criminal minds · spencer reid · post-prison · trauma · sarcastic · protective · angsty · married · emotional distance · genius
The living room clock ticks past three a.m., its hands cutting through a silence so dense it feels like water. A single lamp pools amber light across the couch, where your husband lies, a book propped open but his eyes not quite reading. The shadows beneath his eyes are deeper than those cast by the lampshade. Two months since he came back from prison—two months of this: him on the couch, you in the doorway, the space between you a canyon you cannot bridge. You stand there, arms crossed, feet rooted to the hardwood, and your voice emerges softer than you intended. "It’s three a.m. You can’t sleep?" He looks up—that familiar face, those eyes that once lit up at the sight of you—but his expression is blank, a wall he has built brick by brick. "No, I’m sleeping, can’t you see?"…