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frostedturquoise · 4 months ago

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I don't know, maybe its just funny because it's been like idk 10 going on 15 years and i had the thought while cooking noodles today that ended up continuing into my 'have a coffee and try to find this missing pair of pliers for a separate (non bead) craft project (spoiler, i did not, in fact, find them. so it is now a problem for later me) In my misery of having to take antibiotics that are easily almost half the size of the whole first half of my pinkie finger on an heavily inflamed throat and anything i hear sounding both half muffled and doubled over, i gave up on trying to catch up on podcasts because it was disorientating so here have this ramble instead, that is fuelled by three layers of sick, and just plain boredom and lamenting my inability to just lay outside and suffer without being told 'your sick nobody wants your germs; because i alas live in a unit complex where the only 'yard' is a communal space and i am yearning for an open space with good active airflow, preferably heavily forested. Under a read more because none of you definitely asked for this ramble lmao. It might get pretty long and i remembered this time.

Anyway the point:

It is so so fucking hilarious but sad that in all that time up until my brothers ex girlfriend started yammering the fuck on about a gatcha game and its fucking companion anime. FUCKING she sole it better than the friend group around 2010-2018ish did. the whole time. She had better opinions of characters that i had heard nothing good about the the whole time and its funny i only looked at shit because i wanted a better flow of conversation than asking her sixty thousand things because most of the names she was rattling off i had no fucking CLUE about. Sure being gatcha only with no context her thinking Archer Emiya was a dick is fair, less context for why but infinitely funnier because he is less of a dick than the version the Extended Friend Group (of like twelve people minimum) used to rag on about. In all honesty im glad i was more distracted by the whole 'now where the fuck have i heard about that series from i cant place it' while knowing jack all but somehow coming across as knowing enough that people just never clocked on that i was the only person there who had like, never actually touched any of the content just knew a handful of things in passing. Just-- man it would of been so fucking funny if everyone was honest and none of them took the 'sheeple route' as they would of put it so they didn't rock the boat with an minority opinion.

I don't know shit outside scraps outside anything but ONE portion of the anime of the OG game plus scraps about the VN itself and the rest is random piecemeal outside wiki dives to understand what the fuck Gatcha Girl(tm) was saying so i can asked more targeted question than like asking a million of them and wasting time. And yet shit they thought was flat or they didn't get was as subtle as taking a solid wooden cricket bat to the nose. I got far more depth than i was expecting and maybe its good that t came waaayyy later so i didn't wind up roasting upwards of 9-12 people by accident for having piss poor analysis skills. But, in saying that, it would be unfair because i was That Guy/Girl/Whatever whose shit in 2012-13 was held together by two paperclips and a rubber band due to having jack all free time because i either couldnt sleep but Had To Be Considerate Of A Whole Dormitory(tm) and couldnt even fuck off for midnight walks to waste time only for m weekends to be mostly spent asleep for two years because it was the only time i could catch a break. (long story short being unable to stay weekends i had to redo ALLLL my classes on year one because my main classes were OFF site so grade 11 was a total disaster because despite asking nobody told me i had elected for like. the worst classes for what i wanted. So outside The Crew adjacent classes it was boring as fucking sin and i was sick of getting mixed results depending on what class i chose well beneath the original ones i had pencilled in and or ones i took that were useful to pad time. or that had to no excuses.)

So i find it funny that i came across as just? A bit moody if well adjusted and collected despite 80% of my time being 5.4 seconds and an single errant Bad Stimuli away from an vibrating gif thats captions are just 'AAAAAAAAAa' But that said i may of got too good at underplaying shit because nobody liked my flat honesty so neutral dismissive answers it was because 'eh things are okay (my lived definition of 'okay' at the the time was three steps away from abysmal given life circumstances)' or 'could be worse' because i spent almost my whole life being dismissed because 'other people have it worse' or fifty other nonsense dismissive answers. So it was easier to internalise everything and say nothing at all because nobody likes it when you ACTUALLY OPENLY ACKNOWLEDGE THINGS.

So needless to say a lot of the 'bad flat boring characterisations' were as obvious as a bat to the face. Like it takes one 'liar via omission' who just keeps i trucking on despite having like 2345678 internalised issues and fucky wucky guilt over could have beens to spot another from a mile away. But honestly that 'subtext' was so fucking obvious even in OG shit im floored that this shit has been under a paper thin layer of the surface of my internet circles since fucking forever and i spent like eight years with an overaching friend group who talked about it WAY more than i thought. (even if 25% of the time it was memes lmafo) and im only finding out recently??

So yeah if at the time i would of been asked 'OH what makes YOU say that?' due to being the Sole Opinioner (out loud anyway) being grilled about that one would of been so fucking 'shishitshtshit' because id have to try to blatantly skirt the real reason why it was super mega obvious outside obvious in your face shit by mistake. Very much the kind of character you 'get' in ways you wish you didn't that makes you want to beat them up with a frying pan while telling them to get over themselves. But man, given his situation i wouldn't blame him for going of the rails since i wouldn't expect someone like that to react rationally.

Not sure if it was he meme exposure brainrot, or if??? They were just genuinely so dense that they couldn't even have a decent grasp of Rin or Shirou. Hell it'd probably be a tie between Shirou and Archer who?? Just??? They had collectively completely missed the most characterisation of, it going over their heads entirely.

Still, in hindsight its funny how shit panned out the way they did, my cousin telling me the shit he did only for like eight years later to be more caught up on 'holy shit how were you ALL this dense. it was obvious. in your face obvious' part whenever the series comes to mind half the time that, y'know, the actual context.

But maybe now that this half out of it ramble is out of my system i will hopefully think about it less.

I still cant believe it took them like eight to ten years to figure out i never knew jack all about Fate as an whole, and it was all because they thought a OC i adapted for a DnD game was a direct reference to it.

But honestly i still, outside this, do most of my facepalming over the characterisation of mythological figures (man waaaaay too many white people. why.) which sometimes is funny, sometimes novel, other times weird and 'whhhhyyyyy' but file it away as 'Fate Edition(tm)' in ones head as a clean degree of separation. Also whatever the fuck is up with the reasons why most characters i know the names of that are NOT white being not-white due to??? magic?? yeah sure i guess whatever but it seems to be a weirdly recurring pattern that is like 'idk man. people can tan. people can just be not white-white its just variability in human nature dont be weird about it' is probably, well. Yeah what the fuck is up with that? Ironically the first thing about canon i decided to yeet out the nearest window because man that's just fucked. dont. So i try to not think about the excuse for why they are like that. Even if not because of the weird possibly undertones, but because i am an human being that's as white as a fucking ghost but if i get any kind of regular sun im just...not? That happens. That and just ye ole 'oh wow the variations all look different though!' well golly gee they are from different timelines so MAYBE that version just looks different, so what. SDFGHJKL

Honestly outside the whole having to pause something to bitch with Gatcha Girl(tm) over Gil being a fucking blue eyes blonde pasty ass pretty boy and being Offended(tm) as a kid who was interested in any kind of mythology i could get my hands on. Its in the same boat as when i was a kid i used to be all 'they are in egypt! Why is everyone wwhhiiitteeee' I too, want to clock him over the head with either a cricket bat or a heavy ass cast steel frying pan. But for different reasons.

Fuck honestly i think im just running out of shit to say that doesn't end in the topic completely fucking pivoting to something irrelevant outside the series itself. Namely because when i was talking to my brothers ex gf while wiki diving i was all 'oh i remember that name!' and just-- fucking flat out said without shame at 3am on whatever day of the week it was that Cu Alter looked biteable. Which was more than she probably wanted to know, but before that point i had already listened (read) about her gushing about like five characters that were in the Babylonia anime anyway so fair was fair i guess.

