10.1
( meant to be. )
☆ ★ ☆
spencer
He doesn't have to be a genius to realise that Iris isn't herself.
Like they always do, they leave work as soon as their shift is over and step out into the fading summer sunlight, which forces them to squint as they begin their walk down the sidewalk to their usual coffee place. Unlike she usually does, however, Iris doesn't brighten up his day, doesn't laugh and jump and crack a couple of jokes. For the first time, Iris has lost her spark.
But he doesn't push her. He's known her for four years, almost five now, and he knows her too well to do that. When she's ready, she'll come to him, and she'll talk to him, and then he'll help her.
For now, he waits while they walk quietly, and he orders himself a coffee and Iris a chocolate milkshake (her usual). He pays for both of them, which he's never done before; he always tries, but Iris usually throws a fit and ends up paying for herself. Today, she's too preoccupied with staring at her hands on the glass counter to even pay attention to what he's saying, nor the girl behind the counter blatantly flirting with him like she usually does.
Today's theme of the conversation: his new haircut.
"You look cute today," the barista says. Eve is the name Spencer remembers her telling him to call her, but it says Evelyn on the white name-tag pinned to her black button-down shirt. She cocks her head, leaning over the white marble counter as their coffees are being made by the machine behind her. "Do I sense something different?" She's joking. Obviously. The change is drastic and impossible not to notice.
"Oh, my hair, of course," he says with an awkward laugh, pushing it out of his eyes. "I got it cut a couple of days ago."
"Well, I can see that, Spencer," she teases sarcastically. Her smile turns to Iris, who she's come to know through their multiple visits in the past, but Iris is so visibly distracted that any words, any niceties, die on Evelyn's lips. Her eyes flick to Spencer, clearly a little worried, who shakes his head. She swallows, purses her lips worriedly, and mutters, "I'll get you guys some napkins," and disappears to the other end of the counter.
When they sit opposite each other in their usual booth, Iris finally speaks: "She's not wrong, you know." A small smile. "You do look good with that haircut. Could do with some gel, though. To keep it out of your eyes."
He runs a hand over the soft curls, freshly trimmed and washed with designer shampoo from the barbers. "Thanks," he says. Swallowing away his thoughts about how unlike herself she's acting (usually, she'd be red with jealousy at the sight of Eve flirting with him), he tries to cheer her up by saying, "The barber did it accidentally: I said cut a few inches off, but he thought I wanted it so there were only a few inches left. I had a few doubts at first, but so far I've only heard positive remarks."
"Apart from Morgan's boy-band comment," Iris says, attempting a smile.
He hums and returns the expression, appreciating the sentiment even though her grin didn't reach her watery eyes. A moment of silence ensues, and then he says, "What about you? Do you like it?"
Iris nods. "Of course. You look," she catches herself before she says something else, a blush rising to her cheeks all of a sudden, like even her thoughts are embarrassing.
"What?" Spencer asks, a grin rising. Whatever she's thinking, it's gotta be good if it's making her blush.
Iris breaks into a small smile herself — the first real one of the evening. "Nothing," she dismisses.
He ducks his head, eyes finding hers, and flicks his eyebrows up in an attempt to make her tell him what she's thinking — cruelly, perhaps, because he always knows what she's thinking. He just wants her to say it.
She rolls her eyes, and then sighs as she admits with a small smile, "Fine. You look really good, okay?"
Spencer chuckles. "Thanks," he says. "I was unaware you had such a problem complimenting me. You never used to."
He must have embarrassed her, bringing up their argument from so long ago; Iris goes quiet again, swirling her milkshake around in her glass with her striped straw, making the ice clink, before she takes a gargling sip.
Spencer looks out of the glass window, into the fading light of the sky, at the pedestrians wandering aimlessly past or marching purposefully toward their destinations. There's so many people out there on the high street, and he wonders how on earth each of them can exist, can have their lives and their worries and their crushes and their dreams, just like he does.
"What are you thinking?" Iris asks.
