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aliteralsemicolon · 11 months ago

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I'll wait for your love - 18+

See part 1 | See Part 2 | Part 3 of We can't be friends (wait for your love)

The only thing you’re sure of is that you don’t want things to go back to the way they were and Spencer agrees that change may be for the best.

Spencer Reid X Fem! Reader

DISCLAIMER I do not consent to my work being used to feed/train AI and/or re-posted anywhere by anybody else This story is NSFW and contains graphic depictions + detailed descriptions of adult content. It is intended for mature audiences only, minors do not interact! You are responsible for the content you consume. Make sure to read all necessary warnings. Please remember this is a work of fiction; if you don’t like it, don’t read.

WARNINGS: Panic attack mentioned, slight PTSD depictions, case details (barely) mentioned, alcohol mentioned like once. Smut (not the focus at all): making out, nipple play, clitoral stimulation, praise, use of pet names (angel, pretty girl, etc). Proceed at your own risk.

Word count: 10.4K See notes at end for authors note & spoilers.

Avoiding Spencer wasn’t overly difficult on the flight back to D.C. You weren’t entirely sure how to face him after he risked his life for you, so you just pretended to be asleep the whole time. You even took a separate jeep from the tarmac to avoid a car ride back with him, and almost made a clean getaway to your car in the parking lot when Hotch stopped you.

“I’m sorry to hold you back, but I do need the Anchorage report on my desk before tomorrow morning. It can’t be put off any longer.”

He looked extremely apologetic and you understood. You’re grateful he gave you as much time as he has. That’s how you ended up stuck at work til the later hours of the evening. Besides the few workaholics, security guards and janitors roaming around the corridors, the only other person there with you is Spencer, oddly. Even Hotch has gone home. You’ve spent more time stalking the doctor work through the pile of case files on his desk than you have writing in the one on yours. Only when you're caught do you look away.

“Everything okay?” The innocent curiosity in his big eyes further reddens the hot embarrassment in your cheeks.

“Fine.” You mutter, dipping your head back down to the open page.

You’re never going to get this damn file done if you can’t get him out of your head, and him being barely three feet away from you doesn’t help. It’s very difficult for you to get your words from pen to paper. Anchorage wasn’t haunting you like it did at first. It was a traumatic event, yes, but alone isn’t the cause of this…block. Obviously the reality that you’re leaving is starting to dawn on you. Somehow your mind has linked this case with your departure and finishing this report makes it more official than your actual resignation.

Plus, as much as you definitely hate Spencer, you do did care for him. The shock of him almost getting himself killed in front of you is another thing occupying your mind. It’s barely been twenty four hours since then, it’s still fresh. You can see him stand and grab his satchel in your peripheral vision, he’s preparing to leave. There are a lot of memories attached to that brown leather bag.

Things he would carry in there for you when you forgot your own bag.

You don’t make it obvious that you’re watching him gather his things in small glances.

He bought extra hair clips for you to keep in there because you would often forget those too.

It’s over now. No point in dwelling on it. You shake your head once he’s out of sight, trying to force him out of your thoughts. Now that he’s gone you’re hoping to actually be able to get some work done.

He taught you chess with the mini chess set he keeps in there. You discovered that you actually quite liked chess and would ask to play with him all the time. It was also his ‘secret’ weapon to help you calm down.

You roll your eyes to push back the tears from the memories that refuse to stop playing. This can wait until you get home, it’s not important.

It wasn’t the chess set that helped you feel calm. Spencer could win chess against you in just a few moves, but he would deliberately stretch out the game so you could have room to breathe. The longer the game, the more time you had to spend focused on the moves and slow down your thoughts. You could open up at your own pace. He would let you feel in control.

It doesn’t matter if he’s near you or not, Spencer has a way of invading your headspace wherever he is. Your train of thoughts is interrupted with a light thud on your right. You covertly roll the tears away again and turn to examine the source of the noise. A mug of coffee placed on your desk by

“Spencer?” You sputter breathlessly.

“Sorry. I know you told me to stop. This is the last time I promise.”

You don’t fully comprehend what he’s going on about, not expecting him to be here at all.

“I thought you left.”

“I did– was. I was leaving, but I thought I’d make you some coffee before I go. Since you’ve been here a while.” He awkwardly explains.

You steadily direct your attention back to the mug, reeling in what was happening.

“Before you get mad, this really is just a cup of coffee from a colleague who thought it might help keep you energised if you’re planning to stay late. There’s no ulterior motive…”

He continues rambling but you’re not mentally present to hear any of it.

He made you coffee.

Even though you’ve been nothing short of an absolute bitch. Granted he was a bitch first, but the point is that he’s still thinking of your well being regardless. You can’t hide your tears from him this time. It’s the soft buzz of your name that draws you back to him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you! I’ll take the coffee–”

His panicked sentiment is cut short when you jump out of your seat and shove past him. The breakdown you’ve been avoiding hits you like a ton of bricks. You run into the nearest empty office and he runs after you, making it past the door before you can lock him out.

“Spencer p–please get out! I’m fine.” You’re pacing in the same spot, fanning away the stream falling down your cheeks, hyperventilating.

He doesn’t respond to you, instead cautiously taking your hand in his. You’re in too frenzied a state to care. He guides you to sit on the couch against the wall and you blindly go along with it, still trying to get yourself together.

You want to stop the tears, but you can’t do that until you get your breathing under control. He slowly wraps his arms around you and you slump into him, head buried in his chest. You should try to fight it, you should push him away, but you can’t. Right now, surrounded by his scent, held in his arms, you don’t want to move. It’s not something you can properly explain, but the feeling is so comforting that nothing else matters. All you know is that you’re safe and that’s enough for you to allow yourself to finally break down.

The first few sobs are loud, like there’s not enough air in the world to stabilise your lungs. They fizzle out into silent whimpers and you grasp onto the fabric of his sweater, balling it in your fist, just letting yourself feel. Spencer still hasn’t said a word. His right hand is rubbing circles on your back and his left hand is gently scratching just above the nape of your neck.

You stay like that for a while, even after you’ve stopped crying. It’s been so long since you’ve been in this little bubble with him and you don’t want it to end. You pull away when you feel the strap of his satchel across his stomach as your hand drops to his lap. He visually follows every move you make.

“You’re still wearing your bag.” You sniffle, leaning back.

“I am.” He whispers, understanding that you no longer want to be touched.

He stays in his original position; facing you, but now with one arm resting on top of the backrest and the other idly in his lap. You’ve moved so that now you're facing ahead with your back leaning against the cushions, pulling your knees into your chest. You had never found comfort in silence until the first time you experienced it with Spencer. Staying huddled, you divert your eyes towards him. There’s a distinct wet patch on his shirt. It’s less visible on his sweater-vest, but it’s there.

“Your shirt’s wet now.” It’s almost impossible to make out what you’re saying with your mouth muffled against your arm, but of course, Spencer manages anyway.

“It’ll dry.” He smiles, tone delicate.

“But– germs.” You choke a little due to your previous crying.

“It can be washed.” He’s using his comforting voice again.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

The silence resumes. Neither of you dares to move, trying to freeze this moment. It’s obvious that you didn’t grasp how badly you craved each other’s presence.

“D–do…” The initial sound grabs Spencer’s full attention again. You take a deep breath, hoping he wants to stay here as much as you do. “Do you still carry that little chess set with you?”

A small, airy chuckle comes out from him.

“Would you like to play?”

“Please.”

He creates some more space between you and begins to set up the board once he’s pulled it out of his satchel. You move to accommodate the set up, now facing him with your legs crossed on the couch and shoes abandoned on the floor. You wait for him to make the first move. After the opening moves the game doesn’t seem to get any harder and you know he’s throwing the game. You’re okay at chess, but he’s obviously a lot better.

“You’re going easy on me.” You mumble.

“Because you’re not even trying.” He replies blithely.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Like I said, you’re making it too easy.” He gently teases.

“Not that. Helping me. You hate me, remember?” You say it like it’s the most casual thing in the world.

“I don’t hate you.”

“You literally told me that you hate me.” You chuckle, numb to the hurt that sentence once brought you.

“So did you.” He counters in defence, trailing your hand as it carelessly moves your queen to her demise.

“I was angry.”

“So was I.” He spared your queen, in turn leaving his king vulnerable.

“It doesn’t matter now…” You don’t finish the rest of your sentence but Spencer still hears it.

You’re leaving soon anyway.

“It matters to me.” If he left something unsaid you choose to ignore it.

“You’re letting me win.” You whisper, feeling the urge to cry some more, but there’s no tears left.

He doesn’t make a move, bringing the game to a halt. He’s waiting for you to meet his eyes. You know what he’s going to say.

“Spencer, don't.” You beseech.

“Why?” If you looked at him instead of the board you’d see the way his eyes are pleading at you.

“There’s no point.” This time it’s your voice that cracks.

You're looking everywhere else and it makes you too aware of your surroundings. Like how the couch is lined up directly under a window that anyone could peek into.

“Leaving is not the only option.” He solicits.

He regards your discomfort and closes the blinds from where he’s sitting, pulling you back into the privacy of your bubble.

“There’s nothing that you can say to make things go back to how they were.” You bite the inside of your cheek, fiddling with a random pawn.

It’s not a proper two way conversation. You’re talking to yourself just as much as Spencer’s talking to you. You’re both trying to convince you of what you’re saying.

“Things don’t have to go back to how they were.” The squeaks in his soothing tone are starting to melt any resolve you have left.

“There’s no reason for me to stay.” You oppose, trying to make any argument stick.

“I can think of more reasons for you to stay than for you to go.”

There’s an underlying tension bubbling. Neither of you notice it over your desperate tug of war.

“I don’t think there’s anything that you can say to get me to stay.” Another baseless sentence meant more for you than for him.

“Give me one chance. One chance to convince you.” He can see your internal struggle at his request and he throws out one final plea to sway you. “For nothing more than closure.”

Closure.

You’ve spent months in turmoil over the hows and the what ifs, trying to conjure answers to questions that wouldn’t stop pestering you. You couldn’t turn him down even if you wanted to.

“Closure?” You repeat, eyes finally latching onto his.

“Closure.” He whispers back in reassurance.

“Even if you can’t convince me?” You caution, not wanting to give him false hope.

He doesn’t say anything, thinking over the scenario in his head. He simply nods and you mimic the action, blinking away the blur in your vision and dragging around chess pieces. It takes Spencer a second to figure out that you were moving them back to their default places.

“Okay new game.” You announce.

Spencer blinks in confusion, waiting for you to elaborate.

“I can ask you any question I want and you have to answer honestly. If by the end of the game I’m not convinced to stay, you back off for the remainder of my time here.” You pause for him to interject, but he doesn’t. “That means we stay away from each other, only talking when needed for work. Even then as cordially and professionally as possible. No more trying to make casual conversation or bringing me coffee or anything like that.”

“Till the end of the game?” He studies you.

“Yup.” You smack your lips together. “Til one of us checkmates the other.”

“This means you’ll actually give me a fair shot?”

“Between the two of us, I’m not the one known for cheating at games.” You jab, trying to ease the tension you could definitely feel now.

“I meant a fair shot at convincing you. As in you’ll seriously take what I have to say into account.” He discards your attempt.

“No, I know. The opportunity was just too good to pass up.”

He can tell you’re trying to hold back a laugh from the small smile on your lips. It’s as adorable to him now as it was the first time he saw it.

“Any rules before we start?” He asks, unable to hide his own smile.

“Only that we have to be honest.” You answer, immediately dropping your smile.

“Okay.” He agrees, smiling slightly wider.

“Okay.” You nod again.

When he finally makes the first move it hits you that you don’t actually know where to start. Theoretically, you know what you want to ask, but don’t know how to ask. You don’t know if you should jump straight into the questions or start with some ice breakers. Nothing is said for about four to five moves when Spencer pauses the game.

“Are you going to ask any questions or have you decided that you just want to play one last game for your closure?”

“Huh?” You snap your vision away from the board. “Oh, sorry. I was thinking.”

“Do you want to return to the game after thinking of a few questions to ask?” He raises his brow and relaxes his jaw.

“No, no, we don’t need to do that. Let’s keep playing, the questions will come to me.” You brush off his suggestion and motion for him to continue with his turn. He doesn’t.

“What?” Your voice raises and you scrunch your nose from perplexity.

“Sorry, it’s just that you’ve put us on a time limit and this is how you’re using our time?” He airs, failing to conceal his amusement.

“Well excuse me if I don’t exactly have a list of questions ready to go for you.” You narrow your eyes in annoyance.

“Why would you suggest this if you don’t have any questions?” He tries to hold back his laugh and ends up snorting as a result.

“I have questions!” You jabber, unable to maintain your annoyance. “I don’t know what– where do I even start?”

“Start with whichever one comes to you first.” He shrugs, finally making his move.

A lot of things come to mind when you think about it. The thing that screams the loudest twitches a nerve and you become instantly irate.

“Okay.” You nod, tone harsh and flat. “Let’s start with whatever the fuck possessed you on the last case. What was your thought process when you put your life in danger like that?”

He almost gets whiplash from the change in mood, his face literally reads ‘are you serious?’.

“He was going to shoot you.” He states like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“I was wearing a vest, I would’ve been fine.” You contend.

“I wasn’t willing to take that risk.”

“Risk?! You literally put yourself in danger for no reason!”

“I think it was a pretty good reason actually!”

“Spencer that was–” You stop yourself with a grumble, inhaling deeply.

“It was instinctual, okay?” He softly explains. “I saw him aim the gun at you and I just reacted.”

“Well it was a stupid reaction!” You whine.

“I’m not going to apologise for it.”

The glare you give is piercing, you bite the inside of your cheek to hold your tongue before you say something you can’t take back. Spencer throws his head back and sighs.

“But I will promise not to do it again.” He adds, not fully intending to keep it.

This was slowly turning into another argument, both of you shooting back too fast with your responses. You aren’t in the mood for another argument. So you redirect your attention to the game.