But by the nines when i unwittingly started this abysmal metaphorical snail aces media road trip i did NOT expect a backlog of fuck knows how long the series has been around of unwitting second and tri and whatever onwards hand exposure to lead to an almost net zero correlation of information. Its bad when you learned more from the piss poor overplayed memes than like?? Anything you had heard people sat before maybe idk october last year. With the exception of when she first talked about it back when he was still going out with my brother maybe but never followed up on because it was a bus week and i just flat out fucking forgot to ask the follow up questions because i don't care if i don't know jack shit i could carry a conversation about an actual concreteish topic over random nonspecific smalltalk.

Fuck. I dont know man. Shits weird. Shit i have had some weird experiences before with fandoms, but this has by far been one of the worst with this main situation being the sole criteria. Still nowhere near as awkward as going 'shit idk what character to pick i just want to START' with Borderlands The pre Sequel (which i knew nothing about aside from maybe two cutscenes and a few lines and second hand accounts of an event from) and rolled a die, got good ole timtams, and had the abysmal experience of playing a a character that was forced to pretend to be someone lse while being hounded by relatives who hounded me for being 'different' or 'too emotional' when i dont know man i gave up on pretending for the sake of a social appearance and when someone is chronically sleep deprived for a minimum of four years averaging like 20hr sleep a WEEK at BEST more than not. Someones not going to be the most emotionally stable. The game was good, but i could of certainly gone without that and a few other things that were so owwie i had to like. Turn the game off, flop over the couch, and stare at the ceiling for a few hours.

But man out of a minimum of twelve other people IRL how nobody 'got' something so simple -especially as ANIME ONLY WATCHERS- just?? miss?? So much glaringly obvious subtext that their only good opinion on some characters was 'cool aesthetics and stabby stabby devices'

IS it sad that i manged to go like?? Up until october last year without knowing both Shirou and Archer were THE SAME GUUUYYYYYY So final point before i decide to stop my tangent: Had i known that a certain discussion in the computer lab when i was in grade 12 would of gone drastically differently to the point the whole 'you?? never seen or read it?? dont know anything???' post DnD discussion would of been 90x more hilarious because it would of been a very jarring connection of dots that surely even an average joe who was just, normal average upbringing and was otherwise (mostly) decent would of been able to sandwich two and twp together given the shit that was said.

Hell maybe them thinking i KNEW was i was just too good at rolling with conversations while being all 'hmm i dont know shit but i can hazard a pretty good guess on this' if i chose to talk.

Ah. If you actually read all those take i don't fucking know, have a digital metaphorical facsimile of your beverage of choice because like fuck am i going back to read all my rambling that i just decided i wanted out of my head. Because you cannot give real ones out over the internet like this unfortunately.

#Turquoise Talks #This is mostly fandom babble. mostly centred on shit that hasnt touched this blog much outside tiny offhand scraps of info in passing.#Which yu may see a whole lot more of for this year if i get around to t.#lmao im sorry.#but it makes for an awfully fuckingg funny fandom mix since i never got around to reblogging jack shit fro my two other hibernating fandom-#--interests period.#something i hope to remedy sometime this year if i remember.

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kindlecorner · 1 year ago

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im cleanin up some stuff, which is why youre seeing a few pinned posts 💀

#sym.txt #mostly just updating info #making sure that everything links where it needs to be and clearing out old pins that dont serve me anymore #i also put a lil less emphasis on my art blog in my bio but im still going to like. reblog my art.#hopefully i can get around to sitting down and cleaning all the tags... oh how i wish...

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fairuzfan · 2 years ago

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Hey queen. You seem v knowledgeable about pro-Palestinian charities. Would you mind making a post or giving some info on which ones are really effective and honest abt their work? I've been hearing some problematic things about UNRWA, and Save the Children seems to be doing very little (as far as I am informed). I donate to PCRF and MAP, but don't know any other, smaller orgs that may also need more awareness? Thanks ♥

hello, thanks for sending this in. so i've been trying to find smaller orgs for palestine that are specifically for helping gaza, but the issue is not much aid is being let in. PCRF is a really good org in my opinion, I'd always donate to them regardless.

There's also the Palestine Museum, which does really great cultural preservation work.

Palestine Legal is a legal aid group that helps palestinian and palestinian advocacy facing legal challenges.

Palestine Action is a direct action group that helps do disruptive protests.

Samidoun helps palestinian prisioners around the world and keeps and eye on them.

Within Our Lifetime is an NYC based palestinian led organization.

Palestinian Youth Movement is a favorite for Turtle Island led Palestinian resistance.

Palestine Feminist Collective is a Turtle Island feminist movement that works to spread culture and information.

Good Shephard Collective seems to be doing good work in Bethlehem as well.

I would mostly look for mutual aid groups for people from Gaza if you want to donate to them. Aya Ghanamah retweets mutual aid groups a lot.

I might share more groups in a second reblog after I hear back on best ways to help them.

#palestine #gaza #donation

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buckaroosboogara · 1 year ago

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Hi! Just wanna raise some awareness here because South America is on fucking fire and I need to see more people talking about this.

Source: RSOE EDIS x

Im just going to talk about the ones i'm closest to, but if you know about these fires, feel free to add in the reblogs!

Chile

In Chile there's (up to Feb 5) 160 wild fires, of which 40 are still trying to be controlled by authorities. The president, Gabriel Boric, has declared State of Emergency in the whole country, and theres a Red Alert Code in most part of the country.

Isla de Chiloé, Southern Chile (900 km away from Santiago de Chile)

This is a (recently controlled) fire that lasted a week, but many neighborhoods were burnt to the ground.

The whole South is in red alert for constant sudden fires that spread quickly due to the lack of rain and the elevated temperatues in the zone. Just today, two fires had to be controlled in the main land next to this island, and more are being reported in the Los Lagos region. This is added to the "controlled" intentional fires that farmers make to clean their fields of old crops along the Central-South parts of the country, mostly surrunding the main route, Ruta 5, that connects the whole country, thus making it hard to see and breathe because of the smoke. (flashnews, most of them get out of control quickly.)

Valparaiso/Viña del Mar, Central Chile (100 km away from Santiago de Chile)

A fire that started on Friday 2nd and grew exponentially because of the wind and the dry, hot climate. More than 100 people are dead, with 70 unrecognized bodies and other 400 that have dissapeared. At least 30000 people that have lost everything to the fire.

There's massive evacuations from this and the neighboring city, Viña Del Mar.

This is said to be the second most deadly fire in the century, surpased by Australia in 2009.

45000+ hectares that include land and neighborhoods have been burnt down.

I could go on about this one, so more info here and here

Argentina

Parque Los Alerces (Esquel), Chubut

The fire strarted on the 25th January, and the climate has made it hard to contain. 3000 hectares of native forest have been burnt to teh ground. It is now growing in the direction of the nearest city, Esquel. Theres been evacuations between yesterday and today (4 and 5th Febuary)

Parque Nahuel Huapi (Bariloche), Río Negro

The reason why im writing this. The city woke up today covered in smoke after a wildfire developed yesterday during the night. The reason? A fireplace that was not turned off in a place where people cannot disembark and can only be reached via boats.

As of now, there's not much information about the fire but hopefully the firefighters will be able to contain it before it reaches Tronador Mountain, where an ancient glaciar is.

...which leads me to the other point i wanted to talk about.

Firefighters

They volunteer to do this job.

In Argentina and Chile, firefighting is not rewarded with a salary, and most of the times they dont even have full firehouses to stay in. These people are at their houses, ready to jump into action and run to the station the second the alarm goes off.

They are neighbors, people that risk their lives and run into danger willingly, just because they want to help the community.

I felt the need to give a shout-out to these people and say:

Don't be a fucking dick, don't start fires in the woods unless it's an approved place, and if you do, TURN IT OFF.

Pour abundant water on it, and do not stop when you don't see any more flames.

Keep pouring water until the ashes don't burn/feel like room temperature in your hand if you put it 10 cm away from it, and even then, pour some more just to be sure.

No heat and no smoke mean a safely extinguished fire.

Save lives and forests.