He purses his lips, eyes lingering on the view beyond the glass, and then flicking back to Iris. "I'm wondering if any of the people out there," he gestures with a bob of his head out the window, "have had as bad a week as we have."
Iris swallows, sliding her milkshake away from her. "Maybe. But it's not likely." She pauses, tracing her finger along a swirling pattern in the mahogany table. "Not many people go through what we have."
"Yeah, I know," he says. He glances out the window, but quickly looks back at her when he's struck by a sudden thought.
Iris isn't looking back at him, eyes focused on the table.
He wonders if this is what Foyet saw, back in his days of observation, of stalking. He observed all of them, that much was clear from some of the final words he would ever say, but Iris was his favourite. He was smart, smart enough to control himself for the sake of getting to Hotch, but he knows self-control had been unnecessary anyway; Iris gave him the sadistic pleasures he needed to resist the urge of killing — she fed him enough fear, and pain, and anguish, to keep him from going on a murder-spree for months.
He thinks of her leg, and he thinks of watching her on crutches, and he thinks of her tear-stained face standing in Benjamin Cyrus' chapel, and he thinks of a dozen other things at a rate too rapid for a normal human mind to comprehend. A broken soul . . . That's what he'd said, wasn't it?
Spencer ducks his head, catching Iris' eyes in his own again, and says, very quietly, "Iris."
Her eyes flick up, peering into his. He can see himself in her irises, suspended in two shining drops of bright amber, can see himself dark and tiny, in fine detail, with the hair curling over his forehead and the little bit of stubble growing around his mouth.
And he watches his lips move, and his eyebrows crease, as he asks, "Are you struggling?"
Iris holds his stare for a long moment that contains an eternity, eyes flicking between his, like they're searching for something. "Yes," she whispers eventually, almost invisibly, and then she collapses. She falls forward, face falling into her hands, the heels of her palms digging into her eyes.
Spencer swallows, and opens his mouth to speak, but before he can have the chance Iris sits up again.
She breathes deeply, then gets comfortable, moving to lean her chin in one hand, and fiddles with her straw with the other. "We all struggle, Spence," she says, eyes darting between him and the table and the window. "It's just . . . It's my leg, you know? Like it always is. Like Foyet said." Three-legged dog, he hears in his head, and he feels his skin prickle and heat with anger as Iris closes her eyes. "It's always been my leg . . . Some days are worse than others — I feel everything all at once, and I'm sobbing on my bed or throwing ice cubes in the bath because I'm so angry." He knows that trick too — it's a popular coping strategy for anger. "Then other days, I feel nothing at all. And I don't know what's worse. Drowning in feelings, or . . . Dying from the thirst." She swallows. "I get caught up in the what ifs, you know? Not just about the future, but the past, too. It just makes me wonder about a lot of things."
"Like what?"
"Like. . ." She laughs. "Like men." Another laugh; she clearly hates herself for that thought. "Like never having kids because I'm so unlovable because my fucking leg isn't there!" Her voice is quiet, but contains a world of anger, and Spencer knows this isn't a new, fresh thought: it's a conclusion to long nights of sitting awake, thinking about nothing else.
"That's ridiculous," Spencer says, calmly.
"I know. God, of course I know that, Spencer." Full name. That's not a good sign. "But do you know how many dates I've been on that have gone so fucking well until I lift up my trouser leg and show . . ." She trails off, shaking her head. Then, at the table, she mutters, "Ten in the past two months. Friends of friends, blind dates, just guys in bars or at parties. But none of them have resulted in anything. Apart from... You know." Sex, he's assuming. "That, boys can look past flaws for. An emotional connection and support, however, not so much. Maybe I've just got too much baggage to be good for anything but..." She trails off, like the words are to hard to say, the sentence too difficult to finish.
Ten. The number shocks him, and he realises just how little of her life he has access to.
Realises that her crush, her silly little crush that he took for granted, is definitely in the past. He doesn't know what he's supposed to feel, but he knows he does feel a strange mix of longing, and regret, and disappointment, along with an overwhelming sense of pity for this girl he should have told I like you to so long ago.
