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ACT 1: THE STORY AND THE DISCOVERY
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This time of year usually brings joy and makes people look forward to spending time with their loved ones. But for you, it always has been more than that. Or at least something different.
While December 25th just means Christmas Day for most people, for you it's also your birthday.
Yeah, for some reason, 'baby-you' thought it was a good idea to pop out of your mom's womb the day everyone was busy with holiday celebrations.
Your mom always said you were her Christmas gift. What a confidence boost. But as you grew up, you couldn't help but think about how inconvenient for everyone - you included - it was to be born on a day like that.
You can't remember having a decent birthday party with kids your age; only your parents, siblings, or some lost relative who missed a trip to their own town.
Friends? No way. All of them were trapped by the spell of Santa coming bearing gifts. And when they were old enough, family dinners and trips out of town kept them away.
So you got used to just celebrating Christmas—a family holiday by definition.
The gift exchange? Not a big deal. Still, your parents made an effort to give you two presents: one for Christmas and one for your birthday. But in perspective, you didn't stand a chance with a guy named Jesus who was born centuries before you.
You just were born in disvastange.
Funny, considering most of your young life and part of your adult life now kept reminding you of the second place you got used to having.
As an adult, you chose not to even acknowledge the date. When people asked about your birthday, you answered in a fake, distracted voice, 'Oh, it's in December,' and quickly moved on to another topic.
And since you joined the BAU, it's turned out even better. The work schedule is so chaotic that you often find yourself working cases during the Holidays. It doesn't bother you, especially if it frees another team member to spend time with their loved ones.
So you locked that part of your life away safely, though the date still pulls a kind of nostalgia from you sometimes.
Apparently this year will be an easy one. On December 21st, 8:30 sharp, Hotch calls everyone to the round table.
Once everyone is gathered there, Garcia starts speaking. "Okay, my loveys. This horror movie is happening in Missouri, in a little town named Peculiar," she pauses a bit. "Don't be fooled by the name, though. Until these murders, Peculiar was nothing but."
Some chuckles ripple around the table. After doing this job for years, things like that can actually be funny. Hotch doesn't laugh, though.
"Garcia," he warns.
"Yes, boss. On it, on it."
Ten minutes later, you are all debriefed about how four women were found dead in the middle of the town's main square, and nobody saw or heard anything. You won't even ask follow-up questions about the killing method because even for a trained FBI agent, it's pretty upsetting, just like it is.
"Wheels up in thirty," Hotch finishes the meeting, and everyone knows what to do.
You go to your desk to grab your travel bag, and as you finish packing, you hear Spencer's voice behind you.
"Actually, Peculiar has a very lame meaning. When the town needed a post office in 1868, local founders submitted several name choices, but other U.S. towns had already taken them all. Frustrated, they wrote to the Post Office Department asking them to pick just about anything sort of peculiar. The Postmaster General replied that Peculiar was a distinct and fitting choice, and the name stuck."
You smile to yourself. Of course Spencer would know that. You turn to him, an amused look on your face.
Oh, how Spencer loves the way you look at him. Beyond that, he loves making you smile. He would dust off whatever knowledge he had stored in his brain just to share it with you and see that beautiful and unguarded smile for the rest of his life.
Yeah, someone would say it's an exaggeration, but no. You have Spencer Reid completely smitten. And bets are running down the BAU hallways that say he is hopelessly in love with you, and people are trying to pinpoint the exact moment he won't take it anymore and will confess.
Needless to say, the bets have had to be adjusted, because more than a year has passed and the genius still refuses to budge, not for lack of want, but rather because he is terrified of your reaction.
"I didn't doubt for a second that this was something you knew. Thanks for sharing it with me, Spencer."
A blush creeps into Spencer's neck and cheeks. No matter how he tries to control it, you have that effect on him. "Sure," he stutters.
"Do you think we can close this case quick?" You ask, with no specific reason, just to keep Spencer talking. You love hearing Spencer talk. If you must be honest, you love everything about Spencer. Not that you would tell him, anyways. You are good friends; he trusts you, and you trust him. Why change that? But it's getting hard to keep your crush on him at bay. Worse when you see all the BAU teasing you both relentlessly.
"The last ten cases we had, involving us traveling to Missouri, lasted between three and six days. Considering the holidays, the less law enforcement available, and the bad weather, my estimation goes to the max of that interval."
Makes sense, you think. That means you will spend Christmas out of state. You feel sorry for Hotch, JJ, and their families. Sure, they all know the schedule is unpredictable, but still.
"Did you have plans for Christmas?"
Spencer's question gets you out of your thoughts.
"What?"
"You asked the time we'll take to solve this. Probably we won't make it before Christmas. Did you have plans for the Holidays?"
"Oh. Uhm - not really. No. Did you?"
Spencer shrugs. "I don't think so. I mean, I wanted to visit my mom, but I wasn't thinking of doing it before New Year's."
"Come on, kids, we have to go." Morgan reminds you both, passing with his go bag already over his shoulder.
Spencer and you nod in unison, grab your bags, and follow Morgan to the elevator.
