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Love was never meant to be easy.
Or at least, that’s what your grandmother had always told you. She’d pull you up on her lap where you’d trace over the soft wrinkled skin and protruding veins of her hands as she’d tell you just that. Love was work, and it was tough.
It wasn’t like that with Spencer. From the first moment you saw him, you knew he was different. Your professor had announced at the beginning of the semester that he had a TA that year, a Ph.D. candidate who had been conducting research with the same professor. TA Spencer Reid was unassuming at first—he looked like nearly every other engineering student you’d met, with the button-up shirt a little too big for him and thick glasses that seemed to complement his face despite being several years out of style—but then he spoke.
His gentle introduction complete with a tiny little wave of his hand confirmed it—you needed to know this man. It started with office hours visits, where you’d purposefully leave a couple of homework problems blank in the hopes he would explain them to you. Each time you’d greet him with a bright smile, you’d try to ask him questions to fill in the empty space while he looked over your work. And each time, he’d avert his gaze with a bashful smile, growing more confident with every comment.
The first time you went on a date, it felt like you were flying. Of course, Spencer had worried about being seen with one of his students so you got coffee together, each of you bringing along your books to feign a study date. You both left the books open and abandoned on the table while you cradled your coffee, eyes shining as you learned more about the person in front of you.
Love was easy with Spencer. It was easy on every date you went on, and it was even easy to introduce your friend group to your new ‘friend’. He’d joined the group readily, finding his own compatible friends within the large group. No one ever knew you were dating, but that was okay because it was a love meant just for you and him.
“I have a surprise for you,” Spencer told you on the night of your anniversary.
“A surprise? Spencer, you didn’t have to do anything,” you told him, already feeling your cheeks heating up at the thought of him going out of his way for you today. “I’m happy spending the night with you.”
“We will, I promise, just trust me,” Spencer reassured you, and that was enough. Of course, you trusted him, how could you not after one of the best years of your life? So you let him guide you over to the car that was technically yours—you laughed as he opened up the passenger door for you and insisted you still didn’t need to know where you were going.
“How do you feel about blindfolds?” he asked then, holding up a strip of soft, silky black material.
“Blindfolds are fun,” you answered, voice softer and higher in pitch than normal. You weren’t sure Spencer couldn’t hear your heart racing away in your chest, weren’t sure the thoughts spinning in your head weren’t obvious to him.
Spencer’s hands were gentle. He always treated you with the utmost care, like one wrong touch might shatter you completely. It was no different now as he reached over to tie the material over your eyes, each brush of his fingers on your skin eliciting a gasp. Every touch was heightened now that the world was concealed from you. Spencer’s hand lingered against your face and you leaned into the touch, nearly breathless from the sparks sent dancing across your skin.
“I love you,” you told him, voice barely over a whisper as though anything louder might shatter the moment.
“I love you too.” Spencer always sounded surprised whenever he said it, as though even a year later he couldn’t quite believe you’d stuck around. You would wash away that disbelief someday—there would be a time when you said you loved him and he’d already know, there was simply no other option you’d accept.
As he led you out of the car and down hallways, past a once-closed door, you could feel the nervousness radiating from him. It grew worse the closer you got to your destination until finally, Spencer slipped off your blindfold with a shaky exhalation.
“A hotel room?” you asked, turning to face Spencer where he was standing just behind you, leaning against the door.
“We both have roommates,” was all Spencer explained, cheeks flooding red and kneading his hands together in front of him.
“Oh,” you said simply, studying his practically terrified expression and trying to figure out what it all meant. Then when it all hit you, your own eyes widened and you repeated, “Oh.”
“We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. We can find a movie and have dinner,” Spencer hurried out.
That was what you’d originally thought the night would consist of—watching a movie in a language you didn’t know while Spencer whispered translations into your ear, innocently unaware of what it did to you. But this, this.
“I want to do everything with you,” you reassured him, stepping closer until your body was inches from his, hands reaching out to unclasp his and rest them against your waist. “Is this okay?”
Spencer nodded, eyes beginning to drift down but snapping right back up to meet your gaze, a sheepish expression taking over his face.
“You can look,” you giggled, your body alight with electric energy as you watched his hazel eyes trail downward. It was when he wasn’t looking that you captured his lips in a kiss, smiling against him when Spencer’s hands squeezed around your waist.
