Work Text:
Spencer doesn't know why he's here.
That's the lie. The one he tells himself every fortnight, when he gets that text.
Two words: come over. Sometimes followed by a coy question mark as a facile imitation of timidity, of care. More often than not, your words aren't caged by punctuation, leaving them to sit somewhere in the liminal space between open request and direct order, and Spencer has always treated it as though it's the latter.
His phone chimes, he glimpses your message, and he drops whatever pointless thing he's doing. He starts rummaging around for his best clothes, his favourite lucky socks; he even sprays the expensive cologne that he bought himself for his birthday years ago that has since sat, scarcely used, on his shelf. You pop back into his life by means of a single message, and everything outside of you loses its colour.
On the unfortunate instance where he's been out of town, he's crammed messages with apologies and stuffed his phone into the depths of his messenger bag, leaving it to burn holes into the leather as he's awaited your response in silence-clad agony. He's presented profiles whilst tearing himself to pieces over the prospect of you hating him for having to reschedule and forgetting, momentarily, that to be hated by you is a privilege which he is not, nor likely ever will be, afforded.
Hate is visceral. It seizes the body, the mind, with flames. Every thought is made kindling. Hatred burns; it requires fuel, feelings to ignite and add to the blaze. But what you feel toward Spencer is cold to the touch; there's no room for fire in your heart.
He isn't important enough to be hated by you, that's the conclusion he's arrived at following almost eight months of slow, clinical asperity. He takes up no space in your mind, not unless he's right in front of you, kneeling at your feet, offering parts of himself for you to take. Humiliating himself week after week for a fleeting glance, a chaste kiss, a premature orgasm.
At times, he finds himself wishing that you did hate him—that you cared enough to hate him. Wishing you felt anything that extended beyond cool indifference; maybe then there'd be some way of changing your mind.
His reality is a simple one: he's Astrophil, chasing his beloved star that hangs, out of reach, in the night sky. Doomed to want what he cannot have, to disdain the very disdain which you feel for him, to let himself be damned to misery by his own want.
He's read Sidney, he's aware of what a fool he is, yet he'll still answer your every beck and call. He'll still crumble under the gaze of his Stella, wondering when exactly he decided to forsake his own liberty.
—
He remembers meeting you in the art gallery, deep into the Winter of 2002. You, pen pressed to your lips as you stood scrutinising one of the older paintings, and him, across the room, too busy studying you to care for the rest of the art around him—both of you anointed with the remnants of melted snow. He remembers scouring his mind, thinking of a million ways to start a conversation and scrapping them all.
You were too peaceful. Too pretty. And he never learned how to talk to pretty girls. He always had it in his mind that they'd bite him. Not literally—hopefully not literally—but verbally. Sharp tones. Harsh words. Glossy lips twisted into mocking smiles.
He vowed to keep his distance. If not to save you the discomfort, then to save himself the humiliation; it was better to be safe than sorry.
You were so far out of his league it was laughable. The kind of girl who wouldn't look at him twice, if you looked at him at all. You were his North Star, Polaris, bright and beautiful and sacrosanct. It wouldn't have been right to approach you, not when you were so at ease and he was so…not.
Spencer Reid, freshly twenty-one and looking even younger, was not calm, or confident, or anything that would have typically classed as "desirable" to a girl like you. He wasn't what you wanted; he couldn't have been. He decided that the moment he laid eyes on you.
Which is why he almost burst into tears when you approached him. You asked for his name, his number—both of which he could no longer remember—with a smile that left him paralysed.
There was an acute kind of assertiveness about you; sharp and smug as all hell, but not mocking. You didn't bite him, verbally nor literally, but your teeth had an almost inviting quality to them, and he found himself, without rational explanation, imagining how it would feel to have them sink into his skin.
How he managed to go on a date with you is beyond him. He can't chalk it up to his totally-real-and-not-at-all-imagined charisma, or a sudden increase in his confidence, because it was you who decided the two of you were going out for dinner. All Spencer did was say yes and try not to collapse when you told him all he had to do was "sit there and look pretty".
You called all the shots, from where you'd go to what time you'd meet, and he let you. You could have ordered his food for him, told him what to eat and when to eat it, and he would have gone along with it. Licked the plate clean. It felt nice, not having to think for once.
He did however have the brains to at least give you his card and offer to pay, but even that gesture was a flimsy one, one that could have been easily dissuaded by a single wave of your pretty hand, or a single brush of your foot against his leg—an action he believed was innocent, if not accidental, until the third time you did it.
