content warnings: description of a panic attack, mentions of bullying and homophobia, swearing
a/n: this story is rated mature, and was written with an adult audience in mind. if you are a minor, please do not interact with this work. thank you!
Spencer isn't looking for a relationship when he meets you. He wants a relationship someday, but he likes his life the way it is for now. He doesn't want it to change yet. He thinks that's why it took him so long to realize he was in love with you.
You join the team a few weeks after Rossi does. Hotch has been wanting to add another profiler to the unit for a while. The fiasco with Gideon's loss of Sarah and subsequent disappearance, then Emily's sudden resignation, finally convinces the board that it might not be a bad idea to have more than five profilers on the team.
Morgan and Hotch already know you. You come from the sex crimes unit, and the BAU had worked a case with them a month before he joined. You were just an agent trainee at the time, but Hotch saw promise in you, and has kept an eye on your work ever since. (Spencer wonders how he never ran into you at the academy; you're only a year older than him and you both joined the Bureau in 2003. Eventually he realizes it's because you weren't remediated.)
Despite an awkward introduction (he gives you his spiel about handshakes and how it's safer to kiss, and you respond with, well, if you insist, prompting laughter from Morgan and Prentiss, and leaving him at a loss for words as his face turns red), you quickly become friends. Your mutual love of reading is how you initially connect. Then he notices you only ever cut off his infodumping when you're working on a case, and it's always with a gentle, "redirect, Spence." Outside of work, you seem genuinely interested in what he has to say, even going so far as to follow up on things you had to interrupt earlier.
You also bond over your shared love of Doctor Who, and begin to join him at Penelope's place each time a new episode airs. It's not long before he considers you his best friend.
Spencer tells you things he rarely puts a voice to. He tells you about his kidnapping and subsequent Dilaudid problem (he still struggles to call it what he knows it was—an addiction) after the South Padre Island case, when he doesn't pick up on Adam's dissociative identity disorder until it's just a bit too late.
On the one year anniversary of his solving of the Riley Jenkins case, he recounts what happened the day his dad left in a wavering voice and you run your hand up and down his back when he cries.
He even tells you about the goalpost incident and the real motivation behind that act of bullying, a detail he omitted when he told Morgan about it. (He didn't have a crush on Alexa Lisben, the prettiest girl in school. He had a poorly concealed crush on the football team's quarterback.)
You also open up to him in a way you seldom do to anyone. You tell him about the bullying you experienced in high school over your shared sexuality. You tell him about the worst cases you saw in the sex crimes unit, and on a day when you're struggling, you tell him what the worst day of your life was.
He's had great friends before, and still does, but he's never had one quite like you.
Spencer can't say what the moment he fell in love with you was. He can't pinpoint when your friendship became something more to him. But he knows the moment he realized he was in love, and he doesn't need an eidetic memory to recall it perfectly.
It's such a small thing, nothing big and grand like film and literature portray. He's showed up to the roundtable with a new haircut. Hotch asks him if he's joined a boyband, which he doesn't quite get, but Morgan finds very amusing. You catch up to him on his way out of the bullpen and say, "I liked your hair long, but it looks great like this, too."
That's when he knows.
The realization is like a punch to the gut, yet it's not unpleasant. His world feels turned upside down, but upside down is looking like a fine place to be.
And you just carry on like nothing's happened, like you haven't just irreversibly changed his life with twelve words.
---
Spencer spends a few weeks sitting with this new information, mulling over his feelings and weighing his options.
Does he tell you he loves you? The FBI holds annual seminars discouraging fraternization between employees, but it's mostly aimed towards preventing relationships between supervisors and their subordinates. There's nothing in the regulations preventing two agents in the same standing from dating (which he knows because he's read the entire handbook). A visit to HR and a form filed away makes that perfectly acceptable.
But as much as he wants to be with you, he's terrified of losing your friendship. It's one of the most important things in his life. If he confesses and you don't return his feelings, it very well could ruin it. Things would never be the same between the two of you again. He can hardly tolerate the thought of that.
He has everything to lose, yet also everything to gain.