Once you are boarding, wheels up has barely settled into its usual rhythm. Files are passed around, Rossi and Emily's voices loop through the jet as they discuss possible victimology, and the air smells like reheated coffee you will have to drink during the flight.
Hotch's phone buzzes with a text, and he sighs through his nose. JJ and Spencer, seated in front of him, glance at Hotch, confused.
"Garcia never sent the updated emergency contact forms," he says, mostly to himself, then louder to the two pairs of eyes scrutinizing him. "The ones from the last round of paperwork renewals. HR needs them on file by the end of the year, and apparently the digital folder never got forwarded before we left."
"I can call her back," JJ offers, already reaching for her phone.
"She's off-grid for the next hour, some server migration thing." Hotch rubs his temple. "We have paper backups from the last few case files, flight manifests, next-of-kin info; all of it gets logged old-school as a redundancy. Reid, you're closest to the archive box. Can you pull whatever's current and cross-reference it so we at least have something to send HR before the holiday deadline?"
"Of course." Spencer is already unbuckling, grateful for something methodical to do with his hands.
The archive box lives in a compartment near the back of the jet, a relic of the Bureau's aggressive monotony policies. Every form that existed digitally also existed on paper, filed and refiled by whoever drew the short straw. Spencer drew it often, mostly because he didn't mind, and partly because organizing things by hand has a rhythm his brain finds soothing.
He works through the stack of information methodically: name, next of kin, allergies, blood type, date of birth. Most of the team's info he already knew by heart, which makes the cross-referencing mechanical, almost boring, until he gets to yours.
Date of birth: December 25th.
He stops.
At first he assumes a clerical error. Dates get transposed all the time; someone's handwriting gets misread by whoever transcribed it into the digital system. But the paper copy is in your handwriting, unmistakable, the same slightly-slanted print you use in the margins of case files. Isn't a transcription error. No mistake.
December 25th.
Something clicks, uncomfortably so, in the part of his brain that files things away without permission. And a specific memory surfaces. It turns out a couple of months ago at one of Rossi's dinners, someone asked around about birthdays. You answered in that too-casual voice, 'oh, mine's in December,' then pivoted the conversation with a speed that hadn't registered as strange in the moment, but now, with the exact date sitting in his hands, takes on an entirely different weight.
You hadn't said it like someone sharing something happy. You'd said it like someone apologizing.
Spencer sets the form down carefully, more carefully than a piece of paper required. After glancing your way, seeing you chatting with Emily and Morgan, he turns and stares out the jet window, running calculations that have nothing to do with the case.
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ACT 2: REALITY AND DESPERATE MEASURES
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Without anyone noticing, the case has escalated fast. A few hours after landing, local PD found a fifth victim, and with her, any hope of wrapping things up before Christmas Eve disappeared. Hotch confirms it at the midday debrief on the 23rd, in that stern voice he reserves for bad news. They are staying in Peculiar until further notice, probably past the 25th.
Most of the team take it with the professional resignation of people who'd already lost enough holidays to the job. JJ makes a quick call to Will, voice low and pragmatic. Prentiss mutters something about canceling a dinner reservation.
No one is particularly surprised.
Spencer, on the other hand, feels his stomach drop through several floors he didn't know existed.
December 25th.
Not only are they going to spend Christmas in a dead town called Peculiar, chasing someone who left bodies in the town square. You are going to spend your birthday there, surrounded by a case, exhausted coworkers, nobody mentioning it. Mostly because nobody else knew, and because you, clearly, have spent years making sure of that.
He thinks about the way you'd said 'oh, it's in December' that one time, the way you'd changed the subject. It had to be habit, he deduces, one so well-practiced it barely registered as sad anymore—the habit of simply not bringing it up.
Spencer thinks about how many times he'd watched you brush off things that actually mattered to you, just because you'd learned somewhere along the way that expecting nothing hurt less than hoping.
He can't fix the case. He can't get you home before the 25th. That part is already decided, out of his control, like most things in this job.
But he can do something with the hours he does have.
Someone has to notice, he thinks, with a conviction that surprises even him. Just once.
The problem is he has absolutely no idea how to organize a surprise. Spencer has never done it before. And he definitely can't do it alone, not without ruining it via some statistical explanation of why surprises fail sixty-three percent of the time when planned solo with incomplete information about the recipient's preferences. A number he is fairly sure he just invented on the spot. However, it sounds convincing enough in his head.
He needs help. And only two people come to mind: reckless enough, and already aware enough of how he feels about you, not to ask too many questions before saying yes: Morgan and Emily.
Will he regret this later? Absolutely.
But desperates times need desperates measures.
Spencer finds Morgan and Prentiss in the room the local PD has handed over to them, a space that smells like vending-machine coffee and has exactly one decent couch, currently occupied by Morgan, feet up on the table.
"I need help," Spencer says, no preamble, closing the door behind him harder than necessary.
Prentiss looks up from her file. "With the case?"
"No."
Morgan lowers his feet slowly, as he's just detected something interesting. "Then with what, pretty boy?"
Spencer glances at the door, confirms it is shut, and lowers his voice anyway, as if the walls of a rural police station might have ears trained specifically for office gossip.
