I get out of the shower and wrap myself up in fuzzy pajamas. Jazz music is playing. I towel off my wet hair as I enter the living room. Right now, I can't bare the heat of the blow dry, the sweat slicking down my head. Cold water will suffice.

Spencer stands in the living room, in the centre of the music, with his hand raised toward me. His cane is propped against his couch.

"You shouldn't be standing on that thing," I whisper.

He doesn't lower his hand, "dance with me."

A smile sneaks up on my face, and I scrunch my nose. He returns it, hand still aloft. Finally, I move into the room, taking it and dancing with him. Spencer leads, as he always does. One step and then another, sweeping around the room.

"You should have told me," I whisper, pressing up against him. He moves us quicker than I was expecting, still not in full force but almost as fast as Caro's wedding. "I would have blow-dried my hair."

He brings me in close, breathing against my wet hair, "you are just as lovely with wet hair, you know."

"I know," I sigh, "and you are just as lovely with your Jesus hair."

He laughs. We take a few more steps, and then he's spinning me.

It's easy. Loving him has always been simple, even when I hated him. Sure, fighting him was easy, but disliking him takes work. It's an active practice, requiring focus on every single sentence. Spencer Reid is so good. He is the smartest man I've ever met, the most attentive, the most thoughtful. He's kind and caring and bursts with passion, be it righteous rage or fun. He loves magic tricks and chess and he loves being mine.

And I can't lose him.

"Okay, slow down," I laugh, as he drags me around the room. "You really shouldn't be on that leg!"

"I'll just take it easy tomorrow," Spencer explains. "Despite my stint in the woods, my physiotherapist has been surprised at how fast I've healed. Likely, I can attribute a lot of it to you, since you've taken care of so much of the housework since my injury."

"It's just because I'm used to Estelle," I shrug. "Besides, you won't accept rent money. I'm beginning to think you're manipulating me into being your house servant."

"I'd never ask you to pay rent at my place," Spencer explains. "This isn't our place. It's my apartment with some of your things in it."

"What would make it our place?" I ask.

He grins, stopping and leaning in to kiss me. I match him before he pulls back, murmuring against my lips, "a balcony."

I lean forward, kissing him one more time, "should we order Indian?"

"Indian," he agrees.

I pop out into the kitchen, ordering us takeout. After a minute, he joins me with his cane, before plopping down at the kitchen table.

"I'm going to go to an NA meeting tomorrow morning, before work," he says, glancing up at me before flickering his gaze back to the table. "I talked to Bastien on the weekend, and I realized I'm not doing well. I'm not using again, or anything before you ask, but I have been thinking about it. I just... I keep having nightmares where you are dead."

I stare at him. I haven't noticed. Well, I did notice when I thought things were bad, but only the one.

"Often?" I ask.

He nods, "every night, since you got another letter."

"Wake me up, please," I whisper. "I want to be there for you."

I expect his expression to soften, but it doesn't. He looks at me, one eyebrow slightly quirked. That was intentional. A gambit.

He's playing a fucking mind game.

Water. With my back turned to him, I go into the cupboard and grab a glass, filling it up over the sink and beginning to chug it.

"Colette-"

"You could just use your words, you know," I snap, putting the cup down on the table. "I'm not a fucking UnSub or a victim to be manipulated okay? If you want me to tell you things, ask. Don't go being vulnerable to show me that it's not just okay, but it will bring us closer. It's... it's mean."

"I'm sorry," Spencer stands. His cane clatters to the floor.

I turn around, finally facing him.

"No you aren't," I say. "You are just sorry you were caught, and that I'm upset."

Spencer scowls, "You're right, I'm not sorry. Simultaneously, you are also incorrect that I can just ask you questions. What have I been doing for the last three days? For fuck's sake, what have I been doing for the last year? The last three years actually, since the day we first met and you brushed off Morgan when he asked you what your deal was. I've been patient, Cole, but I've seen no progress-"

"No progress!" I feel my jaw start to quiver, so much that my shoulders shake and there is an echo in my ears. I put the glass down and lean against the sink, crossing my arms against my chest as if that will help sturdy my core and keep my entire body from rattling. "You've seen no progress? I'm going to therapy, Spencer. When I got that letter on Friday, I told you immediately. Keeping it a secret didn't even cross my mind."