“Check.” You mumble, buying yourself time to think of another question. “Why are you here so late anyway?”

“I wanted to finish some work before tomorrow morning.” He replies, moving his king to safety.

“Yeah, what’s up with that? You could’ve done those tomorrow as well.” Your voice softens out of curiosity.

“I wanted to get them finished in case there were more tomorrow.” It’s not his best excuse. You don’t know what he means by that. He doesn’t know what he means by that. He’s lying to you.

You scoff, poking your tongue against your cheek. “Wow. You really can’t not cheat during a game, can you?”

“Right, sorry.” Spencer clears his throat after the initial confusion clears. Complete honesty, it was your only rule. “I wanted to be here.”

“For…” You egg on, purposely rolling your ‘r’s to prompt him.

“I wanted to make sure that you were okay.” He admits, looking away from you.

“Why?” You’re genuinely puzzled at the admission. “You’re the one who almost died. I mean, it was stupid and your fault, but still. If anything I should be checking up on you.”

“Check.” That’s the only response he gives you. He hopes that you don’t push further, but he knows that you will.

His lack of response only forces you to think about the possible reasons by yourself, using context clues to figure it out. You are a profiler, after all.

“Is this because of the panic attack?” You note how his jaw twitches when he swallows at the mention. “It is! You seriously chose to spend your night stuck at the office because of that?”

“What else was I supposed to do? It’s not like you would talk to me, you literally refused to even look at me!” He gripes.

“Spencer I think anyone would panic if they got tackled to the ground by a six foot man without warning. I’m fine.” You giggle.

“What happened to complete honesty?” It’s his turn to glare at you.

“I am being honest!” You protest.

“Lying by omission is not being honest.” He rolls his eyes.

“Okay Mr. know-it-all, what am I lying about?” You challenge.

“Seriously? You don’t remember?” His approach is doubtful and he just stares at your dazed expression.

“Fucking spit it out already, Spence!”

Any sarcasm he had geared up for a response dissipates at your use of his nickname. He’s heard it plenty in the last few months, but not from you. For a moment things feel like they never changed. It stings in a bittersweet kind of way.

“You sc–screamed– uh–” He clears his throat and rapidly blinks, his nose twitches in the process. “During that panic attack, you repeatedly asked me to stay with you. Y–you, uh– you said you didn’t think you could li–”

“Stop. Stop. Stop talking.” Your voice quavers and you hold your hand up, ears burning up. “I don’t wanna know.”

You don’t know why it makes your heart race the way it does, you don’t even remember it. He waits a while before speaking up again, wanting to be careful about how he goes about the topic without you shutting down.

“May I ask you a question?” He voices professionally, trying to make the conversation less personal so you don’t feel cornered.

You nod, moving your king out of check.

“Is there anybody you will talk to about Anchorage? Without pushing them away?” He keeps the game going as he speaks to provide you with a distraction.

“Woah– Anchorage? Where is that coming from?” You titter.

“I want you to remember that we promised to be honest and I won’t push if you ask me to stop, but I know for a fact that you aren’t okay.” He waits for you to stop him but you don’t, even though you know roughly what he’s going to say. “Panic attacks aside, your avoidant behaviour around the topic, inability to focus, being easily startled, you’re showing signs of PTSD.”

“Spence, c’mon. I don’t need to talk to anyone. I already passed the psych evals.” You attempt to make light of the situation with carefully chosen words so you’re not lying. It was a futile attempt, you know he’s not willing to budge when he doesn’t give you anything more than a blank stare.

“Why does this matter so much to you?” You sigh in defeat. “Whatever happened…that’s a part of the job, you know that.”

“I also know, first hand, that it takes over your life. You can’t run from it, no matter how much you try to.” His tone is soft as he speaks, yet you feel like he’s accusing you.

“I am not running! Why would you say I’m running?” You object with a high voice, shrugging your shoulders. “And it’s not taking over my life. Also, check.”

“Because that’s what you do when you don’t want to deal with something.” He states point blank.

“Woah– so– that was entirely unnecessary.” You stammer, unable to deny it.

“I’m not criticising you. I just happen to know you and I know that you have a tendency to run from your problems. And it is taking over your life.”

“You’re profiling!” You gasp.

“You know that it’s not something we can just turn off! No matter how much we pretend like we can.” He waves his hands defensively.

You can’t argue with that, your lips twisting to the side.

“You want me to be honest?” You murmur sheepishly.

“Always. Please.” He responds gently, wanting you to be as comfortable as possible.

“I don’t want to talk about it. I spend a good chunk of my day actively avoiding thinking about it, but somehow I always end up thinking about it anyway. At times it’s like I can almost feel…” You breathe in instinctively. “This is the first time in months I’ve been able to do anything without it lingering in the back of my mind. Can we please talk about it another time? I would rather talk about other things…”

Another time.

“...right now.”

You’ve implied that there will be another time to talk and he definitely caught it, even if he pretends that he hasn’t. You don’t even know if what you said is true, you got too comfortable with the familiarity of his friendship. It was something you said out of habit from back when you two actually were friends. Not even a full hour's worth of conversation with him and he’s already worming his way back in.

“Um–” You drag yourself further back on the couch, creating more physical distance.

“That’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it at all.” Spencer senses your urgency to leave the situation and jumps into damage control. “It’s your turn.”

“No, um, I should– I should go. Thanks for doing thi– helping me.” You turn away from him, aiming for your shoes and ready to bolt.

“The game’s not over.” He points out.

“Yes it is.” You declare, still in the process of putting on your shoes.

“You said til checkmate.” He huffs, shifting out of his seated position.

“I forfeit!” You throw your arms out in a shrugging manner, standing up after him.

“I can’t believe this. You’re going back on your word!” He doesn’t even raise his voice. He’s just hurt.

“What’s the point, Spencer? Closure doesn’t mean anything, I’m still leaving! You can’t magically change my mind!” You yell, getting louder with each sentence.

“I disagree. I think that you’re running again!” He blocks your way and yells back, maintaining his volume throughout.

“Maybe you should think less!” You suggest, still yelling. Sarcasm is your defence mechanism when you have no actual defence.

“You know what else I think?” He continues, emphasising the word ‘think’ every time he says it out of spite. “I think that you agreed to this thinking I won’t be able to convince you, but I am!”

“I don’t care what you–”

“I think you don’t want to finish the game that you started, because you’re afraid to ask the harder questions!”

“Stop.” You command, but it doesn’t deter him.

“I think that you’re scared to hear my answers because then it all becomes too real for you–”

“Stop!” The words almost get stuck in your throat, but you choke them out. “You’re wrong.”

“If I’m wrong then prove it. To both of us.” He sits back down and motions to the board. “Ask the real questions.”

“I don’t need to prove anything, you’re wrong.” You uphold.

“So leave.” He challenges, knowing that you won’t be able to.

If you truly believed that he’s wrong you wouldn’t feel the need to prove it, but you do and he knows that. You walk back over to the couch, head nodding from irritation, tongue poking your cheek. You kick your shoes off with a bit of force and return to your earlier position across from him.

“Your move.” He reminds you as you settle in.

You don’t reply yet, but move your rook to set him up for the next move.

“Check.” He smugly states.

“Who was she?”

You don’t move, examining him close for any change in his behaviour. He obviously didn't anticipate that question first, snapping his sights back on you.

“Sorry?”

“The woman who greeted me at your door. That night at your apartment.”

“Charlotte.” He replies, holding your gaze to show you he’s got nothing to hide. “We met at the library a week before.”

“Are you guys together?” You break away first, diverting your eyes to the chess board and trying to seem unfazed when moving your knight.

“No, God, no.” He denies immediately.

“I don’t know, she seemed pretty cosy for someone you met a week prior.” You don’t mean to sound as snide as you come across.

“No, it wasn’t like that at all.” He shakes his head.

“You sure? Because I’m pretty sure I saw her mark you up with a kiss on your cheek before disappearing.” You don’t look at him, examining a captured pawn as you wait for him to make his move.

“Mark me up?” He cognizes it instantly. “Are you…jealous?”

“What? No!” You vehemently deny, your voice rising in several pitches.

“You are!” His eyes widen.

“I am not jealous.”

His jaw slacks and he lets out an amused scoff. He doesn’t say anything, making you feel the need to fill the silence.

“I only bring it up because…I know you have a thing with…germs.” Your words falter because of your own uncertainty and you want to dissolve into the fucking floor.

Spencer tries to suppress a smile by poking his tongue out slightly. If the atmosphere was lighter he’d tease you about it, but he doesn’t want to make you take off again. Still, he feels the need to clarify the events of the night.

“I don’t know why she kissed my cheek, it was completely random.” He takes his time saying it, still fighting a smile.

You swallow nervously and purse your lips to the side in response. One question answered and you only have new ones in its place. Did she stay the night? Did she sleep on the couch or on his bed? Did he see her again?

“I drove her home right after you left.” He can almost hear your thoughts.

“Was it a date?” You softly gulp again, unsure if you even have a right to know.

“Yes.” He hesitates.

“Oh.”

“I wanted to try out casual dating for once.” He chagrins. “I honestly don’t know how you did it, it’s not even fun.”

“No it’s not.” You chuckle dryly. “So no second date, I presume?”

“Definitely not. I was just stressed the whole time.” He chuckles with you.

“Take a shot of tequila before you go next time, it helps settle the nerves.” You joke, jumping to give him advice you hope he doesn’t take. You can’t help it, it’s what you’ve always done. Even if it goes against what you desire.

“While moderate consumption of tequila can help relax the nervous system, I will not be turning to alcohol for stress relief.”

“Then blast classical music while you get ready and give yourself a pep talk out loud, it’s actually really efficient–”

“There won’t be a next time. For a really long time, if ever.” He interjects, miffed at your insistence.

“You willingly plan on committing to lifelong celibacy?” You exclaim with a puzzled look. “Why?!”

Spencer laughs at how raw your reaction is. He didn’t plan on giving out any more details but, with that prompt he decides that it’s now or never.

“I don’t think any future dates will appreciate me picturing someone else in their place the whole time.”

Oh.

Both of you lock eyes at the same time. This is not a road you’re prepared to go back down, even if that’s literally the whole point of this conversation. You’re too stunned to reply and Spencer uses this as an opportunity to be elaborate. He doesn’t want any misunderstandings this time.

“I couldn’t stop pictur–”

“Shut up.” You blurt out the sentence in almost one word.

Your heart’s racing like you’re standing on the edge of a cliff. You’re flustered, every part of your body is heated from how terrified you are.

“Y–you don’t have t–t…you don’t owe m–me an explanation.” You try to elaborate, contradicting yourself and stumbling on your words.

“I want to.” He reads that you’re apprehensive but pushes regardless.

“Please don’t.” The tears that you thought had dried out were building again.

“Why ask if you won’t let me answer?”

You don’t have anything to say to that. Did you want answers? Yes. Still, you didn’t expect how hard they’d be to hear. He whispers your name and you scramble to think of your next move, and not in chess. You’re unable to even think about the game right now. You want to bolt, but you can’t even get yourself to move. So you deflect.

“Because it doesn’t matter.”

“I disagree.” Although his tone is subdued, the pace of his wording is faster. “I think it does matter and that’s why you’re afraid to hear it.”

He’s right but you can’t bring yourself to agree. This is only going to over-complicate an already complicated situation.

“It’s not enough.” Your voice cracks.

“How can it be if you won’t even give it a fair shot?”

“Fair?”

It comes out louder than you intended. His words trigger resentment within you and you snap.

“Nothing about any of this is fair! I mean, fucking hell, Spencer, four years. That’s how long we’ve been friends. I mean I’ve shared shit that I thought I would be taking to the fucking grave with you! You were my best friend for four fucking years and all it took was like, five seconds?”

You sob, softer than when you were first crying, but the frustration is clear. He reaches out to touch your hand, but you push his hand away.

“No!” You choke, sobbing harder when you try to compile your thoughts. “Five seconds to destroy all of it! It makes me wonder if everything we shared, our friendship, was it ever even that strong?”

Your anger simmers to sadness, as evident with how your yelling fades into whispering in the last sentence.

“I can’t even tell you when exactly those five seconds were. I mean, I know…but…I don’t. Where did it go wrong, Spence?”

“I don’t know.” Is all he can say after a beat of silence.

He knows exactly where it went wrong.

“Yeah, me neither!” You sniffle, immediately wiping a single tear that manages to escape. “So again, it doesn’t matter.”

“When you took it back.”

“What?”

“That’s where everything changed for me. You showed up at my apartment drunk, after your date with Nathan. Your exact words were ‘I mean as an amazing friend’.” His voice strains like he’s forcing himself to speak.

Your gaze falls, eyes darting everywhere as you try to jog your memory beyond the one sentence you remember.

“I don’t understand.” You croak.

“You know, if I wasn’t who I am, maybe you could love me the way I love you.” He chuckles bitterly, fighting back tears of his own. “That was– that was, uh, what you said before you took it back.”

“Spence, please…” You whine without sound, tilting your head back and chewing on your lip as a final attempt to stay composed.

“No, you wanted to know where it went wrong.” He laughs falsely to downplay his tears. “You can say it doesn’t matter all you want, but the fact is, it does matter. It matters to me and I won’t let you run from it anymore.”

You can’t look at him. Not with tears free falling down your face. You cup your hands together in your lap, pressing your fingers and nails together.

“You told me that I couldn’t love you.” You struggle to sound your words.

“I’m an idiot.” Another chuckle, but he sounds defeated. “When you said that, all I could think about was how badly I wanted to say that I do love you.”

You tearfully laugh at this admission.

“I only took it back because of what you said. I panicked. I thought I’d ruined things…which I guess, I still did.” Another laugh from you.

Spencer responds with the same regretful sound.

The irony spurs another fit of giggles amongst you, this one slightly longer and infinitely more rueful than the last. You look anywhere but at each other until it grows quieter.

“If you loved me, why the fuck would you tell me that I couldn’t love you?” You sound just as, if not more, defeated than him.

“Love.” Spencer corrects without missing a beat.