Conversation was a feat he could barely manage; his tongue felt too loose, too big, mouth too crowded with teeth to produce anything of sense, let alone substance. He wanted to speak with meaning, to impress you with words that he knew he possessed but could not find, so that you'd like him. He was (is) somewhat comparable to a lost puppy, in that sense; always begging for love, pawing at anything that so much as glances his way.
As pretty as it was, Spencer wasn't convinced that your smile was anything other than polite, cordial, forged to hide the regret that started seeping in as soon as you sat down. And there was something artful in the way you spoke to him, and in the way you acted in general. It wasn't exactly disingenuous, but it was…sharp, again.
He remembers the way you looked at him, how your eyes bore holes into his, engraving your initials into the squishy, impressionable part of his brain that hadn't yet solidified. He left that date certain of one thing: that his very molecular structure, in a fantastic defiance of natural law, had been rearranged to spell out your name.
Your foot touched his leg every time he stammered. It took him too long to notice that.
—
Agent Morgan thinks you're his girlfriend.
Spencer has been persistent in his avoidance of discussing his personal life at work, no matter how many times his coworkers probe him about the unexplained messages and the subsequent shifts in his behaviour, and apparently this means he simply must have a secret lover. He's never had the heart to deny it, nor the stomach to tell the truth; he's the BAU's freshest face, and Morgan had seemed genuinely impressed by the thought that he was (in his words) "getting some action".
He values honesty, of course he does, but if the shadow you've cast over his life can do a little bit of good, make him seem a little more normal, then he can live with the guilt of misleading the team. They'd only pity him—look down on him, as you probably do—if he were to come clean about your relationship.
They'd think him naive, so starved of affection that his self-awareness withered away, too, but that isn't the case.
Spencer's sense of self-respect has crumbled to dust, blown away in the wind, but his self-awareness has remained intact. He often finds himself wishing, selfishly, that you had been cruel enough to crush them both under your pointed heel, maybe take a couple dozen IQ points with them; this would be easier if he were a complete idiot, rather than half of one. He'd be able to live in blissful ignorance, if he lacked the sense to feel his misery.
Self-awareness is no saviour. Simply knowing what a fool he is isn't enough. For all of his brains, and for all the years he spent pretending he isn't one, Spencer Reid is painfully, fatally human.
He comes here for the same reason you seek him out: pleasure. Quick, reliable catharsis. Because the BAU's genius, regardless of what people may think, has needs not unlike everyone else, gaps in his self that need filling—that you fill, even if it's just for one night. It's a viscerally human trait, something too ingrained in his biology for his brain to correct; that thick-rooted, innate desire for intimacy, for connection.
Spencer, like any other mammal, is driven by an intrinsic, insatiable hunger. And he's attracted, he supposes, to what he fears most: someone cold, someone not too dissimilar to the popular, pretty girls who stalked his high school hallways like predators. He's always had a habit of picking at scabs.
—
"You still don't drink, right?"
"No, um— no. I don't. Not really."
He's standing in your kitchen, looking like a cornered animal with his back pressed to the counter top, already feeling the heat in his cheeks, the perspiration collecting on his forehead.
You drum your fingers against the slim neck of the wine bottle, deliberating. The quick, rhythmic click of your nails on the glass has his hairs standing on end. Goosebumps. Philoerection. Often brought on by intense emotions like awe and excitement, or by a perceived threat triggering the sympathetic nervous system, activating the fight-or-flight response—it could be both; maybe attraction and terror are one in the same.
He wants to tell you that it's fine, that he doesn't not drink; he's willing to have a glass of wine, or two, maybe three (something to calm his fraught nerves before he becomes the first confirmed case of spontaneous human combustion), but his mouth has run dry, and you're already moving both wine glasses to the sink, filling them with water.
"Good." You offer him a glass, lips curled into a calm smile. "It's probably best for FBI agents to keep their wits about them."
Spencer clears his throat. He cradles the glass with both hands, holding it close to his chest like he's afraid he's going to drop it. "I suppose," he says, "and—um—statistically speaking, federal agents are more likely to develop an alcohol dependency as they age."
You pause, glass pressed to your lower lip, and raise an eyebrow.
"Not that I think I'm—" he shakes his head. "I don't think I'm…at risk, or anything, I-I have my own ways of coping with—um—stress, and I—"
Both of your brows are raised now. Your smile has sharpened, morphed into a smirk.
"…I do prefer to keep my wits about me," he adds in a quieter voice before bringing his glass to his lips, ensuring he drowns whatever humiliating words may want to come spilling out next.
