Work Text:
The mistake was going straight to the prison and conducting the interview instead of checking in to the motel first.
The challenge you’re faced with now is appointing blame for the mistake. (Or, that’s the challenge you’re probably both focused on, to get out of having to deal with the actual problem. It’s possible you both have avoidance issues. Under certain circumstances.)
After eight straight hours of driving, broken only by a single stop for gas and snacks, you were DONE and just wanted to get the interview over with. You didn’t say anything, but Spencer could tell, which is why he made the suggestion that you drive past the motel and go straight to jail.
Like a game of goddamn Monopoly.
So, technically, it was his idea, he’s the one who spoke the words out loud, but you know - both of you - that he only did that because he knew it’s what you wanted to do. Thanks a bunch. What a total knight in shining armor.
Which is why you should do the noble thing and insist that he take the bed.
The single bed. In your single motel room.
Because by the time you got there and were ready to check in, they had released your rooms and now there was only one left.
A single, solitary room with one single, solitary queen sized bed, covered by a gross-looking bedspread (no amount of money could convince you to turn a UV flashlight on that thing) and a single duvet.
There isn’t even a desk. There was one, once, the indentations from its legs still visible in the worn carpet in front of the window. It probably broke and then wasn’t replaced. What probably used to be the desk chair has been moved to the corner of the room. Other than that there’s just a TV stand holding a surprisingly modern-looking flatscreen TV. And the stupid bed.
“Okay.” Spencer says it like that’s a complete sentence.
“Yeah,” you reply, equally verbose.
He heads to the bathroom just to make sure there isn’t a huge bathtub in there. Preferably something super clean and about seven feet long on the inside.
Nope. Instead, he finds a shower stall that has a total of - Spencer counts them because his brain won’t let him not do it - eight short, dark, curly hairs stuck to the wall and he does NOT want to think about how they got there.
Which makes the issue of sleeping arrangements the second-biggest problem he has right now.
So, in a way, things are looking up.
The thought of sharing a bed with you tonight is no longer the worst thing he can think of. Except then you follow him into the bathroom and catch him scratching the back of his head and counting pubic hairs in the motel shower and the bathroom is too small to really fit two people AND this much discomfort in it, at least when one person is frozen in place right inside the door.
“No bathtub,” he tells you, pointing stupidly at the shower.
Oh, there’s a ninth hair, at actual shoulder height. (Spencer’s shoulder, not yours, which makes it even more impressive.) This place defies science. If time could collapse in on itself and the night could pass in about seven minutes, that would be a-okay by Spencer.
“I didn’t have you pegged as a frat boy,” you tell him and he stares at you for a second, his mind still stuck on the pubic hairs and the single bed and the fact that he already spent eight hours trapped in a car with you, and listening to Carl Lister give a detailed account of how and why he killed seven women has not been enough to get the scent of your perfume out of his nose or the sound of your giggling at something Emily texted you about five hours into the drive out of his ears.
Basically, Spencer feels like he’s in some circle of Hell that Dante left woefully unexplored (which has left Spencer woefully unprepared for how it just goes on and on and on) and it’s making him just a little slow on the uptake.
“You wanted to sleep in a bathtub?” you try again. “I only ever knew frat boys who did that.”
“No, I thought YOU might.” His tone is bright, like you’re having a very normal conversation and he’s making a very normal observation and if you don’t distract him quickly you’re going to get a detailed history of the invention of the bathtub, standard measurements and how they vary geographically, probably an explanation of the expression ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. None of which you need or want, but it’s still a little unsettling that you aren’t getting them.
“Well, that’s a shame, then,” you say and someone who has never heard you speak before might think that you meant it.
Spencer has heard you speak loads of times, though, has gone over conversations you’ve had - with him sometimes, but mostly with other people - in his mind repeatedly in the privacy of his own home, where no-one can know and judge him for it.
He knows exactly how you sound when you haven’t had enough sleep, he has sub-categories for the reasons you’re underslept; when you’ve had too much coffee; when a case is getting to you more than you want people to know; when someone surprises you pleasantly.
When you think he said something funny.
“I’ll go back to reception, ask if they have extra blankets and whatever,” you tell him.
He doesn’t reply, just keeps staring at the shower like he’s contemplating the idea that one of you might sleep in there.
You back out of the bathroom with a grimace and a mental note to text Emily and ask if Spencer has a reset button, because you’re pretty sure he’s bluescreening.
“Ten,” you hear him mumble to himself, and it sounds like he might throw up.