Nonetheless, he tries to reassure, "Iris, you're not . . . If you feel like it makes you unattractive, in any way, you have to know . . . Iris, to me, at least, you're beautiful no matter what."
He doesn't know what he expects. Maybe he wanted her to brush, to acknowledge his acknowledgement of how he finds her attractive. But she barely even registers it. He's surprisingly disappointed.
Simply, Iris nods, tearing a napkin into little squares with her fingers. "I just hate . . . I don't know. I just hate the whole damn thing. I hate that it's happened — not just that it's happened, but that it's happened to me. You know?" He nods. She squints, staring straight at him, now unafraid of looking away. "Is that selfish?"
"No," he says, instantly. "It's not selfish to not want to be burdened with pain anymore."
"If I had the chance, if I could get my leg back but only if I had to take someone else's away . . . I'd do it," she says. Her voice is calm and unashamed, like she's testing him, pushing at him, seeing how much he'll forgive her for. "I've thought about it a lot. And I know I would do it, in a heartbeat."
Spencer blinks, not saying anything, eyes searching through hers.
But then she looks away, sliding her milkshake away from her and sitting up to fold both hands in her lap. "And I feel like that makes me no better than a goddamn unsub."
Neither of them say anything for a long while, and their drinks sit untouched on the table between them. Both of them stare out of the window wordlessly, and the silence is only broken when the steam rising from Spencer's hot mug of coffee is beginning to disappear.
"Sometimes I wonder... Just... What's the point in all of this?" Iris asks.
He looks at her, but she's still focused on the people outside the window. "On what?"
"Everything," she answers, looking at him. Her eyes are calm, even though her words and her feelings and the way she makes Spencer feel, is all so turbulent and frightening and raw. "In suffering, and our job," the way she says the word is angry and frustrated, "and just . . . Everything.
"When I was younger, I was sure there was a God, and for a long time that was my purpose. I was so sure my life had meaning," she says. "But then my dad died. And how could a God who I was so sure loved me, and wanted the best for me, let that happen? And then I lost my leg. And how could any sort of merciful God allow me to suffer in that way? Allow anyone to suffer in that way?"
Spencer shrugs. "I don't know," he breathes, feeling helpless and pathetic for his answer. "I've never believed in God."
Iris smiles, but for some reason it's pointed and a little angry. "Of course you haven't," she says.
Spencer searches for something to say, desperate to redeem himself after his terrible attempt at helping with the first response. "Well," he begins hesitantly. "Well, maybe — maybe, the events in our lives were set in motion a long time ago. Not by a God, but by . . . I don't know, something."
"Yeah. Yeah, maybe," she says, trying to agree, but he can tell her heart isn't in it. She runs a finger up the slope of her nose and then presses her palm into her forehead momentarily. "I don't even know what's wrong with me. What I'm thinking. I'm such a mess."
"Iris," Spencer cuts in, leaning forward and wrapping his hands around his mug. "Iris, listen to me. The best piece of advice my father ever gave me, and my father was a goddamn asshole so that proves this advice is pretty good if I remember it — "
"You have an eidetic memory, Spencer—"
He rolls his eyes. Iris smiles. "Just listen to me, okay?" His eyes flick between hers. "Nobody on this earth has any idea what they're doing. Ever." He leans back. "Don't be so hard on yourself. It's okay to be confused — to doubt yourself."
Iris breathes a laugh, nodding.
Spencer swallows. "Are you doubting this job?"
"No," Iris says, maybe a little too quickly. She clearly hears her rushed tone too, and her eyes hesitantly flick to his. She does a small shrug and gives a little, humble smile. "I don't know. Maybe." Spencer nods slowly. Iris breathes, relieved by his calm reaction like she'd spent some time worrying about it, and takes a second to gather her thoughts before she says, "I thought I'd be making a difference — "
"Iris, you are — "
"It doesn't feel like it." Her words are sharp, but hang in the air. "Haley died. Hotch is broken, and Jack doesn't have a mother. And Foyet — Foyet killed so many people just like Haley, and people just like Hotch are broken, too, and there are kids like Jack who don't have mothers anymore."
