Spencer Reid - Blog Posts

Masterlist Ver 1.0

This account stands with Palestine

Last Updated: Friday January 24

The ones without underline sadly don't have any pics from me yet srry

Peacemaker

-Adrian chase

Percy Jackson

-Luke castellan

-Percy Jackson

-Clarisse la rue

Criminal minds

-Spencer Reid

The Mighty Ducks

-Dean Portman

-Dwayne Robertson

Hamzahthefantastic

-Hamzah

Streamers

-PlaqueBoyMax

-Fanum

-LumasVa

-TinkyJohn

Swagger

-Nick Mendez

Outer Banks

-Rafe Cameron

-Sarah Cameron

-Pope Heyward

The Walking Dead

-Carl Grimes

-Glenn Rhee

Mid90s

-Ruben

-fourthgrade

Will be updated regularly!

i hate how the majority of the criminal minds fandom is just obsessed with matthew/spencer, compared to other characters spencer has major character flaws and is arguably a toxic character. i love matthew but as a fandom we tend to forget other actors/characters that have equal amounts of redeeming qualities. feel free to disagree with me i love to argue ab this.

i don’t even need to say anything. just READ ITTTT

Love Letters in the Margins

MASTERLIST

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Summary: Spencer has a habit of leaving handwritten notes in the books you borrow from his personal collection. One day, you finally write back.

Pairing: Reader/Spencer Reid

Spencer Reid’s personal library was nothing short of magnificent. Towering shelves filled with well-loved books lined the walls of his apartment, their spines worn from years of eager reading. When you had first started borrowing from his collection, you had done so carefully, treating each volume like a fragile artifact. But what you hadn't expected to find—hidden between passages and prose—were his words.

The first time it happened, you had borrowed Pride and Prejudice. Nestled in the margins, in neat, slightly slanted handwriting, was a comment next to Elizabeth Bennet’s sharp-witted retort to Mr. Darcy.

“You remind me of Elizabeth—sharp, observant, and far too intelligent for the company you keep.”

You had stared at the note for minutes, heart pounding. Spencer had written this long before you borrowed the book, hadn’t he? It wasn’t meant for you, was it? The thought of confronting him about it seemed daunting. Instead, you traced his words with your fingertips, feeling a warmth bloom in your chest.

That discovery led to another. And another.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray:

“You would never be swayed by vanity. Your soul is too kind.”

In Jane Eyre:

“If I were Rochester, I wouldn’t have kept secrets from you.”

Each annotation, each carefully placed comment, felt personal. They weren’t just general observations; they were thoughtful, tailored to you.

Days passed before you gathered the courage to respond. You chose one of the books Spencer often reread—The Great Gatsby. As you turned the familiar pages, you found a passage underlined in Spencer’s careful hand:

“He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity.”

And next to it, in his delicate handwriting:

“Longing is a difficult thing to master.”

You exhaled deeply, running your fingers over the ink. If Spencer had been leaving these notes for you, maybe he had been waiting for a response, just as you had been waiting for a sign. With a rush of courage, you picked up a pen and, in the same margin, wrote:

“I wouldn’t need a green light. You’ve always been within reach.”

When you returned the book, carefully placing it back on his desk at the BAU, you felt the weight of your silent confession settle in your chest. What if he never noticed? What if he saw it and said nothing? The uncertainty gnawed at you, but it was too late to take it back now.

The next day, Spencer found you in the bullpen, book in hand, his expression unreadable. Your heart leapt into your throat.

“You…” he started, voice soft, reverent almost, as he flipped open The Great Gatsby to the exact page where your response was written. His fingers traced your words like they were delicate, precious.

“I—” you faltered. “Was that okay?”

His eyes locked onto yours, something unspoken passing between you. Then, he smiled. Not just any smile—one of those rare, genuine smiles that lit up his entire face, the kind of smile that made your stomach flip.

“You wrote back.” His voice was breathless, in awe.

You swallowed hard. “I was wondering when you’d notice.”

For a long moment, Spencer simply stared at you, the book clutched to his chest. It was as if he was processing every possibility at once, and you could almost see the thoughts racing in his brilliant mind. Then, before you could panic, he took a step closer.

“I—” He hesitated, clearing his throat. “I’ve been leaving those notes for you.”

Your breath caught. “You have?”

Spencer gave a short, nervous laugh. “For a while now. I didn’t know if you’d ever see them or if you’d—”

“I saw them,” you interrupted, a smile tugging at your lips. “And I loved them.”

His shoulders relaxed, relief washing over his face. “Really?”

You nodded, warmth spreading through you. “Really.”

For a long moment, neither of you spoke. Then, Spencer exhaled, flipping the book open once more. “So… does this mean I can keep writing to you?”

You tilted your head playfully. “Only if I can write back.”

His smile widened, his fingers brushing against yours over the worn edges of the book. “I’d like that.”

From that day forward, every book exchanged between you contained more than just stories. Between the lines of famous literature, nestled in the margins of classic texts, you found something even more precious:

Love letters in ink, waiting to be read.

The notes continued, hidden within the pages of literature both of you adored. A stolen thought in Wuthering Heights, a whispered confession in Les Misérables. Each time Spencer handed you a book, your fingers would brush, lingering longer than necessary, and his eyes would search yours for recognition.

Then, one evening, as you flipped through Anna Karenina, you found a note in the final pages, underlining a passage about fate.

“Sometimes, love is written long before we even know it exists.”

And below it, in a nervous, yet determined script, Spencer had added:

“I think I’ve been in love with you longer than I realized.”

Your breath caught, your heart hammering against your ribs. This wasn’t just a passing thought, an intellectual observation. It was real.

Without hesitation, you reached for a pen and, with steady fingers, wrote beneath his words:

“Then it’s about time we stop reading between the lines.”

That night, when Spencer saw your response, he didn’t just smile.

He kissed you.

And for the first time, there were no more words left unwritten.

The notes continued, but they became something different now—love notes, secret confessions, playful teases. You wrote to him in the margins of history books, and he replied with riddles in the pages of mystery novels. The space between you had once been filled with unspoken words, but now it was a novel of its own, each sentence a promise, each underline a touch.

One day, Spencer handed you a book without a title on its cover. Puzzled, you flipped it open to the first page, where a single line was scrawled in his familiar handwriting:

“Every great love story deserves to be written.”

And beneath it, in smaller letters:

“Will you write ours with me?”

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YES YES YESSSSS ITS SO GOOD

The One Where Everyone Finds Out

Master List

Spencer Reid is in love with Y/N, and she’s in love with him…only they don’t know it yet…and they might be are definitely going to be the very last to know. And since Spencer and Y/N happen to be surrounded by the best profilers in the country, the rest of the team is, of course, the first to piece together the romance. Little by little, bit by bit, the team solves the case of Spencer and Y/N. 

A 1K Celebration miniseries!