Spencer hears the door close behind you and only then do your words catch up with him. He rubs his eyes and sighs. He should have offered to go to reception instead of letting you do it. Then he takes a deep breath and forces himself to take advantage of this brief respite from having to use up about 37% of his brain power to force himself not to reach out and touch you, just because you’re close enough that he can.
His eyes land on the bed, his brain turning the intricate geometric pattern on the bedspread into mathematical formulas and in spite of himself, he feels his jaw unclench. Just a little.
But then you return, walking through the door your arms loaded with pillows and a second duvet, and a ‘no, this is fine, everything’s great’ smile pasted on your face.
Spencer has your smiles catalogued as well.
This one is usually labeled ‘Hotch wants you to do a thing you don’t want to do’, but clearly there are more uses for it.
“I’ll sleep on these,” you tell him, throwing the pillows on the floor on the side of the bed opposite the door to the bathroom.
The pillows drop with a muted thud and he steps to the end of the bed so he can see where they landed. Even without touching them he can tell that they’re thin and lumpy and you might as well be sleeping on the floor.
Except, of course you won’t. “No, I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says. That really should be obvious.
“Were you a Boy Scout?”
Spencer frowns, not sure why that’s relevant to anything. Is this a dig at him for having manners?
“Do a lot of camping as a kid?” you elaborate.
“Oh. No.” He’s sure you know about his family, who on Earth would take him camping?
“Well, I was Brownie. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
He steps closer and bends down to pick up a pillow. The reality of it is even worse than what he imagined. It’s like hardened lumps of cotton, loosely floating around inside a pillowcase. Sleeping directly on the forest floor would probably be more comfortable.
“Are you going to light a fire and make ‘smores?” he asks sarcastically.
“No, I ate all the chocolate,” you say with regret.
He gapes at you. “ALL of it?”
You shrug and pick up your purse, pulling out half a KitKat. “Pretty much.”
“Amazing.”
“Thanks.” For the first time since you arrived at the motel, your smile is genuine, amused and butterfly-inducing.
Spencer hugs the pillow closer, confirming once again that it is useless, both as a mattress, and as a pillow, and for a grown man looking for a comforter/shield type combo. “You’re still not sleeping on the floor.”
“Neither are you, I didn’t get enough pillows.”
The makeshift bed you’ve made is barely long enough for you to fit on, much less Spencer.
“Of course I am.” He feels childish and stubborn but also like it’s very, very important that he wins this discussion.
You point at the pillow he’s still holding. “No, you’re not.”
The discussion goes on like that for another couple of rounds until you break the pattern. “You really think you’re going to get any sleep on that thing?” You gesture at the pillow mattress he’s still holding. The eight hour drive back to DC tomorrow is implied in the wave of your hand.
He shrugs, letting it drop. He can sense the defeat becoming inevitable and finds that he doesn’t have the energy to care anymore. It’s not like he WANTS to sleep on the floor.
He just can’t cope with the idea of sharing a bed with you. If the proximity doesn’t kill him, the shame of whatever you wake up to see definitely will.
You look at him, then at the bed, hands in your side and elbows out like you’re a superhero or a child about to throw a tantrum. “So then what do you suggest, Dr. Reid?”
His lips move, glued together and silent. There’s no way he’s going to be the one to say the words out loud.
You take pity on him, or maybe it’s something else, a smile tugging at your lips when you pull the bedspread away to examine the bed more closely. You fold the bedspread absentmindedly.
And badly.
Spencer takes it from you and undoes your work in order to refold it with the corners touching and the sides aligned. When he’s done and the bedspread is lying neatly on the wooden chair in the corner of the room, you’re lining the pillows that were on the floor up along the middle of the bed, shaking and brushing them off before putting them down, creating two separate spaces.
You look at him like you’re expecting him to tell you everyone’s got it all wrong, actually you’re the genius, not him.
The wall created by the pillows is lumpy and about an inch and a half tall.
He bends over the bed, tries to fold the nearest pillow in on itself to make the barrier less scalable. It doesn’t work.
“I think that’s probably as good as it’s going to get,” you tell him after he’s given it another two tries.
It’s not good. It’s not good at all.
“Should we go get something to eat? The receptionist said there’s a Roadhouse a few miles south.”
Spencer isn’t hungry at all, if anything he’s feeling a bit queasy. “Sure.”
He lets you drive, sits on his hands in the passenger seat, eyes fixed on a squashed bug on the windshield. You resist the temptation to squirt wiper fluid and clean it off, just to see where he’ll look instead.
You back into a space in the parking lot in front of the restaurant, the blinking of the neon sign above the entrance giving the inside of the car a strange disco feel. The dashboard is the dancefloor, NPR is the soundtrack.
“This looks like the sort of place that serves roadkill,” you say flatly.
