Work Text:
Emily’s always had a sneaking suspicion that they’re doing their job ineffectually. If you want to know what someone is made of, thinking how the team does only gets you so far. To really know them, know what makes them tick and learn every bundle of nerves and scar tissue that makes up the average flawed human being, you have to fuck them.
Like her. She’s a hot mess of insecurities and they all appear when she’s naked and panting. Her need for control, her rejection of commitment, every cruel word she’s ever had aimed her way about her lack of grace. It’s a lie that anyone is bare in bed; when she’s naked and waiting, she’s wearing her history like a shroud. Behavioural tics tell her story. She twists away if her partners spend too much time along the line of her pelvic bone because she can still remember her mother declaring she has hips like a man; she never lets her hands rest for too long so they don’t see the lack of decorum in her bitten nails; and there’s nothing she hates more than being pinned down and loomed over. It’s too much like every man who’s ever used her as nothing more but a receptacle for their pleasure, and she knows she’s sour but that’s what comes with being nothing but scars and sores and parts that are raw.
It’s hard to undo some thirty years of resenting the men who fuck her, even the kind ones. It’s even harder for her to come to terms with the realisation that not every man is Doyle, which means this is a problem inherent with her. She just brings out the worst in people, or maybe she sees cruelty where there isn’t any. Or maybe it’s as simple as her having never learned to trust someone with the parts of her she just can’t hide.
Either way, she should have known something would have to give the day she made the dumbass decision to fall in love with Spencer Reid; if there’s anyone who’d take not being trusted personally, it’s him. And he does, which doesn’t surprise her.
But he also doesn’t leave, which does.
No one’s ever stayed for her before, either.
They’ve had fights in the past, but this one is a doozy. They’re three years into a relationship that’s only contentious at the points where she makes it so, because she thrives on conflict despite his furious rejection of it, and one of those points is sex. She doesn’t trust him not to hurt her and he’s very aware of this.
Angry despite having no justification for being so, she’s lingering naked by the living room and he’s sitting shirtless on her couch staring at the black screen of her TV. Not shirtless on purpose. He’d been dressing to leave in a moody huff of ruffled genius, but she’d taken his shirt and refused to give it back, knowing him being pissed at her here is better than him walking out and not coming back.
“I’m sorry,” she says, but there’s a bite to her voice that exposes that she’s still furious. “I can’t help it.”
He turns hurt eyes onto her, crushing her anger into a tight ball of guilt right in the centre of her chest.
“You treat sex like a fight,” is his stony response. “I can’t enjoy it when you’re looking at me like you want me to hit you.”
“I don’t want that.”
He glowers at her before rejecting her in favour of staring at the TV once again.
“Spence, come on. The job we do, we all have our rough edges, and this is mine. I’m sorry. We can work on it, alright?”
A huff answers her, his voice low. “Our job has nothing to do with you flinching when I’m on top …”
That’s true. It’s very true. Feeling like a dog that’s gotten into the trash, she slinks over and perches awkwardly on the arm of the couch, finding that she can’t quite look him in the eye. Instead, she makes eye-contact with the reflection in the TV, hating the downward pull of his mouth.
“I can’t help how I react when I’m vulnerable,” she manages, the words choking her on the way out. Admitting this leaves a sour taste in her mouth, and it’s a mark of how desperate she is to keep him. The terror of him leaving has her gripping his shirt tight in her hands, a hot burn behind the skin of her face either tears or more anger. “You have your hang-ups too –”
“None of my hang-ups are related to you,” he bites back, leaping up and turning that incriminatory gaze on her, the effect only slightly ruined by his bed head and unzipped fly. “Face it. Your problem with me in bed is that I’m male, and you associate a male in your bed with being hurt. How can I work through that with you when you won’t let me? When you’re content to respond like that no matter how much it feels like I’m being punched in the gut every time? You invite me into your bed, where I want to be, don’t get me wrong, and then you spend the whole time braced for a blow that’s so contrary to who I am as a person that I’m not even sure you know me at all. Do you?”
What the hell can she say to that? She tries, “I know you’re not Doyle.” That’s a mistake because it’s his turn to flinch back from her. Her turn to land a blow except, unlike him, this one isn’t just anticipated – it causes tangible pain.
“There’s the problem,” he murmurs, holding his hand out for the shirt. Cornered, she gives it to him, feeling the last three years of their lives since she’d come back from London fold inwards onto his waiting palm along with the crushed fabric. This is it: they’re over. But he continues, “It’s that, even for just a second, you’d compare me to him. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not leaving.” At her raised eyebrow, he corrects himself: “Well, I am leaving tonight, but not for good.”
Still naked, still with traces of the lube they’d been using drying on the inside of her thighs, she listens to him walk away and wonders when she’ll stop burning down everything she loves.
But he stops by the door.
“Em,” he says. “I mean it. I’m leaving tonight to think about this, but I’m coming back. I’m telling you this because that’s something else you’re anticipating, isn’t it? My leaving you?”
“Stop profiling me,” she teases weakly, looking down at her trembling hands on her lap.
“Stop making it easy.”
Despite his words, the door shutting with a soft snick between them still sounds like the end of something.
Because this relationship is important to her in a way she doesn’t really know how to deal with, she goes to his apartment horrendously early the next morning and lets herself in. His alarm is beeping quietly on the coffee table, the gloom from the still-dark-outside-windows barely showing the sedate lump of him on the couch, huddled in blankets and still in the clothes he’d left her house in. She doubts he’s slept well since he’s not waking to his alarm, and is also pretty sure that’s her fault.
“Spence.” It’s not a great idea to sneak up on one of them while they’re asleep, especially not those of them who are still more used to sleeping alone than not, so she calls his name as she dodges the coffee table and leans in to shake his shoulder. “Your alarm is alarming.”
His eyes are open. “Alarming?” he murmurs as she goes to straighten at the realisation he’s already awake. Instead, he catches her hand and pulls her on top of him. Recognising an invitation, she drops her bag beside the couch and snuggles on top of him like a too-big cat, head on his chest and wondering if they have time to nap. They do, technically, since she’s arrived early enough to rouse him and talk before he gets ready for work, especially since she can drive him instead of his having to take public transport.
