling. I think she’s listening to Bjork. She has a strange affinity for Bjork, one she’s shared with me and I cannot fully knot every string she’s so benevolently stretched across to my hand. I like Bjork. Can’t name single song besides her favorite; Violently Happy.

That’s how I feel with her. I’m thrilled to such a point I want to rip out my hair, tear my clothes off and watch the buttons ricochet off of surfaces. I want my skin gone— my teeth, out. I want it all gone, because what is left of me that is not hers? I am her. In a sense. I’ve begun to adopt her strategies in chess; she makes up stories for the pawns and writes dramas on my forehead about the black queen falling in love with the white knight. It’s so absurd, and adds nothing to the game besides her smile, so it matters. A lot. It matters more than the little frown she gets when I win. It does not matter as much as the brilliant smile of triumph she gets when I let her win. And I’ll never tell her I let her win.

I bend down and kiss her kneecap. She twitches, only slightly, and I kiss the other one. Kind of like a knight. Lancelot. I’m nowhere near as… charming as the addled piece of fiction (addled in my humble opinion, and I’m a doctor— three times over— so my opinion is the best). But, I’m loyal. Loyal to my queen I should not have; of whom I deserve in no way. Who should not be mine, but she is. I always wonder how, but never forget to say my ‘thank you’s for those how’s. She’s got those colorful tights on today. She almost ripped them— it was horrifying. Her hands were held up, not in surrender, but in calm— atonement. Her words, God, her words. “I’m not here to hurt you, I’m here to help,” she’d said to a sociopath. She sees good in everything. She sees good, and she sees hope, even in a man holding another in a chokehold, gun to his head.

”I’m here to help.”

So much about her— all she is— catches me. Hook, line, and sinker; I’m flailing around helplessly as I’m pulled from the depths and into fresh air I cannot breathe. She bends down and kisses me, and it’s life.

Now I’m thinking of a fisherman giving CPR to a trout…

I don’t think that would work.

For multiple reasons.

Her foot nudges me, heel bumping into the side of my thigh, and I meet her gaze. Her mouth is hidden behind her book, which is a good thing. I’d probably act like a woken sleeper agent and crash my mouth to hers.

“Hey,” she says, and I soften. As if I wasn’t already a pile of soft serve in the chair. “You look pretty deep in thought, Spence.” She pulls out an ear phone, and hands it to me as she sits up— Macbeth is placed on the table, and her legs leave my lap. I miss that weight, a lot, but now I can see her mouth. It’s a dangerous; maroon but slowly fading to ruby from a long day of negotiating with serial killers. Pressed against my side, she slips the earphone into my ear canal, and, yep, it’s Violently Happy. “A little Bjork for my boy.”

My boy. Hers.

I accept the Bjork— who the heck wouldn’t?— and crane my head to snatch a kiss just as Morgan walks past. He fake gags, and she kisses me harder. If she could, she’d lower me in her arms till my head brushed the floor, and kiss me then. I’d let her. I hope she does that at our wedding.

I hope I marry her.

I will.

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #criminal minds #x reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid #spencer reid fluff #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds x you #criminal minds fluff #Spotify

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noonew1lleverask · 13 days ago

Text

I fear I’m entering a new white man I want era

I know if I'm haunting you, you must be haunting me

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noonew1lleverask · 29 days ago

Text

nonexistent rizz

the team is shocked to see that… early seasons!spencer pulls?? and he has pulled???? (aka, the team discovers that early seasons!spence has a girlfriend)

a/n: first cm fic!!! super indulgent, deffo way longer than it had to be but I don’t care, I love love love the dynamic of the s1/s2 team and I NEEDED to write it (look at '#mystery girl!au' on my blog to see more musings about them <3)

cw: alcohol consumption, reader referred to as a woman, reader is around spencer’s age in s1/s2 (23-24), completely inaccurate early 2000s technology i think, cuties being cute, not edited in any way

wc: 2k

part two | part three | mlist

(reblogs are the only way to promote fics on tumblr! please reblog if you enjoyed it :) )

“‘O Keefe’s! My wonderful, wonderful sweethearts, we are going out!” The moment the team steps out of the elevator, Penelope is bombarding them, hands moving wildly as words seem to tumble out of her mouth. “And yes, Hotch, I am sure we have no cases lined up yet, and yes, I’m sure JJ can corroborate that the moment she gets to her office and no, you may not stay behind, tonight is compulsory. That stands for you too, Gideon!”

Hotch hasn’t even opened his mouth, shaking his head in defeat as he takes in Garcia’s determined face. Under the watchful eyes of the team, his shoulders slump, a tired hand scrubbing down his face. “Fine. We all have to finish our reports, but if we’re all done in half an hour, we can go. Gideon?” He turns his face, hoping for Gideon to find a way to bunk off, but there’s a glint of amusement in the older man’s eye. “Sounds like there’s no getting out of it.” With that, he walks off, to his office.

Penelope whoops excitedly, “Okay! That means we’re all going! That’s the first time since Gideon came back,” but her face sets slightly when she meets Spencer’s eye. “No. No, Baby Genius, you will not do this to me,”

“Garcia, I have pl-” “No! You are coming out with us, and we’re going to have a great time, and whatever Russian indie film you were going to watch will still be there for you tomorrow. Okay? No more complaining, baby, you know I won’t listen.” With a pat on his shoulder, she flounces off. Defeated, he doesn’t move from the elevator area, shrugging helplessly when Elle, JJ and Morgan brush past him to the bullpen.

With a sigh, he takes out his phone, pressing his newly-programmed speed dial and bringing the phone to his ear. From Derek’s vantage point in the bullpen, he can see Spencer, pacing back and forth in front of the elevator doors, and he can see the moment whoever is on the other side picks up. The younger man’s face lights up, like when he’s on the receiving end of a rare Hotch smile out in the field, but more spirited, buoyant. Only snippets of the conversation float in through the slightly-ajar glass doors, but they’re enough to give him pause, and still his fingers above his keyboard.

“...Garcia’s got this plan for us all, and…”

“Yes, I know, I do like going out with them, but that’s not what I wanted to do…”

“...I took the metro tonight, so I think I’ll just… Really? You want to?”

At that point, Spencer turns, his voice muffling, and keeping Derek from his vested interest in his conversation. But what little he heard is more than enough to pique his interest. He flicks a pencil onto Elle’s desk. “Greenaway. You know if pretty boy’s mom is in town or something?” Elle looks up from her monitor, head tilting, “Not that I know of. Besides, doesn’t she not like flying? I don’t think he’d have her come here. Why do you ask?”

Derek doesn’t reply, simply gesturing to the glass doors, where Spencer is walking inside, his mouth twitching to conceal his smile. His steps are measured, like he’s trying to feign calm. He settles at his desk, hunching his back in a way that can’t be comfortable, typing rapidly as his knee jiggles up and down. Elle turns back to Derek, eyes wide with wonder.

“That is not how you look getting off the phone with your mother.”

The incident is quickly forgotten, however, when the BAU team are crammed into a booth in the back of the low-lit bar. Penelope has roped Hotch into helping her bring drinks back from the bar, and the rest are speaking a little too loudly, arms flinging and bumping into the empty glasses littering the table.

All except for Gideon, who, despite having had three glasses of whiskey, is still just as calm and observant as he is fully sober. It is this that causes him to zero in on Spencer, sitting across from him, sandwiched between Morgan and the newly-returned Garcia.

There’s a pink flush across his high cheekbones, and he’s incredibly giggly, all things that are completely expected for him, a few drinks in. However, what the experienced profiler picks up on, are his darting eyes. Spencer can often be found staring into the middle distance, or, since Gideon taught him the importance of building rapport with victims and officers alike, trained steadily on the space between someone’s eyebrows, but this time it’s different.

His eyes flick to whoever’s talking, feigning interest, but every few seconds, it turns back down to his lap, where something is clutched in the hand he keeps under the table. If it were Hotch, Gideon would know with absolute certainty that he was watching his phone, waiting for a text from Haley.

But this is Spencer. The youngest person he knows. The youngest person he knows whose technological knowledge is somehow worse than Gideon’s own. What on earth would have Spencer acting-

Oh. Gideon nearly gasps at Spencer’s movements. On his fifteenth peek down at his lap, Spencer stiffens, then draws his hand up from his lap to get closer to his face. It is his phone, and Spencer Reid has somehow learned to text as quickly as Morgan does. His thumbs fly over the buttons on his phone, and he can’t hold back the smile that spreads on his face.

Gideon’s eyes furrow, and he can’t hold back from nudging Hotch’s shoulder, pointing in Spencer’s direction. Hotch pulls himself away from his conversation with JJ, and Gideon can see his expression morph from mild interest, to confusion, to complete bewilderment. After a beat, his face turns to meet Gideon’s and his normally stoic demeanor is shaken, eyes wide.

Spencer, however, doesn’t even notice his mentors’ faces, still tapping away at his phone and craning his neck to look around the bar.

It’s a while later, when JJ has pulled the team (minus Hotch and Gideon) onto the dance floor, a few drinks past tipsy at this point. She’s laughing out loud, holding Elle’s hand and twirling her under her arm. Penelope and Derek are mock-waltzing, bursting into laughter every few steps, and Spencer…

JJ pauses for a moment, before Elle pulls her into moving again. Her head whips around, trying to find Spencer, before giving up. He must be back at the table with Hotch and Gideon, he was never very comfortable dancing anyway.

The four on the dance floor quickly devolve into a mess, swapping partners until they’re all dizzy and laughing. JJ and Penelope are shimmying back and forth together, when Penelope gasps a little, tapping JJ’s arm without ceasing her movements. “Jayj! Look, see that girl at the bar?” She gestures subtly at a younger woman, probably in her early twenties, wearing a purple wrap top that has JJ sighing wistfully.

“Pen, I think I’ve seen my soulmate. Would it be weird for me to crawl over there and beg her for her shirt?” Penelope giggles, gripping JJ’s forearms so they can sway to the music dramatically. “Just a little, my sweet. How about we go ask her where it’s from, though? I think that would be a little more…” She goes uncharacteristically silent, and it has JJ twisting to see what shut her up. However, Penelope tightens her grip on her arms, keeping her from moving.

“JJ. My love, my heart. You’ll always be honest with me, won’t you?” Now she’s worried. JJ nods quickly, deciding to just focus on Penelope. “Yeah, Garcia, of course. What’s wrong?”

“I think I’m seeing things, and you are one of the most qualified people in the world to tell me if I’m going crazy. I’m going to turn us around, and you’re going to look at the woman in that gorgeous top, and you are going to either scream, or send me off to Hotch for a psychological evaluation.” Her tone is serious, hushed, and JJ nods solemnly.