"It's her birthday," he says. "The 25th. Her actual birthday is the same day as Christmas, and nobody knows, and we'll be here, working a case. She's going to spend another birthday with nobody noticing, and I can't-" he stops, out of breath, realizing he's gone ten seconds without inhaling. "I can't let that happen. Again."
Silence.
Emily and Derek exchange the exact look they've shared for over a year now, every time Spencer's name and yours showed up in the same sentence.
"Wait." Morgan holds up a hand. "How do you know her birthday?"
Spencer doesn't think that information is important for his cause, but answers anyway.
"It was in the emergency contact forms. Garcia forgot to send the updated ones, so Hotch had me pull the paper backups from the archive box."
"So you were reading her date of birth off a backup form," Derek deduces, and Spencer frowns at the obvious remark.
"It's literally what I was requested to do, to cross-reference them, Morgan."
"Uh-huh." Morgan doesn't look entirely convinced that is the reason for the look currently on Spencer's face, which was, without exaggeration, the look of a man who'd just uncovered classified information and had no idea what to do with it.
Prentiss, the pragmatic as always, has already set her file aside. "Okay. Let me get this straight. You want to throw her a surprise birthday party in the middle of an active case. In a town we've never been to. With what, gas station resources and good intentions?"
"Uh. Yes. Basically."
"And why us?" Prentiss probes.
Spencer looks at both of them, and for a second, underneath the sudden panic and determination, something more honest slips through. "Because you're the only two I trust not to ruin it. And because," he adds, quieter, "if I don't do something, she's going to spend another birthday thinking nobody cares. And that's not true. And I want her to know that. Even like this, even with whatever we've got here."
Morgan stares at him for a long moment, and then, very slowly, a grin starts spreading across his face. The kind of grin of someone who's been waiting months for exactly this moment.
"Well," he says, standing up and rubbing his hands together, "finally! Prentiss, pull up your phone. We need to know what's open in a town called Peculiar at this hour."
Emily is already searching, but not before shooting Spencer a pointed look. "Just so we're clear, Reid: this isn't just about the birthday."
"I know what it is," Spencer says, and for the first time he didn't sound scared to admit it. "Just... help me make sure she knows, without me having to say it badly."
Morgan claps him on the shoulder hard enough to nearly knock him over. "My man! Welcome to special ops. It is gonna be a glorious disaster."
"Please, Morgan," Spencer groans.
Maybe he is already regretting this.
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ACT 3: THE ODD BEHAVIOR AND THE REASONABLE ASSUMPTION
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It started small. That's the worst part. You can pinpoint the exact moment it began, and it was so insignificant you almost missed it.
After the jet touched down in Peculiar, Spencer has barely looked at you. It is like he is solving a complex enigma in his own head. At first, nothing special; you know Spencer could shut down when his mind was in overdrive. You supposed he is trying to piece together the case details before arriving.
At the precinct, his nose quickly dives into files and maps. Hours pass, and he barely pays you any attention, focused instead on the uncooperative locals.
Hotch even had to scold him for confronting an officer who did a poor job taking a witness statement.
When you approach him and ask what is wrong, he only stutters and says he only wants to solve the case quickly.
You all want the same thing, but Spencer seems more adamant about it.
Usually, when something like this happens, Spencer goes to you and shares his thoughts. You listen and try your best to reassure him. But how can you do that when he isn't even talking to you?
By day three, things haven't changed that much. You're still far from catching the guy, and the stress starts to creep into everyone.
But Spencer seems beaten by it. That's when a thought pops into your brain: maybe he does have a reason to come back home quick. You assumed he didn't mind, since he wanted to visit his mother before New Year's.
But the final straw comes when Hotch announces that they are unlikely to catch the killer before Christmas. It is as if someone has poured a bucket of cold water down Spencer's back. While the others - you included- resign themselves to the idea, Spencer Reid looks like he is about to have a heart attack.
As soon as the debrief ends, Spencer stands up and leaves the room.
He doesn’t do it with fanfare, but you notice.
That's when you stop assuming it is mere coincidence and start piecing the whole picture together. Still, you want to give him the benefit of the doubt. So when everyone goes to their assignments, you go looking for Spencer.
You follow him to the parking lot, planning to ask if he wants to grab coffee and talk things through. But as he sees you coming, his thumb moves fast over his phone screen, locking it, sliding it into his pocket like a kid caught with something he shouldn't have.
"Everything okay?" you ask.
"Fine. Yep. Totally fine." Spencer hasn't looked fine. Actually, he looks like someone doing long division in his head under pressure.
You tell yourself it can still be case-related. Or family. Or something reasonable and boring that has absolutely nothing to do with you.
But by the next day, that assumption stops working.
You can notice the pattern now, whether you want to or not. It is in the way his eyes would catch yours across a room and then dart away half a second later, the way he starts a sentence and abandons it halfway through, the way he'd gone from texting you random facts about serial killers or medieval plumbing at midnight, completely unprompted, to barely texting you at all, paying more attention to Morgan and Prentiss.
Your brain, unhelpfully, is very good at filling silence with worst-case scenarios. It's a skill you developed early, out of necessity, and it doesn't know how to turn itself off just because you ask nicely.
