Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.
"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater." - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
o o o o
December 5, 2009
"Spencer?" Calliope's voice was soft as she called for him as she left their bedroom.
"I'm just picking a book, sweetheart," Spencer answered, pulling her attention towards the bookcase in the living room that held their favourite titles. He was standing in front of the shelf, barefoot and leaning heavily on the cane she'd bought him in Italy, with a difficult expression on his face.
"Tough choice?" she asked, slipping against his side and wrapping an arm around his waist. Spencer mumbled noncommittally, absently brushing a kiss to her hair as he continued staring at the books. "Will you read to me tonight?"
"If you want."
"Or I could read to you?" Calliope looked up at him through blonde lashes, waiting for him to fully notice her. It had been like this since Haley's funeral, since Strauss' witch hunt had ended, and their life had returned to what was supposed to be normal. They were together, but separate. So caught up in the processing of their own grief, they hadn't spent time together. Not really. Not in the way she realized she missed. She missed their connection, missed being fully present with him now that she had nothing to distract her, no house to fix, no funeral arrangements to make. Just life continuing with or without her as if her heart hadn't broken.
Spencer blinked, the words penetrating his thoughts after a few minutes of silence. Looking down at her, he seemed to notice her for the first time. He'd been getting lost in his own thoughts more and more since they buried Haley. Forgetting his surroundings - forgetting her - as he processed and tried to make sense of their new reality.
"Hi," she smiled sadly.
"Hi," he returned her smile slowly, a slight confusion in his eyes. "How long have you been here?"
"About five minutes."
"Did we say anything?"
"Nothing important," the corners of Calliope's smile slipped and Spencer tugged her closer to him, his arm going tightly around her boney shoulders.
"Have you eaten, sweetheart?" Spencer asked as Calliope buried her face in his soft sweater vest.
"Yes. We ate together an hour ago."
"Oh."
"I love you, Spencer Reid."
"I love you too, Calliope Sellers. Are you okay, sweetheart?" Spencer tipped her chin up to look at her, studying her seriously as he wiped her tears away with his fingertip. "How can I fix this?"
"I miss you so much, Spencer," Calliope hiccupped.
"Calliope," Spencer kissed her forehead, at a complete loss as to what to do.
"Can we have a date night tonight?" Calliope asked, tentatively, afraid he would turn her down.
"It's nine o'clock already," Spencer glanced at the clock on the mantle over the fireplace. "We already -"
"I know," Calliope interrupted in a rush of words before he could continue. "I just meant, like… a stay-home date? Maybe just talk? Reconnect? I mean, I - never mind. Sorry I brought it up."
Spencer grabbed her hand as she pulled away and held tight, suddenly realizing her insecurity. He still didn't fully understand what was going on, but he knew it was important. "Wait, sweetheart. Yes. Let's have a date night. Whatever you want. We can eat Pop-Tarts in the bathtub if you want to."
"Pop-Tarts in the bathtub?" Calliope gave him a wiry smile, threading her fingers though his and reaching up to push his long hair out of his face. "You hate Pop-Tarts. You must really like me if you're voluntarily gonna eat a Pop-Tart."
"I don't hate Pop-Tarts. I just don't think they have any nutritional value and there's better things you could be eating. I mean, the ingredients are terrible - high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, modified starches. There's 170 milligrams of sodium, 38 milligrams of carbohydrates, 16 grams of sugar. It's basically a clogged artery in chalky pastry form. There's also things that also taste better."
"Nothing tastes better than a Pop-Tart, Spencer."
"A lot of things taste better than a Pop-Tart, Calliope," Spencer chuckled, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. "In fact, most things taste better than a Pop-Tart."
"Name one," Calliope challenged playfully.
"Coffee of any kind. Frozen custard at Carl's. Monday night burgers at The Tavern. Rocko's Milk Stout. Everything Halina cooks. Kevin's maple bacon donut."
"I only said one," Calliope pushed up on her toes and pulled his head down to hers, kissing him shyly, like it was the first time she'd kissed him. "But that maple bacon donut was damn delicious."
"And I don't like you," Spencer told her, a hand at her temple. "I love you. Very much."
"I love you too, String Bean."
"So, am I eating a Pop-Tart tonight?"
"No, I won't make you eat a Pop-Tart. But why don't you go get some wine from the basement and meet me in the bedroom?"
"Anything else you want?" Spencer asked as she stepped out of his arms.
"Just you."
With that, Spencer watched Calliope sashay away from him and down the hall to their bedroom, Perses trailing at her heels. As soon as he heard the door close, Spencer went to the kitchen and tapped awake Calliope's MacBook Pro sitting out on the bar. Clicking the Safari icon, Spencer pecked at the keyboard to search results for 'romantic night at home' on Google.
