["The second his lips touched yours, the roar of bad memories and gruesome crime scenes that always filled the silence in your mind dulled down to a whisper. The darkness of the world faded into an afterthought, barely a blip in the back of your mind. The demons stopped clawing at your throat and settled down to hibernate for the night. For the first time in years, you felt like you could breathe. No amount of booze in the world could have compared to that feeling. You had found a new distraction, a new way to forget, and he was highly addictive."] * Following a particularly grueling case and an unexpected night together, the reader and Spencer Reid become friends-with-benefits: no expectations, no strings attached, nothing more than just using each other for sex. But as the reader and Spencer grow closer despite their best efforts, ghosts from the reader's past begin overtaking her present, threatening the delicate thing between them. And though their arrangement is just meant to distract them both from the horrors of their day-to-day lives, the reader comes to find that some horrors just refuse to be ignored. Some ghosts just refuse to stay dead. _ Beautiful cover by Cynthia (or clarade on ao3)!!

"How many existentialists does it take to screw a lightbulb?" Spencer asked with a small laugh. Once again the room was silent. You faintly heard Agent Rossi mutter, "Don't." "2. One to change the light bulb and one to observe how it symbolizes an incandescent beacon of subjectivity in a netherworld of cosmic nothingness," he said. The room was silent still, until you laughed. His eyes looked up at yours in confusion. "Wouldn't they sit in the dark and hope that the bulb decided to light again? An existentialist would never change the bulb. He would allow the darkness to exist," you questioned. - #1 #spencerreid #1 #mgg #1 emilyprentiss