Ignoring his comment on her choice of words, she kisses his jaw to avoid morning breath and says, “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. I’m sorry for how I treat you in bed. I know I’m judging you on the basis of gender, and I know it’s wrong, but it’s also a deep thing. I’ll work on it. I promise.”
His eyes are wide open now, shadowed in the dark of the room, and she’s amused to note that, despite the seriousness of the conversation, he’s also hard. Good morning to him, too. “You know you don’t have to puzzle through this on your own,” he responds after a quiet beat, wiggling around until he can tug the blanket out and invite her under with him, waiting until she’s in before reaching for his alarm and resetting it for the next hour. “I’m here for you.”
“I know.” She’s watching him set the alarm as she deliberately snuggles in so she’s flush against his front, hands sneaking under his crumpled shirt and making him hiss at how cold they are. He’s pantsless, in just his briefs and that shirt, so she has a fine outline of him against her leg. “Why do you set your alarm so early? You barely sleep as it is.”
“In case a gorgeous woman sneaks into my apartment before dawn,” he answers with a cheeky grin she can hear more than see. “I’d hate for that to happen and for me not to have time to take very consensual advantage of it …”
She eyes him, surprised by how eager to give in to his biological urges he is despite their argument. She’d have thought this would sting for at least a week, leaving her out in the cold where she likely belongs.
“You forgive me so easily?”
His hands are already undoing her shirt, warm on the skin of her stomach and tracing patterns that have her hoping he has because she wants to chase away last night’s memories with something kinder. Even if that means she’s going to have to shower again before going to work so people don’t smell his sweat on her, or vice versa.
Spence pauses for a second, twisting in a way that grinds his dick against her even though he’s doing it to reach for a pack of breath mints he keeps tucked in a pen holder. This isn’t the first time she’s surprised him so early, and he’s a fan of being prepared. Popping the mint into his mouth, he sucks it thoughtfully before nudging his nose against her chin in a soft hint for her to cuddle back down, even as she shimmies her shoes and pants off. He still doesn’t answer even when he has his fingers inside her, working her up quickly with her underwear pulled to the side, a focused, deliberate moment between them.
It’s not until he slips his fingers from her that he answers, also kissing her fiercely in a rush of mint and tongue as he replaces them with his dick. She hates him for waiting until she’s like this, warm and pliable and wet against him, knowing he’s left her underwear on because he gets a kick out of the pretence she’s going to still wear them to work. She’s definitely not, but he can pretend if he wants to. Gently he pushes into her, hands soft and letting her rearrange herself for her own comfort instead of moving her into a position more comfortable for his, and he says, “I’m not any other man you’ve been in bed with before, and I’m never going to hurt you. I believe that one day you’ll believe that.”
When they’re like this in the early, comfortable hours of the morning and there’s absolutely nothing here to remind her of who she’s been in the past, she believes that she can too.
Though Spencer puts his considerable intellect to use trying to puzzle through their conundrum, he’s silent about it for the next month. Silent enough that she moves on from their fight, although not so much that she stops being very careful with how she responds to him during sex. It takes its toll, this refusal to let down her guard, and she knows he notices. It’s not unusual for her to not climax every time they have sex; however, it is unusual for this to happen five times in a row, especially after he spends the last two occasions desperately trying to make it happen. It’s no consolation that he doesn’t come either since she’s pretty sure that’s because he’s feeling guilty about not getting her off.
But they’re okay. She’s too old to worry about how many times she orgasms in a month, and there’s more to their relationship than sex. So long as he’s not looking at her like she’s cut him to his core, they can work anything out.
On this night, they’ve been out drinking with the team and she doesn’t quite realise how tipsy she is until he pours her into a cab and then scurries in beside her, leaving her feeling like the world is suddenly tipsy too. Incidentally, she also doesn’t realise how drunk he is until she gets him up the stairs of her apartment building and he goes from bouncing cheerfully beside her to slipping a hand up her shirt and trying to nip at her ear before they’re even at her door. It’s a raw flirtiness that only ever seems to come out this fast when he’s been drinking, and she grins when she sees how overbright his eyes are.
“You’re drunk,” she whispers to him, aware of the hour and how loud their shuffling feet are on the carpeted hall. “I can’t get the door open with you inside my shirt.”
“How about with me inside you?” he responds with such rapidity that she sighs. “Also, I’m not beautiful, you are.” She stares at him until he grins and flushes the tiniest bit pink on his nose. Not cowed, he waits until she’s busy with the lock before wiggling close again and whispering, “What about just my tongue inside you?”
This earns him a gentle elbow to his chest before they fall through the open door and into her condo.
“Water,” she warns him as he wrestles with his shoes and falls over onto her shoe rack with a sad meeping sound. “You’re getting water first, and so am I. What on earth got into us, drinking so much …”
“Morgan,” says Spencer’s voice from the shoe rack. “Morgan got into me, I mean, got alcohol into me.” He appears once more, one shoe still on and brandishing a single red heel. “I don’t know what got into you, and I’ve just now realised I’m missing an opportunity to imply that I should be getting into you, not Morgan, although I guess I’ve already made that innuendo. Also, we should try pegging.”
That takes a second to compute, and then a second more because what.
She realises that she’s staring blankly at him even as he rustles past her, still holding the heel, and veers towards her fridge for water.
“Em?”
She stares at him some more.
Pressing a glass of water into her hand, he peers back, still looking drunk and mildly amused. Nothing really phases him when he’s like this and his inner weirdo emerges, leaving him smiling his widest smile and liable to laugh at anything like he’s just happy to be happy.
“Pegging?” she finally manages.
“Yeah.” There’s that smile again, so giddy and happy that she’s smiling back despite being thrown for a loop. “You know.”
She knows.
“Me, you,” she tries, gesturing weakly at her crouch and his like she’s trying to interpretive dance the concept of pegging. “Me … fucking you? With a strap-on, that kind of pegging?”
Her shock is starting to seep into her voice, leaving it shrill, but he still hasn’t stopped beaming.