TIMELINE OF EVENTS MENTIONED IN THE SERIES

The One Where Hotch Finds Out

The One Where Penelope Finds Out

The One Where Derek Finds Out

The One Where Alex Finds Out

The One Where JJ Finds Out

The One Where Rossi Finds Out

The One Where Spencer Finds Out

The One Where Everyone Finds Out

Full Fic in Chronological Order

~~~

Taglist: @pinkdiamond1016 @shadyladyperfection @cielo1984 @rainsong01 @jhillio @pessimystic-fangirl @saspencereid​ @takeyourleap-of-faith @andreasworlsboring101 @avidreider @saays-bitch @waddlenut @nighttimerain123 @meowimari @aizawaxkun @babyspencersslut @no-honey-no @the-hermit @andrewhoezierbyrne @jessicarabbit09 @subhuman-queer​ @ncsls0515​ @liaabsurd​ @sizzlingclamturtlesludge​ @sassiest-politician​ @meowiemari​ @uhuhuh​ @closetedreidstan​ @whatamidoinghp​ @quillanpie​ @spongeshxt​ @spencer-blake-supremacy​ @itsametaphorbriansblog​ @vgirl-10123​ @peoplejustcanthandlemywierdness​ @stand-tall-pineapple​ @nighttimerain123 @padsfirewhisky​ @ceeellewrites​ @mggsprettygirl​ @drayshadow​ @cal-ifornication​ @theetherealbloom​ @teenwolfgirl90 @eevee0722​ @questionmymentality​ @wintermuteway​ @ellesmythe​ @mac99martin​ @supersouthy​ @obsssedwithjustaboutanything​ @ssa-githae​ @cherrystay​ @calm-and-doctor​ @icedcoffee187​ @devilswaldorf​ @annemijnisdancing​ @half-blood-dork​ @blameitonthenight21​ @happyreid187​ @ssa-kassidyhughes​ @goldeng1rl8​ @meangirlsx​ @honestlystop​ @lastpasttheposts​ @problemforfuturetech @justthewidevarietyofthingsilike​ @avengers-ass-emble17​ @bauhousewife​ @averyhotchner​ @underscorecourt​ @green-intervention​ @takeyourleap-of-faith​ @fan-girl-97​ @coolbeans3​ @boxofsparklingmuses​ @allaboutsml​ @day-n-night-dreamer​ @ssareidbby​ @percabethfangirl​ @spencerreidsimptime​​ @v-is-obsessive​ @tanyaherondale​ @usuck​ @mitchiri-nek0​ @olicity-beliver​ @kaitlynpcallmebeepme​

Link to Main Master List

LIFE IS GOOD WHEN I READ SPENCER REID FICS THAT ARE THIS GOOD.

Sweet echoes of the past

Summary: When the gentle hand of the past becomes the present, it tightens around the ADA's throat, forcing the hidden faces of darkness into the light. Pairing: Spencer reid x lawyer!reader Genre: HURT/comfort wc: 19k! (i know it's long but its a retribution for the wait time) TW: cm canon violence, FEMALE RAGE, kidnapping, discuss of child trafficking and abuse, discuss of domestic violence, vertigo, discuss of drugs and reader's past (talked in part III) gets disclosure! A/N: i support women's rights and women's wrongs. it's supposed to be jesus reid through the whole chapter but i didn't find a pic that would match. not proofread yet. part I - part II - part III - part IV - masterlist

　　　　 　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　　

As the elevator doors slid open, you stepped into the hallway of your apartment complex, exhaustion settling deep in your bones from the lack of sleep over the past few nights.

It had been months since you helped Morgan in Chicago. The determination you had shown—sometimes unnecessarily—and the disclosure of your past to gain Morgan’s trust had made you the BAU’s preferred unofficial legal advisor. Whenever they needed legal assistance—whether it was a warrant, a last-minute consult, or navigating bureaucratic red tape—you were the first person they called. It was never official, never written down anywhere, but the weight of it still lingered, pressing against your already demanding workload.

You weren’t complaining, though—you loved to help. And you would never admit that maybe, just maybe, Reid’s presence was a factor in your willingness to do so.

Ever since that conversation on the jet—the one that had been abruptly cut short when Hotch interrupted—you hadn’t tried to continue it. You had left the seat in front of him, and going back felt… strange. Too obvious? Too desperate? What if he didn’t want to talk? So you didn’t.

Which was incredibly frustrating, because you would have listened to him for hours. Every thought, every opinion, every ridiculous fact he might throw your way.

Still, in that time, you had learned a few things about him. He was brilliant—almost impossibly so. You had overheard him ramble, though never to you, about the most fascinating things: statistical probabilities, obscure historical events, literary references that seemed to live at the tip of his tongue. His mind was like an endless black hole of knowledge, and the more you listened, the more you wanted to be the one he shared it all with. The more you wanted to crawl inside his head and understand everything about him—the books he read, the things he liked, his favorite foods, his favorite things in general. Everything. Anything.

But the more time you spent with him—with the BAU in the middle—the heavier the guilt sat in your stomach. Someone like him, someone that brilliant, wouldn’t turn to drugs because he thought it would be fun or relaxing. Something must have happened. Something bad. And instead of reaching out, instead of trying to talk to him like a normal person, you had freaked out. You had gotten mad. You had acted on impulse—flushing his drugs, shoving a card with a number into his hands without even checking if he understood what it meant.

You had been a monster.

And you didn’t know if there was any way to fix it. 

Anyway… you tried not to go down that road too often. Your impulsiveness wasn’t entirely your fault—though if Dr. Fitzgerald were here, she'd make sure you took responsibility for your actions.

Still, Reid didn’t seem to hate you or anything. If anything, he was almost… friendly. Maybe he was just being polite. Maybe he was wary of you—of what you could do, of what you could become.

You definitely needed a bath. A long one.

One that would take your mind off him, off your spiraling self-doubt.

Though, if you were being honest with yourself, you’d probably just end up thinking about the major case that had landed on your desk months ago.

At first, it seemed like a straightforward prostitution case—three men arrested for running a ring. But things took a darker turn when financial records revealed suspicious transactions, and lists of names and ages were hidden under the guise of real estate properties.

On paper, they appeared to be children and teenagers. But no bodies were found. None of the rescued individuals were underage, and every single one of them insisted they hadn’t been forced into anything.

You had call transcripts connecting D.C. to Virginia, Maryland, and even Baltimore, but they weren’t enough to prove people were being trafficked and sold. You didn’t even have a confirmed transportation route. With the evidence you had, the harshest sentence you could secure was 20 years—at best.

That wasn’t good enough.

You and Austin had been working non-stop, digging for anything that could reopen the case. The police had committed a dumb mistake, totally unintentional, and blamed it on a rookie officer. 

You weren’t so sure.

The trial date was still a month and a half away, and if you didn’t find enough evidence to charge them under RICO, you’d be forced to fight for every minor charge you could throw at them.

It was a high-profile case. You knew that. Your boss knew that. Your very proud—but slightly concerned—parents knew that. Soon, the press would probably know that too.

Did the pressure affect you? Maybe. It added weight to your shoulders, sure, but nothing compared to the pressure you put on yourself.

As you reached your door and unlocked it, the usual sense of ease and relaxation never came. Your body knew it wasn’t safe yet.

At first, you told yourself it was nothing. Coincidence. Paranoia. Your mind playing tricks on you after digging too deep into something dangerous.

But then, the little things started adding up.

The unsettling feeling of being watched, the man you were almost certain had followed you during your morning run. Papers on your desk shifted just enough to make you second-guess yourself. A black car parked across the street, there one day, gone the next—then back again.

You were methodical. Filed the complaints, knowing full well they'd be ignored. But you did it anyway. It was something to fall back on—a formality, a way to say you tried.

But nothing prepared you for this.

The moment you stepped inside, something felt wrong.

The silence, thicker than usual. The stillness in the air as if it were holding its breath.

Something incredible happens to the brain after it experiences trauma. The amygdala heightens the sensibility to danger helping recognize and avoid potentially harmful situations in the future. It can also enhance emotional resilience—some people develop a stronger sense of intuition, quicker reaction times, and a greater ability to read social cues.

Your bag hit the rack. Your coat slipped off your shoulders, but you didn’t move—didn’t breathe—until you saw it.

A piece of candy. Then another. And another.

Everywhere.

Scattered across the floor, the counters, the table—spilling from the cabinets, tumbling from the couch, everywhere.

Your skin prickled. Your stomach twisted. You didn't want to follow the trail, but your feet moved anyway, step by step, against every instinct screaming at you to turn around.

Candy. Candy. Candy.

Crinkling wrappers, glinting under the dim light.

Candy. Candy. Candy.

Your breath came shallow. The air felt thick. Too sweet. Sickly.

Candy. Candy. Candy.

You followed it into the kitchen. More candy.

Piled high, spilling over the edges of the counter, the table, the chairs. The sheer amount of it—obscene, suffocating, grotesque. Like a tide that had rushed in and drowned the room in sugar-coated horror.

Your fingers twitched. Your jaw clenched.

A candy wrapper crinkled. Your body jerked—but you hadn’t moved. Had you?

You looked down. Your hand. Your fingers, clenched so tightly around something that the foil had crushed against your palm.

Your heart lurched. You didn’t pick anything up.

You swallowed, throat dry. Then you saw it. Amidst the mess, perched at the very top of an overflowing heap.

A folded note.

The candy was pressing in, the sweet artificial scent clogging your throat.

Candy. Candy. Candy.

You reached out.

A breath shuddered out of you. Your vision blurred. The room felt smaller, pressing in, squeezing, pulling you back—back to the days when candy was more than just candy. When it meant something else. Something worse.

Your knees locked. Your pulse pounded in your ears.

Candy. Candy. Candy.

You weren’t breathing. You couldn’t breathe.

The paper crinkled between your fingers as you unfolded it.

Miss me, sugarcube?

—Dr. C.

　　　　 　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　　

The night was settling over the city as the bullpen slowly emptied. The BAU had just wrapped up a case in Louisiana, and exhaustion lingered in the air, each agent buried in their own work.

Spencer wasn’t paying much attention until Morgan’s phone rang.

“What's up, Woody?”

That caught his ear. They usually called you. Not the other way around.

A flicker of jealousy sparked—irrational, unwanted, but there. Morgan had the privilege of calling you by your nickname, not just your name, like it was second nature. Like it meant something.

But that flicker died the second Morgan’s posture shifted.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What's going on? You have to bre—”

Whoever was on the other end cut him off. Morgan sat up straighter, his brow furrowing.

Spencer felt his pulse tick up.

Morgan nodded sharply, already reaching for his jacket. “I'll be there in ten. Is she okay?”

The words hit like a hammer to the chest. You.

Something was wrong.

Reid was on his feet before he even realized it, trailing Morgan as he grabbed Prentiss’s arm on the way out.

“What happened?” he demanded, voice tighter than he intended.

Morgan didn’t answer right away. He was moving too fast.

That only made the knot in Reid’s stomach tighten.

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Morgan's knocking on your door was frantic, sharp raps against the wood that barely left room for a pause. Behind him, Prentiss and Reid stood tense, their eyes flicking toward the door, waiting.

Inside, Austin peered through the peephole before unlocking it, swinging the door open without hesitation.

“I got her to take a shower,” he said, stepping aside to let them in. His voice was steady, but the tightness in his jaw betrayed him.

The apartment felt wrong.

Reid stepped inside, his gaze immediately scanning the space. The lights were on, but there was an eerie stillness, a weight hanging in the air. The scent of something sharp—maybe soap, maybe something harsher—lingered.

Morgan exhaled, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “What the hell happened?”

Austin’s lips pressed into a thin line. He looked toward the hallway, where the faint sound of running water could be heard. “Someone broke in during the day”. 

Without another word, he turned and walked toward the kitchen. In the middle of the aisle sat a large garbage bag, its top loosely tied. Austin pulled it open, revealing an unsettling sight—piles of candy, an overwhelming amount. He reached inside, pulled out a small card, and handed it to Morgan.

“This was scattered all over the place,” Austin said, nodding toward the bag. “And this was left with it.”

Morgan’s eyes scanned the card, his expression darkening. He turned it over, glancing at Austin, waiting for an explanation.

Austin’s voice was steady but clipped. “Dr. C,” he said, the name alone carrying weight. “It stands for Dr. Calloway.”

Morgan frowned. “Who is that?”

“He was my foster father.”

Spencer turned at the sound of your voice. You stood in the doorway, wrapped in a long, fluffy white robe, your damp hair clinging to your shoulders. The only skin visible was the curve of your neck, the length of your forearms, and a glimpse of your legs beneath the hem. You clutched the robe tightly against your chest, as if trying to shield yourself—not just from the cold, but from the lingering presence of what had invaded your space.

“He used to give those… a lot of them, before and after he—” Your voice stuttered, catching on the words, unable to finish. 

Spencer’s gaze flickered to the kitchen, then back to you, the weight of your words settling heavily. Then, he noticed it—the raw redness of your skin. Even from across the room, he could see the angry patches where you had scrubbed too hard, as if trying to wash away something that wouldn’t come off.

You cleared your throat as best as you could. “What did the cameras show?” Your voice was low, raspy, as if it hurt to speak.

Spencer barely registered the words. All he could focus on was your eyes—wide, searching, and for the first time, so… small. The sharp edges of your presence were still there, but instead of the formidable woman he knew, you looked like a child—a scared one, cornered with no way out.

Austin sighed, his expression unreadable as he chose his words carefully. “The staff said the cameras haven’t been working for about a week.”

Something in you snapped.

“What do you mean they aren’t working?” Your voice rose, trembling with anger. “This place brags about its security system!” You whirled toward the door, fists clenched. “I’m gonna sue them for negligence and breach of contract! They’re going to—”

Austin moved fast, already anticipating your reaction. He caught you before you could storm out, arms locking around your waist as he turned you away from the door.

“You are not going out.” His grip was firm but steady as he spun you to face him, hands settling on your shoulders. His voice softened, but his words struck hard. “You’re losing focus. You’re losing perspective. You’re losing energy.”

It was a mantra he told you every time you were being too impulsive, too reckless, lashing out without thinking. His voice grounded you when you were ready to burn everything down.

You refused to look up—to meet the gazes of Reid, Morgan, or Prentiss. You could already picture their expressions. Judgment at your impulsiveness. Pity at your situation.

You didn’t know which was worse.

“Woody I understand this is a lot for you right now” Aside from Austin, Morgan was the only aware—partially—of what it meant that note. “We can help catch whoever did this okay? We'll take this to the rest of the team.”

You nodded, not being sure if that's what you really wanted. “I-” You couldn't help but stutter while swallowing the knot on your throat you forced yourself to. “He's supposed to be in prison now”

Prentiss began scanning the apartment, checking the corners with a trained eye. She ran a gloved hand over the door frame, inspecting the lock closely before crouching near the handle. “No visible signs of forced entry,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone else.

Morgan asked carefully, “Is there any chance he got out?”

The thought of someone like him—a monster—walking free through the streets made you sick. “I’m not sure. His sentence was 20 years, but the charges didn’t exclude parole opportunities.”

“Did they break anything else?” Reid asked, his gaze shifting to the shattered glass on the floor.

You shifted your weight uncomfortably from one leg to the other, at the full display of your anger, shaking your head. “No, I—um… that was me.” He didn’t miss the note of shame in your voice as you spoke. 

“Have you noticed someone following you or watching you, maybe?” Prentiss asked carefully from the entry door. 

You nodded, exhaling shakily. “Yeah, um… on my morning runs and outside the courtroom sometimes. There’s a folder in my desk.”

Without waiting, you walked in toward your office. As they entered, they took in the mess from the case you were working—registers in the floor, files and records pinned in a corkboard, a stark contrast to the rest of your apartment. The mess in here felt intentional, like the chaos inside your head had spilled into the space.

You dropped to your knees in front of the desk, pulling open the bottom drawer. Then, instead of rifling through it, you gripped both sides and yanked it out entirely, setting it aside.

Their eyes followed your movements as you reached down, pressing your fingers against the smooth wood floor until you found what you were looking for. A red folder, hidden beneath the drawer, its worn edges marked with a single sticker that read Austin.

You stood slowly, gripping it tightly before handing it over. “I have copies of every complaint I’ve made over the last couple of months… it’s all in here in case—”

The thought of you leaving proof in case something happened to you made Spencer’s chest tighten. His fingers hesitated for a fraction of a second before he opened the folder.

Inside, neatly stacked yet slightly worn from being handled, were copies of official complaints, incident reports, and personal notes. Dates, locations, descriptions of suspicious figures—some written hastily, others with meticulous detail. 

Before he could say anything, Morgan spoke up. “Do you know if they took anything from here?”

You shook your head. “It looks normal, and if they did take something, I have copies of everything in my office.” You paused for a moment, thinking. “Did you find anything at the hospital?” you asked, turning to Austin.

He shook his head. “They insisted on a warrant, but a nurse said she could help me if I came back tonight.”

A sigh of exhaustion left your lips as Morgan glanced between the two of you. “Then why don’t you just get a warrant?” he asked, his tone laced with confusion.

The question made you tense up.

You and Austin exchanged a wary look before you answered carefully. “We’re conducting an investigation that has to stay off the record.”

“What do you mean ‘has to stay’?” Reid asked, his brows knitting together.

“It’s a case I’m prosecuting, but we think it’s bigger than what’s on paper, and we can’t prove it yet,” you explained, crossing your arms as you stood. “Weeks ago, some evidence was ‘mislabeled’—sat in storage for weeks before anyone realized. The police chalked it up to a clerical mistake, and now they’re insisting on closing it.”

Morgan exhaled sharply, glancing at Austin. “And you think someone did it on purpose?”

Austin nodded. “There’s too many coincidences. Too many people trying to shut this down.”

Morgan nodded in understanding. “Tomorrow, we’ll tell the rest of the team about this. It’d be best if you didn’t go out much—stay indoors as much as possible.”

You shook your head immediately, running a hand over your forehead. “I can’t. I have to go to work tomorrow. I have a trial.” Your voice was firm, unwavering. You weren’t about to let someone else control your life. Not again.

Reid, who had been silent up until now, felt his mind start running the numbers. He calculated the probabilities of something happening to you if you insisted on going to work—factoring in everything they knew. Your stalker’s escalation pattern, his growing confidence, geographical profiling probabilities based on your work location. The percentage of workplace homicides committed by known aggressors versus strangers. The statistical likelihood of an abduction attempt in broad daylight versus early morning or late evening.

The numbers weren’t in your favor.

The higher the risk, the tighter the knot in his stomach became. Rationally, he knew he couldn’t control your choices, but emotionally, the thought of you walking straight into danger made his pulse quicken.

He swallowed and called your name softly. “It’s too dangerous for you.”

“If he’s watching and I don’t go to work, he’ll think he’s in control.” You met Reid’s gaze, and for a moment, the numbers ceased to matter. The statistics, the probabilities—none of it held weight against the quiet determination in your voice. You weren’t demanding, just asking. Asking to hold onto some semblance of control over your own reality.

Austin, who had promised long ago to stand by your side, spoke up. “The courtroom and the D.A.’s office are always packed with officers. Plus, if we escort her, he’ll see us and maybe back off.”

Or get even angrier, Reid thought. The probability of escalation was high—too high—but when he looked at you, at the way you squared your tense shoulders despite the fear you were barely keeping at bay, he knew you already understood the risk. You were scared, that much was obvious. But you refused to let that fear dictate your actions. And maybe that terrified him more than any statistic ever could.

Prentiss re-entered the room, her gloved hands brushing against the doorframe. “The lock wasn’t forced, but the scratches on the latch suggest someone picked it.” She gestured toward the window. “And there are faint scuff marks on the sill, like someone checked it as a secondary entry point.”

You nodded. "So it's not safe for me to stay here, is it?" Even if it was, you weren’t sure you’d ever feel safe here again.

Morgan, Reid, and Prentiss exchanged hesitant glances. Eventually, Morgan let out a deep breath, looking at you with concern. "We can set up surveillance outside, keep a close watch. But you need to think about what you want, too. If you don’t feel safe here, we’ll figure something out."

You hesitated for a moment, feeling the weight of the uncertainty pressing down on you. Spencer could see it in your eyes, and it ached him to realize that you didn’t feel safe in your own home. 

Austin noticed the hesitation too and, without another word, made the decision for you. “Fix a bag with what you need. If you forget something, we can come back together, you are staying at my place.” he said, his voice steady and firm.

You nodded slowly, the practicality of the suggestion grounding you, but the knot in your stomach tightened. The idea of leaving felt like a step further into something you couldn’t control, but at least it was a step toward safety—toward some semblance of normalcy.

As you turned toward your bedroom, you felt a flicker of gratitude for Austin’s unwavering presence. Spencer’s gaze followed you, his concern etched deep into his features, but he remained silent, understanding that you needed space to process it all.

As they were walking out of your office, something caught Reid’s attention—a small yellow post-it note buried among the clutter. The handwriting was nearly indecipherable, but the quote stood out:

"To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's."

He recognized it instantly—Dostoevsky.

Almost reaching your bedroom, you suddenly froze. A realization hit you like a punch to the gut. Someone had been sending you baskets of candy and chocolate for months—always without a card. You had dismissed it every time, taking them to the park to share with the kids. The kids.

“Austin!” you called out, horror tightening your throat.

He was by your side in an instant. “What? What is it?”

“The c-candy… we have to—”

“I’m getting rid of all of it, don’t worry,” he said, grabbing your trembling hands.

“No! You don’t understand.” You shook your head frantically. “You have to test them. See if they were spiked or something.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes, and he nodded, his grip on your hands tightening.

“I’ll call your dad, tell him to get them tested first thing in the morning,” he reassured you.

"Tested how? Why?" Spencer asked, his sharp gaze flicking between you and Austin, picking up on every detail—the stiffness in your posture, the way your fingers twitched like they wanted to curl into fists. The horror in your eyes.

You opened your mouth, but nothing came out. You should have had an answer, a perfectly structured explanation. But your mind wasn’t cooperating. The words tangled, stuck somewhere between logic and memory. If you said it out loud, it would be real. And if it was real, then—

Austin moved, getting you into your bedroom before you could even try to force something out.

"Sit down," he said, his voice softer now but edged with quiet urgency. "Take a breath, and when you feel ready, pack a bag."

He stepped out, finally giving you a moment of silence. Outside, he joined Morgan and Prentiss, their conversation hushed but focused as they mapped out their next move.

Ten minutes later, they had a plan—Austin would relay all necessary information about you to Garcia and JJ. But Spencer wasn’t listening. Not really. His mind was elsewhere, caught on you and how you were holding up. He didn’t want to intrude, not while Morgan and Prentiss were deep in discussion, but his gaze kept drifting to your door.

Slowly, he approached, noticing it was slightly ajar. The dim light from inside spilled into the hallway, offering him a glimpse of your space—neat, controlled, yet somehow fragile. He hesitated, then knocked softly, calling your name.

No answer.

A flicker of unease tightened his chest. He knew you needed space, but silence had never felt so heavy. Pushing past his hesitation, he stepped inside.

You were curled up on the window seat, dressed in loose black sweatpants and a gray T-shirt. The window was half-open, a faint cold breeze stirring the fabric of the curtains, cooling your senses down. Your back was turned to him, your hand moving absently over the soft fur of a gray cat curled against your thigh.

Reid hesitated, watching you for a moment. There was something fragile about the way you sat there, staring out at the night. The weight of the evening still clung to you, but the cat’s quiet presence seemed to ground you—if only just.

He took a careful step forward. “Hey,” he said gently.

He startled you, making you jump clumsily in the seat. The sudden movement spooked the stray cat perched on the windowsill, its fur bristling as it let out a sharp hiss. In its panic, it lashed out, claws swiping against the back of your hand before bolting.

You flinched, instinctively pulling your hand close to your chest as the cat leapt from the ledge and disappeared into the night. A bright line of red was already forming where its claws had caught you.

“I’m sorry, I—” he started, but you quickly cut him off.

“It’s okay. I didn’t hear you coming.” Your voice was quiet but gentle, like you didn’t want him to feel bad for it.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again, unsure of what to say—unsure of how to reach you through whatever you were going through. Finally, he settled on the only thing that came to mind. “What’s its name?”

That earned him a small, tired smile, and for a brief moment, he thought he might have done something right. “Um—he sorta came with the place,” you admitted, glancing back at the empty windowsill. “I just call him Stray.”

Spencer’s brows furrowed slightly, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “You named a stray cat ‘Stray’?” His voice held a hint of humor, soft but genuine.

You couldn’t help but feel a warmth spread in your chest at the sound of it. “Yeah…” you replied with a lighter tone. “He owns up to his name.” You raised your right hand a little, showing him the long scratch on the back of it, as if to prove it.

He pressed his lips together, rocking back and forth on his feet nervously. “Sorry again,” he muttered, his voice soft.

You shook your head, a small smile tugging at your lips. “It’s fine, he just got scared.” You glanced back toward the window where the cat was tentatively returning. You placed your hand a few inches away from him, watching as the stray slowly approached. It only took a second before he leaned against your hand, purring softly and licking the scratch he had done, as if he felt guilty and was apologizing.

“He’s been coming around since I first moved in years ago,” you said, your voice gentle as you scratched the back of the cat’s ears, causing it to purr louder. “It took me an entire year, some food, and a lot of scratches and patience to get him this comfortable.”

You smiled a little at the softness of the moment, but the warmth faded just as quickly as it came. The reality of it all crashed back down on you—this place you called home had been invaded, your sense of security stolen. Again.

“I have to move out right?” the thought of leaving Stray alone and without food pained you. 

Spencer saw the shift in your expression at his nod, the way your shoulders sagged and your eyes darkened with exhaustion. He hated that look on your face, hated the weight of it. Desperate to pull you away from the spiraling thoughts, he let his gaze sweep across the room, searching for something—anything—to get you out of it. 

“Did you go to Harvard?” Reid asked, his eyes landing on a framed picture sitting on the bookshelf.

In the photo, a younger version of you stood between your parents, your diploma in hand. Your mother held a crimson banner with the university’s name in gold, while your father wore a red sweater emblazoned with a bold yellow ‘H.’

“Yeah. Law school. Though I look awful in those pictures,” you admitted.

You were 18 in them, and in your opinion, it wasn’t your best moment. The smudge eyeliner and dark clothes—an attempt to make yourself look unapproachable—clashed awkwardly with the family-intended picture. Besides, college wasn’t exactly a time you looked back on fondly.

Thankfully, you had outgrown the phase of needing to prove yourself. Sort of.

Reid, however, thought you looked pretty. Despite the heavy makeup that aged you, he could still see the youth in your features—the sharp intelligence in your eyes, the quiet determination. He wanted to ask more. At what age had you graduated high school? How had your teenage years in college been? Were they anything like his—lonely, spent buried in books?

You stood from the window seat, moving to zip up the bag you had packed for the next few days at Austin’s. Your gaze flickered to the closet, pausing briefly on the dress hanging behind the door.

Prentiss knocked lightly before stepping in with a small smile. “Ready to go?” Her eyes landed on the dress. “Oh, that’s fancy.”

It was. The dark purple silk draped elegantly, the halter top flattering yet professional, the long skirt flowing with just the right amount of sophistication. You and your mom had picked it out together for an important dinner—she had insisted you needed something that made you feel beautiful.

You exhaled, brushing a hand over the fabric. “Yeah… It was for a work dinner. But I guess I finally found the perfect excuse not to go.”

You grabbed the bag and walked out of the room, Spencer and Prentiss leading the way. With one last glance over your shoulder, you reached for the light switch, casting the space into darkness before quietly closing the door behind you.

　　　　 　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　　

Walking into the bullpen of the BAU felt like stepping into a pressure chamber—every glance, every hushed conversation carrying the weight of unspoken questions. You weren’t just another visitor; you were the case. The reason for the extra tension in the air. 

Morgan led the way, having picked you and Austin up for security reasons—Austin’s bike wasn’t exactly the safest option. The briefing room felt suffocating, the air thick with unspoken concern. You tried to ignore the warmth creeping up your back, the telltale sign of exhaustion clawing at you. Sleep had been scarce last night, and the extra-bitter coffee in your hand was doing little to keep you grounded.

Everyone was already there when the three of you arrived. Their eyes flicked toward you, subtle yet piercing, like they could see right through you. You hated this feeling—vulnerability wrapping itself around you like a second skin. Have you ever walked into a room and felt like a lamb walking straight to the slaughter? You swallowed the knot in your throat and forced out the proper good mornings, your voice steadier than you expected.

Some habits never leave you. Like the art of avoiding physical touch—something you’d perfected in your teenage years. Always keeping your hands full, whether with books, files, or a cup of coffee. A strategic shield, paired with an apologetic smile when someone offered their hand, as if to say, Oh, I’d shake, but my hands are full. Sorry. Every movement calculated, arbitrarily staged, yet second nature by now.

And yes you could perfectly just say no to a simple handshake but playing against the rules wouldn't have gotten you anywhere. 

You stayed at the back of the room, leaning against the wall, trying to avoid the pitying looks from the team. JJ began explaining how, over the last few months, you had been stalked—someone had followed your routine, watching your every move.

Images appeared on the screen, displaying your apartment filled with candy. Your stomach twisted at the sight, and you quickly averted your eyes, staring out toward the bullpen instead. JJ continued, explaining how the situation was even more concerning given that your personal address wasn’t listed in any public records—precautions you had taken after past incidents.

“There was a note left behind,” she said, pressing a button to reveal a close-up of the paper on the screen. The message was short but chilling.

“‘Dr. C.’” JJ read aloud. “It stands for Doctor Calloway.”

Garcia chimed in, her voice devoid of its usual warmth. “Doctor Dean Calloway is a convicted felon. Over twenty years ago, he and his wife, Michelle Calloway, ran a foster home. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison for child neglect and public assistance fraud in Wallens Ridge State Prison.” 

The picture of him on the TV makes your legs go weak. His cold, piercing eyes—the same ones that had once looked at you with a twisted, possessive kind of love—make you feel like you want to rip your skin off, just to escape the memory of them.

Hotch frowned at the pictures. “And what’s the significance of the candy?”

You cleared your throat, knowing this was an important detail you had to clarify. “Calloway was—is—a child molester.”

The silence that settled over the room was suffocating, pressing down on your chest like a weight.

“He used to call me like that and drug me on the nights he—” Your voice wavered, threatening to crack, but you forced yourself to continue. “I never knew how or with what. All I know is that he made me eat thousands of those, maybe to hide the taste of whatever he was using.”

You swallowed hard, the weight of their eyes pressing against you, seeing through the cracks you tried so hard to keep together.

“His license was revoked after his conviction,” you added, your tone carefully measured, though your hands clenched at your sides, wanting to stop the trembling. “And I never had enough proof to go after him.”

A heavy silence followed, the air thick with unspoken thoughts. The team exchanged glances—understanding, anger, maybe even guilt for not realizing sooner. You weren’t sure which was worse.

