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The bony hand on his wrist makes him freeze and turn on the stairs. Spencer smiles at the guy he sees – he's late, and he was tempted to run the rest of the way to the BAU offices, but it was a lost cause by this point, so there was no reason to stress. While he favoured punctuality, there was very little difference between getting in at five past or ten. “Can I help you?”
“Ah – you're Dr. Reid,” says the other, and it's not a question, but his voice gets a bit higher at the end anyway.
“I'm sorry, do I know you?” asks Spencer, studying the other's face. He doesn't often forget people, but the other holds himself in a way that suggests he has some practice hiding in a crowd. He could have easily escaped Spencer's notice.
“No, but – but I know what you do. I – I'm Nathan.”
He pauses and adjusts his bag. Nathan is on the other side of the handrail, and while his hand is still on Spencer's arm, he's standing a great deal apart from him. “Nice to meet you.”
“Um, I saw your lecture at Georgetown a few weeks ago. On – crime rates amongst the Shifter populations. Crimes involving people in their other forms ...”
“I'm not much of a public speaker,” Spencer says, and the other shakes his head and smiles slightly.
“I thought you seemed cool.” Nathan takes a deep breath and glances back down the stairs. He releases Spencer's wrist and looks a little like he wants to sprint back down into the train station. “I was wondering if I could get some advice about – my form, that is.”
Spencer tenses. He's not quite comfortable with the topic. Many people – particularly non-Shifters, or Shifters from purer bloodlines – made some rather unpleasant generalisations about others based upon the nature of their second form. It felt a bit like dividing people up with reference to their star signs, really. Some of their claims were outlandish, or based upon anecdotal evidence and folklore, and could effectively ruin people's lives – admitting to having the second form of a snake, for instance, often earned one a great deal of suffering, whether or not the individual actually ever demonstrated the specific traits assigned to that animal. He'd heard stories of teens being kicked out of home after expressing an unfavourable form. So he was wary of Nathan, and automatically a little fearful on his behalf.
It doesn't make sense that Nathan would come to him, though – there were professionals who dealt with Shifters. BAU agents were not those professionals. “For any particular reason?”
Nathan shuffles a bit, once again looking down the stairs. “Could I meet you later? It's – I don't want to talk about it in public.”
He thinks about it for a moment. It's a paperwork day today, so he should still be in Quantico. “I can meet you for lunch, I guess. As long as you don't have school or something.” He passes his coffee cup and jacket to Nathan so that he can dig out a pen, then writes his number on a scrap of paper and gives it to him.
“Just graduated, actually,” says Nathan, as they awkwardly juggle various personal belongings back and forth until everyone has what's theirs. “The Rose Garden, then?”
The Rose Garden was a cafe barely a block from the BAU offices themselves. Spencer wonders if Nathan picked it out in advance, but can't bring himself to care when he thinks about their hazelnut lattes. “Sure,” he agrees, turning towards the street with a smile. “See you at midday.”
Outside of the crummy subway lighting and in the warm, homey setting of the Rose Garden, Spencer is immediately struck by something; Nathan looks very, very ill. His fingers tremble slightly and are nearly the same colour as the white mug in his hands, and he holds himself hunched inwards, elbows on the table. He smiles at Spencer when he sits down beside him in the booth. Spencer has the strangest desire to reach out and check if he has a fever.
“Dr. Reid, you made it,” Nathan says, as if he expected Spencer to fail to do so.
“When was the last time you Shifted?” Spencer says in lieu of an actual greeting, concern flaring up with the waver he hears in Nathan's voice.
“I – I've only Shifted a few times. I don't like to do it in the Parks, and I can't do it at home, so ...” He shrugs his shoulders weakly and stares down into the cup. “A month, maybe?”
Spencer actually drops the sugar packet he's holding. Raw sugar scatters across the table. He reaches out and presses the palm of his hand to Nathan's forehead, alarmed by the heat there. “A month?” he chokes out, because after fifteen years of Shifting, Spencer rarely goes a week without changing his form. “What are you, a scorpion?”
“What? No, I'm not –” Nathan wrinkles his nose, looking confused rather than disgusted. “Why would you think I was a scorpion?”
The truth is that Spencer's spent all morning trying to work out what kind of form would leave someone so scared of Shifting as Nathan had looked earlier – the general rule was that the further a form was from mammals and the domesticated, the less acceptable it was considered. Scorpions were rare and were certainly not considered a favourable form. He shrugs in response and drops his hand from Nathan's face, palm still frighteningly hot from the brief contact.
“... I'm a wolf, I think,” Nathan adds after a moment, quiet. Spencer suspects it must be the first time he's actually said it out loud. “A dog, maybe. I don't know. A canine.”
Wolves were often considered special – a tie to one of the purer bloodlines – and dogs were definitely considered a good form, particularly common to those in law enforcement and the military. If one accepted the individual's form as indicative of their own nature, both were considered quite positive. Spencer doesn't understand the issue, so he waits in silence for Nathan to continue.
“Dr. Reid … the criminals you hunt. What are their forms like?”
Spencer hums to himself. While in some areas, particularly those where the culture still oriented itself against Shifters, there was a statistically significant increase in the numbers of robberies and thefts committed by them, on the whole, violent crimes tended to remain largely equal across both demographics – despite the opinions of some, Shifters demonstrated about the same amount of aggression as non-Shifters, with the difference in criminal activity being attributed to the economic need fostered by a greater difficulty in finding and keeping a job. Even considering cases of Shifter violence, he couldn't think of any type disproportionately recognised. He tells Nathan this, but the other just shakes his head and looks frustrated.
“No, I mean, were their forms violent as well? Did they – did they ever hurt anyone?” He seems to wilt under the weight of his own thoughts, shoulders sloping downwards, and he looks up at Spencer with eyes wide and pale and desperate. “What would it mean if you were killing other animals when you Shifted?”
“... It's not unheard of for instincts ingrained in the animal to appear in the Shifted form,” says Spencer slowly. He considers telling Nathan the story of the time Morgan – a wolf himself – once almost had a panic attack in his Shifted form in a hotel in Manhattan when a cleaner in the next room turned on their vacuum cleaner, but even with his limited social tact he can see that the anecdote will not fit the tone of the conversation.
“I read about that, though – nothing says anything about hunting.” He pulls a binder out of his backpack and Spencer can't help but shake his head when he reveals it to be filled with articles and photocopied pages from textbooks, all highlighted and annotated. “In her essay, 'Behaviours of the Shifter-type Typical Domesticated Dog', Professor Miller describes instances of 'barking, howling, and even attempts to mark one's territory', but 'a distinct aversion to 'true' dogs, females in heat, and smaller animals, including potential prey'. Dr.'s Tate and Cunning did a study spanning nearly a decade that looked at the social and psychological development of canine Shifters and they don't record a single case of hunting prey.”
“They did note several occasions in which canines attacked other Shifters and even the researchers themselves,” Spencer points out, recalling the particular text.
“Those were all acts of aggression, though, usually driven by human motives that Tate suggests were simply allowed priority when the individual was in a state that left them unable to properly control their emotions. It honestly makes it worse.” Nathan clutches the binder to his chest, knuckles white. “What if, subconsciously, I want to hurt others and my actions are a manifestation of that?”
Spencer doesn't know what to say, so he reaches out and tugs the binder from Nathan's hands. The first section contains general information about Shifting, the second on canine Shifters specifically, and the third on behaviour – both of Shifters and dogs. Nathan looks embarrassed when he scans the articles but Spencer just smiles. “It's good that you're trying to learn who you are,” he says, and then adds, “You'll make yourself sick if you don't Shift soon,” trying not to notice how sick Nathan already is. He looks miserable.
“I can't. The public Parks are too full of animals and … and I haven't told my mum yet. I don't want to hurt her or anything.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes. It's nearing the end of his lunch hour, and Spencer can't stop glancing at Nathan from the corner of his eye as the other tentatively sips at his cooling chai latte. “Do you remember anything from when you Shift? Can you control yourself?”