Your brows twitch up and your heart jumps.

“I was so hung up on every single part of your sentence that I didn’t know what to say first.” He proceeds to answer you without leaving much room to process what he said. “I wanted to tell you that I do love you. I love you as you are. Not as somebody else.”

“But you didn’t say any of that.” You ignore all his admissions, not fully comprehending.

“Like I said, I’m an idiot. I was in so much disbelief and that was the first thing that came out of my mouth.” He sullenly huffs.

You don’t reply, sniffling with your head down.

“For like a second, I had everything I wanted. Then you took it back and it was like my whole world had been ripped out from under me. In those five seconds, you’d given me a taste of what I’d spent four years convincing myself I couldn’t have and I just– I couldn’t go back after that.” He adds after a stillness.

After a short while, your focus shifts from your hands to the board in front of you. The game’s been long forgotten. You’re immersed in the conversation, in spite of how strenuous it is.

“I understand why you were distant, even mean, at first.” You snivel. “But after a while you just became downright cruel.”

Spencer doesn’t shy away from your gaze when you do look at him. His skin is as drenched from crying as yours is.

“I mean ‘I don’t want to see your face’? I know that I don’t really have a leg to stand on anymore, but, what the fuck Spencer?”

He doesn’t cringe any less with every reminder. He’s truly regretted the words since they left his mouth.

“I wanted to hurt you.” He reveals. “I thought you were being deliberately cruel and I wanted you to feel exactly how I was feeling.”

“Deliberately?”

He nods, hanging his head.

“I thought that you knew how I felt and were just trying to be funny or something.”

“Well I didn’t. I wasn’t.” You cut him off with a constricted voice.

“Even if you did, it’s not an excuse.” His eyes are glistening from the outpour of tears, but he still lifts his sights back to you. “I’m sorry.”

You don’t know how to acknowledge his apology at all. You’re not even angry anymore, all you feel is sorrow and regret for the way everything happened. An entire friendship down the drain due to an unfortunate set of circumstances.

“This is so fucked up.” You say with another mordant laugh. “All of this could have been avoided if we just talked about it.”

It stung less when you had somebody to blame for it. Your vision blurs and you make no effort to clear it, letting yourself cry openly.

“We’re talking about it now?” It’s almost a squeak, the way it’s spoken.

“Yeah, but,” your shoulders slump, defeatedly, and you have to pause to control your sob, “what good does it do now? I’ve already lost the best thing that’s ever happened to me in the most pathetic way possible.”

“I’m right here.” He counters in such a small voice that it gives your goosebumps.

“Spencer, too many things have been said…”

“When you first joined the team, I instantly knew I liked you.”

He chews on his lip and darts his eyes around while he contemplates if he wants to continue.

“I thought it was because of your kind nature. You were so sweet to everybody.” He decides he does, but his voice shakes throughout. “You have this gift…you make people feel so good about themselves. Whenever you spoke to me, I felt like the most important person in the world. It was impossible not to like you.”

You want to pretend like you don’t know where he’s going with this. You want to stop him, but your voice is stuck in your throat.

“It wasn’t until you bought me coffee for the first time that I realised just how much I liked you.” He chuckles again, as he reminisces in the memory. “You didn’t even get my order right until the fourth time, but it was still my favourite cup of the day.”

“You make me sound like a saint.” You finally choke out, attempting to play down the confession so it doesn’t crush your heart. “The only reason I even started bringing you coffee is because you learned how I like my coffee first.”

“Not a saint, an angel. I’ve fallen so deeply in love with you that there are times where it genuinely feels like I’m in the presence of an angel.”

It’s stated with such sincerity that it knocks the wind out of your pipes. Your eyes are widened and you’re biting your tongue with your mouth closed, staring at him with your chin tucked. He seems so confident, even with the glistening from previous tears in his eyes.

“I wanted to be in your life in any way you would have me. Even when it meant that I had to accept you with other people. And it was bearable, until…” His reminiscence only ends at the memory of the night that changed everything. “Like I said, I couldn’t go back.”

The last part fades into another whisper, only then do you find the courage to speak up.

“Exactly.” You stick to your denial. “It can’t go back to how it was before.”

Your heart is so sure of what it wants, but your head is blinded by fear. You’re at a crossroads, except one path, the path that leads to everything you long for, is clouded with a fog of uncertainty. The other path is so painfully clear, you can practically see what’s on the other side. A fresh start, where the risk of fucking up further doesn’t exist. What you don’t see is Spencer.

“Good. I don’t want it to go back to how it was.”

Spencer’s waiting for you to enter the fog. He’s going to be there holding your hand every step of the way.

“I’ve already handed in my resignation.”

“That matters less than everything you’ve claimed doesn’t matter.” He leans in, intensifying his eye contact.

“I’m pretty sure Hotch is really close to confirming my replacement.” You comment half-heartedly.

You’re trying anything to dissuade both him and yourself from acknowledging the obvious, but he doesn’t plan on letting you avoid it.

“I love you.” He whispers softly.

“Spencer…” You begin when he takes hold of your hands and whatever you had to say disappears from your tongue.

“I love you. With every atom that makes up my body.” He repeats himself with further elaboration to instil it in your mind.

“I’m scared.” You whisper back with a sob, finally accepting it.

“Why?” His voice can’t be any softer, but it still cracks a little.

“Because, you can’t guarantee that it’s going to end well.” You allow your vulnerability to peek through. “And that’s going to hurt more. I’d rather leave now than fall deeper.”

Although you didn’t say it back, it’s an indirect admission that you love him too. And it’s enough for him to fight harder.

“I know that my credibility isn’t the greatest,” he coaxes a small, sad scoff out of you, “but I truly believe that this, us, we’ll work. Because I know that I’m going to do everything I can to make this work.”

He feels bolder when you don’t pull away from his touch, folding your fingers into your palms and cupping over them. You observe the sight as it unfolds in lieu of a verbal response.

“I’ve spent four years judging any man that comes into your life, wishing I was in their place, swearing I would treat you better than all of them.”

Spencer feels the need to fill in the silence and he lets honesty guide his confession. He leans in further as if he’s indulging his deepest secret.

“Four years wasted wondering what could be, cursing out those idiots, but taking no action to make it happen. And that makes me the biggest idiot out of all of them.”

When he speaks like this, with his big, imploring eyes and prayerful tone, it melts your heart to a point where it almost hurts. The more he talks, the more you begin to lean in, opening yourself up to him.

“It took losing you to realise how badly I fucked up and for that I will never forgive myself. I know that I have no right to ask you to waste any more time on me…”

There’s no more resistance against the pull you both physically feel to each other.

“...but I’m begging you for a chance to do today what I should have done way before yesterday.”

Your faces grow closer by the second, you can feel each other's breaths against skin.

“And I’m going to spend every tomorrow proving what I said today.”

The likelihood of him changing your mind with one conversation wasn’t very high, both you and Spencer knew this when you got into it. You’re not entirely surprised when he somehow manages to overcome those odds too. You take the step to close the gap and lightly press your lips to his.

It starts off soft, there’s no lust, no ulterior motive behind it. It’s a simple confirmation that you’re both present and this is real. Spencer doesn’t shy away from the kiss, not that you’d call this a kiss. It feels more intimate, more unguarded.

Spencer pulls you onto his lap as he shifts and leans back against the backrest to allow more room for you. You wrap your arms around him and the kiss deepens. In the midst of you straddling him, he slides the entire chess board off the couch and the pieces scatter on the floor. It’s only when you feel that the kiss can’t bring you any closer to him does the lust emerge. It fuels a desire to prove that you both whole-heartedly belong to each other.

There’s no pinpointing when the switch happens. All you know is that the feeling of his lips against yours is no longer enough. You cup his jaw in your hands, swiping your tongue on his lower lip and it causes his grip on your waist to tighten. He parts his lips for you and it starts what you can only call a dance with your tongues.

Your breathing grows hotter, your hips subconsciously grind against him. There’s a prominent bulge that brushes against your heat and you whine into his mouth. Spencer grunts your name in response and then abruptly pulls away.

“Wait, wait, wait, slow down.” He breathlessly whispers against your lips.

“What?” You whisper back with concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” He gazes into your eyes, afraid that you might regret this later.

“I’ve never been more sure, actually.” You’re confident at first but the look in his eyes makes you pull back further. “Unless…you’re not sure?”

“No, don’t misunderstand me. I want you.” His tone rises just above the previous whisper with his clarification. “It’s just that the last thing I want to do is take advantage of you when our emotions are running high.”

“Four years, Spencer.” You lean in again, just brushing your lips against his. “The only reason you should be making me wait is if you’re not sure.”

He shuts that idea down by crashing his lips on yours. The kiss is so hungry, so desperate, it’s everything both of you have longed for and denied yourselves everytime you’ve been in each other's presence. It doesn’t take long for hands to start to roam. He traces the curve from your waist to your hips, stopping just at the hem of your shirt, tugging it like he’s asking for permission.

You rush to undo your buttons and he meets you halfway, starting at the bottom. His fingers brush against yours as you two reach the final button and you pull the fabric off yourself. You do the same with his shirt, lips remaining locked, except for the small gasps of air you take in between. It requires a bit more manoeuvring with him, but you’re both soon shirtless.

His mouth travels to your jaw and you shut your eyes from pleasure as he continues down to your neck. The stubble on his chin tickles your skin. You cup it, gently pushing him away with a giggle.

“Forget to pack a razor in your bag, Dr. Reid?” Your voice is teasing, more playful than seductive.

He chuckles, airily, hiding his groan. He knows you’re being sarcastic, but the use of his title, with your voice in this context, catches him off guard. You moan as you feel his growing bulge against your heat when his arms tighten around your waist, pulling you into his kiss. You swiftly undo the clasp of your bra, but before you can take it off, Spencer grabs you from just below the hips and lifts you up off him, gently laying you down on the seat of the couch.

There’s no room for hesitation as his lips find your neck again and he nips at the skin. Every suckle earns him short gasps and the grip in his hair tightens as he travels lower. He stops just above your breast, pulling himself up to sit on his knees. You stare up at him with a heated gaze, the nail of your thumb resting between your teeth with your lips parted to make up for the loss of his lips.

He reaches for your bra strap and begins pulling slowly, searching your eyes for any signs of you withdrawing consent. All he sees is how beautifully they sparkle when you give him a light nod. It’s been too long since he’s seen the stars that you hold in your eyes, stars he accustomed himself to before he even got to properly know you.

Gazing into his eyes, you’ve never felt more sure, more safe. You trust him implicitly and you’ve never wanted anything more. His constant need to make sure you're comfortable sends shivers down to your core. He slides the garment off you and Spencer’s beyond grateful that he’s already on his knees, knowing that if he was standing he’d fall to them because of the sight below him.

His eyes don’t falter once, he’s trying to permanently etch this moment into his brain. He hovers his fingers above your body, thumb brushing against your hardened nipple and you softly whine. He looks awestruck, almost like he doesn’t believe what’s happening. You can’t help but wonder if he thinks your boobs look weird.

“Beautiful.” The words fall out of his mouth in a whisper, as if on cue. He’s really just thinking out loud.

Before you can respond he lowers down and plants a small peck to your sensitive nub before taking it into his mouth. You gasp again, head lolling back in pleasure. One of your hands goes for his hair, while the other clings to his hand that’s already holding yours. He switches between sucking, pulling and squeezing; rolling it between his tongue and uses his teeth to squeeze ever so slightly.

“S–spencer.” A strangled moan falls from your lips.

You tug his hair, whining and moaning as your hips roll against the strain in his pants. When your motions become continuous, he lets out his own strained groan and is forced to release your nipple with a small ‘pop’.

“Angel, I really need you to stop doing that.” He murmurs in your ear with a gentle, gravelly tone.

As soon as the nickname reaches your ears your hips involuntarily buck up again, making his hips automatically push down against yours. His cock presses against your core and you both moan, his head falling against your shoulder.

“Spence, more.” You quietly whine in against his ear. “I need more.”

“More?” He echoes back, turning his head so that your lips brush past each other when speaking.

“Mhm.” You nod weakly as he brushes a strand of hair out of your face and weakly connects his lips with yours.

Even when he’s got you vulnerable and at your most compromised, he’s still as gentle as ever. You don’t feel him undo your pants or sneak his hand in them, but you definitely feel him press the pads of his fingers against your clothed clit. Air escapes through your nose in a huff of surprise and you hum in his mouth, hips jolting at his touch. He can feel your slickness through your underwear.

“Oh, my pretty girl.” He sighs, breaking the kiss and directing his whispers in your ear again. “All wet for me?”

“Please..” Even with your broken whimper you beg him for more.

“Like this?” His deft fingers swipe your panties to the side, fingers landing directly on the clit this time.

They feel cold at first. The contrast against your heated body makes you squirm and you groan in a soft, high pitch.

“What are you feeling right now?” He pries a verbal response from you, circling your bud lightly. “Tell me.”

“Good.” You sigh, eyes shut as you try to savour the pleasure.

“Good?” His voice is still soft against your ear.

“Mhm.” You nod, one arm draping against his shoulder and the other hand running along his scruffy jaw. “So good.”

“And this?” He adds pressure to his movements. “Does this feel good?”

Your hips buck again and he feels rewarded when you moan. There’s no doubt that the sound of your voice is his favourite. He especially loves it when it’s directed at him. Whether that be in the form of a laugh or your sweet moans. It makes him somewhat dizzy. His lips attach to the skin just under your jaw in an attempt to coax more.

It’s very effective. Fingers working your bundle of nerves, circling and flicking while changing the pressure, and mouth kissing and sucking near your pulse. It makes your back arch, hand gripping his shoulder so you don’t float away. He’s careful not to leave any purple traces of him on your neck, mindful of you being bombarded with questions from your colleagues.

“I love how reactive you are, Angel. You sound divine– fuck.” He can’t help the grunt that escapes him. “You are divine.”