"And we can help them. Can help stop more people from becoming like them."
"No. No, we can't." Her eyes are glossy and reddening as she briefly tugs her lower lip between her teeth. "We'll never be able to save everyone. It's just . . . Never-ending. Evil breeds evil, Spencer. Broken hearts leads to lashing out, and lashing out creates victims, and you and I both know victims make some damn good unsubs." She finishes with a dry, empty chuckle.
"You're talking about abuse survivors becoming criminals," Spencer says, staring at her seriously. "And you and I both know that's a small minority. One in eight."
Iris looks away.
Spencer swallows, his throat dry and lumpy and refusing to close. "If you don't want to do this job, Iris, it's always okay to quit. We'll all understand."
"It's not a matter of understanding," she says, somewhat sharply, closing her eyes. "It's a matter of leaving all my friends behind. It's a matter of losing touch, like I always do. It's a matter of ending up alone, like I used to be. I'm just . . ." She breathes deeply and raggedly for a few moments. "Being alone, that's what scares me."
"That's understandable," Spencer says. "You lost your father at a young age, and — " She looks at him with narrowed eyes, giving him a look that says don't you dare profile me, so he stops talking. Instead, he changes his focus, "Iris, you're not alone. Okay? You're my best friend, for God's sake. I . . . " He stops talking, so much to say — I love you, I'm proud of you, I'm not going to leave you — but settling for too little.
Iris closes her eyes, nodding. "I know." Somehow, he knows she's acknowledging the unspoken words, rather than the spoken ones.
"You know?" he asks.
She meets his eyes with her own, two drops of amber that glow like firelight. "Yeah," she breathes, the words only his, "I know."
He breathes deeply, exhaling as he sits back.
"It's not like it bothers me that much," Iris says. "I'm happy." A smile breaks across her face, small but significant, and God, Spencer's heart pounds at her utter radiance. "Dead God, I'm the happiest I've ever been. I'm out of my dead-end town, I have friends, I have you, and I'm doing a job I've worked so hard for." She pulls her straw out of her glass, licking off the remnants at the bottom. "I'm just frustrated. I had it built up in my head for so long, and now that it's not what I hoped it would be, I'm angry. Angry! At myself! Hell, not even myself — I'm angry at past-me! Isn't that ridiculous?"
"Iris," he says, a sad smile curling at the corners of his mouth as he tilts his head forward a few inches, "that's regret."
She shakes her head. "No. No, it's not. I don't regret working for the BAU." She sighs, swirling her straw again, and even though their topic of conversation is still low Spencer can tell her mood has lifted just the slightest. "I guess... I'm just annoyed at myself for doing what I always do: getting my hopes up."
"Hope sure is deadly."
"Tell me about it."
She finishes her milkshake in silence, taking breaks from her gulps to swirl her straw around, then returning to drink. It makes Spencer laugh; she's far too methodical about it, reminding him of . . . Well, himself, really. He must have been rubbing off on her more than he realised during the past year or so.
"Wanna come back to mine for dinner?" she asks as she finishes completely, the casual tone and question a refreshing change from their previous low topic of conversation.
Spencer grins. "Sure. Only if I can cook, though. I make a mean casserole, and I'm in the mood." Her eyes flick up to him, glinting with mischief, and he rolls his eyes as he realises what that might sound like and finishes, "For casserole."
Forty minutes and one steaming plate of food later, Iris and Spencer are sat opposite each other at Iris' kitchen table, the radio between them is humming with gentle music, the bottle of wine they shared is down to its final drops, and Iris has perked up much more.
She'd sat, perched on the edge of the table, while he darted around the kitchen cooking. They didn't speak, aside from Iris occasionally giving a direction to where she kept a certain kitchen utensil (he seemed annoyed and confused she kept her pots and pans in the oven, until she called him 'such a white boy' and he shut up; he must have been improving his Spanish, and had been able to translate it). But it was needed — some silence. Some time to just think, and enjoy each other's company at the same time. And Iris had finally gotten back to her usual self when she fell into a fit of laughter at Spencer's rant about her not owning a spatula.