“Yup.”
Dizzy, she decides very much on her own behest that she wants to sit down, and does so. Hard.
“I think it will help you with your trust issues,” he says with a confusing amount of certainty.
“I’m not entirely sure how me fucking you with a strap-on is going to help me with my trust issues,” Emily manages, before reflecting on the sentence that just left her lips and wondering what’s happened to her happy-to-be-vanilla boyfriend. It’s not that he’s incapable of being kinky, he just … hasn’t been. With her. Yet. Until now. And then she has a thought: “Wait, are you asking from experience? Is this something you’ve done before?”
Now that she’s got that in her head, it’s going to pop into her brain at the most inopportune moments, she’s sure, like in front of a precinct full of police officers. But he’s rambling on happily; his hard-learned instincts of when he’s talking too much always shutting down completely when he’s drunk and alone with her, which she supposes is sweet, really.
“It’s definitely a trust thing. In society’s eyes, allowing the female half of a heterosexual relationship to be the one in such a position of power is emasculating, it’s opening myself up to being as vulnerable to you as historically women have been to men. A subversion of gender roles that’s more complete for that it’s in the bedroom, where the man’s masculinity is supposed to be absolute purely by the distinction of them almost invariably being the phallic partner. Besides, there’s an agency in being the cause of the pleasure instead of the vehicle for it. I’m content with being that vulnerable to you because I trust you. You won’t hurt me.” He pauses, visibly running back over their conversation in his head, before adding, “And no, it’s not something I’ve ever done with a female partner before. You’ll be the first, as you should, because I’ve never trusted someone with my body and my life as completely as I trust you.”
She digests that slowly, glad that she’s sitting down and that the glass of water beside her keeps magically refilling. “Oh,” she says, something clicking into place. “You’re not straight, are you?”
This is a strange thing to realise about a man that she’s known for eleven years and has been in a relationship with for three, but he never talks about his past experiences. She’s also never asked, knowing how raw the subject is. But the careful phrase ‘female partners’ sticks out for its deliberateness.
“You can be straight and enjoy anal play,” he says, finding a seat in front of her with an ease that betrays how childlike he can often be, legs crossed and leaning his arms on her knees. Yet the way he gazes up at her, chin on his arms and eyes intent in a way that makes her feel pinned, is a stark reminder that he’s very much an adult. “But no, I’m not straight. I don’t bother defining my sexuality, it’s fluid. Currently, I want to have sex with you and only you. Previously, I have enjoyed sex with men. I’ve also gone through stages of complete disinterest in all sexual contact, as well as fluctuations in my interest in romance. I’m me, Em. And what I am right now is very intrigued by the idea of allowing you the power over my body that you give me over yours every time that we have penetrative sex, so you can see how impossible it would be for either of us to harm the other in the ways that you’ve been hurt previously.”
She loves him so intensely at that moment that she can’t even think to reply to his offer, instead bowing down to hug her arms around his head, feeling his breath on her collarbone as he gusts a laugh against her.
“Come to bed with me,” she asks him, kissing the mussed hair below her mouth. “We’ll talk about it in the morning, when we’re sober. If you remember.”
“Oh, I’ll remember,” he says into her chest with another warm, gusting laugh.
The next morning, she’s cooking eggs and nurturing a hangover she can’t wait to see leave the nest, wondering if she dreamed it all up. It’s a question that’s answered when he appears beside her with two coffees and a quirked smile.
“I remember, you know,” he says as he kisses her cheek. “And the offer is still open.” She’s left staring after him until her eggs begin to burn and he’s forced to rescue them from her hungover hand, serving them up with a casual, “Think about it,” and sauntering away like he knows she’s not going to be able to do anything but.
Emily then proceeds to think about his offer: constantly. At work, she’s focused, but as soon as work lapses and she catches sight of him out of the corner of her eye, a small voice sneaks back into her head and reminds her that there’s so much about him she doesn’t know and never imagined was possible …
They’re out food shopping one Sunday, an event she’s always enjoyed sharing with him since he knows the weirdest things about the ingredient lists and does all the calculations of how much they’re buying in his head which saves her the trouble, and out of nowhere he pops out with, “You can ask me, you know.”
Surprised, she turns her back on the rice section and stares at him as he sorts piles of groceries in the cart into further small piles. “Ask you what?”
“About my sexual history. I can tell you’ve been thinking about it. I see you watching me sometimes.” He’s resorting her tampons now, and she scowls at him until he stops juggling them about for everyone to see, his mouth doing that thing it does when he knows he’s being aggravating and is enjoying that knowledge. “It’s not a secret between us, barring names.”
She shrugs, leading him through the supermarket until they’re down the toiletry aisle and she’s in danger of getting his toothpaste lecture again, distracting him with the condom section instead.
“I don’t want to talk about mine,” she says as he double-checks their usual brand for any surprise additions to the box before doing the same to the lube and, following that, her shaving cream.
“You don’t have to,” he assures her. “My willingness to share my past has no bearing on you sharing yours, I promise.”
She takes him up on that.
They’re in bed that night and she’s testing her aging flexibility as she attempts to get her legs over his shoulders. They manage it, barely, and with no help from him as he winces every time something in her body pops, but she’s forced to admit that maybe some extra practice is going to be needed before she can retain that position.
“I can’t get my leg over your shoulder in that position, if it helps,” Spencer points out, flopping onto his stomach on the bed and watching her stalk about, grumpy that she’s getting older. “And I’m youn –”
She turns and glares.
“Come back to bed,” he finishes.
She slinks back to bed and curls up beside him, distracting herself from her crabbiness by sweeping her hands up and down his back and sides as he melts into a contented puddle of Spencer. At least she can enjoy his body, whether or not he can get his leg over his head.
This continues until she’s distracted by her thoughts again.
“So,” she says, mind veering back to his offer and his reveal. “Uh. Um.”
He lifts his head, pillow creases on his cheek and drool on his arm from where he’d been almost asleep. “Words, Em,” he murmurs, rolling over and yawning. She sits up, examining him openly, where he’s broader around the waist than he used to be, the muscles in his legs, the line where abdomen meets pelvis.