His touch alone is enough to make you feel electric, but the sweet nothings he’s whispering in your ear will be what send you over the edge. It’s a foreign feeling, being reminded that he values you for more than just your body. Just under an hour ago you had incredibly high walls built around you and none of them are left standing as you exposed under him.

Spencer’s not the first man to touch you, but he is the first that loves you. It’s something you’re not at all used to and it feels as overwhelming as it does good. It transcends the want, no, the need for the man on top of you beyond lust or love. You plan to show him just how strong that need is tonight.

The carpeted floor is littered with your clothes, carelessly thrown around and tiny chess pieces scattered around the abandoned chess board. Spencer’s comfortably lying on the couch, facing the ceiling and you’re lying directly on top of him with your face buried in his neck.

You run your fingers back and forth along his jaw, scratching his beard in slow streaks. He’s enveloped you in his arms, one around your lower back and the other playing with your hair. It doesn’t feel as peaceful as it seems, both of you are afraid of being the first to speak. You know you can’t stay like this forever and you decide to bite the bullet.

“Spencer?”

You only get silence from his end. You know he’s awake because his motions in your hair don’t stop. You push yourself up to face him, trying to study his face. The sudden movement brings him back from wherever he was zoned out to.

“Hm?” His features jump.

Does he regret it?

“What’s wrong?” Your voice shakes from worry. “You have this look on your face.”

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just thinking.”

“About…?”

“How bad we are at communicating.” He chuckles. “It’s concerning when you think about how all we ever do is talk.”

Hearing this makes you snort and you fall into him again. It sends both of you into a short fit of laughter.

“Oh that’s promising for the success of this relationship.” You giggle, sarcasm evident.

Hearing relationship makes Spencer inhale sharply.

“So you’re staying?”

“Well obviously, Dingbat.” You scoff playfully at the question and shift upright, straddling him. “But we really do need to get better at the communication thing for this to work.”

Spencer mounts his weight on his hands by either side of him and pushes himself up to you, stealing a deep kiss.

“Yes, we absolutely do.” He whispers, breaking away for only a second.

The kisses fizzle in you a plethora of smaller kisses.

“Spencer, I’m– serious.” You voice in between, loosely draping your arms on his shoulders.

“I am too.” He says in a hushed tone as he pulls away.

“I want to take it– this,” you motion between the two of you with your finger, “us, slow. Not four years slow, but, like, by a couple of months at the very least.”

“Okay.” He agrees, his eyes scouring your face with complete adoration. It’s not ideal, but he understands where you’re coming from.

“That means that we start again. Romantically. We have to talk about a lot of things first.”

He shifts his body out from under you, resting his back properly against the couch and pulls you back into his lap in one swift motion. Both of his hands graze from your shoulder to your wrist.

“How about…you come over this weekend,” He suggests, wrapping his arms around your waist for a hug, “we’ll do snacks, a movie, maybe an actual game of chess.”

“That sounds like a date.” You wrap your arms around his neck to return the gesture and lean your forehead against his.

“It’s not a date. Not yet, anyways.” He whispers. “I’m asking you to come over this weekend so we can talk about things properly, because frankly, I don’t think either of us is in the right headspace for it right now.”

“Should I be offended at that?” You giggle, not entirely sure what he’s alluding to.

“No!” He snorts with a high tone. “Dopamine aside, our Norepinephrine and Serotonin levels are too high right now for us to have a proper conversation about this.”

“I’m not saying that you’re wrong, because you’re not, but I also think you’re just using science to try and confuse me, so that I agree to wherever this speech is heading.”

“It’s times like this where your attentiveness puts me at a disadvantage, because this tactic has a hundred percent success rate on everybody else.” He grins and you chuckle, both leaning in for another kiss.

“Can we hold off on starting over? Just for tonight.” He reluctantly voices, not wanting to push any boundaries.

You draw back and raise your eyebrows with your eyes widened.

“Spence, I have waited for years for this. You’re insane if you think I’m giving that up without relishing in it for at least a night. We’re not starting over until we’re both officially back on the clock.”

“Okay.” He heaves from relief, leaning in for another kiss, but quickly withdraws with a new question. “Don’t you think the team’s going to be suspicious when we’re not fighting tomorrow?”

“Forget them, what am I gonna say to Hotch when I ask to withdraw my resignation?” You huff out a tiny groan. “He’s gonna hate me for all this paperwork.”

Paperwork reminds you why you’re here to begin with. You audibly gasp, jumping off Spencer and scrambling to put your clothes back on.

“Fuck! Spencer, get dressed!”

Spencer doesn’t share your panic, but adheres to your demand. You mutter a continuous line of obscenities as you throw on your clothes and when you don’t seem to be getting calmer, he intervenes.

“Hey, hey, hey!” He coos as he steps towards you, still undressed on the upper-half. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is that we’ve been here for hours!” You shriek, now fully dressed.

You push past Spencer and grab his shirt, deciding that he was too slow on his own. He lets you dress him as he probes further.

“That’s okay. No one’s going to notice this late.”

“No– Spence–” You sigh, throwing your head back. “In less than four hours, Hotch is going to walk into his office expecting the Anchorage report on his desk. I’ve barely been able to get half of it done in weeks, how am I going to finish it in four hours?”

You shake your head and begin working on his buttons. He grabs your wrists, urging you to look at him.

“You’ll have it done in less than one. I’ll help you!” His voice is light, airy, soft and accompanied with a chuckle.

“Spencer, you’ve already been here later than you need to be. It’s okay–”

“Let me help you.” He resorts to pleading, releasing your wrists and cupping your face.

You don’t have it in you to argue, his eyes staring back at you with sincerity. He wants to help. There’s no point in pushing him away, because as scared as you are about being too vulnerable with your trauma from that case, you trust him wholeheartedly. You know he won’t push for more than what you choose to share right now.

“Okay.” You nod and smile into the kiss he leans in for after the confirmation.

“Okay. Now, you go and start some coffee.” he instructs softly with a wide grin, waving to the scattered chess ensemble. “ I’m going to clean up here and join you.”

“I love you!” You lean for another kiss and hushedly exclaim as you break away, receding towards the door.

It’s Spencer’s turn to lose his breath. He’s affirmed his love for you countless times tonight and this is the first time you’ve verbally reciprocated it. He knows that it won’t be the last time either. That, to him, makes him the luckiest man in the world. He stops you from going any further by your arm and gently yanks you in his direction, crashing his lips with yours.

“I love you too.” He whispers after the kiss, letting you go.

Heat rises in your face again and you struggle to hide a huge dopey smile, one that Spencer has too. You’re floating on cloud nine, finally out of the blurry hurricane you’ve endured for months. There’s still a lot of things that you need to work out, but the thought of them doesn’t make you feel dread like it once did.

"One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is Love." - Socrates

Spoilers: Yapperoni (so much dialog in this chapter), BAU! Reader, enemies (kinda) to lovers, hurt, comfort, love confessions (they might be a little too sappy, idk, I was sleep deprived), the praise made me giddy at some point, smut but I edge you by not writing out everything, happy ending.

AN - I have a little tiny fear that people (me) will nawt (I don’t) fuck with this monstrosity, but out of all my drafts, this felt like the most natural course of action. I thought it would be really fun to go from friends to enemies to lovers. Now, literally nobody talk to me about writing fics after this. Uni’s started, so I’ll be very inconsistent for a bit. Casual reminder: I am not Spencer Reid. I don’t have an IQ of 187. Any facts I make him spew could very well be bull-shit and he only spews them for the purpose of the story. I also have no knowledge of how the FBI works and lack a ton of common sense. A lot of things were made up for the purpose of this story.

A comment today keeps semicolon away (from showing up to your house and eating all your snacks).

Thank you for reading!

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feelmyskinonyourskin · 2 months ago

Text

Judex, Judicum, Infantem - Chapter 7

(Eventual)Reader x Matt Murdock x Frank Castle

previous chapter | next chapter | series masterlist | my masterlist

summary: There's trouble in paradise as Matt finds a good reason to put the suit back on. Things get even more complicated when you get an unexpected visitor.

warnings: AFAB Reader. No use of Y/N. We're starting to get angsty again. Mention of blood and description of injury.

notes: Someone lovely DMed me and let me know they hadn't gotten a notification they'd been tagged in the last few chapters. So I went in an manually retyped the whole tag list. Hopefully, it should be working now (though with Tumblr, who knows) Sorry about that!

w/c: 2,448

*I never give permission for my fics, manips, or any other original creation I post on Tumblr to be copied, posted elsewhere, translated, or fed into any AI program. The only platforms I currently post on are Tumblr and AO3. Thanks!*

You weren’t aware of the beauty that was sleeping on silk sheets until you started dating Matt, now cool against your skin as you sat in your bed with your computer propped on your lap. You scrolled through yet another parenting forum, now contemplating if getting your placenta crushed into capsules and eating them was really a health benefit or just a bunch of malarkey.

“I don’t know baby girl, sounds gross.” you commented, hand rubbing at your abdomen. You and Matt had both begun the habit of regularly speaking to the baby and it filled you with delight that she would come out already knowing your voices.

Your 16 week appointment went incredibly well, sonogram finally starting to show something that actually looked like a baby and not a blob to you. You giddily chuckled as you picked it up from the night stand beside you and gave it a glance.

She was gonna be cute. And probably trouble. Just like her dad.

You shook your head at the thought of a mini Murdock running around and went back to your readings just as Matt stepped into the room. You did a double take as you looked up at him, incredibly surprised to see him not in his sweatpants as he was a few minutes ago when you were in the kitchen, but clad in his crimson Daredevil suit.

“Matt, what are you doing? We agreed you weren’t going to look for Frank anymore.”

“I’m not.” Matt said, lips pursed as he fiddled with his gloves

“Well it’s not exactly a kink I thought I’d have, but if you want to let the devil out on me…” you joked laying back seductively, hoping Matt would chuckle with you.

He didn’t.

“Something happened. Remember the Ayala girl?”

“Hector’s niece? Yeah.”

Of course you remembered the tragic case Matt had wrapped up a few weeks ago. Securing the freedom of an innocent man only for him to be murdered less than two days later. It was the exact type of incident that Matt explained to you made him take up the vigilante life in the first place; he used the system the right way for justice and still an innocent person lost to corruption.

“Well she visited me today at work.”

“Is she okay?” you asked

“I don’t know. She said something about her Uncle tracking something before he died. I told her to let the police handle it, but she didn’t want to listen.”

“Okay? What’s that have to do with Daredevil?”

“She just texted me. An address. I think she’s about to do something dangerous.”

“So call the police.”

“No.” he shook his head with a grimace “That did a lot of good with her Uncle.”

“Matt—”

You threw the duvet off yourself and followed him as he headed down the hall. His heavy footsteps echoed on the hardwood floors as he walked away from you with determination. You weren’t about to just let him go out with no information about it.

“Sweetheart, I need to handle this. I’m sorry.” Matt called behind him to you, still making his way toward the balcony with no falter in his step. He retched the door open, letting in the cool night breeze.

“What are you walking in to?”

“I’m not sure.”

“So you’re just going in blindly?”

“I have to.”

“Matt!” you shouted

Your voice practically echoed and the silence that followed was almost as loud, with little other noise around as the city began to wind down for the evening.

It was enough to stop him in his tracks as he turned to face you. You hoped since Matt could now hear the heartbeat, it was coming through strong and clearly. Hoping your baby girl was giving you an extra assist in persuading him to stay.

“What if you get hurt? What am I—” you cupped the base of your stomach “—what are we supposed to do?”

“I won’t.”

“You don’t know that.” you scoffed

“Sweetheart, I can’t argue right now—”

“So I’m supposed to just let this happen? Let you walk into unknown danger and what? You just expect me to be okay with it? You have a family now, Matt!”

“I know. And I love you and I care about you more than anything in the world, but right now Angela is in danger. She’s just a kid and she needs me.”

“In need you Matt. Here. With me and our child. Safe.”

“What if this was our child!? How do you think her Aunt feels right now!? Soledad is probably worried sick!”

You tugged at the sleeves of Matt’s Columbia sweatshirt, wrapping your arms around yourself. The air was brisk from the breeze that kept blowing in as the two of you stood in a stale mate, Matt one foot out the door and you pleading for him to stay. The sigh that escaped your lips was heavy. He was right. If it was your baby in danger you’d want someone, anyone to save her.

“Okay. So, you help her; you find her and save her from the very unknown and possibly dangerous variable and then what? Is this a one time thing or are you back? What happens if you just find more questions than answers tonight and need to keep going out and—”

“Honey, I can’t answer that. Look, I don’t have time for this right now.”

“Then when will you?” you continued to push

“I’m not exactly thinking about you or the baby right now, it’s just about—”

“Oh, I got that loud and clear, asshole.”

Frustration surged in Matt’s veins, apparent by the the tick in his jaw and the way his fists clenched at his sides. Angry that you couldn’t see his point and exasperation that you were resorting to sarcasm and venomous words to make your point.

“I can not live with myself if I just let her go in there and get hurt or die. Deliver those who are staggering to slaughter, for if you do not speak out to warn them then I will hold you responsible for their blood.”

“I’m too tired for the Catholic guilt right now, so cut the shit Matt.”

“Sweetie, this is who I am. I know you haven’t really seen it until now, but it used to be a big part of my life… “ he trailed off

The life before you. The one he was keeping guarded. He stopped being Daredevil for a reason; a reason he wouldn’t fully tell you. But you knew it involved someone he cared about getting hurt. If he cared about Foggy that much, couldn’t he extend the same courtesy to you? Not put himself in harms way to prevent you from getting hurt if something happened to him? If he wanted to raise this baby right, you knew he needed to face the demons of his past and let them go in order to move forward with his child. But he was so unwilling to open up, so stubborn to not let the things that hurt him also hurt you. They were anyway, him keeping closed off only making it worse. Like hot lava bubbling up from a dormant volcano, oozing out to the surface in the form of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

He stripped his gloves off, stepping forward to cradle your face in his hands.

“I was Matt Murdock the lawyer. And I was Daredevil. And I was damn good at both. And I need you to accept that.”