The intricate plan is conducted, and JJ is now facing the bar, her eyes searching for the girl, when she stiffens, sucking in a breath. “Yes! I’m not crazy, you see it right? What is going on!” Penelope smacks her arm repeatedly, but JJ can’t tear her eyes away from it. It being something she couldn’t possibly have prepared herself for, not in her wildest imaginations.

The girl is sitting on a barstool, sipping at a cocktail, and chatting to… Spencer. Spencer, the BAU’s Spencer, child-prodigy-lovable-dork-awkward-mess Spencer Reid, is stood in between her legs, smiling down at Mystery Girl without a hint of fear. It’s devastatingly sweet, his eyes soft in a way she’s never seen before, as he nods along with whatever she’s saying. Penelope jolts her out of her trance with a tap to the arm, JJ whispering, “He’s so… carefree.”

That’s the only way to describe it. He’s looking down at her, eyes locked onto hers, and he’s still. His hands aren’t tapping, his leg isn’t shaking. He’s just looking at her.

JJ can feel Morgan and Elle huddle near her, questioning Penelope about what they’re looking at, before shutting up as they see it. She hears them take twin gasps, and huddle even closer. They stand in silence, surely a hindrance to the people dancing, but they can’t tear themselves away.

It’s only when Spencer shatters their worlds once more that they finally find themselves able to move. Four pairs of eyes follow him, as he leans even further towards Mystery Girl, and they all bulge at once when he raises a hand, carding his fingers through her hair. Penelope whispers, “oh my god”, Elle grips JJ’s arm in a vice grip, and Derek makes an unseemly noise, before gripping their arms, tugging them back to the booth.

They collapse in the seats, faces pale as they look at each other, next to a very confused Gideon and Hotch.

“What? What is it?” Hotch questions them, brow furrowed deeply. None of them speak, however. Only Elle lifts a weak hand to point. She directs their attention to the sight at the bar, and they all turn back to it, gasping once again. They’re… “kissing,” Derek breathes, shocked. Hotch and Gideon stiffen, but still crane their heads until their eyes fall on what has rendered their highly trained team speechless. And their reactions are just as silent.

Mystery Girl has stood up, her arms around Spencer’s neck, and he’s leaned down to meet her lips, hands braced on her hips. It’s honestly not that scandalous, a lazy, casual kiss that they part from with twin smiles, but the FBI agents can’t handle it. They don’t say a word, straining their ears to hear whatever she is saying as he holds her hand (Penelope lets out a squeak at that), and walks with her towards the door, not even noticing that his coworkers have returned to the booth. Her voice is low, but Hotch manages to pick up a few of the words.

“...go home and watch that movie I was telling you about? Metropolis, I think you’ll really…” And they’re off. Spencer Reid has left a bar, holding hands with a girl (that he’s apparently spoken to multiple times? Who refers to a place as home for both of them?), acting like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

The group sits in silence, unable to muster a comment, when Penelope’s phone buzzes. She checks it, and silently turns the screen over so they can all read it.

BOY GENIUS: Hey Garcia. I wasn’t feeling well so I decided to go home. See you Monday :-)

“What?”

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noonew1lleverask · 29 days ago

Note

hello!! i admire your writing so much and was wondering if i could make a request? where bau!reader is framed or becomes a suspect for the case they are working and spencer defends her. i think reader would find it so hot and spencer’s just stubbornly dumbfounded by the police officers’ terrible handling of the case by accusing a federal agent. thank you so much for your service 🫶

arrested — spencer reid

pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader ( no use of y/n ) content warnings: reader is arrested , mention of reader being cuffed , mean police officer , a/n: hi hi !! such a great idea <3 hope you like this ! <3

"I didn’t do it. How many times do I have to repeat myself?" Your voice was trembling.

Two hours. Two long, agonizing hours of the same question, the same accusations, the same disbelieving stares. Your eyes burned, partly from fatigue, partly from the sting of frustrated tears you refused to let fall.

You had been working this case for days, running on caffeine and sheer willpower alongside the team. All you had wanted was a moment of rest. A quick nap in your hotel room before diving back in.

But the universe had other plans.

Instead of waking up refreshed, you’d been jolted awake by pounding on your door, handcuffs slapped around your wrists before you could even process what was happening.

And now here you were.

In an interrogation room. In your pajamas.

The officer across from you, a bald, broad-shouldered man with a permanent scowl, leaned forward, his knuckles pressing into the table. "You expect me to believe you just happened to be at the scene right before the victim disappeared?"

You bit the inside of your cheek. "I was sleeping. Check the hotel cameras."

He smirked, as if your answer amused him. "Convenient how they malfunctioned last night, huh?"

Your fingers curled into fists under the table. This was a game to him. Ask the same question in different ways, wear you down until you slipped up. But you had nothing to hide.

The door creaked open, and another officer leaned in, murmuring something to your interrogator. The man’s jaw tightened before he pushed back from the table with a grunt.

"We’re not done," he warned, jabbing a finger in your direction before stepping out.

The second the door clicked shut, your shoulders slumped. You let your head fall forward , squeezing your eyes shut. The room was freezing. You rubbed your arms through the thin fabric of your long-sleeved pajama top, but the fuzzy pants you’d thought would be cozy did little against the chill.

God, you missed your hotel bed. The warmth of the blankets and the heater. More than that, you missed Spencer.

Just a couple of days ago, you had been right next to him on the jet, suppressing a grin when he chose the seat beside you despite the rows of empty chairs. The two of you had shared an iPad, scrolling through case files, his curls brushing against your cheek as he leaned in to point something out. You missed the warmth of his shoulder pressed against yours, the way his voice softened when he explained some obscure fact.

Now, instead of his quiet ramblings, all you had was the relentless sound of the interrogation room’s broken light.

You sighed, rubbing your temples.

This was ridiculous.

You were an FBI agent. You’d been working this case for days. Tracking leads, analyzing evidence, losing sleep alongside the rest of the team.

How could anyone seriously believe you’d be involved in the very crime you were trying to solve?

You clenched your jaw. Hotch better be out there. If anyone could bulldoze through bureaucratic nonsense, it was him. You could practically picture him now. Stone-faced, arms crossed, deploying his prosecutor’s tone against whatever half-baked theory these cops had cooked up.

But until then, you were alone. Shivering. Exhausted.

And so done with this night.

You pressed your lips together, teeth sinking into the soft flesh to keep the tears at bay. Don’t cry. Don’t give them the satisfaction. But exhaustion and frustration clawed at your throat, and just as the first traitorous tear threatened to spill—

The door slammed open.

Not the careful click of a hesitant officer. Not the bored push of routine procedure. This was a sharp, violent sound—metal cracking against the wall like a gunshot.

And there he was.

Spencer Reid, usually all gentle hands and quiet steps, stood rigid in the doorway, his chest rising too fast. His eyes locked onto you before scanning the room like he was memorizing every detail for later dissection.

“Spencer.” His name left your lips in a breath, half-relief, half-disbelief.

He was kneeling in front of you before you could blink, one hand hovering just above your knee like he wanted to touch you but wasn’t sure if you were hurt. “Are you alright?” His eyes darting over your face, your cuffed wrist, the way your shoulders hunched inward.

You opened your mouth to answer, but the bald officer chose that moment to stride back in, arms crossed, his smirk already twisting your stomach into knots.

Spencer didn’t even glance at him.

Instead, his fingers moved to the buttons of his cardigan, shrugging it off before draping it over your shoulders. His hands lingered for a second, adjusting the fabric with care, tucking your hair free so it fell loose around the collar.

You wanted to lean into him. To bury your face in his shoulder and let him shield you from the officer's glare. But the cuff around your wrist kept you in place. A harsh reminder of where you were.

“Thank you,” you mumbled, fingers curling into the cardigan’s sleeves.

Spencer wasn’t saying much. You weren’t sure why, until he turned his head toward the bald officer.

And then he exploded.

“You arrested her on nothing.” His voice was sharp.The officer opened his mouth, but Spencer continued immediately. His hand still on your shoulder, thumb brushing absent, soothing circles against the fabric. “No evidence. No witnesses. No justification beyond a hunch dressed up as police work.”

The officer bristled. “We had probable cause—”

“You had nothing.” Spencer’s voice cracked like a whip, sharp enough that the man flinched. “She’s an FBI agent. She’s spent the last 72 hours working this case with us, and you—what? Decided to skip due process because it was convenient?”

A stutter fractured his words, anger tangling his usually precise speech. “Th-this isn’t procedure. This is laziness.”

The bald officer stared back, mouth half-open like he wanted to argue but couldn’t find a foothold in the wreckage of Spencer’s logic. And as terrible as the situation was—yes, thank you, being dragged out of bed at 3 AM and cuffed to a table was definitely a personal low—you couldn’t tear your eyes away from him.

Spencer’s chest rose and fell too fast, his curls in disarray (more than usual, which was saying something). His jaw was set, his eyes burning with something fierce and unyielding, and—

Oh.

Oh no.

Because the only coherent thought your sleep-deprived, adrenaline-jittery brain could muster was: Spencer Reid is terribly attractive right now.

You knew it was wrong. Knew you should be focusing on the fact that you were still handcuffed to a table, but the way he stood there, all righteous fury and trembling intensity, made your stomach swoop in a way that had nothing to do with fear.

“Uncuff her. Now.”

Yep. There it was again. That voice—usually soft, bookish, all rapid-fire facts and hesitant smiles—had gone dark, and God, it shouldn’t have been as compelling as it was.

The officer hesitated, and Spencer snapped.

“Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act prohibits false arrest under color of law. Miranda v. Arizona requires probable cause beyond circumstantial conjecture, which, given the lack of physical evidence or witness testimony, you clearly don’t have—”

He was rambling now, a torrent of legal precedent and biting sarcasm, and you should have been paying attention. Should have been cataloging every flaw in the officer’s case.

Instead, you were too busy thinking, I’m in trouble.

It wasn’t helping that Spencer hadn’t stopped touching you—his hand still on your shoulder, fingers now brushing the sensitive dip near your neck.

“Okay, okay!” The officer finally snapped, palms raised in surrender as Spencer’s rapid-fire legal citations chipped away at his resolve. Fumbling with the keys, he unlocked the cuff.

You winced, rubbing your wrist where the metal had bitten into skin. “Ouch.”

Spencer tracked the man’s retreat with a glare, waiting until the door clicked shut before whirling back to you.

But you were already on your feet, crashing into him before he could speak.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you—” The words tumbled into the curve of his neck, your arms locked around his waist. A tremor ran through you, violent enough that your teeth nearly chattered—had you been shaking this whole time?

