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appledressing · 9 months ago

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i hated this. i mean i loved this, but i hated it because it didn’t happen for me :( how can you like me, then when i start too, tell me i’m too weird. why can’t i have a bombshell!reader assure me of my weirdness being just fine

😭

anyway! they should kisss

𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 | 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐝

Spencer calls you drunk and in need of rescue. You confess a few secrets to him while he won’t remember them (or so you think). 3k, fem

cw drunk!spencer, mentioned past drug use, confident/bombshell!reader, flirting, spencer getting some well deserved comfort, a handful of his drunken compliments, insecurity, intense mutual pining

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

You’re blissfully sleeping in the arms of a REM cycle when your phone rings. It pulls you by the chest, a punch of shock and expectancy at once. It’ll be someone calling you into work, Hotch himself if you’re lucky.

You search blindly for your phone. If you’re even luckier, it’ll be a wrong number. Your fingers curl around the little body of your phone and you bring it to your ear without checking the number, frazzled. “Hello?” you ask hoarsely.

Total quiet.

“Hello?” You pull the screen away. The caller reads: SPENCER. You pull it back rather than hang up. “Hey, Spencer. Are you there?”

“Hello.” He laughs. “Hello, are you there?”

“I’m here, Spencer, where are you?”

“That’s an interesting question, actually, and I’m sure there’s a great answer, but…”

“But what?” You sit up quickly, your throat aching with sleep. Your room is black as coal pitch. “Spencer, what time is it, my love?”

“You shouldn’t call me stuff like that.”

“Stop being weird and tell me where you are.”

He laughs like a hyena. You can see it in your mind, his smile and all his pearly perfect teeth. You love it when he smiles like that and he rarely ever does. “I’m somewhere and I need your help getting home!” he says with another funny laugh.

“Are you alright? You sound…” He sounds inebriated.

Spencer struggled with his drug problem for so long before you found out. You just hadn’t been around enough, and when you were he’d gotten good at hiding it. You can still remember how furious you’d been with everyone, including him, because you could’ve helped, would’ve done anything to support him through it. If he’s hurting now and hasn’t told you, you love him, but you’ll be insanely angry.

“Spencer?” you ask quietly.

“I went for drinks with a girl but she didn’t like me and I may have drowned my sorrows too much,” he admits. “Um. Did you know gin is very strong?”

“Aw, baby. You’re cheating on me?”

“I’m afraid so,” he says, and hiccups.

“Where are you?”

After some hassle wherein you persuade Spencer to give the phone to someone else in the bar for a slightly less drunk interrogation, you dress and gather your bearings for the drive. You zip a hoodie up over your pyjamas, stuff your feet into some old converse, and set out into the dark to find him.

He calls you again as you’re parking. “Hello,” he says as soon as you answered. “I need you to come and get me.”

Spencer called you twice to save him. Even if he doesn’t remember, he’s called you to come and get him when he knows he needs help, and that realisation is hard to ignore. “Spencer, I’m two minutes away, I’m parking. You’re still where you were?”

“Where was I?”

“At the bar, sweetheart. Are you still there?” It’s scarily dark out and you didn’t grab any sort of defensive measure before you came, which you regret now, climbing out of your car to walk the dimly lit road. The bar glows like a beacon to be followed.

“Still where?”

“Did you hit your head?”

“Not to my knowledge. Though I’m not sure I have much right now. I feel like I’m forgetting everything I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot. You know I can read about eighty average length novels in one hour on an e-reader? The buttons make it faster.”

“You haven’t told me that before.” You shiver against the nighttime winds, footsteps heavy on the grey sidewalk.

“I’m trying to be more conversational. Emily says it’s not working.”

“You’re conversational. Isn’t the only condition of being conversational to prompt a conversation? We’re always talking.”

“…What?”

You laugh like crazy. “Spencer, you don’t need to change the way you talk.”

“I annoy people.”

“You don’t annoy me.”

You approach the door of the bar, a ramshackle sheet of plywood over what looks to be a glass door. The bar building seems in similar dessaray, with modern features wrecked by scratches and smashed panes. It’s a real dive. Spencer couldn’t have meant to come here.

