Spencer Reid x Reader | Work Husband
@emberfrostlovesloki : Spencer X Reader request. What if Spencer wrote the reader a note saying he liked them. The reader knows it’s Spencer but pretends to not know who it’s from. After a while she writes him back and they confess their feelings for each other and the reader tells Spence she knew it was him all along. Maybe some kissing and cuddles included! Thanks so much.
@he4rtbre4khotel : could you possibly write a spencer x reader where the reader always teases spencer? (like how garcia & morgan tease eachother)
(A/N: Combination of two requests because I thought they would go well together <3)
(Summary: Spencer is NOT pleased when it seems like someone might be swooping in on his anonymous romantic gesture, 3k+ words, fluff, Warnings: None, Jealous!Spencer)
“Honey, I’m home!” you mock yelled as you entered the bullpen, laying a wet kiss on Spencer’s cheek.
You wouldn’t usually be so forward with public displays of affection in the workplace, but Hotch was nowhere to be seen so you felt comfortable planting one on your ‘work husband’.
“Did you know that the muscle you use to pucker your lips is called the Orbicularis Oris and is also used in exhalation?” Spencer asked, using a tissue from his desk to wipe off his cheek.
“I did not know that Spencie, but I guess that’s why we keep you around,” you said, as you took a seat at your desk.
You and Spencer had known one another for years but your relationship hadn’t always been so familiar. When Spencer had first started working at the Behavioral Analysis Unit, you had treated him with the utmost amount of care. When he’d shown up on the first day, he was wild eyed and timid and that had scared you. While everyone else made fun of him, you had tried to stick to the background and offer him support when he needed it. You had never met anyone like him and you were a little scared that one wrong move would set him off or break him. Half of the time that he spoke to you, you had no clue what he was trying to say but that didn’t stop you from trying to get it.
Through the years, you had started to humanize him and the kid gloves you had used when interacting with him had come off in favor of a more familiar banter. Spencer was still shy and nervous, but you had realized that it wasn’t necessarily a bad quality for him to have. If anything, it kept things interesting. As the two of you grew closer you had adopted the habit of referring to him as your ‘work husband’ and flirting with him shamelessly.
Unlike with Morgan and Garcia, Spencer rarely flirted back. Instead, he opted to respond to your advances the only way that he knew how, with fun facts and bashful curiosity. You had a feeling that women didn’t pay Spencer much attention, so you figured it was probably healthy that he got a healthy dose of the female gaze once in a while.
Also unlike Morgan and Garcia, you were pretty sure that there was something distinctly non-platonic brewing under the surface of your relationship with Spencer. Sometimes the two of you shared moments that felt so much bigger than banter and flirting and that was a little scary. It felt weirdly serious to consider the fact that you had feelings for Spencer, so most of the time you didn’t. He didn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to confront his feelings, so you didn’t think the issue was too pressing.
Luckily, today was a paperwork day which meant that there wasn’t any traveling that needed to happen. Unluckily, paper work days were the most boring part of the job. Mindlessly filling out forms and recalling terrible images was the opposite of your idea of a good time so you often did what you could to spice the day up for you and your coworkers.
“Quick, baby! Tell me a nerd fact!” you yelled, tossing a balled up piece of paper on to Spencer’s desk across from you.
Spencer perked up at your request, always willing to drop what he was doing to indulge your requests for new knowledge. He had a habit of licking his lower lip when he was thinking deeply, an unnecessarily sexy accompaniment to teaching his coworkers about something.
“Laws governing fashion were first recorded in England in the 13th century. These laws were regulated to distinguish and preserve the differences between classes of the society. For instance, women had to dress as per the social standing of their husbands and fathers, and silks in purple and gold could only be worn by the royals. Those who broke these rules were punished, sometimes executed!” he said excitedly, tucking his hair behind his ear to keep it from getting in the way of his speech.
You nodded solemnly, satisfied with the new information that Spencer had introduced into your life, “That’s a very good fact, baby. I’m excited for tomorrow’s.”
The two of you spent the rest of the morning filling out forms, having whisper debates about the best Dr. Who episodes, and attempting to stealthily throw the paper ball back and forth without the rest of your coworkers noticing.
By the time lunch rolled around you were almost done with all of the forms that had accumulated on your desk. If you finished all of them in a timely manner you would probably be able to leave work early, which meant that Spencer would definitely be able to leave with you because he was able to go through government documents with superhuman speed. All you had to do was grind a little after you got back from lunch and you were practically guaranteed a movie marathon with Spencer.
“Alright, hubs. It’s break time, where are we getting lunch?” you asked Spencer through the low divider of your desks.
“Oh,” he said nervously, “I can’t get lunch with you today, I have something I have to stay in the office for.”