Maybe Spencer actually met someone. The thought arrives uninvited while you pretend to review witness statements you aren’t actually reading. Maybe there's someone back home. Someone he actually tells things to.
It makes an ugly kind of sense, once you let it in. Spencer is brilliant, and kind in that specific, unshowy way that makes people fall for him slowly instead of all at once. It isn't exactly a stretch to imagine someone finally noticing that, someone who isn't buried under a year of denial and bad timing like you are.
Of course, you think, with the particular bitterness reserved for realizations you'd apparently made peace with long ago. Of course it's someone else. Why would it be you? You're the friend. You're always the friend. The consolation prize. The one who gets the joint present because sharing a date with someone more important is apparently your whole personality from birth.
You hate how easily the thought slots into place, like it has been waiting there the whole time for a good excuse to resurface. It picks up the ache from every Christmas that has quietly doubled as your birthday and repurposed it, seamlessly, into this — into watching Spencer avoid your eyes and immediately assuming it meant you'd been quietly, gently phased out of whatever place you'd carved for yourself in his life.
Maybe he doesn't know how to tell you. Maybe the secretive calls were him trying to figure out how to tell the coworker who very obviously has feelings for him that he met someone, without making it unbearably awkward for both of you.
That would explain the flinching, you think. That would explain all of it.
You catch yourself staring at nothing, statement forgotten in your lap, and force your eyes back down to the page before anyone notices. Not that anyone would. You are good at this: doing the math on your own worth in silence, arriving at disappointing conclusions, and then acting like you hadn't.
Twenty-six years of practice would do that to a person.
You don't say anything to him. What would you even say: 'Hey, are you avoiding me because you have a secret girlfriend, and if so, can you do it less obviously because it's making my chest hurt in a way I don't have a good excuse for?' No. You'd smile, and nod, and pretend you haven’t noticed anything, the same way you pretend every December that today was just Christmas, nothing more, nothing personal.
You are very good at pretending. You'd have a lifetime of practice for that too.
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ACT 4: CASE CLOSED BUT PROBLEM NOT SOLVED
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You know cases can break in any minute. Sometimes it is a minimal overlooked detail; other times, it's a witness who remembers something they didn't before. Even the unsubs can betray their own nature and slip a clue no one expected. Mistake or not, new information gives Garcia the chance to open the door to put a name to your slippery killer: Adam Smith, a very angry man against the world, but primarily against women.
What a surprise.
It's December 24th at midday, and everyone is getting ready for the takedown. Bulletproof vests, guns loaded, cars ready to jump in.
The adrenaline that makes you forget - for a moment - how tired and sleep-deprived you are. It's the fuel you need to make the job done.
In a corner, you see Spencer anxiously adjusting his vest. You try not to think about it, but every time an extreme situation can put the team in danger, that knot in your stomach tightens. You push that thought to the back of your mind. For now.
Hotch leads the operation, and you get to catch Smith before he can hurt his next victim. JJ tried to talk him down, but you knew those eyes: the eyes of someone who has nothing to lose, so before he slashes his next victim's throat, you shut him in the shoulder, making him fall back, yelling in pain.
Not so brave now, uh?
And that's how Peculiar has his serial killer arrested and the public panic slows down. You're back at the precinct around 5 PM to do the part everyone hates: the paperwork.
Hotch confirms that, because of the work left and the weather conditions to fly back, you can leave Peculiar only after midday on the 25th.
Great. A Christmas Eve in a dead town.
You only pray Morgan doesn't propose going to the only bar in the area to 'decompress.' For you, the only option is to go back to the hotel and sleep until it's time to fly back to DC.
You have been staring at the same paragraph of the case file for ten minutes, not really reading it, just watching the words blur while your brain replayed the same loop: 'Spencer has been weird.'
"Okay, so," Morgan says, way too loud for someone trying to sound casual, and you actually flinch.
"I think we should call it early tonight. Like, everyone. Early night."
Emily doesn't even look up from her files. "It's 6 PM, and we are not even close to finishing the paperwork."
"Early dinner, then. Early dinner, and then everyone goes to bed so that we can start fresh tomorrow before leaving this fucking town. Hotch said the jet will be ready after midday. Enough time to pack everything and leave."
You glance at Morgan, suspiciously so. "Do you have plans?"
Morgan's eyes widen. "No! No plans. No plans at all. Nobody has plans." He says this while very obviously not looking at the door, through which you can swear you saw Spencer slip out twenty minutes ago, phone pressed to his ear, talking low.
Probably to whoever he would rather be spending Christmas with, and apologizing for not making it on time. How can you blame him? Just because you don't have plans doesn't mean the rest of the team can't. But it's Spencer, and a tiny splinter sticks in your heart.
"Derek, you can admit if you already have a date with that officer who was flirting with you since we arrived," you point. "It's Christmas Eve, and in this dead town? You would be the lucky one. I don't mind staying here for a couple of hours."
For an innocent joke, Emily's eyes leave the file she's checking and turn to you. Why is she looking at you like you just said you want to jump off a bridge?
"Even if I think Morgan is being more enthusiastic than anyone could be at this time, I agree you should take a break. All the more so, considering you were the one who ultimately had to shoot the unsub. That always leaves one's head reeling and dazed," Emily points, playing with her pen between her fingers.