You war with both hands to open the door and find yourself faced with a long and empty corridor leading to another door. Worried you’re going to get kidnapped, you bring the phone back to your ear, Spencer’s chatting an immediate greeting. “…telling me I’m doing something wrong without telling me what it is, it’s impossible.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, can you come to the door?”

“I don’t think I have control of my legs,” he says without inflection.

“It’s definitely the building with the smashed door?”

“Yesssss. Are you here?” he asks excitedly.

“I better not get murdered, Spencer Reid.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“How are you even keeping the phone to your ear right now?”

“I’m on speaker phone. Milly showed me how to do it. Say hi, Milly.”

“Hi Milly,” a new voice says.

You rub your eyes with one hand and square your shoulders, prepared to defend yourself if the creepy door leads to a creepier room.

Spencer is immediately visible from the get go. You open the door on to a rather cosy looking bar, which you’re thinking might be the whole point; wretched exterior, secret attraction. Warm orange light ebbs into the space from sconces and a faux fireplace, while a wrestling match playing from the small TV behind the bar casts brighter light down onto Spencer’s shoulders. He looks out of place, dressed in a white oxford shirt and a suit jacket, his tie loosened and hanging from either side of his neck, compared to the lingering patrons who sit dotted around the room in booths and on barstools. One such patron sits in a plaid shirt and a trucker hat, her hair to her back, thick and dark.

You hang up the call and put your phone in your pocket. Spencer gasps like he’s been smacked and picks his own phone up from the bar, clicking at buttons with clumsy fingers. “No,” he hums sadly.

“Spencer,” you say, not wanting to disturb the people spending their sorry-looking night here. “Spencer. Hey, Spence!”

His phone tips between his fingers. The woman you assume to be Milly catches it and offers it back without looking too far from her beer.

“Hey,” you say gently, crossing a wide empty space to meet him. The room itself is shaped like a horseshoe, the bar taking up a surprising amount in the centre, and booths and tables placed around it. Spencer’s off of his barstool as you approach, eyes like puppy dog’s, arms extended. “You okay?” you ask.

You can feel eyes on you both from every angle, but it doesn’t matter, not when Spencer’s falling into your arms (or on to them —he’s surprisingly tall when you aren’t wearing heels). “You alright?” you ask again.

“You don’t have to be worried, I’m fine.”

He’s less coordinated in real life than he’d sounded over the phone, his slurring unmissable, his hands like jumping fish as he tries to hug you. It’s weird and straining to take his weight but you do it without complaint. He smells the same, at least, only his cedary cologne is sharpened by the tang of gin on his breath.

“Thank god you’re here,” he whispers.

“Why?” you ask, pulling away to check for danger.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you too, handsome,” you say, genuine but laying it on thick simultaneously as you ease his head back to cup his cheek. You can’t help yourself. He’s the prettiest man you’ve ever met, and it gets worse every year.

He frowns at you deeply. “I don’t like first dates.”

“Then don’t go on them,” you suggest, “you don’t need to until you’re ready.”

“I’m ready for love,” he says. You pull your lips into a flattened line, unsure of what to say, how to explain that it’s waiting for him, but his chin dips towards his neck and his eyes lock onto your face. “You’re not wearing makeup. God, you’re so pretty.”

You flinch away from him. “Fuck, Spencer.”

“I’m sorry! It’s not that you don’t look pretty with makeup, but I never see you without it!”

You’d forgotten you weren’t wearing any. Makeup isn’t a shield, exactly, but you like putting your best foot forward, so to speak. You’ve no clue what you look like tonight, hadn’t managed to look in the mirror, you’d been focused on getting to Spencer before he got lost. You can imagine the puffiness.

Spencer touches your cheek. You let him turn you mostly because he’s surprised you, his eyes roving up and down your face with a fawning curiosity.

“You’re beautiful. You know that already, but people don’t tell you enough,” he says, his hand falling from your cheek.

“Spencer,” you say softly, “let’s get you home.”

