Chapter Text
It was late, and Spencer was so tired he could feel it deep in his joints and his bones. Derek and already gone to bed hours ago but Spencer had stayed up to finish the book he was reading. For two hours he had sat curled up in his favorite chair, so entranced in the novel that he didn’t notice the way that his knees and hips had begun to ache from the awkward position. Next to him, a bowl of half-eating sugary cereal sat on the side table. As Spencer closed the back cover of the book with a satisfying thud, he finally stood up on wobbly feet and stretched his arms high above his head. He wanted nothing more than to curl his body up beside Derek’s. He glanced at his cereal bowl. Derek and Spencer didn’t fight often, but the cleanliness of their shared apartment was often a point of contention; Derek was a self-proclaimed neat freak, and Spencer didn’t know how to articulate that he was a grown man who was often emotionally overwhelmed by the prospect of simple housekeeping.
Spencer pushed the bowl to the back of his mind and took a step towards the bedroom, but then froze. He looked back at the table. He could hear in his mind exactly what Derek’s annoyed sigh would sound like upon discovering it the next morning. With steely resolve, Spencer reached a hand out to pick it up, but then changed course once again as he imagined what the water and dish soap would feel like running over his hands and fingers. Spencer hated wet; he found it repulsive, and avoided it whenever possible, and he felt too worn down to bring himself to turn on that faucet tonight.
The internal battle he was fighting was one that he was all too familiar with and he felt the acidic taste of anger and frustration rising in his throat. The unbearable weight of expectation versus the oppressive limitations of his bodily, sensory existence. He felt paralyzed. He had to wash the bowl, but couldn’t. He couldn’t make his body move in either direction.
Sighing, Spencer sat back down, leaned his body sideways, and laid down in the chair, tucking his knees up to his chin in order to fit his impossibly tall frame into the confines of the oversized recliner. He loved the chair because he could do exactly this. Derek teased him about it often, relentlessly pointing out that the chair was too large for one person but too small for two; it was, logically, a waste of space. To prove his point, Derek loved squishing his body into the chair next to Spencer, their hips and ribs and knees pushed together almost painfully by the armrests as the two men giggled and squirmed. One of Derek’s favorite pasttimes was drafting faux Craigslist ads for the chair and reading them out loud to Spencer; but the first time Derek dropped to his knees in front of the very same chair and reached for his belt, Spencer smirked, knowing it was all just show.
The more he subdivided the task in his mind, the more overwhelming it became, and whenever he got to the part where he had to put his hands underneath running water… He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, hoping the pressure on his sinuses could calm him down, but his mind was racing now. Three Ph.D.’s and I can’t wash a fucking dish? How would Hotch and the team react to their prodigal teammate being brought down by Lucky Charms and warm milk? Before he even really knew what he was doing, Spencer was standing up, reaching for the bowl, and with surprising strength, hurling it against the wall where it broke with a satisfying crunch.
His regret was immediate. Spencer collapsed back in the chair, not bothering to look at the mess he had made, rubbing his eyes harder and harder with shaking hands.
He heard Derek pad out into the living room but didn’t bother to move his fists to look at his boyfriend’s reaction. The footsteps stopped and then there was a pause as Derek must’ve surveyed the room, looking for the source of the noise, and surely finding it.
“What the hell, Spencer?”
Spencer was embarrassed and not in the mood to talk or explain. He heaved himself up from the chair and pushed past Derek to the kitchen to get the broom and paper towels, mumbling a quiet “I don’t know, Derek,” on the way without making eye contact.
Derek stayed glued in the place and was still staring questioningly at Spencer as he returned with a broom and dustpan. His facial expression was accusatory; demanding some sort of explanation for why Spencer would smash a dish against the wall for no apparent reason and wake him up in the middle of the night.
Spencer gave only a sheepish glance as he passed Derek again, who was now left glaring incredulously at Spencer’s back as he kneeled down to brush the shattered glass into the dustpan.
“Spencer,” Derek called again, becoming annoyed.
With an uneven exhale, Spencer stood up and began to carry the dustpan back to the kitchen, his eyes trained on the floor the whole way. Derek stopped him with one firm hand on Spencer’s hip, his other hand reaching out to take the dustpan from Spencer and set it down on the end table. As their bodies collided, Spencer noticed for the first time that Derek was naked, having rushed out straight from bed to find out what was going on. Spencer felt guilty for waking him, but guiltier still for the way he was about to shut Derek out.
Spencer nervously ran a hand through his hair as he looked up to meet Derek’s gaze, taking in his boyfriend’s furrowed brows but also the way his expression softened when he saw the wetness in Spencer’s eyes.
“Hey, Kid,” Derek breathed, his voice warm and gentle, the hand on his hip sliding around his lower back to pull them close together.
Spencer opened his mouth to say something. He thought briefly about lying: he dropped the dish or it slipped or some explanation other than the true fact that he was often completely overwhelmed by his own life and struggled to function like a normal adult human being. He didn’t want to face the rejection that laid in wait on the other side of that confession. But he knew, too, that Derek would see through any story he made up, and so he pursed his lips and stared at a spot on the wall beyond Derek’s shoulder. A few tense moments passed, and then, finally, pleadingly: “Derek, just let me clean this up and we can go to bed.”
Without waiting for a response, Spencer squirmed out of Derek’s hold; as Derek held up his palms in a terse surrender stance, Spencer was met with that same annoyed sigh he had been hoping to avoid when this began. Derek shook his head as Spencer scurried back to the kitchen, finding himself wishing he had his own bowl to smash in that moment.