Spencer’s breath hitched. Then his hands were on your back, sweeping slow, firm circles over the fabric of his borrowed cardigan. “I’m so sorry I didn’t get here earlier. They wouldn’t let me in, and I’m pretty sure they only caved because I cited Johnson v. Louisiana 1998, but I should’ve—”

“Don’t be sorry.” You muffled the words against his collarbone, clinging tighter. His sweater smelled like cheap station coffee and the faint trace of his shampoo.

His rambling stuttered to a stop. For a heartbeat, he just held you, his cheek resting against the side of your head. Then, softer: “…Are you hurt?”

Yes. No. Mostly just distracted by how unfairly hot you look when you're angry. You bit your lip to stop the completely inappropriate thought from slipping out.

Instead of answering, you clung to him tighter, your fingers pressing crescent moons into his back. "Thank you, Spencer. Again. Seriously."

The words brushed against his neck, your lips accidentally grazing skin as you spoke. Through the fog of exhaustion, you almost missed the way his breath hitched - almost.

Oh. Interesting.

When you pulled back, his smile was soft but his ears were pink. Double interesting.

(Maybe you filed this interesting sight away for later, like the way his curls were rebelliously mussed or how his sleeves were rolled up to reveal forearms that had no business being that defined on a man who called crossword puzzles ‘thrilling.’)

His hands stayed at your waist. Then he noticed the lingering tremors in your shoulders.

Without a word, his fingers moved to the front of the cardigan, buttoning it for you. Each slow click of a button felt strangely intimate. His knuckles brushing your stomach.

"You're freezing," he muttered, and you felt his fingers fumble with the cardigan buttons. His usual dexterity abandoned him; the third button took three tries.

You bit your lip. God, even his knuckles were attractive. This was absurd. You’d just been falsely arrested, and yet here you were, mentally composing sonnets about the way his eyelashes cast shadows in the light.

Spencer tilted his head. "You okay?"

No. You’ve ruined me.

"Peachy," you lied, letting him lead you out. His hand warm around yours, your traitorous heart doing somersaults.

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noonew1lleverask · 1 month ago

Text

I’d Kiss You As the Lights Went Out

A drabble. You and Spencer proceeding in the most intimate act two people who love each other a sickening amount can engage in.

WC: 691

Slight smut.

You couldn’t catch your breath. Nothing about this was right, not even close. But the wrongness of it felt so good.

His lips trailed down your neck, pressing, mouthing, gnawing like you’re a dog’s favorite chew toy. He could be quite a nasty dog sometimes. But not tonight. Not these nights, when you both needed each other more than the oxygen filling your lungs, or, in this case, escaping it.

The drag of his hand down your waist had you mewling— sounds you didn’t know you were capable of producing escaped your throat like someone ripped them out of you, tossed into the air and caught by the skin of your teeth. His teeth, actually.

“Do you know— how beautiful you are?” Spencer mumbled into your skin, pressing so close you got the sense he wanted to bury himself there, just under your epidermis for the winter season. The cold weather raged outside, wind whipping against the windows, shaking the glass, snow piling up on the sill; though, none of it registered in your head. Your parietal lobe had shut off, or maybe it was the only lobe of your brain actively working, because all you could do was feel Spencer.

Nothing but Spencer— feel his hands and lips; smell his cologne and sweat; taste his skin and mouth; hear his groans and grunts that drove you wild in the dead of night when you should be asleep.

And then— there.

Right then, when you connected so intimately it was written in thousands of books— so many different ways to describe such a feeling, yet none would quite compare. You couldn’t put it into words, no matter how many times you thought through it and tested different vocabulary.

Good? No. Great? So mild in comparison to the blazing inferno that your body had been swept into.

Nails scratching down his back, leaving marks of pleasure you’d once seen him admire in your bathroom mirror riddled with sticky notes— you moaned, “Spencer! Feels—“

“I know,” he whispered, his mouth pressing to yours, begging this, begging for you so pathetically. As if you were any better. “I know, my darling. I— hah…”

Your bodies moved in a dance as old as time, but so new with each sequence you fell into— each step. It was as wonderful as the first time, when you both were all nerves and wrapped tightly in insecurities. Now, you whimpered and whined your praises to each other; a mess of sweaty, tangled limbs doused in the warm glow of your bedside lamp and the candles Spencer assured “heightened the romantic atmosphere”. He said he’d read it in a study, but you knew he was lying by that little grin he always got.

That little grin.

Gosh, you loved that little—

“I’m close.”

“Me, too,” you gasped.

When you both fell, it was astounding.

Yeah. Yeah! Astounding was a… good word to describe the entwining of your bodies.

His hips stuttered, your heels dug into his lower back, and you both were just piles of sounds of pleasure and delight and, in truth, pain. It pained you how… perfect he was, and how stupid you’d been before him. How stupid you’d been to not see such perfection, even if you didn’t believe in perfection, Spencer was as close as you’d get to something heavenly.

His body slowly sank onto yours, his weight heavy, but comforting. You rubbed his back soothingly as he pecked praises onto your cheeks and lips and eyes and nose and forehead and neck— any part of your body, really.

“Thank you,” he sighed.

Your hand paused, nails light against his nape. He shivered.

“For what?” You whispered.

“For letting me… love you.”

Your heart swelled and your eyes burned. You kissed his temple firmly, with an exaggerated smack that made him giggle on top of you, his curls tickling your chin.

“Please, never thank me for something I don’t deserve.”

He lifted his head, outrage— true outrage— evident in his features. His brows punched, his jaw hanging in disbelief. “That’s—“

You shut him up with a soft kiss, swallowing his protests with the slow, wet slide of your tongue against his. Pulling back, he chased your mouth, capturing two more kisses and a press of your noses together.

You smiled. “You don’t need to thank me for something I’m… far too happy having.”

He didn’t say anything. Just leaned in and kissed you again.

Thank you for reading<3

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #criminal minds #x reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x gn!reader #spencer reid #spencer reid x y/n #doctor spencer reid #spencer reid smut #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds x you #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds smut

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noonew1lleverask · 1 month ago

Text

Among the Words I’ve Written to You

Backstory/Intro: You left, and you regret it every day. After your kidnapping, your mind was steadily decaying, yet Spencer stayed steady by your side. Well, as steady as he could be. But steady could only keep you afloat for so long. After a case gone so horribly wrong due to your building psychosis, you ran away, left with just a letter on Hotch’s desk. Your apartment sold, your desk cleaned, and no trace of where you were and where you’d be going. It devastated the team, but Spencer? Spencer was ruined. Two years later, you only returned because of Spencer’s imprisonment, and rejoined the team. The aftermath of everything is… awkward.

Warnings: talk of psychosis, but not specified. mediations but not specified. very brief talks of suicidal thoughts and self harm. small little thing about god (but like ethel cain type beat). not very proofread. reader has a button collection :D. i think that’s it, but if i missed anything lmk baby girl.

WC: 2765

You just felt…wrong. You supposed it was normal to feel “wrong” after what happened to you. It’s what your therapist said— a bureau appointed shrink that scribbled down your problems onto a legal pad each session, and wrote you a new prescription by the end of them. You couldn’t be bitter, truly, you had no reason to be when she was meant to be helping you heal. She was working through your trauma with you, assuring that, yes, it’s okay to sometimes hear your abductors voice; it’s okay to fear the bed you were taken from and feel such revulsion when even passing your bedroom door; thoughts of only escaping the dread through death— all so very normal, and ”all part of the healing process,” she’d say, and place her hand on your trembling knee. “That’s why I’m here— to help you out, Y/N.”

Well aren’t you doing fucking fantastical, a part of you wanted to say.

The larger, more desperate to remain— at least sane by appearance— merely shut your mouth and swallows down the next pill giving you brief reprieve from the nightmare consuming your everyday life. Drawing away friends, corrupting your soul, tarnishing your work ethic— oh, you were fine. You’d be fine, right? That’s what happened, that’s how it worked. You’d be fine in a couple months, with the kidnapping and torture and brutality feeling millions of miles away. Thoughts of self-harm? I hardly know her!

But, oh, you knew her. You knew her calling well; her beckoning. Her pained moans sounded pleasurable to you— in a masochistic way, you craved to mimic her sounds and writhe; if only to divert the pain elsewhere, away from your mind and to something far more substantial; your body. You were already falling apart, what more was there to give up? Hygiene, hunger, hydration, sleep. You’d shunned them by now, like a father, you’d turned your back and left without a word, leaving the needs to fend for themselves, arguing which should be taken into consideration today, as the sun rose upon a new morning. You were not in your bed. You hadn’t slept in your bed in weeks; it was still a crime scene. Somewhere, in some file shoved between identical Manila folders, neatly clipped with a paperclip— pictures of your apartment rested, memories of the blood on your pillowcase and sheets, echoes of the struggle that occurred— a battle you’d lost, you’d so foolishly allowed yourself to lose. And now; now; now; there were consequences. Deep, bleeding, throbbing consequences.

Consequences not even the one you loved most could tightly stitch back up.

Though he tried— Spencer had tried— and he was still actively trying.

You had no idea why. Why he stayed. Why he tried. ‘Why’ sang throughout your head, rapping at the door, tapping at the window. Like that raven in that poem

Why? Why? Why? Why?

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

… … … …

Looking back through your journal entries, you frown. Gosh, you were really losing it then, weren’t you? Your thumb presses into the corner of the small, leather-bound journal, flicking through the pages until it stops near the middle. Your handwriting is messy, but it was so much worse when you were working through trauma. It’s practically unreadable. Except for one line, pretty curly with its flicks;

i’ve come to realize i fear not god, but if he watched who i became, and did nothing

i fear he left me long before i suspected

“Jeepers,” you wince, shutting the broken down book and shoving it to the bottom of the box. You might… leave that one out. Maybe accidentally toss it.

Dust molecules dance in the air, spotlighted by the setting sun’s rays as they fall through the window panes, dousing the room in this romantic orange that kisses the apples of your cheeks and calls you ‘darling’ as it drapes over the back your grey sweater, and drapes over the filled bookshelves, dragging the shadows of crisp paperbacks and stoic hardcovers and crumbling tomes and worn notebooks across the jutting lip of the shelves they’ve been shoved into and told was their home.

You’ve never had a home office before. You’re very excited to have one now, but a part of you— a realistic portion— knows it will become storage for the books you will continue to purchase, and random scraps of junk you swear will eventually be turned into sustainable art projects. In your old apartment, where those haunting memories are now buried beneath an older woman named Gertrude Billows, you usually just used your coffee table for work. This will likely be the outcome again, but a person can be optimistic, can’t they?