"Sure," you murmur, taking a small sip of your own water.
Your voice is honey. Thick and sweet, but laced with something tart; an addictive edge that Spencer has never been able to name, but something he's sure would be lethal if he were given too strong of a dose.
"I hope I'm not just your stress toy, agent."
Spencer almost chokes on his water. He spits it back into his glass and shakes his head like you've just accused him of murder. "No! No, that's— that's not what I'm saying at all, I was just…"
His voice trails off, defeated, and he stares down into his glass as you bite back a laugh. The sound makes his stomach churn, full of nauseous embarrassment and something…warm. A hoard of butterflies brought on by a single, stifled little chuckle.
You've taken to calling him agent since he joined the BAU. He's told you several times now that "doctor" (what you used to call him) technically outranks his special agent title, but you responded by informing him that "agent" was cuter, and that was all it took for him to drop the matter completely. It still twangs that obsessive, anal-retentive part of his brain, echoes like the strum of an out of tune guitar string, but he keeps his mouth shut.
He used to worry you'd forgotten his name completely, given how little you used it. He wouldn't have been surprised if you had; most people he knew at the time resorted to calling him "doctor" in lieu of the name they never cared to remember. To think that you were any different would be to cling to false hope.
Three dates in, he had brought you back to his apartment. It wasn't a choice made out of naivety (he was inexperienced, sure, but not stupid); he knew what to expect, what he was asking of you, even if he never voiced the exact request out loud. He was desperate, there's no sugar-coating it, and whether or not you remembered his name didn't matter to him—it never really had to begin with. Respect was something he had learned not to expect, not from anyone outside of his circle, and certainly not from anyone like you; it made no odds, what you thought of him, as long as you said yes.
To say he was nervous would be an understatement. He still is nervous whenever he's around you, drinking water in your kitchen, pretending not to know what will become of the evening. Even now, his veins still light with a burning electricity whenever you're together, like he's trapped in that permanent state of fight-or-flight, but nothing compares to that first time.
He thought he was going to die. He thought he was dying when you climbed into his lap, straddling him. You moved so slowly, so carefully, as though he were something fragile—and he was, he supposes.
Spencer, far too starved of the right kind of touch, had finished in his pants. He likely would have held on longer if it hadn't been for you murmuring his name in that soft, intoxicating tone, mouth so close to his ear he could feel your steady breath against his skin.
You remembered his name when he had forgotten it, and you taught it back to him, repeating each syllable until they were so embedded in his debauched mind he'd never dare to forget them again.
Maybe that was what got him hooked. Maybe that was when you went from out of reach to right in front of him, when you became the drug he'd never be able to wean himself off of.
—
DC weather is never on his side. It always seems to rain whenever he's summoned to your apartment (that first rendezvous at his apartment ended up being the only one. From that point on, you decided that further hookups would be held at your place, exclusively. Spencer wasn't sure whether he should take this as an insult to his home or not—was his personal library not to your taste?).
Or maybe it's you. Maybe you sit by your window, waiting for the first droplets to hit the glass before you send that text. It's possible you get some kind of enjoyment of making him walk in the rain (because yes, he does walk), be it minor sadism or the simple fact that you just like it when he shows up at your door looking like a wet dog.
"You know, your hair has a slight curl to it when it's wet."
"Wh-what?"
It is exceptionally difficult for Spencer to process what you're saying when your hand is where it is. It's hard for him to process anything, period, other than the feel of your palm against his crotch.
He sinks back into the couch cushions, blinking long and slow—but he isn't closing his eyes; you don't like it when he closes his eyes. You're kneeling beside him, sharp eyes studying his expression with one hand nestled between his thighs and the other reaching out to brush some hair from his face. East of Eden is playing on your TV, James Dean reduced to nothing more than background noise.
"Your hair," you repeat, softly, "do you straighten it?"
"Um—" he stammers, searching for the simplest words in the vast, barren expanse of his mind. "N-no."
"Blow dry?" you ask.
Spencer hisses softly, leaning his head back. "Yes."
You make quick work of his belt, nodding along thoughtfully to his answer (which, in truth, sounded more like a moan than anything) as you undo his fly. "You should try using products, or something," you say, keeping your voice light and casual as you dip your fingers under the waistband of his underwear, "you'd look cute with curly hair."
If you keep teasing him, he is going to die (can a person die from teasing? Will he be the first?). It's one thing to mess with him as you pretend to watch a movie older than both of you, but to make such mundane conversation whilst doing so is nothing short of cruel.