Hotch was the first to break the silence. His voice was steady but edged with something close to anger. “If he’s been sending you these messages, then he’s either out or has someone on the outside working for him.”

Reid shifted on his seat, his hands clasped tightly in front of him. “Calloway was sentenced to thirty years. Even with good behavior, he shouldn’t be out yet.”

Garcia’s fingers flew over her keyboard, her usual warmth replaced by urgency. “Apparently, Wallens Ridge had a fault in their security system three days ago, making it really easy for a whole lot of very bad people to escape.”

“Three days ago?” Morgan’s voice was incredulous. “The stalking’s been going on for almost two months. Why didn’t we hear about this sooner?”

“They say they’re not sure who specifically got out,” Garcia responded, her fingers pausing over the keys. “The place is huge, so they’re still updating the fugitives list.”

“I never told anyone about the candy,” you said, your voice thick with the weight of the revelation. “He’s the only one who could’ve known about that.” Your mind raced, trying to piece together any possible logical explanation.

“Unless he has someone on the outside, someone who’s been following you,” Rossi suggested, and his words made your skin feel clammy. 

“Or there are two different stalkers,” Austin added, his gaze focused on you. “It wouldn’t be the first time a case backfired, especially if people have been watching you for other reasons.”

“So, we’re talking about two UnSubs?” Prentiss asked, her brow furrowing in thought.

You nodded slowly, the weight of the situation sinking in deeper. “It’s a high-stakes case. A lot of powerful people are expecting it to be closed and moved to trial as soon as possible. If something goes wrong…” You trailed off, feeling the invisible pressure of it all.

Hotch looked at you, his gaze intense and almost protective. “What kind of case is it?.”

You placed the file down on the table, your fingers brushing over it as you tried to keep your voice steady, but the weight of everything pressing down on you made it hard. You could feel the room’s tension shift, everyone leaning in, focused on your every word.

“The police investigated what on paper are prostitution houses,” you continued, your tone serious, “leading to the arrest of four men—two of them were real estate agents as a cover-up.” You paused for a moment, glancing at the file again, then at the faces of your team, your voice steadying as you pressed on. “All the victims we managed to rescue are adults who claim they weren’t being exploited. But when I went to check the financial records of these real estate agents, I found a ton of transactions tied to a series of properties they owned. The weird part? It was incredibly difficult to get access to the catalogue of properties, and none of them have a real, tangible address.” 

"At first, I didn’t think much of it, but then I realized—each property is actually a person they’re selling. It’s a human catalogue disguised as real estate listings." You knew you probably sounded crazy, but recognizing patterns and hidden meanings had always been how you survived.

"If a property is listed for rent, it’s prostitution. If it’s for sale only, it’s trafficking. A single-story house means the victim is a minor, while two or more floors likely indicate an adult. A garage means it’s a girl, no garage means it’s a boy. I think a porch signifies plastic surgery. And the descriptions of the walls and floors? They match the victim’s physical characteristics."

You laid out the pictures from the folder across the table, arranging them with a methodical precision. "These are the rescued victims. All of them are adults, former prostitutes, found in houses packed with bedrooms."

Then, you placed photos of houses and their corresponding descriptions beneath each victim’s picture. "Look at this one. Dark skin, dark eyes. And this house? Walnut floors, two stories, only available for rent, and it has a garage." You tapped the listing with growing certainty. "They aren’t selling homes. They’re selling people."

The team exchanged looks, some curious, others frowning with concern. Morgan was the first to speak. "How certain are you about this?"

"About 80%. Finding consistent leads has been really difficult," you explained, trying to keep your voice steady.

Hotch leaned forward, his expression sharp. "What does the DA say about all of this?"

You took a deep breath, steadying yourself. “She… doesn’t know. She’s planning her retirement and wants me to run for her position so I can ‘follow her legacy.’ She thinks this case could secure my election—and she’ll be telling everyone that at the Annual Winter Gala for the District Attorney’s office tonight,” you explained carefully. “If I find proof that the case has crossed state lines, it would automatically fall under the Department of Justice’s jurisdiction, leaving our office completely out of it.”

“Let us help,” Emily stated firmly.

Hotch nodded in agreement. “Garcia can look into this further to see if she uncovers anything else. Meanwhile, the rest of us will split up. JJ, Rossi, and Prentiss will focus on finding Calloway, profiling where he could be hiding, and the other half will stay with you, just in case.”

You hesitated but didn't decline knowing it was the best shot you had. 

“And it would be better if you stayed home,” Hotch said tentatively.

“Absolutely not,” you snapped, barely holding back the venom in your voice. “I have cases to handle and a trial in two hours—I can’t just sit around doing nothing.”

He nodded as if he already knew your answer, but still insisted that you not go to the Gala. You didn’t complain; you barely wanted to go anyway.

The thought of staying home, of locking yourself inside like some helpless prey, made your stomach churn. You weren’t a child anymore, weren’t that drugged, defenseless girl he could control. If Calloway showed up, you wouldn’t freeze. You wouldn’t run.

No, you’d put him down like the rabid animal he was.

　　　　 　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　　

Going through sexual abuse leaves a deep, lingering sense of desperation. Last night, you scrubbed your skin with everything you had, trying to erase the phantom touch of ghost hands. It never worked, though. The sensation stayed, haunting you no matter how hard you tried to wash it away.

Being a survivor also carries a heavy burden of guilt. You knew, logically, it wasn’t your fault—what happened to you wasn’t something you could control. But the aftermath, the side effects of being drugged nearly every night, still clung to you, refusing to let you forget.

The familiar hallways of the DA’s office offered a fleeting sense of normalcy, a place where you could breathe a little deeper without your chest aching so badly. It wasn’t perfect, but it was something.

Fresh from the courtroom, you felt like you finally had some semblance of control over your life—at least for a little while, without the suffocating presence of a stalker lurking in the shadows. Morgan and Reid had been accompanying you all day, which was both mildly embarrassing and infuriating. The idea of people thinking you needed babysitters made your skin crawl.

On the other hand, Spencer couldn’t have been more eager to stay by your side. He hated the circumstances, hated the way you refused to meet his or Morgan’s gaze, but more than anything, he hated the way your hands trembled—no matter how hard you squeezed them together or tried to hide it. He wanted to reach out, to take your hands in his, to offer you something—anything—to anchor you.

He couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was like to have your past dissected and laid bare on a table for everyone to see. If just hearing you say Calloway had drugged you had made his stomach twist with sickness, he couldn’t fathom what it had done to you. So if you couldn’t look at him, he understood. He just wished he could hold you instead.

Watching you in court had been mesmerizing. Then again, everything about you captivated him.

Almost at your office, a sharp voice cut through the hallway. “Counselor!”

Spencer immediately tensed, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Morgan’s hand instinctively move to his holster.

You turned at the sound, already bracing yourself and recognizing the voice from Defense Attorney Bennet. Just the sight of him made your stomach tighten, and the way your jaw tensed and your nose twitched slightly—a near-wince before you masked it—didn’t go unnoticed by Reid.

Bennet strolled toward you with his usual smugness, and you barely resisted the urge to take a step back.

“No deal.” Your voice was flat, dismissive. His client had been arrested for attempted murder—of his own wife, in front of their children. The woman had come to you, fear in her eyes, begging you to make sure he wouldn’t get out and try to hurt her again.

Bennet didn’t seem fazed. “I'm not looking for one. My client isn't guilty.,” he said smoothly, as if that was enough to make you care. 

You exhaled sharply through your nose, the corners of your lips threatening to curl in distaste. “Your client belongs in a pine box... but I will settle for an 8-by-10 cell where he can rot until he dies.”

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Ms. Woodvale. He was under a lot of stress due to his demanding workload, which caused him anxiety and insomnia," he says smoothly, as if that excuse isn’t absolutely ridiculous.

You catch a glimpse of Morgan and Reid stepping into your office. Exhaling sharply, already fed up, you fix him with a cold stare. "I have anxiety and insomnia. I don’t go around shooting people."

You turned on your heel and got inside your office, you shut the door with more force than necessary. “I’m sorry for th—” A yawn caught you off guard, cutting off your words as you let your forehead rest against the cool surface of the door. 

"Do you want some coffee?" Spencer offered, his voice so gentle that, for a moment, your shoulders eased ever so slightly.

"Uh—yeah, thank you," you said, watching as he moved toward the small table where the machine sat. Then, quickly, before he could pour, you added, "No sugar, please."

The thought of sweetness on your tongue made your stomach twist. On a normal day, you couldn't stand it. But today? Today, when the fact that Calloway was still out there felt like a breath against the back of your neck? You weren’t willing to find out how you’d react.

Across the room, Spencer nodded, his fingers brushing over the sugar packets before he left them untouched. He finally understood. The incident in Chicago, the way you had recoiled, the way you'd run. He clung to every fragment of insight he could gather from you, anything that wasn’t in a file.

Caleb, Molly’s temporary replacement, entered your office without knocking, looking harried—like he’d just remembered something important, or more likely, forgotten something crucial—Caleb nearly tripped over himself as he spotted you.

"Miss Woodvale," he started, already sounding defensive, "I was just about to—"

You didn’t have the patience. With a sigh, you reached into your bag and pulled out a folded sheet of paper, pressing it into his hands.

"I need two things, and I need them before midnight," you said, your tone clipped. "First, look up any prior convictions for Daniel Rogers—everything, even sealed records if you can access them. Second, type up a subpoena for the evidence request I noted down."

Caleb blinked at the paper, then back at you. "A subpoena? Like… now?"

You leveled him with a stare. "Yes, Caleb. Now. Before I have to argue in court for evidence I should already have."

"Right! Right. On it." He gripped the paper like it might disappear from his hands.

"Caleb," you added before he could rush off. He turned back, looking hopeful.

"Sign it under my name before filing. Properly."

"Of course! Totally on it."

You watched him scurry away and exhaled sharply. You should’ve just done it yourself.

Spencer handed you the cup of coffee, and the brief touch of his fingers against yours sent a small tingle through your skin—just enough to take the edge off, to let you breathe a little easier.

"Where's your usual girl?" Morgan asked, nodding toward the door.

"Molly's on maternity leave. She’s got three weeks left." You sighed. Three weeks with someone incompetent felt like thirty years.

Morgan’s phone buzzed, and he stepped out to take the call, leaving you alone with Reid. Ignoring the nerves creeping up your spine at the thought, you turned and made your way to the back of your office. As you pushed the door open, the room beyond was revealed—a chaotic mess, not unlike the study in your apartment.

He followed you inside, and for the first time, the sight of the mess actually embarrassed you. You shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry for the mess.”

“Don’t worry,” he said with a soft smile, his eyes scanning the board. His brows furrowed. “Why is the map unmarked?”

“I—uh—” You took a sip of your coffee, stalling. Admitting this felt ridiculous. “I’m not very good with directions. Or maps in general… I was going to ask Austin for help, but I always forget.” You hated how left and right sometimes blended together in your head, how frustrating and embarrassing it was.

“Let me do it,” he offered.

Your first instinct was to refuse, but he stepped closer before you could protest. “I do the geographical profiles for the BAU. I’m good at reading maps.”

Something about the way he looked at you—puppy eyes, long hair framing his face—made it hard to say no. Or maybe it was just him. And you couldn’t say no to him.

"Those are the directions," you gesture toward the board just as your phone rings. Seeing Austin’s name on the screen, you pick up.

"Good news, Woody. The candy wasn’t spiked, and I doubt the rest of the baskets were either."

A weight you didn’t realize you were holding in your chest suddenly lifts. The thought of someone twisting something as simple as sharing candy—something that once brought you comfort—into a potential nightmare had been unbearable.

You exhale, murmuring a thank you as Austin reassures you they’ll catch him. When you hang up and relay the news to Spencer, he gives you a small smile, his focus still on the map. Then, as he places a thumbtack, something clicks in his mind. 

"How did you get the lab to run the test that fast?" he asks, glancing over at you. The average turnaround time for something like that would usually be at least a couple of days, even for a small lab.

You shrug. "My dad’s a chemist. He runs a lab, so... it wasn’t hard to get him to push a few tests through."

The irony isn’t lost on you—how your birth parents had also run a lab, except theirs was a meth lab. And now, you’d been raised by someone who ran a legitimate one. Fate had a cruel sense of humor.

Another piece of you gets stored forever, engraved in Spencer’s mind, and the way you’re being so… casual with him makes his chest warm.

“I’m sorry you can’t go to that party tonight.”

“Oh, it’s fine, really. I wasn’t exactly thrilled to get pampered around by my boss, making promises on my behalf.” You lean against the wall.

“Yeah, social environments aren’t my thing either,” he says, placing the last thumbtack on the map. “So, you don’t want to be the DA?”

You take a second to think. “I know it’s a big position, and it would be great for my career. My boss is always saying the tabloids would go crazy—she can already see the headlines with my name on it. And I know it opens a lot of doors, but…” You trail off. “It comes with things I don’t want to do, like playing politics. I’m not interested in that. I’d barely even step foot in a courtroom, and I want to help people. Bring closure. Maybe even some peace, if I can.”

Spencer watches you as you speak with such passion. For a moment, your eyes don’t look as haunted. Your words seem to carry a weight he’s never seen before, and the strand of hair falling over your face is so tempting for him to tuck behind your ear. It’s as if a magnetic force is pulling him closer. 

He smiles at you, opening his mouth to respond, but his phone rings. “I got something for you about our secret mission,” says Garcia on the other line when he picks up and puts her on speaker.

“So, I tracked the license plate from the arrested man. Stumbled upon something—two of them always went periodically to a location where there are no cameras around. It’s pretty far, almost at the border with Maryland,” Garcia continues.

“Is there anything over there?” you ask, feeling a slight sense of urgency.

“It’s a pretty abandoned area, but from a street view program, apparently, there’s a warehouse over the Cicero street,” she replies. “I sent you the location.”

Spencer thanks her, but before he hangs up, Garcia adds, “Rossi picked up Morgan from there. A street camera caught someone who looks like Calloway near the Capitol.”

Your breath catches in your chest for a moment as the weight of her words sink in. You exhale slowly, Spencer hangs up and you speak urgently. “We have to go check that warehouse.”

You see hesitation in his eyes “Please?

He nods, but the hesitation doesn’t leave his eyes. He doesn’t want to go alone without the team, but something shifts when he notices the tremor in your hand. It was slightly worse than before, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he decided not to mention it, knowing that pushing you away now wouldn't help.

　　　　 　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　　

Arriving at the warehouse, you felt anticipation creeping through your bones, an almost electric tension settling in your chest. You were close—so close that whatever detail had been slipping through your fingers had to be right in front of you.

The aged wooden floor groaned beneath your boots, the sound swallowed by the vast emptiness of the space. Dust floated in the slanted beams of light filtering through broken windows, and the air smelled of damp wood and rusted metal.

If Spencer cursed, he would have done it the moment you didn’t wait for him to clear the area first. Instead, he sprinted to your side, his breath sharp as he yanked his gun from his holster, his fingers tightening around the grip.

The place had two floors, surrounded by nothing but dry, brittle trees. Looking back, you wished you could say you had been cautious, but the events of the day had started to numb your judgment. There was no hesitation when the door didn’t budge—you shoved your shoulder against it without a second thought.

Spencer inhaled sharply behind you, his voice cutting through the stagnant air.

He called your name as a warning, his tone edged with unease. And if you had time for waiting you would've picked on the hint of fear in his voice. 

The door gave in, and you stepped inside immediately. The interior was somehow worse than the outside—humidity clung to the rotting wood, the scent of decay thick in the air. The space was lined with tiny bedrooms, each one filled with small beds. The sight made your stomach turn. You didn’t need to imagine what had happened here; the walls practically whispered it.

“You go check upstairs, I’ll check here,” you said, already moving.

“We should wait for backup.” Spencer's voice was firm, his grip on his gun tightening.

"This place is abandoned," you countered, dismissing his concern before he could argue further. He sent Garcia a quick message as you moved through the rooms quickly—most were the same, two beds, a small closet, nothing significant.

Until the last room.

It was different. A desk sat by a small, cracked window, standing out among the neglect. You crossed the room immediately, opening every drawer, rifling through them with practiced efficiency. But there wasn’t much. Loose papers. A few pens. Dust coating the insides.

Then, just as you were about to move on—something.

Tucked in the very back of the bottom drawer. A flash drive.

Your fingers barely brushed against it when— crack.

A footstep. A snap of dry wood behind you.

Your pulse slammed into overdrive. Every muscle tensed, locking you in place for a fraction of a second—just long enough to see a blue shadow move between the trees, fast, deliberate. They had something in their hand. They took something from the desk.

And then your body moved before your mind could catch up. You bolted.

The cold air burned your throat as you tore through the doorway, barely registering Spencer shouting your name behind you. The forest was a blur—branches whipping past, the earth uneven beneath your feet, every instinct screaming at you to keep going, keep your eyes locked on the figure ahead. 

Then it hit.

A wave of vertigo crashed into you like a freight train when you were jumping off a rock.

The world lurched.

Trees stretched and twisted, the ground tilting violently beneath you. Your stomach turned, and suddenly there was no up, no down—just a sickening pull as your balance shattered.

Your foot slipped.

You didn’t fall so much as collapse, legs giving out as the world spun in a dizzying, nauseating spiral. Your shoulder slammed into the dirt first, then your head, the impact ringing through your skull like a gunshot making you groan in frustration and dizziness. 

Distantly, you could still hear Spencer yelling. His voice was closer now, urgent, frantic.

You tried to push yourself up, but the world wouldn’t stop moving. The trees swayed, the ground rolled beneath you, and the sickening weight of disorientation kept you pinned where you fell.

The sirens screamed in the distance, but all you could hear was the pounding of your own heartbeat, loud and erratic in your ears. The earth tilted beneath you as you tried to push yourself up, twigs and dirt digging into your scraped palms. 

Right now, Spencer could only see himself in you—that reckless, desperate version of himself from two years ago. The one who told JJ they didn’t have time to wait. The one who ended up at the mercy of Tobias Hankel. Right now, those magnets—the ones that should have drawn you together—were mirroring instead. And magnets that mirror don’t attract. They repel.

The nausea surged again, your stomach twisting violently as you heard Spencer’s footsteps closing in.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

His voice, along with some police sirens, cut through the ringing in your ears, sharp and edged with frustration, but you could barely focus on it. The ground felt unsteady beneath you, as if the earth itself was shifting. You blinked hard, trying to ground yourself, but the pressure in your skull only worsened.

Spencer didn’t notice—didn’t see the way your fingers dug into the dirt just to keep yourself upright. All he saw was a reckless choice, the same mistake he had made, playing out all over again. And it terrified him.

"I almost had him!" you shot back, breathless, the words slurring slightly as the world swayed again when you stood up again.

"You ran off alone!" His voice cracked, raw with frustration. “You have no idea of the hundred things that can happen when you go alone in the field! You are not even an agent or a police officer!”

The words hit like a whip, laced with something deeper than anger—fear. But your head was spinning too much to fire back. The ringing in your ears pulsed in and out like waves crashing over you, swallowing his words before you could fully process them.

You thought you saw another figure moving toward you—just a flicker of motion in your blurred vision, a shadow against the trees. The ringing in your ears drowned out everything else, making Spencer’s voice feel distant, like he was speaking through water.

“Woody!”

Morgan’s voice cut through the static, sharp and urgent. You barely registered the moment he reached you—his presence was solid, grounding—but the nausea clawed at your stomach, threatening to pull you under again.

“Someone—a blue jacket was—” you tried, but the words barely scraped past your throat, your breathing uneven, shallow. You forced yourself to stay upright, to push through the dizziness, but Morgan’s hands were already on you, steadying, his gaze scanning your face with concern.

“They… they took something from the house. I don’t kn—” Your voice broke off as another wave of vertigo surged through you.

Morgan’s grip tightened, firm but not harsh. “You don’t look good, Woody. Sit down before you fall down.” He guided you down against a tree with your knees to your chest. 

“I’m fine, it’s just—this vertigo shit, I—” The lie barely made it past your lips before the ground tilted violently beneath you. You staggered, your vision swam, and this time—there was nothing you could do to stop it. You swallowed hard, but it did nothing to stop the nausea clawing up your throat. “I—I just need a second.”

As if he snapped off his frustration. Spencer crouched down in front of you, eyes scanning your face, his own panic shifting into something else. “Just take a deep breathe,” he said, and now it wasn’t frustration in his voice—it was realization. 

You blinked at him, but the edges of your vision were still blurry. You hated this. Hated feeling weak in front of him, hated that your body had betrayed you at the worst possible moment.

“I’m fine,” you muttered, even as another wave of vertigo made you squeeze your eyes shut.

Spencer wasn’t buying it. And suddenly, he felt so much shame over how he hadn't even helped you out because he’d been so caught up in his own fear, his own anger, that he hadn’t even seen you struggling.

And that scared him just as much as watching you run into danger alone.

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Once again in the BAU bullpen, you had finally recovered from the vertigo, knowing it was brought on by stress and anxiety.

While you had been struggling, the rest of the team had sprinted through the woods, searching for the person you saw. JJ was the one who found a crumpled, half-burned document about 50 meters away from the house. As for the figure in the blue jacket—there was still no trace.

The files contained lists of properties, and they were marked with prices. For the looks of it, you sensed they could indicate age or maybe height but you didn't get much opportunity to look into it. As for the flash drive, Garcia had taken it to analyze. 

They had told you that the one man they caught on a street camera thinking it was Calloway was just a false alarm, meaning he was still free, you hated feeling like a prey again.

Austin was crouched in front of your chair, watching you carefully.

"I'm fine. And we both know it’s just because my body doesn’t handle stress well," you muttered, taking a sip of the gatorade he handed you. You were no stranger to vertigo and dizziness—episodes that had come and gone over the years—but this one felt different. More intense, more unsettling. A doctor had once told you, years ago, that it could be a lingering side effect from drug abuse.

"Just eat," he said, opening a paper bag and setting it beside you.

You sighed, grabbing the sandwich but leaving the small cardboard box inside. Breaking the sandwich in half, you offered him a piece, but he shook his head. Rolling your eyes, you spun your desk chair to face JJ instead.

"Want half my sandwich? I’m not going to finish it."

She frowned slightly but quickly answered, "Oh, thank you." Taking a bite, her eyes widened. "Oh my god, this is really good," she said, covering her mouth as she chewed.

Smiling, you took a bite yourself. "My mom’s a chef. She likes to send me food sometimes, and since she knows I like sharing, she always sends extra."

JJ hummed in approval before handing a piece to Prentiss, who had the same reaction. 

Just then, Hotch entered the room with Garcia and Spencer behind him. Garcia grabbed the remote and turned on the TV showing the FBI logo.

“My lovely ducks this flash drive was cripting nightmare. But! as your dear tech colorful genius I got it.” She pressed a button, and a series of documents filled the screen—spreadsheets, names, locations, and timestamps. She took a deep breath before speaking.

"Okay, so this flash drive? A goldmine of incriminating evidence," she said, her tone more serious than usual. "We’re talking organized trafficking orders—detailed lists of victims, complete with coded identifiers, transaction dates, and destinations. But that’s not all."

She clicked to another file, and a map appeared. "These are transport routes—highways, backroads, even rest stops marked as exchange points. Whoever put this together is meticulous. And then, there are these."

Another document popped up. It was a list of addresses.

"Safe houses," Garcia continued. "Not just in DC—there’s here in Virginia, Maryland, Baltimore and a few in Pennsylvania. Meaning, this isn’t some local operation. It’s an entire network."

The room fell silent as everyone processed the weight of what she had just revealed.

The breath you had been holding escaped in a slow exhale as you sank back into the chair. You and Austin exchanged a glance, both of you silently acknowledging the weight of what was in front of you—the information you had been chasing for weeks was finally right there.

In retrospect, it seemed almost absurd—how just three men were possibly going to be convicted for minor felonies, while they and so many others were responsible for running and ruining God knows how many lives.

Hotch’s voice was firm. “We’ll give this to the Head of the Domestic Trafficking Task Force, Andi Swan, to continue with the investigation. They will be communicating with the Department of Justice.”

You nodded slightly, processing the weight of the situation you had been unknowingly tangled in. Austin’s voice cut through your thoughts. “You have to go to the gala for an alibi.”

He was right, and you knew it. Not attending such an important event, coupled with the fact that the office was losing an important case while FBI agents had been seen talking to you, could easily make you a target—marked as a 'snitch.' The irony stung, especially when all you’d been trying to do was uncover the truth.

You turned to face the team. “What about Calloway and the other threats?”

Garcia’s expression softened as she responded. “Wallens Ridge has cleared 75% of the area. They haven’t ruled him out as a fugitive yet.” Her voice took on a pitying tone, one you didn’t want to acknowledge but knew was meant to protect you.

“We’ll protect you,” Morgan added, his voice steady. “The gala will be crowded with security. We’ll drive you there and back, and by tomorrow, we’ll continue to look for him. You’ll be safe.”

You nodded, knowing the smart decision was to attend the gala and put on a convincing smile. Austin had told you it was 6 p.m., giving you two hours to get home and be ready by 8.

Hotch assigned Rossi, JJ, and Garcia to keep tracking Calloway, while Morgan and Prentiss would drive you to the event.

Once the team had their tasks, you stood, picking up the brown paper bag before heading toward Spencer’s desk. You placed it on top, glancing toward Garcia’s office, where you’d just seen him disappear. It was a terrible excuse for an apology—‘Sorry for being impulsive and reckless. Here’s a sweet treat.’ But words had never been your strong suit, especially when it came to your feelings.

Time had a cruel way of shifting things. Over two years ago, you had stood in front of another desk, clutching an identical paper bag—only back then, it hadn’t been an apology. It had been his drugs. And you had thrown them away.

Austin was waiting for you. You caught a glimpse of Prentiss flipping through files and swallowed your nerves. You never knew if your difficulty making friends came from feeling like a freak or simply not knowing how to connect.

You hesitated before calling her name. “Uh—could you help me? Maybe? I know you probably have more important things to do, so—”

Prentiss looked up, offering a friendly smile. “No, it’s okay. What do you need help with?”

You shifted awkwardly. “Getting ready? I—I don’t really know how. I mean, I can dress myself, obviously, but—”You exhaled, frustrated at your own fumbling. “I barely know how to do any of that ‘pampering’ stuff.”

Prentiss smirked, grabbing her coat. “Oh, you came to the right person. I’m a diplomat’s daughter—I was practically trained in this.”

You blinked at her, surprised by how quickly she jumped in to help.

She gestured toward the elevator. “Come on. Let’s make you look like you belong at this gala.”

Trying not to seem too eager, you followed her. Before stepping in, she quickly told Morgan she’d be driving you and Austin.

A few minutes later Spencer finally emerged from Garcia’s office, barely escaping yet another lecture about overthinking things. His eyes landed on his desk—and the familiar brown paper bag sitting atop it.

Inside was a small cardboard box. And in it—a piece of chocolate cake. 

A flicker of guilt settled in his chest as he stared at the cake. Had he really made you feel like you needed to apologize?

Maybe he felt it even more acutely after taking a bite—sweet, rich, and undeniably good. The kind of thing that made him wonder if he even deserved it. 

　　　　 　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　　

You glance at the reflection in the mirror, taking in the clean, elegant look. The dress falls delicately, the long strips cascading down your back—so stunning, so unlike what you’d usually wear.

“You look good. Don’t overthink it,” Austin’s voice comes from behind you.

“Thanks,” you reply, offering him a faint smile, but it comes out more like a thin line.

Emily had done a great job polishing you up. She even revived the black nail polish you thought was long gone since your college days, using some remover drops. Your hair was styled in an updo, the final touch to a look that felt like someone else entirely.

“Here you go” she says, handing you the long black coat, giving your makeup a final check. It felt strangely nice to feel this... pretty. You knew without her help, you wouldn’t have pulled it off. To be honest, you liked pretty things. You liked makeup, but you just didn’t know how to do it right. And you wanted to have girlfriends, though you weren’t sure what you’d talk about with them. But that didn’t matter, and Emily seemed nice enough to not mind.

“The car’s downstairs. Morgan and Reid will be taking you” she adds. Right. Reid. You nod as you slip the coat on, trying to ignore the unease creeping up on you.

The thought of Reid seeing you like this, this version of yourself that was so different from the usual, made you squirm.

Would he think you looked good? Pretty, even? Why did you care about his opinion? Maybe because you cared about what he thought in general. Maybe because having his attention, even for just five seconds, felt like something sacred. Why would someone with such an incredible mind waste more than five seconds on someone like you?

You didn’t know which thought haunted you the most: the sense of insecurity that came with the fact someone had broken into your place, erasing the feeling of home and comfort you’d hoped for while getting ready, or the look in Spencer’s eyes—the one that made you feel like you’d been stupid.

The elevator doors opened, revealing the lobby, and in front of the glass entrance doors of your apartment complex stood the familiar black SUV. Your stomach churned with nerves.

Spencer’s breath hitched when he saw you, the way the dress fit you so perfectly, so timelessly elegant. If someone had told him you were a duchess or from some aristocratic family, he would have believed them. The way you carried yourself—controlled yet poised, with your head held high and your back straight—was enhanced by the silk of the dress, giving you an almost regal presence.

He got out of the car to help you in, and the rush of warmth that flooded your face instantly banished the winter’s cold. You smiled awkwardly at him, unsure of what to say.

The low whistle from Morgan saved you.

“Lookin’ good, mama,” he said, flashing that charming smile of his.

You smiled back at him, relieved, before turning to say goodbye to Prentiss. Spencer gently helped you into the car, making sure the dress didn’t get caught or ruined in the process. You felt the tingle of his hand lingering where it had touched yours, and you couldn’t shake the electric pulse it left behind. 

Slipping into the back seat, you settled in with Austin in the front, relaying the venue’s address to Morgan. Spencer sat beside you, trying to keep his composure. He had to be extra careful not to stumble as the scent of your perfume hit him, wrapping around him like an intoxicating mist. It was all he could do to focus on anything else, the smell of it swirling in his senses and pulling him into a dizzy state he could easily get lost in. 