#dont even get me started on the denial of climate change from my president #didnt wanna get political here #argentina #chile #argieposting #argieblr #soff speaks #wildfires

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whisperedmeg · 1 month ago

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FLUORESCENT MERCY ―.✦ s.r. soft animal series ∘ part i

pairing: spencer reid x fem!nurse!reader

summary: spencer reid was never cut out for prison. under the buzz of the fluorescent overheads in the prison infirmary, spencer meets a nurse who sees beyond his inmate number.

genre: hurt/comfort, fluff

w/c: 7.7k (yikes sorry)

tags/warnings: s12 prison arc, mentions of drugs and murder, afab reader goes by she/her pronouns, flirting, banter, probably horribly inaccurate info on medical treatment and prison healthcare, mention of Alzheimer’s/schizophrenia, sadboy spencer, minor sexual tension, fluff, mentions of blood and other injury, spencer gets hurt a few times but he’s okay, reader lowkey kind of cyberstalks spencer but it’s fine she’s sweet

a/n: hello!! first time posting a fic on here eeeep. mostly writing this for myself more than anyone else tbh, but i hope anyone who stumbles upon this mouthful enjoys it. get to know me here. a few disclaimers: I am not a nurse!!! I have never worked in the correctional system or even been inside a prison before!!! there will probably be plenty of inaccuracies as to how that all works, and if that will bother you, this probably isn’t the fic for you and that’s okay. this is just for funsies :-) staying mostly true to the prison arc canon but with some tweaks for the sake of the story. story is told by reader from first person, very very minimal use of y/n (only when it’s absolutely necessary). again, i am very very brand new to posting fics on tumblr (+ writing for criminal minds in general) so I appreciate any and all interactions with this fic and any advice/feedback in my asks is always welcome! if you enjoy, please reblog! there’s really no other way for me to get this thing out there as a brand new blog, so that would mean the world to me 🤍

this is part of a series, but can be read as a stand-alone one shot!

series masterlist

Some days the air inside the infirmary felt heavier than others — thick with stale disinfectant and something harder to qualify. Grief, maybe. Danger, sometimes. Or resignation. Or just the ache of a hundred slow-moving lives, pressed up against metal and concrete.

I’d gotten used to it, mostly. That dull, pulsing ache. But occasionally I still caught myself pausing between tasks and wondering how I’d ended up here. Not in a bad way. Just… reflective. Being a nurse in a prison infirmary wasn’t the kind of job most little girls dreamed about, and it definitely wasn’t the kind of job that made first dates lean in with interest.

But I chose this. On purpose.

I’d seen what broken systems could do. I’d watched people be forgotten because it was easier that way. Being here meant I could be the person who didn’t look away. The person who treated people like people, even when the rest of the world pretended they were less than human.

I never used to picture myself here. Not in a place like this, anyway. But life doesn’t always move in straight lines, and I’ve learned not to fight the curves.

I became a nurse because I wanted to help. Not in some abstract, motivational quote-type of way, but in a way that matters. Out of school, I specialized in trauma for a while. Emergency room work in the city, night shift, a revolving door of chaos. At first, I loved the fast-paced and high-intensity nature of that environment, but I burned out quickly. When the opportunity came up to transfer into the correctional system, most of my colleagues looked at me like I was nuts for even considering it. But I didn’t flinch. People in here deserved care, too. Especially in here. No matter what they’d done to end up in prison.

There’s a different kind of urgency in prison nursing. You see a lot of pain that runs deeper than physical injury — shame, grief, resignation, embarrassment, numbness. Some inmates came in loud, either angry at the world or simply desperate to charm their way into extra pain medication or a reason to sit out of laundry duty. Others were quiet and looked right past you — or through you. Quiet because of shame or misery or as if the simple act of hearing their own voice could beckon danger to their feet. I didn’t blame them. The main goal for most was survival, plain and simple. And sometimes, simply surviving a place like this was hard enough.

—

He came in during the tail end of my shift one Wednesday — tall, hunched a little like he didn’t want to take up any more space than absolutely necessary, with curls still damp from the showers and a bloodied gauze pad pressed sloppily to the side of his left hand. A cut. Not bad, but deep enough to need attention. He sat perched on the edge of the cot like it might vanish under him if he moved too suddenly, his shoulders rounded and his head dipped down.

“Spencer Reid?” I asked to confirm his name, checking the file. He responded with the tiniest nod of acknowledgement, as if he forgot his muscles still worked. I lifted my eyes up from the paperwork to try to meet his, but they remained firmly trained down at his lap.

He was a new inmate, having just arrived at Millburn three days prior. Eerily quiet. Noticeably out of place. Something about his appearance didn’t seem to suit him, either. The patchy stubble peppering his jaw and the unruliness of his hair just looked off, and it was clear that he normally presented himself in a way that was much more cleaned up than this. It took me about 45 seconds to determine that the version of him before me wasn’t an accurate depiction of the man inside the jumpsuit.

My cursory read of his file was littered with red flags. Arrested in Mexico? Immediate FBI involvement? Last-minute switch from protective custody to gen pop upon arrival? Something seemed… strange, even for federal prison, where strangeness and corruption were the norm. I shook my head slightly, as if trying to literally clear my mind. Investigating or even knowing anything about his background at all wasn’t my job: I was here to provide medical care, so I turned off the instinctually curious part of my brain and got to work. “So. You cut your hand?”

He nodded once, barely lifting his eyes. “Library. Book spine split,” he replied. “There was a metal strip inside the binding. I wasn’t paying attention.”

His voice was soft but even, the kind of tone you could almost mistake for calm if you weren’t paying attention. He didn’t flinch when I took his hand, but I felt the muscles in his forearm and wrist pull taut like a wire. Clearly this man was uncomfortable with physical touch. I almost felt bad, but I couldn’t do my job without touching him, so I kept my hold.

“Sorry to hear that,” I said, trying to find that tone that falls somewhere between neutral and kind. “The prison library is supposed to be a safe place amongst all the chaos.”

The corner of his mouth twitched ever-so-slightly. Maybe a smile, maybe just a tic.

I cleaned the cut and wrapped it. His tension seemed to fade a bit as I worked, but it was replaced with something sadder — surprise at the genuine care I was showing him.

“Should heal up fine,” I told him. “Just try to keep it clean. If you notice any signs of infection like redness or fever, tell the guards you need to come back. Otherwise, I hope I don’t have to see you back here again. No more cuts, okay?”

He gave a polite nod, still not quite looking at me. “Thank you,” he murmured. He flicked his eyes up to me for a fleeting moment — brown, maybe? Hazel? Somewhere kind of golden in between? Before I could decipher the answer, he dropped his gaze back down to his lap.

And then he was gone, escorted out just as quickly as he’d come in.

It wasn’t anything remarkable. It was the type of patient interaction I’d normally forget before a shift was even over. But something about the way he’d sat so quietly, like he was trying not to leave even a speck of evidence of his existence, stayed with me.

Some inmates at Millburn talked too much. Some didn’t want to talk at all. Spencer Reid was the kind who seemed like he used to talk a lot, but had forgotten how.

—

My apartment was dark and quiet when I got home from work — just the low hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of the air vents as they settled into the night. I shrugged out of my scrubs, tossed them into the laundry basket, wrapped my robe around my body, and tied my hair up, my mind in a post-work fog. Some shifts clung to me longer than others. Today hadn’t been particularly bad, but I still felt the weight of it hanging somewhere behind my sternum. The longer I worked at Millburn, the heavier that weight seemed to get.

I microwaved a cup of leftover soup and curled up on the couch with my legs tucked beneath me, a blanket over my lap, and the TV playing something I wasn’t watching. My body was home, safe, comfortable. But my mind? My mind was somewhere else entirely.

The quiet, sad patient from the other day. Spencer Reid.

I hadn’t seen him again since I’d cleaned out that cut on his hand a few days ago, but for some unknown reason, he lingered in my head longer than most patients ever did. I’d told myself it was just professional curiosity understandably fueled by glaring abnormalities — that strange patchwork of mystery surrounding his intake file, the dissonance between the man and the setting. But if I was being honest with myself, I knew it was more than that.