You tried not to let yourself fall into a childish pout. It wasn’t your first nature to get so emotionally involved in something at work, especially not something so inconsequential as a lunch date, but when it came to Spencer you couldn’t help but get almost too involved. Luckily, no one was paying attention to you enough to bear witness to you resisting the urge to whine at Spencer to try and wear him down into telling you what was more important than getting lunch with you.
“But there’s a new Thai place that just opened up down the street. You know how much I love coconut chicken, it’ll be devastating if I don’t get any today!” you wailed, clutching a hand to your chest dramatically.
“I’m sorry, I really have to stay here for this.”
For his part, he did actually look upset about having to reject your offer. That made you feel better about acting so strung out and dramatic. When you spent all day staring at gruesome crime scene photos and reading grisly accounts of what sick weirdos had done to their victims, sometimes the best way to cope was to be a little silly or fixate on some of the more menial details of your job (such as your coworkers). That was one of the things that you liked about Spencer, no matter how weird or clingy you acted, he never seemed to judge you.
“You know that this means I’ll have to sit in the dining area looking all sad and alone, right?” you asked him, your face falling into a sarcastic pout.
He laughed and reached under his desk to pull out one of the many books that he kept in a stack amongst his other personal items.
“Here,” he said, offering you some sort of prehistoric looking book, “you can read this while you wait to keep you entertained.”
You stared at the book dubiously. Though you enjoyed books, you knew that you and Spencer’s definition of a ‘light read’ were vastly different. Despite your apprehension, you slipped the book into your purse which brought a bright smile on to Spencer’s face. You knew that even though he tried to appear unphased by your overly affectionate act, he did enjoy the attention that you gave to him. He enjoyed it even more when you seemed to take an interest in what he enjoyed.
“Fine!” you said, spinning around wildly in your chair so that you came face to face with Agent Anderson who was leaning against one of the desks behind yours.
“I happen to love Thai food,” he said, looking down at you with an amused smirk.
“Oh, yeah?” you asked, looking him up and down.
You didn’t know Anderson super well, he worked the more paperwork heavy side of the Behavioral Analysis Unit, but you still liked him enough to let him be your lunch date. Especially if Spencer couldn’t make it.
“Alright, Anderson. Looks like you’re in,” you said, standing up from your desk with your bag in hand.
Turning back to Spencer, you shot him a triumphant grin, “Well Reid, it looks like you are now divorced from work husband related activities because I’ve found someone who actually wants to spend time with me.”
As you leave, you try not to notice the way that the smile had completely dissolved off of Spencer’s face at Anderson’s offer. You’re not a level 187 genius like Spencer, but you are able to deduce that the darkness in his eyes has something to do with jealousy. You and Spencer had never talked about your feelings for one another, but that didn’t stop Spencer from trying to keep anyone else from getting to you first. When the team went out to bars after cases, Spencer always had a habit of not being more than a few feet away from you at any moment just in case any guys got the wrong idea and tried to strike up a conversation with you. It would have been annoying if it weren’t kind of cute.
It wasn’t that you tried to make Spencer jealous on purpose, you just figured that if he was going to have all of these feelings for you and not do anything about them then it wasn’t his place to get all twisted up about what you did. Apparently you could now file ‘getting lunch with male coworkers who are not Spencer’ under things that would get him twisted up because the way that he was glaring at Anderson told you that your lunch date was probably lucky that Spencer had failed his gun qualifications a few times over.
“Don’t look at him like that, Spencie. I’ll bring you back some pad thai. Catch you later.”
And with that you were gone, leaving a very stressed out Spencer in your wake.
When you returned from your lunch, Spencer was nowhere to be found. After plopping down the container of pad thai on his desk, you noticed a white envelope sitting on your own.
Your name was scrawled hastily across the envelope in Spencer’s messy handwriting. It wasn’t like Spencer to send you sealed letters, especially not during the work day. Usually if he wanted to tell you anything when you weren’t around it would be inside of a file or written out on a sticky note that he stuck to your desk.
Opening it up, you pulled out a fancy looking piece of paper that read:
In vain I have struggled, it will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
Please do me the pleasure of accompanying me to a night of conversation and performance that would make even Elizabeth Bennet jealous.”
Inside the envelope, there were two tickets to a production of a stage adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. The note wasn’t signed but if you hadn’t seen Spencer’s scrawl on the front you would have definitely known it was him from the contents of the letter.
A few weeks ago, you and Spencer had been discussing literature and you had mentioned that the only book that you had enjoyed reading in high school was Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. If the Darcy quote and the tickets were any indication, Spencer had taken the conversation to heart and decided to declare his intentions.
He just hadn’t signed the letter.