For five minutes, Spencer read search results, absorbing ideas - half of which made him flush a vicious red with vicarious embarrassment - before shutting down the laptop and hobbled down the stairs into the basement. Facing the wall of wine at the back of the cellar, Spencer stopped and thought fast as he mentally finalized his ideas. He picked out a bottle of Calliope's favourite Cabernet Sauvignon from one of the middle racks and hurried back upstairs as quickly as he could, carefully closing the door behind him.
The warm timbre of Dexter Gordon's tenor saxophone wafted one of his more melancholy tunes through the house as Spencer busied his hands creating a tray of finger foods to pair with the wine. Spencer smiled in momentary triumph when he remembered the song title, something he struggled with when it came to Calliope's jazz music. I'm a Fool to Want You - another of Calliope's favourites. If she was bringing Dexter out, Spencer knew the night was important to her.
Stopping in the living room, Spencer grabbed Calliope's favourite book and the acrylic box containing the TableTopics cards Calliope was always trying to get him to try with her. Spencer took a deep breath and carefully carried the full tray into the bedroom.
Which was empty.
"Calliope?"
"In here."
Spencer followed the Tidewater accent into the bathroom, taking in the scene as he put the tray down on the counter. The light low, Calliope sat in the bathtub - a place he hadn't actually expected to end up when he'd suggested it - with at least 30 of his favourite lavender and cedar wood candles burning around the bathroom.
"You brought Pop-Tarts," Calliope smiled her widest smile at him and he smiled back at her instinctively, his gaze taking in the swells of her small breasts breaking the water and the way water droplets danced on her shoulders.
"Among other things. You look beautiful. I take it I'm supposed to join you?"
"It was your suggestion," Calliope's crooked grin widened still. "Pretty Woman on the brain?"
"I suppose it must have been," he pulled his sweater vest over his head and folded it into the laundry hamper in the corner. Self-consciousness gripped Spencer as he undressed awkwardly beneath her gaze, still unable to believe that she found his androgynous, gangly self even remotely attractive when he couldn't. But, then, she couldn't seem to understand why he thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
Without a word, Spencer awkwardly slipped down into the tub, wincing slightly in pain as he slide between Calliope's legs and leaning back against her chest, her breasts pressed against his back and his head resting back against her protruding collarbone. Calliope wrapped her arms around his shoulders and leant forward, pressing a kiss first to his temple and then his cheek, then turned his chin to kiss him fully. Closing his eyes, Spencer worked his fingers underneath the scarf protecting her hair and into the curls tied up into a top knot. He kept her head to his as he kissed her, her slender fingers trailing down his chest.
"I love you," Calliope whispered against his lips.
"I love you too, sweetheart. So much."
"I'm sorry, I didn't think about your cane. I should have helped you with the tray."
"I managed," Spencer kissed her again.
"Well," Calliope pulled away with a bright voice, dislodging Spencer's fingers from her hair as she moved and wrapped her legs around his waist, "I'm not Julia Roberts, so it's not 88 inches, but there's at least 40 inches of therapy hugging you tight for the bargain price of gratuito, just because ti amo moltissimo."
"Ti amo più della vita, Calliope."
"Oh, String Bean," Calliope snorted, kissing him hard. "You may know the language, but you can not speak it. It looses all it's musicality and basic pronunciation leaving your mouth."
"I can speak 17 different languages!" Spencer sputtered out his protest. "Spanish, Italian, Russian, Korean, Danish, French, German -"
"Ooohh-hooo-hooohh, no, you can not," Calliope laughed, teasing him with the biggest grin on her face, "you have a working knowledge of 17 different languages - you can understand them, but you can only speak one."
"I can be understood," he protested with a slightly defensive scowl.
"Only if the listener takes pity," she giggled before changing the subject. "So what did you bring besides Pop-Tarts? Ohhh, you brought TableTopics!"
"You've been trying to get me to play them for weeks, so I figured tonight would be a good time," Spencer accepted the change of topic with disgruntled grace as he reached his hand over to pick up the box. Calliope picked up one of the glasses of wine from the tray Spencer had put on the stool next to the bathtub. "And I learned Italian for you, you know."
"Don't lie. You learned Italian so you could read Divina Commedia and Machiavelli in the original text."
"Okay, that's true, but I learned 21-century Italian for you. Conversational Italian."
"That I will except as true. You remembered my favourite," she smiled, inhaling the scent of the wine before taken a drink.
"Calliope, I remember everything about you," Spencer reminded her factually as he pulled a card out of the clear box, the romantic possibility of the sentence not entering his thoughts. "I have an eidetic memory. I couldn't forget even if I wanted to. How do we play this? There are no instructions."
Calliope rolled her eyes ruefully as he trampled ungainly over the romantic stopping point and kissed the back of his head, scrapping the acrylic nails of her free hand against his scalp in the way he loved. "It's easy, String Bean. You pick a card, read the question on the card and then talk about it."