A knuckle gently knocks at the doorframe, and you over your shoulder from your seated position on the scratchy carpet to see Spencer leaning tentatively against it. His eyes are wide, drinking in every inch of you like you’re prone to vanishing like the dust particles swirling by your head. You are; in a way.

“How’s it… hanging?” He asks, attempting a more casual stance. Spencer goes to lean his shoulder against the oak frame, but his sweater is too soft and the wood is too slick. He stumbles to the side, and catches himself on your new desk, knocking his hip into the corner.

“Ow!” He hisses, planting his feet down firmly and rubbing the injury.

Gate control theory, your brain supplies. There used to be a time when you’d spit out the psychological term, and watch with delight as his eyes lit up, and his mouth moved of its own accord; releasing facts like a broken dam. You bite your tongue this time, if only to lessen your laugh.

“Are— are you okay, Reid?” You ask, covering your tilting lips.

Spencer looks up, his eyes softening at your stifled laugh. A heaviness weighs behind them, deep and dragging; remorse dancing along the edges of his hazel gaze. It sobers you quite quickly, but your shoulders still quiver.

“I’m, uh, I’m alright.” He clears his throat, and straightens his spine. “How are you? Need any help in here?” Through the doorway, you can hear laughter. You can tell which team member it is based on the laugh. Tara; curving and pleasant like an alto carrying the harmony. She’s no doubt made a cheesy ‘your mom’ joke to Luke. And you’re sure you’d be laughing, too.

You shake your head, and reply with a shrug. “I’m pretty okay. Excited.” Your fingertips still trail the edge of the box filled with your journals. Recollections of your insanity— all twelve copies. When staying with your father, he suggested publishing them.

“Make a buck off your crazy,” he said, scooping honey bunches of oats onto his spoon. They’re soaked in milk. Yours are less soggy. “ ‘S what your Aunt Quincy did, and now she’s talkin’ at brunches.”

“Dad, those brunches are for nursing homes. For the hard of hearing.”

He’s silent for a moment, crunching on his spoonful of cereal, though you’re not sure where that crunch can even come from. “Well,” he begins, “She can’t hear over the money she’s drownin’ in.”

Maybe you should. Label it a psychological study under a pseudonym so no one investigates whether or not you should be allowed back in the bureau. You’re not entirely sure what Hotch did two years ago to keep the bureau from entirely eradicating your ability to rejoin the team— with the proper qualifications redone— but you’re not one to read too far into it. Maybe it’s because you left of your own accord, cowardly dropping off a letter on Hotch’s desk when he was gone, and leaving the next morning— intentionally unaware of the emotional destruction you could potentially bring. How bad could their pain be compared to yours?

You snap out of your head when Spencer’s shadow falls over you. He’s leaning over, looking into the box you absentmindedly trace the edges of. With his hair longer, it falls over his brows and shrouds his eyes from your view, and you’re unable to make out what he thinks of the twelve notebooks filled with your nervous breakdown. All of it, listed here, are the reasons you left him two years ago.

He sighs deeply, wearily— the weight of two years and a wrongful imprisonment on his drooping shoulders— which gives you some insight into his expansive mind. “I should’ve known.”

Here we go.

“I should’ve seen the signs—“

“You didn’t because you were rationalizing, you were trying to maintain peace, trying to keep us—“ You attempt, but he’s quick, and his voice is firmer than you’d expected it to be.

“No, Y/N, I was stupid.” No, he’s not firm. He’s wavering on a foundation that appears strong. Your heart aches, and the instinctual reaction is to touch him, to pull him down and rest his head in your lap, but you can’t. And it’s whose fault? YOURS! Maybe that should be a gameshow, too— Y/N’s Fault or Not?

You look down to the journals in the shadowy box— the sun does not touch them— their dulled covers and cracked spines, edges worn down by time and delusion. On each, white paint labels their number. Twelve journals. You’re not sure how you recovered. Medicine’s a miracle, as a… you don’t know— doctor? A doctor probably said something like that when medication was in its infancy.

Your fingers leave their nervous perch on the edge of the box, and you reach down into the box. It feels like you’re reaching forever, shoving your arm into a pit of quicksand, destined to be sucked in and suffocated. Spencer told you that’s not actually how quicksand works. The buoyancy of quicksand is denser than water, so your body would partially float, not sink. And there’s no real suction, but it’s the only imagery your mind can draw up as you tug your arm back, a journal in hand.

The fifth journal.

Your chest squeezes tightly as you hold it out to him, constricting and shriveling— forcing out air faster than you can take it in. In the back of your mind, a warning screams— blares, screeches; NO! NO! NO!— over and over again, determined to deafen you to your own stupidity.

He takes it.

The siren in your head stops because the threat gone. Because the crisis wasn’t averted.

“I think you should read this one.”

Spencer observes the journal in his hands, turning it over delicately like it’s the most delicate glass— the slightest pressure, and it will shatter into a million pieces. He used to hold you like that. “W-why?” He asks, whipping his head to you. You can see his eyes now, as he straightens, but you can’t read him. Not anymore. Because you’re not sure who he is anymore, just as you’re unsure who you are.

You shrug, attempting nonchalance in a situation that demands emotion. You’ve learned emotion leads to decay. Like rust— if left out in the elements for too long, it will rust, as you have. You’ve been left in the elements for far too long. “I think…” You pause, hesitating. You don’t want to say this wrong— screw it up, as you’ve done since you’ve been back. You stand up from your position on the floor, your knees and backs of your thighs aching from your position. You both have grown so much, for good and for worse.

“You always wanted to understand… why I did… what I did.” He tenses, very visibly, and holds the journal tighter. He used to hold you tighter like that, too, when you’d bring up sensitive topics. “And I feel that might be more cohesive than others. But, I do start talking about unicorns and an elusive narwhal I swore I saw in a dream once.”

That gets a smile from him, and even a short laugh. Your heart lifts, just slightly, and you smile, too. It’s a genuine smile, because he smiled. How pathetic could you get? Maybe that should be a game-show… Spencer’s eyes fall to that smile, the thing more elusive than your dreamed narwhal, and his features soften into what seems to be content. Or regret. You’re forcing yourself to see the former.

“Y/N I… I can’t read—“

“I want you to.” This time, you cut him off, your voice firm. Or trying to be. You’re both on a very unstable foundation— rocking side to side, both knowing you should reach out, but too scared one wrong movement will send you both crashing to the ground.

“It’s only fair after what I did.”

What you did.

You dislike thinking of it often, but it slaps you in the face every morning when you walk into work, seeing him at his desk. He sits more rigidly now, you’re sure, and he takes his coffee black. He takes his coffee darker than the midnight sky, and sips it quickly without wincing. It slaps you in the face when you sit beside each other in the jet, and his arm brushes yours, but makes no more movement than that. It slaps you in the face when he reaches out and stops, just as you do, and you’re both so aware of it. It slaps you in the face when you’re out for drinks and he doesn’t lean over to make up stories about the frequent bar patrons. It slaps you in the face now, and it’s a hard slap when he looks back down to the notebook like it will answer everything.

It won’t, but it will answer as much as you can’t bring yourself to say.

Spencer opens his mouth— pink lips parting— and you want to know what he’s going to say. Force it back or take it with reluctant gratefulness?

You never find out what he says, because Penelope shrieks from downstairs, calling, “Y/N! Luke’s messing with your button collection!”

Luke responds, as if just replying to Penelope, but his voice is raised, too, so it’s obvious he wants to be heard as well. “I am not! Penelope’s trying to steal your cat buttons!”

The bubbly analyst gasps, horrified at the accusation. “I- I am not! Watch yourself, newbie, or I’ll—“

“Agh!”

Assumedly, she swats Luke with some unassuming weapon. Maybe your toilet brush shaped like a cherry.

A familiar laughter falls over you and Spencer, and you look to each other, the tension diminished just slightly. You’ve missed his smile. You’ve missed him.

You hope your journal will communicate as much.

… … …

When Spencer arrives back at his apartment, it’s far later than he suspected he’d arrive. You always draw him in, somehow. Your orbit is strong, and undeniable. Even while you were gone, his planet followed the circle you’d left behind. He knows that’s not how gravity works, but you have a way of changing the laws of nature. At least his laws.

The journal is tucked in the pocket of his coat, and he has not forgotten it. He’s thought of it all night, even touched his fingers to it when least expected, not even realizing he was seeking it out. Maybe it’s a way to touch you again, after so long. If he just… pushed down his anger, his paranoia— maybe one day he can.

Letting out a long-suffering sigh, he unwinds his coat from his neck, his fingers trailing across the purple fabric you used to tug him close by, and he hangs it up. Then his coat. He draws out the journal from the pocket and goes to sit on his couch, sinking down into the creaking leather and huffing.

He stares at it for a long time.

He doesn’t open it. Well, he does, but only to the first page.

i fear not god—

And he shuts it.

It’s violating, in a way, and you want him to violate you? It’s disturbing, and it must be masochistic. But, that determination in your eyes— the very clear and obvious desperation for him to understand why you left him so suddenly and cruelly…

Spencer shakes his head. Tonight is not the night to crack open your psychosis journal like beer. Maybe one day, when he feels less high from your proximity; less manic from your proximity. Standing up, his knees and lower back ache, and he realizes how much they’ve aged since you’ve left. Far too much, it seems.

He takes the journal to his room and sets it down, his fingers lingering on it, on the white painted number on the front; #5.

Spencer isn’t sure what compels him, but he picks up the book and presses it to his lips. A part of him hopes you feel it. A part of him hopes one day he can kiss you again— feel the warmth of your skin and taste your lipgloss instead of dust. Spencer— feeling just as pathetic as before— sets down the journal down again, settled beside the small collection of buttons he’s procured in the last two years, and slips off to bed to be haunted by you.

THANKS FOR READING! YOU MADE IT! Hope you enjoyed, and have a wonderful morning, afternoon, or night. I love you, and you will be okay I promise, and Jesus loves you <3 Again, THANK YOU! Even if you just skimmed it :P

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid angst #spencer reid x you #criminal minds #x reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x gn!reader #spencer reid #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds x you #criminal minds x reader #post prison reid #criminal minds angst

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noonew1lleverask · 1 month ago

Text

Preview of something I’m writing. TW: mentions of suicide and self-harm.

Sorry, guys, I’ve consumed so much sad media I cannot HELP IT. I’m literally in the trenches I need to read a romance novel ASAP.

Well aren’t you doing fucking fantastical, a part of you wanted to say.

Consequences not even the one you loved most could tightly stitch back up.

Though he tried, Spencer had tried, and he was still actively trying.

You had no idea why. Why he stayed. Why he tried. Why sang throughout your head, rapping at the door, tapping at the window.

