Annoyance (Spencer Reid x Reader)

Within Reason

You were almost hesitant to hear about what was going on with the men back at Quantico. You knew from JJ that they were questioning the tall man, or Malcolm, as Garcia had found out. He had a brief rap sheet, nothing that would make one think he had graduated to kidnapping and torturing people, but Penny suspected foul play on his records and was researching more at the moment.

It seemed that you and JJ were on a little bit better terms after your talk. As much as it had slightly relieved you to talk about how you felt, you also felt like you couldn't speak too much about your involvement with Spencer without his permission. You didn't know how much he wanted others to know, so you kept silent about most of it.

You weren't sure if JJ didn't approve of you, or just what you were doing with Spencer. You knew that she would always care for him more than for you, and that didn't faze you much. You were just mulling over her thought process. Obviously, she had thought that your relationship with Spencer was one-sided, which was definitely not the case. Maybe she was upset that you were hiding it, as if you were ashamed of him. Also not the case; you weren't embarrassed at all, it was more a problem of professionalism than anything else. You couldn't very well have favorites at work.

There was also the fact that neither of you had actually given a label to what you were doing. It was loosely a friends with benefits situation, at least at first, but the both of you knew it had grown into something else entirely, something that neither of you had spoken about in detail. In theory, friends with benefits shouldn't involve romantic feelings, but you knew that you and Spencer were way past that point. He had never asked you to be his girlfriend or anything like that, but that word just didn't feel right to you. It felt like it diminished your roles in each other's lives. He was more than that to you; you had been in love once, a very very long time ago, but it had never felt anything like this.

Love.

You were almost scared to say it out loud. But you knew what it was, and you were positive that Spencer did too. You could never say it first. You were too scared of getting hurt, too scared of what it would mean to change what you had right now. Ideally, it would change nothing about your relationship with Spencer. But there was something about actually saying it to him that made it very real, very final. If your relationship ended, you couldn't go back and say that it hadn't meant something to you, or play off your feelings to pretend that you hadn't actually cared. It meant you were vulnerable and open to the possibility that he could break your heart, that you could change your entire life and plan a whole future with him and then possibly watch as it crumbled to the ground because it hadn't worked out.

You ended up falling asleep again in your chair, only to be shaken awake by JJ.

"Yeah?" you grumbled. "What's up?"

"Hotch needs to talk to you," she replied seriously.

That woke you up quickly. She held out her phone to you and you took it, quietly slipping out of the room to stand outside the door.

"It's me," you said finally.

"How quickly can you get down here?"

"As quickly as traffic allows, I guess," you said, stifling a yawn.

"I'll see you then. I'll be in my office."

And then he hung up the phone. Shit.

-

You knocked on his closed door tentatively. You were not looking forward to this. You heard Hotch tell you to come in, so you did. You knew he would be there, of course. What you didn't expect was Spencer, sitting in front of Hotch's desk waiting for you, too. You felt like a child at that moment, like you and Spencer were two kids who were summoned to the principal's office for fighting on the playground.