Spencer doesn’t disagree with you, just gets out of the car and waits for you to join him before heading inside.
The place is all but deserted and the waitress seats you in a booth made to fit 8 people. Spencer waits for you to pick a side and scoot in on the linoleum bench before he copies you on the other side, stopping when he’s directly across from you. His foot bumps into yours as he settles and he apologises without looking at you, already picking up the menu.
“Today’s special is hog roast,” the waitress tells you like she cares even less than you do. “Soup of the day is creamy corn.” Then she walks off with no promise to ever return.
“I’ll have a salad,” Spencer tells you, still holding on to the menu like he’s worried the salad option will walk off the page.
You finish reading the menu at the speed of a normal’ish person. Salad seems like the safest choice. “Want to share a side of fries?”
Spencer considers this for an awkwardly long time. The idea of sharing food, the implied intimacy. The reality that this is almost definitely the sort of place where a side of fries could feed a family of four. It’s not like you’re proposing marriage. “Yeah, okay.”
Miraculously the waitress does return, after about 5 minutes, carrying two glasses of water. “So what are you lovebirds having?” she asks.
Spencer makes a sound you’ve never heard a human make before.
“I’ll have a Ceasar salad,” you say cheerfully before looking at Spencer, who still looks like he forgot what a language is, much less how to speak one. “Spence?”
Honestly, if he doesn’t get over it soon, you’re going to take offense at how freaked out he is by the idea that anyone could think you’re a couple.
“Me too,” he says at last. “And we’ll share some fries.”
“Loaded?” The waitress has mastered the skill of writing and talking at the same time, even if she’s not great at decoding interpersonal relationships.
“No,” you both say in unison.
She smiles at that, like you’re adorable. The tips of Spencer’s ears go pink like this is the most humiliated he’s ever been. Which feels like an exaggeration but also really pretty rude. You know he doesn’t like you much, never sits next to you anywhere, always gets super formal if you’re forced to go anywhere together, none of the friendly camaraderie that he has with the rest of the team. It has made you wonder before if he still just sees you as the new kid, temporary, or he actually actively dislikes you.
You saw this trip as a way to find out and maybe work past it or whatever, but right now it feels a lot like no steps forward, three steps back.
“Anything to drink?”
You’re quiet until Spencer has told the waitress that he just wants water before you ask for a diet coke.
The waiter leaves with your order and absolutely no clue about, well, Spencer's mind is going a mile a minute faster than normal, trying to work out why this complete stranger would assume you were a couple.
Whatever signals he's giving off, he needs to work it out so he can stop.
Back home he's pretty sure he has everyone fooled. At least JJ once asked him why he couldn't try to be a bit nicer to you, make you feel more welcome on the team. It made him feel bad, but also a little relieved, because she didn't say it in a wink-wink-nudge-nudge kind of way, she seemed genuinely worried about you.
Which had made Spencer worry, obviously, so he'd brought you a coffee (he was going to the kitchenette anyway and he knows how EVERYONE takes their coffee, it's not like he went out of his way or anything, but you still smiled at him like he brought you the moon).
You'd thanked him and your fingers had brushed as he handed over the mug and maybe that was all part of Spencer's subconscious’ devious plan but he lived to regret it, because he spent the rest of the day wondering if he was developing a rash or he had an allergic reaction to your hand lotion the way his skin burned where you had touched.
"So the interview went pretty well," you say, and he actually jumps in his seat at the sound of your voice, too deep in thought, hands clenched in his lap at the memory he wonders if he'll ever manage to make fade if he keeps bringing it to the front of his mind.
This is good, though. This is safe ground. He can talk about this stuff for hours. "Yeah."
"Okay," you say, like you're agreeing to something he totally didn't say and he wonders what it was, but then you lean back in your seat, arms crossed and a resigned expression on your face. This fed up energy you had going on in the car for the last hour mingled with what looks too much like disappointment for Spencer to be able to just leave it like that.
He licks his lips. "You were really good with him," he says, an experiment. Will either of you be able to cope with him complimenting you? "He really responded to the way you asked questions."
You seem to take it in your stride, Spencer is probably the only one feeling flustered right now. "I think he just got a kick out of telling his dirty secrets to a woman."
Spencer thinks so too, but still. He wouldn't tell them to just any woman.
But he told YOU, and Spencer could tell by the end of it that Lister was realising he had given away a lot more than he meant to.
The deer in headlights expression on his face when you stood up, gathered the file and recorder from the desk before walking out of the room without another word, was one that almost made Spencer sympathise with the serial killer who just spent two and a half hours proving with his own words that he did not have a single redeeming quality at all.