“No. I just sort of fall asleep and then wake up somewhere else.” Nathan takes a shuddering breath. “I – I killed a bird once. I woke up covered in feathers and blood, and my mouth was full of – I don't remember doing it. I guess I was trying to eat it.” The bones, shattered, had left little cuts on the insides of his cheeks, but he'd been too horrified to do more than google search the possible infections. “I can't Shift again, Dr. Reid.”
The silence returns. Spencer looks back down at the binder of research, and then at Nathan's drawn face and big eyes, and before he can think, blurts out, “I can teach you. To control yourself when you Shift.” He's never done that with someone before, but he taught himself – he feels like he should be able to do this. Maybe. “Um, if you'd like. Most people can't control themselves when they first start Shifting, anyway, but I mean, I can teach you the basics so that you can at least develop your awareness. And this way, you can learn to control yourself, and you'd have a safe place to Shift – as long as you don't tear up my apartment.”
A light turns on somewhere in Nathan's head and he gives the closest thing to a real smile that Spencer's seen from him. “Dr. Reid – thank you,” he says. Something like affection swells in Spencer's chest and he touches Nathan's shoulder.
“Don't mention it,” he says, trying not to feel like he just did something very inappropriate.
Apparently Nathan shares Spencer's preference for punctuality; there's a timid knock on his door at 5.58, and when he opens it, Nathan is there, backpack hanging off his shoulder again. “Hello,” he murmurs, and Spencer lets him in.
“I don't know what I can actually teach you today. I think you need to just be in your form for a bit.” Nathan looks like death warmed over, the sickness a side affect of his self-imposed static shape.
“You're sure it's safe for me to Shift here?” Nathan asks, glancing around the little apartment and blushing. “I don't want to hurt you or anything.”
“I'll keep my hand gun close,” Spencer jokes, and then feels vaguely ill when Nathan nods in agreement, clearly accepting it as the viable solution. Spencer guides Nathan into his bedroom, shows him where he can put his clothing, and leaves to keep working on his reports, spread out across the coffee table.
Nathan toes off his socks and his pants and removes his shirt, folding everything neatly and wrapping a self-conscious arm around his thin chest. The first time he Shifted had been in his sleep – he'd woken up in the ruins of his favourite sheets, his bedside lamp in pieces on his floor and his room in shambles. The other times had all been in the Park near his apartment block.
A certain disconnect occured during the transition into a new form between the brain and the body – like a temporary shut down of the mind while the body twisted and deformed. Nathan is out like a light before his body starts changing. A few minutes later, after knocking, Spencer opens the door to find a hulking creature in place of the younger man. It turns at the sound of the door, cocking it's head to the side and trotting up to him. While it showed no signs of recognition and didn't get within a few metres of him, the animal doesn't attack him or act aggressively, which is certainly a good sign, and Spencer steps to the side to allow it to explore the rest of the apartment.
It doesn't look like a dog, or a wolf; It seems too big for either animal type, the head too small for a wolf. Spencer catches sight of a dewclaw on one of the back legs. He wonders idly if Nathan could be a hybrid – rare, but not unheard of. Spencer doesn't know a whole lot about dogs, or wolves, but he finds himself watching it – Nathan – pad around his living room, sniffing at everything. He'd figured that even if Nathan wasn't 'conscious', per say, being in a more human environment than the dense trees of the Park would do him good and remind him of his humanity a little, and it seems to be working, because other than snapping a bit when the television turned on in the apartment above them, he stayed quiet, content to study the room. He ignores Spencer for the most part, uncaring, which Spencer takes as another marker of mixed heritage; a wolf tended to be skittish around humans, while a dog tended to be affectionate, where Nathan was clearly ambivalent.
After a month out of his form, Nathan would be exhausted. Spencer wouldn't be entirely surprised if he stayed Shifted for the next twenty four hours. He wonders what Nathan told his mum.
At some time around 11, Spencer packs away his paperwork and digs out a novel, and he's flicking through it, consciously slowing down the rate that he reads, when Nathan whines from the kitchen. Stretched across the couch, Spencer drops his head over the arm and watches, upside down, as Nathan made circles around the kitchen island and whines again. He manages a few more laps around the little kitchenette before Spencer clues into his hunger and wonders what the hell he's meant to feed the other.
When he opens the fridge, Nathan butts against his hip and tries to push himself into the door, poking his nose around until Spencer manages to nudge him away and get the door closed after finding nothing edible. He has to be at least seventy centimetres at the shoulder, and heavy enough that the weight of him against Spencer's thigh makes him stumble.
Grumbling a little, Spencer goes across the hall to Ms. Wittles, who's still up watching game shows, and manages to beg a half-dozen raw sausages from her. They gross him out to no end, but Nathan seems delighted, trotting about Spencer's legs and nudging at him eagerly when he holds the sausages above his head. He's not a neat freak, but he refuses to let Nathan get uncooked sausage meat on his carpet.
They end up in the kitchen, Spencer leaning against the cabinets and Nathan curled on the lino, chin on his knee. Spencer breaks chunks of sausage off and throws them to the other, and wonders how a creature as sweet as Nathan could tear a bird to pieces. He imagines that the environment was a significant factor – the Parks, built to give Shifters a place to move around in their second form, were wide and open and perfectly conducive to allowing one's more animal instincts to dominate.
Spencer doesn't want to go to sleep until Nathan did, in case something happened. Some time past midnight, Nathan starts prowling the living room, testing out several spots on the couch and generally making a fuss. When Spencer stands up, Nathan moves as if to follow him into his bedroom, but Spencer simply gathers spare blankets and pillows and goes to the bathroom. He fills the bathtub with his linens, and pats the side. Nathan gives him an odd look – a flash of human intelligence – before jumping over the side and into the makeshift nest. He waits a little while longer for Nathan to fall asleep before retreating back to his bedroom.
Nathan wakes in the morning to the soft white light of the bathroom fixture. Spencer is leaning against the sink, brushing his teeth, and Nathan watches him for a bit, too tired to particularly care about his nudity under the quilt Spencer has draped over him.
“Morning,” Spencer says when he's done.
“Hey,” greets Nathan, tugging the quilt up a bit and rubbing at his neck. He scowls a little. “My mouth tastes foul.”
There doesn't seem to be a decent way to admit that you spent the night before feeding someone hunks of raw meat from the palm of your hand, so instead Spencer digs a toothbrush out of the multipack in the medicine cabinet and hands it to Nathan. “I'll leave your clothes outside,” he says, as if just noticing that Nathan is naked, and he leaves the room at a trot.
They have a lazy breakfast. It's awkward at first, because they've known each other for just over twenty four hours, but it's not hard to find things to talk about, and while they're both quiet by nature, Spencer is very capable of rambling when he lands on an interesting idea and Nathan seems content to just listen to him talk. It's nice to have someone listen to him, rather than just nodding along – Nathan asks follow up questions, interrupts him when he doesn't understand a concept, and even argues with him on the finer points of some topics. It's nearing midday when Nathan looks at his phone, sees the time, and jumps out of his chair, tripping a little over his own feet.
“Same next week?” He asks, leaning against the door and tugging on his shoes. Spencer nods, still scanning the train timetable in his hand, and Nathan elbows him in the side to get his attention. “Doesn't count unless you say it out loud.”
“See you next week,” Spencer obliges. Nathan looks a little less sick already – his eyes are still rimmed read but he's a bit less pale, two spots of colour high on his cheeks. “I'll text you if I have a case.”
