Chapter Text
“Do you— would you want to— come upstairs?” he asked.
Spencer stood in front of her, unsure of what to do with his hands. Y/N was absolutely radiant— bathed in the very last of the golden daylight and more beautiful than he even remembered. All he wanted to do was hug her again and never let go.
She shook her head, and he tried not to instantly deflate. “I have to feed Roald.” She smiled a little at him and restarted his heart. “But would you want to come over? We could order somethi—”
“Yes— yes.” She let out a quiet laugh at his eagerness, and he wanted to hear that sound every day for the rest of his life. “Can I— I just want to drop this stuff off and change, and then I’ll, um.” He gestured vaguely to her. “Should I drive you or do you want to walk or I can just— meet you? Whatever— whatever you want.”
“I’m gonna head back now and take care of Roald. Take your time, and just— well, here.” She held out her hand. “I’ll put my number in your phone, and you can just text me when you’re on your way.”
He fumbled the phone out of his pocket, placed it into her outstretched hand, and nearly vibrated with the way her fingers brushed over his. She stared at the unsophisticated phone in her hand. “You weren’t kidding about the technology thing, huh?”
He ran a hand down the back of his neck and shrugged. “I prefer to keep things simple.”
“I haven’t seen a T9 keyboard since I was in high school. This is a relic,” she laughed and then gave him a soft smile. “And… very you.”
He watched her fingers as she pressed along the tiny keys, still sort of in shock that she was here, that he was getting a second chance, that she wanted to do this with him. She handed the phone back to him and then stuffed her hands in her pockets. “So, I’ll see you in a little bit?”
He nodded and gave her his best smile. She stepped forward into his space, and his eyes went a little wide as she leaned up and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. She stepped back with a smile, then waved and turned on her heel headed to her car.
He stood rooted to the spot until she had disappeared from view, then let out a long breath and looked down at the small screen of his phone at her contact information. His lips twitched at the name she’d given herself.
Miss Honey <3
…
Forty five minutes later, Spencer smoothed down the front of his cardigan and blew out a sigh. He’d spent five of those minutes reveling in the magic that was Y/N, and the other forty convincing himself that she’d already changed her mind. But he was a man in love, and so he was standing in front of her building, willing himself to press her buzzer.
He was jolted out of his stupor by the buzzing of his phone. He pulled the device from his pocket and saw her name on the tiny screen, hesitating only a moment before pressing the button to answer. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He could hear her smile through the tinny speaker, and it immediately set him at ease. “I was just checking to make sure you remembered where you were going.”
“Yeah, I— I’m outside now, actually,” he confirmed.
“Oh, great! I’ll buzz you up.”
The door buzzed open, and Spencer pocketed his phone, stepping into the small foyer. He wiped his sweaty hands on his pants as he made his way to the staircase. He had barely taken the first step when she called, “It’s the third floor!”
He barely resisted the urge to take the stairs two at a time. When he reached the landing of the third floor, she was standing in the doorway in a purple sweatshirt, sweatpants, and fuzzy socks with dragons on them. He couldn’t help but grin.
“Hey.” She returned his smile. “Come on in.” She moved aside and waved him into her apartment.
He stepped over the threshold, and she closed the door behind him. “I can take your coat. Feel free to leave your shoes there. Roald will be in hiding for the next half hour or so,” she informed him.
He shrugged out of his coat and handed it to her, looking briefly around the tidy space. The walls of her living room were a calming mint green, adorned with plenty of art and photographs. Her couch was a blush pink velvet, exactly as soft as she was.
“Okay, I’m starving,” she admitted, turning to hang his coat in the coat closet. “We can order pizza, Indian, Thai— any preference?”
He shook his head. “No, whatever you want.”
She closed the closet door and cocked an eyebrow. “So if I wanted to order a huge pizza with extra cheese, you’d be cool with that?”
“Sure, absolutely,” he nodded.
She tilted her head. “Even with your dairy thing?”