Because Spencer understands the fear of getting too close and unwittingly giving too much away. Your presence always makes him feel like he’s one encouraging smile and a hand on his arm away from turning himself inside out for you.
So he works very hard to keep so far from you there’s no way your hands can reach him, even if that were something you’d want to do.
The fact that he knows it isn’t, doesn’t help. The problem is that you COULD.
There isn’t too much he can do about your smiles, and they feel like the one indulgence he can allow himself, at least occasionally.
The waitress returns, balancing two salads and a portion of fries that might be even bigger than Spencer expected. She sets everything down, winks at him and leaves.
He pulls a face, as if it might shake the discomfort out of him, but then realises that you’re watching him, amused.
“Not your type?”
Spencer looks so indignant you laugh. “She’s… older than my mom.”
“Some guys like that.” You dismiss his argument with the wave of a french fry, a drop of ketchup threatening to spill on your salad.
Spencer would warn you, except maybe right now he feels like you deserve it. “I’m not ‘some guys’,” he says, although it feels like a weak argument.
“You certainly aren’t,” you agree, and there’s something in your tone that he can’t decipher. He stores it away to analyse later. Probably spend a few weeks on it. Maybe a month, if there’s no new data in the meantime. (This whole trip feels like data overload. Maybe he’ll wake up tomorrow and not remember that this conversation even happened.)
He picks up a fork and stabs into his salad, trying to work out a way to eat it that won’t leave dressing dripping down his chin. “Besides,” he says, not really sure what to say but wanting to put off the moment when he has to fit this massive leaf of romaine lettuce in his mouth. “I realise you’re only suggesting that because you’re hoping to get the room to yourself.”
What?! WHY were those the words that came out of his mouth? How did that happen? Spencer immediately regrets every choice he made in his entire life that led to this moment.
Except then you’re bent over the table, laughing, actually dropping your fork. He thinks you might have snorted and he regrets nothing.
(He’ll definitely remember this.)
“You’re right, Spence. Damn you and your profiling skills. I was really hoping you’d go home with that waitress when her shift ends so I can go back to the motel and eat chips in bed and watch Grey’s Anatomy.”
“I mean, you can still do both of those things with me there,” he offers. “Just keep the crumbs on your side of the bed.”
You pick up a knife and hand it to him; he feels like a neanderthal who doesn’t know how tools work yet. But then he cuts up his salad and is about to take a mouthful of it until he realises you’re staring at him.
“I didn’t have you down as a food in bed kind of guy,” you say, like this is something you’ve actually thought about.
Spencer puts down his knife and fork, his mind going completely blank for a second. The truth is he is NOT a food in bed kind of guy, but it also hasn’t ever really been a discussion he has had to have. “Maybe you need to work on YOUR profiling skills,” he says, joking.
You shrug, completely unbothered, except there’s maybe a glint in your eye like you’re enjoying this conversation. Spencer wishes he hadn’t noticed that, teetering so dangerously close to not being able to refuse you anything you want, forever. “Or maybe you’re full of shit and beads of sweat are running down your back at the idea of me eating so much as a vitamin in bed.”
He swallows. There is definitely some overheating going on at the thought of you doing ANYTHING in bed. (Maybe he could sleep in the car?)
“Would you look at that,” you say, triumphant. “Vegas Boy has no poker face.”
Spencer begs to differ, but he does it silently. If you think his reaction is about being caught in a lie then he has an EXCELLENT poker face. “Who wants to sleep on crumbs, though? It’s uncomfortable and it’s gross.”
“And which of those is worse?” you ask and he can tell that you’re goading him.
“It’s unhygienic.”
You grin and stuff another fry in your mouth, chewing around a smile, and Spencer feels like he’s slowly turning into Pavlov's dog as he smiles back.
“Okay, no chips in bed,” you assure him.
Spencer isn’t really sure that makes the situation noticeably better, but he still nods. He’s also still smiling.
The waitress mostly leaves you alone to finish your food, popping up only once to refill Spencer’s glass of water from a plastic jug and bring you another soda. You’re surprised by his sudden willingness to talk to you, not sure if you’ve (finally!) worn him down or he’s just accepted that there’s no-one else around so you’ll have to do. Maybe when you get back to Quantico things will go right back to normal.
Somehow the thought of that makes you sad - you like this version of him.
And not just because he sits back and lets you eat fries until you groan with how full you are before he flags down the waitress to pay for your food. He might be rolling his eyes at you, but he’s doing it indulgently like he doesn’t really mind. Maybe that’s because when you’re chewing he gets to do all the talking, sprouting endless facts.
You’re pretty sure he’s said “did you know” at least five times while you’ve been here.
