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inthehystericalrealm · 3 days ago

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‘blah blah blah, proper name, place name, backstory stuff’

𝐥𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠

You begin to have intimate dreams about your roommate, Spencer. [9k]

c: pining roommates, dreams, tipsy non-confessions, spencer being a sweetheart. fem!reader. this fic was requested!

｡𖦹°‧⭑.

i. a dreamt bruise

“What are you doing?”

Your chest lists slightly forward as a body warms your back. Arms wrap around you, solid but gentle, arms you’ve been held by a thousand times.

You cover them with one of your own. “What does it look like I’m doing?” you feel yourself ask.

The room is golden, gaussian, better now he’s behind you.

“I don’t know, dove. That’s why I asked.” His voice is soft in your ear. His hair presses to the side of your face as he hugs you —you’ve never felt love like this. It’s palpable. It’s in his hands.

Nobody’s called you dove before, but he is, he has. It might feel strange if it weren’t for how softly he said it, affection in the very marrow of the word, warmth of it kissing your cheek as he holds you. He says ‘dove’, and it feels like he loves you. Feels like you’ve done something beautiful to earn it, but that’s the beauty of it: you didn’t do anything.

The room turns narrow, sunlight on the dining room table of your apartment. A table usually crowded thickly with books, or your work. A space has been cleared away and filled with pieces of a jigsaw.

“I thought you were going to do this with me,” you say, dragging a piece across the table with your fingertip.

“Maybe later.”

“You can’t stand there all night.”

Are you sure? you think he says, but things are hazy, and he’s turning you toward him suddenly, you’re standing, the puzzle forgotten. “How’s your bruise?”

“What?” you ask, almost sleeping as a big, kind hand drags up the front of your shirt, holding it to the underside of your breast.

“Does it still hurt?”

His thumb brushes over your contusion, skin on your side, your back. It’s tender. Any breath is lost, any sense of breathing at all. You’re not a girl so much as something being touched with care, warm joy and love and a contrasting ache wedged under your heart as he draws a circles into your skin.

He hums sympathetically, the weight of him ebbing as he leans away, letting your shirt fall back into place.

The dream stretches on for a lifetime, the two of you standing in your living room, dining table behind you, couch and TV opposite. Your life in one room, his life, his books, his furniture, but your home. You know it all well, just, in the light, you can’t see the stitching.

He takes your face into his hand. Nobody’s ever touched you like, turned your face up like they were moving through honey, staring at you with eyes that shade of brown. Brown, brown… so big. So melting.

Spencer holds your face gently.

His nose touches yours. He tips his forehead into yours, his breath skimming lips he’d just warmed as he says, “Don’t worry, alright? You’ll be okay. Just take it easy,” he says, the last of his pleading lost to your mouth.

You wake up with a caught breath.

Your eyes are glued together, eyelashes threaded, gummy. You turn into the pillow beside you, slightly deflated and cold where you’d turned away in the night.

The room is dark when you manage to pry your eyes open. You close them just as quickly, begging your body to sleep, to plunge back into the dream. Just five more minutes of golden colour, hugging your pillow, love in somebody’s hand, in Spencer’s hand… five more minutes…

Your eyes open again.

Spencer’s hand on your cheek, guiding you carefully upwards for a kiss.

You raise your hand, feeling along the swell of your bottom lip with your thumb and index finger. They tremble with the weakness of having just woken up. With having something torn away from you.

What was that? you think, the hook of sleep lodged in your throat as you struggle to sit up. Your face tips forwards heavily, but your back doesn’t hurt like it tends to in the early mornings before work. There’s no ache there —your body slept well. You use your hands as anchors and drag yourself foot first from the bed. Your sheets fall to the floor with a quiet shush.

It felt so real that for a moment you’re wondering where Spencer went.

He was touching you, he was caressing your waist. You rush to the door of your room, every night left ajar, pushing it open and beelining for the bathroom. You flick on the light and stop in front of the mirror, staring at yourself, wondering if you’re foolish enough to do this, before peeling your shirt from your stomach to analyse your bruise.

It’s not there.

You turn and contort yourself to catch the light. Maybe it was further back? But no… there’s no bruise, nothing for Spencer to check. Your torso is a stretch of unharmed skin to run your hand down without pain.

Your head whirs.

From somewhere in the apartment, Spencer puts down a mug. You flush with heat at the realisation that he’s home, and panic flares when his footsteps move in your direction. Your bedrooms are on opposite sides of the apartment, and there are two bathrooms —the bath and toilet near your room, and the en-suite to his room— meaning Spencer’s coming to see you specifically.

“Hey, Y/N?” he says.

It’s been a few days since he was home, and you aren’t just roommates, Spencer’s your friend. He sounds happy that you’re awake, pausing at your bedroom door.

“I’m in the bathroom!” you say, your dry throat turning your voice to fractures.

“I just wanted you to know I’m home. Are you working?”

“It’s Saturday.”

He laughs. “Oh. I know, I forgot. Well, can I make you breakfast? I was gonna have oats and sliced bananas and stuff.”

“Okay.” You clear your throat. “I’ll be right there.”

“Sorry,” he says, like he’s just remembered where you are. “This is harassment. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

You wash your face and brush your teeth. You head back into your room to change from your pyjamas into loungewear that’s just as soft. The flavour of your dream follows you around, you’d like to call it sweetness, saccharinity, but it doesn’t fit the bill. The feeling you’d woken with wasn’t a sugar high but contentedness, like a warm evening meal. You’d felt utterly sated, your arms reaching out for a body that wasn’t there.