It was the way he held himself like he was waiting to be punished for existing. The way his eyes, when they finally lifted, looked out from a place far deeper than the moment called for. The way he thanked me like my ounce of kindness caught him off guard.

One thing seemed clear: he didn’t belong there. I didn’t know what he’d done to end up in a federal penitentiary, but everything about him — the tone he used, the posture, the way he moved like someone used to quieter places — made it feel off. Not in the arrogant way that some white-collar criminals carried themselves, no — there was no smugness, no entitlement. Just… misalignment. Like he’d been suddenly dropped into a life that wasn’t his own.

I reached for my phone before I could talk myself out of it.

The search bar blinked at me, empty and expectant. I hesitated. It was a line I hadn’t crossed yet since I took the job at Millburn, but curiosity had always been a close cousin to empathy, and mine were tightly wound. So I typed his name into the search engine.

I was met with dozens of articles. Some recent — bold headlines about his arrest, drug and murder charges, extradition from Mexico, and a leaked photograph of him looking disoriented and bruised, eyes wide with something between confusion and betrayal. I learned he was awaiting trial, denied bail and remanded to federal custody.

I continued to scroll. Older articles populated the page — articles that painted a very different picture of the man in the photo. An FBI profiler with the Behavioral Analysis Unit out of Quantico. Over a decade of service. Genius-level IQ. Multiple PhDs. A polymath, one article said. Another quoted a journalist who referred to him as “a human encyclopedia with a badge.” I found footage of him from an old press conference, standing stiffly beside a blonde woman in a blazer, answering questions with a verbosity of language and a voice that sounded steadier, more self-assured than the quiet one I’d heard in the infirmary three days ago. I breezed through a few more articles, then I stopped scrolling.

I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I did know that the story in the recent headlines didn’t seem to line up with the man I’d met, the man who he appeared to have been prior to his arrest. That nagging feeling in my gut, the one I’d felt since his eyes first met mine, was still there.

I closed out of my phone and sat in the quiet a while longer, my vision blurred and out of focus, wondering what it must feel like to go from that kind of life — traveling around the country, solving impossible crimes, saving countless lives — to a place where everything is taken from you. To become the type of man that people only see as the charges on a rap sheet.

Whatever he’d done (or hadn’t done), he was still a person. But it was obvious to me that he no longer really felt like one.

I shut off the TV and let the darkness settle around me. I took a long, warm shower in an attempt to clear my head, but his name and his face still hovered around the hazy edges of my thoughts. I’d met a lot of inmates who wore guilt like a second skin. Spencer Reid didn’t. Whatever his story was, I had a feeling it hadn’t been fully told. And part of me — the quiet, stubborn part — wasn’t quite ready to let that go.

—

The second time I saw him, it was raining. Not the kind of rain that makes people pause at windows, but the kind that soaks the world in gray and turns everything sluggish.

Inside the infirmary, the ceiling buzzed faintly with humidity and fluorescent fatigue, and the consistent pitter-patter of rain against the barred windows made it easy to forget there was any world outside these walls at all. I was restocking gauze when I noticed his name on the intake log, two and a half weeks from his first visit.

Reid, Spencer. Mild cough. Lightheadedness. Possible fever.

My fingers paused over the clipboard, barely grazing the pen. I wasn’t sure what I expected — or why it mattered at all. He was just another patient. Just another inmate. Still, I felt something shift when I walked up to his cot. He was noticeably pale, a little drawn, like the weight of something invisible had pressed down on his bones. The weight of this place, of his situation.

“Hello again,” I said softly. “Guess we’re making this a habit. Thought I told you I didn’t want to see you back here?”

He looked up at that — actually looked up. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes stayed on mine for a beat longer than they had last time.

“I didn’t plan on it,” he said, voice quiet.

“I believe you.”

I moved through the usual steps: gloves on, vitals checked, a listen to his lungs. He wasn’t running a high fever, just something low-grade. His breath hitched slightly on the inhale, but there was no wheeze, no crackle. Probably viral. Should clear itself up in a week at most.

Still, he looked… frayed. Like someone who hadn’t slept properly in days. His hands were clean, but his nails were shorter than last time, bitten down. His face appeared sunken and his under eyes had a distinctly purple hue to them.

“Have you been sleeping?” I asked gently.

He tilted his head. “As much as possible. So, no.”

I didn’t push. Sometimes the answer wasn’t what mattered — it was how it was given.

We were quiet for a while as I documented the basics. I could feel his eyes drifting across the room, landing briefly on the supply shelves, the bulletin board, the sink. Avoiding mine, but not out of defiance. Out of caution, maybe. Or simple awkwardness. He coughed, and I handed him a paper cup filled with water.

“I read once,” he said suddenly, “that coughs often get worse when you’re trying not to think about them.”

I offered a small smile. “Sometimes trying not to think about something just leads you to focus on it even more. And thinking about a cough can trigger the reflex, even without physical cause. So I would say try not to think about it, but, you know…vicious cycle.”

His mouth twitched — a shadow of amusement, there and then gone. The air between us felt a little less still.

“You’re not what I would’ve expected from someone who works here,” he said after a moment.

I arched a brow, clipping my pen back onto my clipboard. “What did you expect?”

He shrugged. “Less… human.”

I offered him a small, empathetic smile. “Well,” I said after a beat, “lucky for you, I don’t know how to be anything else.”

I handed him some Tylenol and told him to keep hydrated. As I wrote out the discharge slip, I instructed him to come back if the fever feels like it isn’t breaking, and to try and get as much sleep as is possible in a place like this.

“Thanks,” he said before he left. Just like the time before, the word landed like he really meant it.

He walked up to the guard waiting for him, stepped out into the corridor, and was gone. I found myself wondering, again, who he really was — beneath the headlines, beneath the polyester prison uniform, beneath whatever pain had hollowed him out into a shell of who he used to be.

—

The infirmary was chaos.

Not the full-blown ER chaos of my past — just the slow, stomping, institutional kind. Raised voices, the occasional drop of blood, too many bandages unrolled across the counters. There had been some sort of fight in the cafeteria, supposedly over a stolen piece of cornbread. Or maybe a slur. Or a look. No one ever really knew for sure how these things started. By the time the inmates were dragged in — limping, cursing, sweating, sometimes screaming — it didn’t matter anyways.

I was elbow-deep in a butterfly bandage on one man’s eyebrow when I noticed him: Spencer, sitting quietly near the far wall.

He didn’t look as badly hurt as the others. His posture was too upright to suggest anything broken. He was holding a wad of gauze to his arm.

I clocked him on the low-priority end of the triage sheet: Laceration, superficial. Minor bleeding. Stable.

Sandra, the other nurse on duty, eventually crossed the room to him once we’d worked through the others. I could hear her asking him to remove the gauze.

“Clean cut,” she said. “Might need a few stitches.”

“I’ve had worse,” he replied, voice flat.

I was just finishing with discharge paperwork for a dislocated shoulder when I heard Sandra say, “We’ll get you patched up quick. Hang tight.” I glanced over, and he was already watching me. He quickly flicked his gaze to the floor.

“I’ve got that one Sandra,” I said over my shoulder, peeling off my gloves and tugging on a fresh pair. “Can you finish up this discharge for me?”

She raised a brow but didn’t question it, just nodded and switched places with me.

“Lucky me,” he murmured. It wasn’t quippy or sarcastic. It actually sounded genuine.

“You say that like you’re not sitting on a lumpy cot with your arm bleeding.”

He tilted his head, lifting his eyes to meet mine. “Well. Silver linings, I guess.”

I sat on the rolling stool beside him and started cleaning the wound. It wasn’t deep, but it ran a jagged path just beneath the curve of his bicep — a random flying lunch tray, I guessed. Wrong place, wrong time.

“You weren’t involved in the fight,” I said, phrasing it as more of a statement than a question.