"They're just conversation starters?" Spencer asked, turning the card over in his hand as he unconsciously tilted his head against his fingers.
"That's the idea."
"Alright, I guess we can just start with this card," Spencer indicated the card in his hand. "For what reasons were you disciplined as a child?"
"The usual, I think," Calliope took another sip of her wine, still tracing patterns on Spencer's scalp. "Not doing chores or homework - well, actually, I never had an issue with doing my homework. Grandpa had the opposite problem with my homework. Anyways, mostly chores, disobeying. Though, sometimes I'd get in trouble for not taking breaks or pushing myself too hard. Mostly, though, for not behaving in a way that Mammy thought 'befitted the station into which I was born.' I didn't like the frilly dresses or the tea parties. I preferred tracking around in the mud with Eli and Issac or swimming in the pond with Ashanti and Breelyn. Running through the hallways of Dahlia with Jill and Trisha."
"You were disciplined just for being you," Spencer said sadly, reaching back and bringing her head down to his so he could kiss her. "I'm sorry that you spent your childhood always feeling like you were a disappointment."
"Well," Calliope shook her head, making her voice bright. "I'm entirely me now - multicoloured hair and all, so that's that, right? What about you? What were you disciplined for?"
"I, uh, I wasn't. Before my dad left, I was pretty much left to read and learn. And then after he left, I was the parent. Mom wasn't lucid enough to have any sort of discipline or structure in our house."
"Oh, baby," Calliope hugged him tightly. "I love you so much. I wish to God that I could undo everything that's happened to you."
"I'm here now. With you. Everything that's happened to me has led me to this moment with you, Calliope. I wouldn't change anything. My doctorate in mathematics is in the chaos theory. Simply put, one small action can have a huge reaction somewhere else, somewhere seemingly completely unrelated, somewhere in the near future or far future. Anything I might change, no matter how insignificant it may seem, could, theoretically, prevent me from ever meeting you. And I would never want that to happen," Spencer tilted his head all the way back to be able to see her fully and Calliope kissed him, holding him tightly.
"Wha-what's the next question?" Calliope asked, her voice thick with emotion as she pressed a kiss to his temple.
"What possession of your partner's would you like to throw away?" Spencer read aloud the card he pulled from the box.
"Oh. I have no idea," Calliope balked, "I've never thought about it."
"You threw away all my sheets when I moved in here," Spencer reminded her.
"Spencer, they were disgusting. They were some sort of worn out jersey fabric from the 70s with stains on them from spilling coffee and who knows what else."
"Just coffee. And the occasional Coke."
"They were gross. And scratchy. And the elastic was drying out on the fitted sheet."
Spencer chuckled and stroked the back of his fingers over her wrist. "I don't care, Sweetheart. I'm just teasing you."
"What item of mine would you throw out?"
Spencer's eyebrows furrowed together and he thought hard. "It's not really an item?"
"What do you mean?" Calliope tilted her head to one side, continuing the gentle massage of his scalp.
"I-hate-the-way-you-have-the-books-sorted," Spencer spit it out in one giant word and braced himself.
"You hate the way the books are sorted?"
"Yes. Sorry."
"But it's the Dewey Decimal System. Well, except for the bookcase with all my favourites in it."
"I believe that the Dewey Decimal System is deeply flawed, specifically that it's not specific enough and that there are inherent biases present that skew and diminishes the important of very specific categories. It was created in 1876 and, because of the deep prejudices engrained in their society, the biases against women, non-Christians, non-Anglos, those who don't aline to the heteronormative and gender binary classifications are incredibly obvious. And also, there is just so much new information now that doesn't fit properly into the overarching hierarchy - it's been 133 years and the knowledge the world has gained grows exponentially each day."
"And I'm sure you and your gigantic brain have created a replacement system," Calliope teased as Spencer reached towards the tray and picked up his own glass of wine. Spencer took a sip before answering.
"Yes. It's far more specific and completely unbiased, at least according to the topics of today. My study is set up that way. And, of course, I don't have my books separated by language like you do."
"Oh, of course," Calliope rolled her eyes so he couldn't see, pouring herself a second glass of wine with one hand. "What's the next card, String Bean?"
"Uh, it saaays… 'Which of us is the worst back seat driver?'" Spencer read the card and neither spoke for a beat before they both spoke at the same time.
"Me."
"You."
Together, they broke out into laughter like they hadn't since Haley died. Calliope leant her head down to kiss his ear with a happy giggle, running her tongue lightly over the helix. Spencer choked on his wine, a shiver running down his spine, and turned his head to kiss her as he tried to keep his focus on their conversation. "I'm glad we can agree that you are in fact, the worst back seat driver. Possibly in the entire history of the automobile."
"I'm a control freak," Calliope shrugged, unwrapped a Pop-Tart and took a bite. "Can't deny that. Next card?"