They have a case Monday morning; Spencer spends the plane ride to Houston quizzing an uncomfortable Morgan about the ins and outs of canine forms. Morgan, like most Shifters who chose to enter law enforcement, was born with a certain amount of natural control over his form, much more than Spencer had been gifted with, and his rigorous dedication to training meant that, on the field, he was just as valuable – and comfortable – in either shape. Spencer asks him about growing up in a pack environment – wolves, more than any other form, tended to group together, and while he was fairly independent of a pack nowadays, Morgan had been raised amongst other Shifters. He wonders if that would be good for Nathan. He pesters Morgan on and off for a few days, memorising and transcribing every scrap of information that Morgan imparts for inclusion in Nathan's binder.
On Friday, Spencer is halfway through preparing dinner when there's a knock on his door. Nathan is there, obviously, and he smiles shyly when Spencer greets him, and when he sets his backpack of clothes down, Spencer hands him the bowl of reheated spaghetti. “You got hungry last time,” he explains, feeling a little stupid when Nathan just smiles wider and thanks him. He eats and rinses his bowl, and Spencer is putting a second one into the microwave when Nathan, Shifted, trots out of his bedroom. He finds a place leaning against the old couch, long legs stretched out in front of him and muzzle tucked under his paws, and Spencer lays back on the couch and unpauses the episode of Doc Marten.
Twenty minutes in, Nathan stands and springs onto the couch. His tail beats against the armrest and Spencer wonders idly if he's expected to make a rule about dogs on the furniture, even if they do look part-wolf. The other paws at the blanket spread out on the cushions before settling back down, this time with his weight against Spencer's legs, head tucked against his hip. He rubs a thumb behind one of Nathan's pointed ears and goes back to watching his show.
It takes four weeks before Nathan looks healthy enough for Spencer to decide to try to teach him some control.
“Do I have to be naked for this?” the younger complains, pulling the quilt up tighter around his shoulders. He's sitting cross-legged on the floor of Spencer's living room, in the same place he often claimed while Shifting. Spencer, a little embarrassed, carefully avoids looking directly at him, instead focusing on the carpet between them.
“You will be Shifting. Just – keep the blanket on and you'll be fine.” He feels a pang of sympathy, remembering being eleven, twelve, ducking behind changing room lockers at school.
“Ok. Yeah, no, I get it,” says Nathan, pulling his knees to his chest. Spencer can just see his toes poking out under the blanket – them and his face are the only bits uncovered. “I'm just not used to being naked in front of people. Which is reasonable. But I'll get over it. Yeah.”
Spencer smiles and rests his head on his hands and his elbows on his knees. “Tell me, what does it feel like when you Shift? Right before, when you tell your body to change.”
“Um … like going underwater.” When he was seven, a rip had pulled him from the shore and into sea; that was what Shifting felt like, that tug against his body as the water swallowed him. Spencer nods in understanding when he describes it.
“It's easier to keep control than to gain it back after you've Shifted. You have to try to focus – let your body get pulled away, while your mind remains. Most people use an object when they start to Shift – you put all of your attention on one idea, and then after you've changed, your mind immediately jumps back to it. You have to be able to change without thinking about it too hard, though.” He gestures at Nathan. “Keep talking to me, and pay attention to what you're saying, and try to Shift.”
“Okay. So I can talk about anything, right? As long as I keep paying attention to you. Um, your doctorates. What did you write for your chemistry dissertation? Have you ever thought about returning to academia?” Nathan's nose wrinkles as he thinks to himself and Spencer politely faces away when he thinks Nathan is going to Shift. He Shifts back after twenty minutes, standing in the kitchen, and he gets all flustered when he realises that the blanket's fallen half-off him, even though Spencer isn't looking.
“It didn't work. I Shifted normally,” he says, actually pouting, and Spencer just asks him to sit back down.
“It wasn't meant to. At this point we just need you to be able to Shift without focusing too hard.” He switches on the television to the 8 o'clock news. “Describe everything on the screen and Shift at the same time. If you can, think about Shifting back right after. We're going to be doing this for a while now,” he says, and laughs when Nathan groans.
It's been a bad case, and a long one. Spencer, in recent weeks, had taken to Shifting during the weekdays so that he wouldn't need to when Nathan was over, but he doesn't like Shifting in hotels or on cases, and so the first thing he does when he gets in his door is strip down, dump his clothes in the laundry hamper and let his body change forms, sprawling across the couch and arching his back. His muscles ache. His tail hangs down and flicks against the floor.
An hour later he's woken by a knock on the door and the startling realisation that he'd been too tired to remember to lock it. He watches Nathan tuck his shoes neatly in place beside the door before turning to face him. He intends to go to his room and Shift back, but when Nathan sees him he actually grins, dropping his bag to come and crouch at eye level with him. He presses a hand to Spencer's side and pats the length of his spine. “I've never seen you Shift before,” he says, sounding a little amazed. “You're an ocelot, aren't you? I saw one at the zoo once.”
It's not exactly appropriate to touch a Shifter without them initiating it, but Spencer finds he doesn't mind. It's not like Nathan knows the ins and outs of Shifter courtesy. Spencer hasn't ever really been touched in his form before, except for when he was eleven and almost broke his paw jumping out a window. It's soothing, especially when he's so tired already, especially when Nathan rubs his knuckles along the tense muscles of his back. He laughs, and it takes Spencer a moment to realise that Nathan is laughing because he might have actually just purred, but when he does he nips at the tips of Nathan's fingers in retaliation, which just makes Nathan laugh harder.
“Shove over, pussy cat,” he says, scooping Spencer up and taking his place on the couch. Spencer isn't small – he's almost twice as long as a house cat, and weighs twice as much – but Nathan doesn't seem to mind sitting with him curled up against him, just continues stroking along his spine, firm but gentle. He turns on the television and watches two episodes of QI and one of Jeopardy, and during the ads he tells Spencer about his day, about his mum's birthday, about an article he read in the newspaper about a woman who says she has two forms and whether or not it's a hoax. He outlines the rosettes in Spencer's fur with his thumb and teases Spencer when he purrs.
Shifting in front of someone else is a fairly novel experience. It's not like his form is particularly practical, like Morgan's, and he doesn't often have people in his apartment. Nathan seems delighted by his form, and Spencer can't tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing, especially when Nathan finds out that he can squeeze Spencer's paw pads and unsheathe his claws, or when he calls Spencer a “pretty cat”.
Sometime after midnight, Nathan falls asleep on the couch. His legs are propped up on the arm and Spencer is draped across his body, head under Nathan's chin and one of Nathan's hands curling around him. He carefully slips out of the other's hold and Shifts back, fetches blankets from the linen closet and tucks them around Nathan before going to his own room to sleep.
“I buried it,” Nathan says abruptly one day over breakfast. He doesn't look at Spencer, just stares down at his hands. “The bird. It looked so small and frail and I buried it with all of its feathers that I could find and I even found the wing that I – that it had lost and put that in there, too. I was really scared, and my heart was beating hard – when I had Shifted back, though, I could still feel the excitement. Before I realised what was going on. Dr. Reid … I was so excited, actually proud of myself, to have caught and killed an animal.”
He's trembling in his seat, looks so guilty, and Spencer pulls him to his chest, settles close against him and just holds him as he sobs. “I'm a monster,” he murmurs into Spencer's neck, and Spencer runs his hand down the other's spine the same way he always did when Nathan Shifted and doesn't say a word.
Nathan has a very steady voice. It was monotonous, almost, not dull but soothing. He sounded gentle, soft; it was the kind of voice that you could feel in the speaker's throat. In fact Spencer had felt it, in his chest, when he Shifted and Nathan had sat on the couch with him in his lap and watched telly. Spencer thinks about this in line for a coffee one Wednesday morning, thinks about how it would feel to put his head on Nathan's chest again and hear his heartbeat and listen to him talk about nothing much.
It becomes a problem. Nathan's voice becomes a startlingly common topic in his head, particularly since Nathan himself is so often at the forefront of his mind anyway. He finds himself thinking about the gentle slope of Nathan's shoulders, the shape of his lips – not pink and full like a girls but pale and small, with a distinct cupids' bow and sometimes a slight mark where he had bitten on them during the day. He orders a hazelnut latte, thinks about meeting in the cafe that first time and sighs because he can identify attraction when he feels it.