And no, you didn’t. Not a single one of those times.
On the drive back he’s suddenly quiet again, fiddling mindlessly with the radio dials as you drive. He knows he’s being weird, he can tell from the way you keep glancing across at him, but there’s nothing he can do about it.
This space is too small, too private, and he is all out of facts to share. Something too true will slip out if he opens his mouth.
Because you smiled your way through dinner, listened to his info dumping like you actually wanted to hear about plant genera or the statistical probability of a meteor strike and the bogus science around it. If Spencer isn’t careful he’ll accidentally convince himself that you like HIM telling you about these things.
You park as close to your motel room door as you’re able to get, possibly planning for a quick getaway in the morning, and then hesitate before getting out of the car, your fingers wrapped around the keys still in the ignition.
Spencer rubs his hands together, just for something to do with them while he waits. He wonders if you’re changing your mind about this whole arrangement, has almost convinced himself that you’re going to suggest just driving through the night, you can be back home by morning. Is surprised-but-not-really to feel a small but insistent pang of disappointment at the thought.
He squashes it down into some deep recess of his mind where he stores other inconvenient truths about himself. “I think I saw a vending machine over by the reception building. What flavour chips do you want?”
You look at him like a kid at Christmas who thought it was June ten seconds ago. “Oooooh. Ranch Doritos. Please.”
“Gross,” he tells you and then gets out of the car, heading in the opposite direction of your room.
This guy is going to give you whiplash and you wonder if you’ll be able to claim it as a workplace injury.
He knocks on the door to your shared room a few minutes later, just as you’re setting down the TV remote on the bedside table, and you go to let him in. He hands you a bag of doritos and a mars bar and then indicates the TV with a tilt of his head.
You found a documentary about Mesopotamia. “Turns out Grey’s Anatomy isn’t actually on tonight.”
“Such a shame,” he says. He looks around the room, trying to work out where to sit, his only options being the bed (nope), the floor (disgusting, absolutely not), or the corner chair that not only holds the bedspread but also your jacket at this point (maybe? Is it rude to just move your jacket?).
“Which side of the bed do you want?” you ask, distracting him from the decision he’s trying to make.
“I don’t care, you choose,” Spencer offers. Or maybe begs.
You look at the bed as if the decision is actually a momentous one, as if it makes a difference at all. Then you grab the pillow from the side closer to the bathroom, away from the door, and go to settle on the wooden chair, using the pillow as a backrest and stretching your legs in front of you. You open the bag of Doritos and pull one out.
“Can I just remind you that less than twenty minutes ago you were so full you didn’t want to stand up?”
You shrug one shoulder. “That was dinner-full. This isn’t dinner.”
“You’re a freak of nature, you know that, right?” Spencer wonders if he’s pushing too far, if he’s gone too far and you’ll be upset by the jibe? And if he hasn’t, will there be any way back from this place? Just, it turns out talking to you is EASY, in a way that feels so, so dangerous, and it’s like a whole new kind of drug and part of him probably knew it would be and that’s why he resisted for so long.
“And you’re just a freak,” you retort, but you’re smiling, absolutely no sting in your words. Spencer has been called that before, but never by someone who made it sound like a compliment.
He looks at the bed and the poor excuse for a pillow wall down the middle. ‘Freak’ is definitely one word for it. It has a lot of possible meanings. ‘Perv’ would probably be a more accurate descriptor, ensuring that the correct nuances come across.
With no other chairs left to sit in - which is massively inconvenient, but at the same time Spencer appreciates the fact that you aren’t eating in the bed he’ll be sleeping in - he’s left with a choice of bed or floor. Looking at the stains on the carpet that isn’t really a choice at all, and Spencer sits down gingerly at the foot of the bed on the side that still has a pillow and turns his focus to the TV.
“Did you know that there are Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets dating back to as early as 3500BC, making them among the first known writing systems? Actually, the first written evidence of religion was recorded on a Sumerian tablet.”
“No way,” you say in between doritos, amused. “I wonder if that’ll come up in this program?”
By the time the credits roll, Spencer is sitting crosslegged on the bed completely engrossed by the TV after the narrator brought up a fact about Mesopotamian irrigation systems that he didn’t already know. You’re leaning back in your chair, tired and uncomfortable and very much regretting eating half a bag of doritos.
When you yawn audibly, Spencer turns to look at you and then immediately jumps off the bed as if he’s not supposed to be there. “Do you want to…” He clears his throat. “Um, do you wanna go to bed?”
You smile.
“I mean,” Spencer falters again, looking so uncomfortable you can’t not enjoy it for just a moment.
