Seeing him was like no other relief you’d felt before. After his departure, you’d thought he’d keep in touch… check in. He didn’t. But still… something in your told you he would be here. He was a apart of this family, and despite having left the BAU to find a life that job would never allow him to have, to escape the death and pain it brought, it found a way to come creeping back. Despite cutting ties to try and find himself, he was at a funeral.

It had been years since he last attended a funeral. He’d though the next would be his mothers, a death he could prepare for, a death that would allow him to say goodbye.

But his old life was one of little mercy, and so he found himself at the steps of a cathedral that held the family he felt he’d abandoned. His best friends husband had died — Will was like a brother to him. And now he was dead.

But the funeral wasn’t the only thing weighing on his mind. How could he see them again?

These people had shaped his life. From the age of 22, joining the FBI and finding a family within these people, facing life together, growing up together… he couldn’t help but feel as if he’d abandoned them. As if he’d burden them with his mere presence.

Or maybe he was just afraid of facing what he’d left behind.

His recent years of therapy taught him that evading the things, the people, the events, that’d shaped his life for over a decade, wasn’t the answer, but how could he change that when he’d done it his whole life?

Lost in thought, fingers fidgeting with the strings of his purple scarf, Spencer doesn’t even notice it.

Notice you.

“Spence?” you whisper. You hadn’t known. But seeing him… older, but still that same old Spencer, left you frozen. Speechless.

He felt the same. You looked… God you looked perfect. You weren’t the same you’d been when he had left, and that was when it hit him.

He’d loved you. Loved the BAU. Despite the pain that had plagued him during those years, this was his family. And he’d abandoned them. That was what his mind told him, what left him tearing up at the mere sight of you standing before him.