Throughout the ride, you stared out the window, mentally preparing yourself for the event ahead. You knew you had to play the part—professional, charming, decisive, almost regal if you wanted to make an impression. The problem was, you didn’t want to win that way. You didn’t want to play the political game that came with it.

Looking at Morgan was a reminder that Calloway was out there, and you could let him throw you off. But then your gaze shifted to Reid, and the tightness in your chest made you stutter for a second. His presence had that effect on you, unsettling yet magnetic in the most infuriating yet addicting way.

Your phone rang, pulling you out of your thoughts. You rummaged through your purse and saw it was your office number, making you frown as you picked it up.

“Hello?” you answered doubtfully, everyone was supposed to be at the venue or on their way there by now.

“Miss Woodvale!” Caleb’s voice came through, making you fight the impulse to roll your eyes. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m afraid there’s been a problem.”

You sighed, bracing yourself. Caleb was pretty useless as an assistant, and you could already feel the frustration bubbling up. “What’s happened now?”

“It’s the subpoena for the evidence in the Rogers case, the one about the gun,” he said, his voice tinged with panic. “The judge declined it, and I... I’m not sure what to do about it. The paperwork was filed wrong, and—”

You cut him off before he could ramble further. “Is it the one I gave you a draft on how to do it exactly?”

Yes! I typed but—I don't know something must have gone wrong and I’m at the office right now and I-” You sigh knowing you had made a mistake in asking him to handle such an important thing like a physical evidence paperwork. 

Knowing it was pretty urgent and could jeopardize the case, you decided to take care of it in the moment “I’ll handle it.” You ended the call, already plotting the quickest way to fix this.

You glanced at the others in the car, a sudden sense of urgency creeping over you. The event felt like it had slipped from your mind for a moment, but the reality of your job brought you back into focus.

“Is everything okay?” asked Spencer, with a concerned look on his face.

You nod slowly “Yeah just…” you said, turning to Austin and Morgan. “Can we please make a stop in the office for a second? There was a problem and I’ve got to go fix it.”

Morgan glanced at you, eyebrows raised. “You sure? We’re almost there”

“It’s on the way, just some paperwork issue that I don't want to escalate” you said, your tone firm. “I’ll be quick. I promise”

Morgan nods and turns towards your office. A couple minutes later you are in front of the office, stepping out of the car. Spencer, followed quietly behind you. His voice was low, but there was concern in it. “I’ll come with you”

You just nodded, knowing that convincing him you’ll be fine was a waste of time. As you walked toward the courthouse, your mind raced through possible solutions to fix Caleb’s mistake, not wanting to think of the effect Spencer’s presence by your side had on you, and how the silence between you two was almost suffocating over the unsaid feelings.

Spencer cleared his throat. “You look beautiful,” he said, offering a sincere smile. He wanted to say more—wanted to apologize—but the words tangled inside him, unsure of how to make it right.

The compliment caught you off guard, leaving you momentarily defenseless. You felt the warmth of a genuine smile tug at your lips, and Spencer’s chest tightened at the sight of it.

“Thank you,” you said softly, meaning it.

Spencer exhaled, deciding to take the chance. “About what happened in the warehouse, I—”

A sharp gasp from Caleb cut him off.

“Counselor! I’m so sorry—I completely forgot the gala was tonight!” Caleb’s voice was frantic as he adjusted his glasses, guilt written all over his face. “I wanted to apologize. I know you trusted me with this, and I—”

“Just give me the files and let’s fix this,” you interrupted, already feeling the weight of the situation pressing down on you.

Before anything else could be said, Spencer’s phone rang with Garcia’s name in it.

He picked up immediately, but something was off. The call crackled, her voice cutting in and out, fragmented in a way that sent a prickle of unease down his spine.

“Garcia? You’re breaking up—what’s going on?”

As you, Caleb, and Spencer stepped into your office, the static grew worse. He pressed the phone tighter to his ear, but Penelope’s words were barely making it through.

“Ca—way… Welle—ridge…” The interference distorted Garcia’s words, making it impossible to understand what she was saying.

“What? Garcia, I can’t hear you,” Spencer said, pressing his hand over the other ear to block out the noise.

Your assistant glanced up. “There’s better reception downstairs at night.”

Spencer gave a quick nod and stepped out of your office, heading toward the lower level. By the time he got there, the call had already dropped. With a sigh, he immediately tried calling Garcia back as he got further and further from you. 

　　　　 　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　　

Upstairs, Caleb handed you more files, his usual carefree expression in place. As you took them, your eyes flicked to the dirt under his nails, and you fought the instinctive wince of disgust.

“I gave you notes on how to do this. Did you check them?”

You really didn’t want to lecture a man who was two years older than you and a bit taller, but at this point, it felt unavoidable.

What felt even more ridiculous, though, was how he managed to mess up every task you gave him.

Caleb scratched the back of his head, looking sheepish. “I mean… sort of? I figured it was just a formality thing, so I—”

“This isn’t even from the Rogers case, Caleb,” you interrupted, exasperation seeping into your voice as you handed the file back to him. You didn’t even try to mask your frustration.

“Oh! Right—sorry!” He fumbled through his stack of papers before hastily picking up another document and handing it over.

You sighed, taking it from him, already dreading what mistake you’d find next.

He disappeared down the hall, leaving you staring at the stack of files, irritation simmering under your skin. With a sigh, you scanned it carefully, your frustration shifting into confusion. There was nothing wrong with it. No technical error, no missing information—just a perfectly valid request.

Frowning, with your back towards the door, the file still in hand, rereading it just to be sure.

“Caleb, I don’t think thi—”

You never got to finish the sentence.

A sharp, jarring thud struck the back of your head, and the world lurched sideways. A burst of pain shot through your skull, white-hot and disorienting. The file slipped from your fingers, papers scattering across the floor as your vision blurred.

　　　　 　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　　

Morgan’s phone buzzes sharply against the desk, the name Garcia flashing across the screen. He barely has time to press accept before her voice spills through the line, fast, frantic.

“Morgan, this is weird—really, really weird—I don’t understand how th—”

He straightens, instincts flaring. “What’s going on? You caught Calloway?” With a flick of his thumb, he puts the call on speaker so Austin can hear too.

There’s a sharp inhale on the other end, then Garcia’s voice—urgent, almost breathless.

“Morgan I called Reid first but his phone it’s not working, Wallens Ridge just called. Calloway never left the facility.”

The blood in their veins turned to ice at the thought of it. If it wasn’t Calloway—the only one who knew about such a macabre detail—then who? Who else could possibly know?

They both bolted out of the car. Who even had your address? It had to be someone trusted. Someone close. Someone you had let too close.

　　　　  　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　

A blinding explosion of pain cracked through your skull, turning the world sideways. The room twisted, floor tilting beneath you as your knees buckled. The taste of copper flooded your mouth.

Hands—rough, too strong—grabbed at you, yanking you forward before you could catch yourself. Your body slammed into something solid. A wall? A desk? It didn’t matter. The impact rattled through your bones, sending shockwaves down your spine.

Panic surged through the haze. You tried to move—tried to fight—but the dizziness slowed your limbs, making everything feel sluggish. You wanted to scream for help, for someone, anyone, for Spencer, to come help you, but the spinning world had stolen your words.

Your fingers clawed for anything—something—to defend yourself. Your vision swam, but you felt it: the sharp edge of something on the desk. A pen? A letter opener?

Your hand closed around it.

But Caleb was faster.

A crushing grip seized your wrist, twisting, forcing your fingers open. The object clattered to the floor. He shoved you back—hard. Your shoulder slammed into the wall, pain blooming through muscle and bone. The air left your lungs in a choked gasp.

You had to move. Had to run. Had to— A sharp sting. Cold flooded your veins.

Your body locked, every nerve screaming in protest as the drug hit.

No. No. No.

You thrashed, arms flailing weakly, but your strength was already draining, slipping away like water through your fingers. Your vision blurred at the edges, dark spots creeping in.

Caleb yanked you by the arm, dragging you across the floor. The wood scraped against your skin, tearing at you as you kicked weakly. Your fingers clawed at the ground, desperate for an anchor. You dug your nails into the floor, hanging on, fighting to the last.

A white-hot burst of pain exploded through your hand as your index’s fingernail caught on a splintered groove in the floorboards—and ripped clean off.

A strangled cry wrenched from your throat. The agony barely registered before the blackness swallowed you whole.

　　　　 　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　　

They were too late.

Your office was a disaster—papers scattered, the desk chair overturned, a letter opener lying abandoned on the floor. The air felt wrong, thick with something unsaid, something violent. But it wasn’t until Spencer’s gaze dropped that his stomach lurched.

A fingernail. Lodged between the wooden floorboards.

His breath hitched, nausea creeping up his throat, but there was no time to process it. Austin was already moving, frantic, his eyes darting toward the hallway. He knew there were cameras out there—but not in here. Whoever had taken you had known exactly how to stay hidden.

Morgan and Austin had sprinted up the stairs the second Garcia’s call came through, barely stopping when they saw Spencer frozen near the entrance. The silence in the office was suffocating. There was no one else here. Everyone was at the gala.

Spencer was supposed to be watching you. Supposed to make sure nothing happened. And yet—he had failed. The weight of it pressed down on him, suffocating, as Morgan barked into his phone, demanding that Garcia access the security cameras, cursing when the signal started to fail.

That’s when he heard the soft creak of a door.

He turned just in time to see Caleb stepping out of the bathroom, his face and hands damp, water still clinging to his skin.

Something wasn’t right.

“Where is she?” Austin’s voice cut through the air like a blade, sharp and unrelenting.

Caleb blinked, frowning. “Where’s who?”

The nonchalance sent a cold chill through Spencer’s body.

Morgan wasn’t wasting time. He tore through your office, yanking open drawers, rifling through papers, looking for any sign of where you’d gone, but there was nothing. Austin was shouting your name now, advancing on Caleb, his voice rising with barely contained rage.

Then—Morgan cursed. Low. Cold. Spencer turned just as Morgan reached into Caleb’s desk and pulled something out. A signal jammer.

That was why his phone hadn’t worked.

That was why Morgan’s call had cut out.

You were gone.

And they had walked straight into it.

Austin was the first to react. In a blur of movement, he grabbed Caleb by the collar of his blue jacket and slammed him against the wall with enough force to make the drywall tremble.

Someone close. Someone who knew the building well enough to avoid the cameras. Someone who knew you—your schedule, your address.

Austin’s grip tightened. His voice was razor-sharp. “What have you done to her?”

Caleb’s breath hitched. His face paled. “I—I swear, I didn’t w-want t—”

Austin didn’t let him finish. He slammed him back again, harder. “Where is she?” His voice was low, lethal, vibrating with fury.

Morgan was calling Garcia again, his voice tense in the background, but Austin barely registered it. His entire world had narrowed to the man in front of him—the only lead to where you were.

“They—they threatened me,” Caleb stammered, hands raised in surrender. “My family—I’m sorry, I—”

Austin didn’t care. He shoved him harder against the wall. “Where. Is. She?”

Caleb’s breath came in ragged gasps, terror widening his eyes. His voice cracked as he stammered, “I—I don’t know—they just gave me the needle, and they took her through the back door.”

Morgan was already moving, heading toward the back of the building in search of any trace of you.

Austin didn’t budge. His grip on Caleb’s jacket tightened, his knuckles white. “What did you give her?” His voice was sharp, edged with something raw and dangerous. When Caleb hesitated, Austin snapped. “I’ll kill you with my own hands—what did you give her?!”

You had been drugged.

Fifteen years. Fifteen years of sobriety—stolen in an instant.

The thought sent fire through Austin’s veins. His chest heaved with barely contained rage, but before he could lose himself in it, Spencer’s voice cut through the chaos.

Spencer’s gaze locked onto Caleb’s blue jacket, his mind racing. Then, he caught it—the dirt under Caleb’s nails. His stomach twisted.

The warehouse.

Caleb had been there. He was the one you saw. The one you spoke to in your office—where he could have easily eavesdropped.

You had been watched. You had a target on your back for far longer than any of them had realized.

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The air smelled of damp wood and rusted metal, creeping through your nostrils as your vision swam in and out of focus. Slowly, you began to regain awareness of your body and surroundings. A harsh light flickered overhead, blurring your senses, and a sharp pain on the side of your head made you wince.

Your hands were bound tightly behind your back, the rope digging into your skin, and the searing pain made it almost impossible to ignore. A sound, sharp and unsettling, reached your ears—the click of someone’s tongue. It was enough to snap you from your fading consciousness. You fought to stay awake, but your body felt like it was on fire, an unnatural heat that made your skin crawl. Despite the whistle of the wind coming from somewhere in the room, that warmth felt suffocating, as if it were dragging you deeper into memories—or perhaps the lack of them. Blurry flashes, distorted sounds, and a gnawing sense of wrongness churned in your mind, making you want to destroy anything within reach.

Then came the steps, heavy and deliberate, each footfall resonating through the creaking wood beneath.

“This one used to be one of my favorites, you know?” A low, cold voice slithered through the air.

Something about it... felt familiar. Your mind, clouded by pain and fear, tried to place the voice, but it wouldn’t come. It wasn’t Calloway, you knew that tone—there was no forgetting in the one that had whispered awful things to you in the dark, its pitch a disgusting echo in your ear.

Your mouth was dry, coated with a thick, cottony feeling that made it hard to speak. "Who... are you?" Your voice came out barely a whisper, weak and fragile—closer to breathless than you would’ve liked.

He hummed as he approached, the light casting long shadows over his grey and black hair, his dark clothes blending into the ominous surroundings. His presence was suffocating, strong and undeniable. He squatted down in front of you, the light revealing his sharp features and a long, crooked nose that seemed to sharpen his sinister presence.

"It doesn’t matter who I am, sugar," he said, his voice smooth yet laced with malice. "What matters is how close you've been sticking your nose in my business."

Another wave of sharp pain surged through your skull, confusing your thoughts as you tried to place the familiar face before you. But it was like trying to grab smoke—elusive, slippery.

He stood, his footsteps heavy as he moved behind you, his presence darkening the space.

"A friend of mine gave me some tips about what to do with you," he continued, his tone cold and casual, as if discussing something mundane.

You felt a jolt as his hands grasped your arm, and instinctively, you tried to squirm away, but his grip tightened like iron.

"Although," he mused, his voice taking on a sickening quality, "he preferred you docile. I’d rather have you... more awake." His words made you feel sick, each one like poison dripping into your ears.

The needle slid deeper, it's cold metal scraping against your skin, and you could feel the fluid entering your bloodstream—too quickly, too forcefully. Panic surged within you, clawing at your chest, suffocating you. You fought against it, trying to tear your arm away, but his grip was unyielding.

The world began to spin. The adrenaline hit you fast, a hot wave of electricity zipping through your veins, making your heart race and your breath catch in your throat. Your mind was a fog, thoughts slipping in and out like water running through your fingers.

"You feel that?" He whispered close to your ear, his voice smooth, almost coaxing, like a predator with its prey. "The rush. It's all just a little push, and you'll be awake for everything. For all the things that are coming."

The blurry edges of your vision started to sharpen, your breath coming in short, rapid gasps, your chest heaving with every painful inhale. Each breath felt like a battle, the world spinning around you as the adrenaline pulsed through your veins, burning you from the inside out.

Behind you, you heard him laugh—a harsh, cruel sound that sent ice through your veins. But it wasn't the laugh that made you shudder; it was the anger underneath it.

"If only Dean could see how big his sweet girl has grown," he spat, his voice thick with venom, dripping with something darker than just anger. "He was a good associate, knew exactly how and when to prescribe pills for our little business."

The words were like poison, each one meant to wound, to remind you of the twisted connections. You could feel your pulse racing from the adrenaline, your body on edge as the drug coursed through you, making your heart hammer and your vision swim.

"He's rotting in prison now," he continued, his tone laced with twisted satisfaction. His hand grabbed a fistful of your hair, jerking your head back so roughly that a sharp gasp of pain ripped from you.

But it didn’t stop you. The adrenaline only fueled the fire in your veins, making the anger burn hotter. You gritted your teeth, trying to focus, your throat raw and dry. "Same place you'll go when they catch you," you spat, voice hoarse but unwavering, as the rage swelled inside you.

He chuckled darkly, the sound grating against your ears, before the cold, hard press of metal settled against your temple. The weapon’s chill did nothing to cool the heat that roared inside of you, only making your body tremble with a surge of fury.

“Don’t be so sure of it, sweetheart,” he taunted, leaning in closer, his breath hot and rancid against your skin. “You and that friend of yours have been causing me a lot of trouble.”

Your chest heaved, but this time, the adrenaline wasn’t clouding your thoughts—it was sharpening them, feeding the fury that burned in your veins. Austin. His words only made the fire inside you grow.

“You’re the little bitch who runs that human catalogue? The whorehouse we searched?” you hissed, every word dripping with venom.

He chuckled darkly, the sound making your blood boil. “Whorehouse? Is that how you call orphanages now?” His twisted smile spread across his face when he saw the flicker of confusion in your eyes.

A sharp sting ripped through the right side of your cheek as he slapped you hard, the pain jolting through your skull. Orphanages? You tried to focus, trying to make sense of his words, but the anger only surged more violently within you.

He laughed harder, the sound reverberating through the cold air. “I thought they called them foster homes now. You’re one to know, aren’t you, sweetheart?” His voice dripped with mockery, savoring the way his words landed, knowing exactly how to twist the knife.

He circled around you like a predator, his steps slow and deliberate, inspecting the room. “Like I said, this one was one of my favorites.” His words were casual, but they carried a weight that made your stomach turn.

Through the sharp blur of your vision, you turned your head, your eyes darting to the right. The trees outside were bare, dry branches silhouetted against the bright moon. Recognition hit you like a blow to the chest, and your heart sank. You were in the warehouse you and Spencer had searched earlier.

The memory hit you like a freight train—rows of tiny beds, abandoned, empty, each one a reminder of the lives stolen and shattered. The thought of those children, trapped in that hell, sickened you, making every inch of your skin crawl with the need to escape.

A low, guttural groan escaped your lips, fury burning in your chest, making it hard to breathe. You fought against the ropes binding your wrists, the adrenaline sharpening your senses, making everything feel raw. "I’m going to kill you," you snarled through clenched teeth, barely able to contain the rage. The thought of being in that place again, again, after everything you'd been through... it made your entire body tremble with fury.

“Where’s Calloway’s little girl? His sugarcube? The one he refused to sell after seeing her so tiny and beautiful in that hospital bed?” He taunted, pulling a piece of candy from his pocket. “He told me you loved these. Didn’t you like my special delivery? He used to give you these and you’d just love them.”

His words hit like a sledgehammer. The memories flooded back—sharp and violent, dragging you into the past. You could almost feel the sticky sweetness coating your tongue again, the bitterness mixing with the sugar, and the suffocating control of it all.

Calloway used to feed you those damn candies—piles of them—whether you wanted them or not. He would shove them in your mouth, watching you as you had no choice but to swallow, his sick pleasure in the power he had over you written all over his face. He reveled in your discomfort, in your helplessness, in your inability to escape.

Once, you’d tried to hide some of the candy, just a few pieces, to give to the other kids in the foster home. Maybe it would make them smile, maybe it would give them a little relief from their own nightmare. But Calloway had caught you. He’d punished you for it—made you pay the price for defying him.

You never tried to hide the candy again.

The sickening memory made your stomach churn, bile rising in your throat. The pain of the past felt so close now—too close, threatening to overwhelm you. The heat of adrenaline still surged through you, but it didn’t dull the disgust, the rage.

“I have proof of your sick business,” you spat, your voice rough and dripping with fury. “Every escape route, the safehouse, the money transactions—everything. And you’ll go to the most disgusting 2x2 cell I can find in this world and rot there, going crazy in isolation.”

He hummed, his gaze cold and calculating as he slowly pointed the gun at your forehead, steady between your brows. You stared him down, defiant, refusing to let him see even a hint of fear.

“You think that’s going to save you?” His voice was a low murmur, twisted with mockery. 

His grip tightened on the gun, and for a brief moment, the world narrowed down to the cold, unforgiving barrel pointing against your forehead. You could feel his anger radiating off him, a palpable heat, but it only fueled your own defiance. His words were venomous, designed to rattle you, but you stood strong.

“You’re going to die here, sweetheart. You’ve been a thorn in my side for too long. All your little threats, all your big talk? It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ll put so many bullets in your head, God wouldn’t even recognize you.” He sneered, the words dripping with malice.

You rested your head against the cold steel, the metal biting into your skin, but you didn’t flinch. In that moment, the sensation was almost soothing, like the clarity that comes when everything else fades away, leaving you focused. Focused on one thing.

“I don’t believe in God,” you said, your voice low and steady, despite the terror churning in your chest. "Go ahead and shoot. See if that stops me from haunting you from the grave."

His finger moved over the trigger, just a whisper away from pulling it. The sound of quick footsteps approaching was the only thing that stopped him.

　　　　 　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　　

The BAU stepped out of the SUV with precision, their movements sharp and efficient. Spencer felt his chest tighten beneath the bulletproof vest, adrenaline buzzing through his veins.

After your kidnapping, they had brought Caleb in for questioning. He had confessed to aiding people who had threatened him and his family, revealing that he had given them your personal address. He had been sent to retrieve documents from the same warehouse where you'd been taken, but he panicked and dropped them before JJ could reach him.

The threats had been traced to a man named Graham Sullivan, a former doctor who no longer practiced. He traveled frequently, never staying in one place for long. Garcia had tracked his rented car through its online GPS, leading them straight to the warehouse.

Spencer could only hope they weren’t too late. Again.

Hotch directed the team to surround the house, already briefing them on the structure. He and Morgan led the breach, kicking the door down and clearing every room with practiced efficiency.

"FBI! Put the gun down!" Morgan’s voice rang out from the last room.

Reid rushed in behind Hotch, his heart pounding. His eyes landed on you—sitting in a chair, wrists raw and red from the restraints tied behind your back. Across from you, Sullivan stood with a gun aimed directly at you.

Sullivan’s grip on the gun was steady, his finger hovering over the trigger. His eyes flicked between the agents and you, calculating his next move.

Reid could feel the pulse in his throat, pounding, deafening. He tightened his grip on his own gun, but his hands were steady—years of fieldwork had trained them to be.

“Graham,” Hotch’s voice was calm but firm, cutting through the tension like a blade. “There’s no way out of this. Put the gun down.”

Graham’s presence triggered something in your memory—distant, almost dreamlike, but unmistakable. The image of Uncle Gram flashed before you, an echo of Calloway’s manipulation. You could almost hear his voice, coaxing you to greet him every time he visited, making you act like everything was normal. But it never was. After his visits, the house always felt emptier, the silence heavier, as if another group of children had been “adopted,” leaving behind only their absence.

Graham moved to fire, but Hotch was faster. He saw the threat in his eyes before Graham could make a move, and with practiced precision, he shot him in the leg. Graham crumpled to the floor, dropping the gun as he went down, clutching his leg above the knee. Spencer immediately rushed to undo your restraints, but you didn’t follow him. Your eyes were fixed on something else. You weren’t looking at Graham, or even at Spencer. 

All you saw was the gun in the corner. All you felt was the burn of your newly freed hands. All you wanted was revenge.

Before anyone could stop you, you lunged for the gun, fingers closing around the grip. Adrenaline surged through your veins, your breath ragged as you turned the weapon on Graham.

He was on his knees, bleeding, vulnerable.

Morgan called your name, but you didn’t hear him. Your eyes were locked onto Graham’s.

Your right hand trembled slightly, the raw, nailless finger resting over the trigger. It pulsed—as if calling you to pull it.

The sirens in your head were deafening, drowning out Morgan and Hotch as they tried to reach you.

“Where’s your God now?” you spat, voice sharp and shaking with rage. “Because He sure as hell wasn’t in that house.”

Your entire body trembled, but not with fear. Not with hesitation. With something darker, something primal, something that had lived inside you for years, clawing at the walls of your ribs, screaming to be let out. And now—now that monster had a name, a face, and he was kneeling right in front of you.

Your chest heaved as you tightened your grip on the gun, the cool weight of it grounding you, fueling you. Your hands ached, not from exhaustion, but from the sheer force with which you clenched the weapon. Your index finger twitched against the trigger, the tendons in your wrist pulled so taut they might snap, the palace were you nails used to be pulsated as if it was calling you. Do it.

“This man trafficked children across the country.” Your voice was steady, but there was no mistaking the fury that laced every word. It crackled in the air around you like the moments before a thunderstorm, suffocating and electric. “He made them think they were safe. He made them trust him. He took their hands, promised them safety, and then he sold them. He ruined their lives—just like Calloway did.”

Morgan’s expression hardened.

You knew if you kept talking, you could get to him. You could make him see. Maybe, just maybe, he would let you do this. You could say it was an accident, that it was life or death. And you could walk free.

You didn’t move. You didn’t take your eyes off Graham, who had the audacity to grin.

The sight of his teeth—white, clean, untouched by suffering, untouched by the pain he had inflicted on others—sent something violent and raw ripping through you.

"Finally," he mused, his voice tainted with amusement, mockery, knowing. "Calloway’s little sugarcube. The angry one. The wild one. The one who snapped that boy’s arm like a twig when she was what—six? seven?"

Something inside you cracked.

The air turned thick. The blood in your veins ran hot, too fast, too much. You felt it in your fingertips, in the throb of your pulse, in the back of your skull where pressure built like an overfilled dam, desperate to break.

Your ears rang with the phantom sound of his voice—not Sullivan’s, but Calloway’s—the slurred taunts, the threats, the sickly sweet way he’d whispered your name while he—

Morgan took a careful step forward, his hands raised in a placating gesture. "Put the gun down," he urged, his voice calm but firm. "This isn’t you."

But it was you.

The gun in your hand felt like the only real thing in the room. The weight of it, the cold metal against your palm—it was control, justice, revenge.

Graham’s smirk deepened, unfazed. "Go on," he taunted, his voice raspy. "Show them who you really are."

Your heart pounded. Your finger hovered over the trigger, aching to pull it.

"You don’t have to do this," Morgan tried again. "You pull that trigger, you don’t get to come back from it."

The words hit you like a slap, but they didn’t land. The sound of the gun, of Graham’s taunting grin, drowned everything else out.

Your chest was tight, your breath ragged and shallow. Every fiber of your being was screaming, do it. End him. Make him pay. But something else, something deep inside, tugged at you—just a whisper of hesitation, but it was enough.

And then Spencer appeared at your side.

His voice, when it came, was soft. It wasn’t the sharp edge of a command or the hard lines of Morgan’s warning. It was patient, the way he always spoke to you when he thought you needed to be reminded of your worth. Of your humanity.

He called your name, his voice threaded with something like understanding, like he was walking on glass but knew that you needed him to be there. “I know what you’re feeling. I know you want him to pay. But this won’t fix anything. You know that, don’t you?”

You didn’t answer. Your eyes were locked on Graham, on his smile. The gun in your hand felt so right. But there was something in Reid’s voice, something gentle, that made you waver.

You could feel his presence now, right next to you. Close enough that you could smell the faint scent of his cologne, the warmth of his body that seemed to pull you in. He wasn’t backing off, wasn’t giving you space to breathe—he was there. Centered.

Reid repeated your name, his voice lower, more insistent. “You’re not him. You’re not the monster he’s trying to make you. Please.”

But you were a monster. Weren't you?

You finally tore your eyes away from Graham, the weight of your anger still pressing down on your chest. And then you saw him—Reid. His eyes weren’t filled with fear, or judgment, or pity. No, they were soft, gentle, as if he was trying to reach something deep inside of you.

He wasn’t looking at you like you were some broken thing to be fixed, or a threat to be afraid of. He wasn’t recoiling in disgust. He was looking at you like you were human. Like you mattered. Like you weren’t the monster you thought you were.

"Please," he whispered, his hand—slow, tentative—moved toward your trembling wrist. "You don’t need to do this. You are not alone."

Your breath hitched. A sob built up in your chest, hot and sharp. The rage was still there—so there—but somewhere in the flood, you felt something crack. A dam breaking. The years of holding everything back, all the hurt, the memories, the weight of a life you had never asked for, crashing down on you. You closed your eyes, and in that moment, Reid’s voice was the only thing you heard.

“I’ve got you,” he said, almost like a prayer, his fingers brushing yours, a lifeline in the chaos.

Your chest burned with the need to scream, to yell at him to stay away, to let you do what needed to be done. But instead, your hand—still holding the gun—slipped. Your fingers, raw and trembling, lost their grip, and the weapon fell to the floor with a soft, final clink.

The silence that followed was thick, suffocating. You stared down at the gun, a wave of dizziness crashing through you.

The urge to kill, to make him feel the same terror, the same helplessness, was gone. But in its place… there was nothing. Just emptiness.

Reid’s hand was on your arm now, guiding you, steadying you, like a shore amidst the storm. You let him pull you back, away from Graham, away from the moment you almost gave in to. You let him lead you out of the fury, out of the darkness that had almost consumed you.

Hotch kicked the gun away, and Morgan quickly cuffed Sullivan, but none of it registered. All you could hear was the thudding of your own heart in your ears, drowning out the world around you. You couldn't shake the feeling of weakness gnawing at you—how you couldn't pull the trigger, how pathetic it felt to even consider it. The shame washed over you in waves, thick and suffocating.

And then, hands were on you—Spencer’s hands. Soft, steady, and protective. They guided you, as if he could sense the storm raging inside of you, and he didn’t let go. His touch grounded you, calming the chaos, but it didn’t stop the guilt. You wanted to pull away, to hide from the vulnerability that threatened to swallow you whole, but Spencer didn’t let you. His presence was a quiet reassurance, his grip gentle yet firm, and for once, you let yourself be guided. You needed it. You needed him.

The freezing raindrops began to fall as Spencer walked you out of the building toward the waiting paramedics. Each drop felt like a sharp reminder of everything that had just happened. As the cold settled into your bones, everything hit you all at once. Your body trembled, weak and exhausted, while self-loathing thoughts swirled in your mind. You couldn't stop thinking about what you'd done—or what you had almost done.

Spencer noticed the way your body quivered, how your shoulders were bare in the downpour. Without a second thought, he draped his FBI windbreaker over you.

"I'm sorry," you whispered, your voice broken, eyes filled with regret.