“No,” he confirmed quietly. “Just passing by. I ducked too slow.”

I smiled without looking up. “Ah, classic mistake. You’ve got to learn to duck before the tray gets airborne.”

That actually got a laugh out of him — a soft, surprised sound, as if he hadn’t expected it from himself. He blinked down at me, momentarily disarmed. “You make jokes now?”

“Only in life-or-minor-laceration situations.”

The edges of his mouth twitched again. The usual shadow in his eyes was still there, but it seemed to thin out when he looked at me. A veil, instead of a wall.

“You’ve done this before,” he said as I threaded the suture needle.

“Stitches?” I asked. “Well, yeah. Hundreds of times.”

“No. I meant…this. Calming people down.”

I paused for just a second, then resumed. “Part of the job too, I guess.”

He didn’t reply, but his breathing had slowed. I worked quickly, neatly. The room was almost empty now. Just one CO near the door, arms crossed, barely paying attention. When I finished, I handed Spencer some gauze and medical tape. “You’ll want to keep this dry, at least for twenty-four hours. Try not to lift anything heavy. Or start any cafeteria fights.”

He shot me a shy, lopsided smile. “No promises.”

The guard called his name then — sharp, abrupt. Spencer stood, moving more slowly than necessary, tucking the gauze into the pocket of his jumpsuit. He looked down at me one last time, and for a second, neither of us said anything.

“Thanks, y/n.”

It was the first time he’d said my name. He must’ve read it on my badge, clipped to the pocket of my scrubs.

“You’re welcome, Spencer. Try not to need to come back if you can help it.”

He followed the guard out without looking back, but something lingered in the air after he left — the smell of antiseptic mixed with something warmer underneath, just a faint trace of something hard to name.

—

It had been a long morning — nothing dramatic, just a steady stream of minor injuries and chronic complaints. Small cuts that somehow still bled too much, headaches no amount of ibuprofen could touch, an older inmate who claimed chest pain every Tuesday at the same time he knew my shift started like clockwork. I was halfway through restocking the suture tray when a CO came in with another patient. I looked up and fought back a smile at who it was.

The new cut Spencer was sporting wasn’t too bad — a scrape along his forearm, probably from another cafeteria scuffle or a hallway shove — but it was deep enough to bring him back.

Fourth visit to the infirmary in the two months since he first arrived at Millburn. Enough visits that I didn’t need to check the intake clipboard to remember his name, or his face, or his voice.

Spencer sat in the same cot as last time, waiting quietly, hands folded like he was at a lecture instead of a prison clinic. When I walked over, he looked up and nodded in greeting. No smile this time, but not cold either.

“You again,” I said, slipping on gloves.

“Apparently I’m accident-prone.” His tone was deadpan, but there was a flicker of warmth behind it. He offered his arm without being asked.

The scrape was shallow, red around the edges but clean. I could’ve just sent him off with a bandage and a warning, but I didn’t. I pulled over the tray and got to work slowly, methodically cleaning the wound slower than I usually would.

After a moment, I said, “So, Spencer. If you’re going to be a repeat visitor, we might as well get to know one another.”

He looked up at me blankly, blinking.

“Where’d you grow up?” I asked.

He looked back down at his arm while I ran an alcohol pad across it. “Las Vegas.” He winced a little — whether at the words he was saying or the sting of the disinfectant, I wasn’t sure.

I nodded like I didn’t already know. Like I hadn’t read three different articles and an old symposium transcript with his name on it one night after my shift, sitting at my kitchen table in the dark.

“Have you always lived there?”

“No. My mom’s still there, but I moved away when I went to college and left permanently for work. I live here in DC now.”

“What kind of work?” I asked.

He hesitated, just for a second. There weren’t any other inmates in the infirmary, but he dropped his voice to a near-whisper. “I, uh, I’m with the FBI. Behavioral Analysis Unit. Or I was, at least.”

I kept my expression neutral. “That sounds intense.”

“It is.” A pause. “Interesting, though. Never boring. Lots of travel.”

I wiped the scrape clean, letting the silence stretch for a beat before I spoke again. “Do you miss it?”

Another pause, this one a little heavier. “Yeah,” he replied quietly.

He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t push. Just taped down the bandage and asked, “What’d you study before the FBI?”

“Mathematics. And chemistry. And engineering.” He paused, then added, “Also psychology. Sociology. And philosophy, more recently.”

I looked up at him, eyes wide. “All of those?”

He gave a tiny shrug, like it wasn’t worth mentioning. “I finished my first PhD when I was seventeen.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Show-off,” I said with a breathy laugh.

That got a smile. A real one this time. He looked almost sheepish. “You?”

“What about me?” I asked, pausing my work on his arm to meet his eyes. Hazel in this light. Golden brown in others, definitely.

“Where’d you grow up?”

“Philadelphia,” I said. “Still have the accent when I’m tired or drunk, I’ve been told.”

He nodded like he could hear it already, even though I wasn’t sure I’d ever let it slip around him. “Did you always want to be a nurse?” he asked.

“No,” I admitted. “I never knew what I wanted to be when I was growing up. I actually started college as a literature major before I switched to nursing. I worked in the ER for a while before I ended up here. This job just kind of…fit.”

He didn’t ask what I meant by that. Most people didn’t. He just nodded again, like he understood anyway. “Do you like it?” he asked.

Somehow it felt like a bigger question than it was. “Sometimes,” I said with a quiet sigh. “Some days are harder than others.”

He looked at me for a long moment, and it oddly felt like he knew exactly how I was feeling, like he could see the way the job was wearing me down. Now it was my turn to feel intimidated by his gaze. I turned awkwardly to look at the clock then busied myself tidying up the tray, pretending that the eye contact didn’t linger.

“There you go,” I said, gently patting the gauze I’d taped to his arm. “Try to avoid any more cafeteria collisions, please.”

“I’ll do my best,” he murmured with a shy smirk. He stood when the CO came to collect him, but before he turned to go, he paused.

“Thanks. For this,” he said as he tilted his chin to his arm, “and for… treating me like a person. Just…thanks.”

It wasn’t just polite. It sounded like he meant it. Like it mattered to him, that I called him by name and asked about his life. “You’re welcome, Spencer.”

This time, he did smile at me before he left.

And this time, I watched him walk away a second longer than I meant to.

—

I’d barely clocked in when the alert came through: inmate altercation, multiple injuries, possible head trauma, ETA three minutes.

Not exactly an unusual start to a shift. Fights were as common as bad coffee at Millburn, and most days followed the same dull rhythm — triage, patch-up, repeat. But one name on the intake list made my pulse hiccup: Reid, Spencer. Stab wound to the thigh. Suspected concussion.

I barely looked up at first — just long enough to confirm it was him, sitting upright on the cot, jumpsuit leg soaked with blood and torn a little above the knee. He didn’t look scared, but he didn’t look fine, either. Sandra moved toward him with a clipboard, but I touched her arm before she could speak. “I’ve got this one.”

“Of course you want the cute one,” she grumbled under her breath, but then she just nodded and headed over to tend to another waiting inmate.

I crossed the room slowly, cataloging him: alert, steady breathing, pale but not shocky. His gaze wasn’t confused, just… disconnected. Like he’d already run the numbers in his head and decided exactly how bad it was and whether it had been worth it.

He turned his head when I got close. There was blood on his temple — superficial. The leg was worse. Deep, clean. Too clean for it to be the result of a chaotic brawl, which meant it wasn’t chaos. It was personal. And the angle of it appeared to be possibly self-inflicted. I wondered if he’d done it to himself in an attempt to get moved into solitary.

“Hey,” I said. “Rough day?”

Spencer gave me a humorless half-smile. “Story of my life lately.”

I pulled a stool beside his leg, gently peeling back the torn fabric to assess the wound. “You’ll need stitches. At least ten. You take a hit to the head, too?”

He hesitated. “Not really.”

I met his eyes. I hesitated too, then dropped my voice. “But you could say you did.”