Some cultures believed soulmates were two halves of the same whole, meant to complete each other. It certainly felt like it now, Spencer perfectly filling in the pieces you hadn’t realized were missing. It was a dance that neither of you knew beforehand but one you suddenly completed the steps to now. Spencer’s hands slipped under your shirt and yours moved to the end of his, pulling it up and off of him.
Spencer was slower, his hands slowly trailing up your body and bringing your shirt with them. By the time he broke the kiss to pull the fabric off of your body, you were nearly breathless from his touch. It was when you pressed yourself against him, bare skin on bare skin, that Spencer’s shoulders tensed. His hands shook against you, his lower lip caught between his teeth harshly.
“Is everything okay?” you asked, immediately pulling back to give him space. Even more confusingly, his hands gripped a little tighter around you so you couldn’t create more distance between the two of you. “Spencer?”
“I want this to be perfect for you,” he admitted, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Hey, I don’t know what I’m doing either,” you returned in a soft voice, relief flooding through your system now that you knew you hadn’t done anything wrong. “I don’t need perfect, I just need you. And if you’re too nervous, we can stop whenever you want.”
“I don’t want to stop,” he continued, “I just can’t get out of my head.”
“Do you trust me?”
The way Spencer’s expression immediately melted into pure softness almost ruined you. “Of course, I do.”
It didn’t take long to find what you were looking for, scooping up the fabric from the floor and holding it up for Spencer to see with a little smirk. “Thoughts?”
“You want to blindfold me?”
“To get you out of your head,” you explained, “you won’t have to think about anything about how good it all feels. Okay?”
“Okay,” Spencer agreed, the sweet smile seeming far too out of place as you tied the blindfold around his head, checking to make sure none of his gorgeous curls got caught up in the knot.
“Now I’m in charge, Sweet Pea,” you teased, grinning at the way Spencer shivered against you. You brushed your fingers across his cheek with a feather-like touch, proud of the way he gasped from the sensation. It was almost easier like this for you too, able to figure out what touches brought Spencer the most pleasure without any pressure of him seeing you.
You kissed him gently before taking both hands, guiding him to the bed and helping him lay out on it. “Still okay?” you checked, unhooking your bra and tossing it across the room.
“Yes,” Spencer breathed, “God, yes.”
“I like you like this, desperate to know what I’ll do next,” you teased, hands running down his chest and abdomen until reaching their final destination at his pants, unclasping them easily. “Lift up, pretty boy,” you told him, patting his outer thigh until he dutifully lifted his waist so you could slip off the rest of his clothes.
“I’m not desperate,” Spencer half-heartedly countered, cheeks a beautiful shade of pink.
“You will be.”
Your thighs clenched together as Spencer groaned at your words, head tilting back to expose the gorgeous skin of his neck. “I like you like this too,” he gasped out as you leaned over him to kiss his bared neck, nipping at the skin there in hopes there’d be a mark to show for it later.
With every passing second, Spencer’s confidence grew. His hands reached up without yours to guide them, starting at your waist but trailing up until he was cupping your breasts. You couldn’t help the moan that slipped from you as Spencer softly pinched your nipples—the arms that held you up shaking as he wrapped his large hands around your breasts and squeezed, practically kneading them.
“Is this okay?” he asked as your head dropped so your forehead was against his chest, your own chest moving just out of his reached.
“It’s perfect,” you breathed, “You’re so good to me, Sweet Pea.”
As if Spencer wasn’t already intoxicating, his hips bucked against you at your words. You couldn’t help but raise a brow, taking in how gorgeous your gorgeous boy looked underneath you. His cheeks were completely flushed by now, lips slightly parted from his slightly heavier breathing. His hands were rubbing up and down your outer thighs—though when you spread them wider from where you straddled his waist those hands soon ran along your inner thighs, spreading electricity across your skin.
You watched the way Spencer’s expression twisted into confusion as you moved, tucking between his legs. You made sure to keep your eyes on him as you wrapped your hand around the base of his cock and took the tip into your mouth. His entire body tightened like on a coil, fingers gripping tightly into the sheets. He gasped your name as you licked up his length before taking him a little further. You’d never done this before and even now your heart raced at the thought of finally having Spencer like this. Both of you were taking it slowly, you giving yourself time to experiment to find out what you could do and what made Spencer groan with pleasure. You’d never expected a moment like this to feel so purely sweet, the two of you learning about each other and becoming closer than you’d ever thought possible.
