Chapter Text
Spencer Reid and you had been dating since the two of y ou were set up on a sorta blind date by your mutual best friend Penelope Garcia. While you couldn’t possibly know everything that Spencer went through you had some idea from being Penny’s friend for years. Two years strong with Spencer and you felt like you were starting to know him better than his team.
It was Super Bowl Sunday and you were out with the team. The game was over and Spencer, Anderson, yourself, and a few other FBI agents you had just met that night were sharing a table. You are draped on Spencer’s shoulder watching him getting quizzed by Anderson when JJ walks by, she ruffles his hair and takes a phone call outside. You fix the curls out of Spencer’s eyes and kiss his cheek when he answers the question just in the nick of time.
And then there’s a case. The team was called to Georgia and everything was going well, or as well as a murder investigation can go when one night Spencer had missed his usual phone call with you. He would check-in, at least a minute, letting you know he was okay. So you weren’t surprised when Penelope knocked on your door.
“Hi, darling. Um, I am going to go to Georgia and I wanted to tell you because, well because you and Spence. Somethings wrong. You may want to sit down.”
“What happened to him?” you motion Penelope into your apartment and to your couch.
“Well, uh, boy wonder and JJ were sent to a witness’s house to question him. But the witness well he was the unsub.”
“What?” you look at your best friend. You didn’t want to believe what you were thinking.
“Tobias Hankel, uh the uh unsub took Spencer. I am going because he is highly skilled with computers. I promise you, I will bring him back to you.”
“Okay, so what do we know? Do we know if he’s okay?”
“The team has a video feed on him. They can’t track him, so I’m going to go. That’s my specialty darling, I’ll get him back to you. The image we have of him is okay right now. He’s tied to a chair and clearly wounded but he is okay. The unsub has multiple personalities and one of his personalities is feeding him and giving him water.”
“Okay sounds good. You leaving now then?”
“Right now. I knew you needed to know before I left though. I love you darling stay strong for your boy wonder.” Penelope popped up off the couch as you rose and gave you a tight squeeze before floating out the door.
“Yeah okay. Love you too.” you followed and closed yourself out of the world.
It was another three days. Three days of not hearing from Spencer, but at least you knew why. He was being held captive. Three days of knowing your boyfriend was in pain and danger, a murderer holding him and streaming his whereabouts to his friends. No word from Spencer. No word from Penny. No word from no one.
Until you woke up to Derek Morgan calling you at 2:30 in the morning.
“Hello? Derek is everything okay?”
“(y/n),” it was Spencer. His voice was rough and scratchy and maybe a couple of octaves lower.
“Holy shit Spencer. You’re okay.”
“I’m safe. And I’m going to be with you as soon as possible baby. I just have to go to the hospital first.”
“Spencer Walter Reid come home to me as soon as humanly possible. I just need you.”
“We’re headed to the hospital now. It’s just bruising and a gash on my head.”
You heard the team behind him and just needed him. Safe in your arms, safe out of the field.
“Spence just come to my apartment when you get home and I can take care of you.” you hear Morgan wolf whistle from your words. “I’m glad he can make jokes right now, that helps me know you are fine.”
It was so early you tried to go back to sleep. But you couldn’t, finally getting out of your bed at five and making coffee. After trying to eat something you couldn’t stay still anymore you decided to do some chores. You were folding laundry and found a pajama set Spencer had left at your apartment, it was soft flannel and covered in little beakers. You noted the company on the tag and a hole in the knee showed how loved they were. You went to the store and got his favorite peppermint tea and snacks, making sure to make it feel somewhat homely for him, and finally returned home where you sat on your couch sewing up the knee waiting for him to come home to you.
It’s past 8 pm, you have the pajamas folded beside you and a movie playing on your tv when you hear movement on the other side of your door. The sound of a key and the doorknob moving pulls for your attention when Spencer walks into your apartment.
“Charming Boy, what are you doing?” you grab his bags since he was clearly in pain. “Where’s Derek?”
“He dropped me off?”