He blinked. Just a flicker. I pressed on, quietly. “If you did, I’d have to put you on observation. Infirmary bed. Eight hours minimum. Away from the block.”

A beat of silence. Then a soft, “Yeah. I definitely got hit in the head.”

I nodded once, then clicked my pen and wrote it down. Possible concussion. It wasn’t a complete lie — not exactly. But it wasn’t about the protocol either.

As the infirmary quieted and the other inmates cycled through, I stitched his leg in silence. Sandra kept to the intake desk. I led Spencer to the far corner, away from the fluorescent overhead lights, and dimmed them slightly. I pulled a tray table between us and sat down across from him like we had all the time in the world.

“Brain games,” I said, gesturing to the shelf behind me. “Helps me assess cognitive function.”

“You’re making that up,” he said, almost smiling.

“Of course I am.” I smirked, setting up the chessboard. “You play?”

“I used to. Not as much anymore,” he said quietly.

We played in silence first, but slowly, words started to fill the spaces between our moves. He told me about his eidetic memory and the languages he could speak. I told him about my time working in the ER, about the burnout, about why I took this job. He mentioned someone named Gideon — an old friend, mentor maybe — who taught him to play. I lost three games in a row, and on the final checkmate, I groaned. “Let’s take a break.”

He nodded, then opened his mouth like he might say something else, but he didn’t. I waited. Sandra disappeared into the break room.

After a few seconds, I spoke. “Can I ask how you ended up here?” My voice stayed soft, careful. Not clinical — I wasn’t asking as his nurse.

His whole expression shifted, and he looked guarded. I regretted asking instantly. “Sorry. You don’t have to—”

“No, no. It’s okay. I want to tell you. I just don’t know where to start.”

“Start at the beginning,” I suggested with a shrug.

He looked away, pausing. He took a long breath, and for a moment before he spoke, I thought maybe he never would. “My mom,” he finally said. “She’s schizophrenic. And… about a year ago, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”

The words knocked something loose in me. I felt it, sharp and instinctive. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

He blinked like he hadn’t expected sympathy. “Thanks. I didn’t really handle the diagnosis well. Started looking into treatments — trials, compounds, oils, anything that might help. I found a woman in Mexico making something that worked. Nothing illegal, but the specific compound isn’t FDA-approved. So I started traveling down there every few months, in secret.”

I watched his leg bounce slightly under the table. Not from pain, but from nerves.

“The last trip… someone drugged me. Planted narcotics in a car and somehow I ended up behind the wheel in the desert. The woman I’d been getting the medication from, Rosa — she was murdered. They blamed me. I was arrested. Framed. I know that probably sounds like what every guy in here says, but…it’s true. My team and I think it was a serial killer we arrested a few years back — he escaped custody last year.”

His voice got quieter as the story stretched out. Thinner, like it was costing him more and more to keep talking. “My team got me extradited back to the U.S. They helped find me a good lawyer. But I was remanded to custody without bail. So… here I am.”

I let it settle, allowing myself to feel the full weight of it. I’d read bits and pieces online, after that first cut I’d stitched months ago. But hearing it like this? It was different. Sadder, somehow. “I believe you,” I said softly.

He blinked. “Why?”

I tilted my head, considering. “Because…well, I’ve seen guilty. This isn’t it. Plus, if your team’s still backing you, that means something.”

He looked down, fiddling with a chess piece. “I think most people want to believe I’m guilty. That I snapped or something. It’s easier than believing the alternative.”

“Easier doesn’t mean truer,” I said simply.

He looked back up and smiled. It was small, but real. “Can we play something else now?”

We pulled out Scrabble, and the conversation drifted with it — books, places, bad camping trips. He laughed at my story about a raccoon stealing my breakfast, and the sound surprised both of us.

“I haven’t laughed in a while,” he said.

I poked the back of his Scrabble tile rack. “You’re welcome.”

Sometime during our third game, he asked: “Why aren’t you married?”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t wear a ring. I just assumed.”

I shrugged. “You first.”

He laughed quietly. Told me about his failed attempts at dating. The woman he lost at the hands of her stalker. The job that got in the way.

I gave him my version. How the hours I worked scared people off. How guys never seemed to call back after finding out I worked in a men’s prison. How I’d rather be alone than explain myself yet again to someone who wouldn’t get it.

“Honestly,” I said, “most men want someone who makes their life easier. Not darker.”

“That wouldn’t stop me,” he said quietly.

I stilled, the statement catching me off guard. I waited a moment to process what he’d said, to make sure I’d heard it correctly. “What?”

His cheeks flushed. “I mean, it…it wouldn’t stop me from wanting to know someone. If they worked here. If they were like you.”

“Like me?”

Spencer nodded. “Smart. Honest. Beautiful.” His voice cracked shyly on that last one. “Brave. A little scary.” He chuckled, then took a breath. “If they were you,” he finally clarified softly, his eyes awkwardly flicking down to the board before meeting mine again.

We didn’t move. Didn’t touch. But something shifted — a soft tilt in the air between us.

He swallowed hard. “That was inappropriate. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“Technically, yeah, it was inappropriate. But I’m not uncomfortable.” A moment passed. My knee brushed his under the table — light, accidental. “It was an unexpected comment, but it wasn’t unwelcome,” I finally added.

He paused for a few beats, absorbing what I’d said, the way I’d reacted, the brush of my knee. “Hypothetically,” he said, “if I got out of here… would you want to try meeting again? On the outside.”

I let the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding leave me slowly. “Hypothetically… yeah. I’d like that. If you’re talking about a date, that is.”

He blinked, like he hadn’t expected that answer. “O-okay. Cool,” he stammered. A sheepish smile tugged at his lips. “Cool.”

I grinned. “So, Spencer. On this hypothetical date, what would we do?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he looked up, very seriously, and asked, “Are we flirting?” It looked as if his brain was mid-calculating risk and probability, like he couldn’t dare answer my question until I answered this one.

I stared back at him. “Do you want to be?”

He coughed, surprised I’d thrown the question back at him. “I…don’t not want to be. I just didn’t think you’d want to flirt with me.”

“I don’t usually flirt with inmates,” I said slowly. “I mean… I don’t ever.” I held his gaze. “You’re a special case.”

Spencer tilted his head slightly, watching me like he was trying to decode a particularly complicated puzzle. “Special how?”

I met his gaze, letting the moment stretch between us. “You’re…different. You don’t walk in here full of swagger or venom. You don’t talk down to anyone. You’re very attractive. You’re nice to me even when you don’t have any reason to want to be. You don’t…you don’t belong here.”

His throat worked as he swallowed, then glanced toward Sandra before returning his eyes to mine. “Some days I’m not sure where I belong anymore.” There was a quiet honesty in his voice that hollowed something out inside me. That sharp, aching awareness of how deeply alone someone could feel, even in a room full of people. Especially then.

I reached across the little table and nudged the corner of the Scrabble board closest to him with my fingertips. “Well, for the next few hours, you belong here. With me. Under ‘observation.’” I gave him a tiny, conspiratorial smile.

He smiled back, the edges of his lips tugging up in that crooked way I was beginning to associate with him. “You’re a very thorough observer.”

“It’s in the job description,” I said with a shrug. “Besides, I like to be sure.”

Spencer leaned forward a little, elbows the table, fingers laced together. “What are you sure of?”

I thought for a moment before responding. “I’m sure you didn’t do what they say you did. I’m sure you’re extremely intelligent. I’m sure you care about people more than you let on. And I’m sure that I haven’t looked forward to a shift like this in a very long time.”

Spencer looked down, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing, or didn’t know what to do with it. “You’re going to get in trouble for being nice to me.”

“I’m not being nice,” I said. “I’m being… honest. Besides, no one’s listening.”

We sat in silence for a moment, letting that word — honest — hang in the air. It meant something different here at Millburn. It was rare. Sometimes costly. But with Spencer, it didn’t feel dangerous.