“Do YOU wanna go to bed, Spencer?” you tease.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly. When he opens his eyes he’s looking straight at you, his expression completely blank. “I bet you snore.”
That makes you laugh. “I’ve never had complaints before,” you assure him as you stand up and you go to your duffel bag to get out your toiletries and the shorts and tank top you brought to sleep in. Spencer mutters something to himself as you lock yourself in the bathroom, but you can’t work out what it is.
You make quick work of brushing your teeth, cleaning the remaining makeup off your face and moisturising, and then you pause, looking at the two items of clothing you’ve put down on the closed lid of the toilet before looking at yourself in the mirror. You’ve been pretty good with the bravado so far, and it’s not as if any part of you is at all worried about Spencer doing anything untoward (ha!), but the outfit you brought to sleep in isn’t exactly… professional.
Maybe you should have paid more attention to your mother when she told you never to go to bed in clothes you’d mind people seeing you in if you had to leave your house due to a fire. Not that you mind PEOPLE seeing your Roger Rabbit shorts and “can I suck your lollipop?” tanktop, but a coworker emphatically isn’t ‘people’.
You sigh and change your clothes, putting on the tanktop inside out. Then you square your shoulders and open the bathroom door. The print is still visible, but maybe Spencer will ignore it if it’s backwards and blurred by a layer of cotton?
Obviously not.
All you achieved is that Spencer spends a few seconds longer staring at your chest, deciphering the writing there. You can tell the instant he realises what it says. His whole body goes rigid and he starts shaking his head as if he’s trying to wake himself from a nightmare.
Yeah, you and me both, pal, you think to yourself.
He waits for you to move further into the room before he makes his way to the bathroom, walking in an arch that means he’s never within three feet of you. The bathroom door slams shut and you sigh to yourself.
It feels like all the progress you made today (the feeling that Spencer might be someone you could be friends with, this connection between you that you had all but given up on by this point) has vanished in an instant, all thanks to your sister’s dumb idea of a joke gift and you choosing to bring it on a work trip.
You grab your pillow from the chair and drop it by the headrest, then pull back your duvet and get into bed. If Spencer takes more than 5 minutes in the bathroom, maybe you can just pretend to be asleep when he comes out?
In fact, Spencer stays in the bathroom for 8 minutes. The only reason he comes out when he does is that he’s worried you’ll think he’s… Well, he probably already stayed in there for too long, but hyperventilating is not something you can really rush, and then he DID have to brush his teeth and floss, so.
You’re still wide awake, though, and looking at your phone when he pushes the bathroom door open, which means there’s no way you can convincingly pretend to be sleeping. Spencer doesn’t look anywhere near you, just walks across the room and starts taking off his clothes until he’s in a t-shirt and the slacks he’s been wearing all day. His vest, tie, and socks are folded neatly and placed on top of his bag.
Okay, so clearly you both came unprepared for this situation.
“Nice PJ’s,” you say before you can stop yourself.
Spencer ignores you. Every muscle in his body looks tense and you think he might be angry with you.
“Look, I’m sorry,” you say to his rigid back, shoulders almost at his ears. “It’s just a stupid joke, I know it’s really inappropriate. It was a gift, I… It’s just really comfortable, like the softest cotton I’ve ever felt and—”
“It’s fine,” Spencer cuts you off through gritted teeth. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Well, I AM worried. I feel like it’s made things awkward.”
Spencer feels all sorts of things. ‘Awkward’ is just a blip on his emotional radar right now. He wishes with the intensity of a child that still believes in Santa Claus that he did not know what was meant by ‘lollipop’. There was a time when that joke would have gone right over his head and never before has he wanted to be that obtuse again.
Sometimes ignorance truly is bliss, but Spencer Reid is very bad at being ignorant, which is why he’s about to get into bed next to you while you’re wearing a tightfitting tanktop that’s basically asking if you can blow him and all he can think, the only semi-coherent thought running through his mind, is “ohmigod yes please and thank you.”
Which is inconvenient, to say the least.
“It’s fine,” he says again. Because what else can he really say?
You know it’s not fine, but it’s also very clear that Spencer doesn’t want to discuss it, so you let it go. What choice do you really have?
The mattress - too springy, too small, too everything - bends as Spencer sits down on his side, pausing for a moment before he lies down with his back to you. The muscles in your core tense to resist gravity, which is pulling your body towards the indentation he is making. You put away your phone and copy him, laying on your side with your back towards him.
Something about this feels like you’re an old married couple who argued about the kids’ extra curriculars and now you’re both resentful, and the absurdity of it all makes you giggle. This image in your head of growing old with Spencer Reid.
