Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tuesday was an underrated day of the week. You’d made it through the worst of it on Mondays but still had the energy boost that came from a relaxing weekend. There were still plenty of days left in the week to get the necessary work done, leaving you with plenty of motivation and a long list of items to check off.

Tuesdays became even better after the start of the month when you decided to go to the park to read despite never having wanted to do so in all the time you’ve lived near it. Maybe it was fate, maybe it was simply because it had been the first nice day in a while, or maybe it truly was just a wild random thought that you happened to act on. Either way, you would always be thankful for the decision to do so.

The park was incredibly busy that day. The sky was shiny blue and that fact alone was enough to lure out seemingly the entire city. 

“Is it okay if I sit here?” a voice pulled you out of your book. Looking up, you saw an absolutely beautiful man with longer brown hair and shining eyes. He looked nervous, fingers tapping along the cover of his book and feet pacing in place. “All of the other benches are full, otherwise I wouldn’t be bothering you.”

“Yeah, of course,” you answered once you knew it wasn’t someone trying to be creepy. You wouldn’t mind if someone like him sat beside you, especially since it seemed all he would be doing was reading like you were too.

Though you didn’t know the man, you didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. It was almost peaceful, the silence that filled the small space between your shoulders punctuated only by the occasional page turn. He was doing much more page turning than you were, practically flying through the book while you were still caught on the same chapter from before. In fact, the more he turned the pages the slower your progress continued, finding your eyes caught more on him than your own book. He was slightly hunched over, one hand tracing his path down each page carefully.

“Are you skimming that?” you finally asked, only feeling a little bad when his shoulders jumped from the unexpected communication.

“No, I’m a quick reader,” the man explained, looking almost embarrassed about the fact. Or maybe, it was just that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It made sense, truly, that someone with such a particular skill might get tired of all the questions surrounding it.

So, you changed tactics. “It’s a good read, that book. A friend recommended it to me a few years back.”

“I’m surprised you’ve read it,” the man mused, then you had to laugh as his expression shuttered. “I didn’t mean that in an offensive way, I only mean that not many people want to read a book about thi—”

“I’m not offended, it’s okay,” you laughed, “it’s not a popular topic, I get it.”

When the man didn’t answer but also didn’t go back to reading said book, you took it upon yourself to continue the conversation. “I’m Y/N.”

“Dr. Spencer Reid,” he answered back gently, a smile forming that lit up his entire face.

“Doctor. Like a medical doctor or the other kind?”

“The other kind,” Spencer told you in bemusement, “in chemistry, engineering, and mathematics.”

“Oh, so you’re smart,” you returned. “Are you the kind of smart guy that knows he’s smart and likes to make sure everyone else knows it too? Or are you the kind of smart guy that doesn’t want anyone to know he’s smart and ends up surprising everyone with random facts?”

Spencer seemed to consider it for a moment before shrugging and saying, “A little bit of both?”

It wasn’t that funny, yet still you found yourself laughing. Spencer did too, in fact. It wasn’t often you hit it off so easily with a complete stranger, and yet here you were on a random park bench in a random park, talking and laughing with a total stranger like you’d known him for months.

As the two of you continued to talk, both of your books ended up abandoned on the bench between you, a little bookmark in his while you took to folding over the corner of the page. 

“All I’m saying is, I don’t think you can properly classify ketchup as a smoothie if no one would drink it willingly.”

“The willful drinking of something doesn’t make it a smoothie,” Spencer argued through his smile. “Someone could make a smoothie out of strawberries and salmon, but I wouldn’t drink that. A smoothie is made of fruits and vegetables ground up into a drinkable substance. That’s ketchup.”

“No, I refuse to accept th—”

The easy conversation was interrupted by a phone ringing. Spencer sighed, took one look at the caller ID, and then grabbed his book.

“I’m sorry, I have to get to work,” Spencer apologized, his expression truly looking mournful at the thought of leaving this park bench. “Can—Would it be weird to say I want to see you again?”

“Not at all,” you answered, feeling in your chest brightening as he’d said exactly what you’d hoped. “Here, we can exchange numbers,” you offered then, handing out your phone while keeping your other hand outstretched for him to place his in.

“I’ll call you then?” Spencer checked after you’d gotten your own phones back.

