Chapter Text
As a child Spencer was not too talented at making friends, finding that he had too little in common with kids his own age and even less in common with those he went to school with - it certainly didn’t help that “kids his own age” and “kids in his school” were two separate, distinct categories. But as Spencer got older, he began to care less about actively trying to make friends. If it happened, it happened, but Spencer no longer felt pressured to seek out new companions. Through working at the BAU, Spencer found a family of his own, and though a few faces had come and gone through the team, he had a solid foundation with a few of its members.
All this is to say, when you began at the BAU, Spencer was the hardest one to get to know. He didn’t jump to meet you and get to know you like Penelope, or make comments to reassure you when you doubted that you belonged on the team at the start like Derek did. Spencer definitely did not dislike you, he never gave indication to suggest negative feelings and was always pleasant to you at work. It’s just that he also didn’t give indications that he did like you, not in the same way you were sure he did the others. He tended to keep to himself most of the time, only interacting with you when it pertained to work or in casual conversation in group contexts. You figured this was pretty common behavior for Spencer, understanding that he probably selects his close friends carefully. If you wanted to be friends with him, you would have to earn it. And by god, you were determined to earn it.
The opportunity came one morning when Spencer had entered the bullpen and made an immediate beeline to his desk to take care of the borderline offensive mountain of paperwork awaiting his attention. The team’s last case found them in Las Vegas, and Spencer had elected to stay an extra two nights to spend some time with his mother. Unfortunately, that meant he lost the privilege to fly home on the BAU jet and instead had to catch a red-eye flight that got him in at 3:30 in the morning. The awkward flight time cut right into his sleep window, and Spencer was even more visibly exhausted than normal. He didn’t have time to get coffee that morning because the only few hours of sleep he got began around 5:30am, and he found himself waking up too late for work.
Spencer was really beginning to face the repercussions of taking two days off from work: three days worth of paperwork to tackle in one. Sleep deprivation and lack of caffeine was really dampening the relaxing qualities Spencer found in doing paperwork, but he had too much to handle to stop. You watched him suffer in silence for the first forty-five minutes of the work day before you realized that this would be your perfect moment to extend an olive branch, to break the ice. Silently, you got up from your desk and slipped away into the break room, returning with one hot cup of coffee in hand.
When you wordlessly set the cup down on Spencer’s desk he spent a good few moments staring at it before inquiring about it. “What’s this?” He looked up at you with those soft doe eyes and you thought, this must be the first time I’ve really looked into his eyes. They were the warmest eyes you’d ever seen.
“Coffee.” Yeah, he probably gathered that. “For you, I mean. I thought you might like some.” The smile Spencer gave you after that, though it was small and shy, was definitely the most sincere one you’d received from him yet. This one wasn’t one of his ‘we made eye contact so now I feel like I’m supposed to smile to be nice’ smiles or ‘there’s an awkward pause in conversation’ smiles. It was a real one, and you immediately knew you wanted to keep doing things just to see that smile again.
“Oh. Thank you.”
Not wanting to feel like you were lingering, though you definitely were just to continue staring at him, you returned his smile so as to say No problem! and went back to your desk.
Spencer wasn’t expecting anyone to pick up on his current exhaustion considering he hid his issues so well, much less to act upon it. The fact that it was you, who he had only just met three weeks ago, was surprising. When he brought the cup to his lips and sipped he was absolutely floored. It was perfectly to his liking. Spencer had to set the cup back down and stare at it for a little while so he could pick apart how that could be. In the short time you had been there, you had seen him make his coffee maybe once before. And yet you remembered how he took it.
Because of his god-given talents, Spencer was used to remembering every detail about other people; their favorite colors, books, and coffee orders. It was an automatic function of his brain. But he knew it was far easier for him to recount those things than everyone else, and never expected that level of attention to be reciprocated back to him. As he stared at that cup, Spencer couldn’t help but feel that your remembering of how he liked his coffee had to have been a willful act on your part.