A heaviness takes your heart. Suffocating longing, you carry it to the kitchen with you to find Spencer’s already made you a cup of your tea. He’s warming oatmeal on the stove, blueberries and bananas on the countertop. You sit at the island. You should hug him. If you hadn’t dreamt of his hands on your waist what felt like mere moments ago, you would’ve.

“Did you go shopping?”

“I did, I went to Leaven last night. You were already sleeping at ten.” He peeks at you from over his shoulder. “Long day yesterday?”

“I get too tired by Friday,” you say, averting your gaze to stare down into your mug, steam twirling up to kiss your chin.

“No, I get it. Me too. Are you feeling any better today?”

You were sick when he left. “I’m fine.”

“Okay, good. I’m gonna put the blueberries in with the oatmeal, is that okay?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” Spencer’s gaze lingers on you. He turns back to the counter.

He cuts two bananas. You realise he has strawberries, too, watching as he cuts them, wetness leaking from their punnets where he must’ve rinsed them in the sink. He slices out the stems and cuts the strawberries in clean halves like hearts.

“I missed you,” he says.

You can’t read his tone, but you aren’t cruel, even feeling shy as you are. “I missed you too. How was the case? Everyone made it home in one piece, right?”

“Everyone’s fine. Emily got into a car accident and it was pretty bad, but she’s okay now. Recovering from her concussion at home with Sergei.”

That’s good. You’ve met Spencer’s boss, Agent Hotchner (very scary), and Emily, JJ, and Penelope (who aren’t scary at all). You’re glad to hear they’re all okay, because they’re good people, and they risk a lot to keep others safe. You forget sometimes how much Spencer puts on the line whenever he leaves.

You poke at him for details of the case, though legally there are things he has to keep from you, and you don’t mind either way. Nothing personal can crop up while talking of murder, and for now you’d like the conversation to stay far away from you and your bed and your sudden dream.

You assume you’re safe, but then Spencer mentions the bruise one of the sergeants got from their weapon’s kickback and you’re flushing nervously all over again.

Spencer grabs two bowls from the cabinet, dark brown ceramics he got from Koreatown, the perfect size for each helping of oatmeal. The purple from the insides of the blueberries bleed into the oats as he pours.

He lays each bowl with a curve of banana slices, strawberries, and covers half with a drizzle of dark fudge sauce. “Salt?” he asks.

“Yes, please.”

Spencer grabs two spoons from the cutlery drawer. He grins when he finally turns, bowls held aloft, making his way to the stool beside you. He puts his own down first, then the cutlery, standing ever so slightly behind you as he lays your breakfast down in front of you. “What have you been doing while I was away?” he asks softly.

You can’t look at him. Can’t think.

What are you doing?

What does it look like I’m doing?

I don’t know, dove. That’s why I asked.

You lean away from his presence, desperate to have him follow, and ashamed. Spencer’s a friend, a good one, he’s kind and loving and handsome beyond description, but you’ve never thought of him like that. Each time your mind slips wondering what he might be like in love, you’ve let the thought go. But now...

You shrug, grabbing your spoon. “Not much, Spencer. This looks amazing, it’s really pretty. Thank you for cooking.”

“No problem. Are you sure you’re feeling better? You don’t look so good.”

You take a quick bite of oatmeal, the spoon scalding your tongue, “Ah,” you say, breathing harshly around it, “I’m fine. Woke up a little wrong, that’s all.”

Spencer sits in the seat next to you with a soft smile. “Good. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”

Oh, no, you think, reading way too much into how he says it. No, no, no.

—

ii facts

We should explore the city, Spencer declares after breakfast, before we forget what it’s like to be outside!

You were outside yesterday before you got home, and everything sucked as much as it usually did —it’s the weekend, and the point of it is to stay home resting and or lazing, but you wouldn’t usually say no to Spencer so you can’t now. He can’t ever know about your dream, so he can’t know how you’re feeling, so you have to be the friends you’ve always been.

Spencer analyses people for a reason, but you have practice. You’ve successfully hidden what it was that morning that made you feel cagey and tender. He knows something is wrong regardless. He attempts to fix it the best way he knows how: Spencer talks.

“Cheese production globally outshadows coffee, tea, tobacco, and chocolate, over twenty two million metric tons of it every year, with almost half of that made in Europe alone, which is only a half million metric ton more than what’s being eaten. The average American eats forty two pounds of cheese a year, but I don’t really like cheese that much? So I’m bringing the average down. Besides, every time I eat cheese I get strange dreams. There’s actually a chemical in cheese called tyramine which is linked to nightmares. Hey, you okay?”

“Cheese gives you weird dreams?”

“Why, have you been eating a lot of it lately?”

“No,” you say resolutely. “I hate cheese. I’ve never eaten cheese before.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Let’s get donuts.”

Spencer is easily swayed. You glance around the square for the McDonald’s and follow that to the street with the bakery, landmark to landmark, until the smell of sugar and oil is strong enough to follow. “Do you wanna know something about donuts?” he asks, crushing in behind you as you pass through the heavy wooden door of the bakery and join the line.

“Sure.”

“They were first called oily cakes.”

“I knew that,” you say, “you’ve told me that, Spencer. That’s the first fact anybody thinks of.”

“Okay, don’t be rude,” he says, giving you a playful poke in the ribs, right into the bruise that isn’t a bruise.

You look over your shoulder at him, catching his eye. You share a long look that’s daunted on your part and confused on his, brown eyelashes tangling in the corners the longer he looks at you. “What?” he asks, squinting.