“What?” Spencer asks, like he’s already regretting it.
“If you had kids, would you make them do the Science Fair or would it be okay if they were into tap dancing and drama club?”
He changes position, and you can feel every move he makes in the shifting of the mattress. He stays quiet for so long you assume he’s ignoring you. Which is fair enough, that’s a pretty weird question to ask someone who already doesn’t want to be around you. But then: “As long as they didn’t expect me to help with their tap homework I don’t see why I’d mind.”
Huh.
“So you don’t tap?”
“Really?”
You laugh and you’re SURE you can feel the tension easing out of Spencer’s body. There’s no way you’re just imagining that, right?
“Do you tap?” he asks after a beat.
“No,” you admit. “My sister did. I played soccer.”
“Girl Scout and soccer,” Spencer says. “That's very…”
“Boring?”
“Normal,” he corrects you. “So what happened?”
Happened? Is he trying to unlock your tragic backstory lying back to back in a dingy motel in North Carolina? “What do you mean?”
“How did you turn out so weird?” He asks it like it’s a punchline to a joke you’re both in on. So you play along, because what else is there?
“Probably something in the water in DC.”
He hums his agreement. He drinks the same water, you live less than half a mile apart. Emily told you this once, not Spencer. Obviously. Pointing out the window of the taxi you’re in, “Oh, Reid lives just up there,” as if that’s something you need or want to know about your colleague who won’t talk to you or be alone in a room with you.
Wouldn’t, you correct yourself. You’re talking now, you’re in the same room. You’re very much alone. And it’s a tightrope walk but you’ve got your pink umbrella out and your balance is good.
You fall asleep, exhausted from the long drive and the emotional rollercoaster of the day, but you wake up in the night, the room lit by the glare from the lampposts outside that makes it through the flimsy curtains and gives everything a ghostly shine.
In your sleep you’ve rolled onto your back, a losing battle fought with the mattress. Spencer is sleeping on his stomach, starfished over the pillows you had laid out between you to create an illusion of space. His face is turned towards you, his soft breath warm in your face when you turn to look at him. His hand is… his hand is on your stomach, clenched around a fistful of your tanktop.
He’s not holding you, he’s holding the fabric, you tell yourself, not really sure why it matters.
Well, you did tell him it was soft.
It occurs to you that this should feel like an invasion of your privacy, your personal space, your… But it doesn’t.
You feel safe, tethered somehow to this space and this moment, to him, the Spencer sleeping next to you so different from the Spencer you’ve worked with for the last seven months. You know, without really knowing how, that THIS is the real Spencer.
Soft, safe, close.
With the hand that isn’t trapped by his arm you reach out and gently brush a strand of hair out of his face so you can see it better. He looks different, too, younger and less haunted by experience. The motion makes your body shift, but his grip on your tanktop remains firm, his hand heavy on your stomach, as if maybe it’s you he’s holding in place.
You decide there’s no way you’ll let your relationship go back to what it was before this trip. You’ll fight him if you have to, your grip on him will be stronger than the one he has on your lollipop tanktop.
You drift back into sleep with a smile playing on your face.
Spencer wakes up confused, his internal clock expecting an alarm that hasn’t blared. As his body begins to send signals to his brain about his surroundings, his confusion deepens and then a sense of dread sinks in.
Because he isn’t sleeping on a springy, uncomfortable mattress, and he’s not perched on the edge of the bed, which is where he was when he fell asleep last night.
Instead, he’s half on top of you, one leg draped over yours, his body pushed into your side, your arm trapped between your bodies, your fingers pressed against his abdomen (much too close for him to be able to lay there comfortably). His arm is around your waist, one treacherous pinky finger directly on your stomach where your tanktop has drifted up. Where he’s tried to pull it off you, his brain corrects him, because clearly that’s what’s happened here. He shifts to pull back his hips, creating some distance where he wants it the least but needs it the most.
The thought that you could have woken up before him to the feel of his erection pushing into your hip. He understands the science behind nocturnal penile tumescence, that his parasympathetic nervous system is to blame, but that doesn’t really change the fact that he has a hard-on and he is touching your bare skin and there’s a small smile playing on your lips, like you WANT to be there.
Spencer feels disgusted with himself and utterly betrayed by his own body in a way that is completely predictable. He’ll need to enroll himself in a workplace harassment course the minute you get back to Quantico and then he’ll spend the rest of his career apologising to you.
He also doesn’t ever want to move.
This is too close to what his fantasies are like, or how they start anyway, your body warm and soft and there. YOU, there. The memory of this, the feel of you, is already being catalogued in his mind, every detail logged for future… Spencer's disgust only deepens, he wonders if there’s a second, more specialised course he needs to do. One specifically dealing with self-gratification while thinking about a coworker and why it’s wrong to do that.