“Y/N, please,” Spencer moaned, thighs practically quivering on either side of you, “please, please, I—” It was all the warning you needed to pull back with a gentle ‘pop’, catching your breath as Spencer’s back arched and he came with another groan of your name that made you wonder how you could ever hear your name another way again. How sinful it sounded on his lips, filling the hotel room and making it completely certain that in the same way he was yours, you were his.
You moved quickly then, laying down beside him and hooking one leg over his. “Close your eyes,” you whispered, waiting a moment for him to comply before you slipped the blindfold off of his face.
“I’m sorry,” were the first words out of Spencer’s mouth, head turning so he could look at you with practically watering eyes.
“Hey, hey, hey, why’re you sorry, pretty boy?” you asked, face twisting with concern as you watched him struggle not to fall apart here and now. Was something wrong? Had you done something he hadn’t liked? Even worse, were you not at all what he was expecting?
“You didn’t get to, I didn’t,” Spencer tried, and though you were beginning to understand you would allow him to gather his thoughts. “I was too fast.”
“Spencer,” you cooed, smiling softly at the pure kindness from your boyfriend. Of course he would care that you hadn’t gotten off. You’d heard so many horror stories from your friends, heard them talking about slipping into the bathroom to finish the job because their partners hadn’t care enough to, but here Spencer was, practically in tears because you hadn’t gotten there. “It’s okay, I promise.”
“It’s not,” he whined, “we didn’t even have sex.”
“We will,” you reassured him, pulling Spencer impossibly closer to you and brushing your hands through his hair softly. “We have all night, right?”
You laughed as he nodded into your chest, his hands moving to wrap around you tightly. “So for now I say we order dinner from that little Chinese place you love so much, and I’ll pick the movie, and we can go again later.”
“You’re really not mad our first time wasn’t perfect?”
“Spencer, I told you it doesn’t have to be perfect as long as I’m with you, and I meant it,” you told him, pressing your hands to either side of his face so you could make sure he looked at you. “I love you so much, this was perfect for us.”
“I love you too,” Spencer returned, leaning forward to press a sweet kiss to your lips. The two of you laid in bed for awhile longer, wrapped up in one another.
“I liked the blindfold thing,” Spencer admitted softly a few minutes later.
“I did too,” you told him, “we’ll have to try that again sometime.”
The rest of the night was absolutely magical. You would get your perfect moment that night, the moment when you were with Spencer and realized this was the man you wanted to experience the world with.
Loving Spencer had been easy, though maybe that was where it all went wrong. The first fight you had, the week after graduating, everything shattered into irreparable pieces.
Your friends had consoled you all night, even when they didn’t know what you were devastated about. Maybe they did know but hadn’t wanted to admit it to you, or maybe you and Spencer truly had hidden your relationship that well.
Regardless, you and Spencer were over and you have absolutely nothing to show for the year you’d spent with him.
So you moved on, the best you could. You took a job offer in Chicago that just a week before you’d been intent on turning down. Within the next month, you were leaving behind Los Angeles and all of the memories it had brought you. It had been hard at first but with each passing day, you went a little longer without thinking of him.
And soon, ten years had passed and you hadn’t thought of him once.
That is until you read the letter addressed to you from Los Angeles, from one of your friends you hadn’t really spoken too much since college.
A friendship reunion in LA, ten years after splitting up. All six of you had scattered around the country and though you tried to keep in touch with some of them it grew too hard as your lives diverged from each other. It seemed fun, getting to see all of the people you used to spend every day with. Becca had kids now, you knew that. You were fairly certain Trevor was engaged to the guy who did all the perfume commercials, though you didn’t know for sure.
The realization came only on the flight to LA. You wanted to cancel, panic beginning to fill your lungs at the thought of who else they’d invited. Would Spencer even show up, knowing this had been your friend group first? Would he even remember you all, after ditching you for some fancy FBI job?
“When were you going to tell me you’re going to Quantico?”
“Spencer, were you ever going to tell me, or were you just going to disappear one morning?”
“Fuck you, Spencer Reid.”
