DISCLAIMER: CBS owns all Criminal Minds characters. All OC characters, Hannah, Matthew, and their family, are mine.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story is a re-publish. It was originally called Life is Messy but Love is Messier. I wasn't happy with it so I did a major overhaul and re-write. If you read the previous version, you'll notice big changes. Certain details have been altered or completely removed. I hope everyone likes the new story. I'm happier with it. Thank you and please review! Also, I had to alter where Hannah's family is from - San Francisco (bare with me please!)
Prologue
Spencer Reid and Hannah Darrow met at a fraternity party at Stanford when they were seventeen. Hannah's best friend, twenty-two year old Jenna, accompanied her while Spencer's friend Paul dragged him to the party to show people his magic tricks. Spencer didn't regret it. He met Hannah.
He first spotted her when she breezed in behind Jenna. Hannah looked like a sea goddess in her blue and green dress. Spencer turned away before she looked his way, too nervous to even smile at her. When she glanced at him, Hannah saw the deck of cards in his hand and his watch over his sleeve. She knew what the eccentricity meant; a trait of a gifted mind. Hannah always picked up on what people said and did. Her parents, famous psychologists, taught all eight of their kids how to observe and analyze. She made a mental note to track down the guy with the watch over his sleeve later.
Hannah stumbled upon him as they both stared at the alcohol bottles. Spencer studied the alcohol volumes; Hannah contemplated outright theft of a bottle of rum. That idea vanished the moment she looked up and saw Spencer, his hair disheveled and a watch over his sleeve.
She grabbed his hand and led him up to the roof to see the stars. Two minutes later their legs dangled over the roof ledge. They talked astronomy, mythology, Star Wars and Star Trek, classes, friends, literature and psychology until the party dispersed and the guy who lived under their ledge told them to get off his roof. Their conversation continued in whispers as they dashed out of the fraternity. They wandered campus for a half hour, looked up as the sun rose, then headed for the nearest apartment, Hannah's, just a few blocks off campus.
Before they arrived Hannah explained her roommate situation. She lived with her oldest brother, Don. So long as Hannah checked in with him around breakfast, lunch, and dinner, refrained from sex until she turned eighteen and alcohol until her twenty-first birthday, and did her homework, he didn't pry and he let her enjoy her freedom away from their parents. In exchange for this, she let him stay over at his girlfriend Tracy's apartment as much as he wanted and lied to their parents about what each of them did. Her twin brother Matthew, still in high school in San Francisco, helped them out each time he warned them of a surprise visit.
After her explanation, Spencer didn't want to go to her place, until she explained Don made plans with his girlfriend for the whole weekend.
Almost two months later, they moved in together, less than a month after Spencer's eighteenth birthday on the ninth of October, and the night before Hannah's eighteenth birthday on Halloween.
They also agreed on an open relationship before they started to look for apartments.
Their relationship worked, and flourished. They didn't see their relationship as an obstacle, but as opportunity. Spencer's work required he travel often, and even though he don't know how to flirt with woman not his girlfriend, he always had the chance to try it out. Also, Hannah could not handle or even participate in a monogamous relationship, despite her love for Spencer.
Of their entire extended family, just Hannah and Matthew sought out, crafted, and maintained multiple relationships. The open relationship fascinated Spencer from a psychological viewpoint. He and Matthew's girlfriend Allison loved Matthew and Hannah and didn't see the arrangement as wrong, but enjoyed it. Allison saw other people too. Spencer felt too much like a nervous idiot to try.
Hannah and Matthew's parents on the other hand found the twins relationship arrangements very strange and asked all four of them very personal questions. When asked about it themselves, Hannah and Matthew kept it simple and said that they loved many people. Spencer understood that. Allison understood that and lived it too. Even Spencer's team understood the dynamics of their relationship better than her parents did.
Aaron Hotchner could quote Hannah's relationship rules off the top of his head. Spencer suspected he knew why his bossmemorized them, and why he repeated them. The first rule Hannah followed stated no sexual relationships with married men, unless they participated in an open marriage or received permission from their wife to date Hannah. Her second rule mirrored the first; no dating men already dating another woman, unless given permission by the girlfriend. The third rule dictated communication to the primary relationship, Spencer, about whom Hannah saw and when, how and when the relationship ended and why. Spencer even had permission to run background checks on Hannah's other relationships, as well as Allison's and Matthew's. Her brother and his girlfriend followed the same rules. No one got hurt.
But Hannah and Matthew still held secrets.