Now that sounds more like it. It's not your first time shooting your gun, but you hate doing it. Your primary approach has always been to talk down the unsubs, but sometimes you just can't.
"Yeah, maybe I could use an early night," you say after considering it, mostly to make Morgan stop sweating and let Emily's statement sink in. And because you really feel exhausted.
"Great! Perfect. Actually-" he exchanges a look with Emily that he clearly thinks is subtle, "actually, some of us were gonna get dinner, but you should just, you know. Order room service. Relax. Big day tomorrow. Closing the case and flying home."
You huff a laugh. "Morgan, the case is already closed. And it would be done sooner if we do the paperwork now," you reason.
"Exactly! Which is why you should relax. Alone. In a room. Maybe if you want not alone, but-"
"Morgan," Emily says through her teeth.
You almost laughed - almost - except your chest tightened as it does whenever you think about it for too long. Your mind drifts to the two presents that were never really two, the friends who always had somewhere else to be come December. Old news. Old wound. You knew its shape by heart.
Except now it had a new data point for your cause. Someone you actually liked, who used to text you random facts at midnight and now couldn't stay in the same room as you for more than five minutes without inventing a phone call.
You don’t say any of that. You just say, "I think I'll just go to bed early. Actually alone."
Morgan's face falls in a way that would've been funny if you weren't so tired. "But-"
"Morgan." Emily grabs his sleeve. "Let it go."
You catch the look between them: worried, apologetic, like they are sorry for something they haven’t even done, and you have no idea the whole team already knows. Know about the crush, know what tomorrow is, know that the guy currently hiding in a supply closet negotiating with a bakery over the phone is not, in fact, avoiding you.
All you know is that it is December 24th, and you are, once again, about to spend your birthday alone.
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ACT 5: THE CONFRONTATION
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You are already leaving the precinct when you find Spencer outside, phone in hand, looking like he's just been caught doing something he shouldn't. Which, of course, he's been sneaking around for three days straight, and you are done pretending you haven't noticed.
"Okay." You cross your arms. "What is going on with you?"
He nearly drops his phone. "Nothing? Nothing's going on. Why would something be going on?"
"Spencer."
"What?"
"You've been disappearing every twenty minutes for three days. You flinch every time I walk into a room. Yesterday you hid behind a vending machine. I saw you. The machine is see-through, Spencer."
"That's - uh, okay, that's a very specific detail to have noticed."
"So what is it?" The words come out faster than you mean them to, sharper too. "Do you have a girlfriend back home you forgot to mention? Is that it? Because if this is you trying to figure out how to let me down easy, you can just say it. You don't have to do the whole vanishing act."
"What? No!"
"Or is it that I'm just, what? annoying you? Being around too much? Because we're stuck working together for the holidays, and I get it; that's not exactly anyone's dream scenario, but you don't have to make it weird; you could just tell me to back off."
"That is not-" Spencer looks, briefly, like a man drowning. "That is genuinely not what's happening, at all, in any universe-"
"Then what IS happening? Because from where I'm standing, my - my friend, who I thought was my friend, won't look me in the eye, keeps whispering on the phone, and practically ran away from me at breakfast. So forgive me for assuming the worst, but that's kind of a pattern for me around this time of year, so-"
"Okay, can you just-" Spencer racks a hand through his hair, glancing at the phone still lit up in his palm as if it might rescue him. "Can you trust me for like eighteen more hours? Please? I swear to you —I swear on literally anything —this isn't about a girlfriend, and it isn't about you being annoying; it's the opposite. It's so much the opposite that I can't, you know? I can't-"
He stops himself. Hard. Like he's almost driven off a cliff and yanked the wheel back at the last second.
"The opposite of what?" you say quietly.
"I can't tell you." He actually looks pained saying it. "I want to. You have no idea how much I want to right now. But if I tell you, it would ruin-" He caught himself again, jaw tight.
"Ruin what, Spencer?"
"Eighteen hours," he says, almost pleading. "Can you give me eighteen hours before you decide I'm the worst person you've ever met?"
You stare at him. He stares back, phone forgotten, looking so genuinely wrecked at the idea of you thinking badly of him that some of the anger in your chest cracks, just slightly, into confusion.
"Fine," you say, because you don’t know what else to say. "Eighteen hours."
He exhales like he's been holding his breath for three days. "Thank you."
You walk away first, mostly because you need somewhere to put your face that isn't in front of him. You don't see him lean back against the wall and mutter, "Eighteen hours," to himself like a countdown to his own execution.
Spencer has maybe four seconds of peace before Emily's head pops out from behind the exit door.
"Please tell me you didn't tell her."
"I didn't tell her!" Spencer defends.
Morgan emerges right behind Emily, holding what looks like an entire tray of cupcakes, and he has no reasonable explanation. "We heard 'the opposite of what,' and I genuinely almost had a heart attack. I pictured the whole thing collapsing. I pictured us flying home tomorrow with the sad, deflated balloons."
"There are no balloons yet, Morgan, that's literally tomorrow's job-"
"I'm speaking hypothetically!"
