#this is statistically VERY improbable

[faygos]

forever scared that when i'm scrolling my tumblr in public someone will come up behind me and recognize my blog

[freckleslikestars]

So I have a couple of mugs filled with lollipop sticks and on each one I have an episode of txf written on it so that if I want to watch a random episode or make a gifset for a random episode I can just pick a lollipop stick out, right? And I’m trying to pick an episode to watch as I fall asleep and I pick out 11.04 and I’m like….hmmm no. So I pick another. And it’s 10.04. And I laugh cause haha, forth episode of the revival seasons both times. Funny coincidence. And then I pluck out another, because I don’t wanna watch 10.04 either. It’s 9.04. I’m looking for an early series episode and also this is fuckin weird now. I pull out one last one, otherwise I’m just going to cave and watch Detour. It’s 8.04. I’m gonna watch detour because if I keep doing this then I’ll pull out detour in three lollisticks time anyway

[kazz-brekker]

suspicious number of evil ginger royalty in my media consumption right now. where's this trend coming from.

[gay--dog]

every day i just like repeat every time anyone has called me cool in my head and try to figure out if theyre right or not

[heavenlybodies333]

Goddamn, Baby, you drink like Hemingway -S.R

Spencer Reid x bsf coworker!reader

You slam your second shot down and wince. “God. That tastes like jet fuel.”

Spencer nudges his drink with two fingers, grimacing. “You know this place is objectively disgusting, right?”

“Which is why it’s perfect,” you grin, tossing him a look over your shoulder. “Also, you’re welcome. If it weren’t for me, you’d be at home alphabetizing your books by language root.”

He snorts. “They’re already alphabetized by language root.”

“Jesus, Spence.”

“Don’t act shocked. You know I’m like this.”

You do. You know every weird little habit, every nervous tic, every tangent he slips into when he’s rambling his way out of a trauma spiral. You know how he likes his coffee. How he prefers to be touched—sparingly, and only by people he trusts.

And you know that despite his body being planted on that cracked vinyl stool, Spencer Reid does not want to be here.

“Come on, just one more drink. You promised.”

He narrows his eyes playfully, leaning toward you. “I said I’d come. I didn’t say I’d drink enough to forget what you make me do when I come.”

You blink. He blinks. A hot flush crawls up your neck. “Okay,” you mutter, lips twitching. “I walked into that one.”

“You dove,” he deadpans, sipping his watered-down whiskey like it’s a crime scene sample.

The bar is a dive—the kind of place that serves beer in cracked mugs and smells like spilled tequila and missed rent payments—but it’s cheap, and anonymous, and just a few blocks from Quantico. After the week you’ve had—case in rural Pennsylvania, two hostages dead, one minor kidnapped and rescued by your team—you needed a reset. And Spence, bless his cardigan-wrapped soul, needed it even more.

“I think you’d be better off alphabetizing drinks by how much they destroy your liver,” he says dryly.

You lean in with a lazy smile, propping your elbow on the table and resting your chin in your palm. “That’s funny coming from the guy who just sipped a watered-down Old Fashioned like it was poison.”

He looks down at his glass. “It is poison. Chemically.”

“You’re no fun.”

He looks back up at you, eyes warm, unreadable. “I think I’m having fun.”

“Yeah?” you murmur. “You only say that when I make you.”

“That’s not true.” His voice is quieter now, head tilting slightly toward yours. “Sometimes I like it.”

Your stomach does a lazy, drunken somersault. “Yeah, but you’re cute when you’re like this,” you say, poking his cheek. “All logical and judgmental. Like a drunk little owl.”

He blinks. “Owls aren’t judgmental.”

“They are. They have very judgey faces. You do the same thing when I suggest karaoke.”

Spencer tilts his head. “That’s because last time you sang Beyoncé’s ‘Partition’ in front of two Quantico instructors and a guy who once testified in a Senate subcommittee on organized crime.”

“Yeah and I killed it.”