”Nothing.”

“Okay,” he says, his voice lowering, quiet to match the hush of the bakery and its humming fridges, “don’t tell me. I’ll work it out eventually.”

“Dude!”

“What?” he asks with a laugh.

“Boundaries!” you laugh back. “Stop trying to figure me out.”

“But there’s something to figure out?”

He’s evil when he smiles like that. His pride is adorable, giving his sweet face an even fresher look. You’d pinch his cheeks if they weren’t already pinking in the October cold. His scarf hasn’t saved him, his coat buttoned tightly no match for the winds. Not to say it’s a bad day. The weather is fine if you keep your fingers in your pockets and your nose in the depths of your coat.

“What do we want?” you ask rather than answer.

They have white icing, chocolate with sprinkles, jelly middles, smiley faces. They have donut holes by the bag. “Hazelnut spread,” you say, pointing at the side of the case. “That looks good.”

He enters in conspiratorial whispers with you. “Apple cider doughnuts with cinnamon sugar,” he says, pointing at the row below. “What about a double chocolate chunk cookie? They look good. Hey, there’s cake in the fridge.”

You let him lean into your side. His hair kisses your cheek.

“Pick whatever you want, okay?” he asks, offering a smaller smile than before. “I’m buying.”

“You can’t, Spencer Reid, I want so many things.”

“It’s fine, I missed you, I dragged you out when you wanted to stay in bed.” He stares at you. “Let me,” he mouths.

You ignore the hot twist of your stomach and nod. Okay.

Spencer buys the baked goods you’d admitted to wanting and the three others you’d eyed, as well as a cookie and two fat slices of red velvet cake. He asks you to carry the box while he pays. The woman behind the counter gives you a knowing look and a flick of her head, as if to say, Lucky you. You can’t quite smile back, distracted by the insinuation. You haven’t thought of it before, but you and Spencer, naturally, look like a couple. You could easily be one. And the idea that she thinks so fills you with a shocking amount of smugness.

You and Spencer head home before dinner. On the walk back, he pulls the cookie apart and offers you half.

—

What if, when you fall asleep tonight, you dream of Spencer again?

You lay on your back with your hand on your chest, drawing circles. The cold of the evening is explained by the rain lashing your window, distant winds coming forceful now. A thunderstorm. You tap the middle of your chest in an attempt to be idle, rather than restless.

It isn’t a dream you’d like to have again, you decide. Spencer had been soft. You’d been familiar with each other.

What would it really feel like to have him touch you like that? Is Spencer confident, when he’s comfortable? Is he imposing?

My stomach, you think slowly, is never going to stop spinning.

“Y/N?” Spencer asks.

You can hear him all the way from the kitchen.

“Yeah?” you ask, raising your voice so it carries.

“Can I come and sit with you?”

It’s an odd request. You know Spencer’s like you, no social butterfly, quiet and content to spend time by oneself because being with others hasn’t always been an option. He isn’t timid, however, and his asking shouldn’t shock you, but it does. “Sure,” you say, shifting onto one side of the bed.

Spencer arrives at the ajar door and lets himself in. He carries two bottles of water and a heat pack, which he likes to use when the weather allows it. A creature comfort, you assume. Something soothing and constant, like the sound of a fan at night, or rain on a window.

“I can’t sleep,” he says, “which doesn’t make much sense.” Spencer sits on the empty side of the bed, his lips pulled into a grimace. “I like the rain.”

He’s more handsome when he’s smiling, but there’s a charm to him as he passes you a bottle of water and crosses his legs. The plaid slacks he’s wearing are rough with age, dark blues that seem black in the low lighting.

“Maybe it’s because of work,” you say.

“Maybe, but I’m pretty used to getting woken up.”

“Right. It’s not easy, though, the stuff you do. It would keep me up at night if I did your job.”

“I think sometimes doing my job is the only reason I can sleep.”

“It's hard. Sounds hard, Spence.” You relax into your pillow, turning to see him. Spencer’s eyes run along your hip for a millisecond, just long enough to remind you that he’s a boy, that he could see you in a different light.

“It’s okay,” he says.

“Was it hard, this time?” you ask.

“No,” he whispers. “I don’t know, it was bad when Emily got hurt, but she’s so stubborn. If Morgan didn’t strap her down she would’ve kept going like nothing happened.”

You and Spencer have lived together for so long that you remember a time before he even knew Emily. You answered his ad in the paper —you hadn’t realised people still put ads in the paper— looking for a roommate. His apartment was already furnished and he didn’t want to change much, but the second bedroom was spacious and the bathroom could be monopolised. As a girl, you’d been a little dubious reading about a single male looking for any gender, but his self-description was inviting. Twenty-two, just finished a doctorate, working for the FBI and expected to be away from the state at least once a month.

You’d met Spencer and felt even less intimidated. He was awkward and dorky but friendly, too, with his glasses he apparently didn’t want to wear, but would eventually give in (before choosing contacts), and his big red sweater fit for a grandpa. “I can make more room for you but I can’t get rid of the books,” he said, “so I don’t expect you to pay a neat half.”

How could you pass it up?

“I can’t believe I’ve never met them,” you say.

“Do you want to?”

He sounds so surprised. “They’re your friends. I’m your… friend.”

“You’re my best friend. I’ll arrange something, or try to. It’s hard to get us all in one room when that room isn’t the conference room,” he says.

“You look nice in a t-shirt,” you say, not thinking as the words come out.

Spencer leans in to whisper, “Thanks. You like this one?”