He was surprised that she even remembered such a tiny detail from all those months ago, and his heart would have fluttered if he wasn’t so focused on making as few waves as possible. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d made a mistake letting him back in, and he didn’t want to do anything that would cause her to rethink her decision. “Well, it’s— it’s just a sensitivity, not a true allergy. Although it’s gotten a bit worse in recent years. But really, whatever you want to do is fine.”
He suddenly struggled to make eye contact, feeling overwhelmingly awkward and out of place. Now that he was here in her apartment, it was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped. He cracked the knuckles on each finger as he waited for it. She let out a small sigh, and he braced himself for impact.
“Why don’t you come sit?”
Her voice was quiet, and then her hand on his arm was soft, and she was leading him to the couch and sitting down next to him. She kept some distance between them, placed her hands in her lap, and then she was still for a long moment. He could feel her eyes on him, but he wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t know if she wanted him to say anything at all.
“You know I forgive you, right?” The question was tentative. He met her eyes, and he didn’t see the regret or pity that he expected. There was something else there; something he couldn’t quite decipher. “Because I do. Forgive you. You apologized, and you meant it, and you allowed me space and time to process. And that’s— that’s all I could have asked for.”
As seemed to always be the case, the task of articulating what he was feeling began to crush him under its weight. The words were there, but he couldn’t get the order right. If it were anyone else, he would have just evaded the conversation entirely. But he’d promised her that he would try. After everything he’d put her through, she deserved that much.
He breathed in through his nose, expelling it in a sigh. “I’ve just— I’ve spent the last month thinking about this— about you— pretty much exclusively,” he admitted, staring at his hands. “And I’m just realizing that I never really… allowed myself to think about what would happen next, because I wasn’t sure that this would happen at all.” He gestured between them and then looked at her. “And now I’m here— with you, and I just— it’s…” He let out a sigh.
“Doesn’t live up to expectations?” she prompted.
His eyes went wide, and he moved closer to her on the couch. “No— god, no.” He instinctively reached for her hand, felt that electricity again when she allowed him to lace their fingers together. He was already making a mess of things. “You always exceed expectations.” He shook his head, and she squeezed his hand. “I just— I don’t… I don’t wanna mess this up.”
She covered their intertwined fingers with her other hand, rubbed her thumb along his. “I don’t think you will. Something tells me you don’t typically make the same mistake twice,” she inferred.
He laughed a little at that, and she gave him a sweet smile, and then she said, “So, no pizza. How about Indian?”
…
They were just cleaning up the last of the take out containers when Roald made his way out of Y/N’s bedroom.
“There he is! Hey, buddy,” she cooed, leaning down to give Roald a quick pet. She gave Spencer a sheepish smile. “He takes a while to warm up to new faces, so don’t be offended if he’s not—”
She was stopped mid-sentence by Roald’s decision to make a beeline for him. The cat stopped to give a cursory sniff before weaving between Spencer’s legs, purring loud enough that they could both hear it. Her mouth dropped open a bit as he leaned down to scratch between Roald’s ears.
“He— he is never that friendly,” she said incredulously. “There really is something about you, Dr. Reid.”
He looked up at her with a smile. “I’m just glad he approves. Would have been kind of awkward otherwise.”
“He’s a very good judge of character, so that bodes well for you,” she confirmed.
“Oh yeah?” Spencer scratched underneath Roald’s chin, grinning at the contented cat. He brought his gaze back to her, standing back to his full height when he realized she’d moved… a lot closer. His tongue darted out to wet his lips, and he watched her eyes track the motion.
“Yeah.”
He thought back to that night nearly two months ago, the way his mouth had verged on violent when she’d kissed him. He hated that their first kiss was tainted with his foolishness, that he’d marred that memory for them both. He couldn’t take it back, and he wasn’t certain that she wanted to kiss him now, but he couldn’t stop himself from asking.
“Can I kiss you?”
“Yes, please,” she breathed.
He brought his hands to her face and used a gentle grip to pull her in. She rested her warm palms against his waist and let her fingers dig in, holding herself steady as his lips met hers.
He kept the kiss as soft as she deserved, opening his mouth to let her in but letting her lead and take him wherever she wanted to go. Her hands slid around to his back, and she tugged him in closer. He left one hand cradling her face but moved the other to the small of her back and pulled her flush against him.