“Matt. I love you. But this is not just something you can spring on me and expect me to be okay with.”

Now? You’re telling him now? You absolute buffoon—

Matt winced, had the audacity to wince, at you finally admitting you loved him. You cleared your throat and continued, trying to calm the still growing rage in your voice.

“If you were planning on going back out as Daredevil, it should have at least been a discussion before it became an emergency situation.”

“You don’t get to decide what I can or can’t do.”

“I’m the mother of your child Matthew! I think I should at least get a say if my baby’s father wants to put himself in potentially fatal danger!”

“Your baby’s father might be Frank, which would be worse in the danger department if we’re being honest.”

Acid in an open wound would have stung less than him bringing that up now. You bit your lip, unable to control the tears that began flowing. Cowering away, you shook your head and stayed silent.

“I love you too.” he finally replied, taking a step towards you and placing a kiss on your forehead “I’ll be back soon. Don’t wait up.”

Then he turned, put on his helmet, and walked out the door.

You’d lost count around hour 3 just how many times you had done a lap around the apartment, pacing anxiously until Matt returned.

‘Don’t wait up.’

What a dick statement. Of course you were going to wait up. Like you could ever possibly sleep being worried sick and watching the clock as the minutes ticked on.

Eventually you were able to at least sit in bed, resuming your scrolling of mommy blogs but not really able to focus on any of the words you were reading in a feeble attempt to distract yourself.

It was almost 2AM when you heard the sliding glass door from the balcony open and shut. You leapt out of bed and trudged down the hall, bare feet cold on the hardwood. Would he be hurt? How badly? Would he still be angry with you?

When you rounded the corner you jumped back at the sight before you. A figure taller and larger than Matt was leaning against the kitchen island, slouched over and grunting in pain. The moon was the only thing lighting the apartment right now and you were having trouble making out the details of the person before you. The only thing clear to you was that it was not Matt who was standing before you bloodied and bruised.

As he stepped forward, keeping a hand against the counter for support, you were able to get a better look at him. Your eyes locked into his and you both stood there silently.

Frank.

His grizzly beard was damp for some reason, droplets reflecting the moonlight coming in through the large windows. He’d grown his hair out since you last saw him, clearly not caring about his appearance as much based on how tangled and unkempt it looked. The way his eyes softened nearly melted you on the spot as he realized it was you in front of him. They didn’t distract you enough to not notice how hollow they sat on his face, whatever he’d been up to in the months since clearly taking a toll. Plenty of cuts and bruises were littered across his cheeks and nose. He looked in an even worse state than you imagined Matt would be coming home in, holding a hand to the side of his neck as crimson liquid flowed between his fingers.

Shit. That’s why his beard was wet. It was blood.

“Baby?” he managed to weakly croak out, before collapsing onto the ground

The reverberation from his body hitting the floor finally broke you from your shock and you rushed toward him, sliding onto your knees to pick his head up and assess.

His neck gushed blood from an open wound, sticky and warm beneath your fingers while you applied pressure as hard you could muster. His nearly unconscious form was boneless as you tried frantically to stabilize him. Heavy in your arms, you struggled to hold him steady and also tend to his injury.

“Matt! Help! Matt!” you screamed into the night as loudly as your voice could manage, hoping he was close enough to hear and come home.

You’d thought a lot about what you’d do if you ever saw Frank again. In the days after he disappeared, your mind wandered into the what ifs. If you ever saw him again, would you be angry? Or sad? Contemplating the outcomes, you figured you’d either scream at him or let your fists do the talking. Or maybe you’d just cry. Or by some miracle by the time your paths crossed again, you’d have healed enough and moved on, totally unbothered by his presence. Would you tell him about his possible child? Or be so happy with Matt that it wouldn’t be worth it?

You never thought it would happen like this. All the hours you’d spent pacing your apartment, verbalizing the things you’d say in one sided conversations with yourself. All the fear, the anger, the sadness, the hurt. It all flew out the window in this moment.

All you wanted to do right now was not lose him.

Frank clearly came here seeking Matt’s help, not expecting to find you instead. Fuck, you wished he was home right now. You wished he hadn’t gone out tonight. You didn’t know the first thing about first aid. There was a baby CPR seminar the two of you were going to attend in a few weeks, but you didn’t think it would possibly cover something like this. With all his years experience stitching up his dad and fixing his own injuries from Daredeviling, Matt was much better equipped to help. You were panicking, not calm in a crisis like he was.

What did you do? Keep putting pressure on the wound and hope Matt got home in time to save him? Leave Frank and risk him bleeding out to find your phone and call an ambulance that also might not get there soon enough? Was it already too late? Would you lose him?

Frank reached up, a hand stained in ruby caressing your face as you stared into his eyes. They fluttered open and closed, fading in and out of consciousness as he grunted beneath you in agony. He looked paler by the second, face draining of color beneath your shaky fingers. The shock was apparent in his face; at the sight of you or at the pain he was in, who was to say? Unable to speak, his mouth opened and closed with gasps as if he were a fish struggling outside of water.

You were losing him.

“Frank. Please, Frank. Stay with me.” you begged

He writhed in your embrace, kicking his heavy boots against the ground in suffering and confusion.

And then he was still.

NEXT CHAPTER

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Tag list: @xxdrixx @a-leg-without-fear @echo-ethe @capswife @xoxabs88xox @allmyn1ghts @laaadygisbooornex3 @ninacotte @uncertified-doc @moth-murdock @danzer8705 @endofthelinegang @buckyssugarchick @hellskitchenswhore @pixviee @themikkapika @bisexualbith @labellapeaky @theoraekenslover @sexyvixen7 @tanyaherondale @marysucks-blog @0callme-mimi @aesthetic0cherryblossom @livewaspsblog @lokifae42 @plutosbearr @kneelforloki

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saywhat-politics · 2 months ago

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The two men appeared at the US Copyright Office days after the Trump administration fired its leader, who had just published a report about the use of copyrighted materials for AI training.

TWO MEN CLAIMING to be newly appointed Trump administration officials tried to enter the US Copyright Office in Washington, DC, on Monday, but left before gaining access to the building, sources tell WIRED. Their appearance comes days after the White House fired the director of the copyright office, Shira Perlmutter, who had held the job since 2020. Perlmutter was removed from her post on Saturday, one day after the agency released a report that raised concerns about the legality in certain cases of using copyrighted materials to train artificial intelligence.

A source familiar with the matter tells WIRED that the two men who tried to enter the Copyright Office showed security at the building a document stating that they had been appointed by the White House to new roles within the office. The source identified the men as Brian Nieves, who claimed he was the new deputy librarian, and Paul Perkins, who said he was the new acting director of the Copyright Office, as well as acting register.

#donald trump #second term #us copyright office

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Google is (still) losing the spam wars to zombie news-brands

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (May 3) in CALGARY, then TOMORROW (May 4) in VANCOUVER, then onto Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Even Google admits – grudgingly – that it is losing the spam wars. The explosive proliferation of botshit has supercharged the sleazy "search engine optimization" business, such that results to common queries are 50% Google ads to spam sites, and 50% links to spam sites that tricked Google into a high rank (without paying for an ad):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

It's nice that Google has finally stopped gaslighting the rest of us with claims that its search was still the same bedrock utility that so many of us relied upon as a key piece of internet infrastructure. This not only feels wildly wrong, it is empirically, provably false:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Not only that, but we know why Google search sucks. Memos released as part of the DOJ's antitrust case against Google reveal that the company deliberately chose to worsen search quality to increase the number of queries you'd have to make (and the number of ads you'd have to see) to find a decent result:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Google's antitrust case turns on the idea that the company bought its way to dominance, spending the some of the billions it extracted from advertisers and publishers to buy the default position on every platform, so that no one ever tried another search engine, which meant that no one would invest in another search engine, either.

Google's tacit defense is that its monopoly billions only incidentally fund these kind of anticompetitive deals. Mostly, Google says, it uses its billions to build the greatest search engine, ad platform, mobile OS, etc that the public could dream of. Only a company as big as Google (says Google) can afford to fund the R&D and security to keep its platform useful for the rest of us.

That's the "monopolistic bargain" – let the monopolist become a dictator, and they will be a benevolent dictator. Shriven of "wasteful competition," the monopolist can split their profits with the public by funding public goods and the public interest.

Google has clearly reneged on that bargain. A company experiencing the dramatic security failures and declining quality should be pouring everything it has to righting the ship. Instead, Google repeatedly blew tens of billions of dollars on stock buybacks while doing mass layoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Those layoffs have now reached the company's "core" teams, even as its core services continue to decay:

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

(Google's antitrust trial was shrouded in secrecy, thanks to the judge's deference to the company's insistence on confidentiality. The case is moving along though, and warrants your continued attention:)

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-2-trillion-secret-trial-against

Google wormed its way into so many corners of our lives that its enshittification keeps erupting in odd places, like ordering takeout food:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Back in February, Housefresh – a rigorous review site for home air purifiers – published a viral, damning account of how Google had allowed itself to be overrun by spammers who purport to provide reviews of air purifiers, but who do little to no testing and often employ AI chatbots to write automated garbage:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

In the months since, Housefresh's Gisele Navarro has continued to fight for the survival of her high-quality air purifier review site, and has received many tips from insiders at the spam-farms and Google, all of which she recounts in a followup essay:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

One of the worst offenders in spam wars is Dotdash Meredith, a content-farm that "publishes" multiple websites that recycle parts of each others' content in order to climb to the top search slots for lucrative product review spots, which can be monetized via affiliate links.

A Dotdash Meredith insider told Navarro that the company uses a tactic called "keyword swarming" to push high-quality independent sites off the top of Google and replace them with its own garbage reviews. When Dotdash Meredith finds an independent site that occupies the top results for a lucrative Google result, they "swarm a smaller site’s foothold on one or two articles by essentially publishing 10 articles [on the topic] and beefing up [Dotdash Meredith sites’] authority."

Dotdash Meredith has keyword swarmed a large number of topics. from air purifiers to slow cookers to posture correctors for back-pain:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/keyword-swarming-dotdash.jpg

The company isn't shy about this. Its own shareholder communications boast about it. What's more, it has competition.

Take Forbes, an actual news-site, which has a whole shadow-empire of web-pages reviewing products for puppies, dogs, kittens and cats, all of which link to high affiliate-fee-generating pet insurance products. These reviews are not good, but they are treasured by Google's algorithm, which views them as a part of Forbes's legitimate news-publishing operation and lets them draft on Forbes's authority.

This side-hustle for Forbes comes at a cost for the rest of us, though. The reviewers who actually put in the hard work to figure out which pet products are worth your money (and which ones are bad, defective or dangerous) are crowded off the front page of Google and eventually disappear, leaving behind nothing but semi-automated SEO garbage from Forbes:

https://twitter.com/ichbinGisele/status/1642481590524583936

There's a name for this: "site reputation abuse." That's when a site perverts its current – or past – practice of publishing high-quality materials to trick Google into giving the site a high ranking. Think of how Deadspin's private equity grifter owners turned it into a site full of casino affiliate spam:

https://www.404media.co/who-owns-deadspin-now-lineup-publishing/

The same thing happened to the venerable Money magazine:

https://moneygroup.pr/

Money is one of the many sites whose air purifier reviews Google gives preference to, despite the fact that they do no testing. According to Google, Money is also a reliable source of information on reprogramming your garage-door opener, buying a paint-sprayer, etc:

https://money.com/best-paint-sprayer/

All of this is made ten million times worse by AI, which can spray out superficially plausible botshit in superhuman quantities, letting spammers produce thousands of variations on their shitty reviews, flooding the zone with bullshit in classic Steve Bannon style:

https://escapecollective.com/commerce-content-is-breaking-product-reviews/

As Gizmodo, Sports Illustrated and USA Today have learned the hard way, AI can't write factual news pieces. But it can pump out bullshit written for the express purpose of drafting on the good work human journalists have done and tricking Google – the search engine 90% of us rely on – into upranking bullshit at the expense of high-quality information.

A variety of AI service bureaux have popped up to provide AI botshit as a service to news brands. While Navarro doesn't say so, I'm willing to bet that for news bosses, outsourcing your botshit scams to a third party is considered an excellent way of avoiding your journalists' wrath. The biggest botshit-as-a-service company is ASR Group (which also uses the alias Advon Commerce).

Advon claims that its botshit is, in fact, written by humans. But Advon's employees' Linkedin profiles tell a different story, boasting of their mastery of AI tools in the industrial-scale production of botshit:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

Now, none of this is particularly sophisticated. It doesn't take much discernment to spot when a site is engaged in "site reputation abuse." Presumably, the 12,000 googlers the company fired last year could have been employed to check the top review keyword results manually every couple of days and permaban any site caught cheating this way.

Instead, Google is has announced a change in policy: starting May 5, the company will downrank any site caught engaged in site reputation abuse. However, the company takes a very narrow view of site reputation abuse, limiting punishments to sites that employ third parties to generate or uprank their botshit. Companies that produce their botshit in-house are seemingly not covered by this policy.

As Navarro writes, some sites – like Forbes – have prepared for May 5 by blocking their botshit sections from Google's crawler. This can't be their permanent strategy, though – either they'll have to kill the section or bring it in-house to comply with Google's rules. Bringing things in house isn't that hard: US News and World Report is advertising for an SEO editor who will publish 70-80 posts per month, doubtless each one a masterpiece of high-quality, carefully researched material of great value to Google's users:

https://twitter.com/dannyashton/status/1777408051357585425

As Navarro points out, Google is palpably reluctant to target the largest, best-funded spammers. Its March 2024 update kicked many garbage AI sites out of the index – but only small bottom-feeders, not large, once-respected publications that have been colonized by private equity spam-farmers.

All of this comes at a price, and it's only incidentally paid by legitimate sites like Housefresh. The real price is borne by all of us, who are funneled by the 90%-market-share search engine into "review" sites that push low quality, high-price products. Housefresh's top budget air purifier costs $79. That's hundreds of dollars cheaper than the "budget" pick at other sites, who largely perform no original research.