“What was your first time like?” she asks. “I mean, not first time having sex but … first with a guy.”
As she’s talking, she’s curling her hand around his ass and sliding her fingers along until she’s tracing down the centre of him. He twitches, his flaccid dick twitching with him, and she’s intrigued; he’s never reacted so quickly to just the possibility of her fingers on him before. But, despite the fact that he’s now semi-aroused as her finger just barely brushes his asshole, he squirms away from her.
“I’m particular about preparing for anal play,” he murmurs, leaning forward to kiss her so she knows it’s not a rejection of her but simply a deferral. “Otherwise it’s an exercise in anxiety management to engage in it spontaneously. Relevantly, my first time was spontaneous.” He laughs self-consciously, ears red. “I was in demand as a study companion at college …”
It’s her turn to kiss him, her eyebrows raised. “Wow, studying has gotten sexy since I was at college,” she quips, hearing his laugh deepen into a proper one, not one aimed at himself. Much better.
“Well, I was already sleeping with this study buddy,” he assures her. “It was like clicker training, except he wasn’t primed by food but, uh, well, blow-jobs were successful.”
That’s it. She’s officially in bed with a clone of Spencer Reid, far kinkier than he’s ever been.
“Anyway,” Spencer continues, now properly red. “He, uh, had a vibrator and wanted to return the favour one day, and the results were surprising for both of us. We’d never really explored beyond hands or mouths, but the next week we were drunk and horny and trying it again and, before I knew it, he was asking if we could have penetrative sex and it sounded like the greatest idea I’d ever heard. Which I assume was entirely the product of me being nineteen and drunk and already aroused, since in retrospect it wasn’t quite so revolutionary.”
She doesn’t know about him, but she’s feeling a kind of kinship with nineteen-year-old Spencer. She’s feeling pretty turned on by the idea of spontaneous drunken fucking right now too, although she can’t help but picture Spence as how he is now rather than as young as he would have been then, since this is the Spencer who is so firmly embedded in her mind as the one she’s attracted to sexually.
“With the vibrator?” she queries, sitting up and finding that she’s not the only one turned on, thankfully. It’s less curiosity now and more pure lust, and he seems to know that as he lifts his hand and draws her closer, encouraging her to straddle him as he hardens between her legs.
“No,” he breathes, holding her there as he rubs his dick gently against her, his eyes flickering shut with pleasure. “I let him penetrate me, although he did use the vibrator on me throughout. You know, the fact that this arouses you is promising for my offer, right? You’re fascinated by the idea of me in that position.”
She is, damnit, he’s right.
“Did you like it?” she asks him, reaching down to stroke him against her while simultaneously checking with her fingers to see if she’s wet enough to take him or if they’re going to need the lube tonight for comfort. “The sex, I mean. Did you like what he did to you?”
Spencer makes a low purring sound against her, rolling his hips up. “So much,” he breathes. “Maybe without the vibrator and with a less experienced partner it would have been a disaster, but how he was with me? I loved it so much. And I’d love it more with you, I promise.”
It’s about that point that she realises the opportunity to make him remember her that fondly is something she can’t pass up.
If she’s given the option after she kicks the bucket to make a ‘highlight reel of my life’, then she wants this moment in there: buying a sex toy with Spencer Reid standing behind her making all kinds of startled noises at the descriptions he’s over-the-shoulder reading.
“Inflatable?” he squeaks out as she realises the trauma potential this moment has and begins deliberately clicking on the frightening-looking ones. “Spines?! How big is big? Emily?”
She tilts her head back and watches him make whale eyes at her upside-down, unable to stop from laughing at his panicked expression. “I’m kidding,” she assures him, going right-way-up and holding her left arm out for him to come snuggle against. “Here, look. These don’t have … whoa.”
Whoa because, while she’s not vanilla, she’s also not ever really bothered perusing the wide range of available sex toys out there, both her and Spencer cocking their heads at an identical angle to study the toy that’s just come up.
“Fascinating,” murmurs Spencer, eyes going distant as though he’s mentally puzzling it out.
She clicks in. Scrolls. Reads the reviews. Looks at him right as he looks at her.
“Your credit card or mine?” he asks, his mouth doing that thing again.
They put it out of their minds until the day they’re at work going through old case files and Emily’s cell beeps with a ‘your package has been delivered’ text. She forwards it to Spencer, seeing his eyebrows rocket up as he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. It’s a heated stare he’s giving his cell, and Rossi notices.
“Big plans for the weekend, huh?” he asks with the kind of smile that means his terrible, old brain is being at least seven shades of lewd right now. Emily eyes him and decides to slide another HR pamphlet under his door, just as a general reminder that she’s watching.
“Oh, you know,” Spencer babbles, looking at no one in particular and only affirming his guilt. “Staying in. The usual. Nothing exciting. Maybe some gardening.”
JJ lifts her head slowly, nose crinkling as she tries to connect Spencer with gardening in his tiny apartment with the drapes permanently pulled shut.
“Well, I, for one, am very much looking forward to this weekend,” Tara announces. “Taking the new baby out for a spin and she is going to purr.”
“I’m envious,” Rossi replies, distracted from Spencer, who looks relieved. “There’s nothing better than having a fine new toy to ride –”
Emily chokes on her coffee at the expression on Spencer’s face, sure that this is also going to be on that highlight reel, it has to be. She never wants to forget it.
“Dave, you are a gift,” she promises him as JJ helps her mop up her spilled coffee, Spencer having left the room without a word and still wearing that face.
“What?” In his defence, Rossi looks genuinely confused. “What did I say?”
The paperwork seems to last forever that night.
Spencer is the second-last to leave, lingering at her door until everyone is gone before slipping inside and closing it. “Want me to grab something for dinner on my commute?” he asks, watching her with eyes that tell her exactly what he wants to eat when he gets home.
She nods, throat dry like it’s three years ago and they’re tentatively tiptoeing towards each other for the very first time, the same butterfly-thrill of excitement building in her belly. “Get something for the slow-cooker,” she suggests, the excitement surging as his smile curls and smoulders like a promise. “Something that can keep. If we get distracted.”