“You also fell off the stage.”

“Dramatic exit.” You down the rest of your drink and motion for another. Spencer watches you, biting back a smile.

“You know,” he starts, tone going into that signature Reid fact-voice, “alcohol affects women differently than men. Lower water content in the body means higher blood alcohol concentration. Technically speaking, you’re probably at .12 right now.”

You stare at him. “Technically speaking, you’re hot when you talk statistics.”

He sputters. “That wasn’t—that wasn’t meant to be sexy.”

“It’s sexy because it’s not meant to be. You’re, like, drunk and still trying to teach me things. It’s adorable. Like if Bill Nye and a golden retriever had a baby.”

“That’s horrifying. That’s genetically improbable.”

“And yet—” you pause, sliding off your stool to press a palm to his chest, “here you are. My own drunk, genetically improbable nerd.”

Spencer’s breath catches, and you swear his pupils dilate a little. He grabs your wrist lightly, eyes locked on yours.

He steadies you with one hand at your waist, the other gripping his drink with the intense focus of a man pretending not to panic.

“Did you know,” he says, like a last-ditch effort to distract himself, “that Hemingway once said you should write drunk and edit sober?”

“God, I love when you spit literature at me.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m not that drunk.”

“You’re quoting Hemingway and grabbing my waist, Spence.”

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. You were best friends. You’d been there for each other through the worst of it—loss, fear, heartbreak, cases that left you both shaking. He held your hand after your first shooting. You bandaged his wrist after a suspect almost broke it. You crashed on his bed more times than you could count. You knew his favorite tea, he knew your bad dreams.

By the time you make it back to his apartment—stumbling back, actually, with you laughing into his chest as he fumbles with the key—your cheeks are flushed and your stomach aches from the buzz and the banter.

“Okay,” you say as the door shuts behind you. “Rate the night.”

Spencer kicks his shoes off. “Four out of ten.”

You shove his arm, fake-offended. “Four?!”

“Sticky floor. Terrible lighting. Music was objectively bad.”

“You are so annoying.”

“You did fall off your bar stool.”

“Okay, technically, I slid off it,” you correct, poking his chest.

He catches your finger. Holds it. Doesn’t let go. “Also,” he says, voice quieter now, “you told the bartender I cried during a Pixar movie.”

“You did!”

“I was seven.”

You’re both laughing now—until you realize he hasn’t let go of your hand. And that you’re still pressed against him, in his entryway, breathless, a little drunk, and way too aware of the heat between you.

Your smile falters just enough for him to notice.

His brows draw together. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” you murmur. “Just… thinking.”

“About?”

You look up at him, flushed and buzzing and full of so many buried things. You didn’t sleep with your best friend. But god, he looked at you like he wanted to. And tonight, you couldn’t stop yourself from admitting the things you’d shoved down for too long.

“Spence,” you laughed, standing in his living room, clutching his hand to your chest, swaying. “I think I’ve been in love with you since that case in Boston. The one where we almost got shot in the stairwell and you said I was your favorite person.”

His head shot up from staring at his feet. “That was three years ago.”

“Exactly.”

“I—You’re drunk.”

“You are too,” you counter. “But that’s not why I’m saying it.”

Spencer’s gaze drops to your lips. And for once, he doesn’t try to hide it. You reach up. Touch his cheek. Let your fingers linger. “I think about you a lot, Spence.”

His voice is hoarse. “You’re my best friend.”

“I know.”

“And if we do this—”

“We are doing this,” you whisper, stepping closer. “Unless you want me to stop.”

“I don’t want to mess this up,” he whispers into your neck, even as he’s guiding himself into you, slow and reverent.

“You won’t,” you breathe, cupping his face. “It’s us, Spence.” you close the space between you, your lips moving slow against his soft ones.

You moan into his mouth, wrapping your arms around him as he walks you backward, blindly, into the bedroom.

You’re both giggling and breathless between kisses, bumping elbows and fumbling with buttons.

