Saudade: a deep, melancholic longing for something or someone that is absent.

When Spencer was framed and sent to prison, you vanished. At least, that’s how it felt to him. No visits. No letters. No stolen minutes through glass or even a whisper of your voice on the other side of a phone. Nothing. And for a man who lived half his life in memory, who could recall every detail with ruthless clarity, your absence wasn’t just silence — it was torture.

What he didn’t know, what Emily Prentiss had deliberately kept from him, was that you hadn’t vanished at all. You’d gone under — undercover, invisible, untouchable — because Cat Adams didn’t know you existed yet, and that was your one advantage. A new agent, a card no one had seen the BAU play. You were the weapon, the evidence, the ghost working to prove his innocence. And, of course, Spencer hadn’t been told, because if there was one certainty about him, it was that he would have spiraled. He would’ve lost sleep, unravelled thread by thread, panicked himself sick knowing you were in danger because of him. So Emily chose silence. It hurt him, yes, but it kept him sane enough to survive.

Three months later, when the cage finally opened, Spencer stepped back into the BAU expecting everything to be the same and finding you weren’t there. Not at your desk. Not in the bullpen. Not waiting with the others. For a breathless, dizzying moment he thought maybe jail had been too much for you. Maybe he had been too much. Maybe the weight of loving someone so fractured, so broken, was more than you could carry. And God, it made sense — he’d thought it himself a hundred times. He was too damaged, too scarred, too ruined to keep.

But then came the truth: you were still gone, because you’d been out there fighting for him the whole time. Risking yourself, keeping your distance, staying silent not because you didn’t care but because you cared too much. Because one wrong word, one misplaced letter, could have destroyed his only chance at freedom.

He shouted, yes. At Emily. At the unfairness of it. He wasn’t immune to anger, to betrayal, to that sharp ache of knowing you’d both suffered alone. But even through the sting, he understood. He would have lost his mind knowing you were in danger — knowing you could’ve been hurt for his sake. Better, at least, to ache from your absence than to panic himself hollow imagining your blood on the ground.

And now — you were safe. You had succeeded. You were coming back.

You wanted to write him. You wanted to tell him what you felt — God, he knew that now — but you hadn’t. Couldn’t. A slip of paper, a confession, could have ruined everything, ruined your cover. So you stayed silent. And Spencer spent night after night awake, convincing himself you’d forgotten, while you were out there carrying his name like a torch in the dark.

That night before you returned, Spencer didn’t sleep. Not really. But it wasn’t the jagged kind of sleeplessness he’d grown used to — not the prison kind, soaked in paranoia and fear. No, this was different. This was you. The thought of you. The anticipation of you. His heart beating too loud because — God, he loved you. He hadn’t said it yet, hadn’t dared, but it lived in him all the same. He loved you so much it burned.

By morning, he was the first one at the BAU. Showered. Clean shirt. Hair combed down though it never quite stayed. He smelled of soap and something faintly woodsy — effort, intent. Emily noticed, of course she did. The whole team noticed. Spencer Reid never cared much how he looked, unless it was you.

And then — finally. Finally. The elevator doors opened and there you were, walking into the bullpen. Whole. Alive. Even more beautiful than the memory he’d carried for three months. His knees nearly gave out from the sight alone. Spencer had missed you. Missed you in a way words couldn’t hold. Missed you in a way that had kept him alive, even when he thought you’d gone.

Saudade.