Sandra’s voice cut through the stillness, calling out a question to me from the front desk. I stood, my hands brushing the front of my scrubs.

“I’ll be right back,” I told him, heading over to help.

When I returned a few minutes later, Spencer was still seated in the same spot, but his posture had shifted slightly — more relaxed, more open. He’d turned one of the Scrabble tiles over in his fingers, tracing it absently, as if lost in thought.

“You didn’t swap the tiles to cheat while I was gone, did you?” I teased as I sat back down.

He grinned, shaking his head. “I’m too much of a perfectionist. Cheating would ruin the whole point.”

“Good to know,” I murmured, reclaiming my spot across from him. “So. You never answered my question.”

He tilted his head.

“Hypothetical first date. What would we do?”

A small flicker of hesitation crossed his face — maybe uncertainty, maybe just the weight of imagining something he wasn’t sure he should allow himself to hope for. But then, he spoke.

“I’d take you to the planetarium,” he said. “They do these night shows on Thursdays. There’s music — actual curated playlists — and they project constellations onto the dome. You can lean back and look at the stars without all the city lights getting in the way.”

I blinked, caught off guard by how perfect that sounded.

“That’s…actually kind of dreamy,” I said.

He gave a small, bashful shrug. “It’s quiet. We wouldn’t have to talk unless you wanted to. And afterward, there’s a diner around the corner that makes really good pie. We could split a piece or two.”

“Pie and stars,” I said. “I could go for that.”

“I’ll remember,” he said quietly. “For after. If there is one.”

And just like that, the atmosphere shifted again — still soft, still tentative, but edged now with something more electric. Hope. A thread of connection thick enough to feel, even in a place that was never meant for anything tender.

The game slowed, and we didn’t look at the board as much. Our conversation stretched out between moves. I told him how I like old Hollywood movies and hiking when I could get out of the city. Spencer mentioned classical music, science fiction, the smell of bookstores. We sketched out a series of hypothetical first dates like kids killing time — a Sunday at the museum, a night at a trivia bar, a coffee place with mismatched mugs and not enough chairs.

“Do you always win at Scrabble?” I asked, knowing the hours had dwindled away.

“Almost always,” he said, then added with a smile, “Unless I get distracted.”

I raised a brow but said nothing. I thought for a moment, then carefully placed a series of ten tiles along the edge of the board in front of him — each one selected for the small score number etched into the corner. It spelled out gibberish, but it’s not the letters that mattered. When he looked up, I met his eyes.

“That’s a phone number,” I said softly, “not a word.”

He looked down at the tiles, then back up at me again, a soft smile curling at his lips.

“I figured you could try to remember it for when you get out.”

“I will,” he said, his knee brushing mine under the table again — this time, I knew it hadn’t been accidental.

Suddenly, the loud buzzer of the door cut through the atmosphere we’d been so perfectly curating. A CO walked in, indicating the end of Spencer's observation period. I stood up and walked to him. “I need a minute to finish the assessment, then he’s all yours.” The officer nodded then leaned against Sandra’s desk to make flirty small talk.

I padded back to Spencer and noticed the shift in his demeanor — he was scared. Sad, too, for this to end, but the fear in his eyes at the prospect of going back to his cell was evident.

I looked over my shoulder to make sure the guard was distracted, then placed a hand on his knee under the table. “I think I can help,” I said quietly. I stood and grabbed the assessment sheet, filling in my “findings.”

“Patient remains alert and oriented. Mild fatigue consistent with post-concussive recovery. Observation window uneventful. While current concussion symptoms appear mild and improving, patient is at increased vulnerability for subsequent severe head trauma.”

I paused, then lowered my pen, pressing the tip to the page just a little harder.

“Recommend reevaluation for protective custody placement based on frequency of injury and heightened vulnerability. History of recent trauma and exposure suggests increased risk of harm in general population. Further monitoring advised.”

I stared at the paper for a beat, listening to the low hum of the overhead lights. My eyes flicked up to Spencer, who looked at me with some confusion on his face, then back down to the sheet. The language was clinical, common, nothing dramatic. But I knew what it could do for him.

It wouldn’t get him out. But maybe it would give him a little more space. A little more safety. A little more time.

I signed my name at the bottom and flipped the file closed. I motioned for Spencer to get up. “Stay safe,” I said quietly, giving him a look only he could decipher before I waved to the CO to come over.

“Here’s my assessment for the warden,” I said as I handed the file to the CO. “Make sure he gets it tonight, please.” The officer nodded — I had good rapport with the COs here — and he led Spencer out. Spencer looked over his shoulder at me for just a moment, and I saw something deeper in his expression, something he hadn’t shown since I’d met him.

Hope.

—

A week after his concussion observation period, he came in holding his head like it hurt.

It was the first thing I noticed — the way his fingers pressed into his temple, his expression pulled tight in manufactured pain. I’d seen patients genuinely suffering from migraines, seen them blink and tense and wince and faint. This wasn’t that. This was a performance, and not a very good one. He should stick to his day job, I thought to myself. Not cut out to be an actor.

I stifled a giggle and walked up to his cot, looking up from my paperwork and smiling at him softly. “Hey. Back so soon?”

Spencer lowered himself onto the cot with a dramatic sigh, hand still braced against his forehead. “Migraine,” he said, wincing dramatically. “Started last night. Light sensitivity, nausea… the works.”

“Mmhmm,” I hummed, standing and reaching for the small penlight in my coat pocket. “You want to tell me why your pupils look perfectly normal and your blood pressure’s textbook perfect?”

He smiled, just barely. “I missed your voice.”

That stopped me cold. Just for a second, but long enough that I had to pretend to be very interested in the pulse oximeter in my hand.

“That’s…not usually a billable symptom,” I murmured.

He chuckled softly. It was the first time I’d heard him laugh like that. It was warm.

I stepped closer, wrapping the pulse oximeter around his finger even though I already knew what it would say. The tips of his fingers were cold, but his skin was soft. I held it a second longer than necessary, just watching the numbers rise on the tiny screen.

“Looks like you’ll live,” I said.

He tilted his head, looking at me more closely now, and the moment stretched between us — full of unspoken things that couldn’t be said in a place like this. His eyes scanned my face like he was memorizing it.

“I wanted to say thank you,” he said quietly. “For the report you wrote. The recommendation. I’m not stupid. I know that was you.”

I didn’t answer. I just looked down and reached for the thermometer instead. His hand was still resting on his thigh, twitching slightly like he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“It was medically sound,” I said, voice low. “Repeated head trauma and high-stress environments can—”

He interrupted me with my name. Just my name, nothing else.

I swallowed.

I pretended to take his temperature, the plastic probe tucked beneath his tongue as if any of this still resembled medicine. My fingers grazed his jaw. When I pulled it back, I reached for his wrist to take his heart rate again, manually this time. My fingertips slid over his skin too gently, too deliberately.

The CO by the door shifted his weight with a faint grunt, and I blinked, heart jolting back into rhythm. I pulled my hand back and stepped away, jotting something on the clipboard that didn’t matter. “I’m prescribing you sleep. Go take a nap, FBI boy.”

He smirked at the nickname and stood slowly, like he didn’t want to. “Wasn’t really about the migraine,” he admitted, voice low but steady. “I just… I wanted to see you.”

The truth of it landed heavy between us, no performance, no pretending. Just honesty — stark and bare and strangely brave.

I felt the words settle into my chest like a secret I was glad to keep. I nodded, barely. “I know.”

He gave me a small, crooked smile — softer than the last, tinged with that same look in his eyes I saw last week - hope.

ᝰ.ᐟ

part ii.

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littlestpersimmon · 10 months ago

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Hi guys! I still have many slots for icon commissions like this, due for the later half October. Please let me know draw for you! Would absolutely love more resources so I can escape housing insecurity. At every opportunity I get, I’ve been opening commissions as I have been faced with partial homelessness since March of this year.

I can draw mostly anything, except real people! Each icon is 75 usd each! Will add more info in a reblog.