Google search has a problem. AI botshit is dominating Google's search results, and it's not just in product reviews. Searches for infrastructure code samples are dominated by botshit code generated by Pulumi AI, whose chatbot hallucinates nonexistence AWS features:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/01/pulumi_ai_pollution_of_search/

This is hugely consequential: when these "hallucinations" slip through into production code, they create huge vulnerabilities for widespread malicious exploitation:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

We've put all our eggs in Google's basket, and Google's dropped the basket – but it doesn't matter because they can spend $20b/year bribing Apple to make sure no one ever tries a rival search engine on Ios or Safari:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-payments-apple-reached-20-220947331.html

Google's response – laying off core developers, outsourcing to low-waged territories with weak labor protections and spending billions on stock buybacks – presents a picture of a company that is too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Google promised us a quid-pro-quo: let them be the single, authoritative portal ("organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful"), and they will earn that spot by being the best search there is:

https://www.ft.com/content/b9eb3180-2a6e-41eb-91fe-2ab5942d4150

But – like the spammers at the top of its search result pages – Google didn't earn its spot at the center of our digital lives.

It cheated.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Image: freezelight (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spam_wall_-_Flickr_-_freezelight.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

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the-necromancer-wife · 3 months ago

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14 days with you: A comprehensive (i hope so) guide on what are those encrypted messages on day 4.

Soooo for those who don't know, i have a special interest for cryptoanalisis and even took classes when the military showed up at my school (it's a normal thing for the military to come recluting in my country lmao, males even have to go one year of mandatory military training) anyway. I noticed something interesting on day four and i don't know if anyone else has tried to decipher these. But i don't want to just limit to give the decoded message, so in this post i'll teach you how exactly this type of cipher works so you can respond to this guy in his same language >:3

TW: Spoilers for 14dwy (of course) and a looong rant. Those are the only warnings.

Just scroll to the end in case you're just looking for the translations alone.

The first two messages are pretty easy to decode since it's just ascii. You can easily translate it online or if you know the language of 0s and 1s you can just read it through.

The first one reads a bit more harder than the other two but it says "HI ANGEL" and "ERROR: I SEE YOU" or something like that.

The main thing it's the more complicated set of words we get later:

This specific cipher is called Monoalphabetic substitution.

I'll teach you how it works:

Monoalphabetic ciphers are a type of substitution cipher where each letter in the plaintext is mapped to a fixed letter in the ciphertext. This mapping remains consistent throughout the entire message. The primary goal of these ciphers is to convert plaintext into ciphertext and vice versa, ensuring data security.

Basically swaps a letter for another and that's it. Well...not quite. There is also different categories when you work with this specific cipher. You have to take into account if the spaces on the encrypted message must be kept (Aristocrat cipher) or ignored (Patristocrat cipher). In this case we'll be taking the spaces into account. You also must take into account the language, since russian monoalphabetic and english monoalphabetic (for example) are completely different (obviously).

You need to start guessing the letters with the only clue being the text itself.

It might sound complicated but it is really simple. I'll work with the messages in the game directly while i show you:

We already know that the language is english, so there is must likely two letters we already have, and it's the letter "I" and the letter "A". Since those are the only single character you could use separately from the others to indicate personal first-person pronoun and an adjective respectively. The first issue is that we have two letters that repeat themselves as single letters throughout the messages: Letter "P" and letter "M"

So we must figure out which letter corresponds to which substitute letter. So my recommendation is to look for short words through the messages that include a P or an M

We have PIJ and PS and JMJ, AMQ and AMS for example. The ideal would be to look for any words with P and M both included, but i didn't find any word. So if you replace Ps and Ms as

P→I

M→A

Basically the words are IIJ IS JAJ AAQ AAS

Notice how the "IS" seemed to be partially solved but could be "IS" or "AS" since we don't have confirmation of actually P→I. Of course, all of this assuming S→S

When you do the substitution as P=A and M=I we have something like this: AIJ AS JIJ AIQ AIS

the AIQ and AIS are two really interesting words since they could be pronouns. HIS and HIM respectively, but this is all a process of trial and error until you try every possible combination that will get you to eventually complete more words (bigger words) and fill in the gaps, obtaining more letters.

It kinda reminds me to the system of learning a language in this game called HOMICIPHER.

Anyway, I'll save you some troubles and try some more combinations.

If we assume that

S→S

P→I

M→A

We can now try to figure out bigger words. Words that contain S, P and M

Btw this is a super complicated thing to do as it sometimes requires more of a leap of faith than a proper analysis. So this is a process that goes back and forth.

For example, we see the word PQ a lot. The P being I and the Q could be an S so it forms the word "IS". But when we see that S=S the only other possible combination is Q→M

So now we have another letter deciphered and we can try and replace the letters in bigger words to see how many more letters we can complete. From this point on it gets a lot easier unless we make a mistake, in which case we need to go back and try other combinations.

Now that you have the method, you can try and figure it out by your own. But if you don't feel like it, I'll just leave the full substitutions below. I encourage you to skip it and try to figure out all the letters by yourself, it's pretty fun.

HCJWTBYKNDRGIUEAMQSLOPFVXZ is the key for solving this.

See?

Of course i will translate all the messages for you in case you just want to read them.

TRANSLATIONS:

HOW INTERESTING. A LOWLY, MEAGRE INTERLOPER ATTEMPTING TO REWRITE WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN ORDAINED SINCE THE BEGINNING...

YOU REMEMBER NOTHING OF YOUR PAST NOR HOW YOU CAME TO BE, YET HERE YOU ARE, ATTEMPTING TO DIG UP THE ROOTS OF FATE AS THOUGH IT WERE A WEED AND PLANTING YOUR OWN CORRUPT SEEDLING IN ITS PLACE

PERHAPS WE ARE THE SAME, THEN

I TOO FIND ENJOYMENT IN DISRUPTING THE VINES OF KISMET AND WATCHING HIM STRUGGLE

(Kismet = a force that controls the future, outside human control)

TWAS I WHO GAVE HIM HIS GIFT, AS I DID WITH OTHERS, AND YET HE WASTES SUCH SPOILS ON A LOWLY MORTAL TO BORROW MORE TIME. I SUPPOSE THE LIFE OF MANY MATTERS NOT TO THE LIFE OF ONE

NO MATTER. SUCH TRIVIAL ENTERTAINMENT IS NOT LOST ON ME

GO ON, CONTINUE DOWN THIS FOOLISH, OVERGROWN PATH AND SEE WHAT WILL HAPPEN. TIS NOT THY WILTING SOUL I FEED ON AND IT SHALL NOT BE THY LIFE I CLAIM ONCE THE ENDING HAS BEGUN

AFTER ALL, I AM THE END, JUST AS I AM THE BEGINNING AND THE IN-BETWEEN. THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE, COMBINED INTO ONE. I AM INEVITABLE.

...

Final thoughts:

This doesn't seem like something Ren would say, not even [REDACTED] since whatever this is seems to be ancient (judging by the language) and completely able to "give" abilities to people.

I personally believe there is certain philosophy under the idea of "being a programmer" or a "hacker" since it's one of the only instances in which a human can become something remotely closer to a god. When you think about it, within that knowledge lies the ability to name (variables), the ability to give a purpose and overall the ability to control what happened, happens and will happen. Considering that 14dwy is a game that heavily brings the topic of something (probably Ren/Redacted) messing with the code, i wouldn't be surprised if this entity that speaks in criptic manners was something among the lines of a laplace demon. Which would be hella funny, because the nickname Ren chose for us ("Angel").

I could explain more about the Laplace Demon concept if you, dear readers, are interested but that would be for another occasion. Another essay hehe.

For now, a huge thanks to @14dayswithyou for their amazing work in cryptography. I had a lot of fun deciphering this. I am excited about what this game will turn out to be.

Have a really great day/night!

#14dwy ren #14 days with you #14dwy #14dwy redacted #14dwy analysis #14dwy encrypted texts

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not-terezi-pyrope · 1 year ago

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Often when I post an AI-neutral or AI-positive take on an anti-AI post I get blocked, so I wanted to make my own post to share my thoughts on "Nightshade", the new adversarial data poisoning attack that the Glaze people have come out with.

I've read the paper and here are my takeaways:

Firstly, this is not necessarily or primarily a tool for artists to "coat" their images like Glaze; in fact, Nightshade works best when applied to sort of carefully selected "archetypal" images, ideally ones that were already generated using generative AI using a prompt for the generic concept to be attacked (which is what the authors did in their paper). Also, the image has to be explicitly paired with a specific text caption optimized to have the most impact, which would make it pretty annoying for individual artists to deploy.

While the intent of Nightshade is to have maximum impact with minimal data poisoning, in order to attack a large model there would have to be many thousands of samples in the training data. Obviously if you have a webpage that you created specifically to host a massive gallery poisoned images, that can be fairly easily blacklisted, so you'd have to have a lot of patience and resources in order to hide these enough so they proliferate into the training datasets of major models.

The main use case for this as suggested by the authors is to protect specific copyrights. The example they use is that of Disney specifically releasing a lot of poisoned images of Mickey Mouse to prevent people generating art of him. As a large company like Disney would be more likely to have the resources to seed Nightshade images at scale, this sounds like the most plausible large scale use case for me, even if web artists could crowdsource some sort of similar generic campaign.

Either way, the optimal use case of "large organization repeatedly using generative AI models to create images, then running through another resource heavy AI model to corrupt them, then hiding them on the open web, to protect specific concepts and copyrights" doesn't sound like the big win for freedom of expression that people are going to pretend it is. This is the case for a lot of discussion around AI and I wish people would stop flagwaving for corporate copyright protections, but whatever.

The panic about AI resource use in terms of power/water is mostly bunk (AI training is done once per large model, and in terms of industrial production processes, using a single airliner flight's worth of carbon output for an industrial model that can then be used indefinitely to do useful work seems like a small fry in comparison to all the other nonsense that humanity wastes power on). However, given that deploying this at scale would be a huge compute sink, it's ironic to see anti-AI activists for that is a talking point hyping this up so much.

In terms of actual attack effectiveness; like Glaze, this once again relies on analysis of the feature space of current public models such as Stable Diffusion. This means that effectiveness is reduced on other models with differing architectures and training sets. However, also like Glaze, it looks like the overall "world feature space" that generative models fit to is generalisable enough that this attack will work across models.

That means that if this does get deployed at scale, it could definitely fuck with a lot of current systems. That said, once again, it'd likely have a bigger effect on indie and open source generation projects than the massive corporate monoliths who are probably working to secure proprietary data sets, like I believe Adobe Firefly did. I don't like how these attacks concentrate the power up.

The generalisation of the attack doesn't mean that this can't be defended against, but it does mean that you'd likely need to invest in bespoke measures; e.g. specifically training a detector on a large dataset of Nightshade poison in order to filter them out, spending more time and labour curating your input dataset, or designing radically different architectures that don't produce a comparably similar virtual feature space. I.e. the effect of this being used at scale wouldn't eliminate "AI art", but it could potentially cause a headache for people all around and limit accessibility for hobbyists (although presumably curated datasets would trickle down eventually).

All in all a bit of a dick move that will make things harder for people in general, but I suppose that's the point, and what people who want to deploy this at scale are aiming for. I suppose with public data scraping that sort of thing is fair game I guess.

Additionally, since making my first reply I've had a look at their website:

Used responsibly, Nightshade can help deter model trainers who disregard copyrights, opt-out lists, and do-not-scrape/robots.txt directives. It does not rely on the kindness of model trainers, but instead associates a small incremental price on each piece of data scraped and trained without authorization. Nightshade's goal is not to break models, but to increase the cost of training on unlicensed data, such that licensing images from their creators becomes a viable alternative.

Once again we see that the intended impact of Nightshade is not to eliminate generative AI but to make it infeasible for models to be created and trained by without a corporate money-bag to pay licensing fees for guaranteed clean data. I generally feel that this focuses power upwards and is overall a bad move. If anything, this sort of model, where only large corporations can create and control AI tools, will do nothing to help counter the economic displacement without worker protection that is the real issue with AI systems deployment, but will exacerbate the problem of the benefits of those systems being more constrained to said large corporations.

Kinda sucks how that gets pushed through by lying to small artists about the importance of copyright law for their own small-scale works (ignoring the fact that processing derived metadata from web images is pretty damn clearly a fair use application).

#not-terezi-speaks #ai #nightshade

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probablyasocialecologist · 25 days ago

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AI data centers are being approved at a breakneck pace across the country, particularly in poorer regions where they are pitched as economic development projects to boost property tax receipts, bring in jobs and where they’re offered sizable tax breaks. Data centers typically don’t hire many people, though, with most jobs in security and janitorial work, along with temporary construction work. And the costs to the utility’s other customers can remain hidden because of a lack of scrutiny and the limited power of state energy regulators. Many data centers—like the one Meta is building in Holly Ridge—are being powered by fossil fuels. This has led to respiratory illness and other health risks and emitting greenhouse gasses that fuel climate change. In Memphis, a massive data center built to launch a chatbot for Elon Musks’ AI company is powered by smog-spewing methane turbines, in a region that leads the state for asthma rates.

[...]

A research paper by Ari Peskoe and Eliza Martin published in March looked at 50 regulatory cases involving data centers, and found that tech companies were pushing some of the costs onto utility customers through secret contracts with the utilities. The paper found that utilities were often parroting rhetoric from AI boosting politicians—including President Biden—to suggest that pushing through permitting for AI data center infrastructure is a matter of national importance.

23 June 2025

#ai #artificial intelligence #meta #data #energy

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mckitterick · 28 days ago

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She Won. They Didn't Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election. How Leonard Leo's 2021 sale of an electronics firm enabled tech giants to subvert the 2024 election.

Everyone knows how the Republicans interfered in the 2024 US elections through voter interference and voter-roll manipulation, which in itself could have changed the outcomes of the elections. What's coming to light now reveals that indeed those occupying the White House, at least, are not those who won the election.

Here's how they did it.