“Watch the clock hands move. Focus on time passing as you Shift, think about the seconds and the minutes, and keep thinking about them afterwards ...”
Spencer is on his stomach on the carpet and Nathan is sitting across from him. His watch sits between them. Nathan is once again naked, and Spencer's trying not to notice how cute he looks, hair dishevelled and bony shoulders visible. He's staring hard at the clock face, biting on his lip, and Spencer doesn't turn away when he Shifts. For the most part, he avoids watching the change occur – but it's fascinating, in a slightly nauseating way, watching fur race down pale arms and lips deform and stretch over growing teeth. Nathan doesn't seem to mind, anyway.
He Shifts back after only a few minutes, looking disappointed and pulling the quilt more firmly around his body. “It didn't work,” he says, a bit morose, and Spencer just shrugs.
“We'll try again, then.”
Eight weeks in, Spencer opens the door and gets an armful of Nathan, who wraps an arm around his neck and another around his middle and informs Spencer in that breathy, sweet voice, “I Shifted in my sleep last night,” like it's the best thing that's ever happened to him.
Spencer, unwilling to relinquish physical contact, pushes the door closed behind him and settle his hands on Nathan's narrow hips, tugging him close. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I woke up and I didn't know what was going on, because I felt odd, and then I realised my form had changed.” He laughs, and with his head tucked under Spencer's neck, his breath tickles Spencer's throat some. “I panicked and changed back immediately, but it was good. I was in control.” He seems to realise how close they are, though, and drops his arms from Spencer's person, stepping back far enough that the door handle catches on his backpack and he fumbles to free it. “Sorry,” he mutters, looking flustered, and Spencer shrugs and tries not to look like he misses the feeling.
“Celebratory take out?” he suggests. “There's an Indian place down the road that does a good chickpea curry.”
They sit around Spencer's apartment eating curry and watching the first X-Men movie. It feels a little weird at first, to share a couch with Nathan while both of them are human, until Spencer comes to the realisation that the real problem is that he isn't touching Nathan and puts the issue firmly out of his mind.
Nathan's phone vibrates in the opening credits of the second movie. He's folded himself up under one of Spencer's blankets, his favourite, and he seems unwilling to get out of it, so there's a bit of shuffling as he tries to get around Spencer to his bag without getting off the couch. His bag is on the floor beside the couch and he crawls over Spencer to get it, apologising when an elbow catches Spencer's side. Only when he manages to retrieve the phone, he doesn't quite retreat back to his original position, and his back ends up pressed to Spencer's arm, and when Spencer moves his arm, he settles more firmly against Spencer's chest. The text is just some automatic thing from his service provider, and he grumbles and shoves it into his pocket.
They settle back to watch the movie until a stray thought catches Spencer's attention during a lull in the action. “Where do you tell your mum you go?” Spencer asks, peeking at Nathan from the corner of his eye, watching the light across his face. The other shrugs.
“I'm eighteen. It's normal to be out every weekend.” He makes a face. “I think she's just happy to think I have a friend now."
Spencer's chest tightens at 'I'm eighteen' and 'I have a friend now'. He slips his arm away from Nathan and stands, trying not to notice the way Nathan lists to the side without Spencer to support his weight. He gets up and fetches a pack of crisps from the cupboard, and when he gets back, Nathan is once again on his side of the couch. His seat is cold and lonely, but he tells himself it's for the best.
The bodies in the photographs are mangled beyond comprehension. They're spread out across the steel table of the interview room – they show the three known victims, all Shifters; a hare, a sheep and a terrier. The wounds don't precisely make sense on a human body – they'd been inflicted while in the victim's animal forms, and the change back upon their death had distorted them, warped the bite marks to something nearly unidentifiable.
“Not bad for a scavenger,” grins Bryant in front of him. He smells of rotting wood and flesh and it makes Spencer's over sensitive stomach churn.
He flicks through a few pages of the file before pressing his finger to a particular note. “According to this, you're a spotted hyena – almost all of their food comes from what they themselves hunt. Though they are well adapted, physically, for scavenging, that they're solely scavengers is a misconception.” He closes the file and cocks an eyebrow at the man, tired and uncomfortable enough to be snappish. “I would have thought you'd know a little more about your own body.”
The man bristles and Gideon gives him an odd look, but Spencer can't really bring himself to care about that. It's a Friday and he wants to go home and play house with Nathan, to pretend for a while, and there's certainly enough saliva in the bites to get a conviction, so it's not like they're in here pleading for a confession. The truth is, though, that he wants to know why this man did it, why he'd go through with such an act of brutality, and while the profile and the medical records show that it was born from years of abuse and neglect, while a school counsellor marked Bryant as a concern in year three when he was suspected of killing the class hamster, he has to know if it happened when he Shifted. If this man was what Nathan was worried he'd become.
Everything Bryant tells him demonstrates the opposite, though – in fact, he boasted, he'd had excellent control of his form when he was young, had chased particularly reviled classmates up and down the block and nipped at their heels. He's very eager to share when Spencer shows even a bit of interest, and Spencer memorises every word for transcription later. Gideon gives him that not-so-subtle once over again, and Spencer once again ignores him, considering the information, a part of him excited to show Nathan that he wasn't necessarily the monster that he thought he was.
There's heat – not from his environment but coming from his body, muscles burning and tongue flying free as he runs, the dirt soft and wet between his feet. The exertion is only a vague idea in his head, his entire consciousness focused on the chase, on the smell and sight and the faint, too-frequent heart beat that he can hear. He leaps forward and snaps at the air, feels feathers coming away into his mouth but nothing more substantial, and he snarls and his jaw closes like a trap again, slamming shut on the tiny, fluttering body. Wings beat weakly against his muzzle as the bird tries to free itself before the resistance stops, the creature going limp in his teeth. Blood sticks to his fur and the delicate ribs crack underneath the force –
He screams when his eyes open, or tries to, but the sound chokes off in his throat and he sobs painfully. He must have Shifted back in his sleep because he's curled on his side in the bathtub, twisted up in his quilt. Spencer is in the room almost immediately – the flat was too small and the walls too thin to keep the sound in. His heart beats wildly, still swept up in the thrill of the dream, the vivid chase, and the adrenaline-induced excitement quickly becomes about fear rather than exhilaration.
Spencer kneels beside the bath, rubbing at his back and approximating soothing sounds as Nathan dry heaves, entire body trembling. It's not the most effective calming influence, but it's a kind attempt at least. After a few minutes he seems to get that it isn't working because he stands, gently nudges Nathan forward and shuffles into place behind him, wrapping his arms around the other's chest and pulling him close. He presses his face to Nathan's cheek and runs his hands up and down the younger man's bare sides, and Nathan twists a little so that he can tuck his nose against Spencer's neck. He smells like tea and sleep and not at all like the forest. It occurs to Nathan at some point to be embarrassed about his nudity, to be uncomfortable with the sight of Spencer's legs, bared by his boxer shorts, bracketing his own, but at the same time he's too tired, feels too sick, so he just takes what he can get, folding himself up in Spencer's arms and allowing himself to slip back into sleep.
They're practising Shifting again, Spencer's watch once more between them. While he hasn't improved much in the awareness department, Nathan is usually pretty good about changing back quickly when he proves unsuccessful, body keying into his needs and Shifting back after no more than fifteen minutes. For the moment, though, Spencer is stuck lying around, waiting for him to change back.
Last year, Garcia went through an impressive crocheting phase; she'd made him a beautiful, if bizarrely coloured and not quite square afghan throw rug, the border outlined in bright flowers. It's currently draped over Nathan's back, one corner on his head, the tasselled corner tickling his nose. Spencer realises that, as far as he knows, Nathan's never seen his own form. He pulls out his phone and fiddles with it, the device remaining mostly foreign to him, until he finds the camera function.