Emily grabs Spencer by the front of his jacket, which, given that she is roughly two-thirds his height, is more intimidating than it had any right to be. "You almost told her. I watched your face almost tell her."
"I panicked, okay? She thinks I have a secret girlfriend, Emily. She thinks she's annoying me. Do you understand what it's like to stand there and let the person you're crazy about believe that, when the actual truth is the opposite of that in every conceivable way, and not be allowed to just-"
"Yes," Emily says flatly. "That's called Tuesday, for the last four months, for both of us, watching you two dance around each other while pretending to do casework."
Morgan nods solemnly, cupcakes wobbling. "We've suffered."
"You've suffered?" Spencer asks. "You've suffered? I'm the one who just told her to trust me for eighteen hours like some kind of hostage negotiator."
"Okay, but did she agree?" Emily reminds him.
"...Yes."
"Then it worked!" Morgan says, far too triumphantly for someone holding evidence of a secret party. "Crisis averted. Operation Not-Ruining-Christmas is back on track."
"She's going to the hotel right now," Spencer says, gesturing weakly toward the street she's disappeared down, "thinking I might be the worst person she's ever met, and I have to just, just let her think that. For eighteen hours. On her birthday."
That lands differently. Emily's teasing smile fades a little, and even Morgan straightens up, tray and all.
"Hey." Emily's voice softens. "She's not gonna think that for eighteen hours. She's gonna think it for maybe, like, three more, tops, because tomorrow she's going to walk into whatever we're building down there and she's going to understand exactly why you've been acting like a raccoon caught in a flashlight beam for three days straight."
"A very sweet raccoon," Morgan offers.
"Thank you, Morgan," Emily tells the man with the cupcakes in a tray.
"I try."
Spencer drags both hands down his face. "I need the bakery to text me back. If the cake isn't ready by six, I don't know what I'll do. I don't have a backup plan; the backup plan is to cry."
"The cake is ready," Emily says. "I picked it up an hour ago. It's hidden in my rental car under a blanket like a body."
"That's - uh, deeply unsettling phrasing, but thank you."
"Also," Morgan adds, "unrelated, but should we be worried she's going to head to her hotel room and find three separate string-light shopping bags sitting outside my room that's next to her? Because I may have miscounted how much twinkle was enough twinkle."
Emily closes her eyes. "How many bags, Morgan?"
"...Seven."
"Seven?"
"They were on sale!"
Spencer’s eyes bounce between the two of them, his coworkers, his co-conspirators, currently arguing about the ethics of seven bags of Christmas lights in a hotel hallway, and he feels, despite the last excruciating five minutes, something that is almost hope.
"Just," he pleads, "get the lights inside before she sees them. Please. I've used up my miracle for the day."
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ACT 6: THE SET UP
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By 5 AM on the 25th, the hotel's small rooftop terrace, usually reserved for wedding parties and corporate mixers nobody wanted to attend, has been quietly transformed into a crime scene of Christmas paraphernalia.
"Okay," Emily says, consulting a notes app that has somehow become a full battle plan, complete with a timeline. "Lights first, then the table, then we hide all evidence of the lights being purchased in a panic."
"I resent the framing," Morgan complains, already three rungs up a ladder with a string of lights draped around his neck like a very tacky scarf. "This is strategic Christmas light acquisition."
"You bought seven bags at a gas station at midnight."
"Strategically."
Spencer isn't really listening. He is on his knees by the small round table they'd dragged out of the hotel's storage closet, trying to find a tablecloth to stop it from looking like something that has been folded in a suitcase for six months, which - to be fair - it has.
"Is this too much?" he asks no one in particular. "Tell me if this is too much."
Emily glances over. "Spencer. You haven't once in months asked if anything was too much for her. You were planning a whole surprise for her birthday when you came back to DC, and you changed it all again when Hotch said we wouldn't make it before Christmas. Putting in simply, you would do anything if it means you'd get to spend her birthday with her despite being in this dead town. I think we're past too much.”
"I just don't want it to feel—" he searches for the word, hands still fumbling with a stubborn wrinkle in the fabric, "like I'm trying to make up for, like, twenty-six years of bad birthdays in one night. That's not- I mean, I can't fix that. I just want her to have one good one."
Morgan, from the top of the ladder, goes uncharacteristically quiet for a second. Then: "That's disgustingly sweet, and I need you to hand me more lights before I start crying on a ladder, which feels like a workplace safety issue."
Emily hands the lights up without a word, but she smiles at Spencer in a way that makes him feel seen and exposed at the same time.
The trio works mostly in silence after that, the kind that comes easily between people who has spend months pretending not to notice two coworkers falling for each other in slow motion. Emily strings fairy lights along the terrace railing in loose, uneven loops, ‘rustic,’ she insists, when Morgan calls it ‘structurally concerning.’ Once safely back on the ground, Morgan unpacks a small speaker and queues up a playlist he refuses to let anyone preview, muttering something about 'vibes' and 'trust the process.' Spencer sets two mismatched chairs at the table, then moves them four inches closer together, then four inches back, then gives up and just sits in one to see how it looks, which makes Emily laugh so hard she nearly drops the last box of lights over the railing.