That smile again and he slips to the door, pausing with his fingers resting on the handle. “Em?” he calls back, looking at her with something so serious in his expression that she remembers how easy he is to hurt. “I love you so much, you know that?”
What she should say is ‘not at work, Reid’. What she actually says is this:
“I love you too.”
By the time she makes it home, she’s worked up and over ready. It’s a pleasurable comfort to come in and find his shoes on the rack already, his bag hung neatly on the hook. In her gun safe, she knows his revolver will be sitting waiting for hers to be tucked beside it. His contacts case and glasses already put down on his side of the bed in preparation for that night so he doesn’t need to fumble around while she laughs. It’s nice to have someone to come home to, the scent of the slow cooker filling their space deliciously. She peeks in as she pads through the condo in her socks, weapon in hand, finding that he’s put pulled pork in for them.
She realises she’s called it their space, shivering as she lets that thought twist through her. It’s a nice thought, and it hammers home how important tonight is: she’s never let anyone into her life as she has him, so why can’t her brain realise this extends to the bedroom?
She goes looking for him after she puts her gun away, excited to tell him this, but the door to the bathroom is locked with steam eddying out from under the gap. When she knocks, the shower sounds from inside falter – he’s never locked her out before, so she’s curious – but all she gets in response is the door cracking open slightly, steam billowing out around his shampooed hair as he peers at her with the vacant expression he wears when he doesn’t have his contacts in.
“Go away,” he tells her bluntly, fingers curled white around the wood. “There are a lot of things I’m comfortable sharing with you. What I’m doing in here is not one of them.”
Amused, she leans forward and pecks a kiss onto his nose – something he hates – before wandering back to the bedroom, laughing as the shower starts up again. If he wants some mystery to remain, she’s fine with that, and then she sees the still-packed box sitting on the bed and all thoughts of Spencer’s bathroom activities flee her brain.
That’s where he finds her, with the contents of the box strewn about her on the bed and the object of interest in her hands as she examines it. In he wanders, bringing with him the scent of her toiletries and the warm touch of shower-heated skin, a plush towel wrapped tight around his waist. As he comes closer to her, looking at what she’s holding with a fixed kind of concentration, she holds it up for him. He takes it. It seems more real in his hands, larger than expected and a deep almost purple-black. It’s a strapless, double-sided dildo designed to go in her before it goes in him, and she hadn’t quite thought through how much clenching she’s going to have to do before now, having actually seen it.
“Huh,” he says, rubbing his thumb along the bit that, in theory, should press against her clit once it’s inserted, his nail bumping over the ridges. “Well then.”
Feeling dazed and not at all sure how this night is going to go, Emily dodges him with a pat on his shoulder as she goes for the bathroom. “Do you want dinner after my shower?” she yells to him, feeling her cheeks heat with the knowledge of what he’s standing there with.
“Maybe later,” he calls back, voice husky. “Go shower while I wash this.”
She wonders if that’s because he’s excited to get started or if he’s avoiding eating for another reason, before forcing herself to stop wondering and just enjoy her shower.
When she comes out, towel-wrapped and comfortably warm, she finds him in the kitchen in her bathrobe. It’s too short on him and she pauses in the doorway, smirking at the back of his legs and the way he has the sleeves rolled up to hide how high on his forearms they sit. That smirk fades as she appreciates how nimble he is in the kitchen, cutting various forms of vegetables into rough chunks and adding them to the slow cooker. Heart aching at the quiet domesticity of this moment, finding nothing in her memory to compare it to except a distant whisper of sneaking into the kitchen as a child to watch the staff cook, she slinks up behind him and wraps her arms around his middle. He goes quiet and still against her, leaning into her bear-hug as she tips up onto her toes in order to brush a wobbly kiss against the damp curls of hair on the back of his neck.
“Hi, gorgeous,” she tells him as a warning that she’s being pervy before slinking her hand around to his front where the robe doesn’t quite close. Benefit of being shorter than him, she’s able to easily slip her hand inside the robe and take his dick in hand, humming against the back of his neck as she strokes him.
“Emily, I’m holding a knife,” he rumbles, his voice thudding through her as he makes a liar of himself and puts the knife down, instead holding onto the counter with his back arched into her.
“You’re not now.” With that accurate observation, she uses the hand not busy exciting him to unhook the robe from his broad shoulders, letting the material reveal him as it pools in a satin-blue puddle around his feet. With that, she firms her grip and uses her free hand between his legs from behind, along the perineum and back until she can stroke her fingertip across and then very slightly in him, the muscles resisting her as he tenses all over from surprise.
“I need to wash my hands,” he breathes, turning his head so that he’s in stark profile to her hungry eyes.
She lets him go, impatient for him to finish fastidiously soaping right up to his wrist. When he’s done, she rolls her eyes but lets him use her towel to dry his hands. She only wonders for a moment why he’s not using the hand towel … right up until he chuckles, grins, and then rips her towel right off her in a shocking burst of speed, leaving her suddenly naked and very surprised as he pelts off up the hall with a whoop and a flash of his bare ass hurrying away.
“Hey!” she hollers. Despite not needing the towel for future activities, it’s more the spirit of the thing, so she hurtles right off after him with a warning yell that she’s going to make his scrawny ass regret it when she catches him. She notes with a wry amusement that he’s still partially erect, dick bouncing as he dodges her attempts to jump for the towel he’s holding out of reach, and then she regrets ever inviting him into her home in the first place as it occurs to her he’s probably doing it to see her tits bounce about too.
She continues fuming about this until he lures her into the bedroom and then executes a picture-perfect tackle onto the bed, both of them sprawled there with him on top of her and softly giggling.
“Think I can add that textbook tackle to your next performance review?” she asks him as he pins her down without actually pinning her in a way she’ll hate, kissing busily down her chest and stomach.
“Maybe leave out the erection,” he says into the skin of her belly.