Before he could reassure you—that none of this was your fault, that you hadn’t done anything wrong, that everything would be okay—one of the paramedics rushed toward you with a stretcher. In an instant, they pulled you from his arms, guiding you toward the ambulance.

Spencer cursed under his breath, the image of you in that moment burned into his mind. He knew it would stay with him for the rest of his life.

　　　　 　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　　

The sun bathed the park in a golden glow, its warmth fighting against the crisp breeze, making the trees shimmer with life on what the weatherman called ‘the warmest day of our winter’. Everything looked prettier at sunset. It was a beautiful day—one best spent among the laughter of children and the quiet focus of elderly chess players, their skill not only clearing your mind but offering it a rare moment of peace.

It had been two weeks since the night you almost lost control. After that, you decided to take three weeks off work—time you had spent searching for a new place, moving in, visiting your parents, and coming to the park.

"Check in five," Ethan said with a confident smile.

He was good—really good. He assessed the board with careful precision, you considered every move, from the forced plays to the controlling one's for the next move. 

"I see it in four," a voice said behind you.

The sound sent a shiver down your spine.

“Yeah, but he plays with the rooks,” you said, studying the board after spotting the move Spencer had pointed out.

Ethan frowned as you moved your bishop, setting up a check he hadn’t seen yet—not until he moved his pawn.

“Check in two,” you announced.

He sighed and pushed his king piece forward. “I officially surrender because I do not remember moving my bishop there.” His confused expression made you smile. Then, he glanced behind you. “And I’m glad you finally showed up. Can’t wait to see which one of you is better.”

Spencer tensed slightly but forced a polite smile at Ethan, who had no idea what had happened between you two. And Spencer hadn’t come here looking for you—but considering the probabilities of both of you being at the same place at the same time, he wasn’t exactly surprised either.

Still, he didn’t know how to talk to you. He still felt guilty about how he had treated you in the warehouse, and you were ashamed of how you had reacted.

As Ethan walked away, Spencer took the seat across from you. Something shifted in your stomach when you noticed his hair—it was shorter now, messier, no longer brushing his shoulders. Your blood rushed at the sight.

“Hi,” he said, offering a small, tight-lipped smile.

It was infuriating and embarrassing how impulsive you became around him. “You cut your hair.”

“Uh—yeah. My boss said I looked like I joined a boyband.” He ran a hand through it, chuckling nervously. 

“I think it looks good.” Where had all the apologies you prepared for this moment gone?

He smiled softly, wishing the hair was long enough to cover his pink ears, and you looked down at the chessboard, unable to meet his eyes.

“Do you want to start over?” he asked gently.

When you looked up again, it wasn’t the board he was focused on—it was you. There was something in the way his eyes shine, the way he swallowed nervously. That’s when you realized he wasn’t just talking about the game.

So much remained unspoken. Too much. Fear and shame sat heavy between you. You had convinced yourself that no one could love someone with the monster you carried inside you. But Spencer had seen it. And somehow, he was still here, offering a way forward.

He extended his hand. “I’m Spencer.”

His skin looked soft, and you hesitated for only a second before reaching out. For the first time in weeks, physical touch didn’t make you flinch.

You smiled. “I’m Woody.” Your voice was soft but steady.

“I’ve been told you’re good at chess.” He smiled at you the way the sun warmed the park—quiet but certain.

“Well, wanna see for yourself?” You began arranging the pieces.

He did the same, his fingers moving with practiced ease. Maybe the odds suggested otherwise, and maybe you didn’t believe in destiny—but if Spencer ever confessed how he had felt inexplicably drawn to the park that day, you might just believe him.

Dostoevsky once wrote, “To love someone means to see them as God intended them to be.” And Spencer, ever the atheist and man of science, found himself willing to believe in God every time he looked into your eyes.

　　　　 　　　    .˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘⋅.˳˳.⋅∘ ˚ ˚∘.˳˳. 　　　　　　 　　 　　 　

FINALLY MY BABYS ARE TOGETHER. the request for them are OPEN. And the series is going to take a jump in time, next time i post about them, they are going to be already together

Feedback feeds motivation! Likes, reblogs and comments are all appreciated <3

tag list: @arialikestea @hellsingalucard18 @pleasantwitchgarden @torturedpoetspsychward @cultish-corner @nymph0puppp @l-a-u-r-aaa @cherrygublersworld @theoceanandthestars @i-need-to-be-put-down @esposadomd <3

genuinely one of the best fics i’ve ever read… i felt like i ascended while i was reading.

pop rocks and green tea

word count: 20k

warnings: depictions of violence, 2x15 warnings (torture, drugging, spencer dies for a second, religious trauma), ANGST, hurt/comfort

summary: "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." (Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9)

there's very little in the world that will not make sense to doctor reid once he finds interest in it. most things come easy as they go, rubik's cube solved forwards and backwards — upside down and right side up, questions of physics and doctorate dissertations coming in triplets the same way that the notation rings in an empty performance hall with a musician.

in his life, to understand is power, and power is protection against those that have once hurt him. no harm in the present, he understands. not from them. not ever again. the only harm in the present is from the unsub and the unknown.

the absence of light still scares him. he tries not to think too much about that.

knowledge is power. wisdom is efficiency.

to profile someone is to understand them.

to profile you should be to understand you.

yet, beady eyes and charming smiles, you cause the rational to burn irrational — the known to become unknown. there is always something you know that he doesn't.

no, not simple facts of life or statistics that could save your life.

the void of your eyes is always too dark under the sun — the absence of light.

the shine of your hair is always too dim under the light — the absence of life.

you can do the one thing he can not, and he does not envy it. no. he does not crave to understand or to contain it. there is no dark need creeping up around his throat begging him to cage you and sing for him only.

it is simple curiosity.

charming as knowledge, preening with the night sky.

he fears you just as much as he must know you.

and well, doctor reid is never one to back down from nonsense that he must make of sense.

somewhere when he was a child, he thinks he has met you. your face is far too fresh in his mind to be more than just a passing face, but far too familiar to be someone who he no longer remembers. perhaps you are a face seen in dreams — dreams that on occasion give him deja vu, but it never quite matters. it doesn't quite matter, actually. he's truly not much better off knowing just who you are. perhaps a fond memory or a lost face in his past is plenty fine on its own. he simply hopes he will never encounter you in his line of work — even if it seems that he will some day. people in his dreams are never quite the best. people in his dreams are part of his past and always circle back to his future.

but the dreams of you come in strange flashes — a grin with too much teeth, a laugh with too little air. a song with too many keys. a voice that carries a little too much — a voice that sings too many notes. there is something that doctor reid should know about you in his dreams, so he tries talking to you, but there is no voice ever.

all there ever is is a nice cup of coffee at a local coffee shop — and an image of you frowning at him.

he wonders if he should seek counselling for such a matter, but it is much preferred to the sound of screams in his nightmares that jolt him awake and the constant watch for voices that have plagued his family. he worries that he will hear them too one day. that the voices will eat at his mind and ruin him. the same way they had ruined the man on the train — the same way it had eaten so many of the unsubs that he knew.

to be in your mind is never too much a good thing, but is it really a sin to listen?

you manifest the differently in his reality as you do in his dream.

you passed him on your way to morning work — stumbling up the stairs to the metro, phone tucked to your belt the same way that morgan has it, briefcase overfilled. its a cliché in the same way that he's a nerd who looks the same as ever.

a student internship in the BAU. you didn't ask. he didn't either.

hotch mumbles to gideon about how you shouldn't be here considering clearance, and when you are asked, you do not know. you tell them in pure honesty that you had been sent here because of your post-graduate dissertation. a paper on reading people. a paper on just about everything that the BAU did. too much brainpower at such a young age. you should not be in the department, but hotch isn't given much time to complain before everyone is called out and you are left.

with me. spencer finds himself saying to you.

you tag along, dissertation handed to doctor reid as he tells gideon, and you fiddle with your fingers — three rings on your left, and four rings on your right. berkeley then stanford then harvard. your resume shows too much yet too little. degrees in humanities until your doctorates where you had changed to psychology. an intrigue in the art of lying and manipulation. the psychology of acting and the need to control everything. perhaps it is a strange subject to be let into the fbi for, but no one on the plane comments on it.

a killer. a man who calls and kills.

a man who kills in the name of god.

god.

a strange word, truly. reid doesn't believe in anything the same way gideon does, and while the way you recite verses from revelation feels like there is truth in your faith, the grimace on your face after indicates anything but. is that the truth? or do you lie the same way your dissertation writes? do you use the art of manipulation to get what you need? what you want?

what does he want?

you don't have a goal, doctor reid.

scary words to be told by someone who was his age when he joined the bau. do you have one? you don't seem to either. he tries snapping back at you, really, but it doesn't work how it is supposed to. how are you supposed to react? someone your age should snap into an argument. argue back with him. someone his age should know better than to snap back. but when you only give him a half-shrug and grin when he argues back. it almost feels as though he's the one who never grew up.

perhaps it is jealousy. he had first started out when he was your age yet he didn't slot in nearly as nicely as you do. it almost feels like you've become one with the team. an entity with a lack of shape. a non-newtonian fluid that slots in the cracks that the team is yet to be missing. an adhesive that somehow sticks the team better than the rest of it does. someone who slips through the cracks to reveal the lack of continuity. the team should work well already, so why then do you reveal the worst when you let go? perhaps you are here to prove your dissertation and not to help.

do you wield a gun? why do you hold on to one?

your fingers wrap around the grip and you stare at the unsub from behind him. reid begs you to slow down, but you aren't fast enough — not enough survival in the bau, a case requiring too much agility that you have not yet developed. training could do nothing for it, so when the unsub catches wind of you, it goes without saying that the intern lives even if he passes. perhaps you were doing it on purpose. perhaps those dark eyes of yours with too much pupil and too little iris. the sound of you yelling his name rattles through the night, and he is gone.

will he dream of you when you are right there? or will his dreams come to haunt him?

when he wakes it is a dark room. you are in the back, tied and half awake, and he is on the chair, fully clothed, stuck staring into the eyes of an angel of some sort. raphael. the angel's name is raphael but he's not even congruent with modern teachings, your mouth earning you a snap of the gun in russian roulette. you fear not even death, eyes glimmering and mouth uncontrollable as you dive into the history of the book of enoch and tobit, spitting out scripture upon scripture of archangels that do not include raphael. you earn a second shot and a third as you drive the unsub mad, your eyes in equal desperation as he finally lands on the fifth, turning around and aiming it at reid as you hold your breath and bite your tongue finally.

"Psalm 31:9. I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue: I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before me"

he pulls the trigger and you watch, eyes trained as spencer lets out a breath in relief.

he mouthes at you to keep it shut while you fiddle at the restraints, staring as the unsub knocks spencer back out, barrel of the gun jammed into the side of your head as you're next.

you wonder if you'll see spencer again in your dreams.

doctor reid, with formality.

when he rouses again, it is to the smell of smoke and fire, and your eyes are staring at the door. spencer does not speak. he's learned that it is most likely best for you not to, but you open your mouth again.

exodus 20:7. you shall not misuse the name of the lord your god, for the lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses His name. you spit out verses like they've been beat into you. like you know something that spencer can not read in between the lines. he knows the footnotes and cross-references. he knows every verse in the bible if he really willed for it, yet you feel like a disobedient child, thrashing and choking up the ten commandments, you shall not murder stinging on your mouth as the whip comes down on your foot. It is as though you know this feeling.

spencer winces and tries to open his mouth, but you leave no space. you can not stone me. for you are not sinless and clean. john 8:7 and 9. they kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, "All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!" at this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. it is scripture upon scripture until the sole of your foot has become bruised, and the man tires, only then is your foot restored and you are given your body once more.

"1 Corinthians 14:34. The women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church." he spits back at you, and you laugh.

Acts 2:17. And it shall be in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.

spencer can not bear to see the abuse you suffer, and when you laugh and laugh, cursed as the man tells you to be quiet, you spit that he has no authority. he is not your husband. he is not your father. he is not your brother in christ, for no brother in christ is a murderer, you curse.

"And you are not sinless, woman."

the lord spake unto moses saying, "speak unto all the congregation of the children of the lord " and say unto them, ye shall be holy, for I, the lord your god, am holy" spencer finally gets a word in, and your neck snaps over to stare at him, almost as though he were not speak in the conversation.

spencer gets beat, and you are unsurprised when the man leaves and leaves a reddened sole that near matches yours.

he is no charles. you mumble, bruise on your foot as you mumble quietly. for we are all slaves of god.

perhaps in some way he still is.

no. you mumble. for we are made in his image, and in his image we are made. male and female.

spencer can not offer you words of comfort, your eyes glazing over as you stare up at the wood of the ceiling, eyes closed as you are gone.

when the man returns, spencer asks for his name while you heave, heart racing and body flushed. you are not sick, no, but perhaps your body is struggling under the stress. an offhanded comment he had once documented from his dream reminds him that you do not do well under stressful situations. a body that shuts down and decides it is no longer worth it.

tobias is his name, and you cry and beg to not be injected, whimpering and shaking, squeaming in his hold as he straps you down to give you the injection. it is the first time that spencer has seen you in tears since meeting you. you had not cried at the abuse nor at the kidnapping, but you squirm and cry at the needle being forced into you, half of the dose forced into you as you cry and cough, body eventually going soft, and when tobias sees spencer's foot, he knows he's next.

you manage to force out a clean out of your lips with glassy eyes as you focus on him, eyes wounded and hurt as you beg tobias to let you sit closer to spencer. stronger in two, you cry. would he not offer even the mercy of letting the two of you pass as one? was it a sin to love someone?

he moves you after arguing with his father, and you manage a weak limp before you are at reid's feet, glassy eyes and slow blinking in your system as your body resists the drug.

reid is delirious. he is weak. father is leaving again. there is no way to stop it, and he has to live it out, and his mind is gone. he is out. he knows he is. he is stuck in a memory, and he does not know where he is anymore. he was somewhere. he was doing something. he was... something. where is he? he must be somewhere important. he is barely conscious when the sound of a beating rattles through the room, and he is stuck staring as you are dragged by the hair and a camera is set before you both.

nothing outside of a beating. you mumble. the drug will numb yours.

you stare into the camera through heavy eyelids, and you watch as reid struggles to focus.

"Choose one to die. I'll let you choose one to live."

you cough as you feel your skin crawl, and you know it'll come to a point where the two of you will not return. you will claw and force your way back like you have learned to, but the doctor next to you will not. it will force through his bones and pure will not be enough. he will never be the same after this, and in such a way perhaps it is your fault for not pulling the trigger in the field. it matters not if you're only an intern. if you pass then you pass. the doctor has to live.

Spencer Reid has to live.

"Can you really see inside men's minds? See these vermin? Choose one to die. I'll let you choose one to live."

"No."

"I thought you wanted to be some kind of savior."

"You're a sadist and a psychotic break. You won't stop killing. Your word's not true." You mumble. Again. You can do this. Just like the first time. Just like the second. You are better than this.

"The other heathens are watching. Choose a sinner to die, and I'll say the name and address of the person to be saved."

"I won't get choose who gets slaughtered and have you leave their remains behind like a poacher." You cough.

"Can you really see into my mind, girl? Can you see I'm not a liar?! Choose one to die, and save a life. Otherwise, they're all dead." He pulls you up by the collar, and you clench your fists.

"All right, I'll choose who lives." Spencer mumbles. "Stop hurting her."

"They're all the same."

"Far right screen." He mumbles.

You go limp against Spencer's leg as you're dropped, and when the door clicks behind you and the silence meets you, you're blinking and heaving, crack from your wrist alerting Spencer as you stumble and hop on over, one wrist free as you turn on the camera, mumbling under your breath to the team as you slur half your words and cry about a cabin in the woods, mumbling about drugs and how you're sorry you didn't stop Reid from going into the cornfield and how you'll accept any form of punishment going your way. You're slurring half your words and praying the team understands. Maybe the red of the camera hasn't turned on at all.

you look strange like this, spencer thinks. there's so much fragility that he can't help but assume that this is really how you are. perhaps all of the acting you had written on had only revealed that you are no better than anyone else when it came to abuse. he will be gone until late night, if he is not wrong. three bodies at once is not something to be done quick. perhaps tobias does not want to kill still, but it matters no longer. he feels it too. the drug in his system has done something.

by the way you're crying, he almost wants to console you.

kid.

doctor reid.

do you have the strength to tell me a story?

i'll tell you a dream I once had.

anything to get my mind off of the drug.

i dreamt once, a long time ago, that i would become famous. fame that would act in musicals and sing on a grand stage all for me. my mother's dream was for me to become someone's pretty and compliant wife. but i dreamt of velvet curtains and pine wood floors and a crowd that would applaud whenever i finished my show. 

and now?

and then i dreamt of books. pages and pages of books. research that would engulf my life, days and nights in ranges of literature.

and now?

i dream... i dream of survival. i dream that we make it out alive.

the two of you watch the murder of the first on the camera.

"Reid, if you're watching, you're not responsible for this. You understand me? He's perverting god to justify murder. You are stronger than him. He cannot break you."

you blink lifelessly, tears slipping and dissociating out of a fear, body going limp when you slack back next to reid, and he stares at the screen as he spaces out. gone. he's back in the middle of nowhere, memories stuck on replay as he knows he should break out to find you, and it isn't until you're crying and begging not for a second dose, bawling that wakes spencer up when you're squeaming and gasping for him to put the needle and drug away, voice raspy and breaking as he forces the needle into you, reid stuck watching, unable to tear his eyes away from it as half of the drug is pushed into your system and your bawling turns into quiet sobbing, sobbing turning into half-sniffles until you're gone completely.

reid squirms with the injection into his system, and he slouches down and passes out next to you.

It's night when you wake first, eyes dead and pupils small as you feel Spencer rouse next to you. You're shaky. The second dose should have been enough to cause you to go into shock and nearly die, but the seizures have long grown to be things of the past and god-forbid this be your first rodeo because as soon as the screen flashes with a message about a virus, you're widening your eyes and bracing yourself for another beating. If the drugs can't help you, then god help you with the beating.

"No. No! They're trying to silence my message!" Tobias— Charles yells.

i can't control what they do. i'm not with them. i'm with you. Spencer whimpers.

"Really?" He laughs, and you watch as he turns on the video from earlier from Gideon. You should hurt him, truly. You should bite the bullet and just risk death because it doesn't matter unless—

"Do you think you can defy me?"

I don't know what he's talking about.

"You're a liar!" He raises a brow at your raised sleeve, and you flinch as he forces the fabric up on your arms before checking Spencer's. "You're pitiful! Just like my son. This ends now. Confess your sins. Confess!"

i haven't done anything. tobias, help me.

You watch in horror, yelling as you watch the man beat him up.

"he can't help you. he's weak."

tobias.

"Confess your sins."

help.

"It's the devil vacating your body."

You scream, forcing over to Spencer as you break your wrist out again uncomfortably to do CPR, mumbling quiet sorrys to him as you press your lips to his to force the air back into his system, numbness in your wrist no longer mattering to you as Spencer coughs back to life, and you don't care if the barrel of the gun is pressed to your head as Spencer is forced to watch.

"You revived him. How many members in your team?"

"Seven." You whisper, voice breaking. You aren't one of them. Not technically.

"The 7 angels who had the 7 trumpets prepared themselves to sound" Tobias mumbles to himself, and you lock eyes with Spencer who's still on the ground.

"Choose one to die."

You're gaping and swallowing air like a fish, and you whisper quietly.

"I don't know their names." Your voice breaks. "I don— I don't know their names. I'm not— not one of them."

you're crying again, and it really makes reid wonder if anything you do is real at all.

"Aaron Hotchner." Spencer exhales. "Him first. Genesis 23:4. "Let him not deceive himself "and trust in emptiness, vanity, falseness, and futility, for these shall be his recompense."

"For god's will."

You're on the ground mumbling to yourself, crying and coughing, your wrist starting to turn purple, and Spencer glances at the way you hold it up to him with a sad smile, laughing almost pitifully.

you dislocated your wrist.

"Yeah." You laugh, humming quietly as you look almost fond. "Fun stuff. I'll pop it back when we're saved."

you?

"Yeah." You hum, resting your head on his thigh as you help the chair back up. "He didn't notice."

too focused on me. what about your wrist?

"I can do it myself." You hum, leaning on his thigh. "I'll get scolded, but it'll be better than this."

Spencer doesn't say anything else, and when Tobias returns and you're both offered water, you're unsurprised that he still doesn't notice that your wrist has been broken free, but when another shot is injected to Spencer you're begging the poor man to leave him alone, a dose returned to you as you fight the depressants in your system with a furrow of your brow and with the last bit of strength, you pop your wrist back into place, without too much of a thought as to do anything else, and you go in for the kill, screaming and shrieking as you steal the gun from his pocket and pull the trigger between his brows, sobbing and wailing as the blood pools underneath you and steal the key to let Spencer out.

He's too sluggish to move comprehensibly, and you hear Tobias' voice behind you, your fingers smoothing over his wound, your discolored wrist dark against the glow of the room as you weep, hands stained with blood that isn't yours and an internship ruined all thanks to your foolish choices, and when Spencer drags himself over to hold you, you're sniffling and coughing into his arms, apologizing for the blood on your hands and the drugs in his system.

You force his hand out of the man's pocket, needle in hand as you take out the last of the drug and force it into the leaves, the sound of the rest of the BAU approaching as you squeeze the needle in your hand and throw it as far away from Reid as possible. You can't let him lose himself too. You can't let him do it. His future is too bright and yours has always been a clawing upward that you've grown used to.

Your hand finds his instinctively, squeezing for comfort.

spencer feels your hand in his vaguely, and he tries to make a sound of complaint when he sees you dump the rest of the drugs, but it doesn't come out. the sound of the bau hobbling on over and the sound of your cry and begging doesn't register to him. it barely does. he's truly past it, and when gideon brings him in and you hobble behind him with a stretch of your back, it almost feels as though the narcotics were a part of your daily life. he does not understand you. he fears he never really will, and perhaps the closest you will ever get to being honest with him is when you started crying over the shots in your system.

"Kid."

you shake your head and tell him you'll be fine. just run a detox kit on the two of you and you'll teach spencer the rest.

"Detox?"

detox.

you sit in the same ambulance as spencer because you refuse to be separated, and you let the drip run through your system. you have the medics flush everything out of both your systems, and while you think you're going insane the first 24 hours, both of you are booked into a treatment facility before you're out in a jiffy. you assure the workers that your relapse won't happen considering you no longer have access to these drugs, and you visit reid every day just in case you do somehow think of it.

i don't get it. i need it. i know i don't but—

its just the drugs talking. we can do a reward system or just give it some time. you'll forget soon.

when you return to the office first, you're offered a job by hotch. it almost feels ironic for you to accept a job that nearly killed you on the first day because of a misfiled paper, but you accept it anyway.

"Reid needs you."

you know. he needs them too.

you continue to visit him every day after work, telling him about the cases you had been reading and the work that had become new, and he lets you fiddle with his hands to calm the both of you. a germaphobe. he never should have let that needle touch him, yet he couldn't argue. neither of you really could. you couldn't either. the two of you are clean from everything else but the drug, and it's appalling that you had recovered so fast. he wonders just how much of you you had been honest about in the fbi profiling when you had first been introduced to the team. he's certain hotch must know more about you, but whether or not the drugs had been part of your past is only for hotch to know.

you seem shattered.

spencer notes the lack of rings on your fingers now.

when the two of you are back in the office, you toss him a teabag instead of the coffee, and he raises a brow at you.

skitterish. he's anxious, and he's sure maybe it has to do with the withdrawals, but you hold your hand out for him to squeeze. there's something, maybe. he isn't that peeved by you when you end up sanitizing your hands before holding it out for his, and he squeezes in increments as the two of you sort through the following cases. your hand becomes an extension of his in a way, and while hotch doesn't understand why you're required to be by him at all times, he understands to some degree that perhaps you know better than everyone else in the team how to deal with it.

it'll be good for him.

"I doubt it will."

it helped me.

you start to understand doctor reid to some degree, you think. there's something so strange about him willingly holding hands with you. perhaps a blood bond had been formed when the two of you had been drugged by the same needle. he learns to hold hands with you longer, and when it's awful, he squeezes and asks you if you have sugar or something else to get his mind off of the drug. the withdrawal is bad, he thinks you know that much. the sugar in his system helps him calm a little. sometimes its tea, sometimes its sugar. sometimes its just squeezing your hand until he calms a little more.

sometimes it's holding headphones over his head while he tunes out the noise, and sometimes it's his hand looking for yours instinctively. when the noise is too much and he slams the window closed, you have headphones popped over his ears as he maps everything out, frustration evident on his face as you squeeze at his hand from the chair, blinking at the map.

not particularly bright, but particularly good at both reading and acting. you'd never go off script. not once. you're truly only good for interrogation at this point in time, and perhaps observation, but you tag along with him and emily to the shelter. when reid's being rude you just slap your hand over his mouth and apologize to the poor woman, dragging him off to look around while you hand the case over to emily.

you're not my babysitter.

trust me, until you know how to handle yourself, i am.

you apologize to emily and smack reid when he tries to argue back, and when reid tries smartassing with you, you just tell him to shut up with a hand over his mouth — something you know he despises.

emily, you've barely known me—

you slam a hand around his mouth, eye twitching. forgive him, trauma response.

you let emily do most of the talking when you head back, forcing a slice of gum into reid's mouth as you wave him off with a flick of the wrist, brow raised as you glance back at the case files.

spencer wonders what the discomfort with your dismissal is, but he takes your hand back up again because you can't deny him for too long. you know how skittish it is to be off the drugs, and it's an awful handful of days. on occasion it lasts into weeks, and you squeeze spencer's hand back when you need it too. always better with a friend. you can keep telling yourself that, truly.

you need it sometimes too, staring quietly from the confines of the room as you're told that the unsub died in the line of fire, thumb brushing against the back of spencer's hand as you let out a huff, mumbling quietly case after case until you grow numb to it like the rest of them. new face. you grow to become someone that isn't a new face, and when reid's begging you for the drugs in his system, you're holding him back, mumbling as he groans into his hands about not having anything to kick in his system.

you hand him a cup of tea and pop rocks, dumping it onto your tongue with the opening of your mouth on the plane as you kick your feet back. a new case. not a day of boredom in your new world.

it's case after case and running after running, pinching reid to get him to shut up when he says something mean, apology stumbling past your lips almost as though he were some troublesome child you were taking care of for the time being. and when he finally frees himself of you to grab a drink with his friend, he's snapping his phone off at emily's calls, panic on his face when you show up at the very bar a handful of hours later, waving hello to his friend before sliding down on reid's lap.

i'm not done talking to him.

you're on the job. you mumble back to him, letting his hand wander. drunken man, you think. too handsy.

His friend lets out a laugh as you start chatting with him, and you swat at Reid's hands each time they trail too close to your pelvis, squeezing it at one point when he raises a brow at you.

what?

"You're getting too handsy." You hold his wrists together as you set his drink down, and you crack a smile as his friend when he laughs. "Hm?"

"He seems real fond of you."

"Trauma bonded." You hum. "You see it too, huh?"

"Not sure where he got it."

"Sure wasn't from me." You let go of Spencer's hands, and he brushes the exposed skin of your upper thigh absentmindedly, humming quietly. "I threw out the last two before we were taken."

"He seems quite affectionate."

"No. Not quite." You hum, hand held over Spencer's as you click on your phone. "I doubt he knows it."

"He couldn't know even if you died."

"Perhaps I'll be gone by the time he realizes it." You tilt your head as Spencer blinks at you, and you hum, laughing as you rest your forehead on his.

"I hope he doesn't. For his sake."

i'm still sober, you know.

i know. you laugh.

stop excluding me.

we're not.

you're unsurprised the case is by a woman, and you're even more unsurprised when she's carried off after barely harming the final victim. you stare blankly and let gideon talk to the both of you, and you laugh airily, telling gideon it wasn't that deep for you, but reid would need some time. you catch the look in gideon's eyes, but you don't comment on it. it's alright. you'll stick with reid. you're close enough for you to grab him every morning anyway.

"Kid."

"Hm?"

"You ask for help when you need it, all right?"

"Alright."

spencer doesn't say anything until gideon is walking off, and his hand finds yours out of habit, mumbling quietly to you about how all you were was an actor, but you don't comment on it, laughing instead.

and when the open mic calls for someone to join him to sing, you hobble up without a second thought, a drunken curl on your lips, mouth open as you sing, and spencer thinks back to when you had cried with a quiet voice that you dreamed of things once a long time ago. a dream that would break you and ruin you to pieces. it seemed to matter enough to you at the time, but it really should not matter. especially not when you're spinning and spinning on the stage and swinging to the beat. you suit the stage the same way he suited books. a dream that you could both never truly pursue the way you wanted to.

even if you did, it would only end horribly now that you are where you are.