“Oh my god,” you laugh, pulling his shirt over his head. “This is the least coordinated I’ve ever seen you.”

“I’m nervous,” he huffs, tugging your dress down your thighs.

You arch a brow. “Spence. You’ve disarmed bombs while quoting Latin. You’re not nervous.”

“I’ve also never had my best friend naked in my bed before,” he says pointedly, hands spreading across your thighs. “So yeah. I am.”

Spencer’s hand slides between your thighs, and you gasp when his fingers find you wet.

“Oh,” he breathes. “God, I didn’t think—”

“You make me this way,” you pant, biting your lip. “I get handsy when I’m drunk, yeah. But you? You make me needy.”

His whole body shudders. “Jesus.”

“I’ve thought about this,” you whisper. “So many nights. What you’d be like. If you’d talk dirty or be all clinical about it. If you’d—”

“I’d what?” he interrupts, pushing two fingers into you with a sharp breath.

Your back arches. “Fuck.”

“Tell me,” he urges, kissing your jaw, your neck, your shoulder. “Tell me what you thought.”

You reach between you and stroke him through his boxers. He gasps, grabbing the edge of the dresser for balance.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “Okay, I’m not gonna last if you keep—”

You smirk, dropping to your knees in front of him. “That’s okay. I’ve got all night.”

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, head falling back.

Spencer’s normally so in control—you’ve seen him talk down terrorists and survive torture—but right now, he’s all hands and lips and want. He strips you down carefully but quickly, like he’s afraid he’ll wake up and this will have all been a dream.

“You’re so soft,” he murmurs, lips brushing the swell of your breasts. “So perfect. I don’t deserve this.”

“Shut up,” you whisper, pulling him back up to kiss you. “You deserve everything.”

And when he pushes into you—slow, inch by inch, eyes locked to yours like he’s memorizing your face—it’s like something clicks. Like your body was made to fit his. Like this was always supposed to happen.

Spencer stills, buried deep inside you, eyes blown wide and reverent, like he's trying not to fall apart.

Your hands cup his face, thumbs stroking the sharp bones of his cheeks. “You okay?” you whisper, heart racing under your ribs.

He nods, once, shakily. “You feel like... everything I’ve ever wanted.”

You kiss him then—deep and unhurried, full of every soft, aching thing you've never had the courage to say. His hips start to move, gentle at first, like he’s learning you all over again. Like he wants to remember every breath you take, every sound you make just for him.

"Faster," you murmur against his mouth. "Don't be careful."

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” you promise, gasping as he thrusts harder, deeper. “God, Spence—feels so good.”

His lips trail down your throat as he sets a rhythm, murmuring against your skin like he’s still trying to process that this is real. "I used to dream about this. About you." A sharp thrust. “Thought I was going crazy.”

You cling to him, fingers digging into his back. “You’re not. We’re here. I’m yours.”

He groans, burying his face in your shoulder. “Say that again.”

“I’m yours,” you whisper, trembling as he rolls his hips just right. “Only yours.”

“Fuck,” he breathes, hips stuttering. “I’m not gonna last—shit—I want to make you come first—”

“You already are,” you gasp. “You have no idea what you do to me.”

You clench around him and he shudders, lips parted, totally gone for you. You rake your nails down his spine and his control finally snaps. He thrusts harder, deeper, desperate now, chasing the edge.

“I can feel you,” he groans. “So tight, so warm—god, I love you—”

You crash over the edge with his name on your lips, back arching as pleasure wracks through you like lightning. He follows with a low moan, spilling into you with a trembling cry, burying himself to the hilt.

For a while, neither of you speaks. You just lie there tangled in each other, breath syncing, fingers stroking sweat-damp skin.

Eventually, Spencer shifts, brushing your hair from your face. “Was that… okay?”

You huff a laugh, chest still heaving. “Okay? Spence. That was the best sex of my entire life.”

His mouth twitches. “Even better than the bartender you flirted with in Atlanta?”