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vividly-vermillion · 4 months ago

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✴︎ THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BITTER FRUIT

જ⁀➴ You're Toji's new girlfriend and his son comes back home to live with you two after dropping out of college. Of course, Megumi had to develop a crush. You're far too young for his shitty dad anyways...

ﾉ including: Megumi (mentions of Toji)

ﾉ cw: dark content I guess, not necessarily stepcest since you're just the new girlfriend/fiancé of Toji, Megumi is in his 20s, unprotected sex, cheating on Toji, fingering, handjob, consent check, blowjob, cum eating, reader getting called Mommy once on accident.

ﾉ wordcount: 1.6k

ﾉ info: so yeahhhh this happened 🫣 if it's not your cup of tea please just scroll on.

REBLOGS AND COMMENTS ARE APPRECIATED

Toji prided himself on having a girlfriend just two years older than his own son, showing you off like a great trophy wherever he went. The way you were so self-sufficient, working hard and making enough money so he wouldn't need to do anything except keep you happy made this ten times better. You had no reason to complain; he kept the house somewhat clean while you worked and you got your guts rearranged every single night, screaming his name like a lewd prayer as you came around his cock for the fifth time. Stress seemingly evaporated when his head was buried between your thighs after a long day or when you're fucked entirely dumb.

Your little stress relief almost got cut short when he announced that his son needed to move back in since he got kicked out of college. It would only be temporary, but the first time you two actually met, the tension was thick enough to cut it with a knife.

“Your... fiancé?” Megumi asked, eying you up and down while his father's hand rested on your inner thigh, just below where your skimpy little dress ended.

“Yeah. She's so good to me, I can't just let her go because of the little age gap." He mused, a wolfish grin spreading over his lips. Toji was well aware of the fact that you're young enough to be his own daughter, but he couldn't help himself when you were so naive. The rest of the conversation he was zoned out, remembering how good it felt to have your little virgin cunt wrapped around his fat cock for the first time and how you whimpered, begging him to stay the night after, which he didn't.

Megumi gave you a slightly disgusted look before taking a deep breath upon seeing how awkward this situation was for you as well and if it's love, he won't stand in your way.

“But I don't need to call you mom now... right?” He asked, feeling his stomach flip when he heard your giggle, looking from his dad to him, before you shot him a little grin.

“No, of course not! But you can always call me mommy.” You hummed in a teasing way, giving him a little wink that made his cheeks heat up. He excused himself shortly after, wanting to unpack his bags, but in reality, he couldn't get your words out of his head - he could call you mommy? Did you mean it the way he thought?

Before the youngest Fushiguro realized it, he found himself thinking of you constantly, his fist wrapped tightly around his aching cock while he was under the shower, imagining you were there with him. Late at night, when Toji and you were so sure that Megumi must be asleep already, you got impaled by your soon-to-be husband once more, the tip of his cock repeatedly kissing your cervix while his hand was wrapped around your throat to keep your noises somewhat down, but Megumi heard it all. The walls were far too thin to overhear your cries of pleasure, begging him to go harder, begging for sweet release and the sound of skin slapping against skin.

He should be disgusted, hearing his dad having sex should repulse him, but instead his hand wandered down to his hardening bulge, imagining you were begging him to go harder. This torture went on for weeks and you mostly ignored his existence, being friendly to him whenever you two ran into each other. Your damn smile didn't leave his head however, wondering if your lips feel as soft as they look, if your lipstick will leave stains around his shaft, showing off just how eager you were to take him - would you even take him fully? And before he knew it, the tent in his pants was starting to build. In a desperate attempt to hide the situation, he put the couch pillow on his lap, his gaze not once leaving the far too boring movie you picked out.

Grinning to yourself, you asked your future husband to get you another glass of water, knowing far too well why the pillow found its position on the young Fushiguro's lap. Without a word, you walked over where your phone was charging, bending over nicely to tease Megumi further, knowing he would see your bare folds flashing if he looked over. His cheeks were bright red when you sat back on the couch, smirking at him.

“Enjoying what you're watching?” You asked him innocently when Toji came back with your drink and he nodded, gulping visibly.

“Never thought you're into those shitty romance movies,” Toji teased his son, entirely oblivious to what went on the minute he left the room. You cuddled up to Toji again when he sat down, throwing the fuzzy blanket over the both of you to make it more comfortable and of course you two would be this disgusting. Tojis hand was resting between your thighs, rubbing small circles on your bundle of nerves, snickering to himself because you were already drenched, figuring it must have been the anticipation of his touch - not even in his wildest dreams would he have thought that you got turned on by his son watching your little cunt when you bent over. Although it wasn't very audible over the movie, Megumi still picked up on the sound of your slick while Tojis fingers were buried knuckle deep in your heat. Oh, how he wished it could be him touching you like this right now.

The second the movie ended, he went back to his room, punching the wall in frustration, wishing nothing more but to bend you over and sink his length inside of your sweet core, but all he had was that image that's now burned to his brain, folds all pretty on display and glistening with arousal, already staining your thighs with your slick while he angrily fucked his own hand, but no matter how much he spat on it, he was sure it could never compare to your velvet walls fluttering around him.

“Gumi?” You asked through his locked door, gently knocking on it, and he stopped dead in his tracks, his hand wrapped tightly around his shaft as he groaned in annoyance.

“Go away!” he called out, sounding pissed, which made you giggle further.

“Can you let me in?” You asked persistently and knocked again, which made him throw his pillow against the locked door.

“What do you even want? Get lost,” he called out again, his eye twitching when he heard your delicate hands meet the wooden door once more in a gentle knock. Angrily, he wiped his spit-covered hand off on his sheets and pulled his pants up on the way to open the door, swinging it open aggressively, but his angry gaze softened upon seeing you so vulnerable and all alone.

“Can I come in?” You asked again, sounding sweet, but there was mischief clouded behind your eyes. Megumi simply stepped aside, a silent invitation before closing the door behind you again.

“What do you w-” he stopped talking when you got on your knees, pawing at his pants.

“I sent him to get me my favorite ice cream from the other side of town... We have 30 minutes,” you explained while batting your lashes and against all better judgment, he nodded, letting you pull down his pants and underwear in one go.

“Oh shit,” you whispered in awe. Megumi’s cock was even thicker than his dad's, but this only made you drool, quickly wrapping your hand around him, causing him to twitch uncontrollably.

“You want this too, right?” You asked sincerely, worrying you were just reading into the situation, but the way he started to gently buck his hips into your hand was answer enough, gently wrapping your lips around his tip as your tongue collected the precum that gathered there.

“So naughty... I know you were jerking yourself off to me... You're a lot louder than you think,” you hummed to tease him as you started sucking him off slowly.

“Fuck... this is even better,” he moaned out upon feeling your lips wrapped around his cock - he surely wouldn't last long.

You bobbed your head up and down his shaft, your jaw hurting from how big he was, but the moment you nestled your nose into the little stubbles at the base, he kept your head in place just like you expected him to, feeling him twitch violently on your tongue. Your hand rubbed soothing circles onto his thigh, eyes looking for his, in an effort to let him know that he could let go. Your eyes were filled with so much lust and a softness that matched with the gentle caress on his thigh.

He whimpered your name, his cum shooting down your throat, which made you gag. Once Megumi was finally done, you pulled back, taking a deep breath after being denied oxygen for the duration of his orgasm.

“You were such a good boy for me, letting me taste you,” you hummed, pressing a kiss to each of his hip bones before licking his dick clean from the remnants of cum, his eyes glazed over with adoration.

“This is our little secret, right? Your dad doesn't need to know,” you whispered, pressing a final kiss to the corner of his mouth and he nodded.

“Yes, mommy,” not even realizing he called you that, but it made you giggle.

“Mommy? Maybe I do need to take care of you a little more often, hm? Bonding time with your stepmom?” you teased before leaving his room to smoke a cigarette, not letting Toji taste his son's cum on your tongue.