His t-shirt says, I may be NErDy, but only periodically. The NErDy is made up of elements from the periodic table. It’s a bad pun.

“I love it.”

He reaches for you. Tentative, he squeezes your elbow. “Is there something wrong? All day it’s like… I don’t know, did something happen when I was gone?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But…”

“Please,” you say, as he catches the last bit of light from the hallway, every eyelash illuminated for the counting. “I don’t wanna talk about it, Spencer. But thank you.”

He, in a move that’s almost uncharacteristic, pushes your arm into the mattress and leans over you. “I wanna be the first one to know when you do wanna talk,” he says firmly, holding your gaze.

How’s your bruise?

You nod mechanically. Spencer recedes. “Okay, good,” he says, grinning.

“Good,” you echo, thinking of Spencer in the dream, his hand on your hip and climbing up your sore ribs. “Let’s watch TV.”

—

iii. scared of snow

“You’re being weird.”

“I’m not,” you refute.

“You are.”

Spencer frowns at you, a show full downturn of the lips. A dusting of snow lands in his hair and you both look up to catch it, a drift of it from the marquee as you pass. You don’t remember when it started snowing, but it feels like it’s been coming down for days. It’s in his eyelashes. Your sleeves are wet with it.

“The snow’s making you strange.”

You hold out your hand with fingers parted, feeling his laugh travelling down his arm and into yours as he takes it, intertwining your fingers tightly. He doesn’t feel cold.

“It’s making you strange,” you mumble.

You and Spencer walk down a cobbled road. Snow crunches under your shoes, turned to slush in the high traffic spots by vendors booths left curiously empty of shopkeepers, though their festive wares still line the insides, carved cuckoo birds and metal ornaments, glass balls made to be personalised for mantles. You can smell orange oil and chocolate fudge, crepe carts and churros and cinnamon, and then suddenly any hint of your olfactory sense is gone.

“It’s so quiet.”

“It’s the snow,” he says, pulling your arm against his chest as you walk and walk, your footsteps the only sound. “It acts as a sound absorber when it’s fluffy like this. The sound waves get caught.”

Caught. You think, or say, not sure if it makes it out of your mouth.

“Like you,” he says, stopping in the middle of the road.

“What?” you ask.

Snow lands in his eyelashes. “You’re caught,” he says.

You wake up thinking his hand is on your cheek. Like a nightmare, you start, still picturing his lips moving around the words. Caught, you think again, heart a hummingbird in your chest. Your mouth is dry. The heat is up —Spencer must be home again.

You suck in a deep breath and sit up, curling over yourself protectively.

You dream about Spencer more often than ever, and half the time they’re normal dreams, which is to say, they follow no rhyme or reason, with no discernible plot. Spencer loses all his teeth, or he takes you to the movies to see one of his long Swedish films, or he’s an afterthought, a bystander. The main plot of your dream doesn’t involve him at all.

But the other half of the time is ruining your life. You dream of Spencer holding your hand like you had been, or touching your shoulder. Never again do you dream of that tender bruise, but Spencer lifts your shirt in other scenarios. He pulls your pyjamas off, his hand inching between your legs but never touching, or he helps you out of your bra. And every time you think, why is this happening to me? Perhaps a sex dream could be explained away by want and Spencer’s proximity, but all these constant intimacies weigh heavy in your head.

You head to the shower and picture Spencer helping you out of your bra, and all of you goes hot, so you turn the water to lukewarm and stand until you’re cold to the point of misery. You clamber out and shiver into a towel, then your robe.

Spencer’s humming in the kitchen.

You honestly wish that the dreams made you like him less, that the sound of him might send you running back into your room, but you poke your head out of the bathroom and wait until he enters the living room. He sees you waiting, his face splitting into a smile. “Hey, good morning, did you sleep better?”

You can’t explain the discombobulation of your dreams. Spencer had become convinced you have insomnia. You may have let him assume.

“Slept fine,” you croak.

“Okay, well get dressed and I’ll make you some coffee.”

“‘Kay.” Your stomach pangs with nerves seeing him, reminded of tonight’s big event. “Are we still, uh, on, for tonight?”

“Nervous?” he asks.

You feel like you're about to be a fish in a pool of sharks. “Of course not.”

“Yeah, still on, even JJ.”

Awesome. Spencer turns around to make you your cup of coffee and you go to your room, dressing quickly, two pairs of socks. You tone your face and moisturise, fanning yourself slowly. You don’t hurry to the living room, but you aren’t slow, and it’s not Spencer, you tell yourself. Not Spencer. You’re just craving the warmth of a cup of coffee.

You spend the morning together on the couch. Spencer reads and occasionally chats to you about whatever tome it is that specific half an hour. You make sandwiches at lunch time, he showers in the early evening. You get dressed and primped while he’s gone, and at 6PM, Spencer knocks your bedroom door to ask if you’re ready to go.

“Could I fake an illness?” you joke nervously.

Spencer’s hand falls on your handle. The door is ajar as usual, but he doesn’t tread any further inside.

“Come in,” you say.

Spencer takes a single step inside before stopping. He looks you up and down without the hunger you crave from him, a more clement, familiar appreciation to him as he says, “You look pretty.” He traces your arm, leaving the skin tingly in his wake. “Really pretty.”

“Thank you. I didn’t want to overdress.”

“It’s perfect, don’t worry. And no, you couldn’t fake an illness. They all know when I’m lying, especially Hotch. And Emily, actually.”