"You…you think so?" he asks. He tries not to react as your fingers graze his shaft, but his body is quick to give him away; his cock twitches, already uncomfortably hard, against your hand.
"Mhm." You nod. "I'm sure you'd get loads of girls."
Somewhere in the back of his rapidly melting mind, Spencer makes a note to keep his hair straight.
"Of course, I'd like it, too," you add, running your free hand through his hair. Your nails drag lightly along his scalp, sending shivers shooting down his spine. "I'm a sucker for a guy with curls."
And he's correcting that note, declaring that he'll stop and buy all the hair products in the world on his way home—if he survives this, that is.
He forgets how to breathe when you pull his cock from his pants. He shifts, trying to suppress the urge to whine and buck up into your hand, to show you just how badly he needs this as you stroke him, keeping your movements so purposefully slow it's almost painful.
"I thought you liked this movie," you say.
"I-I do." He chokes on a moan, forces himself to breathe. "Kazan is a brilliant…director, and— um…the cast are— they're all…good."
"Hm." Pressing your lips into a thoughtful pout, you let your thumb circle the head of his cock, smearing precum across the sensitive tip as you say, "It's just…you don't seem to be paying very much attention."
Biting his tongue, all Spencer can manage in response is a low hum. He knows you're asking— no, telling him to focus on the movie, but he doesn't. He can't. His gaze remains glued to your face, watching with poorly concealed desperation the way you narrow your eyes.
"Am I distracting you, Spencer?"
He nods.
"Do you want me to stop?"
He shakes his head.
He might cry if you stop. Epididymal hypertension, "blue balls", is real. Rarely serious, often overdramatised, but real—and uncomfortable. If you stop, he'll for sure have to pay a conspicuous visit to your bathroom, and there's no way you'd let him do that; no, you'd make him watch the rest of the movie, sit in the discomfort, and you'd enjoy every torturous minute of it.
"Please."
The word jumps from his tongue in a whisper, saturated with a need that mounts almost to genuine distress.
"Please what?" You tilt your head, smiling. "Tell me what you want, and I'll make it happen."
Your gentle, breathy tone does little to ease the unbearable heat raking through him, not when your hand continues to tease, focusing on his sensitive tip. A whine escapes him as his composure steadily crumbles away under your touch.
"Pretty little noises won't get you anything," you murmur. There's a mocking edge to your voice now, one that threatens to pierce his brain, deflate it like a balloon. "Be good, and use your words. You can do that for me, right?"
His head moves of its own accord, jerking up and down in a frantic nod as his words continue to fail him. When you raise an expectant brow, all he does is give a weak little whimper. You're killing him.
"You— please…you know what I want," he eventually manages.
Disappointment washes over your expression, and your smile vanishes as you give a helpless shrug. "I can't read minds, agent. But…" You sigh, click your tongue before giving the flushed head of his cock a gentle, but nonetheless firm, squeeze. A warning. "I can always make you talk. Is that what you want, Spence? You want me to be mean?"
"Nonono—"
"Then what do you want?"
"I—" His throat closes around the words, breath stuttering as he teeters uncomfortably close to orgasm. Your hand stills, allowing him room to breathe, to recuperate, and to really hear his own voice as he whispers, "…wanna be inside you."
Your response is preceded by a gasp, over-dramatic and sarcastic, the kind that makes his stomach do somersaults, curdles nausea with arousal, burns him in the best possible way.
"Good boy. That wasn't that hard, was it?" Your lips curl into a grin he can only describe as sinister; one that may appear innocent out in the sun, but in the half-light of your living room is all pointed teeth and sharp edges. It acts as a counterweight to your praise, throws him off balance.
Spencer wilts in the absence of your touch as you lean back. Your hands are cold, they always are, yet they imbue him with a kind of paradoxical warmth; the embers continue to pulse in his core even after you've pulled away.
"I'll go grab a condom—"
"Wait."
He's already rummaging in his pockets, pulling out condoms—five of them—before you can get up. He gives them to you without thinking, like you have any use for them, and curses himself when you gently press them back into his hand.
"As prepared as always," you observe, biting back a smile as you watch him fumble with his collection of condoms, "and…optimistic."
—
"A girl gave me her number today."
He isn't sure why he says it. To fill the silence, maybe; to poke you with his flimsy, proverbial twig that he seems intent on using as a bridge, forever trying to broach conversations it cannot bear the weight of. He wonders whether he'll spend the rest of his life circling the elephant in the room, if he'll always be too scared to address it out of fear it'll trample him.