"No, you're right. I've seen some progress. You still didn't tell me about the other letters," he says. "Someone has been stalking you for almost a year and I was not privy to that information. You hid the letters, only showed some of the photos, and you completely lied about who sent you the flowers!"

"And I understand that revelation is new to you, but the lie isn't new to me. I've stopped lying, and that's fucking progress," I still am shaking.

Spencer stares at me, glassy eyes focused on me. "I understand that," Spencer sighs. "But you have to understand that it is also deeply humiliating. You went to Hotchner before you went to me about it."

My face screws up. I hate when he's right, which is all the fucking time, "It's because I could handle this on my own."

"You don't need to."

"I don't need your help!" I shout. "I never have. Always fucking correcting me. If you're not fixing my code, or sneaking around to talk to my siblings, you're telling me how to keep myself safe from a stalker than I've been dealing with by myself just fine!"

The bridge of Spencer's nose tinges pink. He stares at me, eyes narrowing in and mouth slightly agape. For someone who always has words, he has none now. My chest puffs beneath me, my cheeks burning red hot. And he just stares at me.

The truth occurs to me so late, it's almost ridiculous. "You have no idea, no idea, what I am putting myself through to be better."

Spencer looks at me, face crumpling. I wish he would scream at me, match the anger. He doesn't incinerate the way I do. He's warm, down to his amber eyes.

"When you talk this way, I feel like it is harder for you to be with me than it would be for you to be single..." Spencer shakes his head. "I don't want to make your life harder."

I shake my head. No. No he doesn't fucking get it. It is harder to be with him than single. It is harder to live in DC, to stand above hospital beds while my brothers are unconscious. It is hard to be at Caro's wedding so close to the anniversary of when He held me in his basement and assaulted me. This, standing here in his kitchen with wet hair and a hungry stomach, arguing with him after a terrible day is so fucking hard.

It's not even that it is my only option.

"Is sobriety easy?" I ask, exhaling. He looks at me, eyes wet. I press on. "Is it worth it anyway?"

Spencer inhales and exhales. He steps up from the table, moving over to me. He wraps his arms around me. Slowly, I lean into his chest and breathing in the smell of the coffee which clings to his shirt.

"I'll ask," he whispers, holding me to him. "Tell me about Luc."

I exhale, murmuring the words against the fabric of his dress shirt "we haven't just been calling. I've seen him recently, during my trip to UPenn for the interview. I didn't bring it up because I didn't want to derange you."

Spencer recoils, letting go and bumping into the cabinet, "You... you think I'm being jealous?"

"That's not-"

"Why, because you dated him when you were fifteen?" Spencer says, an eyebrow raised. "I'm an adult, Colette. I don't care about your teenage relationship."

"And I'm a teenager?" my voice starts to sour.

Spencer breathes in, "you aren't exactly- look, the only person I would ever be jealous of is someone you trust," Spencer says. "And... and I'm not sure that... that person exists."

I close my eyes slowly, feeling the sink. I'd rather he have slapped me, mostly because it would justify the heat curling beneath my ribcage.

"What?"

"It's not just Luc," Spencer says, his voice calmer. "You clearly had a fight with Stéphane during Caro's housewarming party and you haven't mentioned it to me. You don't tell me for months that you have a stalker. You confront Rachel in a forest and purposefully make it harder for Garcia to find you. Luc is one example in a long-standing pattern. I just... there was a weird look between you and Luc and I knew you were hiding something from me. Again. So that's it then? Your Canadian ex-boyfriend has been visiting you secretly? How many times?"

"Just twice," I snap. "And they weren't social calls. He was visiting me on behalf of the RCMP to update me on-"

I swallow. Karine does not exist, and I'm not going to lie to his face. Not right now. Hopefully, not ever again.

Spencer's face drops. He steps around the table reaching for me. I recoil, to the very end of the kitchen until I'm pressed against the counter and I can feel a cabinet handle poking into my leg. He doesn't get any closer.

"Luc was working with victim services," I say. "It was about a parole hearing."

There is no follow up question, and I feel like I'm in Hotch's chair, and I feel like in a hospital with a metal clamp inside of me, prying me open for two nurses and a camera and I shut my eyes tightly.