Ten seconds, he tells himself. He’ll allow himself ten seconds like this and then he’ll get up. His eyes close.
When he wakes up an hour later, you’re gone. He panics, thinks you might’ve woken up and felt so disturbed by his nearness that you took the car and left. But then he sees that your bag is still there, overflowing after you’ve rummaged through it, and there’s a note on your pillow. It’s time-stamped twenty minutes ago and just says, “Gone for a run. See you in an hour.”
Which gives him 40 minutes to convert to Catholicism and join a monastery. Great. That’s plenty of time, he already did the required reading.
He takes a 3 minute shower with the temperature set all the way to ‘cold’ and then dresses quickly, somehow anxious that there was a misunderstanding with the timing and you’ll walk back into the room before he’s fully clothed in his armour of professionalism. Or at least his tie and knitted vest. (Who is he kidding? He will never be able to pretend to be professional around you again. He also won’t need to, he’ll probably get fired for his behaviour during the night.)
But you don’t return, and so he checks his watch and then leaves a note for you to let you know he’s going to find some breakfast.
When he gets back with two large coffees and a bag of mixed pastries, you’re in the shower. He sets everything down on the TV stand and then starts pacing like he’s trying to leave a permanent groove in the carpet.
The fact that he’s facing away from the bathroom door when you open it feels like winning the lottery and then realising the prize money is fake. He can’t face looking at you and he wants to look at you forever, wants to know how you look after a shower, wonders if you’re wearing a towel or you… He stops his mind wandering by reciting decimals of pi to himself.
Maybe he can move back to Vegas, become a magician? It would be nice to be closer to his mother. Right?
“Hey,” you say. Sounding completely normal. Like you didn’t just pretend to go for a run so you could talk to HR in peace.
“Hey,” Spencer replies, not turning around.
“Ooooh, you got coffee,” you go on, sounding delighted. And still completely normal.
Spencer picks up one of them, he’s right by the TV, and turns around to hand it to you. You’re wearing slacks and a white top, no makeup and your wet hair combed away from your face.
And you’re smiling at him. Smiling. Like everything is fine.
“This one’s yours,” he says and pushes the paper cup towards you.
You accept it and take a sip, humming happily as the caffeine hits your system.
Spencer stares at you, mesmerised.
“Give me five minutes, then I’ll be ready to go,” you tell him.
He wants to tell you you should both just stay here forever. ‘Let’s never go home. Let’s stay in this disgusting room and share this uncomfortable bed until the end of time. I’ll bring you all the coffee and snacks you want. Just, let’s not ever leave.’ “Cool,” he says instead.
You put on a shirt, buttoning it up right in front of him like Spencer is dreaming in reverse, while you chat aimlessly at him about the people you saw on your run. The old man walking his dog in his PJ’s and slippers, the receptionist smoking a blunt behind his car.
Like everything is amusing to you, and everything is fine.
But it feels just a little bit forced. Not fake, exactly, just determined.
“Hey,” Spencer says, halting your stream of words with his heart in his throat. “Are we okay?”
You stop packing, your running shoes halfway in your duffel bag. Your eyes boring into him like that’s what YOU’VE been worried about. “I hope so,” you say at last. “I think we are.”
Spencer nods, deciding to take you at your word. “Okay. I’ll drive first.” It’s possible you should have a different kind of conversation, all that apologising he’s meant to be doing, but you just don’t seem mad at all, aren’t avoiding getting close to him. If anything, you’re closer than you were before. A hand on his back when you squeeze past to go to the bathroom to collect your toiletries, the apple turnover you pull out of the pastry bag, consider with a frown, and then shove right in his mouth.
You aren’t disgusted with him, and - far more importantly - you aren’t scared of him.
You take the room key to reception (you insisted, wanted to see just how high the guy is) while he packs the car (it’s just two bags in the trunk and then setting down coffee cups and the bag of pastries in the space between the car seats) and when you return he’s holding the passenger door open for you.
“And they say chivalry is dead,” you joke.
“It’s not,” he replies. “Actually chivalry is a code of conduct that stems from medieval France, where knights were known as chevaliers. ‘Chevalier’ is an order of merit that’s still used today. It’s the first class in the Legion of Honour, awarded after 20 years of public service. So chivalry is still very much alive in public service.”
Your laughter is still ringing in Spencer’s ear as he makes his way to the driver’s side of the car and he thinks maybe things will actually be fine.
All he needs to do is just never close his eyes or think about you ever again.
Easy…