This earns another laugh as he slithers off the bed, leaving her wondering what he’s planning. He doesn’t reappear for a moment following the thump of him hitting the floor until she levers herself up onto her elbows and peers at the edge of the bed. Up he pops, reappearing with the towel around his shoulders and the dildo in one hand, a tube of lube in the other like the world’s kinkiest street magician.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
If he pulls out a rabbit, she’s out of here. Despite this vague-but-justified worry, she still points out with some amusement, “Why are you asking me, considering who’s taking the business end of that?” She points to the dildo, his eyes following the line of her finger as he hmms in agreement. “Are you ready?”
He gives her a look that’s pure hunger, nothing remaining of the silly man who’d just chased her; it hammers home how exciting this is for him, and how much they stand to gain. Her throat goes dry, a flush of heat working right through her.
“Ready,” she rasps, and means it.
She’s not sure if the foreplay is slow for his sake or hers, but she’s glad for it either way. She gets him ready first since he explains to her that that will likely take longer, especially since it’s been a while for him. It’s not a kink he indulges on his own: everything he gets out of it comes only with the inclusion of a partner. They’re lying in bed together, her head on his chest and eyes closed, working her fingers inside him as she listens to him talk to her about what to expect. The first moment she’d pushed them into him had been strange but not really so different from her explorations of her own body, and now she’s just enjoying the closeness they’re sharing while she eases him open with her fingers and the warming lube. His dick is going from hard to semi-hard and back again along with the beat of his heart, and there’s a quiet kind of comfort settling around them. They could be doing this more energetically, but she knows this is part of it; this trusting moment where it’s just them and the night stretching ahead, in this bed where they’ve come together so many times before.
Not once throughout this entire time, despite her own slow waves of arousal, has she felt threatened or out of control, or like this is anything she’s ever shared with anyone else. Never before has she been this careful, this intimate. This relaxed, like there’s nothing to do that’s integral, no rush to this night, the hours stretching endlessly ahead of them until a moment when they decide they’re ready to move on and absolutely no sooner.
“Remember,” he murmurs, kissing her hair, “if at any point you’re uncomfortable, we can stop.”
“I know,” she tells him, and, “I trust you,” which she’s beginning to really suspect might be true.
It’s time. He tells her that it’s her turn, getting onto his knees beside her and watching her with such a flushed glee that she wonders why they didn’t try this years ago. He guides her onto her back, crouching between her legs with his body at such an extreme angle that she aches for him before he brings his tongue to her. It’s the most tediously delicious thing she’s ever experienced as he eats her out only slightly less slowly than she’d worked him open, any worry that the lube they’ve used in him is going to dry out in the time he takes fading along with her senses as he works her up to such a point of arousal that she bypasses defensive and slams straight into sated. She has one leg over his shoulder by the time he lets her come back to himself, and he’s slid to the floor so he can straighten his back, watching her from between her legs with his hair in his eyes and his expression wicked from a mouth that’s fucked from the mess she’s made of it. She’s so wet she can feel it slick right up to her own ass, the sheets under her probably wet as well.
Then he has her end of the dildo pressed against her, the tip nudging, and he still hasn’t broken eye contact. It seems important, it feels important, so she matches that eye contact with her fists bunching up the sheets around her as he gradually pushes it inside her. The thing is flared to help her hold it in, so the feeling of it filling her is new until he has it fully seated and she realises she’s been making breathy noises the entire time. It feels so odd that she’s not sure she wants to look yet, warm from his skin where it’s fitted against her clit and her body tightening around the part of it inside her. The weight is new too, as she moves her hips to test it and feels a bulk outside of her move with it. Spencer makes a strange noise.
She opens her eyes, looking down and staring at what is absolutely a silicone faux-dick between her legs, her brain rebooting hard at the sight. Spencer’s staring too, standing in front of her with his eyes locked on the dildo and utterly erect, there’s no denying that. He’s so hard that she can see pre-come beading at the tip, a completely poleaxed look on his face. She doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing, looking from his face to the dildo and trying to compute what she’s seeing.
Finally, Spencer speaks.
“Nice dick,” he says.
She’s gone. She’s laughing so hard that she can’t even hold the fucking thing in anymore, hand darting down to pull it back as she feels it popping free. Stomach aching and legs clamped tight, she curls up and tries to contain herself, hiccupping until it hurts and with Spencer’s hands on her knees and his own body shaking from barely contained laughter.
Still smirking, Spencer helps her uncurl, passing her a tissue to dab at her eyes as she tries to apologise. He waves her off without a word, studying where the base of the toy sits against her and shifting it to examine how it rubs her clit.
“What are you …?” she begins, trailing off as there’s a crackle of foil and his hand appears with a condom in it, his eyes flickering up to pin her as he brings it to his mouth.
Before slipping it in, he murmurs, “Easier clean up,” and then stuns her by wholly taking the toy with one easy swoop of his mouth, going as deep as he needs to use his tongue to slide the condom over before popping free. Knowing he can see how stunned she is by the open disbelief on her face, he looks up, makes eye contact with her, smirks, and then licks the tip with a slow unveiling of her very self in the careful sweep of his tongue. She’s not laughing now because suddenly she understands why blowjobs are so appealing.
Wow.
Fuck.
“You’ve done that before,” she rasps out, feeling her body pulling tight once more against the toy as it misreads the flood of arousal that just slammed through her as a cue to try and draw his dick in deeper, the toy visibly bobbing as her muscles shift it.
“I was a very dedicated study buddy,” Spencer answers distractedly, eyes locked on the dildo.
Emily swallows, feeling it grate down her dry throat. She’s so torn between confused and aroused that she doesn’t know what to do next, her hands useless on the bed beside her as her brain struggles.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Give me a second.” She closes her eyes, breathes, and opens them again to find him watching her with adoration on his face. It’s calming and she smiles, using one hand to reach out and cup his jaw. “Remarkably, this is my first foray into having a dick. I’m adjusting.”
“Oh,” he responds, smiling so wide that she feels the muscles in his jaw move with the expression. “Well, if it helps, you look very pretty with a penis.”
“Please stop,” she begs him, ribs aching as she gets the giggles again, “I can’t hold it in if I’m laughing.”
“Sorry. I mean, not for saying you’re pretty, because you are, but sorry I’m making this harder – ah!”