She huffed out a tiny breath against his mouth, her lips turning up in a smile that he could feel in his toes. She brought one hand up to his jaw, rubbed her thumb across his cheek and then wound her fingers into his hair. She tangled them in his curls and tugged just enough to break the kiss, pressing their foreheads together with a sigh.
“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’m just gonna wipe our first kiss from my memory and replace it with that one,” she murmured.
“I’m very much on board with this rewrite,” he agreed.
“Excellent.” She used the hand in his hair to pull him forward into another quick kiss. Roald made his presence known at their feet with a loud meow, pulling a laugh from both of them.
They de-tangled themselves from each other, and she ran a hand through her hair. “It’s getting late.” He nodded in agreement, although he never wanted this night to end. And then she continued, “Do you wanna, um— do you wanna stay the night? I’m sure I can find some comfy clothes that’ll fit you.”
He’d been a ship on a turbulent sea for the past two months, just barely staying afloat at times. It had been heart wrenching and nerve wracking and terrifying— and all of his own doing. And in one night, she’d anchored his vessel amongst the crashing waves. A solution kit, a hug, forgiveness, a kiss, and now this.
His racing mind came to a standstill. The near constant noise was quieted. The turbulent sea became calm, still waters.
“I’d really, really like that.”
…
Spencer ended up in an XXL t-shirt from a school fundraiser and a pair of stretchy bike shorts. Y/N had managed to scrounge up a new toothbrush from the back of the cabinet, and they brushed their teeth together with foamy smiles in the bathroom mirror.
It had taken very little convincing for Spencer to agree to share the bed. Y/N climbed in under the covers, settling back against the pillows and turning down the duvet for him to join her. He held up one finger and disappeared out into the living room, returning a minute later with the solution kit in hand. He moved to the bed, sliding in between the soft sheets and pulling up the duvet.
He leaned back against the pillows and turned toward her, opening the box. “This is the most incredible thing anyone has ever done for me,” he admitted. “Can you, um— explain them to me? Some of them I figured out, but others— well, I just want to hear you, really.”
She scooted closer to him and leaned over to look in the box. “The first few are pretty self-explanatory. This one,” she said, pulling out a picture of her with her hands over her heart and belly, “is taking deep breaths until you’re calm and ready to try again. This one is reading a favorite book— which I know will take you about five minutes,” she joked.
She retrieved the card with the clip art book, and then the one behind it with a pencil and paper. “You can try to write down the difficult thoughts and feelings to get them out of your headspace.” The next card had a picture of an old rotary phone. “Hmmm, almost a match to the dinosaur phone you actually have,” she teased. “But it’s an option to call someone. Could be your mom, or a friend, or—”
“Or you? Could I call you?”
She looked up to find his eyes on her and smiled. “Yeah. You can call me, too.” She pressed a soft kiss to his mouth, and— not for the first time that night— he could not believe how lucky he was.
She drew back to pull out the next card: a clip art rendering of a desktop computer. “Oh! This one is for researching something. I know you’ve got a seemingly endless encyclopedia of knowledge up there,” she tapped on his temple, “but there’s always something new to learn. And teaching yourself something can help you feel capable in moments where you’re feeling— a little helpless.”
There was also a small wooden puzzle cube in the box. She took it from the box and held it up in front of them. “I know your IQ will probably solve this thing in fifteen seconds, but at least it’ll be a nice fidget toy,” she laughed.
The last card in the box was a picture of a timer. “This one might seem kind of dumb, but sometimes it helps me to set a timer to remind myself that feeling shitty is a temporary state of being.” She held the card between her fingers and shrugged. “Even if I’m still feeling less than great after the timer goes off, it usually gives me the boost I need to move forward.”
She gathered all the cards in her hands, shuffling them and then placing them back in the box. “You can add your own options as you think of them. This was just a starter set.”
He closed the lid of the box and set it on the bed between them. He reached for her hand, and she immediately threaded their fingers together. He rubbed his thumb along her impossibly soft skin and took a deep breath.