“Nathan,” he calls, feeling like an idiot, until Nathan twists to look at him, head cocked to the side, and he grins and snaps a picture. After a moment he sets it at his background. When Nathan Shifts back, he drops the phone into his hands and laughs at Nathan's surprised look, calls him cute just to get a reaction.
He doesn't think much of it until he wakes in the night for a glass of water to find that Nathan's pinched his phone at some point. He's curled up on the carpet under the afghan again, and his body twitches when Spencer rests a hand on his exposed shoulder. The glare of the screen is bright across his face, and Spencer thinks his cheeks might be wet. He props himself up on his elbows and stares down at the phone. “Shifting is crazy. I might be crazy.”
“You aren't insane,” says Spencer, smoothing down a few stray curls.
Nathan narrows his eyes. “What else do you call it when there's a part of you that you can't control?” he says. He grips the phone tighter, thumb to the screen. He doesn't sound hysterical, more resigned, still talking with that familiar, soft voice. The back light times out and he mashes buttons until it lights up again, and slumps forward until his cheek is pressed against Spencer's bare thigh. Spencer studies the picture; where he sees an almost cheeky expression, a lolling tongue, he imagines Nathan seeing a snarl, cruelty in bright eyes. “It's a beast. I'm a beast, Spencer, I'm a monster. Can't you see?”
He presses the phone into Spencer's chest, one plastic corner digging into his sternum, and Spencer just pries it from his hands. He closes his fingers around Nathan's. “No need to be maudlin. It's – it's just a part of you.” He swallows, tries not to blush, even in the dark. “I don't think you're anything like that, really. I think the anxiety over what you are has been more damaging than the reality of what you are. That is, you're so terrified of what you think you might become that you're hurting yourself now, by – not Shifting, and hating yourself, and generally not being very happy. You're so afraid of what you might do to stop to realise that you won't – that you'd never – that you couldn't, not again. There's a difference. Between wanting to and doing. You've done one and not the other, and you're taking steps to ensure that you never make the same mistake.”
“What I did was inexcusable. It doesn't matter that I don't want to do it, Spencer, because I did do it and I could do it again. I don't want to be a monster again.” His insistence is starting to get on Spencer's nerves, his refusal to see the truth, that he'd lost control but he could have it back, that he could be better, was better. He wants to prove to Nathan that he can be something other than wrong, but he doesn't know how.
“I'm broken, Spencer. I don't know how to be right again.”
He takes Nathan's face in his hands, nudges him gently until they're facing one another. He kisses the salt from his face and presses their foreheads together. “I think you're right enough,” he says, and holds Nathan close when he laughs bitterly.
One week Nathan comes early. University starts soon – he's been accepted at Georgetown U, on the premed track – and Nathan was meant to be out with his mum, but she had been called into work a few hours earlier. Instead they make a stir fry together. Spencer goes out and buys haloumi to crumble over the top, and he's unpacking the plastic shopping bag and watching Nathan slice capsicum when the younger asks, “You never did tell me what you wrote about for your dissertations.”
Spencer shrugs, tucking the bag into the holder to reuse later. “Well, in layman's terms, my physics dissertation was primarily rooted in astrophysics, specifically the study of –” He doesn't get to finish before Nathan cuts him off, grinning at him, the skin around his eyes crinkling. “Why are you smiling like that?”
He gets a vague, dismissive hand gesture in response. “Don't take this badly, but you reminded me a bit of Sherlock Holmes. When we met. And look, obviously your interests are wide and varied and often entirely inapplicable to crime, I mean you own enough classics to stock a decent library, but sometimes I just – expect you to care less. About that sort of stuff.”
Spencer can't help but scowl a bit. “The world is a great and fascinating place. It would be remiss of me to neglect knowledge just because it wasn't immediately of any use. Besides, the stars are occasionally relevant to what I do. The Angel Maker marked several constellations on the bodies of his victims, as did Chloe Kelcher, his copycat. And serial killers are often conceited enough to drag literature into their work – Frank Graney, for one, and Kenneth Roberts. If anything, Sherlock Holmes was doing himself – and the population of Great Britain – a disservice by failing to adequately appreciate the arts, and astrophysics.” He leans against the counter, rinsing a few carrots. “I don't think I could stand not learning things, anyway. I'd get bored.”
Nathan scrapes the capsicum into a bowl and takes one of the carrots, then, turns the board around and hands Spencer a knife so that they can both work on it. “You're certainly more well-rounded than Holmes. More personable, as well,” he declares, nodding to himself. He stops and grins, tapping Spencer's nose with the heavy end of his carrot. “You'd make a terrible boxer, though.”
“You wouldn't be saying that if you saw me in the shorts,” mutters Spencer under his breath, and Nathan laughs until he chokes.
Sometimes Nathan shows up on days that aren't Fridays. He has an excuse at first – a late tutorial cancelled, perhaps, or an unquenchable craving for the leftovers from last night's clumsy attempt at cooking – and the occasional offering – DVDs, liquorice allsorts – but after a while he just starts appearing, to the point that Spencer begins to expect him, is sometimes faintly put-out when Nathan doesn't rock up uninvited.
He catches Spencer in form a few times, and on every occasion proceeds to spend the entire night – even after Spencer Shifts back – teasing him and making intentionally terrible cat puns that still manage to make Spencer laugh. Occasionally while on a case Spencer will receive texts apparently apropos of nothing – “This pasta is purrr-fect”, reads one, and it's signed with an emoticon cat face for added effect – and he saves the best to his phone.
All the while, his connection to his form improves. He can't remain in control, but Spencer takes to performing memory tests before and after, showing Nathan a series of cards and then getting him to identify them in order when he's human again, and his accuracy gets better and better, able to recreate the pattern nearly every time. Spencer suspects that a great deal of his difficulty stems from his anxiety regarding Shifting, that he's sabotaging himself so as to separate himself from, well, himself. It can't be good for him, Spencer knows, and every time he catches Nathan looking particularly despondent, still too pale in a certain kind of light he considers his options – considers, even, asking Nathan to see a psychologist, perhaps, which he suspects Nathan would be less than appreciative of, remembering that Nathan's motivation for approaching him was probably to avoid mental health professionals.
His attraction to Nathan is neatly suppressed, carefully compartmentalised, which he is quite proud of himself, considering that the other spent a minimum of four hours a week naked in front of him practicing his Shifts, and three days of seven eating his food and watching movies with him and pinching his sweaters when it got too cold.
Nathan's improving, he seems happier, and Spencer hasn't done anything totally foolish, unless one counted renting the third Spiderman movie by accident (which Nathan very much did). It seems to be going well.
Until it isn't.
Spencer is woken by a pain in his shoulder. At first, drowsy from sleep, he thinks that he's lying on it oddly, that the abrupt tingle has been caused by a pinched nerve, and then his eyes open as reality comes to him full-force and the pain comes with it. He kicks up, trying to twist out of the way, but he can't shake Nathan from his body. It crosses his mind that a wolf had a bite force of around 400 p.s.i., though the information was fairly irrelevant.
His flailing leg manages to catch Nathan in the side, and Spencer can actually feel him tighten, feel the growl in his throat. He's a heavy weight on Spencer's chest and Spencer can't breathe, feels like he's suffocating, the blankets tangled around his body and choking him.
His head aches, his left arm alternately flaring up in pain and burning numb, and he shoves hard at Nathan's chest to no avail. He manages to cough out, “Nathan,” face shoved against the pillow.
The weight above him moves abruptly. He has the momentary sensation of human skin on his exposed back, the impression of lips on his neck before he hears the thud of Nathan hitting the floor, having thrown himself clear of the bed. He's somewhat aware of the bedside table falling over with a clatter, the dimmed lamp cracking against the skirting board and turning off.