You immediately noticed that Spencer had downplayed his injuries. A black eye was forming on his sharp cheekbone and you looked to his hairline where there was medical tape assuming that was the gash he had mentioned on the phone and his wrists were red from the restraints Penelope mentioned. But he hadn’t let go of his side since he entered your apartment and it just elevated your terror when he yelped from you taking his bag. What in the world happened to him. “Spencer why didn’t you tell me?” you lowered the bags to the ground and took his free hand and cheek in your hand, trying to get him to look at you.
“I was taken and beaten up for days but I’m good. I’m with you.” he kissed you but it didn’t feel like the boy that left you a week ago.
You pulled back from the kiss and looked at him. His eyes were distant and avoided yours looking to his messenger bag on the floor. You kiss him on the nose and he plays along crinkling his nose but his eyes don’t move. He is still dazed and out of it when you pick up his bag and drag him to your room.
Spencer didn’t like therapy, after the L.D.S.K about a year ago you asked him if he wanted to talk to someone outside of the FBI. “ I know all the tricks, I can’t learn anything new from them.” and while you knew it was an unhealthy view you were not going to force him to do anything he didn’t want to do.
“Hey, Charming can you look at me?”
You had brought him to the side of the bed he would sleep on when he stayed the night and he was staring out the window with his messenger bag on his lap and was holding on to it like it was the only connection to the world. He looks up at you standing in front of him. But his gaze quickly moved to the window and moon and sky again. “I’ll be right back.”
You grab his pajama set from the couch, a couple of glasses of water and a first aid kit then return to him, he hadn’t moved. After setting the items on the bed and the water on your bedside table you sit by him. You brush away stray hairs off his forehead and place a kiss on his hair. He smells like chemicals and raw fish.
The Spencer scent of his shampoo and matching body wash that reminded you of Christmas and the spilled coffee lingering on his sweaters was overpowered. Gone. You could spend days wrapped up the cardigans he left behind but right now he was nowhere near that version, in a shirt that was clearly Derek’s as it fell off his collar bones.
“Hey Spence, do you want to take a shower?
“Do you want me to?”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, it’s just, you’ve been held by an unsub for three days,”
“Two days, 13 hours.”
“Okay, so about three days. Charming wouldn’t it make you feel better?”
“I can if you want me to.”
The short answers made you very uncomfortable. The words and avoidance of a shower were very non- Spencer, you wanted his rambling back. You wanted the boy that left you a week ago, but he wasn’t coming back, so you just wanted him to feel a little bit better. Safe.
“Spencer, can you tell me where your head is at right now?”
“My head is in the chair I was strapped to for 61 hours.”
“Can I ask you to elaborate on that Spencer?” you didn’t want to push him but no one had told you what happened to him during those days and you wanted to know everything after he showed up worse for wear to you. “Did they touch the spots that are off-limits Spence?”
Spencer Reid was the most beautiful, handsome, and attractive person you had ever met. After the one time you hung out with the team, it was a no-brainer for Penelope that she needed to set the two of you up. And now years of knowing him and getting to know him differently than his team the two of you were comfortable together. And you quickly learned things before the team. You had planned to go with Spencer to see his mom when he was given vacation time, but you weren’t given time off; you left your retail job a month later to pursue your dreams. And like his mom before the Fisher King case, the team didn’t know about his ‘off-limits spots’ and this spaced-out man sitting before you. You knew they definitely didn’t know about his off-limits spots because you learned about them when you were making out one night and untucked his shirt. His ribs, his stomach, and wrist were the hardest for him when unsubs taunted him. The restraints, the groping, the beatings. They were also the places he put all his frustration out when his anxieties were out of control. But it had been two years.
“Spencer, did you hear me?”
“Um well he, Tobias took his belt around my arm, a make-shift tourniquet, and drugged me. He hit me in the head.” he gestured to his forehead. “And when they found me, the team, one of his personalities had a knife to my wrists.”
“Oh, Charming. Can I see?” he nods and you take his hand and unbutton the cuff of his sleeve, and there it is. A clear bandage was tight to the skin covering a dozen of cuts next to light scars from Spencer’s own hand. You couldn’t help but think two years down the drain even though the marks weren’t from Spencer, they sure looked like it. “Okay, bathroom Charming boy.”
The two of you walked to the bathroom and while Spencer sat on the closed toilet lid you ran the bath. Going back to your room you grabbed the first aid kit and his pajamas.