"What non-sexual thing does your partner do that really turns you on?" Spencer flushed just reading the question aloud. When Calliope didn't answer immediately, Spencer bit the inside of his cheek and looked down, clearing his throat as he put the card down on the discard pile on the edge of the tub.
"Your hands," Calliope whispered, putting her wine glass down and taking both his hands in hers, turning them over so his palms were upwards. She traced her fingertips along the lines of his palms and then over his fingers. "I love your hands. I -"
Spencer watched their hands as Calliope kept running her own fingers over his. She brought his right hand up to her lips and pressed a kiss to the back of his hand before gently positioning his hand so that his middle finger was down slightly from the others.
"I love watching you read," her voice was warm against his ear. "Your hand's just like this and you trail it down over the pages. Anything you do with your hands, really. Reading, writing, cooking… whatever. They are so beautiful and delicate, but also strong and steady. The whole time I was in Italy, I kept trying to draw them, but they never came out as beautiful as the real thing. But I particularly like watching you read, I like how… sure your hands are when you're reading. You're so focused and you loose all your awkward gangliness when you're reading. It's one of the few times you're completely confident in yourself. You were reading when I first met you, Spencer. I fell in love with you watching you read."
"I remember. You like to watch my hands while I'm reading?"
"Well, it's super embarrassing when you say it like that!" Calliope flushed, ducking her head into his hair.
The water sloshed while Spencer pulled away from her as he sat up and awkwardly tugged her out from behind him, pulling her into his lap and leaning against the back of the tub with her in his arms. Calliope buried her face into his chest and wrapped her arms around his neck.
"Sweetheart," Spencer kissed the top of her head and squeezed tightly. "I love it in the evening when we're getting ready for bed. We're in the bathroom, already in our pajamas. I'm brushing my teeth - I watch you in the mirror - and you're sitting at your vanity. You're just sitting there rubbing night cream into your skin. You're so beautiful. Then you pull your hair up into a top knot and you stand up, walk over to me. I have a mouth full of Listerine and you just stop next to me. You squeeze my hand and kiss my arm. Then you turn away and go to the bedroom, saying 'You coming, Spencer?' And when I walk into the bedroom, you're sitting up in bed reading, just waiting for me. And no matter what you're reading, you always look up when I close the bathroom door. And you just… you just smile at me, like you never want to see anyone else. Like I'm - heh - like I'm the only one you want to see coming to bed with you."
Spencer went quiet, running his hand in small circles over her bare back, feeling the gentle bump of her ribs beneath his palm. "Calliope, every night I get that moment with you… I treasure it. Before you, I never… I didn't… Calliope, before I met you, I never thought - I would have been a fool to want this life, to want you. I spent my childhood getting my ass kicked, being made fun of, trying to take care of my mother, worrying I'd become just like her. I have Aspergers and social anxiety; I'm socially awkward, obsessive compulsive, touching people freaks me out, I struggle with emotions. Calliope, I never dared dream that someone - that I would find someone who'd tolerate me, much less love me."
Tears welled in Calliope's hazel eyes and she clung to him.
"I never thought I'd get that moment," Spencer brushed a loose curl away from her face and kissed the tip of her nose, brushing tears from her cheeks with wet fingers. "That one that's private, just for me. No one else gets to see you brushing your teeth, putting moisturizer on your face, waiting for them in bed. It's just for me. I… I never thought I'd get that. Especially not with someone as amazing you."
Calliope reached up and moved his long hair away from his face, kissing him deeply, almost desperately. She pressed against him, trying to get as close as physically possible. Turning, she straddled him and took his face in her hands, pressing her forehead to his and meeting his gaze determinedly. "I only want you, Dr. Reid. I only want you."
Spencer kissed her serious whisper silent, sliding a hand along her spine to settle on her hip. Calliope trailed her fingers across his chest, kissing her way down his neck.
"Calliope," Spencer whispered her name, biting his bottom lip as he looked at her. Freckles dusted her shoulders and arms, candlelight dancing shadows over her ivory skin. His hands looked so big against her, tiny as she was, and he smiled at her before catching her lips with his once more. She met his gaze as he ran the back of his fingers against the swell of her breast and her hands buried in his hair.
"I only want you, Spencer."
A/N:
Wow. It has been a couple years since I've posted anything. My life has so drastically changed since I started writing CM fanfiction. Or posting fanfiction in general. It's been over nine years. I genuinely cannot believe that.
This is an out-take from my multi-chapter Mystery Muse, which focuses on Spencer and Calliope. It takes place between Chapters 26 and 27, after Haley's funeral in Season 5. So if you like this and want to read more, that's where you find it. Along with almost all my other one-shots, which are S&C-centric.
Thanks for reading, I hope you liked it and, please, tell me what you think - good or bad.
Love, Thalia.