"You're right," she says, stretching her good leg out between his until it rests on the edge of his chair, "you make a mean casserole."
"Living alone produces a good cook," he says, squeezing her leg with his knees. He glances around as he leans his chin into his hands, elbows on the table either side of his empty dish. "As I can see from here."
He's never actually been in Iris' apartment before — only outside to pick her up. Now, however, he's free to peer around. It's an open plan dining room, kitchen, and lounge, much like his own. Iris is quite the little chef, with cookbooks on shelves and spices on racks and an apron hanging over the back of a chair at the table. Most of the furniture is IKEA stuff, a lot of it white with the design attempting, but failing, to be minimalist. Glass trinkets and brightly-coloured souvenirs are dotted around — the sign of a life well lived.
"I bake. Rarely cook," she disagrees. "I've not been doing it much lately. It was better when I was off work. Had more time." She finishes her glass of wine. "Next time I see my mom, I'll bring back some of her banana bread. It's the food of the gods."
He raises an eyebrow. "And my casserole isn't?" he asks, scoffing with artificial offence.
"You're asking me to choose between you and my mom," Iris says. "And I don't know what you expected. 'Cause it's Mariah Remington every time, bud."
Spencer, slightly intoxicated and much more effected by the wine than he'd like to admit, falls into a fit of giggles, which makes Iris laugh too.
"Come on," Iris says, very suddenly, as she pushes back her chair with a scrape of it across her wooden floor and stands, "let's watch a movie. I'm exhausted."
"You sound like you're trying to make a move on me," Spencer says, standing anyway. "This is the sort of thing I said when I was twenty-one, desperate to have a girl sleep with me."
Oh, God. Shouldn't have said that. Should not have said that. Because Iris' reaction may not be instantaneous, but it sure is over-dramatic. Now halfway to the door leading to her hallway, she whirls on him, mouth wide open, finger pointing at him. "Oh my God!" she cries, open mouth turning up with a smile. "You just said something sexual!"
"I talk about sex all the time."
Iris rolls her eyes, turning back around and flicking on the hallway light. "You talk about sexual predators, Spencer. There's a difference." The fact that that is a genuine sentence he's literally just heard with his own two ears, absolutely astounds him. It's a wonderful life he's living, isn't it?
When they enter the bedroom, she steps to the other side of the bed, her back to him, and in one swift move pulls her t-shirt over her head, letting it fall to the floor. All entirely wordlessly, like it's the most normal thing in the world, like she's completely comfortable with it.
Spencer feels like he's just had a shot of caffeine or some kind of energy drink. Iris is there, right in front him, shirtless. In the dark, her skin looks dark and smooth, and a constellation of moles and birthmarks are dotted across her back. A splotch of darker brown to the rest of her skin — a birthmark — disappears beneath the white strap of her bra.
Her shoulder blades move and shift rhythmically as she pulls on an older, baggy t-shirt. It conceals her all the way down to her mid-thigh as she yanks down her pants and pulls on a pair of shorts instead.
"I'm sorry," she says as she climbs into bed. "I'm not wearing pants." Yeah. He figured. "So you can see my leg. I won't take it off, so the stump's still hidden and everything. But it's still..." Eyes filled with distaste, she glimpses down at the piece of plastic that, in the dark looks completely normal, but if the lights were on he's sure he would be able to notice the waxy texture. "You don't mind do you?" She looks up at him, eyes wide and innocent, tinged with worry. The insecurities she told him about earlier swim deep in her irises.
Realising he must look like an idiot, he swallows. He's still standing hesitantly by the door with his head light as air. "Yeah," he breathes. Without letting his mind wander, he crosses the room and climbs into bed, nodding as he does so. "Yeah, of course that's okay."
At first, while they choose a movie, he keeps his distance, but within half an hour they're pressed close together, his arms around Iris and hers around his ribs, her head against his chest.