“Do you need anything, want anything to eat or drink?”
“Do you have peppermint tea?”
“I got some for your visit, I can make you some while you relax. Anything else?”
“My shampoo and conditioner are in my go-bag. Not that I don’t like the scent of your stuff I just want mine.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself, honey. Okay let me get those for you and then I can take your bandage off and we can clean it up.”
As you walk back into the bedroom Spencer yells “Actually it is better to cover wounds to help them heal properly.”
“I know Charming but I want to clean it and switch it to a new bandage. Better padding you know you were in a hospital and a plane with that one. Whoa,” Spencer was in the tub already and you were shocked to see him naked. A big bruise was wrapping around his rib cage. You had never seen your boyfriend in less than a button-up with the top three or four buttons undone. “Sorry, um I’ll go make something to eat and boil water.” you go to close the door.
“(y/n), wait.” his eyes were finally starting to come back in focus, “ Weren’t you going to help with this,” he places his arm on the lip of the tub.
“Sweetie, you’re, you are,” you are trying to look at his face and not the wounds or his collar bones or his chest or his below the water.
“Oh,” and just like that, his eyes unfocused.
“No Charming, it’s just, we’ve never been shirtless in front of each other.” you go to sit by the tub on the floor of your bathroom, grabbing his hand still limp on the lip of the tub. “Are you okay with this?”
“Yes, I’m okay, just can you not look at me like I’m different.” he looks at the arm and your hand holding it. “Just because my arm looks like this again.”
“Spencer, I didn’t look at you differently when you told me originally, I’m not going to look at you differently now. One sec,” you scoot on the tile and grab the first aid kit off the floor in the doorway where you dropped it. “Are you okay if I clean it and change the bandage?”
“Um, yeah, yeah you can, thank you.”
You grab his hand and put the kit in your lap. Grabbing an alcohol pad and running on the edge, and slowly but surely you get the bandage off his arm. You stand and get a washcloth off the shelf above the toilet and wet it with cool water.
By the time you finish bandaging his arm again the water Spencer was sitting in had gone cold and he is shivering.
“Can you make tea now and, um,” he looks down at his arm covered in new beige badges. Boring, but no one could see it anymore.
“Yes of course I can, um, I left a pair of pj’s on the bed you left them here.”
“Thank you.” he looked so small and scared in the tub.
You left thinking he was just bashful because he was in the tub and went and started a teapot. As you’re heating up a pot of water for mac and cheese you hear him padding into the kitchen.
“Do you feel a little better?”
“Definitely.” he sat at your kitchen table and you walked over to him. “Thank you for fixing my pajamas (y/n), I’m glad you had them. I thought I lost them, left them in a hotel on a case.”
“Yeah they were here, I can fix other clothes if you want.” you card your hands through his damp hair and twist his front fringe around your fingers.
“I would like that, thank you.” he closes his eyes as you comb through his hair and hold the back of his head. “Um, can we just have peanut butter and jelly, I just want to snuggle with you and I can’t wait for the water to boil.”
“That sounds perfect, do you still want tea?”
“Yes please.”
You kiss the top of his head, his hair finally smelling like Spencer. Your home. And as you let go you don’t feel that sinking feeling you usually do when walking away from Spencer. He joins you at the counter and pulls out two knives. You grab the bread slices and the two of you make sandwiches. When the kettle shouts you grab two cups and tea bags from the box and pour out water. Spencer grabs the plate with the sandwiches and follows you to your bedroom.
Once there you set the cups down and grab your phone and turn on some quiet music. When you turn around Spencer is already under the blankets and honest to god nibbling on his sandwich. You go to your closet to get your own pajama set, granted not as cute as your boyfriends, and join him.
“How are you feeling?” Spencer asks.
“I am so happy that you are here. Can I kiss your silly face?”
“Please do.”
You launch at him. Your flannel-clad legs wrap around Spencer’s hips. His hands go to your hair as his tongue starts to brush your lower lip and you open your mouth to accept his tongue. Pulling away from his mouth, his beautiful, talented, and oh so addictive mouth, you look to him as long lashes flutter open his big brown eyes you’re hit by a train.
“Move in with me?”