Y/N is the new flight medic on an elite aviation crew in the military. She expected long hours, difficult training, and the need to prove herself to the team, especially to the crew chief. What she did not expect was a helicopter crash. With her crew now stranded with no immediate rescue, Y/N now has to treat her crews injuries and help keep them alive long enough to make it home.
Y/N has been with the BAU for over a year and has developed an unusually close friendship with Spencer Reid. Neither considers their relationship romantic, but they’ve become exceptionally good at reading each other—small changes in expression, voice, habits, and body language that everyone else misses. A new case requires two agents to go undercover as a married couple. Reid and Y/N are chosen. They expect pretending to be married to be awkward. The problem is how quickly it stops feeling like pretending.
When unexpected damage leaves Y/N's apartment unlivable for several months, a mutual friend offers an unconventional solution: Spencer Reid has a spare bedroom. Y/N barely knows him, and Reid barely knows her, but the arrangement is practical. She needs somewhere temporary to live, Reid has more space than he uses, and they both agree it's only until her apartment is repaired. Ten days later, they're still figuring out how to live with a stranger.
Y/N has finally returned home after a nine-month overseas deployment with the Army. She is a combat medic, a sergeant. After months of living out of a duffel bag, working long days, and being surrounded by the same people constantly, coming home is supposed to feel normal again. Instead, everything feels just slightly different. Her father is the Chief of Police in her hometown, meaning Y/N practically grew up around the police department and knows most of the officers who work for him. Including Simon Riley. Simon is one of her father’s most trusted officers—quiet, intimidating, sarcastic when he wants to be, and notoriously difficult to read. He and Y/N knew each other well before she deployed. They were never together, but there had always been something underneath the way they looked at each other that neither of them acknowledged. Then Y/N left. For twelve months, Simon occasionally heard about her through her father but rarely contacted her himself. Y/N assumed whatever had existed between them would disappear while she was gone. Now she’s home. With post-deployment leave stretching ahead of her and her father still spending half his life at the police department, Y/N inevitably starts finding herself around the station again. That means seeing Simon—except the dynamic between them isn’t quite what it used to be. Y/N isn’t exactly the same person who left nine months ago. And Simon Riley definitely noticed.
Y/N has been with the BAU for several months and has developed an inconvenient crush on Spencer Reid. Determined to keep it completely to herself, she carefully hides it behind their friendship. At least, she thinks she does. Reid remains blissfully unaware, interpreting every lingering look, unnecessary excuse to talk to him, and slightly-too-thoughtful gesture as perfectly normal behavior between friends.
While hunting an unsub obsessed with loyalty and sacrifice, BAU agents Y/N and Spencer Reid disappear while following a lead. When Y/N wakes, they're both restrained, the unsub has a gun pressed against her head, and the rest of the team has no idea what he's planning to do with them. His final test is simple. He wants to know exactly how far Y/N would go to keep Spencer Reid alive.
After getting a new phone and losing his contacts, Spencer Reid manually enters Morgan's number from memory. He gets one digit wrong. The number belongs to Y/N.
A few nights before Y/N is scheduled to start her new position with the BAU, she meets Spencer Reid by chance. Neither knows much about the other. They exchange first names, spend the night talking and flirting, and eventually go home together. It's spontaneous, uncomplicated, and assumed to be a one-time encounter. They don't exchange last names, jobs, or make plans to see each other again. Then Y/N walks into Quantico for her first day with the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Spencer Reid is sitting at the conference table.
Y/N knows the bride. Spencer knows the groom. They meet before the ceremony, talk again during cocktail hour, and discover they're seated beside each other at dinner. By the end of the reception, they've spent almost the entire wedding together. The only problem is figuring out what happens when the wedding ends.