Why? Why? Why? Why?

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid angst #spencer reid x you #criminal minds #x reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x gn!reader #spencer reid #doctor spencer reid #criminal minds angst #criminal minds x you #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid x y/n

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noonew1lleverask · 2 months ago

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When They Found a Better Planet, Only the Gentle Survived

GUYS! I’m so sorry I haven’t posted in AGES. APs are killing me, yall😔 anyways, feast upon this baloney and berate me if need be. Love you guys🫶

Spencer Reid x gn!reader (maybe more fem!presenting, though, so I’m so sorry if it is). They’re kinda weird, which is specified in the beginning. Angsty. Kinda fluffy?

Warnings: maybe ooc Spencer? Talk of a case involving children (two of which are dead and it is talked about), so if you don’t like this, just don’t read. Reader can’t cry because I was thinking of Cameron Diaz in the Holiday. Alcohol (not specified). Talk of kidnapping and the word “rapist” is used. Bad, sucky, dookie writing. NOT PROOFREAD. I think that’s it, and if I missed anything PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

WC: 2,409

You know you’re weird. It’s a given, considering your career choice. No sane, right-in-the-head person strives to study the minds of criminals— psychos and the mentally disturbed. You didn’t think, however, when joining the bureau, you’d find people far… odder than you. You noted this with love, as you were surrounded by such weird people on the jet slicing through the sky, quiet as it sailed the air like it was a withdrawn sea.

You. You, with your button collections and mugs stuffed into your cupboard— each withholding a sentimental value in your heart that you knew could merely be attested to anthropomorphism: the natural inclination humans have to personify objects. Truly, human emotion is such a complex pot of stew, with such thick broth, the ingredients were a surprise to each ladled scoop. You with your colorful tops and matching tights, most of which followed the grain of multicolored patterns and funky designs. You, who could not, despite the nature of your job, see any… bad in people. It was your fault— entirely yours— and your silly empathic heart swelling in your chest until it threatened to crack your ribs and burst grotesquely from your body; a splatter of blood, ripped muscle and skin, bone.

This was what you found odd in your colleagues. They didn’t seem to feel as you did. And, for once in your life, you were disturbed. Returning from a case with children— dead children; cold bodies of young boys that were burned into the backs of your eyelids, resting peacefully among the leaves. It was sickening. It was wrong. So why were they okay? Why couldn’t you be okay as they were? Hotch, Rossi, and Emily were sharing drinks, chatting quietly about nothing�� nothing but chatter— chattering. Hotch seemed far more withdrawn than the others; you were sure he was thinking of Jack. The loss of Haley was still a fresh wound, sloppily stitched shut by the death of the Reaper. Morgan had slumped down into the soft leather of the jet’s seating, his headphones crooked over his smooth head, his lashes dark and feathery where they rested against his cheeks. JJ had called Will, asking for Henry, if he was okay, sleeping good? Good, JJ had replied with a sigh. Deep, relieved, and guilty that she could rest easily while two mothers mourned the loss of their boys— barely even six. Nausea washed over you, suddenly. You could tell, especially if the case involved children, it weighed even heavier on JJ’s shoulders, reminding her of her own child’s life, and its volatility. Was it grim to think such a thought? You weren’t sure. You felt it was natural— given, considering the sludge you’d recently pulled yourselves from. You shook your head. How could you think that? How could you think of such a terrible situation; such a terrible outcome; as sludge?

Having forgotten about a certain genius, you found yourself startled when he stumbled into the seat beside you, making you jump. You always startled— too deep in your own thoughts to remember there was reality surrounding you. Spencer leaned heavily into his cane as he sat, a short huff escaping his pink lips when his butt finally reached the chair. He lifted his injured leg, elevating it onto the chair in front of him, and groaning deeply and tipping his head back, a long curl dropping over his eye. The sound made you flush, just a little. You looked between he, and the aisle, then the surrounding cabin. Out of every space, he had to choose beside you? You shifted in your seat, uncomfortable, and stuck your hands under your thighs. You knew they were trembling. You knew he would notice. Spencer hadn’t said much, considering things, about the case, to anyone else, anything. You supposed he was as deep in grief as you. You doubted he was as confused, as troubled, as disturbed.

Spencer faced you suddenly, and tucked the curl back. His hazel eyes were wide and open, much like a lake from your childhood— no, a creek. It was behind your house, deeper into the woods that you’d preferred, but your sibling dragged you past the tree line and into the sun-dappled forest. Spencer’s eyes reminded you of that creek, and the surrounding trees glistening under the morning sun, dew drip-dropping from their leaves. A symphony.

“You’ve been quiet,” he noted, his voice a low murmur you couldn’t find yourself disliking, but craving. “And isolating yourself from the others…” He lifted his eyelids, widening them to a slightly knowing degree, his hand over the crook of his elbow as he leaned closer— not in your personal space, but enough to be apparent. You leaned back. “You’ve been subtly glaring, did you know that?”

Sometimes, you didn’t like Spencer, and it was for reasons such as these. He saw too much, and you were sure he disliked it as much as you. Beneath your thighs, your knuckles rubbed against the fabric of your bootcut jeans, twitching to shove him away and hide under the table. “No, I did not,” you replied drily. “Thank you for telling me after the fact. Did… anyone else notice?”

He shook his head, and your shoulders eased with relief, brows softening. “No, no— I just…” He paused, hesitated, actually, his jaw working while his vocal chords didn’t. A breath was softly pushed from the back of his throat. He restarted, softer; whispering, “In non-family abductions, 40% of children are killed, and 4% are never recovered.” You weren’t sure how this was supposed to help you. He obviously saw the issue, saw past your thick shell of armor you liked to think was as strong as steel, but, really, it was just a flimsy aluminum.

Swallowing down the bile in your throat, along with the anger bubbling in your chest, you replied, “I really don’t see how that helps anything, Spencer.” All you could see were those bodies— small, fragile, peaceful in those last moments save for the… the… Bile was rising again, acidic and burning. “Our job is to save people, to deliver justice, not… not to let children die at the hands of sociopathic pedophiles—“ you were getting choked up. You couldn’t stop it. You didn’t like it— you wanted to bury yourself in a pile of your funky tights and Mary-Jane’s, mugs and buttons, kitties and puppies, chunky rings and golden necklaces with shimmering fake gems— you didn’t want to think of dead children and their mothers sobbing in your arms, demanding why, God, why would He let this happen?

Spencer, if he wasn’t already utterly available to your sorrows— in that strange way he seemed to make himself available to anyone— softened further, his hand raising, heisting, before it came upon your shoulder, then to the other. He pulled you against his side, and you collapsed, your face buried into the shoulder of his suit jacket, and tore your hands from the confine of your thighs to grasp his arms, crumpling the nice fabric. Soft, and smelling sharply of fig, with woody notes that reminded you of the decrepit books he buried his nose in, and you wondered how they didn’t collapse under his touch. You didn’t cry. You haven’t cried in years, and, despite everything, you knew you wouldn’t cry now. You simply released small, shaky breaths that rattled you to the core, chipping away at your swelling heart, relinquishing the threat of it breaking your ribs.

He rubbed your shoulder, tenderly, far more tender than you’d assume, but you knew assumptions were bad. A natural, human thing; judging, assumption, assuming. It was a survival instinct. What would we be, if not for our judgements? But you weren’t assuming; you knew Spencer had an… aversion to touch. Not entirely banning the concept, but cautious of it. He touched those he knew well, those he deemed worthy of it. You had no idea how you were worth his touch, but it must be a one time thing, you rationalized when he pulled you in tighter. And you could swear you felt something brush the top of your head. His nose, probably.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. His volume had dropped even lower. This was a private conversation— just you two. Just the two of you on the jet; no chatter, no soft sighs, no phone calls, no humming or tapping feet, not even the low hum of the jet as it raced home. Just you and Spencer, hovering mid-air, his body covering yours from the pain tearing you apart. Your own little planet; only for those who felt and who ached as you did.

“What I meant by that was… we can’t save everyone.” He sounded pained saying it, like it had taken serious convincing for him to believe it, too. “Some things are out of our power, and it… sucks. It really sucks.” You snorted. Why Spencer saying ‘sucks’, and working through it like a child with metamorphosis made you laugh, you didn’t know. It just did. He held you looser, comforted by the sound, trusting you wouldn’t shatter on impact if he released you. “But… we have to focus on what’s in our power. Who we saved. Who we will save. Those boys, they— no child deserves what they went through. And the guilt never gets easier. But we can use that guilt. Become better, grow smarter, grow faster…”

You pulled back then (not from his arms ,you weren’t stable enough to leave his protection yet), and met his eyes. There was something else in them now— the creek had become a river; rapid and racing, crashing over rocks, currents that pulled you under and refused to let go. Something shifted in your chest, your heartbeat quickened. He lowered his head, and— oh, you knew your title of oddest hadn’t been lost— thought for a moment he may kiss you. You didn’t want him to, but you weren’t sure you’d mind it. The realization was confusing, and not the primary focus at the time, so you shoved it away when he merely leaned in closer to emphasize his point. “We don’t forget them,” he said. “We never do. But…” his eyes flicked away then, and returned. The fire was brighter now, an inferno behind his eyes. “We save the next child, and the next, and the ones after that, and we put away every single maniac who dares to lay a hand on them.”

It wasn’t really the answer you wanted, but it held the conviction you were craving. You wanted something solid— “we do this until none remain”— but they’d always remain. No matter how many rapists, serial killers, child abductors; the deranged were put away… more would appear, more would hurt and kill. But it was your job to stop them. To think of cases like these, and not see them as failures, but as a victory. You apprehended the UNSUB, and he wouldn’t hurt any boys again. There’d be no more mourning mothers at his hands, nor small bodies pillowed on beds of leaves like that solved everything. There would be more— you just had to stop them. Preferably before they struck, but that was merely a wish occasionally granted. Occasionally didn’t even fit, actually. Once in a blue moon. That was much better. Once every eclipse, sadly.

You sniffled, though there was no real reason, and pulled away. You had been stitched back together by Spencer’s careful hand; the hand that never crumbled books, never broke pencils, but spilled a few too many coffees. The calloused hand that had held guns, and now held you. “Thank you, Spencer,” you smiled. “I’m sorry—“

“Don’t,” he cut you off, holding up a hand. “There’s no reason to feel sorry when your feelings were justified.”

There it was again.

That little kickstart to your heart.

You nodded, but you didn’t really believe there was no reason to apologize. You’d been glaring at your innocent colleagues for God’s sakes, when they’d done nothing but push themselves to the brink, just as you. The inadequacy, however, was deeply felt in moments like these, when Spencer gently called out your behavior and directed you away from a path of spiraling and self-destruction. You wondered who had guided his path. It was a question for another day, when your relationship was stronger, and you didn’t feel physically ill at the prospect of having your request be rejected.