(full story is replicated here below the read-more: X)

She Won

The missing votes uncovered in Smart Elections’ legal case in Rockland County, New York, are just the tip of the iceberg—an iceberg that extends across the swing states and into Texas.

On Monday, an investigator’s story finally hit the news cycle: Pro V&V, one of only two federally accredited testing labs, approved sweeping last-minute updates to ES&S voting machines in the months leading up to the 2024 election—without independent testing, public disclosure, or full certification review.

These changes were labeled “de minimis”—a term meant for trivial tweaks. But they touched ballot scanners, altered reporting software, and modified audit files—yet were all rubber-stamped with no oversight.

That revelation is a shock to the public.

But for those who’ve been digging into the bizarre election data since November, this isn’t the headline—it’s the final piece to the puzzle. While Pro V&V was quietly updating equipment in plain sight, a parallel operation was unfolding behind the curtain—between tech giants and Donald Trump.

And it started with a long forgotten sale.

A Power Cord Becomes a Backdoor

In March 2021, Leonard Leo—the judicial kingmaker behind the modern conservative legal machine—sold a quiet Chicago company by the name of Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion. The buyer: Eaton Corporation, a global power infrastructure conglomerate that just happened to have a partnership with Peter Thiel’s Palantir.

To most, Tripp Lite was just a hardware brand—battery backups, surge protectors, power strips. But in America’s elections, Tripp Lite devices were something else entirely.

They are physically connected to ES&S central tabulators and Electionware servers, and Dominion tabulators and central servers across the country. And they aren’t dumb devices. They are smart UPS units—programmable, updatable, and capable of communicating directly with the election system via USB, serial port, or Ethernet.

ES&S systems, including central tabulators and Electionware servers, rely on Tripp Lite UPS devices. ES&S’s Electionware suite runs on Windows OS, which automatically trusts connected UPS hardware.

If Eaton pushed an update to those UPS units, it could have gained root-level access to the host tabulation environment—without ever modifying certified election software.

In Dominion’s Democracy Suite 5.17, the drivers for these UPS units are listed as “optional”—meaning they can be updated remotely without triggering certification requirements or oversight. Optional means unregulated. Unregulated means invisible. And invisible means perfect for infiltration.

Enter the ballot scrubbing platform BallotProof. Co-created by Ethan Shaotran, a longtime employee of Elon Musk and current DOGE employee, BallotProof was pitched as a transparency solution—an app to “verify” scanned ballot images and support election integrity.

With Palantir's AI controlling the backend, and BallotProof cleaning the front, only one thing was missing: the signal to go live.

September 2024: Eaton and Musk Make It Official

Then came the final public breadcrumb:In September 2024, Eaton formally partnered with Elon Musk.

The stated purpose? A vague, forward-looking collaboration focused on “grid resilience” and “next-generation communications.”

But buried in the partnership documents was this line:

“Exploring integration with Starlink's emerging low-orbit DTC infrastructure for secure operational continuity.”

The Activation: Starlink Goes Direct-to-Cell

That signal came on October 30, 2024—just days before the election, Musk activated 265 brand new low Earth orbit (LEO) V2 Mini satellites, each equipped with Direct-to-Cell (DTC) technology capable of processing, routing, and manipulating real-time data, including voting data, through his satellite network.

DTC doesn’t require routers, towers, or a traditional SIM. It connects directly from satellite to any compatible device—including embedded modems in “air-gapped” voting systems, smart UPS units, or unsecured auxiliary hardware.

From that moment on:

Commands could be sent from orbit

Patch delivery became invisible to domestic monitors

Compromised devices could be triggered remotely

This groundbreaking project that should have taken two-plus years to build, was completed in just under ten months.

Elon Musk boasts endlessly about everything he’s launching, building, buying—or even just thinking about—whether it’s real or not. But he pulls off one of the largest and fastest technological feats in modern day history… and says nothing? One might think that was kind of… “weird.”

According to New York Times reporting, on October 5—just before Starlink’s DTC activation—Musk texted a confidant:

“I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.”

Then, an hour later:

“This isn’t something on the chessboard, so they’ll be quite surprised. ‘Lasers’ from space.”

It read like a riddle. In hindsight, it was a blueprint.

The Outcome

Data that makes no statistical sense. A clean sweep in all seven swing states.

The fall of the Blue Wall. Eighty-eight counties flipped red—not one flipped blue.

Every victory landed just under the threshold that would trigger an automatic recount. Donald Trump outperformed expectations in down-ballot races with margins never before seen—while Kamala Harris simultaneously underperformed in those exact same areas.

If one were to accept these results at face value—Donald Trump, a 34-count convicted felon, supposedly outperformed Ronald Reagan. According to the co-founder of the Election Truth Alliance:

“These anomalies didn’t happen nationwide. They didn’t even happen across all voting methods—this just doesn’t reflect human voting behavior.”

They were concentrated.

Targeted.

Specific to swing states and Texas—and specific to Election Day voting.

And the supposed explanation? “Her policies were unpopular.” Let’s think this through logically. We’re supposed to believe that in all the battleground states, Democratic voters were so disillusioned by Vice President Harris’s platform that they voted blue down ballot—but flipped to Trump at the top of the ticket?

Not in early voting.

Not by mail.

With exception to Nevada, only on Election Day.

And only after a certain threshold of ballots had been cast—where VP Harris’s numbers begin to diverge from her own party, and Trump’s suddenly begin to surge. As President Biden would say, “C’mon, man.”

In the world of election data analysis, there’s a term for that: vote-flipping algorithm.

And of course, Donald Trump himself:

He spent a year telling his followers he didn’t need their votes—at one point stating,

“…in four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote.”

____

They almost got away with the coup. The fact that they still occupy the White House and control most of the US government will make removing them and replacing them with the rightful President Harris a very difficult task.

But for this nation to survive, and for the world to not fall further into chaos due to this "administration," we must rid ourselves of the pretender and his minions and controllers once and for all.

#musk-trump regime #election interference #election integrity #election 2024 #election fraud #coups

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what-eats-owls · 10 months ago

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This info was of some surprise to folks on Bluesky, so I'm going to repeat it here in light of the sheer number of "the Internet Archive was an uncomplicated good apart from this one weird move" posts I've seen...

Are we all aware that IA has been gradually pushing the dogma that generative AI is a net public good, and has been feeding books, music, and video into AI?

This article is about how IA is actively using AI in their archives. It's an interview with Brewster Kahle, founder and Board Chair of IA. Choice quote:

This is the blog post about the comments they submitted to the US copyright office arguing against any new copyright regulations for AI. Some more choice quotes:

You can guess how I feel about framing the writers and artists whose work BUILT generative AI as "workers" who just need to be "retrained."

Last year they hosted a zoom panel called "Generative AI Meets Open Culture: Opportunities, Challenges & Ethical Considerations." Multiple visuals were AI-generated art, the panelists were asked to avoid discussing copyright. It's an hourlong panel and I couldn't find a transcript, so I skipped around to see if anyone addressed the elephant in the room. I found at ~32 minutes, a vague gesture at acknowledging it wasn't great if you tried to replicate an artist's style, but fine if you just wanted generic art.

(If anyone finds a more concrete statement in there, and/or a transcript, I'd love to know! The tenor I got was overall "look at how cool these tools are and let's talk about how they're a public good.")

At the end of January 2024, they hosted "Public Domain Day," including a panel on incorporating Generative AI in art. They invited two artists who utilize Generative AI, and a publisher whose books go immediately into the public domain. More quotes from their own writeup:

This was an event in celebration of public domain, but as far as I can tell, they've more or less avoided even acknowledging that creators are actively being harmed by Gen AI. Again, if anyone can find a clearer statement, please share it.

Another wrinkle in this is that Kahle, on behalf of the Internet Archive, sued the US Government in 2004, challenging the law that automatically granted and renewed copyright to a creator. Previously, copyright was opt-in only, had to be regularly renewed by the holder, and cost money to do so. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2007, but was dismissed. (Scroll down to Docket 07-189, Kahle v Mukasey, for court filings.)

To be clear, this is the law that means you automatically own your own work. It's not a shock that Kahle's suit failed. But if Kahle had won, artists who didn't pay to secure and maintain copyright over their work would be SOL right now in the lawsuits against generative AI image and text scrapers.

So yeah. My tiny violin for IA continues to shrink.

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dearhnymn · 2 months ago

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𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥.

PAIRING ⊱ a. lockwood × mentor!reader WORD COUNT ⊱ 3.8k SUMMARY ⊱ as a skilled but no-nonsense dueling expert, inspector barnes sends you to 35 portland row to whip lockwood & co. into shape. with this comes butting heads with anthony lockwood, who challenges you at every turn. the stakes are rising every passing session, and so does the simmering tension between the two of you.

You’d long stopped wearing the uniform.

The Fittes coat lay folded in the back of your wardrobe, an artifact of a life you hadn’t quite been ready to discard—an emblem of duty and responsibility you had chosen to leave behind. At first, you had worn it proudly, thinking that the prestige and responsibility it brought would fulfill you. But soon, its weight became suffocating, the starched fabric a constant reminder of how you were being held back. The assignments you were given were tame—routine, less dangerous, and in a way, dull. You dealt with Type Ones, haunted buildings that were more nuisance than danger. The other agents, the ones with real experience, were sent to face the actual threats—the buildings crawling with dangerous Type Twos, violent and unpredictable. You couldn’t stomach the disparity anymore. You needed more than this, more than these carefully contained hauntings that didn’t challenge you, that didn’t make you feel alive. You were stuck in a box, kept back by bureaucracy. So, you left.

　“Thank you for your service,” was all they said. You filled out the paperwork, your signature sharp and resolute, and shook hands with your supervisor. His gaze lingered on you, a mixture of disappointment and concern, as if you were stepping off a precipice. But you didn’t look back. Not once. Regret was a stranger to you now.

Yet your name still echoed in certain circles, trailing behind you like a phantom.

Among the younger agents, there were whispers—stories of the girl who had once parried a Type Two blindfolded during a training demo, her concentration unwavering, blade glinting with fierce determination. As a child, you had tackled opponents twice your size in tournaments while many of your peers were still mastering sticks in the playground. You weren’t famous—far from it. But you were known. Not for your charm or the knack for theatrics, but for the hard-hitting results that spoke volumes.

That reputation was why Inspector Barnes sought you out.

You hadn’t anticipated his visit. It was a chilling Tuesday afternoon, the kind that sent a shiver through your bones, as you were rummaging through a cramped rented cupboard in an apartment above a bakery. The warm, inviting scent of rising dough mingled oddly with the memories of your recent case. A lingering apparition had drifted through a family’s home in Highgate—a Type One spirit, nothing you couldn’t handle. You were bruised and weary, flecks of salt still clinging to your boots from your late-night escapade, when the knock echoed through your solitary refuge.

You opened the door, your rapier still securely buckled at your side, instinctively prepared for whatever lay beyond.

Barnes stood there, more worn than you remembered. His trench coat was rumpled, as if he’d been caught in a storm—both literal and metaphorical. The lines etched on his stern face spoke of late nights and worry, of battles fought and losses accepted.

　“You’re hard to find,” he said, his voice steady but edged with urgency.

You raised an eyebrow, letting a smirk tease the corners of your lips. “Maybe I prefer it that way.”

His gaze softened for the briefest moment before resolute resolve returned. “I need a favor.”

This stilled you. Barnes was not the type to ask for favors lightly; his reputation was built on self-sufficiency and an uncompromising attitude.

You stepped aside, allowing him entry into your world—one you had fought so hard to escape.

He didn’t sit, didn’t bother to shake off the city’s chill as he remained rooted in the middle of the room, an immovable sentinel. His words spilled forth, crisp and clear: “Certain independent companies have been drawing attention—smaller ones that are reckless in their pursuits. Lockwood & Co., in particular.”

With each word, a knot grew tighter in your stomach. “They’ve made quite the name for themselves,” he continued, his tone flat but heavy with implication. “More successes in the field than some Fittes teams, apparently. But they’re unorthodox. Undisciplined.”

You nodded slowly, piecing together the fragments of his request. “You want me to whip them into shape.”

　“I want you to refine them. Teach them the proper way to handle a rapier before someone gets killed—especially that boy, Lockwood.”

Your breath caught for a moment. “You want me to teach Anthony Lockwood?” The disbelief clawed at you, caught between reluctant excitement and a deep-seated wariness.

A flicker passed across Barnes’s mouth—maybe it was a grimace, maybe a hint of smugness. “The boy has exceptional talent, but he’s cocky. Doesn’t think he needs help. He won’t respect just anyone.”

You crossed your arms, the weight of his expectation pressing against you. “And you think he’ll respect me?”

　“I think you’re the only one who won’t fall for the show,” he replied smoothly.

That almost elicited a smile, a ghost of your old self surfacing momentarily.

　“Alright,” you said the words slowly with renewed conviction. “I’ll do it. But on my terms.”

　“Of course.”

He handed you a simple slip of paper, his neat, clipped handwriting marking the address: 35 Portland Row. No files, no dossiers, just a name laden with untold stories and the promise of a turbulent future.

And just like that, he was gone, leaving only the echo of his presence behind—a mixture of duty and dread lingering in the room, as you contemplated the path ahead.

The townhouse looked.. alright.

Your knock at the door was sharp and businesslike, cutting through the cozy atmosphere like a well-placed dagger. Lucy, nestled comfortably on the worn sofa with a tattered novel in her hands, looked up to meet George's gaze. He was half-buried under a mountain of disheveled newspaper clippings and biscuit crumbs.

　"That'll be her," Lucy said, a note of anticipation lacing her voice as she rose from her perch and moved toward the door.

George smirked, a teasing glint in his eye. "I bet she’ll stride in with a clipboard and superiority complex."

Lucy shot him a brief glare, but amusement danced in her expression as she pulled open the door. There, framed by the drizzle of a damp London morning, stood a figure who seemed to embody the very spirit of practicality. The young woman, perhaps only a few years older than themselves, was clad in a thick coat that looked as though it had seen many dreary days. A worn satchel hung heavy across one shoulder, and her eyes held a no-nonsense glint that reminded Lucy of freshly sharpened blades—uncompromising and keen.