All his statement earns from you is a hum; a dull sound, void of any substance, produced only to confirm that you heard him.
Spencer never talks about other women, mostly because there aren't any. Even if there were, he wouldn't bring them up; neither of you discuss relationships outside of this one, sexual or otherwise.
Keeping each other in the dark wasn't something you agreed upon; there was no conversation, no discussion—but when is there ever? Your life outside of him is none of his business, and his isn't any of yours, no matter how badly he wishes it were. The silence was never introduced; it was already there.
It's easier for him not to question it, it would only cause problems. He'd have to question this, you, himself, re-evaluate all the things he's been ignoring, all the factors that led him to you—his complexes, his insecurities, the things he tries to keep stowed away in their little boxes. He doesn't want to do that; he'd much rather just lay here.
And that's what he does, most of the time. In the lull between your moments of passion, Spencer's gaze is usually glued to your ceiling, counting the bumps in the popcorn texturing, re-spooling the parts of himself that unravelled in the heat.
You're lying on your stomach, face pressed into the pillow. He worries, sometimes, that you might suffocate like that. So, when he isn't studying your ceiling, he's watching the rise and fall of your naked shoulders as you breathe and counting the moles on your back, wishing you'd let him connect the dots, cover your body in constellations—and he chides himself for getting too carried away.
Thankfully, he's still staring at the ceiling when you raise your head. "Are you gonna call her?"
Being able to infer meaning from nonverbal elements of speech—pitch, pace, volume, inflection—is a key aspect of profiling, of communication in general, and it's something that Spencer should be good at by now. He can get by in most cases; reading people's emotions through speech patterns and word choices is something he's become quite proficient in since joining the BAU, though sarcasm can still throw him for a loop, especially when it's directed at him.
He is good at reading people, he just isn't any good at reading you.
Maybe it's your neutral tone, your blank slate of an expression, or the fact that his head is still foggy from sex—whatever it is, Spencer has no idea how to interpret your question. Is it intrigue? Jealousy? Do you want him to call her? Is this another social game he doesn't know the rules of?
"I, um— I don't know," he says quickly—too quickly—before adding, in a quieter voice, "…maybe."
He couldn't sound more unsure if he tried, and he really, really shouldn't be trying to talk about this when you're lying, naked, barely two feet away from him. You're watching him with this unreadable expression, and he can almost feel you picking him apart piece by piece, dissecting him like a frog in a high school biology class.
Something heavy settles in his stomach, and he recognises it as guilt.
Guilt. What does he have to feel guilt over? You don't care if he talks to other women—do you?
You nod calmly. "Just let me know if you do."
"Okay." He's averting his gaze before your words register, and then he's turning back to you with a slight frown. "Why?"
"Well, if you're gonna start…dating her," you mutter, shrugging, "we won't be able to keep doing this."
"I know that," he says. He sounds almost defensive.
"Same goes for me, obviously," you add, "but, you know…"
He feels his chest tighten as your voice trails off. Heart muscles contracting, holding their breath.
"Are you looking to start dating?"
Damn it, now he sounds hopeful.
The dry chuckle that escapes you causes him to flinch, as though you've just spat in his face. "No," you say, shaking your head. With a sigh, you lower your gaze, and he thinks for a moment that you're about to bury your face in the pillow once more, putting an end to the conversation before he can derail this evening further, but then you raise an eyebrow. "Are you?"
It's the obvious question, yet it still catches him off guard. He stares at you, wide-eyed, like a computer stuck in a buffering loop; he isn't sure he's even asked himself that question.
"I don't know," he says, truthfully. "If the right person came around, then…maybe. I-I haven't really thought about it."
Well, it isn't entirely truthful; Spencer has put a lot of thought into the idea of dating, it's just that his list of potential partners begins and ends with you—and that, for obvious reasons, isn't a fact he wishes to share.
"'The right person'?" you repeat the phrase with a quizzical frown. "What are you, twelve?"
"You don't believe in finding the right person?" he asks.
"You do?"
"I don't mean—" He shakes his head, feeling heat rising in his cheeks. "I'm not talking about soulmates, or anything like that—it's a nice sentiment, but it isn't realistic. However, it is proven that— that some people are more compatible than others. It's science."
You don't look at all convinced. "Is there a metric for this? Do you have a spreadsheet?"
Spencer purses his lips. His gaze drops to the bedsheets, and he gives a vague shrug before muttering, "I don't have much data to work with."