It bothered you a little that he hadn’t attached his name to his love confession. Obviously he knew that you would understand that it was him, no one else would know something like that, so he hadn’t actually taken the time to invest himself in the declaration. All in all it felt a little…underwhelming.
“Whatcha got there?” Spencer asked, coming up behind you.
“A letter. Don’t know who it’s from though, they didn’t sign it,” you replied, feigning ignorance.
“Oh my gosh,” you said interrupting him, “babe, I’ve got a secret admirer!”
“Wait, I’m not so sure that’s what’s happening here,” he said, a perplexed look on his face evidencing that he didn’t anticipate his gesture going in that direction.
“Should I write back?” you asked, trying to muster up an earnest expression.
Spencer’s eyes had gone wide and he had started to fidget with his hands. You could practically see the wheels turning in his head, trying to figure out the best course of action to handle what was happening in front of him.
You tried to resist the urge to roll your eyes as you watched him internally freak out. All he had to do was tell you that the letter was from him. All he had to do was own the confession and then the two of you could ride off into the sunset together.
“Um, yeah you should write them back,” he said, not making eye contact with you.
“Okay! I guess I’ll just write them back and then see if they come and get it,” you said, picking up a pen and starting to jot down a note as an addendum to the original letter.
For the next two hours you and Spencer took part of a silent game where you would write a note, get up from your desk, come back and see the new note, question Spencer on who had written it (obviously he had absolutely no idea who it was that had dropped it off), and then rinse and repeat. It would have been tiring if you hadn’t been enjoying how much Spencer was freaking out trying to juggle the situation.
Eventually, though, the paperwork ran out and it was time to call it quits on the workday. You assumed that Spencer would break on the drive to his apartment, but for the most part your ride was silent, save for the occasional mention of the secret admirer and a brief debate on the evening’s snacks.
It was infuriating. You were so vocal about your interest and affections for Spencer but he couldn’t even own up to writing you a stupid note. Instead he had opted to keep up an afternoon of written conversation with you where he had been so witty and charming that it almost physically hurt to resist simply voicing your responses out loud to him. If he wasn’t so gosh darn shy then this wouldn’t be so difficult, unfortunately his bashfulness was just another thing that you loved about him.
It was time to switch tactics.
“I just can’t believe I have a secret admirer,” you said wistfully to him as he sat down on the couch beside you.
“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy,” he said ruefully.
“Well, maybe because, wait- what?” he asked, turning to face you.
Finally. You knew that if anything was going to throw Spencer off of his game, it would be his notorious jealous streak.
“Yeah, I mean we had such a great time at lunch and I had a feeling that he was flirting with me a little and I guess this just confirms it.”
“Flirting? With you?” he asked, his eyes wide and jaw slack.
“He might not have been my first choice but he’s kind of cute I guess. And obviously he has a way with words that I didn’t know about,” you responded, lazily placing your head on Spencer’s shoulder.
Spencer started to sputter, his fidgeting going into overdrive as he became more and more frustrated with the situation.
“You mean to tell me that you think Anderson of all people has been sending you Jane Austen passages and giving you tickets to plays?” he asked, his body practically vibrating with rage.
“Hey, don’t underestimate him, he isn’t just a pretty face. Besides, who else do I know that would talk like that.”
Spencer abruptly pulled himself out from under your shoulder to look at you. His eyes were dark and his face was starting to turn a little red, obviously getting a little carried away with his emotions.
“I talk like that! I’m the pretty face who talks like that!” he exclaimed, his voice going up an octave.
“What?” you asked, still trying to remain innocent.
“I sent you that note! And the tickets! Not Anderson. I’m the one who likes you.”
The two of you stared at one another in silence for a beat. The tension between the two of you mounted, Spencer searching your face for a reaction to his confession. Even though he had been on the brink of a meltdown mere seconds earlier, you could tell that he was starting to fall back into his anxiety having let out his confession.
“Oh, good,” you said as you fell back into the couch, “you finally admitted it.”
“What?” Spencer asked, eyes not leaving you.
“You admitted that you wrote me the note, I thought I was going to have to actually go out with Anderson.”
“No,” he said immediately, “you’re not going out with Anderson.”
You rolled your eyes and reverted back to your position on his shoulder.
“So you’re finally telling me that you like me?” you asked.
You felt him nod against your head.
“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”
“Yes, I am finally admitting that I like you.”
You laughed and pulled Spencer into a hug against your chest. He attempted to resist for a second, but then ended up relaxing into your embrace. The two of you sat like that for a while, holding one another and staring at the TV until Spencer broke the silence.
“This means no more lunch dates with Anderson, just so you know. And no more comments about divorcing me either, that hurt my feelings.”
You propped yourself up and planted a kiss on each of his cheeks, “Don’t worry, work hubby. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