You smack his chest. “Shut up. I was trying to get us free drinks.”

“Well,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your forehead, “I’ll get the next round. No flirting required.”

You curl into him, cheek on his chest. The silence between you now isn’t awkward—it’s safe. Warm. Full.

“Spence?”

“Yeah?”

“I meant it. I love you.”

He wraps his arms around you tighter, pulling the sheets over your naked bodies.

“I love you too,” he whispers. “Always have.”

a/n: im graduating so soon im so sad i literally cant

⋆•★⋆ MASTERLIST ⋆★•⋆

[keferon]

I just want this fic to be here too👍 Part 1? Eh

_____________

“He's stalking his celebrity crush.”

“That's not stalking!” resents Swerve ”I'm just worried.”

Rewind makes a gesture that looks vaguely apologetic and looks at Tailgate again.

“Watching. He's watching his superhero celebrity crush who's a member of the Wreckers. And so far no one's survived long in the Wreckers, so he's shaking on every notification like a crazy mom.”

Tailgate tries to peer sideways into Swerve's phone

“That sounds stressful. Is that him? Is he dying?”

_____________

Blurr/Swerve, Superhero au, fic under the cut⤵️ Heavily inspired/based on this post

Blurr doesn't think life and death is something he can control.

He's about 99.99999% sure.

The remaining microscopic fraction of that idiotic statistic is held in place by one small but important factor that Blurr can't explain and isn't sure he even wants to explain. It's like the dream logic. The moment you realize exactly how things work is also the moment you wake up to realize it.

The very nuance understanding which destroys all magic or reveals the fact that magic never existed.

That nuance?

Blurr can't die.

And it's certainly not because he's not trying hard enough.

That last one sounds a little radical. But he has a history. His team has a history.

“Wreckers is a pretty peculiar collection of superheroes. It's easy to get into and even easier to get out of (usually feet first and in a bag). No other hero organization loses so many people so often. No other hero organization can also handle the level of threats that the Wreckers eliminate.

Their fans affectionately refer to them as the Suicide Squad. There is...a lot of black humor among the Wreckers fanbase and Blurr doesn't condemn it. Not after having to memorize new names and faces of teammates every six months.

The thing is.

He probably should have been dead a long time ago. A lot. A lot of “that was close” ago.

Just two days after joining the Wreckers, he found himself in the middle of an absolutely monstrous fire and miraculously escaped death by getting away just moments before the entire building collapsed on his head.

Only a week after that, he gets shot. Fifteen times.

And. Look.

Blurr is fast! Being fast is kind of his main thing as a speedster. He did the only logical thing and made an honest effort to dodge, but three of those fifteen bullets still ended up inside him and only miraculously didn't hit anything that couldn't be repaired.

Half a year later, a car falls on him.

Another month - some freaking supervillain decides to infect an entire country with a homemade super lethal virus and guess who becomes the only victim.

At least once a month, various psychopaths try to break his legs.

At least once every half a year he ends up being the one who “heroically saved all the hostages but didn't have time to save himself”.

It's like an endless stream of negative karma.

It's really amazing how such a small piece of civilization like Iacon can contain so many disasters. Even more amazing perhaps is how people manage to survive through all this neat smoothie of misery and violence.

Earthquakes, villains, villains, more villains, terrorists, natural disasters, monsters from outer space, and it all comes out of nowhere and it all takes a hundred percent effort to pack Blurr in a coffin.

Blurr... doesn't know why he's still alive.

He honestly has no idea how he's doing it. He may get into life-and-death situations more often than he does haircuts but every time things come within an inch of killing him. It's impossible luck. Statistically improbable chance. One-in-a-thousand odds. A fucking lightning caught in a bottle, but it happens so often it's like someone somewhere in heaven decided to open a bottled lightning factory and then reward Blurr with the title of their honorary loyal customer.

Blurr doesn't think he has power over life and death.

But here's the thing.