“I’ll call you if you don’t,” you told him in goodbye, sure the smile on your face would be plastered there for the rest of the day.

Noone called each other. Not for weeks, in fact.

The problem was, Spencer worked for the FBI (a fact you’d find out after watching the news about a week after you’d met him) and you were busy with your own job. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to see him, on the contrary, you very much did.

Maybe that was why, nearly five weeks after you’d first met him, you found yourself pulling out your phone and finding his contact. While you’d charmingly put your first name and heart emoji into his phone, Spencer had simply written “Spencer Reid” into the contact name.

You began pacing around the room as you worked up the courage to hit ‘call’. After several seconds of panicking, you sighed and hurriedly slammed your finger against the little green button before your mind could convince you to do anything else.

Terrifyingly enough, he answered on the first ring.

Even more terrifying, instead of the cheerful voice that would be happy to hear from you like expected, another thing entirely came through the other end of the phone.

“Hi, this is Doctor Spencer Reid. I actually can come to the phone right now with a very special message that your mother is a--”

What the fuck. None of it made sense, but all you knew was that you couldn’t hear any more of what he had to say.

“Spencer?” you gasped, unable to stop the exclamation before you hung up the phone.

Was he that angry at you? You had said you’d call and then never did, but was that really grounds to say such a thing? He sounded so bitter too, so frustrated that you’d called him.

Well, fuck Spencer Reid. Damn him to Hell for not having any patience whatsoever. So what that it took you a while to get back to him? None of it gave him the right to talk to you like that. And if he was going to talk to you like that over something so simple, then what would he do when you inevitably had a bad argument?

No, this wasn’t worth the trouble.

Over the next week, you tried to forget about Spencer Reid. It wasn’t easy, especially considering he began to call you every day. You didn’t answer, not when you truly had nothing to say to him.

This pattern of calling and ignoring continued for nine days before a knock sounded on your door. Truly, you hadn’t considered who it might be and if you would have, maybe you wouldn’t have answered it.

But you did, and now you were face-to-face with the son of a bitch himself. 

Spencer. Fucking. Reid.

“No,” you snapped, moving to close the door and groaning when Spencer stuck his Converse-covered foot between it and the door frame. “Spencer, I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Please, just hear me out. Then you can never talk to me again I just, I need to explain,” he panicked, speaking rapidly and fumbling over a few of the words in an effort to throw them into existence.

“There’s nothing to explain. I didn’t call back fast enough for you and you got ma—”

“I didn’t know it was you!” Spencer blurted out, eyes wide and face expressing nothing but pure and sheer fear. Fear at how you would react to this? Fear of losing you? You didn’t know what, if anything, he was scared of but you knew it was in his face now.

“My coworker—my friend—gave the press my phone number and told them to call me for information as a joke and I was tired of my phone being called all day. I didn’t even look at who had called,” Spencer explained, and all you could think about was what a ridiculous idea that was. No one someone would leak an agent’s phone number to the public simply to prank them.

“It’s okay, Spencer, you don’t have to come up with any excuses to spare my feelings. If you don’t want to try this anymore, we don’t have to do anything,” you sighed, “now can you please remove your foot from my doorway?”

“No, no I want to!” Spencer exclaimed, making you jump a little from the volume. “I’m sorry, no I just. I wanted to call you too, but I got busy on cases and I wanted to wait until I had time to do this right. I was happy when I saw you called.”

“Really?” you asked, voice small as you took in everything he’d said so far. At least Spencer sounded sincere, once you got over the initial outrage at seeing him standing on your doorstep.

“Really,” he confirmed, nodding his head as if that might help prove his point. “Can we give this another chance, if I promise to always check my caller ID before saying anything?”

It would be easy to say no. The safest option would be to tell him to go away, to find some other guy that hadn’t upset you in only the second conversation you’d ever had with him.

Instead, you already knew what you’d do. You laughed, nodded your head, and said, “I think we can try.”

“Really?” Spencer gasped, seemingly surprised that his own plan worked.

“Really,” you returned if only to echo the exchange the two of you had a moment before. “Want to come in? I just put on a movie but we can get some takeout and watch it together?”

“That sounds perfect.” So Spencer moved his foot and you opened the door wider for him to slip through. 

Things might not have started out perfectly, but you were excited to see where they ended up.