He's fast realising that this conversation was a mistake. He never should have brought this up; not only has he essentially admitted that you're the only person he's sleeping with (least obvious fact of all time), he hasn't even been able to gauge your reaction at all—as always, all he sees when he looks at you is quiet indifference, tinged with a slight awkwardness (or amusement, he can never really tell) in the wake of his words.
"…well." You press your lips into a thin smile, and Spencer begins mapping his escape route, calculating the most efficient path out of here without leaving his lucky socks behind. "I wish you luck on your adventure: 'Spencer Reid and the search for the lost soulmate'."
He shoots upright, frowning. "I just said—"
"Are you gonna call her?" you ask.
His shoulders slump, deflating under the weight of an answer he's known from the start—an answer that you've likely known, too.
"…no," he says.
He was never going to call her.
Words rise like lava in his throat; he wants so badly to tell you how he threw away the note with her number on it, how he never even glanced at it, because that's how serious he is about this, about you, but he doesn't. He bites his tongue, the last dregs of his self-respect saving him from complete humiliation.
That girl, as pretty as she had been, wasn't what he wanted—nor were any of the girls who have flirted with him over the eight months he's spent under this spell. None of them ever stood a chance, because they weren't you.
Loyalty is a virtue. It's praise-worthy, commendable. Everyone wants a loyal man.
Everyone but you.
You give another vague hum; an acknowledgement, nothing more. If he could stomach looking at you, he'd see that you're smirking, just barely.
Your fingertips skim along his arm, tracing his freckles and leaving goosebumps in their wake.
"Break's over," you murmur. "Come here."
To Spencer, loyalty feels a lot more like a vice. A metal rung that sits heavy around his neck.
You don't want a loyal man; a loyal man carries a suitcase of baggage, leaves his belongings in your apartment, promises commitment and expects it in return. A loyal man is a boyfriend, and you want a lapdog.
And that's exactly what Spencer has allowed himself to become. You didn't shackle him against his will, you didn't trick him into this; he threw himself at you, offered his neck for your collar whilst his tail wagged behind him.
His skin burns under your touch the way holy water scalds a sinner. He's forever torn, in still moments like these, between tearing himself away, before you can burn any more holes into him, and giving into the heat; he can nurse his wounds, his pride, upon his return home. Wake up to burn scars in the perfect shape of your hands.
In all the time he's spent with you, he's never once found the strength to pull away. He's sure he'd rather let his skin melt under your touch, have his body become a canvas for your scorching palms, than be without you—without this.
Maybe he's grown accustomed to the pain. Maybe he doesn't know how to accept anything else.
He remembers high school, the sharp-tongued girls, the brutish boys. He was quick to learn what it meant to be weak, exploitable; a cheat sheet when he was needed, a punching bag when he wasn't.
He never told you about the bullying. He supposed it wasn't necessary; anyone with half a brain can see it, the lingering insecurities, the stench of a life-long lack of self worth, all of it too embedded in his bones to grow out of.
He figured, at the very least, that his experiences would make him stronger, wiser; he'd see the patterns, know the signs, learn to avoid situations that end with him hurt and missing pieces of himself he'd never recover. He wishes he could say he was right, but he wasn't, and you weren't the first person to prove him wrong.
Repeated exposure builds habit. Habit builds familiarity. You get hit too many times, you stop feeling the pain. You let yourself be used too many times, it starts to feel like your purpose. Eventually, you start to seek it out, gravitate towards people you know will find some use in you: failing classmates, pretty girls in art galleries, FBI agents who'll never be your fathers.
He never learned how to form relationships that weren't inherently transactional, never learned to see himself as anything other than a tool. He wouldn't know where to start, if he tried.
So he's fine, really, with being a lapdog. It satiates his base desire for sexual pleasure, and it allows him to pretend, for a night, that this might be something more. That you might pull him back in and never let go. That you might one day want him, all of him.
But Spencer's heart is a black hole. He'd drain the life out of any meaningful relationship he tried to nurture; he's too anxious, too needy. All the love in the world wouldn't be enough to fill the cavities in his self. It would flow straight through him, he's sure of it.
It's probably for the best, then, that you don't want him; he'd only find a way to ruin it, if you did.
At least he gets something, this way. Closeness is closeness, however temporary. It may not be real, but it doesn't have to be; it's not like he knows the difference.
—
You always make a point to offer him a cigarette once you've had your fill of each other.
You curl up on your windowsill in a shirt two sizes too large, shoulder pressed against the glass, knees pulled to your chest, and you hold it out to him like he might take it—like he hasn't told you a dozen times that he doesn't smoke, and that he has no intention of starting. You assume the role of the devil, the snake hanging from the tree, lips twisted into a coy smile.
