❝ if you wanted to kill me, you would have done it already. but you haven't, because i think you know i'm the only person who really understands you ❞
spencer reid has always loathed the star-crossed lovers trope. i mean, he's read a lot of fiction, and it really is just a terribly repetitive romantic trope -- so, naturally, when it appears as a reality in his own life, it's very much unappreciated.
and, well, star-crossed lovers has never been so literal than when spencer reid feels tied -- by fate, by their pasts, by simple sexual attraction -- to the nefarious subject of a rigorous investigation. this just might be the case of his life, and yet his mind keeps wandering away, down a deep, dark hallway to where someone calls his name.
star-crossed lovers has never been so dangerous.
[criminal minds, season 7 onwards]
[slow burn, enemies to lovers]
[spencer reid x female oc]
["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)!!