They watch a couple of movies, including Iris' favourite, Se7en, but that's mainly because of her long-running crush on Brad Pitt (and, as she told him when he first asked the question about her favourite movie, 'it has everything: drama, love, bromance, and a murder mystery!').
By the time the movie's finished, she's snoring slightly, just a little snicker of noise every time she inhales through her nose. Swallowing, Spencer slides out from beneath her, and respectfully creates a little divide of pillows between them, like a wall to keep the boundaries they never stick to anyway standing tall.
He perches at the end of the bed, pulling off each of his socks methodically, then, hesitantly, his trousers and his shirt, leaving him only in his purple boxers. Her room is insufferably hot and, as people go, she has an unusually warm level of body heat, so he needs to be as cool as possible, even if that means taking off his clothes.
It doesn't bother him as much as he expected it to, however — as in the whole naked thing. He's seen Iris in less clothes than this plenty of times (the hospital, for example), and it's not like she's about to judge him. Iris isn't like that.
He slides under the covers hesitantly, the cotton sheets cooler on this side seeing as he had been lying above her duvet. Much to his own amusement, her bed is too small for him, his feet sticking out from beneath the lower edge of her sheets; he wriggles his toes at himself, then pulls his feet up a little to keep them warm.
Startling him, Iris arm flies out, sending one pillow from the wall into him.
Great. She's a kicker, he thinks, pulling the pillow out of the way and dumping it on the floor. He stares at the ceiling as he half debates putting on his clothes and letting himself out with her key, then slipping it back under the door. Actually, yeah, that would be a better —
Her hand is moving, groping across his collarbone until it gets a good grip on his shoulder, and without permission from his own brain he follows her guidance as she pulls him closer. He rolls across the sheets until he hits the wall of pillows, which, in his exhausted haze and with his dizzying desire to be closer to Iris, he's really forgetting why he even built in the first place.
"What the fuck," a sleepy Iris grunts, not quite as a question, and he would have smiled had his heart not been pounding so violently and quickly.
Her feet move, kicking the pillows out of the way, before she pulls him closer, until her curved back is pressed close to his chest. She slides her hold down his arm, finding his hand, and then pulls his arm across her shoulder to hold it close to his chest.
"Is this okay?" he hears her ask, quite groggily, clearly on the very edge of a deep sleep.
"Mhmm," he hums, because it is — dear God, this is more than okay — but that doesn't mean his heart isn't pounding beneath his ribs.
And that doesn't mean Iris doesn't notice; "Your heart's beating really fast."
"Yeah?" he breathes into her shoulder, eyes blown wide in the darkness despite his exhaustion.
Iris shifts a little, moving her hips in a way that Spencer's crotch is seriously not okay with. "Yeah," she confirms. "It's alright, though. You can hold my hand if you get scared."
"I am holding your hand," he points out. He's so tired and terrified by their intimacy that he hardly knows what he's saying.
"Oh," Iris hums, clearly already half-asleep. "Oh, yeah, you are. Funny how that happens. You're not scared, are you?"
"Of you?" Yes. You may not realise it, but you're more intimidating than you realise. And I'm absolutely terrified that you'll profile me, and realise just how much I want this, and how long I've wanted it for. "Not at all."
But Iris has already returned to her snoring, gone from the world almost entirely.
Involuntarily, Spencer breaks into a grin he feels almost embarrassed for expressing, bowing his head forward and nuzzling into her shoulder like a tired puppy, and he's asleep within mere seconds.
☆ ★ ☆
ya'll want a kiss?? nah man that's fanservice i'm not with that shit
also, REMINDER, if any of you wanna chat please don't be afraid to comment or pm me !! i've been through a bad few days recently (losing fake friends and all that shit) and i'm always scared to talk to people, especially those in real life, so i've just been thinking that, if any of you guys have been feeling the way have, about anything at all (or just wanna talk) don't be worried about messaging me!!
besides, i have literally nothing to do this summer so i'm definitely opening to talking and it would be great to talk to you guys :)