“Stil.” You shrugged. “I needed a shoulder to…” you couldn’t say “cry on”, because you didn’t cry. You think for a moment, and Spencer patiently waits with a slight smile pulling on the corners of his mouth. You want to take your fingers and pull them into a wider one, if only to see those dimples. “I needed someone to help keep me together,” you land on.

Spencer’s eyes widen, and an adorable blush coats his cheeks. “Oh, well, uh, yeah— that… that’s not— ahem— a-anytime… anytime.” He repeats the last word twice, the second time coming out softer, more sincere. Like a promise. Your smile widens, but is stretched by a yawn. Without the stress and anger keeping you awake, exhaustion settles heavy on your bones. Spencer notices, of course, but he doesn’t even need to be a profiler to note your tiredness. He slumps back a little in his chair, his elevated leg shifting, and seems almost to tilt your way. Your stare, confused, until you realize what he’s doing. Offering his shoulder. Maybe that touch wasn’t…a one time thing. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, you drop your head to his shoulder. It’s bony, not entirely comfortable, but soothing. Because it’s him, a small, quiet part of your mind answers, and you internally shush it. Your eyes dropped to the buttons of his coat. They were nice buttons. “I like your buttons,” you murmured, and he huffed a soft laugh.

“Thanks. They’re yours when this decomposes,” he promised, tugging on the hem of his coat. You’d hold him to that promise when the time came.

Quicker than you imagined, sleep overtakes you, and, as you drift into the first stages of unconscious, you feel that brush again, at the top of your head. From afar, you think you hear a soft chuckle, and a teasing, “my man,” but you’re quite positive it’s only in your head. It must be, because Spencer’s little laugh sounded too good to be true.

THANKS SO MUCH FOR READING THIS BAD FIC. Or skimming, whatever floats your boat. I really hope you enjoyed, and SO SORRY about not writing for so long. I’m attempting to create a schedule of posting almost every Friday. So be PREPARED! Love you, be safe, and know that you are loved deeply by me, God, and someone out there. Whether that be a cat, dog, or platypus— YOURE LOVED♥️♥️♥️

Thanks again, lovelies<3

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x you #criminal minds #x reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x gn!reader #spencer reid #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds x you

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noonew1lleverask · 2 months ago

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is reading angst a way of self harm

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noonew1lleverask · 3 months ago

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the virgin reid going full hermit over a girl he talked on the phone with for a few months vs. the chad hotch coming right back to work after his wife was murdered in front of his son

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noonew1lleverask · 3 months ago

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called you again | s.r.

in which you make a late night phone call to your ex-boyfriend because you're convinced he's the only thing that can lull you to sleep

who? spencer reid x fem!reader category: angst (h/c) content warnings: exes but they're still in love so... a lot of yearning, briefly mentions a bau case, inspired by a mattress and a tiktok. word count: 1.84k a/n: shout out to whichever anon from yesterday told me to post this!! you're a real one

Rolling over on your bed again, you tugged the comforter over your shoulder, hoping the fabric would form a cocoon around you. Mimicking the feeling of someone behind you, warm arms wrapped around you. You begged for the comfort that you needed in order to fall asleep, but sleep never came.

Your exhaustion had come and gone, any hint of sleepiness wiped away when you moved from your couch to your bed. Insomnia had come to find you, a face so familiar that you had begun to greet sleepless nights with open arms.

On your nightstand, your phone buzzed. Likely a social media notification or a news email telling you the end was near, but you rolled over anyway on the off chance that it was a text. Every night, you remind yourself that you should turn on do not disturb, but you’d spent years waiting for your phone to buzz at all hours, hoping for the opportunity to tell Spencer how your day was. That’s why you had to check your phone, hoping to see the contact with the heart next to it, remaining unchanged since you broke up with him two months ago.

Cringing at the blue light on your sensitive eyes, you squinted at the notification. It was an email, holding the weekly advertisement for the grocery store. You tried to resist the disappointment that roiled in your brain, but it took over anyways. Disappointment that it wasn’t Spencer and shame that you’d thought he’d reach out to you after everything that happened between you.

You clicked on your messages, looking at the short exchange from the day he came by to drop off a box of your things. He’d brought you coffee. You’d broken his heart two days before, and he brought you coffee from your favorite kiosk near his apartment. That kind of love was the epitome of Spencer Reid, and that was why it had killed you to let him go.

As if your thumb had developed a mind of its own, you tapped on his contact and initiated a phone call, quickly sitting up in bed and ending the call, tossing your phone in the depths of your down comforter and glaring at it in horror.

It must’ve been less than a minute before your phone started to buzz again, you rifled through the bedding to look at your phone, and there it was. The purple heart that you’d placed next to his name the night of your first date. It seemed cruel to take away his heart when you knew very well there was no love lost between the two of you. Swiping at the screen, you lifted the phone to your ear and took a nervous breath, “Hey.”

“Are you okay?” He asked immediately, not responding to your greeting and instantly trying to get to the root cause of why you had called.

You tried not to read into it, staring at your lap and fiddling with a loose thread on your pajama shorts. “Spence,” you said meekly, your voice hovering over a whisper as his question echoed in your head.

He was silent for a moment. You imagined he was considering hanging up on you until he spoke again, “Hang on.”

You heeded his instruction, shifting awkwardly on your mattress and listening to the shuffling on the other end. It was almost two in the morning, and he didn’t sound like you had woken him up, so he must be out on a case. Something akin to deja vu came over you then, imagining him in some city that he’d never be able to explore while you waited in your apartment for the slightest bit of contact.

“Y/N?” Spencer said your name, and every bit of embarrassment you felt related to this call faded away. You could deal with the humiliation if it meant you got to hear him say your name just one more time. “What’s wrong?”

Because it couldn’t just be that you wanted to hear his voice, the only reason you could possibly be calling him in the middle of the night was because something was wrong. You were stranded when the metro stopped running or someone had stolen your wallet. No, the pounding of your broken heart was keeping you up at night. Even now, it slammed into your ribcage, ricocheting with the reminder that this was all your fault. “Where are you?” You asked, sniffling through the question and wiping you face with your sleeve.

He sighed on the other end of the call and you told yourself it was in relief that nothing was wrong. “Bismarck,” he responded softly, matching your tone of voice in only the way he could. “We got here this morning for a family annihilator,” he explained in more detail.

You felt yourself falling into a familiar pattern, settling your body back in bed with your phone pressed to the side of your face. Family annihilators were hard on the whole team, but Spencer was someone who held family dynamics with the highest regard. It always broke him to see that destroyed. “How was the flight?”

“It was alright,” he answered, entering a similar pattern as you. “We had to fly over tornado alley. It’s storm season, you know?”

Humming, you nodded despite the fact that he can’t see you. “And I’m sure no one appreciated your facts about turbulence,” you said, a teasing lilt finding its way to your tone.

He chuckled through the phone and your heart soared, “They never do. No one ever gets them like you, lo—”

Your body stiffened as he caught himself. It would’ve been so easy for you to move past the initial comment if his instinct was to follow it up with a pet name. Lovey. He liked to call you lovey as a term of endearment. Your previously floating heart came back down to earth, “So it’s a bad case, huh? I should probably let you get back to work.”

“Between you and me, I’m supposed to be at the hotel right now, so this would count as my break,” he told you, managing to coax you into staying on the phone.

It was hard to be broken up with someone who hadn’t strictly done anything wrong, and it was hard to deny him conversation when he was wrapped up in such a dark case. “What’s the weather like?” You asked, choosing to talk about things that don’t truly matter.

He sighed, “Cold, but I’m sure you could’ve guessed that. JJ whines about it every time she steps outside. We’re inside most of the time anyway, so I’m not really bothered.”

Weather was never an issue for Spencer, you used to think he’d be miserable in the winter, seeing as he grew up in Las Vegas, but it would seem that his time in Boston had completely changed him.

“It’s finally getting warm here,” you mentioned. Though, of course he knew that already. Spencer hadn’t taken up residence in Bismarck, but sometimes it felt like he was 1,500 miles away, even when he was just across the river from you. It reminded you of all the times you’d disagreed on the temperature you should leave the thermostat at, and it brought a pit back to your chest. You used to insist that 68 degrees in the winter wasn’t the same as 68 degrees in the summer, and he’d tell you that it was the same temperature, it just felt different because of changing variables.

Laying in your bed, you wished he was there to explain how the tilt of the earth’s axis affects the temperature, but instead, you could only talk to him about the weather. The cherry blossoms would bloom soon, and you wished he was here to take you to see them. “What’s wrong?” He asked you again, his voice was so gentle that it nearly crushed you.

Looking at the other side of your bed, the side he used to sleep on, you sighed helplessly, “I can’t sleep.” It felt infantile to say it out loud, the average person would’ve taken something by now, but you could barely get yourself to stand up, let alone go to the medicine cabinet.

“Have you taken anything?” He asked, reading your mind just like old times.

You hummed, keeping your eyes on the other side of your mattress, “No. It’s too late anyway, I wouldn’t wake up for work.”

“Maybe you should take something and take the day off, you sound exhausted,” he told you, a familiar worry crawling into his voice.

The reminder of why you had left overwhelmed you. Spencer could give you all of the advice in the world, but he’d never be there to help you. Yours wasn’t the first relationship to fall victim to the BAUs hours, but it hurt nonetheless. You loved him so ardently that you’d forgotten to love yourself, and when you couldn’t take the distance anymore, you’d called the whole thing off. It was hard to love someone who wasn’t there, but it turns out distance does make the heart grow fonder. “Maybe,” you mumbled, looking at the divot on his side of the bed.

It hurt you to acknowledge that the inanimate object you slept on had its own memory of Spencer. The impression of his body across the cushion reminded you of the space left by people in Pompeii, their suffering had been immortalized for people to gawk at 2,000 years later, but in 2,000 years, your romance with Spencer wouldn’t even qualify as a blip in the universe’s timeline. There would be no lasting impression of two lovers holding hands because he wasn’t yours and you were no longer his.

“Spence?” You breathed into the receiver, looking at the memory foam imprint with tears in your eyes.

He waited for a beat to respond, “Yeah?”

Your chest ached to tell him that you loved him—that you had made a mistake, but that wasn’t fair to him. That wasn’t fair to you. “Stay safe, okay?” You whispered, hoping that one day things might be different, and if that day ever came along, you’d want him to at least consider the possibility of coming back to you.

“Okay, sleep well,” he murmured back to you before the phone clicked off.

