The Keeping of Words | Spencer Reid

28| Questions

"I give you my promise from this day forward that you shall not walk alone. May my heart be your shelter and my arms be your home." – Marianne Williamson

Things were changing again. How could love continue to grow? His feelings for her were evolving still. They had come to know and reknow each other, they had pulled their relationship back from the brink of death, and yet again there was something new. Ever since those two weeks at his apartment, things had been changing. It no longer felt like enough to try and synchronize their schedules and meet in their free time, or even to spend quiet weekends doing the things they used to do. He wanted more.

It wasn't just the way she pulled him onto the couch that night after North Dakota, though that had definitely been something new. He'd touched her before, and while the flush of heat that had crept through his flesh was by no means unfamiliar, he had never felt so strongly as he had then. The physical wasn't enough to explain the change though; he was still inexperienced in that department and he had no desire to do anything with her before she was ready – truth be told, he needed time to prepare for that too.

No, it went beyond that. It was a warm feeling in his chest that somehow left him feeling strangely hollow, like there was a piece of him missing, something vital that had been carved away. When Maeve died, he had been utterly unwhole, his whole heart gone, but that wasn't it either. It was a need for something that was still there, not unwhole, but incomplete. He was a puzzle still lacking that final answer, and the solution was her. She was the origin of everything, the only theory he could hold in his arms and not just in his head. In the darkness that had become a central part of his story, she was a lantern in the night, pushing back the dark with beat of her heart. A living sunrise, she was that constant and that necessary.

There was no version of the future he could imagine without her in it, for he no longer allowed himself to imagine a day where she would vanish like so many others had from his life – not by choice, never by choice; but he would choose to keep her safe. So why was there still that echo of loneliness? When he felt like he was drifting, sinking, she was the lighthouse-keeper beckoning her Odysseus home from the waves, at the end of every voyage it was blatantly apparent to him that she was home. The very definition of the word had become Bianca, and he couldn't pinpoint exactly when that had happened. All he knew was that it felt incredibly right.

Every second with her was right. He could hold her in his arms, and feel the delicacy of her bones, but never did he mistake her soul for being fragile. His hands could easily feel the sharpness of her shoulder blades through her sweaters, and it took little effort to lift her from the ground (something he was all-too-happy to be able to do) but for all her smallness she was strong, and when he was struggling she gave him strength. He was reminded of Shakespeare's words: "though she be but little she is fierce." Fiercely loyal, fiercely loving. Never did he mistake her kindness for weakness; her ability to empathize and to remain gentle despite what came her way was a gift he did not take for granted.

What then was to come? He'd been asking himself that question for months. There were few guarantees when it came to deciphering the future, but there would never come a day when he did not want her to be a part of his. She said she would stay, when had that no longer been enough? The beginnings of it had come not long after he returned to work, though he hadn't identified it until she left for the wedding. Only then had been able to name it: longing, a longing that followed him even when she was with him, for he knew at some point they would have to part ways and he had developed a terribly irrationally fear that one day, she might not return.

He was determined to get over that fear, to quell it as much as he could. Reid bent down on the floor of his bedroom, rummaging in his sock drawer. There were dozens and dozens of pairs of socks, never quite organized since he always selected two at random. That was another habit he'd developed, checking that drawer from time to time for that last puzzle piece. Though he knew it couldn't have gone anywhere, relief still welled up within him when he reached the bottom of the drawer and saw it there.