All of his speculation is operating under the assumption that you're single, but he's confident in that. You tell each other everything—there's no way you wouldn't mention seeing someone. You've always told him about any dates you've gone on in the past. And if, for some reason, you'd keep it a secret, he's a profiler. He studies human behavior. He'd notice something going on.
Spencer finds out he's wrong in what he thinks must be the worst possible way, because you don't tell him yourself. He finds out you're taken by accident.
It's only a few weeks after JJ's forced departure. They've just wrapped up a case in Connecticut, and Hotch postpones their flight home to the next morning so they can all get some solid rest after a grueling three days. Rossi offers to take them out for dinner at the hotel's restaurant, and everyone takes him up on it.
You and Emily excuse yourselves a bit earlier than normal, but he knows he's not the only one hurting over JJ, so he chalks it up to that. He finds himself following suit not even five minutes later when he fails to stifle his seventh yawn of the night. He steps off the elevator to the fifth floor and hears some quiet giggling from down the hall, but doesn't think anything of it, just heads towards the room he's sharing with Derek. It's the door right after the one leading to the room you're sharing with Emily, so there's no way for him to avoid seeing what breaks his heart.
Emily has her hands on your waist as she presses your back against the door. You're trying to scan the keycard and open the door from behind, a task you're struggling with because she won't stop kissing you.
Spencer freezes, his own keycard dropping from his fingers onto the plush carpet.
"Emily, Emily," you whisper against her lips, trying and failing to suppress your laughter. "You have to let me open the door."
"Mmm, fine," she relents with an exaggerated sigh. She presses a kiss to your nose before taking a small step back so you can turn and scan the card.
Your eyes leave Emily's face and land on his. You just stare at each other for a moment, unmoving.
Emily notices, of course, and asks you, "what's wrong, baby?" before following your gaze to him.
That finally snaps Spencer out of his daze and he blurts out, "Sorry!" His voice cracks and he clears his throat as he bends down to pick his keycard back up. "Sorry! I didn't mean to, to—disturb you. I'm just, just really tired and I'm gonna go to bed now." He keeps his eyes on the carpet as he passes by the two of you, ignoring you when you say his name.
"Reid—" Emily starts, but he's already letting the heavy door fall shut behind him and pressing his back against it. His breathing is shaky and he grips the strap of his satchel tightly. He doesn't bother to turn on the lights—he knows they'd be too much right now—and starts to sway from side to side in an attempt to self-soothe.
It doesn't work, so he begins pacing across the room, back and forth and back and forth until he stumbles over Derek's go bag and any semblance of control he had breaks. His tie feels too tight and the way his bag is thumping against his thigh as he walks is maddening. He pushes his satchel off of his body as fast as he can, then claws at the knot of his tie, pulling on it until it's loose enough to slide off over his head. He throws it across the room.
He starts pacing again, unable to stop one of his hands from flapping as his breathing grows erratic. He trips over Derek's bag again and kicks it in retaliation, just barely holding back a shriek of frustration and agony and panic because oh god oh god I can't breathe it's all too much, too much, I can't breathe.
Spencer can't breathe because he loves you, he loves you, he loves you, and you don't love him back.
---
He loses time.
It happens, sometimes, when he has a shutdown.
One moment he's pacing across the hotel room floor, trying in vain to catch his breath, and the next he's letting out an involuntary whine when the room lights turn on. Whoever flipped the switch turns them back off immediately.
Slowly, Spencer comes back to himself.
He's sitting on one of the beds, hugging a pillow to his chest as he rocks back and forth. His back thumps lightly against the headboard with each motion. He can breathe again, but they're the wobbling breathes that come after crying. He touches his face and it feels wet.
"Reid."
It's a whisper from across the room, and he tenses on instinct.
"Reid, it's Morgan," it continues, and Spencer relaxes. He recognizes his friend's voice now. He makes a small humming noise to indicate that he's listening.
His eyes have adjusted to the dark now and he can see the vague shape of Morgan walk forward and sit on the bed across from his. "Are you okay, kid?"
Spencer's breath hitches as he tries to respond. "I.... no," he whispers. He hasn't remembered what happened yet—something else that can happen when he spirals—but he feels all hollowed out inside, like someone has scooped out everything that's him and left behind only a deep, aching pain in their wake.