The plane was already in the air. Short of a freak accident, there was no escaping landing in LA. You could call your friends and beg Trevor to come up with some lie for why you hadn’t made it after all. You could call Spencer, assuming the number still worked, and ask if he was coming. You could tell no one. You could step off the plane and buy the next ticket out of LA, no matter where it went.
Would you really miss seeing all your old friends because of the chance he’d be there? What were the odds anyway? Spencer had all but said you weren’t good enough for him to stay, that this FBI job was better than anything he’d ever been a part of. There was no way he’d be there tonight.
So when the plane landed, you grabbed your bag and headed to your hotel room to unpack. And when it was time for dinner, you pulled on your best outfit and hurried out of the room before you could change your mind.
“Y/N!” your friends cheered as you arrived at the restaurant. As you settled back into conversation with them, it was almost like no time had passed at all. Sure all of you looked ten years older, more sure of your place in the world, but it was still the rag-tag group of people you’d pulled all-nighters to study and got into mischief with all through university.
“Oh my God, hi!” you returned, wondering how long it had been since you’d walked into a room to so much joy. It was easy to fall back into place with them—each of you catching the group up on everything you’d missed over the past decade.
Though everyone talked like nothing was missing, you couldn’t help but marvel at how strange it was. These were the people you’d once spent all of your time with. Now, though you recognized bits of them even still, they were practically strangers after so many years apart. You’d kept up in social media posts and the occasional postcard when someone traveled, but otherwise, the only thing left linking you to each other were the memories from a lifetime ago.
“Spencer, you made it!”
The words sent a dagger through your chest; the blade dangerously close to piercing the heart you’d spent months hand-stitching back together. Spencer was here. There was a commotion behind you as everyone gave him an equally bright welcome as you, though all you could do was stand with your back to it all. You gripped your drink tightly, eyes squeezing shut as if that would somehow make him disappear.
He didn’t disappear.
“Y/N?”
Did you dare open your eyes? You knew what you’d find in front of you, how could you not? Because while you’d been hurt, you spent the last ten years terrified of seeing a news alert that an FBI agent with beautiful curls and an even more beautiful mind had been attacked. You looked for news updates on the BAU, trying to find snippets of quotes from the man, and were unable to look away from the TV when his face appeared in front of journalists. You got to see how he grew without you, and you got to watch as he accomplished all of his dreams with the team he’d given you up for.
“You know I’m still here even if you can’t see me,” Spencer tried again and you could practically feel the nervousness in his voice. Though your eyes were closed you knew he would be holding onto the glass someone had inevitably handed him, that he would be rocking on his feet in an attempt to make it through this conversation.
Admittedly, you hadn’t thought he’d make it this long. The Spencer you had known ten years ago would have walked away dejectedly by now, or maybe wouldn’t have even walked up to you in the first place. And maybe that was what prompted you to finally open your eyes—the morbid curiosity to see just who the person you had loved had turned into.
“I’m surprised you showed up,” you told him, voice stronger than you’d ever expected it to be.
“I am, too,” Spencer answered, shrugging his shoulders. A small smile twitched at your lips at his posture—turns out you still knew him well, even ten years later.
“I should get going,” you blurted out to break the uncomfortable silence, shoulders automatically lifting with the new tension injected there, “it’s been a long night.”
“The party started an hour ago.” He wouldn’t give you an out, would he?
“Long flight,” you tried again, voice clipping the words as tightly as possible.
“I just got here.”
“I know.” The words were harsh, tossed in Spencer’s face with enough force to make his head reel back. His eyes widened, eyebrows lifting to create that innocently surprised expression you still knew well. “What do you want me to say, Spencer? I can’t pretend we’re best friends.”
“We used to be,” Spencer said, “Why can’t we be that again?”
“I wish we could!” you yelled, causing a few people to turn their heads toward you. Immediately upon assessing the scene, they turned back to their groups in low whispers, likely having gossiped to each other about this exact reunion. “I wish we could go back in time and be that, Spencer, but we can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you left me!” The words scratched their way out of your throat, carving out the little pieces of hurt you’d long since buried deep within yourself. Tears appeared in your eyes and you wanted to scream at Spencer for putting your makeup in jeopardy too, for being the cause of too many of your tears. “You left me behind.”