He lights it for you, encourages your bad habit without inheriting it. But he'll still breathe in the smoke, and he'll act as though he isn't choking on it as he tries to force into gear a conversation that won't start.
He'll spend a long time staring at your face, your reflection in the glass, the way the cigarette sits perfectly between your lips. They'll always be a little chapped. Kissed and bitten raw.
The cigarette will burn out, and you'll leave it abandoned in the ashtray before lighting another. On occasion, he'll try to chastise you for chain-smoking, read off the list of risk factors all while pondering what he feels most for the still-hot cigarette butt: kinship or jealousy.
—
Your mouth is heaven, or the closest thing to it.
Faith is something he's always found himself to be lacking. He'll idolise anything that's tangible, get on his knees for anyone that glances at him twice, but he's never had much of a relationship with God. He's read every version of the Bible, memorised the holy word in a dozen languages, but no amount of scripture could awaken any long-sleeping disciple within him—that's what he tells people, at least.
Reality isn't as black and white. It's human nature to look to something bigger than yourself, to find solace in divinity. It's a hell of a lot easier to believe "He's got the whole world in His hands" than it is to reconcile with the alternative. Spencer isn't immune to that kind of thinking, not entirely; his science-driven mind prevents him from any overt religious zeal, but nothing's truly impenetrable. Somewhere along the line, he managed to adopt the guilt without adopting the faith.
He's never felt any reverence for any god, never knelt at any altars. He's never understood latria as the Catholics do, but when you're on top of him like this, divine in your own right, he's sure there can't be much of a difference.
It's idolatry, plain and simple; you're his false god, and his worship of you will damn him to Hell, if such a place exists—if his soul wasn't already forsaken from the start.
If divine punishment is the price he pays for being with you, then so be it. The sight of you in just a shirt and underwear, and the feel of your bare thighs straddling him, is worth a hundred lifetimes in Hell.
His fingers curl into your sheets, white-knuckling the fabric without you needing to move; the weight of you against him, the thin layers of clothing between you, is already enough to flood his brain with dopamine, adrenaline, all the things that turn him to mush. He isn't even touching you, isn't sure he can; the feel of your skin under his palms might just kill him, or make him finish far too soon—he thinks he'd actually prefer the former.
And when you do move, he's fucked. There's no polite way of phrasing it. He jolts like he's been shocked, whines like he's been kicked, and he watches in awe the way your hips move against his, dimly aware of how the wet patch in his boxers has almost doubled in size since he took his pants off, and he considers saying a prayer.
What he says instead is please. Pleasepleaseplease. He hears his own voice break, and he concludes that he's going to come and die.
"What is it?" You lean down, one hand braced against the mattress, the other trailing along his jaw. "What do you want?"
"Any— anything," he whispers. He's on fire. Hell is inside him already. "You could do anything, I-I don't care. I promise I don't…care—"
An awful little strangled noise escapes him as your hand moves to his neck. His throat bobs under your palm in anxious anticipation, but you don't put any weight on him.
"Please. Please you— you know I'm not very recept—" He shakes his head. "Well, no, I am very receptive to t-teasing…and that— that's the problem. I can't— oh God, I can't last—"
"Spencer."
"—with you…doing this, I-I'm sorry. Please, I'm begging— oh crap…shit, 'mgonna—"
Your hips stop moving the same moment you squeeze his throat, and Spencer swears he feels his soul leave his body. He stops breathing, not because you're preventing him from doing so (you aren't choking him, not yet), but because his brain has completely ceased function. He whimpers, and his hips buck up against yours in unconscious search of an orgasm he was so sure was about to wreck him.
You tilt your head to the side with a frown. "You can't handle it?"
"I'm sorry—"
"I don't think any of that babbling's doing you any good, Spence."
He twists his face into a tight, painfully self-conscious smile. "I-I talk a lot when I'm…nervous."
"Aww, poor baby. How about we put that mouth of yours to good use then, hm?"
You'd think you'd just offered him a million dollars by the way his eyes almost pop out of his head. He's nodding before you finish your question, quick and eager, and completely void of shame.
You lean down, levelling your face with his. He flinches when your breath hits his skin, and the contact turns to static, shooting sparks through his veins. Your lips ghost over his, and he tilts his head up, hoping—praying—for a kiss.
"You gonna make me come, Spence? Yeah?" you murmur. "You gonna take care of me?"
"Please."
His hands finally anchor themselves on your hips, something to keep him grounded as you press a kiss to his jaw, then another as you murmur "you're so fucking eager" before dismounting him.