On some particularly violent nights, he wonders that maybe...

---------------

Sometimes Swerve thinks being a dedicated fan should be on the list of “unhealthy” high-paying jobs. One of those where they give you extra cash for the fact that you even bother to show up and then give you insurance and paid vacations.

Okay, that last one might be a bit of an overkill, but it would be nice if he at least had an endless supply of sedatives.

At least some chamomile. Preferably not from the sidewalk. He's not picky.

See, their world decided to change the rules of existence not too long ago and turned such a trivial thing as “trust” into a new in-game currency.

Simply put. If enough people believe something, it becomes true.

What has society chosen to do with that? Of course create an absolutely insane cult of celebrity worship, essentially giving a bunch of already rich and beautiful people superpowers as well.

As if they weren't already living luxuriously enough!

Swerve is not jealous. Certainly not. His first thought when he found out about the new “rules” was definitely not to tell everyone he knows that he won a million dollars and wait for the power of belief to make it true.

He surely wasn't trying to do that. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a liar or their name starts with a T and ends with Gate.

Speaking of.....

Tailgate scratches the back of his head puzzled.

“So you didn't actually win a million dollars?”

They are sitting in a small cafe, the name of which Swerve has honestly forgotten. Or rather he never memorized it, because the local owner of the place prefers to hang huge posters with superheroes right above the name. Swerve is a rather controllable customer.....

Rewind, sitting at the same cheap plastic table as them, hums.

“And here I was trying to figure out if your holey slippers were a cry for help or one of those crazy expensive 'fancy' designs.”

“Ha. ha.” says Swerve slowly and deliberately unhappily “If I get rich one day, I won't tell any of you.”

He slowly takes a sip of some obscure looking substance that Rewind ordered for them all as an experiment and turns to Tailgate.

“Look, it's a pretty fun system. Things that people believe in strongly enough - become real. So if uh, if uh, if we as a whole country believe that our government is honest - that will, in theory, make it honest. Or if a hundred thousand people genuinely believe you can fly, you will be able to fly. That's how it works now.”

Tailgate stares at him. With very large, puzzled eyes.

Swerve tries not to laugh too hard. Poor Tailgate had once gone off to explore the caves and somehow, by some incredible means, managed to get lost and stuck in them for two whole months. Then he crawled out and discovered that magic had appeared in the world while he was gone. Swerve thinks that if he were Tailgate, he'd look very stupid too, trying to realize the absurdity of the situation.

Tailgate is toying with his curled straw.

“So is the government honest now?”

Rewind makes a loud “snrk” noise into his cup.

Swerve chuckles. Not as “funny” haha but more like “we fucked it all up” haha.

It shouldn't be possible to fit all the sense of doom from the world's level of damnation into one expression, but he confidently goes for it.

“GOD NO, did you ever believe that government could be honest?”

“Well...now that's just sad...” decides Tailgate ‘Something good was supposed to come out of this, right?”

Rewind raises a finger victoriously.

“Oh! There are no more incurable diseases! The placebo effect is the new big thing now that a bunch of people have gotten the ability to cure any illness at the snap of their fingers.”

Swerve nods, dangling his drink in his hands.

“There was a guy who claimed he had magic hands that cured everything and gathered a crowd of fanatical admirers around him. So...now his hands are really magic because his followers believe it. Crazy stuff...”

Tailgate puts his elbows on the table, propping his head up with his hands.

“So if I tell everyone I won a million dollars.....”

“I recommend--” Rewind waves his cup “...first make sure you're not wearing holey slippers.”

“Аh”

“That, and you'll need at least about a million people loving and supporting you wholeheartedly if you want this to work.”

“That's...a lot of people,” Tailgate groans.

Swerve shrugs

“That's why all the really cool stuff only goes to celebrities.”

_____

Tailgate cranes his neck curiously.

“Hey Swerve, while you went to place your order your phone started buzzing.”

Swerve falls back into his seat as fast as if he'd just decided the entire floor was lava and starts scrolling through notifications, cursing at spam and useless newsletters.