spencer brings you down from the stage, swallowing a grimace at your sweaty hands but taking them anyway, eyes trailed on you as you giggle at him. a gentle glow of everything yet nothing. he wants to understand, maybe. he can't, though. he doesn't.

you knock out on the jet on the couch in the back on spencer's shoulder, and he finds himself brushing the back of your hand as he stares out the window. if anyone notices, no one says a thing. cut a little slack for the poor boy, huh. cut a little slack for the youngest ones. ignore the held hands and brushing of fingers. ignore your caging in in order to grab something from an upper shelf. ignore that boy genius gets his iq slashed in half whenever you blink at him with eyes bigger than usual and ignore that whenever you brush past him his voice stutters and his ears go slightly red.

ignore it all for the sake of the boy.

he tries rationalizing it. it's unsurprising for him to be calming down when holding hands. a study by harvard revealed that the pressure of holding hands stimulates the pressure-sensitive pacinian corpuscles in the hand, which send signals to the vagus nerve that conducts signals to the hypothalamus, which then lowers the heart rate and blood pressure and contributes to the neurological management of stress responses. it's that simple. truly. it's just a biological response. he's just having a biological response. he's completely having a biological response.

lots happens for a reason, and lots happens for no reason. spencer tries not to think too much about the smell of your shampoo that he memorizes or how you have a slightly different shade of lipstick that he tries not to point out. small, minor changes. the same way you show up at the metro station seven minutes earlier to be able to catch the same cart as him or the coffee you always have in your hand at the station. he tries not to notice but he unfortunately does, and he truly just plays it off as a normality.

he notices when jj changes lipstick.

"JJ! New lip?"

well, apparently not.

but he tries to convince himself that its transference. it has to be. there's really no reason for him to have a racing heart and strange levels of dopamine rush to his head whenever you squeeze by him in between cases. its simply because he's gotten used to holding your hand when fidgety and the fact that you had saved him when he nearly died. it's really all that is. it shouldn't be more than that. he isn't allowed more than that anyway.

he's just stressed now that gideon's gone and someone new is in the team. he's just upset that gideon left the same way his father did and he's clinging onto you who presented yourself so nicely to him after the two going missing and considering that you both had the whole drug exchange, he finds that perhaps it's just easy to cling to you. it's so easy to just rely on you when you're so vulnerable to him.

he finds his hand in yours under the table in the jet, your eyes closed and knocked out against the window whenever.

it could also be a fear response from him. the chemicals are the same, so it would only make sense that he— oh, who was he kidding. it couldn't be fear. he wasn't scared of you. it wasn't as if you were the one whose mind short-circuted whenever he walked by or handed him an overly sweetened cup of coffee with the exact amount of sugar needed for some reason. you're not the one whose heart lurches whenever he's handed a pack of pop rocks he's sure that you'd like to have instead of him. it's hard not to remember things about you.

it's hard not to just love you when you're so easy to.

you make it too easy for him.

pack of gum held out to him to chew on, telling him that it helps with concetration despite having no true proof for it. you tell him it helps you so it might help him. you don't think too much, and neither does he really when you're holding his chest down and pressing your forehead to his when he wakes from a nightmare, breathing and racing heart rattling in his ears as he matches his breathing to yours on the jet, amused look from everyone as he flushes red and tries to bury the embarassment.

"Nothing to be embarassed abOW—." You hum, jolting as the plane jumps, yelping as Spencer holds a hand to steady you.

"Sitting on the jet floor is kind of nasty, doctor." Morgan raises a brow at you, and you blink up at him.

"Let's hope the clean up crew we hire actually do their jobs, then." You thank Spence as you squeeze between him and Rossi. "At least my pants are dark."

The case is simple, really. Find the one who kidnapped the boy and return him to his parents. One had already passed, so the team tries to speed the process up, and you're put with Morgan and Reid to stay overnight at the home to camp out, so when you're jolted awake by Reid having a panic attack and crying your name, you've got your hands in his hair and he's breathing into your shoulder while Morgan apologizes to the family.

scary. scary, scary, scary. he isn't used to the fear that rattles through his system, and he lives the same dream again and again. dead boy behind the washer. dead boy behind the washer in the basement. step down the basement and be unable to save the boy. haunt his life and stare quietly at the still legs of the boy while his dad watches.

relive a nightmare that he was both part and not part of.

the boy is safe, found in his arms when they sweep the house, and you squeeze spencer's arm gently, eyes relieved as he closes his, boy's forehead pressed to his as the two of you make it out of the house, your phone ringing through to hotch to tell him that you have the boy. the blanket and swaddle in her arms wasn't a child, it was just items. in a way, it was saddening, your eyes weary as you stared at the arrested woman, hand finding reid's to squeeze and let go of.

you alright?

i'll be fine... you?

i'll cross that bridge when i get there.

you're unsurprised when he requests a handful of days to stay back, and you find yourself with him on the couch of his hotel with morgan and rossi, watching a match as you tear open another bag of chips.

"You're not supposed to be here."

you flash him a grin, shrugging as you offer a chip, shaking his head as the three of your forcibly inject yourselves into an investigation that he insists on keeping to himself.

it's a lot to dig through. it's a lot, and when spencer finds himself deeper and deeper down the investigation, rattling his mother and thinking its his father, he finds himself squeezing your hand under the table while you all profile, shoulders sunk back with a weariness that you don't like seeing, trying his best to wrap up the case.

he gets through it anyway, hand finding yours as you squeeze and finish up the case, and you hum quietly as he closes his eyes finally on the plane, mumbling quietly to himself as he thanks you for quiet support. hands finding his in times of fear, acting both as a calming agent when you touch him and a stimulant when you don't. to be everything yet simultaneously nothing. a paradox and an oxymoron.

but the truth is spencer knows why he's this way. he knows why he acts this way, but he has a little moment or two in which he doesn't believe it. he really refuses to. he understands it because he's read textbook cases, and he knows as a matter of fact that he isn't feeling this way because he's scared of you. he knows, but it doesn't stop him from pretending he doesn't anyway. because having you all vulnerable to him and not knowing how you feel about him is enough of a risk as is.

not to mention that he isn't allowed to be fraternizing with his coworkers.

but it doesn't stop him from caring. it doesn't stop him from slipping you breakfast on the metro on the way to work, and neither does it stop you from handing him a doughnut after your lunch break. it stops neither of you from ripping open a pack of pop rocks while listening to the new cases or him from handing you a cup of tea. it stops nothing because there's nothing to be stopping. he understands that much, at least.

but it's fine to care for one another.

it's fine, and there's no reason not to, so when morgan's calling you about how spencer's locked himself in the lab with anthrax, you're terrified. you're there with hotch, pinching your fingertips between your knuckles, biting and letting go of your tongue as the military sets up a grey zone between the houses and you're on the phone after hotch hangs up with reid.

You call him after, upper lip bitten as you listen to the line ring and start.

"Spencer." You mumble, voice breaking as you get him on the phone line, Morgan's hand on your shoulder as you bite back tears. "Are you okay? Breathing?"

i'm fine.

"Please don't do this again. We'll get you fixed up and then we can go back to before." You mumble, chewing your bottom lip as you lock eyes with him through the glass. "Tell us more about the lab. Please. I need to hear you ramble or else my brain's gonna keep reminding me that—"

"Dr. Nichols is a former military scientist, which means he's most likely secretive and most likely a little paranoid. He would have protected the cure, and probably would have hidden it from his partner. So look for something innocuous, something you would not suspect." Reid starts, and you rest the phone between your chin and shoulder, scribbling down notes on your copy of the file.

"He has breathing problems, right? How about an inhaler?" You mumble. "I had Garcia pull medical records."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." You mumble. "Is the doctor inside with you?"

"Yeah. I'll have her look." Spencer mumbles. my head's a little dizzy.

i know, spence. hold on for us, please. You nod at Morgan as he leaves, and you squeeze your palms, eyes focused on the way Spencer looks out the window back at you. He nods at you as he steps out, and you follow him in the decontamination chamber, facing the other side as he strips to be cleaned from top to bottom.

He suffers, though, and you're stuck sitting in the ambulance as he's rushed to the hospital and the samples are processed, one sigh in relief for when hotch tells you the suspect's been detained, and another sigh in relief for when spencer's given the cure. you stay by his side when morgan comes to visit, and you flip through one of your more recent books, chin on the side of his bed as morgan hands you a cup of jello.

"'s he alright?"

"Cured." You hum, peeling open the jello to eat at it, shifting from the bed audible as you look to the side.

having jello without me?

"Maybe." You bite down on the spoon, raising a brow.

i want a bite.

You laugh, shaking your head at him. when you're healed, spence.

but it's so easy. it's painfully easy, even. you make it so easy for him to wonder what you're up to.  it's so easy. too easy.

he ponders over it on some days, and when you find the dog tags to hand to morgan with a grimace, he spots the slight grimace and slanted eyes that you hide away after you go back to searching. he understands it all, he supposes. he did not at one point. it is much easier to know who you are when standing face to face with you as opposed to the spots and dreams that filled the cracks between the visions of you.

he keeps a hand on your lower back and leans his head on yours as the two of you head back on the jet, quiet circles drawn into your skin. you lean back, visibly sunken and drained, squeezing his hand on the way back to your apartments, humming quietly and pressing your cheek to his before you both make it back to your rooms. this is so easy. loving and trusting you is so easy.

but the universe always finds different ways to prove you both wrong.

four hours of sleep is nowhere near enough, and when you split a cup of coffee with reid as you both sit at the homicide, your eyes struggling to stay awake as one twitches, you think you're going to go insane. hotch is missing, there's a serial killer loose for a surgeon's son, and you've flipped through so many files with reid that you're starting to hear shit. you're sure your hallucinating when emily tells you both that hotch is in the hospital for a stab wound from foyet or someone, and you're blinking at spencer as you run through the profile with the father. he should remember. it should come easy.

it comes with difficulty, you suppose, but when you're walking out with the doctor and get tackled by reid, you're staring at his bleeding leg as he stares at the unsub. in a way you probably could have avoided this, but you wince as spencer shoots at the unsub, your own jacket coming off to stop the bleeding from his leg. he tells you and the rest of the team to go find emily and hotch, but you stay back after they leave, lifting him with ease as he sputters, face impossibly red.

when did you even—

don't worry about it. you laugh, humming. you'll be fine.

you hear a faint whistle that you assume is from morgan, and you're off to the hospital with spencer.

you take another jello cup to share with spencer after he gets the bullet removed, and you listen to jj as the doctor tells reid he'll be fine as long as he stays on crutches. you help him into it the first time, and you end up bringing him home. you end up half-moving in to take care of him for the few weeks, cooking and cleaning and huffing as you have to drive through the streets of dc, but it comes naturally to you too. you find that caring for spencer is so painfully easy that you're a little embarrassed.

you most certainly don't say much when garcia gives you a wiggle of her brow and the two of you wiggle your fingers for a cookie from her tin.

"These are for Hotch."

You feign hurt, holding your hand over your chest. "That's evil."

"I get shot in the leg and I don't get any cookies." Spencer huffs. "You know he's gonna hate the attention."

"It's cookies, not cake. He's probably gonna pretend like nothing happened, anyway."

"Well, it doesn't mean we have to." You pout at the cookies as Spencer offers you a lollipop.

"I think maybe we should." Spencer frowns.

"I don't roll that way." Garcia swats your hand as you reach for the tin again.

"I've been thinking about it? The entire time I've known hotch, I don't think I've ever seen him blink."

You pause to think, blinking slowly. "Holy shit."

"I know. It's weird." Garcia scrunches her nose.

"Classic alpha male behavior."

"Do you think he stared down foyet?" You mumble.

"Maybe. If it would save his life."

"Do you think he stared the whole time, like with each stab?"

"I have no idea. Is he ok?"

"I wouldn't be, but... I'm a blinker." Spencer sighs, and you pat his thigh, getting up.

JJ comes in shortly and you're both whisked off to another case, sitting in the station, your hands moving the pins around as Spencer speaks around the whole case, telling you what to write on the board and what to leave out. You think you're fine with this. He sorts out his thoughts by explaining everything to you, and when the case is wrapped up, you fake a gasp in offense when you catch him counting his cards, replacing a card of your own and winning the game to get back at him.

he lets you.

he call you a cheat later when you're walking back to the apartment, pulling out the card that you had replaced in your hand as you pretend not to know what he's talking about. he snaps his fingers as the card disappears and you find it in your belt, and you blink at him with wide eyes that spencer thinks he can get used to. he'd prefer it if anything. to surprise you for the rest of the days as you both head to work together.

you learn to tone down the character in the way you dress, but you don't say too much when garcia's flown in for the newest case involving choking and internet culture, your quiet glancing at the screen making you pause. it's all a game to get a rush of dopamine to your head, but you don't say too much. you never really do. you fiddle with your ring and glance at the bruises on the boy's neck, staring quietly as morgan tackles him.

Reid and morgan have no luck getting to him, so hotch is forced to pull them out.

Hotch suggests Penelope, but you decide that it's slightly easier for it to be you. You fit the profile, and while Penny would be much more comfortable in some way, you had the decoration on you to prove something. You don't remember the last time you ever had the heart to wear your rings. No. You do. You just don't like to think about it.

You open the door, humming as you tilt your head. "You ever done drugs?"

"Someone get her out of there." Hotch groans.

"Because tbh when I was crashing out back when my family passed away I really considered just—" you make a click sound with your tongue, drawing a line past your throat with your thumb as you tilt your head, sitting down slowly. "But the drugs gave the high that came with it, so I thought I could just... keep doing them. Tried choking myself too. It was fine until it wasn't enough."

The kid shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "No way."

"I don't recommend it, though. The drugs. The road of recovery is rough." You sigh dramatically. "You overdo it and suddenly you're regretting your choice, crying in paralysis about how you might actually want to live — also, by the way, the flush that comes with getting everything out of your system is a whole different level of hell. I thought i was going to die from that alone. Always hoped maybe there was something to live for. I miss my parents, but it's something you learn to live with. I think it does get better. Do you miss your mom? Ugh, mine used to make me such good lunches. Sometimes when kids bully you for having a bad lunch that means it's really good. Okay, that's off topic, omg, so sorry. Love the whole goth vibe. Where do you shop from? I don't know. I feel like Hot Topic doesn't hit as hard as it used to. I know the choker's from there, though. Figured I'd ask since, well. Y'know. By the way, love the nails."

You flash the painted nails — black. Done fresh while you were waiting for Reid and Morgan to crack him.

"You a cop?"

"Oh, heavens no." You lower your voice. "I actually find the worst part of my job to be working with the cops, but don't tell my superior. I'm an agent. FBI."

"You?"

"Yeah! Can you believe it? It's like the FBI is just letting anyone in these days." You laugh. "Nice earring too. I love the one earring look."

"Thank you. Got it on eBay. Supposed to be johnny d's from that one movie."

"Sick!" You gasp. "I got all of my rings from a thrift."

You show the boy as he observes, and you watch as his gaze lingers on one of them.

"Isn't that one nice? Apparently it was from a movie set. Found it on ebay."

"Yeah. Sick."

"Oh, by the way. My friend outside, Penny, was trying to break into your laptop and it's actually shocking how good you are at that kind of stuff. The firewall? The anonymizing service? uber cool. And the e-shredder? I gotta know where you're getting this stuff. You're like a cyber genius."

The kid shifts in his seat, and everyone watches as he actually speaks up. "The anonymizing service was from some guy online."

"I know! That one site, right? The one that looks totes sketch but's actually legit? I use it too. On my personal, though. Ugh, I got hacked once back in college and it took ten years off my lifespan to try to fix my laptop."

"No way."

"Got it immediately after. It was awful." You sigh. "I make one mistake and there goes like decades worth of games pirated— oopsies I wasn't supposed to say that with so many cops around."

The boy laughs, and the door clicks behind you.

"Oh, there's my boss. Say hi to Hotch. Isn't he a little scary? Did the boy's dad ask for him?"

"He's lawyering him up."

"I see."

"Was this an interview?"

"Not quite, as you didn't really give anything out." You give him a handshake, nodding as you glance at the earring he slipped you.

"She's not your friend. She was trying to trick you." His dad grumbles.

"That's all made up, sir. I told your son some stuff I could get re-evaluated over." You hold both your hands up, catching Christopher's wrist before he leaves, holding the earring up.

"You sure you wanna give this to me?"

"I think you deserve it. Wear it at work for me?"

You laugh, cheeks warm as you hum. "I will."

You watch as they leave, smile dropping when you know they won't turn back.

"Hotch, but I need a car to tail them in quiet." You mumble. "That boy's being manipulated."

"And you know this because?"

You stare at the door, quiet, finger brushing the earring. "I just know."

"Munchausen by proxy." Reid mumbles. "That's how the mom died too, isn't it?"

"Password's his mom's full name. He misses her." You call, taking the jacket on the chair. "Penny, text me his— actually, no. Send half to the home address. I wanna visit the mother's grave. Send me the church address? Or the..." You lock eyes with Spencer, and he nods.

"Cemetery. Hotch, do you mind if—"

"Stay." Hotch stops you, holding his hand out. "Morgan, Emily, Church. We'll check the house. Stay here. You've done enough."

You huff, staring at the earring. "Will I get to see him?"

"We'll bring them both in."

"Okay." You mumble.

They bring the boy in to you, and you are given one chance. A small promise to write to him, and offer him an item of equal exchange. You're not supposed to, you understand, but you slide one of the rings off of your fingers, holding out the metal to the boy's palm as you hold onto the earring.

"You want it back?"

"No. You can keep that one."

You nod. "Hope I read it right."

"You did. How did you know?"

"You kept glancing at it when we talked." You laugh. "I had a friend who used to stare a lot at things they wanted. I stare a lot too."

The flight back is quiet, you think. A lot of silence, and you twist at the rings on your finger, hand strangely lighter without one of them.

do you have time on friday?

hm?

Spencer mumbles, quiet as he sits next to you. friday.

why?

new place opened up two blocks down.

alright.

spencer spends the most time in between the books, watching as you look through old donated journals and diaries, peering into people's lives that was once private to them. in a sense you don't seem to care that there's a need for privacy, and neither do you really care when you tell spencer you don't mind your diaries being donated when you pass away. you even tell him that he can read through them when you pass.

but you wander around too. spencer takes you around to the jewelry that's been donated, old with age, pretty little gems and dazzling rust with purple. you insist that there's nothing that catches your eyes, mentioning that the loss of that one ring was symbolic that you had made a difference in someone's life even if it was small.

but there's a pair of old wedding rings that you find your gaze lingering back onto at the new place. it's old, yes, and there's hundred of years worth of items here, but the wedding rings catch your gaze again and again, and at one point you pick it up to bring it around with you while spencer looks at the books.

spencer notes it down, yes. he found that you started carrying a box around with you somewhere into the fifteen minute mark, and you refuse to show him what you had picked up, but from the looks of it, it's most likely something that could really only hold jewelry. A ring box, most likely.

what are you holding?

oh, um, rings. you open the box to show him, and he blinks.

huh. real gold.

and the silver?

it isn't tarnished, so i'd assume some kind of gold. possibly white. he holds his hand out for the rings, and you find yourself giving them to him. they're pretty.

you nod, taking them back from him.

did you know world war two popularized men from the west wearing their wedding rings? prior to that, most men would either not have a ring or not wear it. they started wearing them to remind themselves of their wives and kids at home. oh, and according to a plethora of sources, the most popular wedding ring material is yellow gold. spencer hums, watching as you put the box back down.

well, that makes sense.

he takes a second glance at the box, noting down something as the two of you walk off.

You find the exact box with a ring missing the next day on your desk at work.

"Hey. Everyone's already in the room. Ready?"

you look up at spencer, yellow glistening on his finger as you glance back down at the box.

aren't you supposed to get down on one knee?

do you want me to?

you shake your head, sliding the ring down your finger, joining the rest of them at the round table.

you hide your hands the entirety of the time that you cover the case with the team, fingers fiddling with the ring as you run through everything with hotch. he sends you to the police station with spencer, and you find yourself back in the back and forth back and forth of it all. it's so easy to fall into a pattern with him.

it's so easy to fall into a rhythm with you. it's so easy to show affection and exist around you.

it's so easy to share a look with you and split a room, arm wrapped around your waist and nose pressed into your shoulder, groggy twilight on both of your faces as the two of you squint and you find penelope in your arms, cooing quietly at her as you rub the blood from her hands. it's easy to get lost while in the job, you think. she's strong. you have to repeat it so that she believes you.

spencer settles next to you on the couch, closing his eyes and throwing his head back as you knock out on his shoulder while fiddling with your ring.

neither of you are conscious enough for this.

and it carries the same in every other case. in every other case, the two of you are wrapped up on the plane, his hand on your thigh, your head on his shoulder, device in your hand, newspaper in his. a cup of tea brewed to eerie precision on your side, a bag of opened candy on his. a sweet tooth that gnaws at his cheek — a need for peace that eats at your brain.

you listen to reid talk. everything — the numbers, the facts, the stats. everything reads like an audiobook or encyclopedia, and you tilt your head slightly when spencer hands you a photo of the women, and you start drawing lines over the plastic. reid notices it before you do, but you have the facial symmetry crafted before he does, picture stuck up on the glass board as you have lunch, watching spencer snatch it up and thank you for it.

you don't do much for the rest of the time, straw pressed to your lips as you drink, staying on call with penelope as you click through your device. it's those damn phones should be a quote on your feed. The only thing helping you at the moment to kill the boredom of when you're not on the field. hotch is still hesitant to use you at times.

and it's not that he doubts your capabilities.

you're put on the field, hand finding the victim's as she asks you why she wasn't just killed, and you swallow back words and let reid tell her that it was only about power and control, your own words comforting her when you tell her that it fades. it doesn't mean that it will leave, but you will learn to step over it. you promise it to her.

you find time during the drive back to run your hand through his hair as he drives, pinching at the way his curls coil around his head, hum on your lips as you call him pretty. so pretty.

you don't miss the way his cheeks tinge pink as he catches the reflection of white on your finger.

but the unsub gets away and morgan snaps, but you understand that to some degree. you're sure that you'd be in the same situation, and when jj's berating him on an emergency line, you're understanding, gun in hand when you finally find the girl, and you think for a moment that there really isn't much of a space for you.

reid sees it too, the way you let go of your gun, staring as morgan heads into the house and everyone wires him. you understand it well.

reid would say that you've always slotted nicely. you've always fit between the cracks, and when the cracks would fit each other, you would slide away until they would click, and you would be stuck staring on the side. you're just a strangely fluid person in a sense.

but it's a little much to ask of you to fill in for jj's position. it's not for you.

yet you find that garcia tries anyway, and when you're finally called out for the metal band on your finger on the plane, you're staring at everyone and blinking.

"Where'd you get it?"

"Vintique on third." You hum. "Loved them, but didn't want to splurge, but they so magically appeared on my desk at work the next day. Speaking of rings, though. Why have a married couple have sex before stabbing them? What the hell?"

"You know, the stabbing of the wives is almost certainly piqueristic. The unsub gets sexual gratification from penetration with a knife. Most piquerists are impotent... men like Albert Fish, lain Scoular, Andrei Chikatilo... so for him, it could be a substitute for sex." Spencer hums. "The rings were really pretty. Pure gold. Well, not the white one since 18 karat white gold is only 75 percent pure gold."

Everyone's eyes find his ring finger, and Morgan gasps.

"My man!"

But the case isn't too strange. You tell Emily you can step in, dressed up nice as you take off the vest and opt for a purse, Spencer's eyes worried as you tell him you'll be fine, tapping the ring on his finger. You lie your way through the unsub while fiddling with your ring, tapping through to let Morgan and Hotch tackle the man to the ground, only going quiet when the barrel of a gun finds itself on your stomach. you think you hear Spencer yell something in the background, but you pull the trigger in your purse, letting someone pull you away as you exhale and ask if the unsub will live.

are you okay?

i'm fine. you hum, hand finding his as you run your finger over his ring.

He runs the hand to your cheek, coolness of the metal making you close your eyes as you hum.

"You'll protect me, won't you? As my husband?"

"Of course."

Spencer tries to ignore the way that he likes the way you call him your husband. Yours. It rings nicely in his mind — like a child receiving praise. He can practically feel the neurotransmitters in his brain enforcing his behavior to be good to you. to be good for you. it makes him a little nauseous, but he refuses to fight it too much.

It's only logical that he likes hearing good words.

but you never miss the opportunity to tease him anyway, tugging on his sleeve to avoid his hand, name on your lips sweet as he blinks and swallows when a pretty girl passes him, quirk of your lip upward when he tries to make up an excuse, a wave of your pretty hand shutting down his entire brain. it's a little concerning to him — furrow of his brows and a pout on his lips when he realizes what you're doing.

we're together. he pouts.

"I know we are." You hum, bumping him with your hip as you circle around to Hotch.

"Town meeting in the church. I want us all there."

"Got it."

you're not too sure what to make of the blonde girl, and you're unpleasantly surprised at her attitude once admitted into the BAU. you stay civil with her, but never anything beyond that. you don't have much to say when spencer gets sassed at by her, raise of your brow and she shuts her mouth.

I'm used to it, you know?

it isn't about you.

he furrows his brows, and you press your hand to his forehead.

but you find that you understand something else. spencer reid has no protection against pretty girls, and it doesn't matter who he stares at for a second too much, you always find yourself fiddling with your ring and looking to the other side. you understand the biological need to do so, yes, but it doesn't sting any less.

but nothing changes.

spencer still finds himself next to you at most times, pink finding yours under the table on the plane, tilt of his head and lick of his upper lip whenever you beam at him, gold on his ring finger glistening and never rusted. it's honestly incredible that the two of you never give away anything about each other or come even remotely close to having to explain the rings. reid sympathizes with the men, and you hold the women in your arms.

it almost feels like it was made for this.

the charade you both play almost feels real. it's real only when on the field, and when the two of you return to your apartments side by side, it's all fake again. he can spend nights with your forehead pressed to his in the comfort of his couch while you try to help with his migraines, and he can sit back as you take care of him with your life, but he'll never quite get to hear those three words break past your lips. you'll never say it because you feel like you don't have to, and he'll never say it because he'll never be able to read your emotions the same way you read his so he can never quite confirm that you love him the same way he does.

does he really love you? does it really matter? the cat remains unknown until the box is opened — your relationship remains neutral until someone grows cold. you don't know if spencer really did love you at all. it certainly eats at you and chews you from the inside out. you don't know if his moment of realization had just been of realization or of boredom. an overanalyzation of the stars in his supernova. a breaking of his universe because you were too close. he wonders it too, the lack of light present in everywhere you walk. someone who would swallow his universe alive until all that was left was dark matter.

a blank stare and a pinch of your own skin always seemed to do the trick. but you've always got a handful to work with when he was around, his migraines have grown worse as you bring him to doctors, pout on your face and gentle stare on his as he sits through brain scans. you have him drink tea and take care of everything that you can to help him. you're wonderful. you bring the best of the best for him. a wife's affection, really.

the first migraine causes you a near heart attack when he knocks a man in the back of his head, and when the first doctor tells him to consider something psychosomatic and he storms out, you're stuck chasing after him. you'll find him a better doctor. you'll get him the best of the best, and the best of the best do you find after a painfully long period of bad migraines and drinking your tea instead of his coffee. you're just so wonderful.

emily passes away and comes back and all you're stuck with is taking care of spencer, lowering his caffeine intake, quiet running of your thumb under the bags of his eyes, a gentle frown on his face when he struggles with her loss. you struggle in your own way, but you've never been a priority in the team, so no one points out who you are or what you're there for. you're only there when people need you. you aren't required.

you forgive emily quicker than spencer because you understand.

but spencer's migraines are better. slightly better. he meets a new doctor who actually looks into the symptoms thanks to your annoyed pushes, and sometime along the way, you're given the right to his medical records the same way he's allowed yours, and then it all really just goes downhill for you from there. you know the way that spencer scrolls through his phone for payphones to call with the researcher — same look on his face when you had actually looked him in the eye the first time ever.

it's his fault, really.

it's transference, he knows. the doctor taking care of him is just transference, and he knows you catch the way his calls linger for longer than they're supposed to and the slight flashes of pain at first when he doesn't go to bed, but you get used to it. fluid to fill the cracks. you'll fill not only his, but also everyone else's cracks. he feels not enough for you. he fears he turns into something that isn't himself. fill the cracks that he knows you can with something that is not either of you. you should no longer be filling the cracks for him. he should do something for you.

he understands his reasoning is flawed in that way, but he knows not to deal with it. perhaps he does not want to seem weak before you.

but it doesn't stop him from sobbing into your arms, quiet digging of his nails into your biceps on nights that are too silent, gasping into your shoulder when you run your hand down his back. it doesn't stop either of you from playing your part, acting like you all have it under control. acting like it's completely fine — the way you just shatter and break is completely fine. the way he contemplates the drug long gone in his system as you teach him how to cope with the loss.