Spencer, if he weren't missing so many brain cells, would argue you're both eager; you're shimmying out of your panties before he can sit up to help you, and you always let him help you. He doesn't think to complain—hell, he doesn't think at all—he just settles between your legs, and he moans louder than you do when his mouth finds your swollen clit.
For all his unending nervousness, there's nothing careful about the way Spencer handles you when you're like this. The self-consciousness that defines so much of his being vanishes, replaced by something free and uninhibited—something unapologetically animal.
He searches for God in your cunt, finds something better: soft gasps and intoxicating moans, and praises—God, the praises. He'd have each wholly depraved word tattooed onto his body if he thought it would preserve the feeling that racks through him every time you tell him how good he's being or, Heaven forbid, how pretty he looks with a mouth full of pussy.
At some point, he shifts so he's lying on his stomach, erection pressed flat against the bed. If past experience has taught him anything, it's that pleasing you is a sure-fire way to get him to finish hands-free (he's just that devoted), but he's horny and desperate and a little too drunk on the taste of you to think straight, so when his hips start grinding against the mattress, he doesn't try to stop them.
He's pretty sure he blacks out, achieves nirvana, glimpses Heaven. Your voice turns hymnal as his tongue circles your clit, fingers working your cunt like he has something to prove, like if he fucks you good enough you might just let him stay. He'll sleep on your floor, if that's what you want; he isn't picky.
He knows you're close when your words lose their edge. Your thighs clench around his head, canting your lips like you're trying to pull him in, and his efforts are rewarded with a tumble of angelic curses and a gush of warmth that soaks his chin.
When he raises his head, he's crying. Red-faced and dizzy. The tears are barely distinguishable from the slick mix of sweat and arousal that coats his poor face.
"…fuckin' perfect," you breathe, reaching down to brush some hair from his face as you sit up. "Such a good boy for me, making me feel so good. Shh, come here, let me see how pretty you are."
As Spencer pulls himself up, your gaze trails down his body, admiring him with such hunger it makes him feel a little sick—the good kind of sick, if that's even a real feeling; he may just be losing his mind, at this rate. But your expression shifts, hardens, when you notice his lack of an erection. The new stains in his boxers. The matching ones on your sheets.
"You couldn't wait?"
It isn't a question.
He actually shrinks back, covers himself with his hands. Humiliation burns in his veins as he makes himself smaller, cowers like a frightened animal.
"Is that how desperate you are? Come here."
Your voice is soft. Soothing. Deceptive. It ignites that impulse to curl up in your arms, relax his body against yours as you run your fingers through his hair, whispering sweet nothings into his ear—but he knows that isn't what he's going to get.
"Spencer, come here."
He shuffles forward anyway, head hung in shame like a puppy waiting to be kicked. Your fingers are like ice against his cheek, but he leans into your touch all the same.
"And to think I was gonna reward you for being so good— shh, don't speak. You think I wanna hear your excuses?" You press your thumb to his lips, silencing him as you cradle his face with both hands, guiding him to look at you. When he sniffles, you pout. "Oh, I know. Poor baby. You're sorry, right? For being so dumb? I know, hon. I know it's hard when that big brain of yours stops working…"
"I-I didn't mean to—" He stumbles over his words like he's never spoken before in his life. His mouth feels foreign, tongue working against him as he tries to choke out an explanation. "This— this kind of…thing, it doesn't happen. Only…only with you. I can't help it, you've— …I don't know." He can't look you in the eye. "You've…done something to me. I can't—"
"Look at me." You're nodding along with his words, expression full of false sympathy. Your thumbs trace halos over his flushed skin as you pull him close. "Come on, princess. It's okay…there we go. So pretty…"
Whatever's been holding him together shatters when your lips meet his, and the pieces burst into flames when your hand trails down to his sodden crotch. He whines into your mouth, tries to drag you back in when you pull away.
"You wanna make it up to me? You wanna show me how sorry you are?" you murmur, breath hot on his face.
"Sorry…" he repeats the word under his breath, nodding like he's caught in some kind of trance. He's already getting hard again, or trying to; his cock presses weakly against your hand, his body responding to your touch even when it's spent. "Yes. Please."
"That's my boy."
Your boy. Your perfect, pretty, stupid boy. Your devoted Astrophil, bound to you by the chains of an unrequited ardour. It's what Sidney knew as courtly love, but the Romans had a different term for it: servitium amoris, slavery of love, and Spencer thinks that is far more fitting.