Spencer Reid | Oneshots

Prickly Pear ❤️‍🩹 (M)

Summary: Reader tries to hide her body hair from Spencer. It doesn't end well.

Rating: Mature (16+)

Content Warning: Discussion/allusions to sex, body hair, insecurity, burns, inadvertent self-harm (chemical burns), hair removal products, crying

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I'd never been very good at understanding social situations. It'd been a big part of why I'd become a profiler. I mean, if I am already required to memorize every book on body language and behavioral clues just to get by, I might as well get paid for it, too.

Most of the time, it helped. Sometimes it got in the way. I was still only human, and I was bound to make mistakes. And that night, as I sat next to my new girlfriend, I couldn't help but think that it was one of those times.

Everyone had assured me that the beginnings of things were always awkward. But before that night, I hadn't ever felt that way with her. In fact, talking and hanging out with her were some of the only times I felt like I wasn't a freak. She never had a problem explaining jokes and cultural references to me, and she was even happier to listen to me ramble for hours about the most obscure nonsense.

In a way, I blamed my friends for planting the idea in my head that tonight would be any different from any other night. I hadn't even considered the fact that it was going to be our third date until someone said it out loud, and in doing so, they set off a chain reaction of realizations.

It was our third date. She had invited me to her house. We discussed staying the night.

Sex, I realized. My girlfriend wanted to have sex with me.

Cue the panic.

It wasn't that I hadn't wanted to have sex with her — I did. But in the few hours leading up to me showing up on her doorstep, I had considered a million different scenarios where something went wrong. I was no longer comforted by our past experiences because this was something different. Something complicated and new.

I only barely managed to calm myself down enough to go through with it all. I'd worked myself in and out of a frenzy and made it all the way to her house.

And the very second that she'd opened the door, I realized that I had gotten everything completely and terribly wrong.

I wish I could've said I was relieved to find her swamped neck to toes in thick fabric. After all, she was as beautiful to me in a turtleneck and fuzzy pants as she was in a little black dress (trust me, I'd seen her in both).

But in that moment, all I felt was pain. Because my girlfriend had barely been able to convince herself to smile, much less look at me while she did so. Her greeting, normally lively and excitable, had been dull and begrudging. I'd followed her inside because I wasn't sure what else to do. Likewise, I accepted her curling into the absolute corner of her couch as an indication that she hadn't wanted me to touch her.

I'd never been very good at understanding social cues, but even I knew she was screaming 'no.' And of course, I wasn't a monster, so I'd accepted it at arm's length.

But even that seemed to hurt her. Every few seconds, she'd peer over at me with a longing in her eyes that made my heart skip a beat. It would only last a few seconds, and then it would disappear again when she'd looked down at the sea of fabric.

I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I'd wanted to hold her the same as I suspected she'd wanted me to. But I didn't know how to deal with the conflicting reality that was her shielding herself from me in whatever little way she could.