“I couldn’t say no to Gideon, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Spencer explained as if you couldn’t have possibly understood. It made your fingers curl tightly into your palms, nails taking out your frustration into the sensitive skin there. “I couldn’t stay in California.”
“I wasn’t asking you to stay in California, Spencer,” you snapped then, rolling your eyes as he proved what you’d always thought—that night, he hadn’t once truly thought about you. “I was asking you to take me with you. You should’ve asked me.”
“Then you would’ve gone,” Spencer answered, frustration of his own lacing through each of his words.
“Would that really have been so horrible? We could’ve been happy.”
“You would’ve been content at best.” The words swirled around in your brain, but no matter how many passes they took nothing made sense. Spencer seemed to notice this because he continued, allowing his voice to soften. “Your dream job was in Chicago. I knew if I asked you to come to Virginia with me, you would’ve left behind everything you’d been working for. I love you too much for you to settle for anything less than your dreams.”
It was too much. All this time you’d allowed yourself to think Spencer Reid was an inconsiderate bastard who left you behind to chase after his own goals. You’d told yourself that he’d never cared for you, that you accomplished something for him that you’d never quite know, that he’d discarded you like a used toy when he was done.
Instead, you saw yourself in his eyes now. In those hazel hues, you saw all of the longing and hurt you’d suffered through. You wondered who had been there to comfort him after the breakup when all of your friends had been holding onto you. You wondered if he stayed up late at night for months too, unable to sleep without the feeling of someone there next to him.
“You left for me,” you clarified, as though you needed to wrap your lips around the words yourself to truly understand the weight of them. “You self-sacrificing bastard.”
The half-hearted insult pulled a laugh out of Spencer, causing him to tilt his head back a little and smile with the brightness of all the mornings you’d missed with him. It was the same smile you’d known so long ago, now bordered by laugh lines and the weight of a decade of service in the FBI.
“Does that mean the self-sacrificing bastard is forgiven?”
Did it? You took the time to glance around the room, looking over all of the faces who’d meant more to you than you’d ever expected. It was far too easy to remember the way each of them had cried with you that night, wincing at your wailing and promising you that things would be okay eventually.
The night Tyler asked if anything had ever happened between you and Spencer was impossible to forget, marked by gently spoken lies and Tyler telling you he knew what he felt like to lose a friend suddenly. He knew what you were going through, supposedly, but how could he? How could he know the weight of it when no one even knew what you’d lost?
“No,” you decided carefully, trying not to change your mind at the way Spencer’s expression crumpled, “I’m sorry, I really have to go now.”
This time, Spencer didn’t stop you just as you hadn’t stopped him ten years ago. Could he now finally understand even an ounce of what you’d felt—all of the betrayal, the hurt, the wondering if there was ever anything you could have done to make him stay? Did you even want him to understand that pain?
The party continued in the same way life had after you’d broken up. Spencer kept close to the few people he’d spoken to most in school while you stuck to your own little group within the group. If anyone was curious about what had happened between you two—past or present—no one vocalized it. Instead, they allowed you to have fun talking to everyone and never once said anything when you turned your head to find Spencer in the room.
And that was the issue, wasn’t it? You’d finally gotten to say your piece, gotten to throw it in his face how badly he’d ruined everything, but still, you were drawn to him. There was something about Spencer that could not be forgotten quite so easily.
So as the night began to draw to a close, with the help of a glass of wine or two, you found yourself making your way across the room to him. It wasn’t even that you’d made a conscious effort of it, but within minutes your conversation had migrated to just steps from where he was standing. From where you were, you could see the flash of darkened pink of a scar in the initial years of healing against the pale skin of his neck. It was deeper than one would want a mark on anyone’s neck to be, marring the perfectly untouched skin of the Ph.D. student you’d left behind.
It was staring at that scar that you realized it—the very thing that made you rush to the end of your conversation and hurtle your body toward Spencer with such force even he looked shocked.
“I don’t forgive the boy who left me behind,” you blurted out, body shaking as it realized that you stood there with no idea of what to say.
“I understand, Y/N, you don’t have to keep saying it.”
“I don’t forgive that person, but you’re not that person anymore.”
“Y/N?” Was that hope that dared flash across his brilliant eyes?
“It’s been ten years, and I don’t know about you but I’ve been through a lot. I hardly recognize the person I was back at CalTech,” you explained.