And the idea that someone, for whatever reason, deliberately chose to remember such an intimate detail about him moved Spencer more than he cared to admit.
______
Though the BAU had a general, shared idea of what constituted a case gone well - unsub caught, deaths prevented - you had come to notice that the individual members adopted different ideas of what it meant for each of them. Like for Hotch and JJ, it would include some aspect of saving families, whether it was physically rescuing loved ones from harm or emotionally shielding them from hurt. Any instance where they could provide some peace of mind to a grieving brother, sister, or especially parent, was what they considered to be the ultimate service of their job. To Derek and Penelope it was knowing that all of their long work days worked slowly towards making the world an ultimately better place. One case by one, the cruelty of the world could be chipped away and replaced with goodness.
And to Spencer, it was entirely about the saving of a life rather than just the prevention of death. The victims that the team always found and rescued in what could have been their final moments were what Spencer considered to be deaths that were prevented. But the unsubs, who through harsh circumstances of life had turned to darkness, who deserved the chance to seek help and rehabilitate, and who were given a chance to do that once the team could safely bring them in, that is what Spencer considered to be a life saved. That was his personal definition of a good case.
Unfortunately for Spencer, this had not been a good case by his own standard. Each time an unsub had forced a suicide-by-cop, something in Spencer’s heart strained more and more. Especially when he could so easily find redeemable qualities within the unsub, ones that others may not have been able to see. And especially when Spencer could find pieces of himself within them, the parts that he was afraid of but which also enabled him to empathize.
The team had been looking for a teenage boy, who after years of enduring unwarranted ridicule from his classmates, through which he received no help from those in positions of authority, had turned against them. Spencer could never dream to hurt others, but he could place himself exactly in the shoes of that young boy. The isolation and desperation a teenager feels after unending mockery for things out of his own control. When he spoke to the school administration, he discovered that they had been telling this tormented boy the same thing that Spencer’s own guidance counselors would tell him.“It gets better one day.” And although yes, for Spencer, things did get far better, he always hated that sentiment. The grand promise of a happy future never did anything to change the fact that Spencer as a bullied preteen had to live in that present, and that present was not easy on the best of days. When those days had been so rough, Spencer was never capable of dreaming of the future. And now this boy no longer had the option to dream, he would never find out what Spencer had. That even though the sentiment was just other people’s way of deflecting from his problems, if the boy could manage some hope, things could one day look differently.
Those thoughts weighed heavy on Spencer’s mind as the team was in the jet on their way back home from the case. He tried to sit the furthest he could from everyone else to give himself some space - though it was a futile task on such a small jet - opting to vacate his normal spot on the couch for a seat in the back. Nobody questioned him when he spent the duration of the flight staring out of the window, deep in thought. But you took notice of the way his brows stayed slightly furrowed, creating deep creases. How the skin under his eyes took on a more purple hue, no doubt from lack of sleep the night before. His usually soft, pink lips were chapped and red, which you suspected was from his habit of nervous chewing. Around the two-hour mark that Spencer had not moved from the window, you were too deeply concerned to sit idly by.
Something you observed about Spencer is that he prefers to discuss what’s on his mind on his own terms. Coercing and nagging things out of him, even when presented as wanting to provide him a space to talk out his frustrations, only upsets him more. So you wanted to show him that you were thinking of him in a different way, one without words. Just so he knows you would be there when he felt like speaking, but it was also okay if that moment never came. Anything that could bring him temporary comfort in that moment.
In the small kitchenette on the other side of the jet from Spencer, you prepared him a drink that you hoped he would love as much as you do. A dark roast coffee with a spoonful of honey and cream. It’s the exact drink you make for yourself when you’re down and in need of a treat; if you had to describe it, you would say it was like a liquid hug. And for a guy who didn’t love being touched - you still had yet to shake his hand - you thought giving him a hug he could drink might be the best you could do.
