You’d been with the Behavioral Analysis Unit for a year and eight months — and not once had you ever mentioned a boyfriend. Not in passing, not in stories, not even in the quiet lulls between cases. When Spencer Reid returned from prison, wrongly incarcerated thanks to the twisted games of Cat Adams, the last thing he expected was to find a new agent at the round table.

At first, Spencer kept his distance. He wasn’t proud of it, but he was wary — afraid, even, that you'd been brought in as some sort of replacement. But that fear evaporated quickly. You weren’t there to steal anyone’s place. You were there to help. And you were good.

You brought something the team had been missing — a younger, sharper edge for modern times. You weren’t just another profiler; you were a window into a digital world most of the BAU still fumbled through. You knew your way around algorithms, subcultures, and internet rabbit holes. Things like redpills and deepfakes, TikTok psychology trends and AI-generated threats — concepts that would make David Rossi raise a brow, but that turned out to be crucial more and more often.

Spencer admired that about you. No — he admired you.

Maybe more than he meant to. But he wouldn’t dare admit it. Not to you, not to anyone. Maybe not even to himself. Not when his past clung to him like shadow — the things he'd done, the things done to him. He still woke up gasping from dreams of Tobias Hankel, still felt the phantom itch of withdrawal if a memory caught him off guard. He worried that even looking at you too long might somehow stain you. But this morning... something changed.

At your desk, beneath the fluorescent hum of the bullpen lights, Spencer caught the flash of something silver on your right hand. A ring. Thin band, soft glimmer. His heart stalled. Was it on your ring finger? It was.

As you flipped through the fresh case file, oblivious to the hurricane he suddenly found himself in, Spencer’s mind raced. Had you been seeing someone all this time? Had he misunderstood everything? The truth was far less dramatic.

The ring had been a gift from your best friend — a woman you’d grown up with. She hadn’t meant to buy one that fit your ring finger. She’d just guessed your size wrong, and it happened to slide on best there. Silly. Harmless. Almost comedic in how easy it was to misread.

But Spencer was staring. Hard.

"I didn’t know you were..." he began, the words catching awkwardly in his throat, his voice thinner than he expected. He cleared it, looking away. "Didn’t know you had a boyfriend."