“When??”

“Just a couple minutes ago” shrugs Tailgate ”Are you expecting someone?”

“I'M...OH NO NO I'M JUST. Shit, wait a minute.”

Rewind leans over to Tailgate and smiles deviously, not even trying to pretend to whisper.

“He's stalking his celebrity crush.”

“That's not stalking!” resents Swerve ”I'm just worried.”

Rewind makes a gesture that looks vaguely apologetic and looks at Tailgate again.

“' Watching. He's watching his superhero celebrity crush who's a member of the Wreckers. And so far no one's survived long in the Wreckers, so he's shaking on every notification like a crazy mom.”

Tailgate tries to peer sideways into Swerve's phone

“That sounds stressful. Is that him? Is he dying?”

Swerve slides down the back of his chair slightly and tilts the phone toward Tailgate

“No, it's not him. He's the one in the blue suit on the left. And no, he's not dying. That bastard is impossible to kill.”

Tailgate lets out an understanding “ooh.”

“Although,” Swerve admits, “ Following him was a lot easier when he was driving cars instead of saving the world.”

He's been a Blurr fan for so long that it can probably be put on his resume already. He remembers watching the Iacon 5000 race with friends with Rewind starting to joke about how they should all bet on someone brand new this year. To fuel the fun, they sat down to pick candidates to bet on based solely on the color of their cars.

Swerve then poked his finger at a random bright blue car and said he'd bet on it because “blue is a fast color.”

Later, his friends would joke more than once that Swerve had the gift of prophecy that day. Because blue wasn't just fast. Oh, God. No. Blue turned out to be the absolute leader, dominating the race track from start to finish.

Swerve remembers vividly the first time he looked at a racer getting out of that car and thought “who the hell is that” and then immediately “how do I find his socials”.

The answer to the second question came quickly. The answer to the first...well. The guy, Blurr, soon turned out to be a faceless celebrity. Shining at numerous races, but never showing his face. Swerve highly doubts it's due to shyness, given...some character traits. (Swerve has a running theory, which is that ...Blurr has no shame. Even as a concept.) Probably just to keep his life anonymous and quiet, he believes.

It's understandable.

He's not judging. But he has to admit that a billion fanarts on what a face under a racing helmet could look like in theory...really...fuels his fantasy.

He's a very normal and sane fan. He tries very hard to be a normal fan and he's doing a great job at it. Maybe except for those moments when Blurr gets into another car accident. Lots of them. Lots and lots of bloody accidents actually and Swerve at first catches a micro heart attack every time he sees the news, but eventually he gets used to it. Blurr is incredibly resilient. And just as rich as well.

Swerve is used to hearing updates about another incident and then seeing Blurr back in the race a couple months later. Just as energetic, carefree, and frankly . Really handsome. As if nothing had happened. As if any danger would just bounce off him without leaving a dent.

It was familiar. It was habitual.

Until, of course, the universe started handing out faith magic to people. Until Blurr walked up to this imaginary box of lottery numbers and pulled out a ball that said “congratulations you're lucky now go and fucking die.”

Blurr is a racer. A damn good racer. Incredibly popular too. Of course his many fans who adore him beyond measure gave him a superpower.

Of course that power was speed.

Of course.

Blue is the color of speed. What else.

As a racer, Blurr is undefeatable.

As a superhero, ..

Swerve still thinks this guy is impossible to kill, but that doesn't mean he doesn't get worried every time he sees the news headlines and live feeds.

“You're alive” Springer states ”Literally how are you still alive?”

Blurr tilts his head because it's the only part of his body he can still move while trapped under ten tons of mangled steel from a Decepticon flying base falling out of the sky.

“Hello to you, too.”

Springer tentatively pulls the nearest sheet of metal and hums in satisfaction when he feels the structure is stable enough.

“Bleeding? Fractures?”

“I think my hair's ruined.”