By 6:30, the cake, already rescued from its blanket-shrouded exile in Emily's rental car, sits centered on the table, a single candle waiting to be lit, the words Happy Birthday pips in slightly crooked icing because the bakery had been closing when Emily made her desperate, whispered case for one more custom order.
Morgan steps back to survey the whole thing: lights strings crooked-but-charming overhead, the small table dressed as well as three sleep-deprived adults could manage, the cake, the two chairs angled just slightly toward each other.
"Okay," he says, uncharacteristically solemn. "This is actually really nice."
"Don't sound so surprised," Emily responds, though she is blinking a little fast herself.
Spencer just stands there, hands shoved in his coat pockets against the cold, staring at the whole ridiculous, lopsided, entirely sincere thing they've built out of gas station lights and a stolen hour of sleep. For the first time in three days, he feels something that isn't panic.
"What time is it?" he asks.
Emily checks her phone. "6:47."
"She usually wakes up around seven."
"Then," Morgan says, clapping him once on the shoulder, "go get her, Romeo. Emily and I will be very busy being somewhere else."
"Very busy," Emily agrees. "Extremely elsewhere."
Spencer takes one last look at the terrace with the lights glowing softly against the pre-dawn dark, the whole makeshift world he's built for a girl who thought she always came second, and heads for the elevator, heart going a mile a minute, eighteen hours finally, finally almost up.
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ACT 7: NOW IT’S THE TIME
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You wake up to grey light coming through a gap in the hotel curtains and the specific, familiar heaviness in your chest that shows up every December 25th like clockwork, right on schedule. You almost admire its punctuality.
Twenty-six, you think, staring at the ceiling. Twenty-six years of waking up on a day that belongs to everyone except you, technically also belonging to you, in the same way a shared birthday cake belongs to the person who doesn’t get to blow out their own candles.
You ponder reaching for your phone to see if anyone had texted. Then you think about Spencer's face outside the precinct last night. The opposite of what? But decide against it. Whatever this feeling is, you don't want to test it against silence, or worse, against a single 'Happy Birthday' text sitting alone in your notifications like a consolation prize.
Eighteen hours, he'd said. You do the math without meaning to. Somewhere around 10 AM, presumably, whatever mystery is going on will resolve itself, and you will know if you've spent the last three days imagining a version of Spencer that doesn't actually exist.
You almost laugh at yourself. Twenty-six years old, and you are still doing the same thing you did as a kid: quietly deciding not to expect anything, so it couldn't disappoint you when it didn't show up.
You are three-quarters of the way back into a self-pitying doze when someone knocks.
You almost don’t answer. But some old, stubborn part of you. The part that used to hope, even after years of evidence telling you not to, gets you out of bed anyway.
Spencer stands in the hallway in yesterday's clothes, hair a mess, looking like he hasn't slept and might throw up.
"Hi," he says.
You cross your arms, still half-wrapped in the hotel comforter you have dragged with you to the door. "It's not been eighteen hours."
"I know. I'm early. I couldn't wait." He shoves his hands in his pockets, then takes them out again, then seems unsure what to do with them. "Can you come with me?"
"Spencer-"
"Please." His voice cracks slightly on the word, and something about that. About Spencer, who three days ago was hiding behind vending machines, standing in front of you as his whole life depended on the next ten minutes, makes the tired, guarded part of you loosen, just a little.
"Where?"
"Roof."
"It's freezing."
"I know. I'll give you my coat. Just-" he exhales, like he is steadying himself for something. "Please. I have eleven minutes left on my deadline, and I'd like to use all of them properly."
You stare at him a long moment. Somewhere beneath the exhaustion and the leftover hurt from last night, something in your chest that has spent twenty-six years expecting disappointment allowed itself, just this once, a small, cautious flicker of hope.
"Fine," you say, grabbing your own coat instead of his, mostly out of principle. "But if this is weird, I'm going back to bed."
"It's going to be weird," Spencer admits, already turning toward the elevator. "Weird in a good way. I hope. Please let it be weird in a good way."
You follow him down the hallway, half annoyed, half something else entirely. Something that feels, despite every instinct telling you not to trust it yet, a little bit like the beginning of a good birthday.
The walk is silent except for the faint sound of a radio playing carols somewhere down the hall, which feels like a cruel joke given the circumstances. Spencer keeps glancing at you, then at the door ahead, then back at you, like he is doing math in his head and keeps getting a different answer each time.
"You're allowed to breathe," you say. "I won't tell anyone."
"I am breathing."
"You're doing that thing where you inhale but don't exhale."
"That's a very specific accusation."
He pushes the door open, and cold air hits you immediately, sharp enough to make you pull your coat tighter. Spencer steps out first, and for a second he just stands there, blocking your view, hand hovering near the frame like he is working up the nerve to move.
"Spencer."
"Right. Sorry. Okay." He steps aside.
You don't process it all at once. First it was just light, strings of it, crooked and warm, looped along the railing against the pale grey of the almost-morning sky. Then the small table, two mismatched folding chairs pulled close together. Then the cake, one candle standing crooked in slightly lopsided icing, and the words Happy Birthday piped in handwriting that was definitely not professional, which somehow makes it hit harder than if it had been perfect.
You stand frozen in the doorway.