and you trust him so much. you trust him painfully much, and it almost makes him feel undeserving. even with a hand on your lower back and a kind gentle hum on his lips, grimace on his face as you stare at death upon dead, he finds that he doesn't want you to see the same gruesome life that he does. it's unfair to you. not that you cannot handle it — just that he wonders maybe you could avoid it. even if you had signed up for training and ended up in the department.

but there's a visible shift in your dynamic with spencer. you can take him to all the doctors you want and let him cry his heart out, complain and throw a fit that you'd like for him to be reviewed by someone else, but no one will be as good as maeve. you can fuss and cry at home, but he won't ever understand the sense that you just know. you can feel him slipping. slipping through the cracks and through your fingers, and you think there's so much that you don't want to touch, but you can't decide that.

you don't get to decide to take away something good for spencer just because it's something bad for you.

he'll analyze and profile you. you know that. he'll notice that you no longer seem to care, smile not as bright, water bottles replaced with thermos and thermos of tea until the flavor is too far gone to be able to still taste the tea. he'll notice the way you never discard of the tea, but he won't comment on it. he'll never comment on it again, because as soon as work is over or it's sunday, he's rushing off to call maeve, and you're stuck in the office, staring and scratching at your phone, eyes weary and tired, visible signs of age sliding between the fine lines of your portrait, and at one point, maybe you'll find something that you care about again.

it hurts more to be like that, you think.

to love and then be betrayed.

but you still want him so bad. so. painfully bad.

it's unfair how attached you've grown to someone you thought would be your forever only to end up as another piece of your life. how could you ever? was it unfair of you to hope that someone who tasted even a fragment of what you endured prior to it all to understand you even just a little bit? does it not matter to them at all? you're sure it doesn't. spencer's never one to dwell on his heart more than he has to.

Now, all he dwells over is Maeve.

those three words. "I love you."

you watched him freeze up from the car, body paused in the seat when you noticed the lack of gold on his fingers, and you think there's something that clicked in your mind when you did. it's an announcement of affection that you wish spencer would push away, but he doesn't. it doesn't surprise you. it should, but it doesn't. it almost feels like it was perfectly expected of him to act that way. to just accept that someone loves him the same way you do.

it couldn't be the same way you do since they've never met, but you're sure spencer loves her the same way.

you press your tea to your lips, bag of pop rocks left on the round table as everyone files in, a brow raised when spencer enters last, strangely giddy, beaming at you when he sits down with his own mug of tea.

call went good?

yeah. we're meeting up soon.

fun.

if he notices the lack of enthusiasm in your voice, then he doesn't comment on it, taking the bag of pop rocks to down as everyone files in.

"3 days ago, Bruce Phillips was found dead with his blond hair dyed black."

You think you tune almost everything out for the most part. You go through the case, sort through it all, blink and watch as Spencer seems to be as focused as ever. He's meeting up with her in a couple of days. You'll be fine, you suppose. It'll be fine. Everything is supposed to be fine, and when you're getting forcibly sentenced to rest by Hotch, you think it's fine. You'll be fine.

You'll work through the case and look back at all the puppets as you lower the two humans from the strings, and you wonder what you would look like put up on the stage. There is a fear that settles uncomfortably in your stomach, you think. That somehow on that stage it could have been you. You don't know how the victims will survive it, and when you step into the elevator in the dark of night with the rest of the team, you barely go through anything.

"Where's Reid?"

"He said he had something important to do."

You blink quietly at your reflection in the metal, closing your eyes.

"He's seeing the girl he's in love with."

"WHAT."

"Wait, wait, wait. Babygirl, isn't he in love with you?"

"Apparently not." You chew on your inner cheek. "I need a drink."

"Well, you're welcome at mine." Rossi mumbles. "Scotch."

"Vodka."

"You'll learn."

You huff. "Fine."

Maybe ranting to Rossi about your love life wasn't the smartest thing in the world, but you honestly couldn't give any less of a damn if Spencer was dragged through mud after all the stunts he had pulled on you. You grumble and pinch your brows, moping and throwing your head back over the sofa as you sit to sober up. Jesus christ, get a grip.

Rossi tells you that sometimes it's fine to let go.

"Yeah?" You fiddle with your ring, scotch long forgotten on the table.

"Sometimes the best remedy is just letting go."

"Thank you, wise italian man with three wives." You mumble. "I can't wait to be divorced in my twenties."

"You're still young, don't worry." Rossi hums, pressing his drink to his lips. "You want me to reccomend someone to you?"

You glance at the ring on your finger, humming. "It's fine."

you wonder sometimes why reid had gotten tired of you. was it tired? you don't know. he seems to have gotten tired of you. maybe it was just rude of you

maybe the lack of title was—

no. not quite. he's your husband. there was not a lack of title. there was a lack of papers. lack of hard evidence that you weren't playing around with each other in your youthen stupor. there was a lack of nothing. it was just spencer being stupid, you think. it was never your fault. you were more in tune with his smotions than he was, and he knew your mind better than anyone else.

he did not know his own heart, and you suppose it's your fault for ever thinking he would.

you think you're bitter towards how spencer treats you now comparably more than when he did prior to the arrival of maeve. but you're not mad at maeve. you couldn't really be. you and spencer never legalized your relationship, and it's not unheard of to be fascinated with something new — spencer was always fascinated with something new.

but it doesn't really make it hurt any less.

spencer meets maeve in the restaurant, and garcia tells you that apparently he had taken off his ring in the cctv footage. an empty finger to meet a girl that you felt replaced by. wow. what a way to ruin a girl's day.

not to mention how he carries around that beat up book that maeve had reccomended to him — still.

you find it ironic that he's moved on yet you still haven't. what is there to move on? did he owe you the courtesy of a break up if you were never really anything?

the one day you don't bother answering your door.

you spend your days at he shooting range, perfecting your marksmanship, and you wonder if this is the universe's strange way of telling you that you're just screwed. you find that it's hard to hide quiet sniffling and hot tears on your cheeks with frustration that you can't lash out. quiet anger that bubbles in the back of your throat when you start opting to go out on the field more than staying back to analyze — to use your degree since you wasted it all anyway, and hotch lets you.

you ignore the look of hurt on spencer's face when you request of it outright, desperation reeking off your skin, and you become so painfully distant that you wonder if spencer felt like you were supposed to just stick around and wait for him when he called maeve all day like that and expect you to stay around. he's not stupid. you're almost sick of the way that you've never been babied once since joining, and all everyone does is protect him in their own way.

it makes you bitter towards him, you think.

you're glad you're on the field rather than hidden in the police station with spencer. you don't think you could bear to face him or whatnot. it would be unfair for you.

you wonder if you should request to stay back when maeve's kidnapping case comes up, and you swallow slowly when spencer's mind shuts down, and maybe you're just cursed to be stuck as some kind of queen piece that has no purpose now that the player's gotten their pawn to upgrade into a queen. actually, maybe you're a pawn. maybe you're just the pawn that stayed desipte it all in the game of chess. you know as a matter of fact that you could never be as smart as maeve is — which is why you're not really bitter towards her. she doesn't know of your existence the same way that spencer didn't once mention you in… well, anything.

you spend most of the case working through it with everyone else, and you're the first to notice that maybe it's a female stalking maeve rather than a man. it's not a… well, it is a romantic stalker, probably. you don't really know. you're all for it, but less in the case where maybe maeve deserves a stalker and more in the okay well, good for her, love wins, or whatever. you're quite frankly too spent trying to figure out what's going on with the case to really care that it's a woman. you're trying not to throw up when spencer offers himself as collateral, and you're having the worst moment of your life when things happen.

spencer's so in love with her that you think perhaps you never really existed to him at all. nevermind that he's somehow got his ring on and that diane might freak out at the thought, but you don't know. you don't really understand it. spencer reid is in love with maeve donovan and you don't seem to matter at all in his eyes.

one thing leads to the next, and by some strange situation, everyone's on a rooftop of some kind and you're kind of staring at nothing in particular as you stare at the kidnapper. it's a woman, and you feel like you shouldn't be surprised, but you still are. you've read her unofficial paper before — as you did with maeve. when you first figured out who maeve was, you had done a quick read on her research. it was easy to read — her paper. you wonder just how obsessed diane has to be with maeve for her to be jumping her and kidnapping her to this extent. maybe maeve sought companionship with spencer.

you hold your gun up in the back with everyone else, and it's really spencer's call as whether or not to shoot, but there's an instability in the way that she's speaking and shaking, and you think maeve is going to make the wrong choice of words and accidentally tip off diane and then both of their brains are going to be blown out and you don't think that's a really good idea.

but you also don't really want blood on your hands.

is it such a sin for you to desire to not kill? is the blood of tobias hankel not enough?

is a bullet between the forehead not a testament of enough blood you've been stained with?

you stand behind spencer, gun in your hand as you blink and stare.

will the blood of maeve's life dirty your hands any more than everything already has?

There's a gun pressed to Maeve's head, and you have a clear shot to her assailant.

you want to be selfish. maybe. you want to just. you'd like to— you don't want the love of your life stolen from your hands and it tears you apart, but you don't even need to look when you know the answer. it doesn't matter if you love spencer, because you think you know something that they don't or whatever and he can try to de-escalate the situation all he wants. you think there's something that he knows that you don't. there's—

there's nothing.

what are you being so philosophical for? there is really only one answer.

You pull the trigger before Diane can.

The woman falls to the ground, probably dead. you don't know you don't really check. It's. You don't like the weight of a second life on your hands, collapsing into the cement of the rooftop immediately, too short of breath to watch spencer pull a fainted maeve into his arms, breathing growing erratic and mouth hanging open as someone catches you, the voice ringing in your ear as you stare at someone, tears burning at your cheeks and every emotion except for relief on your face, oh, oh, oh what is this — is this, is it , oh it's been such a long time you almost forgot this feeling, didn't you — you're sorry? what are you saying? You don't know anymore. what is going on? you can't— you can't breathe. what is this—

oh, there— there's—

the world turns black, and you wake up alone.

without your ring. alone. well, penelope's by your side when you're staring into the white, blinking slowly without a lifeline because once again there's an iv plugged into the back of your hand and you swear to god if you have to pull the trigger on a man one more time, you're going to kill yourself.

you don't even realize you're crying until Penelope is holding you.

"You'll be fine! You'll be fine!" Penelope holds you, and you stare at her, shaking your head.

"Penny. I wanna go home."

"I know, sweet girl. I know. You'll be there soon."

You laugh, grimacing at the way your body hurts.

"He said he'd protect me. Guess who lied."

"He can't lie for his life. You know that."

You sigh, letting your head sink into the pillow.

"What happened?"

"You passed out from a panic attack."

"Not from killing." you close your eyes. "Did the doctors give a diagnosis?"

"They can't. You don't have anyone to sign for you."

"Right. Security went up."

"He was angry, you know? That he couldn't sign for you." Penelope frowns. "He asked me if I could fake a certificate for you two."

"I feel like I should pretend to be surprised. Did he leave as soon as Maeve woke up? I know she passed out too." you sit yourself up, groaning as you roll your shoulders. "Where's the doctor? I want my diagnosis — and, Penny?"

"Yeah?"

you smile. "Alone."

"Alright... but um, don't be surprised if I hack, alright?"

"Of course." you nod.

You decide two things that night.

One, your hand is tired of holding the gun. You don't think you ever liked the feeling of it even after killing Tobias for killing Spencer. It's just not a weight that you can grow used to. You can't possibly bear to exist with it, you think. It's not a world that you belong in. It's not a world that you like existing in. You don't particularly enjoy the fact that you just had to shoot Maeve's stalker through the skull either. Two deaths too many.

Two. You no longer want to stay.

Penelope takes you home, but you're barely stepping foot in your apartment before you're calling a cab to go to the BAU office, and you wonder if everyone else has headed home. You think they did. Though, you really hope that Hotch is at least there so you can resign to his face. You don't think you're so adamant on leaving that you'd do it without seeing him one last time.

It's 11pm when you make your way to the office, resignation paper, badge, and gun in hand as you find Hotch's office.

The lights are still on, strangely enough, and when you glance at everyone's empty desks for the night, you think it was oddly good timing on your end to come in right after a case that had you passing out with no real victim. Spencer's probably visiting Maeve, and everyone else probably clocked out on time for once. How nice.

You knock before entering.

"Hotch."

He glances at you.

"They let you out already?"

"Urgent business. Also, it was just a panic attack. My vitals were all normal." You nod. "It won't happen again."

"You're supposed to be on break for a couple of days."

"That's the thing. There won't be a need for an eval or wait." You place down the gun, the badge with the box, and you stare at your ring for a second too long before speaking. "I'd like to leave."

"Is it because of the—"

"No." You shake your head, sliding your ring off. "No, no. It's not. I just. I think you know I never really wanted to be on the field like I have, and I'm nowhere mentally strong enough for that role. I'd like to quit before it kills me. I think we both know that I nearly died my first day on the job."

"Are you alright?" He motions for you to sit, and he steps over to shut his door.

"I'm fine." You nod. "I am. I really am."

"Did Reid—"

"Hotch, please" You mumble. "I just want to return to academia and studying instead of practice. There's so much instability in this job, and I can't do it anymore. I'm not strong like you are. I never was."

He stares at you, pinching his brows. "Where will you go?"

"I'll find somewhere." You smile. "I'll be happy there. I've saved up plenty from this job."

Hotch gives you a sad smile, you think. You understand.

"May I visit?"

"With Jack, if you must." You hum. "I'll be out tomorrow. Please tell Straus I'm sorry I didn't go to her."

"You don't need to."

"Yes, I know." You hum. "Do you think I could stay hidden for long?"

Hotch looks at the envelope.

"I think he will find you."

"I hope not."

He exhales. "Stay safe. I'm here if you need me."

"I will." You laugh. "Tell the rest of the team that I'm just recuperating at home? Tell them I don't want any visitors for a few days."

Hotch nods. "We'll miss you."

You linger at the door, looking back at Hotch, smile on your lips that doesn't reach your eyes.

"I'll miss you guys too."

Spencer sits in the other wing of the hospital.

"Are you sure you're okay? It couldn't have—"

"I'm fine." Maeve smiles. "Shouldn't you be checking with..?"

"She's strong. She'll survive." Spencer mumbles, fiddling with the gold on his finger. "She also took me off of her authorized lists. I had signed that she would be able to take care of my medical needs with her a while back, but I suppose that she took me off sometime ago without telling me. It was my fault."

"Your… ring." Maeve swallows. "I didn't know you wore one."

Spencer stares at it, twisting the band absentmindedly. "It's… a couple's band. Matches with hers… bought it at an antique store."

"Spencer, do you love her?"

"Wh- of course I do!" He pauses. "Of course I love her. Everyone does. It's just… she knows that."

"Are you sure? Have you told her?" Maeve mumbles. "I don't think you love me the same way you love her. I love you, Spencer."

"I do too—"

"No." Maeve stares out the window of the bed. "You love her. Think it over. You're smart. Sometimes feelings don't need to make sense."

Hotch doesn't have it in himself to tell Spencer— it's hard to break the news. it would be like breaking news that emily had passed away all over again, and it wouldn't be all that worth it. reid would have to find out on his own. he would. and when he does. when he does, he'll stop and stare, unbelieving in hotch's words with a desperation in his voice that they heard when maeve was at gunpoint, running a hand through his hair at news broken to him last and the box that had once carried your rings that truly has him staring and wondering if it was at all worth it.

"Why didn't you tell me." Spencer clenches his jaw, and Hotch stares. Just stares.

"She told me not to."

"So you didn't?"

"Reid, you would have stopped her from moving." Hotch places a box before him.

Spencer shakes.

"Hotch. You knew that I messed up, and you still—"

"Reid."

"I loved her. I love her."

spencer loves you, loved you, is loving you, oh god forbid anyone tell him anything. he's in love with you and it was his fault for ever thinking that maybe you would have understood without him telling you. you understood his heart. you should have known that he loves you. but maybe knowing isn't enough. maybe he should have said it— no. he should have said it. he should have told you that he loves you the same way maeve had told him. you overthink as well. he knew that. he knows that.

but you do understand him. he's far too hurt to be able to chase you down after leaving the way you knew it hurt the most, so he settles with sitting in his flat and staring lifelessly at the books you had bought for him. you did not touch anything in his apartment. not your clothes, not your belongings. it was as though all you really cared to clear was the desk at work so someone new could join the team.

he settles with trying to see your apartment, blinking when someone new has moved in and he apologizes, mentioning that his friend had moved and didn't tell him — he supposes. he thinks. it's not the truth. you had just planned to leave him in the dark just like that. it was a deliberate chance to twist a blade into his stomach the same way he had twisted it into your heart. he wonders why you didn't just shatter him on purpose.

the new tenant hands him a letter that was left behind with his apartment number on it, and spencer realizes, he thinks. you had just wanted to stab him through the heart and carve a piece of him for yourself after he had left yours hollow and empty. you didn't quite do it, though. the letter hurts, yes, but in a way he felt deserving of it. you tell him at the end that the silver would look nice on maeve's finger.

he doesn't have the heart to open the box to find out if your ring is in it.

and suddenly, there's no interest in maeve at all — and spencer reflects on it in a way. he knows now. it was never really transference with you. it was transference with maeve. it was simply because he had gotten so caught up in making a new friend and calling her all the time that he had forgotten how he had gotten to that point in the first place. did he ever truly love maeve? surely it hurt to hear how she was the prettiest girl in the world to him when you were wearing a ring meant to match his.

how could he ever think of someone else in that light? when you were right there?

when the hurt fades, all he has left are his days in his flat where he traces through the books you had bought him. he traces your writing in the margins of your literature, and it reminds him of when he had to send his mother away all over again. he isn't allowed the joy of keeping someone by his side. not with his father, not with gideon, and now no longer with you. it didn't matter if you had been waiting. people grow tired of it immediately. people need air. you had forgotten that. spencer had forgotten that.

it was stupid of him to ever think of someone other than you.

spencer dreams of you sometimes. leaving without a reason, walking out of his life with most of your belongings packed from your place with the knowledge that you had just told hotch you were leaving, never to be seen again after you had been pushed to the hospital and he wasn't allowed to hear your diagnosis. disappearing from all his records, being denied access to how you were doing now. it wasn't witness protection, no. he would have known if it was. you had just chosen to disappear from his life forever on a random thursday afternoon. the same thursday he was supposed to tell you that he was wrong to ever make you misunderstand that he loved maeve more than you.

he hasn't taken his ring on his finger since finding out that you had just packed and left. he doesn't know why. he mourns you. perhaps he does, and perhaps he had been right such a long time ago when he was still somewhat young and fresh, ramble of how the feeling he was expressing was most likely his own cocktail of romance, but he had been slow. he knew, yet you had not waited. it was not worth it anymore, perhaps. he understands that. you learned to start moving at your own pace and claw your way to stability, and a government job that required you out on the field at all times was not worth the pay.

you could make comfortable money elsewhere.

he knew that much. your passion had never been quite to be out on the field saving people. your passion had always been in reading people and knowing people. in the smoothing of papers and fluids of ink. you had always loved something much different than he did. you always loved something that he had used as a tool to continue upward. he could deduce a million things about you and none of it would make sense because as soon as you flipped the page you would once again become blank and leave him wordless.

you belonged in ranges of books, not the shelves that hosted you on late nights when you did not want to sit alone in your apartment.

you belonged in rows and rows of scripture and poem and psalm that could not even begin to be described with mere pen and paper. it had to be parchment and quill — ink and letters delivered by carrier pigeons that no longer existed. you belonged in a world that he had long forgotten he was once part of. a world that he doubts he could ever step foot back in without something that affects him enough. he's not going to step back into it. not until there is a point in which he knows he can retire and calm down. his papers would never be the papers that you write. your papers would never be papers that reach his hands.

and then hotch leaves.

he wonders if he could ever step away from it all. a second life or death moment. a moment in which he was... alive, perhaps. he understands the tension between him and cat well. its just a shame you're no longer here to untangle his mind after a long day with your fingers carding through his hair. its a case you would have jumped on. a woman who was better than acting than anyone else. he feels like he lost something when he had met her. it was an encounter you would have listened to him ramble and told him what kind of a person she was, but you weren't there anymore. you hadn't been for a while, and when he's in prison, unable to reach out to you, he wonders if it was at all worth it.

you would not have let it happen.

hotch would not have let it happen.

he spends a lot of time wondering what you're doing. he wonders if you still make your tea with a thermometer so the green doesn't become bitter, insisting that tea made at home is better than one at a coffee shop — and he wonders if you still keep packs of pop rocks on you because you refuse to have food and substitute it with sugar so your blood sugar doesn't drop. he wonders if you still lounge in bed until the sun is halfway in the sky, only leaving for brunch in the mornings, and he wonders if you've made friends. perhaps you connected with past ones. he wonders if you're doing better now.

you have to be. for him. you have to be.

it comforts himself to know that at least one of you are doing better.

maeve is there when he's freed. he understands, yes, that he was… dumb to even… oh he doesn't try thinking too hard about it. he thanks her, yes, and it's not really her fault. his fault for taking off a ring that tied his heart to yours so he could try and pretend he didn't care. he wonders if she thinks any more badly of him. he doesn't think she does, but perhaps she's realized too that his heart wasn't ever really for her to begin with.

He glances at the ring he's kept safe for so long, lack of luster causing a frown on his face as Maeve glances at it too.

"You never really told me the truth, huh?"

"No." He mumbles. "I got caught up in your confession, I suppose."

"I see."

He pauses, staring at Maeve as she tilts her head.

"Did you tell her thank you for saving my life?"

"She left before I could."

"You should have been honest with me."

"She had never—"

"And yet you had a ring." She hums. "Did you pretend I was her? Because I told you I loved you?"

"I just… wanted her to tell me she loved me, I suppose." He blinks, suddenly quiet. Ah. So that was it. "So when you said it to me, I just—"

"You should tell her."

"I won't ever get to see her again."

"You should tell her you love her." Maeve hums. "She was waiting for you to say it first."

"I couldn't have—"

"Then maybe she was hoping for you to." She hums, pausing, smiling. "She's doing good. I met up with her last time she was here."

"She was here?" He hates the way his voice breaks.

Spencer understands you more now, he thinks. The time he spent thinking over his emotions and not his mind for once was strange. Isolation did a number to him. He understands himself better now. Maybe he just wanted you to be vulnerable with him first before he could even believe that you liked him even more than you did with others.

It was stupid, yes. It was painfully obvious to everyone that you liked him more than you did the average person, and it wasn't exactly something you bothered hiding. Perhaps you had just been waiting for him to say it first since he had treated you differently too. He knew it, but he just refused to admit it. He didn't need numbers or probability to prove that you loved him. He loved you just the same. The band around your fingers should have been proof of that.

It really shouldn't have been something he ever doubted even once.

So when he gets forced back into the swing of the thirty day sabbatical, his final thirty is a gift from the team.

A carefully picked location — per Garcia's request.

Garcia chose this one, which he finds interesting considering that he's never left too far for guest lecturing before, and Garcia had never shown even a remote amount of interest in his sabbaticals, but apparently the university had really wanted him to provide insight in the lecture, so he was requested by… someone… in the university. Spencer isn't too sure, but he trusts Garcia enough, so he's on a commercial flight to meet with the university.

"It'll be a good breath of air. Besides, when's the last time you had a proper vacation? Don't you dare try to come back before the thirty days are up. I will have prentiss kick your ass."

"Yes, Garcia." Spencer mumbles. "And you're sure this will be good for me?"

"Oh, I know it will be good for you. Thank me later."

It's strange he's somewhere he's seldom been, and the rain reminds him of Seattle, but not quite. The university wasn't really known for their curriculum on criminology, but the psychology program was apparently well respected. He respects it. The campus is gorgeous, and his guide takes him around and lets him know some local places he can visit.

The lecture goes nicely. He quotes books and literature, and he explains the case studies they've all done, analyzing behavior and explaining classic serial killers, but the students seems much more invested in his face than what he's teaching. Which he's grown used to, in a way. He could try and pretend he doesn't understand it, but he doesn't. At least not in that way.

He almost misses when Morgan would call him pretty boy to his face.

He stays behind to check out what they have, though. There's a small neighborhood a little bit southeast of the university quite a nice little street to wander on, and Spencer finds himself stopping to look around. The name reminds him of things you had said once. Quite mumble under your breath when you had passed Pike Place in Seattle about how you liked it better in…

He stops at a coffee shop, ordering a pastry and coffee (sweetened. of course.), and he leaves his last name. He doesn't know what compels it. Well, maybe so his name feels a little more common. He's older now, so his name's dated with him, naturally, but he still finds himself using his last name.

The lady is kind enough — as she can be. She writes his name down and asks if there's a design he'd like on his cappuccino. (He asks for a heart), and he finds himself at the end of the coffee shop, ripping open a pack of pop rocks to dip his tongue into. He started carrying them around ever since you left. The popping on his tongue reminds him that he's not as numb as he believes he is. There's a starbucks across, but his guide had insisted that he try the local place. Been around since forever and still hasn't closed. Apparently it has surprisingly good prices too.

"Green tea for Reid?"

Spencer turns around at his name, watching as you step past him to grab the drink.

The words come out before he can think.

"You're buying your tea now?"

You freeze up in place.

"Latte with vanilla for Reid?" The barista raises a brow.

"That's me." He takes it, staring down at you as you stay still. "Talk to me."

"I don't see what there is to talk about."

"You hide behind a false wall of bitterness mirroring how I hid behind science and logic to not need to face how stupidly in love with you I was." Spencer swallows. "We both know there's stuff to talk about."

You blink up at him, raising a brow.

"Did Penny send you?"

"She suggested the university, yes. But a professor had reached out—"

"Then there's no need to talk about it. You'll go back to your job in a few days—"

"Twenty five."

You raise a brow.

"Twenty-five days." He swallows. "I… went to jail, and as an exchange for taking me back, I have to take a sabbatical for thirty days every now and then."

"And you decided all thirty days here was the move?"

"Garcia did."

and when he senses the pause you want to slip from, he speaks again.

"I know you're bitter about how horribly I treated you when I was calling Maeve three times a week and almost always on a case, and no, I don't expect you to forgive me or anything, but I miss you. I really do miss you."

"Oh, look at that. Doctor Spencer Reid using pathos." You mumble, checking your watch.

Spencer catches the familiar glisten of your ring.

"Listen. You can act like you moved on and no longer care about me all you want, but I think you know deep down that you're still clinging onto bits of me that I left behind, and the ring and your name is no coincidence—"

"Doctor Spencer Reid." You glare. "I don't appreciate being profiled like that."

He stops, clenching his fist as he stares down at you.

"I'm no different."

Your eye finds the ring on his finger, and you sigh.

"I hope you have fun here, and if the universe wills, may we meet again."

"And if I force it?"

You stare up at him.

"I think I know—"

"I don't know, Doctor Reid. I might just have to kick you out for it."

There's no real malice in your words, Spencer finds. There never has been, and he's almost comforted to find that even after all this time, you're the same as ever. The constant of your existence and the growth of you as a person. You dress warmer now and there's not an ounce of unhappy exhaustion on your face, and it almost feels like it's alright. You're doing wonderful on your own, all without ever needing to rely on him.

But he's grown too, he supposes. Years ago, the stubble on his face would have bothered him. A breeding ground for germs that have more "if's" than letting it be. The scar on his thigh from a blade in prison, and then bullet wounds all over. Bruises that he would have never got back when you were still with the team. In a way he's grown after being away from you too, and maybe it would be better if you both just grew on your own, but it doesn't. He doesn't want it to be.

"Tomorrow at Four in AERL 210." You grumble, but Spencer finds the ghost of a smile on your face.

"I love you." He hums, eyes full of affection.

The way you turn back to frown playfully tells him everything he needs to know.

And the tension is gone, he thinks.

In a way maybe you're resentful of him, but he's found that time's changed him beyond recognition. He doubts you had expected him to look the way that he did. There's a mess in his hair and a unclean look that you had always joked about him growing into one day, and maybe it's a testament to how well you knew him emotionally. The same way he knew how your brain moved and operated and not your heart.

but that was what made the two of you work so well. to know the part of someone that they themselves did not know as well. It was a testament of some kind.

to be vulnerable enough with someone that they know you better than you do yourself.

he wonders how you ever found it in yourself to forgive him of his crime, but perhaps time has healed you — and he has no intention of undoing all of that healing. he'll leave you alone after the thirty days if that is what you wish for. he's not one to force himself upon you after all the harm he's done, after all. he's shattered beyond repair, and you were not quite there to fix him up this time. he owes a lot of his life to you, he supposes.

it also amuses him that somehow you had written letters to his mother as well, telling her how you've been. he didn't know why he didn't search there, but when he had visited her after jail, she had told him about some professor writing her letters about her works and how wonderful her son was. it warmed his heart, after all. maybe he didn't know it was you, but it only made sense that it would be. after all, there is something only you would do that no one else would. he doesn't deserve you, in many cases. but ultimately you are the one who gets to decide.