You squeeze your hands together tightly at your stomach. “I don’t know why I’m sooo nervous.” You lick your lips. “I feel like I can’t stop fidgeting.”

“They’re used to it, I promise. They know that they’re gonna make you nervous, but they’ve sworn to be on their best behaviour, and besides, you’re not the only plus one. JJ’s bringing Will, and Morgan’s bringing his sister, I’ve only met her once. The focus won’t be all on you.” He lowers his voice. “After two drinks they forget they’re supposed to be scary.”

“What if I say something extremely stupid to your boss and get you in trouble?”

“What are you going to get me in trouble for?”

“I don’t know. What if I accidentally tell him that that sick day you took a few weeks ago was to help me make brownies?”

“Everyone lies about sick days.” He deliberates. “Maybe not Hotch. But I’m pretty sure he knew I was lying, and it’s explainable. I felt… irate.”

You raise your eyebrows. “What?”

“Staying home with you made me feel better. Which made me a better worker the next day, it’s fine.” His phone rings from somewhere in the apartment. “That’ll be JJ. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” He grins. “Okay. You’re wearing a coat, right? It’s cold. The forecast says snow. It’s thirty degrees out.”

You layer a coat onto your jacket and a scarf to make him happy. You and Spencer get a taxi, black leather gritless under your hands, though you squeeze the seat like it’s gonna stop the car the whole time. Spencer doesn’t talk much, but he looks at you unapologetically, and he smiles, and the quiet is as severe as it was in your dream that morning. If this were a dream he’d be leaning over to cradle your ear. He’d ask in whispers if you were alright, and he’d let his hand rest kindly on your knee.

“What?” you whisper.

His lips part like he might answer. The car comes to a crunching stop outside the bar, and whatever it was he was going to say is kept for later. “I’ll tell you after,” he says.

He pays for the taxi before you can work it out and you say thank you to the driver. The sidewalk is clean, broad, and glowing with the last bit of light. The sun sets behind you. The bar beckons in front.

Your fear is daunting.

You have years of practice fooling Spencer. You know that he knows your tells, so you’ve changed them, and Spencer cares about you enough to ignore obvious truths if he thinks you might not want to share. His colleagues, FBI agents trained to detect deception, are going to take one good look at you and know you’re lying about… this.

You’re plagued by dreams of Spencer, but nothing can touch the real thing.

You feel the space between you like it’s aflame. Spencer checks you’re with him and opens the door.

The bar is busy even for a Saturday. You aren’t expecting the volume, the boisterousness of the patrons already slumped together over tables and waiting at the bar to get their drinks. It’s smaller than you’d pictured too, but its size is made up for with a patio at the back, smokers haunting the door, wary of the cold.

You know what his friends look like already, yet seeing them in person is odd. Hotch is taller than you’d thought, Emily more startlingly pretty. JJ’s frowning, and her partner Will looks like he’s about to fall asleep despite a lazy grin.

Hotch notices you first. He taps Emily on the elbow, who pauses in a thought to follow his gaze. Her face breaks into a smile, and if you weren’t in love with Spencer Reid, you might take a tumble for his pale coworker.

“Hello,” Spencer says, ushering you to the table with an arm behind your back.

“Hi,” you say.

“He-llo,” Emily says, leaning into the table, a strand of her hair dangerously close to a short glass of juice. “I can’t believe we’re finally seeing you in person. I’m Emily.”

“Y/N,” you say.

“Aaron,” Hotch adds. (Aaron! He’s far more intimidating casually than as a boss, it seems.)

“Derek was just here,” JJ says in way of greeting, while Will drawls from over her shoulder, “I’m Will, it’s nice to meet you.”

Spencer pulls out a chair for you and promptly sits in the one beside Emily. “Sorry we’re late. I forgot my wallet and we had to go back up to the apartment and the cab I called got so angry about it that he left.”

You slide between the table and your chair, looking to Spencer for guidance, but he’s distracted taking his coat off and you have to look at Aaron instead.

His smile is immediately knowing. Read for filth in seconds. “We don't bite.”

“Not so early in the evening,” Emily says.

You take a shuddering breath, thankful they can’t hear it over the sounds of the bar.

—

“I’m caught!” you exclaim.

Spencer hugs you under the arms. “I know,” he says gently.

“Caught!”

He holds back a laugh as your arms react, practically flung behind his head in a hug that threatens to cut off the oxygen supply to his brain. “I think you’ve caught me, instead,” he says.

You laugh in his ear. There’s gin on your breath and the sweeter smell of orange juice. It’s not bad, but weird to know it’s from your mouth. Or not weird. It gives Spencer a feeling like seeing the soft curve of your hip when you’re lying on your side. Like watching you bite your bottom lip when you’re distracted by the TV and worrying to yourself, which you do more often than not lately. They’re private things that Spencer shouldn’t know about.

“I’m not trying to,” you say, and Spencer can smell the shot of vodka you did too, which is less pleasant. “Not trying to catch you. Not… I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

Over your shoulder, Spencer spots Hotch’s entertained gaze. All the team has done since you sat down together was pick on Spencer and his obviousness. Boyfriend? they’d asked you. Looking? Sights set on someone? All while JJ nudged him under the table.

Things are falling apart now. JJ’d departed to hold Emily’s hair back, and Will with her. Hotch caught the eye of a woman across the way, and they sit chatting amicably at the bar with more peanuts than drinks. Derek, when he did appear, stayed for an hour with Desiree, recounting to you his most embarrassing stories of which Spencer had taken care to shield you from, and laughed at his subsequent blush.