"I know it's not much," Spencer says quickly, filling the silence because you clearly won’t. "Emily picked out the cake. Well, panicked her way into getting the cake, technically. Morgan bought way too many lights; there's a whole thing about a gas station I'll explain later. I wanted—" he stops, starts again, "I found out four days ago. That today's your birthday. Not just Christmas. Your actual birthday."
"How?"
"Garcia never sent Hotch the updated emergency contact forms before we left, so I had to pull the paper backups from the archive box on the jet. Your date of birth was right there." He rubs the back of his neck, looking anywhere but directly at you. "And then I started thinking about how you always change the subject whenever anyone mentions birthdays, and how you always say Christmas Day is 'basically the same thing,' like you've said that so many times you actually believe it now. And I just—" He gestures helplessly at the terrace, the lights, the crooked cake. "I didn't want you to have a twenty-seventh year of it being basically the same thing."
Your throat has gone tight in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.
"That's why you were avoiding me."
"I wasn't avoiding you; I was hiding a cake in Prentiss's rental car. There's a difference, even if it looked the same from the outside." He finally looks at you directly, and something in his expression makes your stomach drop in the good way, the way you haven't let yourself feel in longer than you want to admit. "I know eighteen hours of thinking I might secretly hate you was — that was bad planning on my part. I'm sorry. I just didn't know how to explain any of this without giving it away, and I really, really wanted to see your face when you got here."
"And how's my face?" you ask, voice not quite steady.
Spencer looks at you for a long moment. In that way he has, like he is committing something to memory, and the corner of his mouth pulls into a small, helpless smile.
"Worth three days of hiding behind vending machines," he says quietly.
You don't trust your voice for a second, so you just step forward, toward the lights and the crooked cake and the two chairs pulled close together, and let yourself, for the first time in twenty-six years, believe that maybe this year you actually get to go first.
Spencer pulls out your chair, hands a little unsteady, and as you sit down, you catch him watching you with an expression he isn’t bothering to hide anymore. Not nervous, not scrambling for cover stories, just quiet and certain and entirely undisguised.
You don't need him to say the words. You already know.
"Happy birthday," he says instead, lighting the crooked candle with hands that are still, somehow, shaking.
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ACT 8: EARS AND EYES EVERYWHERE
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Two floors down would have been safer. Behind the stairwell door, four inches ajar, isn't safer, but it is what Morgan and Emily have committed to.
"I can't see anything," Morgan whispers, practically climbing over Emily's shoulder. "Move your head."
"You move your head; this was your idea.”
"It was a joint idea.”
"I said, 'Let's check on them from a reasonable distance.' You said, 'I know the perfect spot.' The perfect spot is a stairwell, Morgan; this is not reasonable.”
Through the gap, they can just make out Spencer lighting the candle, hands shaking, and the two of them going quiet enough to hear him say something they couldn't quite catch, and then, the unmistakable sound of you laughing, soft and a little wet, the kind of laugh that comes right before or right after crying.
Emily grabs Morgan's arm. "Okay. Okay, this is happening."
"Twenty bucks says they kiss before the candle burns out."
"That candle's not lasting more than four minutes, Morgan; that's not a bet, that's charity."
"Fine. Twenty bucks says they kiss before we leave the case debrief on the 27th."
"I'll take that." Emily narrows her eyes back through the gap. "But I think it's happening today. Look at his face. That's not a 'let's take it slow' face. That's a 'my entire nervous system is one bad joke away from combusting' face."
"Okay, but she might not. You know how she is. Spent her whole life bracing for the other shoe, might take her a minute to believe the shoe's not dropping."
Emily considers this, then sighs. "Fine. Adjusted bet. Kiss today, but not for, like, an hour. She's gonna need to sit with it first."
"Deal." Morgan spits in his palm.
"Absolutely not. We are not doing that. Put your hand away.”
"Fine, verbal contract, legally binding, effective immediately.”
From the terrace comes another laugh, followed by the low, warm murmur of conversation neither of them could make out, and, very faintly, the sound of two chairs scraping closer together.
Morgan grins. "Called it."
"You called nothing; the chairs were already close together, you set the table.”
"I called the vibe, Emily; the vibe was correct.”
"Shh-” Emily freezes, hand shooting out to grip his sleeve. Through the gap, Spencer goes very still, and you do too, and a pause stretched out long enough that even Morgan stopped breathing.
"Is it happening?" Morgan whispers. "Emily. Is it happening?"
"I genuinely cannot see; your elbow is in my-”
The stairwell door creaks.
Both of them freeze.
On the terrace, you glance toward the sound, and Morgan and Emily dive sideways into the stairwell shadows with all the grace of two people who have clearly never had to hide from anything in their lives before this exact moment, whispering apologies to each other's ribs as they collided.
"Probably just the wind," you say slowly, turning back to Spencer.
"Probably," Spencer agrees, not sounding remotely convinced, already fighting a smile.
Back in the stairwell, Emily exhales slowly, straightening Morgan's collar with more force than strictly necessary. "We are never speaking of this."
"Twenty bucks," Morgan whispers, undeterred, "says they know we were here the whole time."
"I'm not taking that bet."
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