The scream is apt because she’s tried to stop the thing from popping out again and instead choked out another full-body laugh that’s sent it flying out of her, knocked off course by his grasping hands and going skittering across the room. Spencer flings himself after it once he’s recovered from the shock of his near concussion. There’s silence as he reappears, dildo in hand and wide-eyed. She stares at him, the mental image of him buck-naked and chasing an escaping dick now seared forever into her mind, just as she’s sure the image of her violently ejecting it is now seared into his.
“Well,” he says. “Round two?”
Trying to get it into him while it still remains in her is an exercise in patience. After trial and error that’s more error than trial, they figure out that him on top is really the only feasible way they can work this until she masters the art of the clench. He’s now straddling her with his brow furrowed as though he’s worried about crushing her under his weight, but, honestly, the only thing she’s apprehensive of at this point is the dildo ricocheting out of her and into his eye. That would not be an easy hospital trip to explain to Rossi …
“This thing has a mind of its own,” she complains, clenching her legs as she tries to figure out if she’d just felt it move or if she’s now having phantom-dildo-expulsion-sensations from fretting about it so much. “I don’t know what it’s going to do at any one time.”
“That’s relatable,” he mutters from above her, brow going smooth as he does the frog-face grin he does when he’s trying not to laugh while being supremely awkward about it, eyes wide for comedic effect.
She glares at him, not appreciating his sass right now. “At least your dick is attached.”
The frog mouth intensifies. “But Em,” he says innocently, “think of all the activities you can do with a detachable dick.”
She considers, for a brief second, smacking him with said detachable dick. “Are you drunk?”
“No,” he answers, his weight on her suddenly as he forgets to hold it up while fighting back laughter. “It’s just very hard to take this seriously.”
She’s laughing too now, feeling the thing pop loose again with a hissed, “Fuck!” from her and more laughter from Spencer. She can’t believe this was his idea, she really can’t. From now on, no kinks involving things that attempt to abscond from proceedings – and if she has to put that rule in writing, so be it.
When they finally get it in, it’s a real moment for them both. Emily’s pretty sure it’s the proudest moment of their lives, the peak achievement for them both. Judging from Spencer’s excited, “Aha!” like he’s one sneeze away from shouting Eureka!, he’s feeling much the same.
“Alright,” she pants, having managed to get the flared tip of the thing into him and both of them pausing there. The lube has gotten a thrashing in the time it’s taken to manage this, and she sure hopes they remembered to turn the slow cooker down to warm. “I can’t feel what my fake dick is doing to you –” Spencer blinks. “– so you have to talk to me, okay? No going quiet like you do sometimes. And, for crying out loud, don’t do anything enthusiastic or this thing is going to spontaneously eject through the drywall.”
He shudders against her and she worries for a moment, before realising that he’s giggling.
“Roger, roger, Emily,” he manages, voice strained and still grinning.
She sighs and tries to figure out how to push her dick into him.
It’s … weird. There’s a disconnect from what she’s feeling and what she’s doing. It’s not at all like using her fingers, where there’s tangible feedback to explain why he’s making the faces and sounds that he’s making, so when he starts to respond, her brain panics.
“Am I hurting you?” she asks, freezing as his eyes go wide and his mouth slips open before snapping closed, teeth worrying his lower lip. “What does that face mean? Why do you look like that?”
He blinks, eyes refocusing from dazed as he looks down at her from where he’s arched up. “What? No, no, it’s … good. It’s good, just thrust, Em, thrust.”
She nods, and then pauses, hearing him groan with a tempered frustration that she recognises as wanting more dick while not getting more dick. But she’s hit a roadblock. She’s realised she doesn’t know how to do something she’d have sworn up and down until this moment that she knew how to do.
“How do I … thrust …?”
He gasps, leaning his weight down and managing to slide more onto the dick with a dangerous sensation of almost pushing it out of her, before wheezing, “Just … do … it.”
His voice is a pretty kind of fucked out that she’d appreciate if she wasn’t so bemused by her body.
“I don’t …” She stares at her hips and the queer sight of seeing her dick seated inside his ass, lifting a hand up like touching it is going to help before shrugging helplessly and seeing his eyes go wide.
“It’s instinctual!”
She snaps back, “Not for me!” and tries to thrust but confuses herself midway and just twists her hips in place, making him squeak as she pulls it to the side inside him.
“Here,” he tries, “like this.”
It’s a fine idea, in theory, him showing her how to thrust – and a view that she appreciates since she’s forgotten in her hyper-focus on the alarmingly volatile dick that she’s sporting that he has a much nicer one – but, in practice, what he almost does is lose his balance and bend backwards with a violence that she knows is going to have him backflipping beautifully right before he smashes his head into a cupboard. She launches up, wrapping her arms around his abdomen in an effort to save him, which has an interesting effect. She doesn’t, as she’d almost expected, lose the dildo that she’s clamped so tight around it’s like she’s trying to make dick-shaped diamonds out of it; instead, he bucks hard into her chest, leaving a wet pool of pre-come on her tits, and then groans like she’s reached in and ripped the sound from him, his hands biting down hard on her shoulders.
“What did I just do?!” she asks him, alarmed by the violence of the sound he’d made. He gives her a blank-eyed stare and whines, his dick so hard against her that she can feel it throbbing. Despite her alarm, his sharp movement also had the side-effect of pressing hard against her clit, so she’s just as worked up, just as wound tight, the tremors in her muscles working through the dildo and into him as his eyes take on a look she recognises as ‘close to accidentally climaxing’.
“Prostate,” he manages, hand rubbing her shoulder like he’s stroking his dick.
“Huh,” she says before trying to emulate it. It takes three goes, but she manages it, staring up at his face with fascination as his mouth hangs open like he’s struggling to vocalise. It makes no noise but a strangled ahhhh that he bites off. She wants to kiss him at that moment. That’s about the point where it all slams home, what she’s doing to him, how undone he looks right now, the knowledge that this is how she looks when he’s inside her sinking in deep.
But she can’t reach his mouth, instead kissing his stomach and what she can of his chest with a frantic kind of love, his hands coming to cup either side of her jaw as he looks down at her with awe.