“The timer isn’t dumb. I, um— I did something similar in prison.” She squeezed his hand. “I kept track of the— the days on this little spot on the wall. Every time it felt like I couldn’t take another day, I’d count the marks and remind myself that I— that I’d survived that long. That I could make it another day.”
He went quiet, and Y/N sat up a little in bed, brushed her free hand over his hair. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“I want to.” It wasn’t a lie. He wanted to talk to her about it. He wanted to talk to her about everything. He wanted to let her into the shadowy corners of his mind that he kept from everyone else.
“If you’re sure, then I’m right here.” She pulled their intertwined fingers into her lap and leaned over to press a kiss to his shoulder.
When she pulled back, he let out a long breath. He watched her thumb as it traced an unwavering line across the back of his hand. “I was, um— I was in Mexico getting an experimental Alzheimer’s drug for my mom. I’d been going down there for a few months, and it wasn’t ideal, but the medication really seemed to be helping her. And I was just— I was desperate. Desperate for anything that would give me more time with her. More lucid, meaningful time, you know?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I do.”
“It wasn’t the, uh— drug that got me arrested,” he admitted. “There was an unsub— one of the serial killers that we put away a few years ago— a psychopathic, narcissistic hitwoman who had this— I don’t know, vendetta against me, I guess. She, um— she manipulated another woman into drugging me and framing me for the murder of the doctor I was getting the medication from.”
He could feel her eyes on him, and he drew his brows together. “I know the— the whole thing sounds completely absurd— fictional even,” he admitted. “She used a mix of drugs called sevoflurane and scopolamine to trigger dissociation and hallucination, which made it really— um… For a long time, I couldn’t tell which of my memories were real and which were drug-induced delusions.”
He focused on the motion of her thumb against his skin. “The team got me out of the prison in Mexico, but because I went against FBI protocol when I crossed the border, the Bureau wouldn’t fund my legal representation here. Emily hired a great lawyer, but the judge was less than sympathetic. And it really, um— snowballed from there.”
He took a deep breath. “I was sent to Millburn, which is a maximum security prison, and then I didn’t get the protective custody detail, so I was in general population, but I didn’t want to hurt people or move drugs, so I got the shit kicked out of me for a while, and then my friend Luis was killed in front of me, and I—”
Spencer didn’t realize he was crying until Y/N’s hands were on his face, wiping the tears before pulling him into her arms. “A-and then I poisoned the drugs, which just ended up hurting a bunch of people who didn’t deserve to get hurt. And then I got outed as an agent, and my mom got abducted, and I stabbed myself to get put in solitary, but I wasn’t safe there either, and I really thought… I was sure I was going to die there.”
He wrapped his arms around her middle and tucked his face into her shoulder as the hurricane of his agony swirled and raged and then swept out as quickly as it rolled in. She soothed his cries and held him against her, never rushing or shushing him. Eventually, his weeping dwindled to quiet sniffles, his heaving breaths faded to drawn sighs. She kept him anchored through all of it, rocking him gently from side to side and calming his shattered frame.
When he finally quieted, she released him and pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. His chest tightened at her tear-stained cheeks, and he brought his hands up to wipe at them uselessly. When his hands fell back to his lap, she sniffled a little before taking a deep breath, releasing it on a shaky sigh.
“The choices you made kept you alive, Spencer. They were— impossible, horrific choices that I’m sure just—” She shook her head, searching for the right words. “I’m sure the weight of the guilt and grief has to be unbearable sometimes,” she surmised. “And there’s nothing I can say that will make that any less true.”
She cupped his face in her hands, swiping at the fresh tears with her thumbs. “But I’m… I’m so selfishly thankful for every choice you made. Because it was the perfect set of decisions in that it brought you here. To me…” The tears tracked hot down her cheeks, and she took a shaky breath. “And I feel so unbelievably lucky and so incredibly grateful to have you.”
He had her wrapped up in his arms before she’d even finished the sentence. “I never believed in luck,” he mused. He pressed a kiss into her hair and closed his eyes. “I’m still not sure if I do. But I can tell you that I’m the luckiest.”