At a sloth’s pace, you crawled onto the other side of your bed and curled yourself into a ball. When trees had objects left around their roots, they simply grew around the invasion, but your mattress was an inanimate object with no way of moving or growing or adapting to a life without him while you had no choice but to do so. Closing your eyes, silent tears streamed to the pillow that smelled faintly of his shampoo—no matter how many times you washed the pillowcase. Finally, you let your body relax into the memory of him.

You supposed you could always buy a new mattress, but that would mean fully letting him go.

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noonew1lleverask · 3 months ago

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There’s a lot of reasons why you love Spencer.

word count: 917

Men. Men, the vile creatures, were so filled with… with hatred, and rage, and bitterness— just an overall unpleasant species with a horrible history tied to it. But, there was one exception to this.

“Spencer,” you called, and he answered;

“Yes, love?” Indeed, Spencer Reid was the exception, and these were the many reasons why…

He had a very lovely smile. Even the slight curve of it in private moments— when he tried to suppress it; shoving it down to a measly little smirk— could send your heart racing. But, the brilliance of his full, elated grin sent you into an overdrive— dopamine flooding your brain, an overwhelming wave of need crashing over you like the most violent of waves in the most violent of storms. You were unsure if you should hit him or kiss him— both hard enough to leave him dazed, both likely having similar effects on the genius. Once, you voiced your adoration of his smile over coffee, watched as he hid it selfishly behind the rim of his designated mug; name labeled on the side; and said, I don’t see it. Well, you’d replied, half tempted to lean across the table that suddenly felt too long, even if your feet were touching— the toe of his loafers brushing your ankle. “It’s not for you, then,” you’d said, a smile caught from his contagious beaming. “It’s just for the rest of the world to envy.

He had good hair. Good, thick hair of the softest texture, and the most rich brown. No matter the cut and, it remained appealing, at least to you. In the days past when Spencer’s hair lacked its curl, its fluff, and remained plastered to his head, even then you adored it. Its many forms had intrigued you throughout the years, so much so you began to think of it as a separate entity from Spencer entirely. “It’s a wig,” you’d tease when playing with it, and tug, leading to Spencer’s groans and moans, and he’d tug yours in return. He’d grown so much, not just his hair, but him. Once, there was a time when his hair was flat and quiet; he wouldn’t have pulled your hair in return then. Now, it was wild and wind-blown. Loud and proud— he’d pull your hair gently, for fear he’d hurt you, and when you both fell back with stomach-aching laughs at your childish antics, he’d gaze at you through the curtain of rich brown, and wait for you to push it back from his eyes, so you could see his adoring eyes, staring upon you in your “seraphic glory”.

His eyes were ever-shifting. They were hazel, so they were magical, you’d said. He’d laughed and asked what exactly led you to that conclusion. “You’re a magician, are you not?” You had him there.

“It’s science,” he’d replied, looking, oh, so lovely on these early Sundays when he insisted they play an early morning card game. The focus in his eyes, determination blazing, as if his life were on the line, amused you to no end. Especially when you won, which you rarely did. Not just for the blaze of competition to flare into the inferno of triumph, but for the kiss he’d smack against your cheek as a good-natured, thank you for feeding my ego.

You watched his eyes flit over his cards, and he betrayed nothing. What rests behind those calloused hands that traced your body so lovingly, that held you together when you shattered, that picked up your broken pieces even when his hands bled from the jagged edges of your broken soul? What did those eyes hide from you; those cheeky eyes, lively with green in the sunlight, deep black in the dark of your bedroom— soft and wholly swallowed by his pupils— so consumed by nothing but you, you, and you— when he wasn’t thinking of anything he was thinking of everything? “Full house,” apparently.

He was a handsome man. As you’ve so abhorrently declared to anyone who dared to listen to the dancing fool he’d unknowingly turned you into, constantly vying for his smile, for his laughter, for his eyes to soften, for his attention, for his love and care— for all of the things he readily delivered to you on a velvet pillow and bended knee, so firm in his belief you deserved it; the gift of him. You didn’t.

You knew you didn’t, yet you cherished him as he cherished you.

You didn’t love Spencer for his looks. You didn’t love him for his smile, his hair, or his eyes. You loved him. You loved how he held you as no man ever had. You loved his imperfections, you loved your fights, you loved his clumsiness, you loved his facts that he rambled on about for just a few minutes too long, you loved his hand in yours. You loved him so deeply it was now ingrained in your soul, and you sometimes wondered if there was an underlying dependency on him, and you’d worry, and he’d ask if you felt alone when he was in the room with you, not touching, not acknowledging, but merely existing beside you— breathing in precious oxygen he’d rather deliver directly from his mouth to yours. He never said that, but you’d know it went unsaid.

And you’d say no.

And he’d kiss your nose, and say, “Good. I think you should start worrying about dependency on me when you start letting me into the kitchen.”

Thanks for reading, lovelies! Hope you liked this, and have an awesome evening, day, or morning. You’re so loved (BY ME), and keep on being you no matter what. Love y’all, and thanks again<3<3

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x you #criminal minds #x reader #criminal minds x reader #spencer reid x gn!reader #spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x fem!reader #doctor spencer reid

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noonew1lleverask · 3 months ago

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How we feelin about this ladies?

👇

“Spencer,” you called, and he answered;

“Yes, love?” Indeed, Spencer Reid was the exception, and these were the many reasons why…

Do I know where it’s gonna go from here? No. No, I don’t. Give me a sleepless night and a monster, and it may be developed by Monday Eve.

#spencer reid x reader #criminal minds #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x you #x reader #spencer reid x gn!reader #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid #spencer reid angst

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noonew1lleverask · 3 months ago

Note

can I pls request: dad!spencer and his baby boy getting antsy and weepy but spencer not knowing what’s wrong until you come back from a long case and then he’s fine straight away

—Spencer and his baby miss you like crazy for 3k, fem

Things have been hot garbage since Monday. Saturday night and all Spencer wants is one good day, where Jude doesn’t cry, and Spencer doesn’t feel sick. Saturday morning it went on for hours —Jude started crying because his bottle was prematurely empty and he didn’t stop, the sobs petering into weeps, sniffly wet nose pressed to Spencer’s neck, then his chest, then his forehead. Poor boy can’t stay still.

Spencer hasn’t eaten properly since you left. He can’t get more than a couple of mouthfuls in before Jude is protesting his own meal or snack and flopping sadly into a Jude-puddle.

Spencer has suggested dinner again, because not eating makes you sad, but Jude doesn’t care what it does and Spencer puts electrolytes in his juice. He offers extra time at the swimming pool and the library, and he plays soccer outside despite terrible coordination because Jude loves to score. Nothing lasts long enough. Jude spends half of his waking time morose and clingy, the other hiding under beds or in the kitchen cabinet under the sink. Spencer makes him an appointment with the pediatrician for Wednesday morning.

The waiting is agony.

“I don’t think you should worry about it until you go,” you say down the phone, “you know that worrying twice is pointless. Not that you shouldn’t worry at all, I know it’s scary, but there’s nothing you can’t handle, Spence.”

“If Jude is sick I definitely can’t handle that.”

“Yes, you can. Don’t be stupid.”

Stupid said very softly. Spencer misses your voice. He tries to go on cases but if they look too long, he stays home, ‘cos who does he trust enough to take care of Jude besides himself? There was one time where you stayed with Jude for a two-nighter just because you wanted to and Spencer missed being with the BAU, but he missed Jude more while he was there than he missed the work. He’s a professional consultant now, and it’s fine. He loves his life. He still goes to the office and sees his friends for coffee, and he gets to be with Jude all the time. If something happened to him…

“He’s just not himself, it’s–” breaking my heart.

“Emily said we’re a half hour from touching down in Quantico, I’ll come over?”

Spencer didn’t consider you going home to your own place, but he should’ve. “Please. Maybe you can get through to him, or figure out what it is that’s making him so sad.”

“What's he been eating?”

“Nothing.” Spencer rubs his eyebrow and the headache there roughly. “Uh, he can’t stop himself from eating those carrot puffs. If you get a couple of those on the way in I’ll pay you back.”

“Honey, I can buy the baby some snacks. What about you, are you eating?”

“Not really,” he confesses quietly.

“Anything you fancy?”

He grins at your phrasing and your light tones. Maybe when Jude is a little older, a lot older, Spencer could go with you again.

“Can you get me those chilli tortilla chips, please?”

“And salsa?”

“Please, if you don’t mind.”

“I love all the snacks you love,” you laugh, “did you want something sweet, too? I really crave a three musketeers.”

“That’s the worst candy bar you could’ve picked.”

“It is not. And for that you aren’t getting one.”

Spencer laughs and sways Jude’s attention from the movie. He frowns at Spencer as if to say, What’s so funny? I’m miserable. And Spencer feels more sorry for him than anyone in the whole wide world. “What’s the matter, baby?” he murmurs.

“Is that my boy?”

Spencer tries to pretend you saying such a thing doesn’t inspire extreme attraction. “That’s your boy,” he says, flustered beyond sense, “he’s not feeling the best.”

Jude shuffles to Spencer’s seat. “I know, poor boy,” you murmur, “aw, I can’t wait to be home, I missed him so much more than I can say, this case felt like an age.”

Doesn’t Spencer know it? He pinches the phone between his ear and shoulder, holding out his hands for Jude, slipping them into his armpits as Jude struggles up into his lap. “What’s wrong?” Spencer asks again.

Jude pouts up at Spencer through long eyelashes. “Daddy, who’s on’a phone?”

“Y/N. Do you want to talk?”

Jude is rigid, his eyebrows pinched tightly, but he nods and holds his hand out for the phone. Spencer guides it gently to his ear. “Tell me if it’s too loud, okay?”

“Hello?” Spencer hears you say. “Jude, lovely, are you there? Can you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Jude says.

“Hello. I miss you very much, I’m excited to come home. Daddy says you’re not feeling well, I’m very sorry to hear it. If you can think of anything I can get you or I can bring you to make you feel better, can you tell me now?”

“Um…” Jude gives Spencer a betrayed glare that makes no sense. “Dad?”

“She said she misses you,” Spencer says softly. “She’s sorry you’re not happy. And she wants to know if you want a present, or a special dinner.”

“No.” Jude straightens up, a little hand tight on the phone. “I miss you,” he says loudly.

“I miss you too. I’ll see you soon, just a couple more hours. Can you be good for dad and have something to eat? Have some apple stars or a bowl of chips or a boppy?”

Jude nods.

Spencer huffs a laugh. “Say out loud,” he whispers.

“Say what?” Jude asks.

“He’s saying yes,” Spencer says loudly.

“You’re gonna go have a boppy now?” you check.