“It feels like I’m an entirely different person sometimes,” Spencer admitted, only further proving your point. It was then, and only then, a soft smile pulled on your lips.
“Exactly,” you said, “we’re two different people. Maybe we don’t try to be who we were before, maybe we learn about who we are now.”
“In that case, hi, I’m Spencer Reid,” the man in front of you spoke and for the first time all night, there was no weight to his words, just that brilliant smile you’d always known.
“I’m Y/N,” you introduced back, grinning as he shook your hand.
Though you tried your best to talk to everyone, you found yourself coming right back to Spencer all night. You talked about anything and everything, from all the moments that made Spencer’s team a family to all the times you’d kicked ass at work. You updated him on your family and though he never once mentioned his you knew, how could you not?
And by the end of the night, you found your heart was aching at the thought of him leaving. Everyone was making their way through the parking lot to their individual rented cars, about to go to their separate hotel rooms and try to move on from this ten-year reunion. You were sure you wouldn’t see most of these people until another decade had passed, but you knew there was no way you could allow the same to happen to you and Spencer.
“Spencer, wait,” you called out when he was about to walk away from you, “you remember that night in the hotel?”
“I have an eidetic memory,” Spencer pointed out.
“I know, but do you remember?”
“How could I forget?”
Standing there in a dark parking lot in California with the man you never expected to see again, you knew one thing all too well.
“How do you feel about sequels?”
The question confused him at first. You could see it in the way his eyebrows slid together and his lips pursed just a little more in his effort to figure it out without admitting his lack of information. You also saw the exact moment it clicked, how his cheeks flushed a brilliant red and his eyes widened as he looked to you to find what you were sure to be an identical expression.
“Sometimes sequels are better than the first,” Spencer told you, and that was all you’d needed to hear before grabbing his hand and guiding him to your car. This time it was your turn to slip into the driver’s seat and lead him to an unknown destination.
It was just a hotel room, one out of countless amounts in all of California, but to you it was everything. Though it wasn’t the same, to you now it felt like the first time you’d been in your own hotel room, pressed against the first man you ever loved and having so much hope for the future. That version of you was long gone as was that man you loved, but standing here with Spencer you wanted to believe in that same hope.
It was Spencer who made the first move, rushing to you and pressing his lips insistently to yours, one hand cradling the side of your face. This was a dance you’d practiced many times since you’d last gone through these steps with him, one you’d perfected since a decade ago. It seemed he had too, shedding away the nerves to instead reveal pure lust. Your hands tangled in his hair, pressing closer to him until the two of you were falling into the bed together.
Experienced hands unclothed each other and though you both had changed after a decade you still knew the right movements. Your lips pressed to his neck, taking care to avoid the raised scar you would ask about later. You and Spencer moved together like no time had been spent apart, hands exploring and relearning one another.
The two of you laid together after, chests rising and falling as you caught your breaths and legs entwined so well you weren’t sure where you stopped and he began.
“I missed you,” Spencer admitted then, pulling you closer as he undoubtedly conjured up images of the same fight now playing in your head. “I kept thinking I’d forget you eventually. The odds of your first relationship being with the perfect person are almost impossible, I never thought…”
“I never thought I’d forgive you,” you admitted. He’d told you his most closely-guarded thoughts, it was only right that you shared your own. “I didn’t even want to show up tonight, in case you’d be there. I think I knew deep down that if I saw you, I’d remember how perfect we are together.”
“You know, I was thinking about retiring by the end of this year.”
“Really?” Shock jumpstarted your heart, pressing your elbow into the mattress so you could lift your head up on your hand.
“I’ve loved being in the FBI, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that my time there was over. Almost everyone from my original team is gone, it hasn’t felt the same in awhile,” Spencer explained. You searched his expression then, desperate to find any hint of a joke there. When none of was found, the beginnings of a hope you hadn’t felt since that very first night with Spencer began to take root in your chest.
“What are you saying?” you asked, not wanting to fall too soon too fast.
“I’m saying I wouldn’t mind living in Chicago, if I was wanted there.”
And God, did it feel like too much and not enough all at once. Suddenly, the happy ending that girl in the hotel on that night ten years prior had always imagined for herself was in reach. There’d be a lot of work to get there still, so much to consider and so much to learn about the person laying beside you.
And yet, all at once you knew that you were willing to try.