“No one can even see your hair.”

“Doesn't mean I shouldn't care about it,” snorts Blurr

Springer tosses aside another piece of metal and reaches for his earpiece

“Smoke...? Nah...no really.....REALLY. ....No, you're not going to believe this. ......Aha, digging him out.” he looks away from the earpiece and leans over Blurr ‘Smokescreen wanted me to tell you that he's impressed and,... I quote ’personally saw that damn wagon fall right on your head'. He also wants to know if he needs to shoo away the paparazzi.”

Blurr tries to shrug but remembers in time that it's best not to fidget too much.

“Tell him I'll need a new suit. Let him keep everyone, I'm fine.”

“Literally...like...” barely audibly mutters Springer. “Like.h ow..”

Blurr smiles “My guardian angel is working overtime.”

Swerve takes a deep, nervous exhale, unhooking his fingers from the phone on which he's watching the live feed. Ah shit. Okay. Okay. Alive. Fine.

Rewind looks over his shoulder.

“Looking out for your pookie?”

“HE'S NOT MY

__________

Smokescreen stops right in the middle of an inspired argument with the advertisement agent when his side vision registers a flash of blue to the right of the entirely destroyed street.

“Blurr??”

“Oh, hey!” waves Blurr, “'Sup Smoke?”

The crumbled asphalt beneath his feet crunches softly. Just a few minutes ago, this street was a complete mayhem....

Smokescreen waves the clipboard in his direction

“I thought you had your head ripped off, you suicidal son of a bitch! Do you know how hard it was to calm your hysterical fans down??”

Blurr knows no one can see his face but rolls his eyes anyway. Almost immediately his brain tells him that this was a bad idea, sending a whole bunch of black spots in front of his eyes.

“Hey, you're getting paid for th...ugh...this.”

Blurr doesn't elaborate on the fact that he was sure he was going to be left headless today as well. One of the Overlord's freaking monster minions grabbed him and for a split second Blurr could swear he heard his own neck crunch.

He tries not to think about it.

The more he thinks about it, the less sense it will make.

The more he analyzes, the louder becomes the voice in the far corner of his head saying he should have been dead a long time ago.

A week ago when an entire air base fell on him. Three weeks ago during the battle with Menasor that practically broke his spine. Even earlier, when he was so busy evacuating hospital staff that he ended up being the only one present when that hospital exploded.

He's afraid that if he starts looking into the causes, this magical effect..this life-saving placebo will disappear.

He's convinced it's a placebo. It's the way this world works.

Someone out there must be doing some complex mental magic, keeping him more or less alive and whole and...Blurr is probably going a little crazy. Probably.

Maybe one of those many blows got him harder than he thought. Maybe it's his own self-confidence manifesting miracles of salvation one after another.

(It actually...doesn't sound that unbelievable. Blurr has a lot of belief in himself. Many people would say even too much. The question is whether it counts.)

(He prefers to think it counts.)

__________

Swerve sees red. Lots of it. LOTS of red.

More than he ever wanted to see in his life.

Uh-oh. That's not good.

His vision is blurring. His head buzzes with a nasty sharp static and his left shoulder hurts like a BITCH.

Above him is the flickering, faltering light of the bulb and below him is a growing puddle of his blood. His hair is wet and sticking to his face, making it hard to focus his already shaky gaze.

He makes an attempt to shift, but all it brings him is an explosion of pain.

Ugh.

Sirens are blaring outside, warning the public to evacuate. He's not really sure he can make out exactly what the sound is announcing. He has memorized all kinds of emergency alerts, but the thought escapes him.

What was it

Oh, yeah.

He's been shot.

He's been shot and he's probably going to die because everyone he knows is either too far away or busy evacuating. He vaguely hopes they'll remember about him.

Maybe only after getting to a safe place, but he'll take even that.

The red around him is getting bigger.

He tries to reach for his phone to...where is his phone? Did he leave it in the kitchen? He probably did. Swerve seemed to have no time to grab it when the entire building shook and ugly semi-mechanical monsters fell from the sky.