“Yeah,” Jude says.

Your laugh is hard to hear, but Spencer knows it well, filling in the gaps in his head. “Okay, babe. You go have your boppy and I’ll see you real soon.”

Jude perks up a little. He thanks you in his mind for being a miracle worker. Jude says, “Okay,” and you say, “Okay, bye-bye,” and Jude says, “Bye-bye, I love you,” which makes you backtrack to say, “I love you too! Okay? Go have your boppy. Bye, sweet boy.”

Jude gives Spencer the phone nicely.

Spencer can see you’ve hung up, so he puts the phone on the arm and takes Jude’s cheek into his palm. “Okay?” he asks.

“I’m gonna have boppy now,” Jude informs him.

“Yeah, let’s go make it.”

It’s skim milk now Jude’s old enough, but he likes it all the same, and he drinks it held against Spencer’s chest where Spencer stands in the kitchen. Jude doesn’t fuss as Spencer starts writing a list on the fridge-pad. Milk, laundry detergent, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, bread, cheese and broccoli pasta mix, cheese, noodles. “What do you want for your dinner tomorrow?” Spencer asks, unsurprised to go unanswered. He adds rice, hand soap, and crayons.

Jude doesn’t fall asleep after the bottle. He stretches and cards a hand through his dad’s hair, clumsy but quiet without sulking for the first time in days. “Thank you, that feels nice,” Spencer whispers.

Jude presses his nose up against Spencer’s jaw, bringing his other hand to double the stroking. “I love you very much, you know,” Spencer says.

“Yeah.”

“And things are going to be okay, I promise.”

“Promise,” he repeats.

“Want another boppy?”

“Maybe I can have soup?”

“Is that what your tummy wants?” Spencer opens the cabinet above the counter before Jude can say yes or no. “What soup do you want? Dad has tomato, chicken, mushroom, parsnip, I have all the best ones. Baby, let’s have soup and sandwiches.”

“Mayo-yaise?”

“Is that what you want? Like, a grilled cheese, or just toast and mayo?” He grins at his little weirdo. “You don’t even want the cheese, do you?”

“No, I don‘ even wan’ the cheese,” Jude grins back.

They make soup together. Spencer sits Jude next to the stove, positioning him between legs so he can’t fall or touch the saucepan. He opens two cans of tomato soup and adds fresh cream from the fridge to reduce the sourness, letting Jude pull basil from the window plant to sprinkle in after he’s brought it to a boil and then cooked it back down to a simmer. He gives it time to cool for at least ten minutes, stirring, and pressing the bread spread with mayonnaise into a sizzling frying pan, Jude mumbling at his side the whole time. Some stuff he understands, and some is jumbled nothing. “I think we can,” he says as Spencer pours the soup into two bowls. He leaves more than enough for you in the pot.

“What do you think we can do?” Spencer asks.

Jude only smiles.

Jude takes a long, long time to eat his soup. Spencer heats it up again once, but Jude doesn’t mind it cold. Spencer finishes his in about five minutes and spends the next thirty waiting for you to come home. Over. Not home.

“Have some more?” Jude asks.

“You want more?” Spencer nearly chokes on his breath.

“You and me.”

“Sure,” Spencer says, standing, “babe,” —he kisses Jude’s head— “you can have,” —he gives another kiss while he's there— “as much as you want.”

“Thanks thank you thanks.”

“More sandwich, too?”

“Can I have–” Jude struggles. “Dad, can we have bread without mayo-yaise?”

“Just bread, not toasted? Still soft?”

“Yes. Please.”

“Sure, baby. Whatever you want.”

Spencer likes that having a baby has made affection easier in every part of his life, he’s kinder to every child he meets because it’s easier now to call them lovely or beautiful or ask where their mom is, probably as a side effect of being loved resolutely. Jude loves Spencer so Spencer loves the world. It’s not exactly new rhetoric.

Jude has managed a second piece of bread sans crust when you slip the door open across the house. Spencer grabs a paper towel to wipe Jude’s face and hands quickly.

“Hello?” you call gently, melodic in your cadence.

Jude sits ramrod straight, batting Spencer’s hands away. “Hello?” he calls back.

“Is that my Jude?” you ask, footsteps drawing nearer, your shoes clipping the wooden slat flooring, and then suddenly there in the kitchen doorway. “Hi, angel. I can’t believe you’re not feeling good, you look just the same as the last time I saw you!” You don’t take your bag off your shoulder, but you let the tote in your hand fall to the floor by the fridge.

“Hi,” he says, like he’s in awe.

Your expression softens further. “Hi.”

Jude slides off of his chair and you go on one knee to reach for him, laughing softly as he digs his face into your neck, throwing his arms around you, too short to close. You hold his back in one arm. The other —Spencer’s heart feels squeezed in your palm— rests in the waves of his hair where they kiss Jude’s nape.

“I’ve been so worried about you,” you confess, your hand turning to a fist on his back. You drag your knuckles up and down.

“I miss you.”

“Sorry, handsome, I didn’t mean to be away that long.”

“I miss you.”

“I missed you too.”

Jude takes a breath somewhere near sobbing and startles both you and Spencer. “I miss you,” he insists.

“Bud, it’s okay.”

Jude takes in another horrible straggly breath that nearly forces Spencer onto his knees.

“Miss you,” Jude says, clinging to you with white-knuckled hands, “miss you, don’t go.”

“Baby, I’m not going.”

“Miss you.”

“I miss you too,” you say, locking eyes with Spencer over his head, your lashes like willow, wide in confusion.

Jude swallows harshly but nods like you’ve said something he can agree too.

You shift Jude against your chest and stand. In your winter peacoat, your scarf and your silky black tights, you aren’t shy about squeezing poor rumpled Jude to your chest, ignoring his frizzed hair and his soup-stained t-shirt, all love as you rub his shuddering back. “Jude, you okay?” you ask quietly.

“You was gone for too long.”

Spencer can hardly hear him.

“I was, huh?”

“Too much.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d miss me this much. I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

“You’ll be in the bed with me?”

“Is that what you want me to do?” you ask patiently.

“Yeah.”

“If dad says it’s okay, we’ll sleep in the big bed.”

Jude spins in your arms, imploring Spencer desperately, “Please, daddy? Please?”

Of course you can stay in the big bed. It’s not unusual for you to spend the night, and you stopped suffering the couch a long time ago.

The moment Jude knows you aren’t going home, he starts to act like himself again. He stops the shuddery breath that makes Spencer hot behind the eyes. His mumbling turns to a more curious probing —Why were you gone so long? Did you miss him? Can I come with you nex’ time?

You don’t baulk. When Jude knocks the door while you’re changing and again while you’re freshening up, you don’t mind. You open the door with water running down your arms and chin and sit him on the sink basin while you brush your teeth. Spencer isn’t offended that you’ve taken over, it’s love. Like, his stomach aches with fondness watching you with Jude. You’ve been gentle from the beginning, loved Jude since he was a furious little baby crying himself sick in Spencer’s lap, and now you’re somehow more than that. You answer Jude’s why’s and when’s with the best you have. You pretend you aren’t tired, waiting for the three of you to sardine together in the dimly lit bed before you let out your first yawn.

“Are you tired?” Jude asks you knowingly.

“Not too much. How about you, are you tired?”

“Not too much,” he echoes. Jude turns to Spencer, looking his age again. “Are you tired?”

“I’m the most tired I’ve ever been,” he says.

He doesn’t have his schoolboy heart attacks seeing you in your pajamas anymore, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still find it special and secret when you rub your bare face and settle on your pillow, one eye hidden, the other sluggish. “Maybe we can rest our eyes with dad,” you suggest in a whisper, “he can sleep, and you can give him a cuddle.”

Jude reaches for your hand.

You hum softly. “I'm not going anywhere.”

Slowly, Jude reaches for Spencer with his other hand.

“Me neither,” he says.

They ‘rest their eyes’ until Jude falls asleep, snoring in snuffs by your head. Spencer takes his glasses and folds them up for the nightstand, before curling into him.

Cautious not to disturb Jude, you reach over to hold Spencer’s arm, locking Jude in, and giving Spencer some much needed reassurance. You don’t talk. Your thumb rubs into a ridge, a sore spot, and after a moment it’s sore in a new way.

“I can’t believe I didn’t realise it was you,” he says.

“Realise what?”

“Jude missed you. It was you.”

Your smile is gaussian. Happy and smudged. You pull Spencer closer to you, which in turn brings Jude right up on your chest. Spencer isn’t too cowardly to curve the arm you're holding right up over you in turn. His fingertips flirt with the dip in your spine, but stay.

“You’re not saying all this fuss was about me being away.”

“I’m wondering if it was.”

You don’t respond.

“You know how he gets when he can’t see me for the day,” Spencer says, afraid of waking Jude and of saying something too obviously adoring, “I should’ve guessed he missed you.”

“He doesn’t love me like he loves you, Spencer. Jude loves you like you’re… it’s… I wish you could see him when he’s with you, it’s like you’re the same person…” You smile apologetically. “Sorry, I don’t know how to say it.”

Spencer doesn’t know how to answer. He stares at Jude’s neck. “I know how he loves me, ‘cos it’s how much I love him. I just think after seeing him tonight, it’s obvious what was going on with him.”

“Don’t speak too soon, okay?” you say. “Let’s wait until tomorrow to decide he’s alright again.”

Spencer draws a line down Jude’s nose. What a kid. Exhausting, beautiful Jude.

“I missed you,” he says under his breath, not looking at you. “Don’t think I realised how much, either.”

“I missed you, too,” you say. When you laugh, it’s like your voice has split and feathered into softness he can’t touch. “I didn’t think it was possible to miss someone like I missed you both. I kept thinking about Jude, when he used to do all that gibberish babble between real words and you’d ask him to repeat himself and he’d be too shy to do it. And his eyes, and his curls, I… I really love him. I’m so lucky that you let me.”

I love you, Spencer thinks. From the day we met, and again when you called yourself my friend. Again, when you spent the first week of Jude’s homecoming sleeping on the couch and waking with every cry, soothing tears no matter who they came from, patient and tired, endlessly pretty.

“I didn’t let you,” Spencer says. “You’re ferocious.”

“Ha!” you whisper. “Ferocious. I like it.”

“I like you,” he says. It’s all he’s brave enough to confess.

“I’m a little sweet on you, Spencer Reid,” you say, turning your head up with a yawn. “I’m so tired.”

“Then sleep. We should sleep, I’m tired, too,” he says, sure he’d meant to say I love you, I want you to stay, I want to reach over and hold your neck and stay here for days.

Spencer allows himself the last one. You whisper goodnight, your face tickled by a small head of hair.

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