Look, I'm never one to paint Spencer as the sad guy who's always moping but moments like these do happen, and here's what I think we all wish we could've done for him then. Enjoy darlings!
The curtains were drawn, the only dusting of light sneaking out from where the hanging fabric didn't quite reach the carpet. The sun had come and was almost gone on the third day since Spencer had gotten back from the latest case and though his body had come home to their apartment each of those days, his mind couldn't have been farther.
She could feel it in his nearly empty kiss though try and hide it as he might. Messier ties, spilled coffee, crinkled papers. His hugs were too short and too tight, over- and undercompensating at the same time, and it had taken her this many days to work up to asking him about it.
She nearly chickened out when she heard the key in the lock but as soon as his slumped shoulders came into view her mind was made up.
"Hi, sweetheart."
"Hey," he managed pleasantly, "how's it going?"
She stayed hovering on the couch, caught between wanting to wrap him in a crushing hug and giving him space for miles. "Work wasn't too busy and I picked up some of the groceries on the way home. How about you?"
He turned away from her to set his satchel down and rifle through it. "Finished some case reports today, still some signatures to track down."
Offering nothing else, he trailed into the bedroom and she followed without a word, just watching him. His shoes were kicked off haphazardly and an apparent crick in his neck required a few more rubs. The air jolted on down the hall, setting a simple buzz through the room that shook her out of her hesitant daze.
"Spencer, are you ok?" Her voice sounded meek even to herself. "After that last case and all?"
"What? Yeah of course, why wouldn't I be? We got the guy and got the case settled away and –"
"You're just not acting yourself." She let it hang there, twisting the front of her shirt as Spencer's mouth twisted to the side and back.
His fingers cut upwards to deftly undo the top few shirt buttons as he muttered, "I'm acting just fine."
The tendency to shy away from tension was woven in her every fiber but she tore through it for the sake of the man in front of her. "No, baby, you've been distant and I can't keep –"
"Maybe I'm allowed to still be upset by seeing dead bodies, ok?" He had only ever snapped in front of her one other time and this tone finally directed at her was scathing. Even he winced and turned away again, tendrils of that long hair dipping as he crumbled even further.
She let the aftershock ripple away, waves fading along two rocky shores with a painful expanse in between. Gliding over to him, she touched a gentle hand to his back before sliding her arms around his waist and melting into the hug with a cheek pressed to his spine.
"Spence, I'm sorry."
"No, I shouldn't have…"
She puffed a sigh onto them both as his hands dawdled to close over hers. "Would you just tell me the truth?"
"Tell you what?"
"Ever since this case there's something you keep going deep into thought about, sometimes so much you physically pull away from me."
He swiveled still in her arms, wrapping her back in an embrace that had the comforting tinge of his usual hugs. Silence rang on for a minute and then two and his steady breathing gave no indication of wanting to speak any time soon. She reluctantly pulled away and led him to sit on the edge of the bed precariously enough that she remained standing in front of him.
"Spencer." It was a simple scrape when his eyes finally met hers for a fleeting moment, a scrape in the massive wall of everything she'd been holding back. "I know we only said our I love you's a month ago, but that's been an entire month of me knowing wholeheartedly that I do love you."
"Please don't think that I don't love you." There was a rasp in his voice as it sank toward a whisper.
Her immediate reflex was to gently squeeze his arm. "I haven't thought that for a moment, baby. I'm just saying that's where these questions are coming from, I love you so much and I want to know so I can be there for you."
"I don't think…I can't…"
She sank to her knees in front of him, heart breaking into overflow. Her fingers dawdled with his light as a feather but her voice grew louder as she poured out to him. "I know you feel like you can't and if you really don't wanna talk I'll back off. But if this is you trying to keep me safe in the dark, safe from whatever past you have, it's not gonna work. I can see you, Spence, I can see that this is eating at you! And I'm right here for you."
The room shook with his shaking sigh and she could feel his shoulders still tense up as the confession slid from his lips. "When I was kidnapped a few years ago, the unsub used the narcotic dilaudid to ease the pain from the torture. I kept some with me and it took longer than I wanted to get clean."
"Baby…"
"And this most recent unsub was going through oxycodone withdrawals that fueled his psychosis and he killed five couples before we could get to him."
"And you think…" she trailed off as her eyes wanted to glaze over. The incomparable man in front of her wanted to compare himself to the monsters he chased and all that was left was her gripping his lap as a plea otherwise. "That's not something that happened or will ever happen to you."
"Oxycodone is extremely similar to dilaudid, they can even be substituted for each other, and that could've been me!"
They were both raw, screaming nerves that could only be healed by the salve of time but she tried her best anyway. A single tear slid down her cheek to match the pair already shining on his. "I know you, Spencer Reid, and I know you would never. You work with the good guys every day! No matter what's going on in that head of yours, you are a good man."
