✓ | 𝗔𝗣𝗛𝗥𝗢𝗗𝗜𝗧𝗘 · ͟͟͞͞➳ spencer reid

CHAPTER 29 ━━━

# ! | CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
- she escapes interrogation

━━━ AFTER BREAKFAST, MERYL
is nowhere to be found. She had cleaned up the dishes and such but then slipped out a door somewhere along the way.  Most everyone is in the library playing games, but Spencer got kicked out of Penelope's Monopoly game after he came up with a 12 minute rent agreement for Kentucky Avenue.

Clau and Marilyn are vacant from the scene as well, but he isn't sure he wants to know what they're up to. Assuming there's only one place she could be, Spencer walks over to the large barn. Walking in to the main area, he looks to the left and finds the aforementioned couple in the arena, riding around bareback on two very large, very regal chestnut horses.

"Mer?" He calls, taking a few steps down one corridor. The barn is quite except for some staccato metallic noises reverberating a few stalls down.

"In here!" comes her muffled reply. Spencer finds her crouched outside the barn, painting red poinsettias on the side of a sleek black sleigh. She's in a t-shirt, raised goosebumps on her skin.

"You know I'm never going to object to you wearing less clothes, but why aren't you wearing a coat?" Spencer asks, leaning his shoulder against the doorway. Meryl flashes him a smile and offers a paintbrush and a little tray of paints.

"Didn't wanna get my sleeves in the paint. You can help if you want, or you can wait on me. Shouldn't be too much longer."

Spence watches for a moment as Meryl traces and fills the petal shapes in a rapid succession. This was simple science, visualizing the desired width and length of the design, accounting for paint displacement from the angle of the brush. He observes what she has going on, and then gets to work on replacing it on the other side of the sleigh. She tells him that the sleigh has been in the family for years, she helped Ren restore it last year.

Spencer looks at the flowers and spits off facts almost subconsciously. "Poinsettias were popularized in the 1820's when Joel Poinsett, the United States minister to Mexico, introduced it to floraculture in the southwest."

Meryl decides to mess with him a little bit. "It's so sexy when you do that."

Spencer clenches his jaw and laughs a bit, a warning. "Shut up or I'm going to fuck up these flowers." The swear was a rarity, and Meryl's... affinity for it was strong.

She says nothing, too caught up in the way his voice sounds, so Spencer talks again. "That's what I thought, good girl."

He's not stupid. He knows what he's doing to her and he loves it. Reid wishes this sleigh wasn't in the way so he could see the pink that he's positive her cheeks are painted.

Meryl clears her throat. "You are such an asshole, have I ever told you that?"

Spencer rolls his eyes, adding green leaves to his flowers. "Oh, I am. If I were you, I'd just leave."

The woman stands. "I'm done, anyway. Maybe I will."

She gets three steps out before Spencer snags her by her belt loops and pulls her back against his chest. She tilts her head to the side and he kisses her neck before biting playfully, laughing when she squeals.

Spencer turns her around just so he can look at her face, full lips slightly parted. Her thick, dark lashes fan around light eyes. She failed to understand how Spencer could be this... everything. Sweet, attentive, appreciative, but then turn around and look at her in a way that makes her spine tingle. She hugs him to her tightly, cheek against his chest. He responds immediately, one hand holding the back of her head and the other braced on the smal of her back.