"What happened?" Morgan asks quietly.
"What happened," Spencer repeats under his breath. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes as he thinks. What happened. What happened, Spencer?
"You left dinner," Morgan prompts. "You said you were tired and were going to go to bed."
That's right. He left the table and headed to the elevator. Got off on the fifth floor. Walked down the hallway to their room and found—
It comes back in a rush, without warning.
You're laughing as Emily kisses you, the hand not struggling with your keycard tangled in her hair. Emily places an affectionate kiss on your nose when she pulls away. You freeze when you see him, and Emily calls you baby.
The memory takes his breath away again, and he feels hot tears falling down his cheeks.
"Reid, Reid." Morgan's voice interrupts his thoughts. "Stay with me. You're okay, kid. You're okay."
All Spencer can do is shake his head, because he's not okay, he's so terribly far away from okay right now.
"Tell me what happened, kid," Morgan urges. "Then I can help you."
Spencer lets out a humorless laugh. Can't Morgan see that there's nothing he can do, can't he see that Spencer's in a thousand pieces on the floor? "You can't help me," he says, his voice hoarse from countless tears he doesn't remember shedding.
"You don't know that. How about you tell me what's wrong, and then I can decide?"
"No, I do know that, Morgan," he snaps. His rational brain recognizes that he's acting out, that Morgan doesn't deserve his anger; he's not who Spencer's actually angry at. But his emotional brain is the one running the show right now, so he continues, "Did you know?"
"Did I know what?" Morgan asks calmly. He's keeping his cool, trying to deescalate the situation, and that makes Spencer even more upset. He doesn't want to calm down, he can't calm down, not when his world his falling apart.
"Did you know that Emily and (Y/N) are—are fucking?" he spits out. He can't bring himself to say that you're in love, despite the fact that the way you were looking at Emily can't mean anything other than that.
"I... No, I didn't, Reid," Morgan replies. He's not lying, but Spencer almost wishes he was, just so he could have someone to yell at right now. "Why is that upsetting for you?"
Spencer doesn't answer. He'd never admitted his feelings about you out loud before, not even to himself, and he sure as hell won't do it now. He knows the moment Morgan figures it out, because he can hear him sigh.
"I'm sorry, kid," he says. "I know how you feel."
"Oh, right," he scoffs. "Derek Morgan, god's gift to women, knows how I feel right now."
"Come on, Reid. Being able to leave a bar with someone on my arm doesn't make me immune to the pain of liking someone who doesn't like me back." Derek's voice is gentle, so much more gentle than he deserves right now, considering all Spencer's done since he stepped foot in their room is lash out at him.
"I don't like her, Morgan," he says quietly. "I love her."
Derek doesn't say anything for a while. He doesn't try and reassure him that he's okay, that he'll get over it. He doesn't use that awful line of there's plenty of fish in the sea. He just sits in silence with him. It's exactly what Spencer needs. He doesn't know how Morgan knows this when he didn't himself.
Derek always seems to just know.
---
The morning comes before he's ready to face it.
He wakes up to the sound of the shower running. His head hurts and his eyes feel puffy and sore. A beam of light is cutting through a gap in the curtains, landing on his face.
Spencer rolls over in bed and curls in on himself as his memories from the night before catch up to him. He stays like that, a lump under the covers, until Morgan comes out of the bathroom freshly showered.
"Hey, kid," he says. "You awake?"
Spencer just grunts in response, unwilling to do anything that isn't staying wrapped up in this cocoon of blankets. You've always called him a "Spencerrito" when he does this. He pretends to hate the nickname, but really, he finds it endearing. Now, though, it just hurts.
Any thought of you and the little things you do, the special things you do, the things that make butterflies sprout in his stomach, things that just yesterday made him feel warm inside, now make him ache all over.
"The jet's set to take off in about an hour," Morgan tells him. "If you don't wanna fly, we can drive back together."
The offer is tempting; spending an hour in close quarters with you and Emily knowing what he knows now, is not his idea of a good time. But he knows what he has to do. He's known from the moment he saw the way you looked at Emily last night.