Because the last thing he needed was to be in the dark.
His sheets are wet, clinging to his shoulder, and the sensation of blood flowing is making him nauseous. He rolls over to face Nathan, who he can't see, but can hear breathing, practically panting. He doesn't actually know what to say, and they just lie there silently.
Spencer's eyes adjust slowly to the dark. When he focuses, at least, his form gives him much better eyesight than most, especially at night, and after a minute he can easily see the details of Nathan, who's pressed himself into the wood of Spencer's closet as if trying to merge into it. There's blood around his mouth.
He touches the ragged edges of the bite mark with one trembling hand.
Nathan sees him move and brings his own hand to his mouth, running his fingers along his teeth. His tongue follows. He looks like a terrible mix between excited and horrified, and Spencer supposes that he could feel his heart beat, if he was closer. It looks a bit like he's about to make an attempt for the door, or perhaps the window. “Nathan,” he says again, because it helped last time.
“Spencer – Dr. Reid – I don't –” He looks pathetic, mouth hidden by red fingers, and Spencer sighs.
“I should have kept my handgun closer, hey,” he says, trying to lighten the mood, but he really is terrible at jokes and Nathan makes a face like he's about to cry. Spencer struggles out of the blanket – which hurts like hell, thank you very much – and shuffles over to Nathan on his knees. It feels a bit like approaching a wild animal, which isn't the kind of comparison Spencer enjoys making, but prefers to the more familiar experience of talking down an UnSub. He stops when there's about a metre between them.
“Look at me. Come on, it – it's okay,” he says, leaning forward to touch Nathan's knee. He gets a flinch in response – a little insulting, considering he's the one who just got mauled, for crying out loud – but Nathan doesn't pull away. He moves Nathan's hands from his mouth and motions for him to stand up. “Let's go get cleaned up.”
He sits Nathan on the edge of the bathtub and fetches a clean wash cloth from under the sink. The blood has started to clot around his shoulder. He wonders if he'll need stitches and knows for certain that he should probably at least rinse the wound before dealing with Nathan, but he looks so upset, so pale, so he wets the cloth and starts cleaning Nathan's face and hands. He's mostly silent, sitting there with Spencer kneeling between his legs, removing the blood with long, slow strokes, except for the occasional quiet “sorry”.
When he's finished, he stands and steps towards the sink, but before he can get far, Nathan's hands shoot out grabs his. “I'll do it,” he mutters to Spencer's back. Another cloth is found and Nathan uses one corner to clean away the mess and another to apply the antiseptic, apologising with every sound Spencer makes. The bite is big, and movement has torn it a little, but Spencer tries as much as possible to downplay it – it helps that he can only see a tiny edge of it in his peripheral vision.
Spencer sits on the edge of the bath in much the same way as Nathan had while the other rummages around under the sink looking for gauze tape. When he find it, he doesn't stand up, though, just presses his forehead to the edge of the sink. “Dog bites have a high infection rate,” he says softly. At least he can speak in full sentences now, thinks Spencer to himself. “Also more worrying than the – the actual skin perforations –”
“Is the risk of underlying structural damage to the body due to the extreme pressure, yes.” He remembers his statistic from before. “100 p.s.i more than your average German Shepherd."
Nathan's jaw tightens, as if he is considering his own strength. He dresses Spencer's wounds silently, then leaves, coming back with Spencer's jacket on his arm and his own mobile. At some point he's gotten on his pants and shirt, but his feet are bare. “I'm calling a taxi,” he informs Spencer. He doesn't try to get Spencer's arm up into his sleeve, just drapes it neatly over his shoulder, but not before leaning down and touching his lips to the approximate centre of the bite mark, almost like he's comparing the change in the size of his mouth.
Shamefully, it all slips away from Spencer at around this point. The taxi ride seems to take forever, and he can vaguely remember watching Nathan fill in his paperwork at the hospital, asking him questions about his health insurance, but the next time he's fully lucid is at about 2 pm on Sunday afternoon. His shoulder aches. There's a list, penned in Nathan's careful, cramped handwriting, detailing what medication he should have when and how to reapply the dressing and what over-the-counter stuff he could take. Underlined is the request to take it easy.
There is no apology, but Spencer can see that several sheets of the pad have been ripped off of it, can see the imprints of the pen where it has dug through the page.
He does not see Nathan for five weeks.
It's Nathan's mum who calls him from the hospital – a Friday morning, as he steps out of the elevator and approaches the bull pit. Spencer has tried to call him at least once every few days, always mindful of Nathan's class schedule, though he suspects that the other isn't showing up. He doesn't recognise the number when it comes through, doesn't recognise the woman's weary voice and sharp tones, but he immediately recognises the fear in her words – not of Nathan, but for him, and it takes him all of thirty seconds to inform Hotch he's taking the day off and walk right back out of the BAU.
It takes him almost forty minutes in peak hour traffic to get to the hospital. He spend the entire time looking at the worst possibilities. He'd been terrified that Nathan would go as far as to try to kill himself, and in some ways he has – five weeks without Shifting and he was down for the count, collapsing in his bedroom.
He doesn't look the same as he did when they first met; he looks worse. The skin around his eyes is blue and red in concentric rings, and Spencer can see the bones beneath his skin, the blood vessels and tendons and what have you. He's not so much dwarfed by the medical equipment as he is swallowed by it, body lost in a mass of IV tubing and beeping machinery. His mother sits in the chair by the bed like a guard at her post – she looks like a stern woman, mouth tight and eyes narrowed in a way that suggests she has some questions for him, and that she's not above violence if his answers are inadequate.
For the moment, though, she is silent; she looks from Spencer to her son before leaving, muttering about grabbing something to eat, though she doesn't look hungry.
Nathan doesn't wake up for three days. His form wavers while he sleeps, his body too tired to preserve any one shape, and his mother is in and out, giving Nathan that same sad look every time. Spencer appreciates that she had chose to contact him – his number had been the most common called on Nathan's phone, surpassing even hers. He's thankfully managed to escape whatever discussion she has planned so far.
When Nathan does wake up, Spencer is there. It isn't a dramatic thing; he doesn't wake up with a gasp or a cry or anything like that. There's a slight hitch in his breath, and Spencer starts in the chair that he's claimed next to Nathan's bed, and Nathan sort of blinks at him, long and slow, like Spencer is a remnant of his dream that he's trying to shake away, or a piece of dirt behind his eyelid.
Spencer pours him out a glass of water. When he moves to pass it to him, though, Nathan just touches his knuckles, his wrists. His fingers catch on the sleeve of Spencer's cardigan.
“I'm sorry,” he says. His voice is dry with disuse, harsher around the edges than Spencer is used to. “Fuck, Spencer, I'm so, so sorry.”
Spencer's never heard him swear before. It's a bit of a shock.
“That – that's okay.” He takes Nathan's hands and closes his fingers around the cup, waits until Nathan takes a drink. “... I was worried about you.”
The glass hits the lacquered bedside table with a clink. Silence opens up between them. Nathan draws his legs up to his chest and frowns, before shaking his head. Loose curls bounce around his forehead and he turns away from Spencer. “I want you to leave.”
He says it quietly enough that Spencer thinks he's misheard, but after a moment he repeats it, louder this time, each word carefully sounded out. Spencer thinks, momentarily, about arguing, but thinks better of it when Nathan's mum enters. Her eyebrows disappear into her hair and she is at Nathan's side in an instant, torn between being a doctor and a mother, insisting that he eats and then reeling off a list of questions about how he's feeling. He reassures her, touching her arm and talking in that soft voice so different to her own hard-hitting tone, and Spencer just sort of sits there for a bit, on the periphery of the conversation, before getting up and leaving.
He doesn't feel Nathan's eyes on him when he leaves. He doesn't feel much of anything.