He never wanted you to know about his run in with anthrax, and he especially didn’t want you to know he’d been stripped nude afterwards and hosed off like a muddy dog.

You’d turned to him with wide, worried eyes. “You were poisoned?” you’d asked.

It’s stuff like that that makes this difficult.

“I don’t know if you know this,” he says now, rubbing your back, “but I’m good with difficult concepts.”

“I did not mean to be like this.”

“You didn’t eat much.” Spencer helps you stand on your own two feet. “They kitchen’s still open. I can get you food, how about a burger? Or we can go find you something.“

“What kind of burger?” you ask, poorly concealing your excitement.

Spencer gets you back to the table. “I’ll be right back.”

“Wait, don’t go.”

“I’m gonna get food. Do you want fries?”

“Spencer, what if I throw up?”

Spencer shrugs. “I can rub your back?”

“I don’t want to throw up.”

“Then drink that,” he says, sliding his glass of coke toward you. “Alcohol irritates the lining of your stomach and increases the production of stomach acid. If you drink,” —he flinches as you knock the cup back— “slowly you can dilute your stomach contents without upsetting it. Slowly,” he says, squeezing your hand, “I’ll order food.”

“No, wait.” You drop the glass and grab him. “Please don’t go. I don’t want to throw up by myself.”

“You won’t throw up.”

“Please,” you say, holding his wrist in both hands, your eyes shiny. “Spencer, don’t go.”

“I won’t.” He doesn’t know how true it is and then suddenly he’s sat down. He won’t go. He wouldn’t leave your side ever again if that’s what you asked of him.

He puts your chairs together, entertaining your tipsy thoughts with light conversation and the occasional slight of hand. You have an aura about you, like Spencer’s doing more than close-up magic, hanging on his every word. Your nervousness had you gasping like a fish, not so subtly downing one drink, then another, but now that you’re feeling the effects of them (and a few extras), the tightness you’d held in your fingers is gone. You’re leaning against the back of the chair with all the ease of you on the couch at home, but the easy fondness you’d usually wear while he speaks is replaced by a bright and shining awe. A sweetness like he’s remarkable. The soft line of your lips and your widened eyes.

You’re not the sort of drunk that leaves you listless and ready for bed. This is giggly and fun, and so long as you don’t push it you’ll be alright. It wasn’t enough alcohol to leave you inebriated all night, anyhow. In a few hours the giddiness will wear away, leaving you with a headache and a deep longing for your missed dinner.

“I’m glad you didn’t let me fake food poisoning,” you say.

“Is that what you were thinking? That’s a terrible excuse. You need something with sudden onset symptoms, like an asthma attack, or pneumonia. An acute illness.”

You take his hand. “I love that you know that stuff.”

Feeling as in love with you as ever, and sorry for you drunken state —he could’ve stopped you, he just didn’t think— he folds your hands together, both of his, rubbing the hills of your knuckles with his thumb. Your hands look right together.

That’s what Spencer likes to think, anyway.

You slow like you’re tired, hand lax in his grips. Your mouth opens but nothing follows, no sigh or gripe or conversation.

“You okay?” he asks softly.

“I think I’m having one of those dreams again.”

“You’re awake,” he says.

“I don’t know about that. They’re all like this.”

He hums, smoothing his thumb down the back of your hand. “If this were a dream, you wouldn't have control over what you’re doing. Why don’t you do something you wouldn’t do in a dream?”

“Like what?” you ask.

“There’s a ton of stuff you can’t do in dreams. People find they have a poor memory, but I can’t ask you to recall anything. You might not remember regardless. How about temperature?” he suggests. “Most people can’t feel warm or cold in their dreams. Do you want to feel something cold?”

You watch him for a few seconds, your eyebrows pulled together unhappily. “Your hands are warm,” you say.

“Right.” He suspects they’ll feel warmer in just a few seconds when the hot flush in his face manages to work its way down. “I’m warm. So are you.”

“Sometimes I feel like you’re warm in the dream, though. You make me feel warm.”

“It’s remembered, maybe.”

You don’t look any happier. “Sometimes I wish I could stop having them, but…” You duck your head. “Sorry, Spencer.”

“What are you sorry for?”

Your head ducks lower. With a start to his chest, your shoulders shake, like you're inhaling the first half of a sob.

“Hey, hey,” he says, reaching for your cheek, ducking his own head to see you, “what’s wrong? It’s okay, you don’t have anything to be sorry for!” he whispers emphatically. “You have nothing to be sorry for, why would you think that?”

“I keep having these dreams, all the time, and– and I– I’ll mess everything up. Everything we have, I’m going to–” You hiccup, eyes turned glassy, imploring him to forgive you for something you haven’t done. “I don’t feel good.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” he says, his hand sliding back to your ear, down to your neck, “you’re just drunk. You’re confused.”

“But the dreams–”

“What dreams?” he asks gently.

You blow out a daunted breath. “Where you love me.”

“I do love you.”

“But more than this. You love me more than this,” you say, shaking your head. “I really don’t feel okay… Do you think we could go home?”

You’re so sorry and frowny that Spencer would attempt, in all his unfitness, to climb Mount Everest for you should you ask. “Yeah, we can go home,” he says, rubbing your arm up and down and up again, a line of affection from shoulder to wrist. “I’ll take you home. It’s okay, Y/N. You don’t have to be upset, I shouldn’t have asked.”

He’s not sure what he asked, really, but the answer upset you. His heart’s racing like he just sprinted the length of the bar and you’re close to tears, this strange weepy sullenness about you as you say, “It’s okay. Let’s just go.”