About a year ago, you'd come to his apartment on a Saturday night, looking truly downtrodden. You had been on a date, but it didn't go well. "I'm scared I'll never find someone," you'd confided in him, your eyes filling with tears. "What if there's no one out there for me, Spence?"
He hadn't been sure how to answer. After all, he often felt the same way. So he'd put your favorite movie on the TV, dug some ice cream out from the back of his freezer, and stayed up late with you, watching one movie after another until you both dozed off in a tangle of limbs and blankets on his couch.
Slowly, he pushes himself into a sitting position on the hotel bed and looks at Morgan through the strands of hair hanging in his eyes. "You can't tell her."
Morgan raises his eyebrows in surprise. "I wasn't going to, Reid."
"I mean it," Spencer insists. "(Y/N) can't know. Emily, either. They... I don't want to ruin this for her."
"Hey," Derek says, raising his hands in a placating gesture. "My lips are sealed, kid. I wouldn't do that to you."
Spencer sighs. "Thanks," he mutters, then attempts to rub the sleep from his eyes. "An hour, you said?"
---
He sequesters himself in one of the corner seats on the jet. He gets multiple worried and confused glances from everyone, including you, but no one pushes, as his body language just about screams, "leave me alone."
Twenty minutes into the flight, someone slides into the seat across from him and he reluctantly looks up from his book. It's Emily, looking properly nervous, folding her hands in front of her on the table.
He's not sure if he's relieved or disappointed that it's not you.
He is sure that he doesn't want to be talking to Emily right now, though. She took you, she took you, she took you, she took you, runs relentlessly through his mind. He pushes the thought away, glancing down at his book and running his finger across the pages to try and keep himself calm.
"Reid," she starts hesitantly, and he drags his eyes back up. "I know you're mad that (Y/N) didn't tell you about us."
Well, you're not wrong, he thinks bitterly. It's just not for the reason you assume, Emily.
"But, um, that's not on her," she continues. "I asked her not to. And it wasn't just you. We didn't tell anyone. Only Hotch knew before last night, and that's because we had to tell him."
"Why?" Spencer asks bluntly. He does, technically, know the answer. Emily is very private when it comes to her life outside of work. It makes sense that she wouldn't want to go around announcing her relationship status.
But Spencer doesn't understand it. He doesn't understand how she can be in love and not want to shout it from the rooftops. It doesn't make any sense to him that she wouldn't want to show you off and introduce you as my girlfriend. He can't comprehend how she can have you, be loved by you, and not want everyone to know it.
Emily's slightly taken aback by his question, and she bites her lip as she considers how to answer. "I just... really prefer to keep my work and personal life as separate as possible," is what she settles on.
"Kinda impossible to do that when you're seeing a coworker," Spencer shoots back, then mentally scolds himself. You said you wouldn't ruin this for her, Spencer. Don't ruin this for (Y/N).
Her chuckle is nervous. "Well, yeah," she concedes. "But we make it work."
Spencer then asks a question he doesn't really want to know the answer to before he can stop himself. "How long?"
Emily's eyes fall to her hands as she poorly hides a smile. "Eight months."
Eight months. Eight months. You've been with Emily for eight fucking months, and you never told him, never even hinted at the fact that you were seeing someone. You kept him in the dark for eight months.
You let him fall in love with you when your heart already belonged to someone else.
He doesn't want to be mad at you. He knows he's not being fair. He really, honestly, wants to be happy for you, happy that you found what you've been searching for, but reality seems hellbent on making that as difficult for him as possible.
"Please," Emily says, "if you're going to be mad, be mad at me. I was the one who asked her to do this."
He stares down at his book for a full three minutes before finally muttering, "Alright."
He sees her shoulders slump in relief in his peripheral vision. "Thank you," she whispers, and then she leaves.
Spencer watches her walk across the jet to the couch and sit down next to you. He looks down before you can look at him because he knows he won't be able to handle what he'll see in your eyes. It'll be love in your eyes, but love that's not directed at him.
Emily took you from him, she took you, she took you, his mind repeats until Spencer makes the first of what's to be many attempts to accept the truth.
Emily didn't take you from him. You were never his to begin with.