He arrives twenty minutes before lecture with a cup of green tea for you, and you hand Spencer a clicker and a pack of pop rocks before telling him to file through the slides. He listens, and you tell him he'll be lecturing since you'd rather wring his brain dry when you can spare teaching. It's an excuse, he knows, because you'd never do anything to harm him, but you might joke about it. He finishes the slides in three, and he asks if there's anything else he should talk about (you tell him no— and when the class files in, you have a hand on his shoulder and a look on your face that can really only mean one thing.

"Class, meet my husband."

Emily Brontë once wrote “He is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be, and if all else remained, and we were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. He’s always, always in my mind; not as a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”

and spencer knows, somewhere an english teacher is rolling in their grave crying that it was never meant to be taken in the context of romance — catherine and heathridge were raised siblings, after all. but he supposes that finding a love where your soul's at rest needs not to be forcibly romantic for everyone.

It just so happens that his was.

Plz send help i havent stopped laughing yet

These are so real

Watch out its men with eyeliner (i did it myself)

Combo attack

Masterlist

PALESTINE MASTERPOST🇵🇸

READING LIST🥀

KINKTOBER 2023 18+

KINKTOBER 2024 18+

One-shots based on songs

Lock your door 18+ Billie Eillish - Billie Bossa Nova >> All Reader wanted was for her coworker to pay attention to her. Spencer was more than happy to oblige.

Take it off Taylor Swift - Dress >> Spencer has a hard time keeping his hands to himself.

Buried in the pillow 18+ Chase Atlantic - Slow Down >> A night of restless sleep ends better than expected.

Body on mine 18+ Justin Sky - Collide >> Reader and Spencer find a way to spend the night together on a team retreat.

Lose Control part 1 of 3 18+ Sickick - Mind Games >> Spencer finds himself locked in a room with his rival.

↳ The Last Laugh part 2 of 3 18+ Sickick - Mind Games >> Spencer finds himself sharing a room with his rival.

↳ Better for you part 3 of 3 Spencer spends the change of year with a new resolution as he starts looking at his rival differently.

Dance with the devil 18+ Chase Atlantic - Swim >> Spencer reassures Reader that sex toys are his ally rather than his enemy.

All I need 18+ Daniel Caesar, Kali Uchis - Get you >> Spencer realizes how much he wants to spend the rest of his life with Reader. What better time is there to propose if not in the middle of making love?

Heaven to you 18+ Julia Michaels - Heaven >> Spencer couldn't wait to touch you after he's released from prison.

Play our fantasies 18+ Doja Cat - Streets >> The FBI agent visiting your workplace wants more from you than answers to his questions.

Eat that girl for lunch 18+ Billie Eilish - Lunch >> Being cornered in the filing room was the last thing you expected when Spencer asked you out for lunch.

Slow Dancing in a Burning Room 18+ This isn’t a love story. This isn’t a fairytale. This is about a woman bent on setting the world on fire and the FBI agent assigned to her case, drawn to the very flame she ignites.

One-shot #Gifwriting

Pretty Boy 18+ Spencer was too pretty for you to resist.

Pretty when you sleep 18+ As newlyweds, Spencer couldn’t keep his hands off of you. Even when you were asleep.

Sweet agony 18+ After a tragic event, you believed you were unworthy of love. Spencer decided to prove you wrong.

Tempting the Cowboy 18+ The team has been trying to bring Spencer back to the BAU after he hung up his badge to live on his ranch peacefully. It’s a good thing you’ll do whatever it takes to persuade him, even if the rugged cowboy wants to bend you over in the barn.

Beyond the limit 18+ Spencer was hesitant when you asked him to be rough, but when he realized how much you enjoyed it, he wondered just how far he could push your limit.

↳ The breaking point 18+ Spencer realizes that being dominant doesn’t always require him to be rough, especially when he has complete control over your body.

Hypothetically Chronically single, you suggest a pact with your best friend to start a family together when you turn forty.

Stress Relief 18+ You convince your husband to take out his anger on you when he comes home very tense.

Behind Closed Doors 18+ Your admiration of his vest leads you to an empty office with his face buried between your thighs—and an urgent Emily demanding your whereabouts.

↳ Behind Closed Doors 2 18+ You welcome Spencer back to the team with a special gesture of your own—and find yourself falling even harder for him after he opens up to you.

↳ Behind Closed Doors 3 18+ Despite your promise not to sneak behind the team again, you find yourself in a compromising position when you’re forced to ride in the same car as him.

↳ Behind Closed Doors 4 18+ Your frustration over his broken promise melts away as soon as he calls, and you find yourself unexpectedly drawn to his voice, more than you anticipated.

Prove me wrong 18+ When you tease Spencer about his inability to be dominant in bed, he decides to prove you wrong by taking matters into his own hands.

Crawling back to you 18+ You never planned on having a casual fling with your brother's friend five years ago, nor did you expect him to fall in love with you, which forced you to end things abruptly. But now he's unexpectedly back in your life—older, wiser, and fully intent on winning your heart

Series

Right Kind of Wrong 18+

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem! Reader Genre: Romance, mystery, crime, suspense Warnings: 18+ explicit sexual content (MINORS DNI), graphic details of murders, mentions of suicide, mentions of SA Series status: complete

Reader never thought she would be involved in a murder investigation when she suddenly became a witness. She also never thought she’d encounter her one-night-stand again—the awkward stranger who isn’t exactly that good in bed… Or is he? Offended by the sentiment, Spencer is determined to prove her wrong. But the more he gets tangled with the beautiful stranger, the more he realizes there is more to her than what meets the eye.

Much Ado About Nothing 18+

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem! Bau Reader Genre: Romance, humor, angst Warnings: 18+ explicit sexual content Series status: on hiatus

There is one rule you and Spencer agreed on: never talk about the past, especially when that one regretful night strained your friendship. But throw in nosy teammates, an obvious matchmaking scheme, and a never-ending battle of wits—the line between friend and foe starts to blur as you find yourself questioning your true feelings.

Requests

Love was a foreign concept until he met you. 18+

You’re flabbergasted at how much your son resembles your husband.

Spencer thinks you’re too sweet for a damaged man like him. 18+

Spencer forces you to give him a show when he discovers your secret. 18+

Spencer gives you a ride on his horse to watch the sunset.

Your idea of showering together to save time doesn’t work out as you planned. 18+

Spencer finally lets you go down on him after you convince him that you're ready. 18+

Spencer comes home to you after prison.

Spencer asks you to ride his thigh while he finishes work. 18+

Spencer decides to take full advantage of the mirror in your hotel room. 18+

Spencer tries to stimulate you into the most intense pleasure. 18+

Spencer is needy after work and tries to distract you while you cook. 18+

Spencer Reid Masterlist:

Guide: Smut ●, Angst ☆, Fluff <3

Kissing in the office <3 by @reidalert

Sleepy Needy Spence ● by @nereidprinc3ss

Work call during the act ● by @nevvdrinksteaa

Pregnancy Announcement (sort of) , vol.2 <3

by @pathologicalreid

"I'm not sleeping with Reid" ● by @incognit0slut

Headcannons <3 by @rafesgfs

Well-kept secret ☆ < 3 by @astrophileous

Work place environment by @nereidprinc3ss

Glasses <3, vol. 2 <3 , vol.3 ● by @luveline, @atlabeth and @raekensluver

Falling asleep on his shoulder, vol.2 <3

by @inkdrinkerworld and @bklynsboys

Please don't have somebody waiting for you <3

by @cerisereids

Being a menace, vol.2 <3 (tho it is suggestive kinda) by @in-another-april and @incognit0slut

Comforting him <3 by @little-miss-dilf-lover

Sleep Deprivation <3 by @faunalune

I love this too much ● by @reiderwriter

Sneaking around ● by @nereidprinc3ss

First Time ● by @luveline

Between the books ● by @reidmotif

Whiny and Spoiled ● by @nereidprinc3ss

Hyper Independent <3 by @inkdrinkerworld

New haircut <3 by @inkdrinkerworld

Waking up with kisses <3 by @secretlovezz

No vacancy <3 @kiss-inthekitchen

Reuniting after prison (Hotch!reader) ☆<3

by @pathologicalreid

Being a munch ● by @lis-likes-fics

Me while watching CM ● by @an1t4k

High Heels <3 by @guiltyasreid

Decoy ● by @violetrainbow412-blog

Tech analyst reader <3 by @moonstruckme

Mixed Messages (series) by @easy-there-leftovers

Addicted to you ● @spencerreidenjoyer

Drunk confessions <3 by @nereidprinc3ss

Proposals <3 by @reidmania

Plastic Hearts (Gideon!reader) ☆ by @atlabeth

I might be in love (Prentiss!reader)

by @januaryembrs

This hurts but in a good way ☆

by @aliteralsemicolon

Heavenly sweet ● by @reidsfilm

His hands, vol.2 ● by @raekensluver and @t1red-twillight

Coming home late <3 by @fairysongs

Soft Intimacy <3 by @t1red-twilight

Missed Lunches (Gideon!reader)☆

by @mindfullycriminal

Grounded (Hotch!reader) <3 by @rreids

His kisses <3 ● by @inkdrinkerworld

50 shades <3 by @rumplereids

Dad!Spence:

Paternity leave <3 by @radiant-reid

Mini Doctor <3 by @reidsdaisies

Hard to say no <3 by @radiant-reid

Lamby goes to work <3 by @cerisereids

Everything in the world <3 by @lis-likes-fics

Daddy's girl <3 by @midniteluv

Toddlerus Interruptus <3 by @reid-fiction

Midnight Scaries <3 by @reid-fiction

Early labor <3 by @rumplereids

Other Masterlists:

Masterlist 1 by @pathologicalreid

Masterlist 2 by @radiant-reid

Masterlist 3 by @slowburningechoes

Note: sorry some of the tags may not work my Tumblr is acting up, also a Spencer Reid fic should be posted sometime soon

I AM INTO SUBMISSIVE MEN!! I LOOOOVE HIM

I’m not into submissive men but….

There can always be exceptions

im such a whore for nerdy smart polite boys, likes yess pls talk to me like were in a Shakespeare play and mansplain everything to me omg and pls pls pls call everything bu their correct name😍

ive found my people 🙏

Live footage of me trying to explain why s2 spencer is hotter than s13

stay with me now🙏🙏

Currently watching the entire criminal minds series from season 1. Going good so far

Watching criminal minds in forensics and trying not to freak out over my obsessive love of Spencer Ried

You ever look back on the fictional people you had crushes on and realize a pattern? Cause I fell in love with Spencer Reid, Sherlock Holmes, Mazikeen, Loki, and Bucky Barnes. I think there’s a pattern and it’s broody brunettes

Added two new dreams to my dream journal an Wattpad. If you want one of your own posted send it to me and I'll post it there with your information and avícola media

Reid is downlow besties with both of them (Eliot was a bodyguard/pseudo-babysitter and he met Hardison at a convention). Garcia and Hardison hack each other to lovingly "check in" from time to time.

Was also thinking about Hardison as a friendly well-adjusted hacker and he should’ve gotten to call in the help of internet friends more. Maybe he did and I’m forgetting, but every time Eliot went “I know a guy… we worked together in [insert foreign country], deep cover paramilitary stuff”, Hardison should’ve gone “I also know a guy, from my twitch stream”

last day of autism awareness month please be aware of him

LIVE BAU REACTION:

This makes me cry every time I watch it. Miss Spencelle so much! ☹️

Credit to: Spencerstehe on TikTok.

CRIMINAL MINDS 10.11 — "The Forever People"

Matthew Gray Gubler as Spencer Reid Criminal Minds 1.19 'Machismo'

🌵 Spencer having a breeding kink

this is making me feral

🌵smut headcacons: send me a character and a steamy scenario/situation and I’ll write how they would react/what they would do (short headcanons)

NSFW under the cut

Check out my 400 follower celebration

Spencer having a breeding kink

i can just imagine it

it starts with a night of babysitting

a friendly gesture for jj bc she wanted a night out with will

the majority of the night is just sweet

just two giggly boys and their godparents having a night together

and then spencer walks in to see lil baby michael perked on your hip

and his brain, for once, absolutely stills at the sight

then its just flooded with images of you

you, pregnant with his kid

you, round and MATERNAL

and they just go straight to his dick

so when the kids finally go to bed, and jj and will are just 20 minutes away

it takes everything in his body to not take you right then and there

doesn't stop him from keeping his hands on you

intentional touches against your legs, fingers grazing your thighs

you give him a knowing, but confused look bc you can only imagine where this is going

and when he asks "do you ever think about having kids"

you know then

you make a joke about him being a *horn dog* bc we all know he is

and tell him he has to wait until you get home

and WHEN YOU GET HOME

good lord

that man has you bent over the nearest surface immediately

you barely have time to think between his words and his actions

"fuck baby don't you want me to just fill you up"

"can't wait until you full of me, my kid"

"gonna let me cum inside aren't you baby, I can feel how deep i am"

... no words...

his hands are all over you as he's pumping into you, to your breasts, down across your belly

and he WILL give you fun facts about how they'll grow and swell

and when he does

oh when he does cum inside

he'll stay right there to make sure it doesnt go to waste, and whatever does?

he'll just use his fingers and push it in, right next to his cock

TW⚠️: 18+, sex!!, spit, nekkid

PAIRING: spencer reid x fem!reader

A/N: im touch starved, dont judge me. i just really like spitting & sex and reid so,, // just a lil blurb cause im too lazy to write a whole thing just to justify spencer spitting in someone's mouth 🌚

⚠️ MINORS DO NOT INTERACT !! ⚠️

continue reading blow the cut 👀

Spencer didn't know what exactly had drove him to do it. Well, he had an explanation, but he pushed the thought away in less than a millisecond, the haziness of the adrenaline almost blinding him as he felt her swallow his spit, a hand not too gently on her throat as he pounded in her fervently. Her moans had turned into pleas then. Good. She liked it too. He leaned down to kiss her, his tongue diving right in, before pulling away and half opening his heavy eyes and staring at the string connecting their mouths. With a grin on his face, he felt the very last ounce of reason leave him as he pushed two fingers in her mouth, now her tongue caressing his digits the same way she had his dick some minutes ago. Her walls pulsated so fast now. One, two, three thrusts more and wave after wave of pleasure washed over her, him following right after.

Masterlist

Started: 9/26/19 Updated: 6/28/21

Bucky Barnes:

To The Stars [social media AU]

Forge of the Heart [series] - WIP (on hold)

Let’s Take An Old Fashioned Walk - [oneshot]

Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy - [oneshot]

I’m Gonna Marry Her - [oneshot]

Dance With Me - [oneshot]

Please Mr.Postman - [oneshot]

A Bucky Barnes Love Story - [series] - WIP

Spencer Reid:

I Love You - [oneshot]

Din Djarin (The Mandalorian):

Love Language - [oneshot]

Dancing in the Moonlight - [oneshot]

Dean Winchester:

ER Nights - drafted

Add yourself to my taglist if you want!

nsfw masterlist (18+ only)

Fandoms and emotional support characters

Alright, let's go

Marvel - Tony Stark + Peter Parker + Rocket Raccoon

DC - (The Batman with Robert Pattinson is the only DCEU movie I support) Bruce Wayne + Raven

Transformers - (Not Bayverse) Bumblebee + Soundwave + Ratchet + Optimus Prime

Ranger's Apprentice - Halt O'Carrick

Tangled the Series - Eugene Fitzherbert

TMNT 2012/ROTTMNT - Both iterations of Raphael, and 2k12 Donnie

Criminal Minds - Spencer Reid

9-1-1 - Evan Buckley

Leverage - Eliot Spencer

The Walking Dead - Daryl Dixon

Stranger Things - Steve Harrington

Harry Potter - Harry Potter + Severus Snape

Ducktales - Donald Duck + Scrooge McDuck

Race to the Edge - Snotlout Jorgenson

We Bare Bears - Ice Bear

Trolls - Branch

The Mandalorian - Din Djarin

Lego Ninjago - Zane Julien

Rick and Morty - Rick Sanchez

Puss in Boots - Puss

The Owl House - Hunter

Warrior Cats - Firestar + Jayfeather + Gray Wing

Helluva Boss - Moxxie

Hazbin Hotel - Alastor

Yes I am aware that they are all men. No, I do not experience a sexual attraction to them. Rather it's like they are all simultaneously my fathers, my children, and my emotional support babygirls. I want to hurt them purely to see them comforted. I want to watch them struggle mainly to see how they overcome their pains, and I want to see fluff because there is a reason I call them my trauma buddies and I want them to have good things. (I have gay ships for most of them on top of straight ships, on top of no ships, on top of ot3s). I'm sure I'll end up adding to and subtracting from this list as time passes, but this is the most current one.

Also, I will not read or write reader insert or OC-centric fics. I don't know why but they make me irrationally angry so I avoid them

The cage is open, you can walk out anytime you want (Why are you still here?),

S2!Post!Hankel Spencer Reid x gn!BAU!reader

Angst (hurt/comfort). Autistic Spencer (you know the drill). Perhaps some traces of fluff if you’re like…. masochistic. Heavily implied happy ending.

— Explorations of Spencer’s (very glossed over) addiction. Love confessions? Half love confessions? Spencer admits it mentally, Reader implies it through actions. What am I saying? They’re sooooooo in love it pains me.

Warnings: *cracks knuckles,* okay…. —heavy depictions of drug addiction, mentions and allusions of suicide, previous mentions of being held hostage (Hankel). PACKED with Greek mythology references (sue me, i study classics as a degree), perhaps some light biblical imagery? Spencer being at rock-bottom. he’s kinda bitchy. he also disses hotlines (they do save lives, don’t listen to Spencer!!! he’s being a dick). mentions of childhood bullying.

w.c: 3.2k

a/n: title so long it’s basically a midwestern emo song.

────────────

There’s intimacy in being fragile. Spencer knows firsthand, has romanticised his Glass delusion. The fear of shattering, fragmenting on impact, like jagged, sliced glass. He thinks of Charles VI, (1380’s King of France), what he felt when he refused touch. When he reinforced himself, shielding behind excess clothing, in the fallacious fear of dismantling.

Spencer does the same, hides behind fabric, shies away from human contact. Because— because being careful is better than being impetuous. If he can make himself so small he no longer takes up space then maybe they’ll be kind to him.

Monachopis. Has he always been this out of place? Has it always felt this way? Will it ever stop?

12 years old. Curling inward to shield himself from the ache of cracked fists. You’re not here, you’re not here, you’re not here. He still feels like that kid, the one bleeding across the school yard, smashed glasses, bust lip, new bruises to hide from mom.

Perhaps he should blame genetics. Find something to point the finger at. Mentally distort the truth, until it’s no longer a paling face he sees, drawing the first needle into his arm, forcing him to take what he never asked for. No longer that, but a bigger issue, a concern that cannot be personified, a larger statistic in the minefield of human psychology.

Those with ASD have a doubled risk of substance use.

He never stood a chance. Did he?

So just like Charles, he covers his arms. Veils the track marks that penetrate skin. Pretend they’re not there, pretend you’re okay. Okay? Okay, nobody has stopped to ask him if he is ‘okay’ since ‘the incident.’ When the shock wore off, and attention strayed, everyone lost interest.

He feels like an outlaw to his own team.

How do you move on from being bound, tied, degraded to something beneath human?

How did everyone else?

He understands now— the pull of addiction. The way it mimics, artificially replicates home. Something soft, in that one, life-ruinously warm moment between the first hit and the inevitable come down.

But just like everything good. It dies. Turns ugly. Disfiguring, decaying. What once was simple, a fleeting temptation, a way to starve off lonely withdrawal, has derailed into desperate, insatiable hunger. To reproduce the first time, to appease the way he palpates in the wake of something tiny—

Call it what it is. Not an analgesic agent, not a semi-synthetic, not a simple narcotic utilised in the medical field. It’s an opioid, two to eight times greater than that of morphine. Given to those dying, to help alleviate Cheyne-stokes breathing, to reduce pain before the end.

It binds to the opioid-receptions in the central nervous system.

He is no superior than those on the street. Begging for loose change to shoot up and placate the cold.

2AM. The phone connection is faint. Do you feel like killing yourself? Is the noose already tied, is the rope choking you? Do you need to breathe? Do you even want to? He wonders what it would be like, to call into those bullshit hotlines, to hear the detached, sharp-bladed sympathy of some stranger.

Instead, when the phone picks up, the blaring beep of a dial dissipating, he hears you instead.

“You know how it’s believed that Artemis killed Orion?” He starts. He cannot begin with hi, I’m scared of the dilaudid burning through my veins. Do you still love me? (Presumptuous of him to believe you loved him in the first place, he certainly wouldn’t.)

He doesn’t let you answer. Maybe he’s scared, or maybe he can try and satiate your concern by fact-dumping so extensively that you automatically revert back to oh yeah, boy genius is talking again. “Well— there’s this other interpretation, that she… y’know didn’t. Instead, they were hunting companions, and it was because of the animals he slaughtered on Crete, that Gaia. Mother ea— yeah, you know who I’m referencing. Okay.”

Even at his worst, he is conveniently a social disaster. They could poke holes in his brain, drag the sharp edge of a blade through the tissue lining of his stomach, and his mouth would still find a way to run:

‘You’re missing major arteries here, c’mon — I know you can push harder than that. Aim for my descending aorta, that will do the job correctly.’

It would be funny if he wasn’t the biggest screw up to ever exist. Social ineptitude has never looked worse.

“Anyway, um… so— disturbed by the blood-bath, and feeling repentant — she summoned this scorpion. Humans are no match for the gods, obviously. So any creation with intent will—“ he sighs, finding new ways to hate himself. “Basically he died. Yeah— dead. To… uh, sum it up?”

“And what?” Oh, there you are. He’s surprised you’re listening, that you didn’t hang up the moment his morbid rambling begun. He’s always surprised, surprised that you listen, that you stay, even when you shouldn’t. It would be romantic, if he wasn’t so flawed in believing you could never want someone like him.

“Well— Artemis gathered up the remnants of Orion and placed them in the sky. Yknow,… hence the constellation.”

There’s shuffling — a moment of uneasy silence. “Spencer—“

He keeps going. Shock-horror. “I’m not sure science would agree with that myth. It certainly counters the Big Bang theory. And the whole schtick regarding— look… it doesn’t,… it doesn’t hold any truth, of course. The gods aren’t real,” (if they are, they must spit at the flawed creation of him), “I just— it was on the forefront of my mind. Made me think of you.”

It’s innocent. If you don’t take into account the stored vials he keeps stashed in his cabinet sink. If you pretend you’re just two people, two old, weary friends, who are insomniac and restless. Then again, where Spencer is concerned, everything is innocent. He’ll bare the weight of existence with no expectation of a return favour. So willing to give give give. Always taken for granted. Tossed to the sidelines. You’ve watched the team ignore his plans, call rain check after rain check, incessant excuses for something so diminutive. Even now, they can’t see what’s right in front of them. The blunt of the truth.

The aftermath of the Hankel case.

“Bad night?” You ask. Like you don’t feel it in your ribs.

He sighs, head spilling back against the wall. Throat bared, it would be so easy for hands to wrap around the unmarred skin, to put him down. “Aren’t they all?”

You’ve both been trained to pinpoint human behaviour. Discern threat from over exaggeration. You don’t hesitate, he knows you don’t— he’s seen you behind the weight of a gun. Dominant hand curved around the grip, aligning the front and rear sight. Firing pin striking the primer of the cartridge, no recoil— he’s watched you no more than blink when the bullet penetrates.

He always anticipates a flinch that never comes.

Sometimes, he has this dream, where he’s got the same Hornady branded bullet, lodged through his chest. Sometimes he wakes up and still believes he’s bleeding out.

He can hear your keys, the clattering that fades into the grating, confirmative slam of a door. You’re out of the apartment complex, and what? He’s too busy thinking about some warped manifestation of his subconscious?

Will he ever live outside of his mind?

The call doesn’t end (5 dragging minutes of heavy breathing and awkward silence), until you’re standing right here, flesh and bone, in his kitchen.

He’s making himself small again. Sat against cold tile, he shields his face from view. As if that alone will incrimate him. He knows you know. And it’s scary; to be so raw in the face of someone you love.

When you drop to your knees, it feels like tending to a wounded animal.

“You didn’t need to come,” he mutters, obstinate.

“So what?” You brush it off, ever the hero. Spencer thinks they should marbleise you in the Vatican. “I still did.”

You came. You called. Spencer fucking hates that cliche. Except, no.. no he doesn’t. Sometimes, he wants to make himself sicker, just so you have reason to touch him.

Reaching up, he feels your calloused palm, the way it cups his jaw, coaxing his face to lift. He thinks, knows, you’re disturbed by the sight. Red-rimmed eyes, and waxen features. Skinnier, hollow. If he is Leander, then he prays you don’t suffer the same fate as Hero.

‘Geniuses are never happy,’ they told him as a child. Detailing the cyanide found in Viktor Meyer’s stomach, Wallace Carother’s affinity for Potassium Cyanide. Hans Berger, Valero Legasov, Alan Turning. Some things hurt more than can be described.

Is it really so startling that he turned out the same? When that’s all he’s ever known?

Spencer stares. He tries to look through you, but it doesn’t work. Not when you’re warm, and real, and if the come down is configuring you into reality, and you’re not really here, then so be it. He’ll take what he can get. “You’ll find Dilaudid in my bathroom. Left turn from the hallway. I suggest you call 911. Report drug possession. They’ll take it more seriously if you say my name, emphasise the doctor in the title.”

“No.”

“Yes—“ indignantly, he huffs, “Yes. You will. Otherwise you’re guilty by association. The FBI will fire you, take away your credentials. You’ll be ruined.”

“That’s if they find out.”

He can’t comprehend why you’re covering for him. There’s decency, empathy, general human kindness, and then there’s this. “You’re supposed to be an upholder of the law.”

“Pft,” you scoff, brush it off. “Yknow, in Alabama, you can’t play cards on a Sunday. Alaska, no moose on sidewalks. There’s also a ban on wearing masks in Georgia. California has—“

“I get your point.” He cuts off, “Well— no, I actually don’t. Considering they’re dumb laws that waste time. Drug paraphernalia, in contrast, is not.”

“Even high, you’re a stickler. Guess old habits die hard?” you push up, and he chases your touch. “C’mon, golden boy. You’re getting a cold shower and some water. Gonna flush that shit out of you the old fashioned way.”

“I wasn’t aware there was a modern alternative…”

He doesn’t let you see him naked. Partially because, it’s his body. This vessel that feels so alienated from the better part of him. He’s never let someone undress him before, see behind the meticulous layers. But, mostly.. well, he has a firm belief that the first time you take off his clothes, it will be in better circumstances. If that ever transpires.

You’d probably think him deranged: hi, i’m saving myself for you, because any touch that isn’t yours makes me sick.

He’d rather rot alone than string someone along who could never fill the void of you.

The shower is methodical. Skin recoiling from the harsh rivulets of water. 3 minutes spent standing there, staring outwards not in. Complete disregard for the mirror, he’s all soft features and freshly-washed pyjamas when he pads into the bedroom. Corduroy pants, thermal-wear socks, some dumb science print embellished onto the front of his shirt. (‘Never trust an atom, they MAKE UP everything’ — yeah, he hates himself.)

You don’t talk. Not until he’s consumed his body weight in water. He fights off the urge to warn you about the dilution of sodium content in blood. Hyponatremia. Fatal, with a likelihood of seizuring and long-flight comatose. You’d probably just laugh at him, considering it was two glasses, a litre at best.

He’ll use his intellect to hurt. And you’ll counter him with little regard.

Even at his ugliest, you still stay.

“I’m fine,” he protests— hating the way you look at him when he’s so raw.

It’s that gaze. That same sinking, pity-warped gaze he received when he talked about his mom, about the kids at school. Adolescent meat-heads who pushed him into lockers, and beat him between class. Its— suffocating sympathy that he no longer has room for.

“No you aren’t,” this might be the worst you’ve ever seen him.

Would you have known? If he didn’t make the call? Cassandra complex. Disambiguating. A psychological phenomenon where an accurate prediction of a crisis is dismissed. Silent concern, the intuitive awareness that he never recovered, it was only going to lead to this—

Oh fuck it. You knew. The entire team did. You’re just the only one who cared enough to help.

You’re not like the rest of them. Maybe they can blanket suspicion, play pretend, refuse to get their hands dirty. But, there’s a reason you’re better. You don’t sugar-coat reality. You act. You react.

He’ll see your name on a wall one day. An award adorning your efforts.

“You’re exhausted, lie down.”

Spencer fights the urge to scowl. Since when were you in charge? Admittedly, he knows the answer to that: since you spitballed into his apartment, better yet, since you spitballed into his life. So, like the good, propitiated loser he is, he complies. Shock horror…

“What are you gonna do? Tuck me in?”

“You wish.” Instead, you force your way onto the right side of the mattress. “Get comfy, you’ve got your own, free of charge, narcotics anonymous sponsor tonight.”

“You’re not great at the whole ‘tough love’ thing.”

“Then call someone else next time.”

Vulnerability feels like being ripped open at the seams. Like some botched Pygmalion creation — stitched wrong, still breathing. He wants to fall asleep, to just… fade into himself. But— you have this uncanny, accursed ability to make him honest.

You, draped over his bed, does little to appease the sickness in his mind.

“I never asked for this,” he starts, “I didn’t— I didn’t even want it. How is that fair? I never got to decide, I wasn’t even given the anatomy to choose. Now—“

The words rip free like Prometheus’ daily punishment: inevitable, agonizing.

He laughs. Cold. Something ugly that doesn’t belong to him. “Now, if I’m not thinking about my next hit, I’m thinking about how you see me. How the team must see me. It’s— it’s the disappointment. I just— I don’t know why you stay.”

It’s all so tentative. The moments before, when you extend your hand, run it across the curvature of his jaw. All it takes is the touch and he’s crashing into you. Like there is no feasible option but to submit to the basic human need of contact. Face pressed into your shoulder, he feels like dead-weight. Something unworthy of labour.

Stop pushing that boulder up the hill, Sisyphus. Let it fall. Let him fall.

His hand knots tighter in the fabric of your top. Like if he lets go, he’ll spiral into Tartarus itself.

Why? Why would you do this—

“You think I’m going to cut and run just because you’re inconvenient? Pft, i’m too stubborn for that. And, well…” there’s a sigh,… “I care about you too much. Alright? So be inconvenient. Fuck, call at 3AM. Call at 5AM. Make me drop everything and come over. I don’t care. I want to carry the burden. I want to carry your burden.”

His touch lingers near your lower back. Drawing soft halos there, faint and uneven. “I hate you,” comes out muttered, something muffled by skin.

“No you don’t.” you counter, immediately.

“No I don’t,” just like that, he breaks. Cease-fire. How could he ever hate you? The statement was deflective, at best. Some way to make you ache the way he aches. At least then it would be a level paying field.

“I hate who I am when I’m like this. I hate— I hate my mind. It’s not… it’s not accurate, the way people romanticise it. I can’t be what they all expect of me.”

You’re doing that thing. The one where you don’t respond. Where you just listen, without interjecting, without cutting through his incessant monologues.

Sometimes, he feels like he dreamed you up. Like you don’t even exist, a stowaway in his brain, something to re-mantle whenever he’s lonely. Real people aren’t this good — this good to him.

“I don’t get to make mistakes. I need to have the answers every single second of the day. I can’t be me. You’re the only one, how are you the only one who notices? I’ve tried so hard, I’ve been so good—“

He’s tangled into you now, tethered like Daedalus’ forgotten son trying to stitch his broken wings back together mid-fall. If he could, he’d crawl into you. Find somewhere warm to safely exist. Without hurt.

“This isn’t just, I’m not like this just because I need you. Please— please remember that. I miss you always, even when I’m sober. Even before— before everything. I’m not in some—“

“What?” you finally (mercifully) interject. “Some drug-infused decline? Where you‘ll lean on anyone that will give you the time of day?”

Spencer flinches — not because you’re wrong, but because you’ve drawn blood from a wound he didn’t know he still had.

He hates that you’ve distinguished him as some mischaracterised energy vampire. Like you could ever be nothing. Like you’re just the closest fix he can find beyond a chemical high. Designer drugs, manufactured in a lab, they say Heroin feels like a hug from God.

Until your body becomes gluttonous for a hit that never appeases.

You— you are not a hollow high. You are slow and real and catastrophic.

Oh, you’re dependable, a want that morphed into all-encompassing devotion over slow dragging time. “Yes, to the former. No— no, definitely no to the latter. You’re not just some emotional crutch to me. You’re, I don’t know, you’re just… everything.”

Spencer swallows, pulls back, feigning composure. “I should be able to do this alone,” he mutters, “Normal people can. I should be—”

“C’mon, Spence. You’re not a machine. You were never built for that.”

Another sharp laugh. It pierces— you can almost taste the blood this time.

“I’m so tired,” he says in defeat. “I’m so tired of trying to be someone worth saving.”

Pressing your forehead to his, you’re kind to not mention the tears. To just let them occur, free fall. “You don’t have to be anything,” you murmur into his hair. “You just have to be. That’s enough. That’s enough for me, and i’ve got you. Okay? I’ve got you. Always.”

“Will you stay with me?” He doesn’t mean tonight, you know that well enough. “Will you stay with me through it all?”

You’re aware of the burden it would imply, the jagged, ugly reality of withdrawal. The toll, sweat-soaked skin and cold fevers. Irrational begging, pleading for god, just one more fix. The way it would change him, change your untainted perspective of him. When you agree, it is not misguided.

You know what you’re signing up for.

“Yeah. I’ll stay. Through it all.”

If this is love, true unvarnished love, reciprocal and real, then he’s sorry he found you at a bad time. Give it, give me, a few months, he thinks, and i’ll spend the rest of my life giving you everything.