You thank Milly for her help and grab Spencer’s bag from the floor to hang on your shoulder. You’d make a joke about how heavy it was if you didn’t think he’d take it from you, and, considering how drunk he is, topple over from the imbalance it provides. His shirt is clammy where you push your hand through his arm to link them, his footsteps wobbly.

“I didn’t want to go on a date,” he says.

“Then why did you go?” you ask, helping him over the door jam into the long hallway.

“I don’t want to be alone forever.”

“Spencer, you won’t be.” It doesn’t feel like the best time to bring up how much you like him. You’re sure he thinks you’re kidding, doesn’t everybody? Don’t torture him, they say. Don’t toy with him. Every time you flirt with him the team acts like you can’t mean it, and for a while it worked for you; you weren’t in love with Spencer. You weren’t playing with his feelings, but you didn’t love him, and then you joined the team and got to know him, watched him fluster at every comment you made or under any soft looking and realised you could love him. It was easy to fall for him. You liked doing it. But now he’s determined to write your affection off as a joke and going on dates?

In the morning, when he’s sober, you’ll have to tell him how you feel. Or you could let him find someone more like him… ugh. It’s such a mess.

You grapple with the size of your feelings for him as he hums and laughs his way down the hall to the glass door. On the street, he squints and straightens his back, fighting to regain his arm from your hold to cover your shoulder instead. “It’s cold,” he says in surprise. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, I got my jacket. It’s a short walk, come on.”

His arm stops acting as protection and starts to use you for support. “I didn’t mean to drink so much.”

“Drowning your sorrows is always a terrible idea because it tends to work,” you lament, less scared of the dark with him at your hip, though what protection he might offer is negated by the alcohol.

“She kind of looked like you.”

You squeeze your eyes together quickly. “Oh.”

“I didn’t know she was going to. But she didn’t– she didn’t– it’s hard to talk. She didn’t listen like you do,” he says, lightly slurring, “she just stared at me like everyone used to in high school. Like she could tell there’s something wrong with me.”

“Spencer, there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“I know,” he says.

“Do you?”

“Yes.” He frowns. “No, I don’t know. I don’t feel like there’s something wrong with me,” —his voice turns to a nearly indistinguishable mumble— “but everyone else always does.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”

“Is that why you make all your jokes?”

“What jokes, babe?”

“Like that! Like babe. It’s funny ‘cos you’d never date me.”

You’d slow if he weren’t already walking at a snail's pace. “That’s not true. Let’s talk about it in the morning, okay?”

“I won’t remember to ask you in the morning.”

“Spencer, you remember everything.”

He drags his feet. “I wish I wasn’t so weird,” he whines. It’s playful at the forefront but desperate otherwise, and it gives you pause. “I wish I was normal, and you could like me normal.”

You look down at your hands, panicking, a flash of Is this a good idea? like an alarm in your head as you turn on the sidewalk to face him. He’s looking at you like he’s begging you to disagree with him.

You’re happy to.

“Spencer, I like you like this,” you insist loudly. His eyes and all his sweet lashes track the movement of your hand as you touch your chest, and your neck. “You’re not normal, I’m not normal. Do you know how many times I’ve been rejected? Just for being me? I’m too bossy, too outspoken, too– too high maintenance. I've had friends with good intentions tell me I need to lower my standards, need to relax, because otherwise I’m going to end up alone for the rest of my life. I feel alone all the time.”

“But you’re perfect,” he says, puzzled.

“To you. And you’re perfect to me.” Your hand crawls to the base of your throat. “So don’t say you’re weird like it’s ugly, honey. And don’t think I don’t like you, ‘cos I do. You think I’d come and get anybody else in the middle of the night dressed like this?” you ask him, gesturing to your ratty pyjamas and your dingy converse.

“You look so cute,” he says mournfully.

You roll your eyes. He’s too wasted for this conversation. “Come on, sweetheart. You can think about this too much in the morning. Let’s just get home in one piece.” Physically and emotionally.

“Can I come home with you?” he asks.

That had always been the plan. “Ask me nicely and I’ll consider it on the way.”