The bedroom rested breathlessly still and Spencer let his eyes drop from hers again, and she knew it would be awhile before he accepted any part of what she said. Three days this had been skinning him alive and he had apparently considered the current scenario already because he knowingly mumbled the next part.
"And now you know about my addiction."
She couldn't get air into her lungs fast enough for her rebuttal. She bounded to her feet and held his face in her hands as she cried, "Do you think that changes who you are to me? That may have changed you years ago but here and now I've got all of you! I've got you."
He leaned into her touch like a withering flower toward the last ray of evening sun and was so tragically beautiful that she couldn't help it when she leaned down to swiftly kiss him.
She immediately jerked away, saying, "I'm so sorry, I don't mean to…"
But his gaze stifled her words and in the next moment his lips were grazing on hers imploringly. They sat there, foreheads pressed together and breath intermingling as she reveled in his form truly welcoming her for the first time in days. She drew back to gaze at him and knew. He could solve hundred year old mysteries in minutes behind those eyes but she still knew that look. He wanted to forget about it all, or at least think about something else for awhile, and she had a whole body's worth of something else.
She linked her hands with his and gently pulled him to stand with a whispered, "I love you."
Making the first move, she pulled off her shirt and discarded it with no intention of finding it soon. "I love you."
His hands helped hers to undo all of his buttons, and she ghosted a content smile at the crawling pace. "I love you," he whispered this time.
"I love you," she countered, pressing a firm kiss to his cheek as she slid the garment off and trailed affectionate hands in its wake.
Her jeans hit the floor after he watched them cascade off her legs. "I love you."
Another "I love you," another kiss to his cheek, and he trusted her with unbuttoning his pants and pushing them off.
His hands were achingly gentle as they reached around and unclasped her bra and he pulled her panties down and away in the same motion. She was bare, completely trusting before him, and he let her do the same to him.
"I love you," they murmured together, one last declaration as she inched closer into an embrace and let his smooth skin envelop her.
All at once he slumped against her with his chest trembling as he stifled a sob in her neck. She gripped him back, a soothing hand running up and down his shoulders and uttering whatever kindness in his ear she could think of.
He was the one to lean slightly back and wrench her into a kiss, sinking to the bed and pulling her to straddle his lap. The salty tears ran slick between their lips but she kissed back with fervor because the way his fingers curled into her flesh desired nothing less. She left her mouth at his disposal to peck like butterflies or kiss until bruises formed, whatever he needed.
When he fell all the way back on the bed, beautifully splayed beneath her, she was sure to follow and never let his shining eyes be far from hers. His hand crawled to clasp hers and she squeezed back as another tearful smile collided with his. She knew the form beneath her but she explored all the same, up strong arms that she'd never feel unsafe in and down a torso that he let her snuggle bare against most nights, and he only flinched when she passed over the bend in his elbow that had helped plague him years before.
The jolt awaked his hands from their sleep and they gripped her ass tighter than normal as his internal struggle ended with a "thank you" brushed to her lips.
"Of course. I love you."
There was a nag in the back of her mind that she couldn't think of anything else to say except that same phrase, but what else was there? She loved him, a thousand times she loved him and always would no matter what, and her lover he would always be.
He kept his lithe body pressed firmly against hers as they rolled over because any moment apart threatened to break the little sanity they'd retained. His nose came to rest beside hers as they paused in reverence to breathe and simmer in their stationary skin against each other, and his hair now fell to shield them in from any of the outside world. The silent, still moments dragged on and she finally opened her eyes to see his expressive brown ones closed and the brows furrowed.
Another kiss blossomed between them as she rubbed thumbs on his cheeks. "Are you still ok for this?"
"Please," he whispered.
The simple heat and friction of their bodies existing together had done their work and he didn't have to ask twice, she was eager to help him heal. He was already hard in her hand as she guided them intimately together and he took initiative with one blinding thrust.
The painted picture of them together in that searing moment would've earned them a spot in the Louvre alongside the other praised erotic artwork. She rolled her hips into his and once their abstract paces lined up heaven itself burst for them, constricting and inflaming every muscle in her core and she knew by the way his mouth dropped open it was working on him, too.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders for leverage and crushed him impossibly closer, still whispering that she loved him and she was there, right there for him and she would never leave. Somehow she was crying again and then hers weren't the only tears on her face as they wept for something lost and something found in the other, broken only by moans as carnal need took its course through their quivering bodies.
Without warning everything snapped and he wailed her name through the dark apartment, resonating in her ear though she barely heard through the blood rushing through her head as the ultimate peak claimed her.
He remained on top of her, slick and spent and winding down from the high for minutes on end before mumbling against her skin, "I understand if…"
"If I know that you're the most amazing man I've ever met? Yeah, I understand that, too."
It was barely there, but a quirk against her flesh told of a faint smile crossing his lips. She smiled into a kiss to his hair as they clasped hands again. "You're a keeper, Spencer Reid, and I hope you'd planned on keeping me for awhile, too."