He calls Nathan's mum, later that day; she seems puzzled that he'd left, but informs him that Nathan is doing well. The next time he calls, however, it's become clear that Nathan's told her not to say anything to him, or maybe she'd clued into that mother's intuition his own mother had lectured him about, because she tells him in no uncertain terms to mind his own business.
Partly, he's relieved; he knows, now, that Nathan will receive the help he needs, perhaps will contact the local dog or wolf pack. His mother will get him a psychologist, proper counselling, because unlike him, she will do what is right for Nathan. At the same time, though, there is an emptiness; he had failed Nathan, failed to be what he needed, and his failure had only allowed Nathan to experience more suffering. It was stupid and self-centred of him, but he felt guilty, felt responsible, and through it all, still desperately lonely. He'd gotten used to Nathan's odd brand of sweetness, to Red Dwarf episodes recorded on VCR and a second toothbrush on the sink.
He'd gotten used to Nathan, and now the only thing he could do was try to forget about him.
“Did you know coffee is on the Olympic Committee's list of banned substances?” Nathan holds up the cardboard cup, turning it to show Spencer the print-out on the side: 'Quirky Coffee Facts'.
It's a decent stall, for both of them, and Spencer is quick to take the bait. “In England in 1675, King Charles II attempted to ban coffee houses due to his fear that rebels used them as meeting places within which they conspired against him. Obviously the ban was ineffectual, and nowadays, coffee is the third most popular drink behind water and tea.”
The silence returns quickly, though. Nathan is trying in vain to look casual, like they've just run into each other in the street, which is ridiculous, considering Spencer's apartment is on the eighth floor, he's holding two cups of coffee, they haven't seen each other in over a month, and he's a terrible actor.
“You should drink it before it gets cold – er, colder,” says Nathan finally, offering the larger cup. “It's hazelnut, your favourite. And it's at least half sugar.”
The coffee is barely lukewarm, but it's sweet, and it gives him something to do with both his hands and his mouth. He sips at it a bit, before making the decision to unlock the door and gesturing inside, not looking back to see if Nathan was following him in.
He tries not to look at the familiar coat and bag in the entrance. The truth is, he has no idea what he's meant to do when the door clicks shut, or when he hears Nathan tracing his path to the kitchen. Instead, he does what he does best – makes a fool of himself. “I fed you sausages. That first night. Sorry – about that.”
“Stop doing that, Spencer, Jesus Christ,” groans Nathan somewhere behind him, sounding exasperated. Spencer finally turns to look at him, taking in the healthier tinge that his skin had taken on, his new haircut, his obsessively matched socks.
“It was only the one time. I promise.”
Nathan makes a face, as if torn between laughing and snapping. “I don't care about any damn sausage meat, Spencer. I'm talking about – apologising, and feeling guilty or responsible or whatever.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “You realise that I hurt you, right? Has it completely slipped your mind that I very violently assaulted you in your sleep, and that you shouldn't have – worried about me, you should have been scared of me? I should think that as an FBI agent, you should have some tiny capacity for self-preservation, just as a matter of course.”
Spencer steps closer. “You asked me for help, Nathan, and I couldn't give it to you. I couldn't even direct you towards someone who could. You reached out to me and I failed you at every turn.”
“I asked you for help because there was something wrong with me. That isn't your fault.”
“But being unable to help you was.”
He barely gets out the last word before Nathan has cleared the last three feet between them. He grabs Spencer's arms – not roughly, just firmly – and tugs him forward. “I came here to apologise and you managed to say sorry first. You know this isn't even the first time you've expressed guilt? I don't think you remember it, but you didn't even wait until the doctor started stitching you up to say so.” He's so close to Spencer, pressing him back against the refrigerator, talking into his shirt. He draws in a breath, voice raw.
“You didn't do anything wrong, and I don't want you believing you're some colossal fuck up because of something I did, and I felt like I was just hurting you, and even when I was refusing to Shift, when it hurt so much, do you know what I was thinking? That I couldn't come back here, knowing that I might hurt you again. I figured – I'd try to fight it. I was sitting there, in my room, thinking, 'the only way I can protect people in the future is to not be in it.' And then suddenly, I was awake, in a hospital room, and you were there, and I knew I had failed.”
“Nathan –”
“No, look, it's true. I just – I really care about you, you know? And I can't – hurt you, like that, I can't risk it, and I just wanted to apologise properly – I even had a whole speech planned out.” He sort of laughs, a muted sound, and his hands drop from Spencer's biceps and fall to his side. He takes a step back, right out of Spencer's personal space, creates an appropriate distance between them, and Spencer just stays where he is, leaning on the fridge, magnets digging into his back.
Nathan says something, as he's pulling on his shoes – Spencer doesn't really hear it. Something generically apologetic, it doesn't matter; Nathan is out the door before he can reply, anyway.
There's something pathetic about Nathan's default facial expression.
This sounds like a cruel statement to make, but Spencer thinks it's fair. He's always peeking up at whoever he's talking to, eyes wide and forehead crinkled, almost desperate, like he's pleading with an unseen judge to go easy on him. It's a perversely vulnerable expression – he looks afraid, really, at the heart of it. It makes some baser part of Spencer want to wrap him up in crocheted afghans and protect him from the world, even if it seems, at this point, that the biggest problem in his life is himself.
It's this expression that makes him move, automatically, to the side when he opens the door, so that Nathan can step, wordless, into his apartment. It's nearly one in the morning – not the first time Nathan's shown up past midnight, but the first time in which he hasn't tried to play it off as an accident: “Well I was just out walking and I guess I headed in this direction automatically,” is his usual excuse, but he doesn't say anything, just slips off his shoes and follows Spencer to the kitchen. Spencer, at least, has been up all night, reading, not even changed for bed.
“Tea?” he offers, moving automatically to the kettle, but Nathan shakes his head a little, curls jumping with the motion.
“I was wondering,” he says, voice raw like when he first woke up, as if with disuse, “I was wondering if I could look at –” he gestures vaguely at Spencer's shoulder, but he's looking at the floor, the scuffed lino apparently fascinating from his angle.
Spencer sets the kettle back down on the base. “Oh.” He isn't totally sure what to say, but Nathan nods, and he still has that pathetic expression on his face, like he already knows Spencer's going to say 'no'. It probably comes as a surprise to both of them when Spencer peels his sweater vest over his head. Considering the number of times Nathan has been naked in front of him – even the number of times he's been nude in front of Nathan, though in form – it shouldn't make him so nervous, but Nathan's hands follow his fingers as he starts unbuttoning his shirt, to the point that it's Spencer who can't look, ends up staring at the microwave. He pushes the shirt down his arms, and Nathan steps closer until Spencer can actually see his reflection in the microwave and gives up on being awkward and looks at Nathan properly.
There's silence – the same stiff, heavy silence that has filled the house for months – and Spencer swallows, nervous, when Nathan brings his fingers to his skin.
Nathan touches his fingers to each point on the scar, the lumps and bumps and ridges, and it hurts a little – rather, perhaps, the unfamiliar sensation bothers Spencer. After a moment, he pulls Nathan's hand away from his shoulder – the other opens his mouth, as if to apologise again, but before he gets the words out, Spencer kisses him. It's sloppy, and he hasn't really thought his angle of approach through, so there's an awkward click of enamel against enamel, Nathan's lip caught between their teeth. Despite his truly awful initiation, though, Nathan presses back up against him, body and mouth, one hand still clutched on the open side of Spencer's shirt and the other on his hand.
Spencer's spare hand curls around his waist, pulls Nathan flush to him; it's almost familiar, body all sharp bones and muscle. Nathan is warmer than Spencer expects, every time they touch, almost surprising – he looks like he would feel cool, but his mouth is hot. The height difference means that his neck is bent at a bit of an odd angle, Nathan's had craning upwards to account for just a few inches.