—

It’s cold to be sitting out by yourself, though the snow stayed its hand another night while the temperature fell again. Your coat poses a weak defence against the chill, nipping at your nose, burning the insides of every breath, and your feet are stiff like ice in your shoes. Yet, the idea of returning to the apartment is a leaden stone in your stomach.

Spencer could barely look at you that morning. You hadn’t given him much of a chance, slipping out of the apartment with little more than a call to say you’d be back later. Your groceries freeze in a paper bag by your feet.

You’re not too embarrassed about getting tipsy. It was drinks with Spencer and his friends, not dinner. Emily had been twice as drunk, and Derek had encouraged you to drink with a round on him. You’re mortified, however, by what you’d said. Your memory is clear enough to know you’d told Spencer about your dreams.

He’d been confused at the time, but he’s a smart boy. He’ll figure it out.

“This headache,” you mumble, tipping your head into your hand morosely. You rub your brow, fingers against the ache, the cold getting worse.

Why did it take a dream for you to realise you had feelings for Spencer? And why did you have to realise at all? If you’d never had that dream, never had that phantom bruise, his hands careful and caring and touching up to the band of your bra, you wouldn’t know now what it is to want him. The dream gave you a bruise, and Spencer presses against it real or otherwise every time he looks at you. You were wrong thinking that it never happened; it’s still there, a purple lash against your ribs.

Every time he makes you breakfast, or he texts you from a different state, or he sits down on the couch just to talk to you. Every time he says something smart, or he tilts his head back as he laughs, or he draws a smiley face on the mirror by the door–

“About those dreams?”

You rub your eyes hard. Of course he’d come to find you. “Please don’t.”

“Please,” he says. You see him through your fingers. His thick scarf is unravelled at his neck, his hair ragged around his face like he’s been raking it repeatedly behind his ears.

You straighten.

“I don’t get it,” he says, “you’ve been dreaming about me? Why is that such a big deal?”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“I dream about you all the time,” he says. “We’re in each other's lives, we live together, it makes sense that your hippocampus would use me. You have a lot of memories with me.” Spencer crosses his arms in front of you. “It’s freezing.”

“I’ll be home in a bit.”

“I’m not gonna go back without you,” he says, like that’s a given.

You move across the bench to make room for him. Spencer sits.

You settle. The occasional bus trundles past, a limited rota for an early Sunday morning. Spencer shoves his hands into his pockets. His lips are already turning blue.

“I know you know what I mean,” you say.

Spencer presses his knees together. “Even romantic dreams where I’m… where we’re together, it’s all easily explained away by brain science. You can’t control what you dream, and I’m not going to hold you to it.”

Silence, silence. You tip your head back to see a horrible grey cloud closing in on you both, the sun a white and gauzy memory behind it. Spencer’s right about control, but he doesn’t get that you like them. It’s not fair to him that you’ve somehow rallied a second life when you’re sleeping, where he’s your mind’s puppet, hugging and holding you, pressing his cheek to the side of your face. Saying things you wish he’d tell you now.

“Well, I like you.”

“What?” you ask, coughing.

“Not to make things awkward or anything, but I like you. Romantically.” Spencer’s voice takes a sharp veer into high-pitched freneticism. “Does that help at all?”

“What?”

“It’s far more embarrassing that I like you on purpose than your accidental dreams, right?” He thumbs at the inside of his wrist. “You don’t have to say anything, or think anything, and I’m not going to change, but I have feelings for you.”

You feel like you’re standing at the top of a very tall building. “Oh?”

“I kind of thought you knew.”

“How could I know that?” you ask, cringing as a cold gust of air bites at your face.

Spencer takes his scarf off and pushes it into your hands. “I don’t know. I guess we know less about each other than we thought.”

The way he says it.

Spencer wraps his scarf around you when it’s clear you aren’t going to do it yourself, and he touches your cheek briefly, a brush of his fingers like he thinks he’s doing something he shouldn’t be allowed to.

“I dream about you all the time,” he says quietly.

A bus passes by and shines headlights at your feet. The wind blows, your ears roar, and just above you, in a cold front to mark the season, snow begins to fall.

You look up simultaneously. A snowflake gets caught in Spencer’s eyelashes.

Just one.

“This is so weird,” you mumble.

Spencer wipes at his eye. “Could you tell me why?”

“I had a dream just like this.”

He laughs warmly. “Of course you did. Forget all reason, then. You’re prophetic.”

“I don’t think I could’ve predicted this.”

“Why? It’s only snow. Virginia gets an inch of snow most Decembers.”

You laugh. In a dream, this is where you and Spencer would kiss or hold hands, or rest your cheek on the other’s shoulder, but neither of you are brave enough. And, as the snow turns to a sleet below freezing, you can’t ignore the cold.

—

iv. the end

The longest anyone has ever slept in recorded human history is eleven days. Two hundred and sixty four hours, or nearly sixteen thousand minutes, just shy of one million seconds of sleep.

The first pillow was invented in Mesopotamia more than nine thousand years ago, in a time where the amount of pillows a person had directly correlated their personal riches. The history of pillows is tumultuous and eclectic. Headrests made of wood, stone, or jade. Curved neck holders worn soft with use.

And, of all Spencer’s gifted facts, you find yourself circling back to the same one as you wait for him to wake: most dreams are no longer than twenty minutes. However, it’s important to note that the longest dream ever officially observed was in 1994, when a man managed to be in REM for just over three hours. You’ve had dreams that felt like they lasted for hours, but likely took place for just twenty minutes. If you could dream for three hours a night, you could live an entire life of longing in a pocket of time.