You.

　"Ah yes," Lucy beamed, her voice steady despite the brisk chill in the air. “You’re the one Barnes called about?”

You nodded, expression bordering on grave. "Lockwood & Co.? If the address I got was correct."

Lucy nodded and stepped aside, inviting you in. "Come in."

Without so much as a beat, she entered the cluttered room. George stood awkwardly, brushing crumbs off his shirt in a vain attempt to appear composed. The girl’s eyes flicked over the chaos that cluttered the coffee table—the remnants of their current case and remnants of George's snacking habits—the faint iron scorch marks on the carpet from earlier mishaps, and the sheathed rapiers mounted proudly on the wall. She took it all in with a discerning glance but offered no comment, her features betraying nothing.

　"He didn’t mention a name," Lucy added, trying to offer a friendly overture by extending her hand.

　"Just call me whatever makes this faster," you replied, tone flat—a monotone that signaled an impatience with social niceties. Your handshake was brief and firm, quickly turning your gaze around the room again. "Where’s Anthony Lockwood?"

A voice drifted down from the staircase, resonant and reassuring. "I’m here."

Lockwood descended with the easy confidence of someone accustomed to authority, his tall frame striking at the base of the stairs. He folded his arms, a slight smirk playing at his lips as he regarded their new guest with a calculating gaze.

He looked like some posh schoolboy who got lost on their way home.

　"You’re the one Barnes sent?" he asked, a playful edge in his voice.

　"Yes," you replied flatly, devoid of any hint of deference.

Lockwood’s jaw tensed slightly, his brows knitting together. "You’re barely older than we are."

Your eyebrow arched ever so slightly, challenging him. "You’re welcome to call DEPRAC and argue."

George coughed to suppress a laugh, while Lucy couldn’t help but grin. The atmosphere brimmed with the electric thrill of their dubious expectations being upended.

Lockwood’s expression smoothed out, but a flicker of surprise crossed his face. He hadn’t anticipated this: a young individual such as you exuding seriousness and strength, unapologetically confident. There was an air about you—calm yet resolute—suggesting that you were the kind of person who didn’t trip over stray ghost nets or misplace iron chains, not ever.

　"And what exactly are you here to do again?" he pressed, curiosity mingling with skepticism.

You dropped your satchel by the armchair with a subtle thud. "I’m here to observe your technique and correct it."

　"Our technique?" George echoed, glancing up from one of the clippings, intrigued.

　"Yes."

Lockwood’s eyes glimmered with a mix of intrigue and amusement. "Barnes thinks we need correcting?"

　"He’s gotten complaints."

　"We’re still alive, aren’t we?"

　"That isn’t the metric he’s going for." Your voice was steady, unwavering.

A heavy silence settled in, the tension palpable in the atmosphere.

"Well then," Lucy said brightly, rubbing her hands together in mock glee, "this should be fun!"

The first training session took place that very afternoon in the basement. Lockwood leaned against one of the desks, his arms crossed, exuding an air of authority that was both natural and practiced. Lucy stood poised, her blade drawn, as she eyed you with a mix of wariness and determination.

　"You’re leading this, then?" Lockwood asked, gesturing vaguely toward the ad hoc training area they had set up—a patch of damp grass laden with iron bells and assorted gear.

You didn’t respond with words, simply drawing your own rapier—a simple but well-worn piece that seemed almost an extension of you—it glinted dully in the softened light as you faced Lucy.

　"Show me your guard."

Lucy obliged, gripping her weapon with a mix of eagerness and trepidation. You corrected her foot placement with a nudge, guiding Lucy's boot into a more stable stance before tapping her shoulder lightly, a subtle cue that spoke without words.

　"You drop your elbow. If a ghost came in fast, you’d be wide open,"

Lucy adjusted as instructed, her heartbeat quickening as she sought to prove herself.

　"Again," you insisted, albeit gently.

The two of you went through the motions for ten minutes, the girl’s tone unwavering and laser-focused. There was no dramatics, no embellishment—just straightforward corrections that pierced through Lucy’s insecurities like sunlight breaking through clouds.

George, watching from the sidelines, muttered something about feeling like he was back in primary school PE. When his turn finally came, he stepped forward with visible reluctance; his movements were hesitant, lacking the fluidity of someone used to physical combat—more flail than finesse. Still, he made the effort, face screwed in concentration.

Lockwood observed intently, biting the inside of his cheek as a mix of annoyance and admiration flooded him. You didn’t seem to seek the spotlight, and that irked him—your skill spoke volumes without needing a showmanship he reveled in. Your skill in the field was much evident in the fluidity of your movements, how you wielded the rapier with the kind of finesse that spoke of endless practice and inherent skill, and the way you delivered instruction with a no-nonsense precision. A part of him, the competitive edge, bristled.

When it was finally his turn, Lockwood stepped forward smoothly, drawing his blade with an exaggerated flourish—an unspoken challenge hanging in the air between them.

　"Let’s see how much there is to ‘fix’," he smiled, confidence thrumming in his chest.

Your silence was electric, almost defiant, as though you welcomed the challenge. You began.

His movements were sharp, tinged with the arrogance that often accompanied mastery. He’d practiced for years, sparred with peers and inspectors, and faced genuine threats; he was good—no, he was amazing.

But you were better. Of course.

You parried every swing with effortless grace, reading his intentions like a well-thumbed book. When you stepped in, twisting your body with precision, you knocked the blade from his hand. He stood there blinking, the tip of your rapier hovering just shy of his collarbone, his heart racing as the reality of the moment settled in.

Recognition flickered in your eyes, perhaps a hint of satisfaction, but it was fleeting—a controlled acknowledgment of her victory. Lockwood’s composure faltered for a heartbeat, a mix of irritation and admiration swirling within him, igniting a steely determination to rise to the challenge you presented.

The others were silent, the air heavy with unspoken tension. You lowered your sword, eyes narrowing with keen observation. "You leave your left side exposed when you recover,” you pointed out, your voice steady, though sweat laced your forehead.

He didn’t move, his expression unreadable. "That’s not a mistake," he replied, his tone a defiance cloaked in calm.

　"No?" You raised an eyebrow, intrigued yet doubtful.

　"It’s bait," he asserted, a trace of a smirk dancing on his lips.

"Sloppy, if you ask me," you countered, dismissing his bravado with a flick of your wrist.

He stepped back, tension coiling through him. A muscle in his jaw tightened, and he shot a brief glance at George, who met his eyes with a knowing gaze. George scribbled something into a notepad, oblivious to the immediate drama unfolding.

　"Are you betting on us now?" Lockwood raised a brow, irritation creeping into his voice, a protective instinct flaring in response to any possible teasing.

　"No," George replied, his tone light and teasing. "Just documenting the courtship ritual. For science, of course."

Lucy snorted, unable to contain her amusement, the corners of her mouth tugging upward as she caught the undertones of their tension.

The next few days dragged on like an unending storm, filled with grueling drills that were strangely invigorating. Mornings began with warm-ups and stretches, followed by footwork drills. They partnered up, rotating every fifteen minutes, as you provided notes and pushed them until their shirts were drenched with sweat. Lucy improved quickly, becoming steadier, faster, and more confident in her movements. George struggled but kept listening, gradually taming his chaotic footwork. You adjusted their grips, pointed out their mistakes, and corrected their instincts as they trained.

You led them relentlessly, pushing them to rise with the sun, stretch until their muscles screamed, and repeat patterns until their wrists ached with fatigue. Yet, your approach seemed fair; after all, you didn’t mock or lord your skill over them. Instead, you tried to inspire them through unwavering determination, making their struggles feel almost noble.

In contrast, Lockwood refused to improve quietly. He fought you at every turn during sparring matches, challenged your comments, and pushed himself harder with each session. Yet, beneath the defiance and dramatics, he was paid attention. He always did.

And he watched you more than he should’ve.

It wasn’t obvious, not to anyone else. He’d mastered the art of indifference years ago—glances that slid off like water, expressions held just long enough to feign casual interest. But when you moved, blade in hand and posture exact, something about it hooked into him.

You didn’t show off. You didn’t gloat when you landed a hit. You corrected him with a calm, even tone, sometimes with a faint smile like you already knew he’d argue it. Your hands were practiced, movements deliberate. There was no ego in it, no need to prove yourself. And maybe that’s what got to him.

You didn’t need to win the room. You were already comfortable in it.

He hated that he noticed it. Even more, he despised the tightness in his chest, a feeling he couldn't identify and didn't want to confront.

He tried to convince himself it was just respect, a simple acknowledgment of your exceptional talent. You were good—very good—and that was all there was to it.

Yet, the more time he spent around you, the more that comforting lie unraveled, exposing a deeper truth he wasn’t ready to face.

Amidst the chaos of the sessions, George took to brewing tea and cooking up his delicious Iranian meals in the corner of the kitchen, his presence an anchor in the rising tension. Lucy held up numbered cards like a judge presiding over an absurd fencing tournament, while he added his playful commentary every now and then, narrating your and Lockwood’s every move as if the two of you were the stars of a grand soap opera.

　"He’s pretending he doesn’t care," she whispered, casting a conspiratorial glance their way.

　"She’s pretending she doesn’t notice," George replied, barely suppressing a grin.

　"Five quid says someone gets disarmed and someone else gets emotionally repressed," Lucy smirked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

Lockwood ignored them, of course. Or at least, pretended to.

One night, after George and Lucy retreated upstairs, he found solace in the stillness of the basement. The rhythmic sound of steel against cloth filled the air as you quietly cleaned the edge of your blade, the faint scent of oil lingering in the cool space.

He lingered in the doorway longer than he meant to.

The others had retreated upstairs—George muttering about burnt lemongrass and Lucy rolling her eyes as she dragged her notepad with her. The quiet that settled in their absence was almost too heavy, too clear.

You were still there, sitting cross-legged on the floor near the shelves, a blade in your lap. The cloth moved in slow, practiced strokes down the length of your rapier. Your posture was relaxed but not careless—like even now, even in stillness, you were prepared for something. For anything.

Lockwood watched you in silence, noticing again what he shouldn't: how your hands, calloused and sure, treated the weapon like a part of you. He observed the way the curve of your shoulders shifted slightly with each pass of the cloth: focused and controlled.

Lockwood should have gone to bed. You were only here to train them, after all—just another mentor brought in by DEPRAC, someone sharper and steadier, older by barely a year but years ahead in experience. You weren’t here to make friends, certainly not to get close.

And yet, he crossed the room before he could talk himself out of it and sat down beside you, close but not quite touching yet. Close enough to feel the warmth of you in the air between.

You glanced at him, not at all annoyed nor surprised. Instead, you had that unreadable flicker of an expression, as if you already knew he’d follow.

Without a word, he grabbed a cleaner rag from the counter and held it out. You hesitated, then took it without a word. No thanks, no comment, but your fingers brushed his as you did.

Something sparked—fleeting, immediate, too much. The room held still.

　“I could’ve gone for the hit,” he said, breaking the silence.

You didn’t look at him. “But you didn’t.”

　“No,” he admitted. “I didn’t.”

You nodded once. The new cloth shifted in your hands as you ran it along the edge of the blade, slow and deliberate again—but this time, he noticed the tension behind it, something simmering just beneath your calm surface. It mirrored the thing rattling around in his chest—too loud in the silence.

　“You’re not from Fittes, aren't you?”

　“No.”

Lockwood looked down at the floor between them, then back at the blade in your hands. There was a knick near the guard—almost invisible, but he saw it.

　“You missed one,” he said softly, pointing.

Your fingers followed his gaze, and your hands brushed his once more—just for a moment, just long enough to feel the heat of skin against skin.

He didn’t pull away. Neither did you.

You focused back on the blade, but Lockwood noticed the difference now—the way your jaw had set, just slightly, as if you were holding something down. He knew that feeling.

This was supposed to be a job. You were supposed to be an instructor, and he was supposed to be just another student you passed through, taught a few things, then left behind. But that wasn’t how it felt.

When your hands stilled and your gaze lifted, Lockwood looked up too. And you locked eyes.

The tension coiled, unrelenting—no banter, no mask. Just something real and unsettling pressing between you. The air pulled tight like a held breath.

Whatever this was—whatever it had grown into—neither of you were meant to feel it. Not here, not now. And yet the draw was impossible to ignore, living in the space between your knees almost touching, the silence too loud to be casual, the flicker of something restrained in your eyes.

He should have looked away. He didn’t. Not until you broke eye contact as your fingers returned to the cloth like nothing had happened. But he saw the way your hands hesitated and how your shoulders tensed just slightly beneath your calm exterior.

He stood slowly. The floor creaked beneath his weight. You didn’t look up again, and that should have been the end of it.

As he turned to leave, he glanced back once. “Same time tomorrow?” he asked, a smooth polish and half a grin crawling back to his face.

You let out a small, amused laugh, your eyes twinkling. “Only if you try not to forget your footwork this time.”

It was the first time he had heard you laugh. Or at least, when it was directed towards him.

With the smile still on his face, he climbed the stairs slower than usual that night, each step feeling heavier than the last. And when he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, he knew that whatever line had been drawn between you, he had already stepped dangerously close to it.

Maybe you had too. And neither of you knew what would happen if you crossed it.

George and Lucy noticed the shift; they always did.

They picked up on the subtleties. The way Lockwood stopped interrupting you mid-sentence, finally listening. The way he nodded in agreement as you shared your insights, a newfound respect blooming between them. The way he lingered in the basement after their sessions, a reluctance to leave the space that had become charged with something more than mere practice.

One evening, Lucy leaned against the banister, arms crossed, and whispered, "He’s softening," a sly smirk lighting her face.

George nudged her, a smirk gracing his lips. "You better have that five quid ready."

the way how this has been sitting in my docs for a little over a month now.. i could feel it stare into my soul judgingly every time I posted a different fic instead 😭 might make a part two, buuuuuut who knows?

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