He didn’t notice at first when you placed the cup gently on the table in front of him, so you cleared your throat softly so as not to startle him. Spencer didn’t say a word, only offering you the slightest turn of his head as he raised his eyes to meet yours. Though it was such a small reaction, it was the largest breakaway you could get him to make from his inner monologue. But even if it was just for a moment, you were happy to be able to get him to take a reprieve from his undoubtedly dark thoughts. He looked briefly down at the cup placed in front of him, then back at you again.
“It’s not how you usually take it,” you warned him, “but it’s the kind I make when I need something to make me smile.” I hope it makes you smile.
As fast as you came, you went back to your seat, sparing him from having to converse. It wasn’t lost on Spencer that you had just shared with him an intimate detail about yourself within this cup. He now knew the ways in which you grieved and coped, and he knew that you could tell when he was in the same state. Spencer’s thoughts were now fixed onto something new: the sweet smell of the coffee and how the warmth it created in his stomach reminded him of you.
_____
Spencer dropped the file back onto the table, sighing softly in resignation and pushing his chair back to stand. If he was going to get through any more files tonight, he would need a decent cup of coffee first. It would have been his fourth one that day - or maybe sixth? Spencer stopped counting for his own sake - but the case was feeling almost impossible to crack, and Spencer was determined not to rest until he found at least one more piece of the puzzle to go off of for the next day. Based on his heavy sighs, and your general knowledge of Spencer’s addiction, you could predict what his next move was going to be, and winced at the harsh truth you would have to share with the tired doctor.
“I’m sorry, I just took the last of the coffee.” This week found the BAU working out of a small precinct in a remote rural town in Kansas, and to say that the station was lackluster would be an understatement. Over the team’s years of travelling the country, this had to be the first police station ever to run out of coffee. And though it was only ten in the evening, all local restaurants and cafes were closed. Spencer was out of luck.
You had the most guilty look on your face as Spencer tried to hide the disappointment in his. “That’s okay.” Spencer offered a soft smile to sell the story and shoved his nose back into the files. Though he loved coffee, and certainly could use it at the present, he found himself feeling strangely glad to forgo the luxury with the knowledge that you could enjoy it.
Not a minute later, Spencer saw a dark blue mug with a Kansas Jayhawks! emblem being set down next to the slowly-diminishing stack of papers he had left to get through. It was more than half-full. “Here, you can have the rest.” You leaned over him, your thigh half-perched against the edge of the desk he was given to work on.
“No, that’s okay. You should finish it. Really, I don’t need it that bad,” Spencer was prepared to protest this for a while, sliding the mug back and forth until eventually one of you relented. You weren’t going to have any of that.
“Stop. I want you to have it.” Actually, I want you to have anything you could ever want. But until I can give you that, I’ll start with this cup of coffee. A little cup of coffee was the bare minimum of things you’d be willing to give up to make Spencer smile. “Besides, if you’re worried about germs,” you took the handle and rotated the mug halfway around, so that the football team’s emblem was now facing away from Spencer, “you can drink from the other side.”
This time, when Spencer looked up at you as he had done so many times before, you felt something completely different. Electing not to address that shift you both felt, you left him with a smile and disappeared into the conference room to look over evidence boards again.
Spencer stared at the cup for a long time. He used a single finger to tentatively hook around the handle and drag the cup towards him. The tint that his cheeks somehow always adopted near you turned darker at his thoughts, as he turned the cup back to the way it had been before, with the team’s emblem facing him again. If he were to look very closely, which Spencer always did, there was just a faint outline of your lipstick stain left behind, greeting him, tempting him.
Spencer brought the cup to his face, placing his lips deliberately against the ghost of where your soft ones had been. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine that his lips were pressed against them as opposed to their trace on the ceramic. As he pulled his face away, it was clear that he had grown too many feelings for you to pretend that they weren’t there. And if your actions meant as much to you as they did to him, he was sure you had to feel the same way. The only thing Spencer had to think about was what he was going to do about those feelings. How was he going to let you know how he felt? Should he ask you out on a date before he spills his heart out? If you said yes, where would he even take you?
Maybe he could ask you to go get a cup of coffee.