Thankfully, you have no need to hide from reality anymore. Spencer sleeps beside you and you don’t want to sleep, you just want him to wake up.

“Good morning,” you whisper, drawing your fingertip across his cheek to encourage the hair that’s fallen there back in line.

He doesn’t stir. It’s alright, you hadn’t meant to wake him.

“I love you,” you whisper, shuffling across the sheets to feel the heat and weight of his body against your own. He doesn’t move for a while, snoring gently, his breath kissing the top of your head as you burrow into the slip of space under his chin. Then, as if he were awake, he wraps his arm around you and drags you in further. His face angles down and his nose finds your forehead, and a hum of what you’d personally say is content kisses your brow.

You tuck your hand behind his back and rub a circle.

Spencer didn’t last long after the initial realisation of requited feelings. In a day he’d asked if you wanted to be his girlfriend (vaguely apologetic, still worried about scaring you, though you’d already come clean about wanting him as you’d warmed your cold hands by the stove). A week later he kissed you on a date outside of the cosiest Indian restaurant in Washington, D.C, and things have been nothing but smooth sailing from there.

Now, when he’s feeling romantic, he brings home butter chicken and turns your face up for kissing, fork in hand. Every night before bed, he tells you to have good dreams, a self-satisfaction in his eyes that you dearly love.

You knew he was a dork and you liked him because of it, but the sheer increase in him is amazing. Yesterday he sent you Close to You by Carpenters over text claiming they wrote it about you. When he got home, he tried to make you dance with him in the living room. After two or three kisses, you’d let him pull you to your feet.

Spencer has turned loving one another into an everyday spectacularity, and not some mystical dream you ached for.

He squeezes the skin of your shoulder as he wakes. Heavy in the hands of sleep, Spencer rubs the tip of his nose to yours, nudging your face up, and waiting there with your lips a few millimetres apart as he finds his bearings. You don’t open your eyes. There’s no need.

“Time?” he mumbles.

“I don’t,” —you clear your hoarse voice, his hand flattening protectively behind you— “know, um. Maybe seven. The sun was rising…”

“You could have woken me up,” he says, and kisses you slowly. It’s almost gluttonous, how he does it. Not chaste at all. His hair falls into your face and tickles your cheeks, his nose smushes your own with his easy depth.

You hold his face and kiss him twice, following a line under his chin, where you pause, smelling yesterday's cologne on his skin. “I was hoping I’d fall asleep again,” you confess.

“Oh, no, don’t do that.” He scoops you against him and turns onto his back as you laugh. “Angel. Let’s stay up now. Let’s just… stay here.”

If you stay here he’s going to waylay you with a smattering of his voracious kisses, and he’s going to turn you on your back and kiss your neck. He’ll touch that place on your ribs where you’d once dreamt a bruise. It’s a secret you couldn’t keep. He likes to kiss you there when he remembers, but most of the time his hands run along it without mention. A slow caressing.

You push your face against his shoulder and sigh as his arms close in around you. With a little effort, you get your arms around him in turn, and you hug him for as long as you can stand the pins and needles in your fingers.

“You smell so good,” you mumble.

He pats your back absentmindedly.

Today, you’re going to make Spencer oatmeal with banana and chocolate. You’re going to shower, maybe together if the small space can handle it, laughing at the soap in his eyebrows and the way he squeals when you touch his hips. You’re going to drape yourself across his lap as he reads, and he’ll lean down to kiss the tip of your nose or some other strange part of you unused to affection. The top of your ear, the palm of your hand, maybe the crook of your elbow. He’ll ramble through dinner or creep up behind you to sniff your shoulder, and it’ll all be choices you’ve made. Nothing left to want or wanting, but being in love while wide awake.

“Are you tired?” you ask him.

He takes a deep breath of your hair. “No,” he says, drawing a light line up your side, “I’m okay. There are worse faces to wake up to.”

You try not to fluster noticeably. He’s always been a good roommate. You’re still getting used to the boyfriend part, the intimacy of being complimented, but Spencer seems to have slipped into the part easily.

“Sorry, that was mean. There’s nothing I’d rather wake up to.”

“Thanks,” you mumble.

You’re tired, suddenly. The minutes pass in heavy blinks —you don’t want to sleep now that he’s awake, but being here with him is warming you from the inside out. You doze and wake and Spencer doesn’t say a word. His breaths come evenly against your cheek.

Eventually, he clears his throat, asksing, “Did you dream at all?” His voice is hewn. He rubs your chest, right over your heart.

”I’m not so sure that this isn’t one,” you say, your heartbeat a crawl under his touch.

“That’s corny.”

“Mm, the Spencer in my dreams is usually kinder.”

“Does he ever get to hold you like this?” he asks, letting his hand fall from your chest to wrap it back around you again.

You take a sleepy breath in. “No,” you say slowly, “he doesn’t.”

｡𖦹°‧⭑.

thank youuuu for reading!! please like comment or reblog if you enjoyed!! thank you❤️

this fic was requested! I usually link to the request I was sent at the top, but I lost the post for this one, but this is what the request said:

“hi angel! i have a request for roommate!spencer where r has a very romantic dream about him and starts avoiding him because she's really embarrassed but spencer is so confused as to why his roommate suddenly can't even look him in the eye. maybe one of them realizes their feelings aren't entirely platonic in the end? love you!!!”

thank you original requester!

#just imagine a deep guttural sigh #that’s me reading this #I love and love and love and love and love

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