“You feel so good,” he’s saying, his voice aching. “You feel so good in me, Em, so good. Every time you tighten around it, I can feel it shift. Can you roll your hips, like this …?”
He does so, soft twists of his hips that nonetheless grind his cock against her, hard and sticky. Doing as he says, she’s rewarded by his breathing ratcheting up. But her spine is killing her from being folded up like this, so she has to sprawl back, still able to roll her hips into him even as cold air steals across the wet stripes on the skin of her superheated stomach. It’s like she’s watching him ride her, and she’s transfixed by the power she has here, the agency of this moment. The pleasure she’s giving him as he loses control of his own reactions to her body and begins to move with her, his hand now around his cock, eyes closed and doing nothing but luxuriating in the gift she’s giving him.
“Why are you so long?” she breathes, wanting so desperately to kiss his bitten-pink mouth, but he’s far beyond being capable of answering her. Just opens his eyes and shakes his head, giving her a look that tells her more than words do that he so desperately wants to kiss her back, to love her in return like she’s loving him, but he can’t.
But they can.
He reaches for her hands first, hers meeting him halfway. They finally work out how to move so perfectly that they’re one singular being connected by a strip of silicone and all their years of memories. Fingers wound tight together, his eyes locked on hers so that she can see the exact moment he begins the intangible hurtle towards coming right there overtop of her, her own body beginning to ripple in a relieved response to the rhythm they’ve found. They’re hanging on for dear life, he’s wildly and visibly in love – so vulnerable and open to her right now, but no fear at all in his eyes – and he whispers something that could be come to me as he tries to pull her against him. She goes as far as she can, which is far enough for him as he draws her hands to his lips and kisses them fiercely. Every part of him trusting her to take him wherever she wants to go –
The dildo pops out, him toppling sideways with a yelp and her stunned and empty in the wake of that.
She gets another attack of the giggles in lieu of doing anything else with the abrupt shock of being thrown so callously off the edge, but suddenly he’s back. Pinning her onto the bed, she lets him and flips right from giggling back to frantic as she claws him down on top of her, her mouth meeting his in an explosion of everything she’s needed. The moment their lips connect, her brain wipes itself for the longest beat of nothing she’s ever felt, breathing him in so hard it’s like she’s trying to use him to survive. They break apart, breathe, snap together again, his knees to her side as he kisses her mouth again and again and again before holding her and clinging with a sound like a sob, like he’s hurting so much with how much he loves and wants her that he can’t think to do anything else.
“Straddle me,” she orders him, sitting up and shuffling backwards so she’s propped against the backboard with a pillow behind her ass. He follows with a blank stare that’s all kinds of ‘please fuck me’ until he’s kneeling over her and she can reach to guide his cock between her legs to replace the one that’s still in him. He barely waits for her guidance, pushing in and moaning so abruptly by her ear that her body responds like it’s been shot, jerking up against him so hard that he slams home all in one hit. They’re scrabbling at each other, too frantic to find the purchase they need and him with his legs folded under him so he can’t thrust properly, but he doesn’t need to. Instead, she waits until he’s tight against her and then reaches around his slim body and finds the dildo still there, bracing with her free hand and using the other to fuck him hard with it, like she couldn’t when she was focused on keeping it inside her.
It’s quick. He’s already worked up and this is just what he’s been needing so, even though he can’t move, she still has the gratification of feeling him throb right into her, his body locked tight and every muscle contracting hard in the second before climax, right before he groans along with the pulse of his come inside her. He’s never come this hard for her before, never, his entire body seeming to spill into her as every part of him goes rigid before unspooling as it begins to slow. He’s barely sensible for the longest time. His head on her shoulder and his lips working gentle kisses into her skin that are as soft as his breaths. She lets go of the dildo she’d been thrusting hard into him, loosening her wrist before pulling the toy free and lobbing it aside to where she can see her towel.
When he comes back to life, it’s to slide out of her, bringing his mouth to hers and kissing her so deeply if she wasn’t already in love with him, she’d have fallen right there. They break apart, her assuming it’s over as she smiles at him, his eyes warning her she’s wrong.
“Spread,” he murmurs, lying down with such care that she knows he’s sore as he lines up his mouth.
“Spence,” she says, stunned since there’s almost more of him down there than there is her and he’s never liked the taste of his own come. “I’m a mess, you don’t have to …”
But he does. Maybe it’s because she knows he doesn’t usually like it but he’s down there because he wants to be despite that, but it gets her off like nothing else. Barely has she finished shaking from the first climax than another one hits, his eyes widening as he looks up at her and realises she’s coming again, dipping back in to lick at her clit until she’s finished and crumpled back on the bed, breathing hard and barely aware.
She only distantly realises he was gone at all when he crawls onto the bed and kisses her and she tastes mint and mouthwash.
“Sorry,” she whispers into his mouth, closing her eyes and nuzzling her nose against his.
“What for?”
“That I gave up on the pegging. And that you had to do something you don’t like.”
But he shakes his head at her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her tight to his chest, ear on his heart and listening to him live. “Ridiculous,” he says. “There’s nothing I love more than getting you off, and you just gave me some of the most fantastic sex of my life. I didn’t do anything in the last hour that I didn’t love.”
She stares at him, humbled to realise that he’s telling the absolute truth. “You don’t mind that we gave up on the …” She looks around for the dildo, but he vanished it when he went to wash his mouth out, so she lets the glance speak for itself.
“Nah. We tried a new thing that didn’t work out and that’s okay. We got there in the end, didn’t we?”
She laughs, because they did. “I don’t think you’ve ever come that hard …” she begins, but trails off because he’s smiling and it’s that smile. The all-knowing, smug one.
“Not the climaxing,” he corrects, breathing in deep before continuing. “Em, we were laughing the whole way through, both of us. You can’t have sex with someone and laugh the whole way and still get off in the end unless you trust them completely. Can you?”
She thinks about that before realising fuck, he’s right: she trusts him completely. But instead of admitting it, she just says, “Hey, Spencer?”
“Yeah?”
“Next time, we buy one with a harness.”