— —

Spencer shuts his eyes, hands itching to clap over his ears as you scratch the head of a spatula across your frying pan. “Is three eggs too many? People usually have two but that’s never enough for me.”

“I think…” Oh my god the metal screeching is so loud. “You should have as many as you want. You know your body. There’s this study on intuitive eating…” I'm too hungover for this. “Three eggs is better than two.”

“So you want three?”

He cannot eat right now. “Yes. Please.”

Spencer’s half sick with dehydration and half grief. He stayed at your house last night and he was too drunk to be nosy. He slept in your bed. He slept in your bed. He woke up to you at your vanity doing your hair, the nutty smell of hair oil mixed with the heat of the hair tool on high and realised with a start that he’d missed something he thought about all the time.

You’d tipped your head back to smile at him. “There’s my boy. Sweet dreams?”

He didn’t dream, but if he had, it would’ve been another agonising wish where you were his girlfriend, or his wife, or just there looking at him with love. He wakes up feeling sick because it isn’t true. And now you’re making him breakfast, humming a tune under your breath, sourdough sizzling under the grill and a shoddily blended avocado sitting in the bowl in front of him.

You asked him for one thing. He picks up the fork and starts to mash the avocado again. He can’t fight the foreignness of sitting in your kitchen, a gap in his memory.

He knows he told you about his date, how she looked like you, how she didn’t seem to like him much, but he’s struggling to collect the finer details. Why had you picked him up? He must’ve called you, but you could’ve said no. He remembers thinking you looked beautiful, but he always thinks that.

The avocado is making him feel sick.

“Here,” you say, sliding a plate of toast in front of him. “Do you want butter?”

“I think I'm gonna throw up.”

“You’re okay.”

“I can’t believe how I acted,” he says, pressing his palms to the hollows of his eyes.

You turn off the hob. Fat bubbles and pops until it’s cooled. The clock on the wall by the refrigerator ticks incessantly. His slept-in shirt feels too tight despite the undone button.

“Hey…” You round the island but don’t touch him, your voice gentle. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He drags his hands down his face. “I can barely remember what I said.”

“You were really nice to me… told me I looked pretty without my makeup, n’ that I was perfect. You were really nice.”

Your tone is off. No flirtatiousness, no endless confidence, you sound wistful, like you’re glad he said it. You take the bowl of avocado he’s made a mess with and put it aside with the toast, resting your arm on the counter, and leaning into his space. “Spencer, last night? You didn’t do anything to be embarrassed of. You were nice, and kind. You tried to open the car door for me and you almost lost your eye, but you were fine. You don’t have anything to be worried about, really.”

“But it’s you.”

“Gonna touch your hair,” you say, giving him enough time to move away as you reach out and rake back his fringe. His heart leaps into his mouth. “You said something last night like that, you know? Do you remember that? You said if you were normal.” You grace the skin beside his eye with the tip of your thumb, your perfume floating his way as you move. “And I said–”

“I’m not normal,” he says, remembering now.

You’re not normal, I’m not normal, you’d said.

But you’re perfect, he’d said.

To you. And you’re perfect to me.

“Right. We’re not normal, Spencer Reid, so forget that girl. She didn’t deserve you anyways,” you say.

You draw a short, silken line down his cheek with the side of your pinky. To be touched so lightly has his stomach in knots —he’s not shocked by the swiftness with which your affection can make a bad situation good again.

You turn away. “Now we should eat before everything goes cold.”

He watches your shoulders move, and he remembers one last detail. So don’t say you’re weird like it’s ugly, honey. And don’t think I don’t like you, ‘cos I do.

The way you’d said it… you couldn’t really mean…

“How’s your appetite? Still feeling sick?” you ask.

Spencer smiles to himself, the ghost of your touch glowing warm on his cheek. “I’m feeling a lot better, actually.”

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

thank you for reading!!! please like/reblog or comment if you enjoyed, i appreciate anything and it always inspires me to write more<3!! my requests are pretty much always open for bombshell!reader (even though this one strays a bit from their usual story haha) so if you wanna see more let me know❤️

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fluff #criminal minds fic #mutual crushes #mutual pining #first dates cuteness #sort of…

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