Onetwothree. Onetwothree. Onetwothree.

It's Spencer though. It's Spencer.

"Now he's in cybercrimes," I explain. "I saw him today at lunch, and it spooked me. I don't like that I just got the letter and Luc Levesque happens to be in town. I can't... I don't think Luc ever would. Logically too. He doesn't fit your profile, but it terrified me. For ten seconds, I was so fucking terrified. Flattened."

Spencer takes a step closer, and another, and then my head is twisted to the side, staring at the fridge and waiting for him to be upon me.

He's right. All this time I've been terrified that I will show Spencer what happened to me and then that thing, that's all he will see. Spencer needs glasses, but he's clever. No, he'll narrow in his gaze on what happened because once you notice it, that is all there is to see. He's not wearing his glasses now, and when he looks at me, all he sees is the carving. I love his glasses. Brown, horn-rimmed, exactly the professor he looks like. I can't avoid it forever, and soon he'll put on his glasses and stop thinking my freckles are pointillism art. He'll realize that I have scars.

"Why won't you let me love you?" he whispers.

"Spen, I..." there's no right way to say it.

He's wrong. I do trust him. With my heart and my soul and everything. It's me I don't trust. It's all my fault. All of it, and all of it that is attributable by me via assist points. Stéphane's panic attacks. Bastien's need to be the strong man. Caro's desperate pleas for a family. Spencer's despair, the anguish I put him through every day. All I have ever done is lie to him.

I suck in a breath, peering at him. His stubble is coming in, his shirt is wrinkled from the day, and he's putting his weight on a bad leg. He's not smooth anymore, maybe he never was but I always thought of him that way. His drug use, his abduction, his absent father and schizophrenic were all before me though.

And I took to long to see it.

"I've already lost you, haven't I?" I choke on a sob.

"You've always had me," he scoops me into his arms, holding me upright as my knees buckle. He pulls me up toward him, tipping me back so I'm forced to face him. "From the moment we met, I wanted you. I wanted you when you were the pretty girl awkwardly polite on her first day, and the annoyed coworker on your second day. I wanted you when you were an office gossip at a ball, and when you were a magician at Denny's, and when you were a bridesmaid at your sister's wedding, and I want you now.

"And you have me. You have me when I'm a doctor with too many PhDs and... and when I'm the son of a schizophrenic," he exhales. "You have me when I'm a field agent running into danger and when I'm a patient in a hospital. You had me when I was shooting up at work, and back then I wasn't even me, but you still had me. If you'll want me, you'll always have me. So let me have you."

I tilt toward him, resting my forehead against his chest. Clavicle. Cold. Counting. Onetwothree. Onetwothree. Onetwothree. I want to pull back, to feel the warmth that radiates from his amber eyes but I can't bare to part with his body. I have him. We are right.

"Spencer Reid, marry me," I whisper.

His fingers move to my chin. He tilts his head up toward his, and I press my lips to his. Closer than we've ever been, so close that the universe could explode between us, stars and planets and galaxies erupting, an entire cosmos of cold tearing his kitchen asunder, and even if we were at the furthest corners of the universe from one another, we would still be this close. I kiss him and I feel him. Every version of him that I have ever known kisses me behind his lips, the full force of all of our time together.

I pull his shirt off him, rip mine off too and they puddle on the floor. He pushes me up so I'm sitting on the counter, level with his eyes. My legs wrap around him, bringing him into me. Closer. Closer than we've ever been.

"Marry me," I murmur. "I don't care if you're terrified to have me or not. Just marry me."

I'm terrified enough to have me for the both of us.

"Colette," he moans my name.

I steal it out of his mouth with a kiss. I'm grateful we kept our promise of hiding condoms around his house, because we rip off the rest of our clothes off. My fuzzy pajamas, his office clothes, and then we are exposed to each other. My freckles, my scars, red hair and all me. And Spencer Reid, lanky and marred and mine. And he sinks into me, our moans filling the ait.

"I'm here," he breathes, sweat slickdown the front of his face as he kisses me again. "I've always been here."

~~~~~

I did warn you it would be good. We'll see if the next one is better teehee.