They break apart, but don't move far, close enough to feel the other's breath. There's an awkward few seconds where Nathan, wide-eyed, looks ready to bolt across the room, and Spencer thinks he might actually be able to track the adrenaline moving through his body.
“I'm really, really sorry about that,” says Spencer, at about the same time as Nathan says, “I should probably go,” but neither moves. Spencer lets go of his hand but Nathan doesn't pull away, instead bringing it to the back of his neck. The next kiss is more controlled, gentler, open mouthed and slow. Nathan pushes forward and Spencer ends up leaning against the kitchen bench top, Nathan standing between his legs, bracketed by his thighs.
He grips Spencer's hips, and his fingers skim along the exposed skin of his stomach, and Spencer hooks his own fingers into Nathan's cardigan and pulls it over his head. They have to separate for a moment to get it off, and Nathan tucks his arms close as if to cover himself before changing his mind and yanking Spencer's shirt the rest of the way off in retaliation. As with the sweater vest, Spencer moves to fold the clothing up, but before he can, Nathan shoves it out of his hands and kisses him again, on the corner of his mouth, his chin, his neck. He can't help but laugh when Nathan, bending down to lick a dark nipple, touches a particularly sensitive part of his chest, and Nathan peeks up at him and pouts as if offended. Spencer tries to kiss him in apology and ends up overbalancing, tipping them both back onto the lino. Nathan sprawls on the floor beneath him, and he still looks upset, keeps glancing at the ring of white scar tissue until Spencer distracts him again, drawing his hands down Nathan's sides and letting his mouth follow, nipping and licking a line down his chest.
When he gets to the waistband of his pants, he asks quietly, “Can I touch you?” and gets an eager nod in response. Nathan's cheeks are flushed, two high points of colour, and he squirms when Spencer flicks the button on his fly. It takes a moment to get used to the taste, the stretch of his lips, and Spencer's glad he pauses because it gives him a chance to hear Nathan gasp, one hand moving to his hair. It's not really something Spencer's done before, but Nathan seems to enjoy it in any case – he sucks the head, foreskin pulled back, and wraps his hand around the base, pumping what he can't fit into his mouth. Nathan doesn't pull his hair or push at his head or anything, just tangles his fingers up, and Spencer can hear him, speaking mostly nonsense – “Thank you,” and “like that, oh my God,” and he's never thought of giving a blow job as particularly arousing, but Nathan is so responsive and so enthusiastic underneath him.
One leg sort of wraps around Spencer's waist, pulling them closer, and Nathan's fingers tighten against his scalp just before he comes. He might call Spencer's name out, but he can't really be sure, head a little fuzzy. He'd been on his elbows before, so that he could see what was happening, but post-orgasm, Nathan lets his head flop back, hears Spencer laugh at him a little when it hits the ground with a thump, tucking him carefully back into his pant and doing up his zipper. When he opens his eyes again, Spencer is still crouched between his legs, making a face.
“It tasted funny,” he says in response to Nathan's questioning look. The younger nods, sits up and, after a moment of consideration, reaches for his jeans, clumsily pawing at the buttons. “You don't have to,” says Spencer, though the last part gets a little lost when Nathan cups him through his pants. “If you don't feel like –”
“I want you to fuck me,” interrupts Nathan, scowling through his embarrassment, and whatever Spencer was about to say gets lost when he makes a sound like he might be choking. Nathan manages to get the button through the hole and tugs Spencer's pants to midthigh before shuffling forward, straddling his knees. He gets a hand down the front of Spencer's undies before he can lose his nerve, wrapping a hand around hot flesh and pumping slowly from base to tip, once, twice, kissing Spencer with a closed mouth at the same time.
Spencer grabs his hips, twitches under him, and sucks on his lower lip. The kiss deepens, and Nathan almost jumps in surprise when he's met with the sort of bitter taste of his own semen, and Spencer might actually apologise for it, which is stupid and just reminds Nathan, a bit, about what this whole thing is about, so he quickens his pace, tightens his fist. “I want you to fuck me,” he repeats, swiping his thumb over Spencer's slit.
“Not tonight, and definitely not on the – the kitchen floor,” Spencer manages to choke out, which has the effect of making Nathan feel rejected for all of thirty seconds until he realises that this implies that there will be other nights, at which makes him grin and press Spencer back into the cupboard. He shifts forward so that not so much of his weight is resting on Spencer's legs, and Spencer rises up to meet his fist on the down stroke – Nathan concludes that he likes this position much better, because with a bit of distance between them he can see all of Spencer, see him twist a little, undignified, flushed with the exertion of it.
He's beautiful, and he's more beautiful when he comes, eyes wide and mouth open. He spurts across his own stomach and Nathan's fist, and Nathan grabs his discarded undershirt and wipes at it before settling close. He can feel Spencer's heart beat as it slows down to a more natural pace, as the sweat dries between them. He still feels sort of silly from his own orgasm, and he leaves a series of light kisses along the underside of Spencer's jaw. “This ended better than I expected it to,” he murmurs into Spencer's neck, and the other laughs, pulling him close. “Should have done this last time.”
“Should have done this months ago,” corrects Spencer.
They somehow stumble into the bedroom; Spencer drops himself onto the bed and Nathan settles beside him. He grabs the familiar afghan and yanks it over his shoulder. “God, I missed this,” he says, and Spencer is all ready to say something sarcastic about just wanting him for his rhombus-shaped blankets when Nathan spreads it over both of them, shuffling up close against his chest so that it will fit.
When Spencer wakes up, Nathan has moved up to sit leaning on the headboard; he's still close enough that Spencer's cheek is resting on his thigh, with his hand in Spencer's hair. He's brushing his hand through it almost absent-mindedly, but he stops when he hears Spencer wake up. “Morning,” mutters Spencer, still drowsy with sleep, but he sobers up a little when Nathan just grunts in response.
“You know I'm not – I'm not magically better, right?” he says after a moment. “I mean I really – I really like you, a lot, but sex doesn't fix people. Doctors fix people.”
“I'm a doctor,” mumbles Spencer.
Nathan rolls his eyes. “Don't be obtuse. You know what I mean. I have a psychologist, now, and there's – a support group, on Wednesdays, and mostly it's Shifters who can't accept their form or who have trouble Shifting but so far it's been really helpful. The thing is that I can't just – just be better suddenly, because that isn't how it works, you know?”
It's not like Spencer thought he had 'fixed' anything, but he can see what Nathan means. He shuffles up the bed so that he's kneeling beside Nathan, looking him in the eye, because if this is their first Serious Talk, he wants to at least get the basics right. “I'm OK with that. I get it. I'm fine with anything you need to do, or not do, though to be honest I'd really like it if you were doing these things with me, but I can understand if I'm not included in the what you need right now –”
“Oh my God, you've managed to do it again. You realise that I was the one giving you an out, right?”
Spencer blinks. “Um. What?”
“Well … I figured you wouldn't really want – all this. I didn't want to pressure you or anything.” He pulls the quilt tighter around his shoulders, glancing up at Spencer with that puppy dog expression, and though he feels like it sort of derails serious discussion, Spencer can't help but kiss him. He intends for it to be brief, but it's drawn out by Nathan's hands on his nape, his fingers in Nathan's hair. When he pulls away, Nathan blinks. “Am I right to take that as a want for 'all this'?”
“You taste like morning breath,” says Spencer, and then nods. “Yes. Of course, yes, all of this.”
Nathan shoves him in the shoulder for the morning breath comment – “You kissed me, you idiot” – and gives him a second kiss for the 'all of this' comment. This devolves into lazy morning making out for several minutes until Nathan pulls back and says, very solemnly, “You know you're never getting rid of me now.”
"No?"
"No. I'm going to spend every weekend on your couch, eating all the daal and stealing the remote and berating you when you pick stupid movies," he announces, poking Spencer underneath the covers, and it's foolish and romantic and altogether too sappy for Spencer to admit, but he wouldn't have it any other way.