One of these monsters noticed Swerve just moments later and activated something resembling a cannon mounted in his hands. Swerve then looked at the glowing muzzle and thought that firing this thing would probably send his atoms so far away that his dna would be found on the moon. He could stick his hand down that gun barrel. And his hands are far from the smallest and most delicate hands you can find.

Why did this have to happen on a Saturday? Why not a day later or earlier? If it were any other day, Swerve would be at work right now. In a different place, with other people and probably with a much better chance of not being killed like a loser.

Not sure he wouldn't have been shot, but at least someone would have seen this and picked him up off the floor, put him in their pocket and taken him to the rescue.

Ugh.

He realizes that he closed his eyes at some point and hurriedly opens them. His expertise is by no means professional, but he is almost certain that that weapon wasn't ordinary. He has no idea what it means for him. Maybe he needs stitches, painkillers and a kiss and he'll be good as new. Or maybe it's like one of those films where you get hurt by an unknown creature and then you grab the sink in front of the mirror at midnight and watch the veins under your skin move on their own.

He doesn't feel shot, as silly as that sounds. He feels numb. Falling. Farther and farther away.

He is falling and falling as deep as he's ever fallen in his life. Maybe not as far as "got lost in the woods" far. No, more like " a coin dropped behind the fridge" far. It's not really about the distance but more about the feeling that he's never going to get out of here because no one ever looks in here.

He’s falling until the state of falling starts to register as a resting point, because that's the only variable he still feels. This corner he falls into is very deep and dark and dusty.

He doesn't remember to open his eyes again.

___________

Smokescreen sounds frankly hysterical, yelling at Blurr through his earpiece.

“I understand you like to show off, but you can't outrun a freaking tsunami?!?!”

Blurr only speeds up, “Watch."

“You cocky IDIOT this is suicide!”

“Relax Smoke” laughs Blurr ”You say that every time.”

The half-destroyed bridge shakes and sways like a wounded animal as the water from the overrunning sea crashes into it, gouging into the concrete and bending the metal.

The whole scene is...depressing. Water and debris everywhere and damn. This isn't the first time Blurr is witnessing a large-scale attack by the "forces of evil" as the hero agency likes to call them, but looking at the wrecked cars and scattered debris doesn't get any easier with time. Maybe it just hasn't been long enough. Who knows.

Springer doesn't look like he is bothered by it. But Springer also has a lot more experience being a superhero. With his skill at giving out smiles and encouragement in absolutely any situation, not many can compete.

Blurr certainly can't. In fact. He's got a face with subtitles that turn on in almost any stressful situation. Wearing a mask is probably one of the best things he can do to calm down any random civilians waiting for him to save the day. If they can't see him making panicked grimacing eyes, they'll be feeling much better.

A few more seconds and he's on the collapsing bridge. The people stuck on it look hysterical and bruised, but no one seems injured, so it shouldn't be difficult.

Blurr's plan is simple. Get all the people out of the disaster's path. Then get yourself out. Easy.

Easy?

He can pinpoint the exact moment when something goes wrong.

It's the second that a crooked, hideous-looking monster grabs his leg and pulls him underwater. The second when Blurr fights it with all his might and realizes with sudden horror that his strength isn't enough. That he is. Not enough.

His lungs burn, begging him to take a breath and he doesn't even know which way is the surface because all there is around him is the dark, black, cold pressure of water. It's clinging to him, seeping through his suit, his hair, burning his eyes and making his fingers go numb. It's pulling him somewhere, and he's obeying whether he wants to or not.

His spine prickles with panic.

His personal miracle. His damn magic or guardian angel or cursed luck or whatever the hell it was called. That thing that was always there to catch him like in that game of trust fall. He'd gotten so used to it's presence, he began to take it for granted.

Like the air you trust to be there every time you need to take your next breath.

And right now?

It's not here.

His body takes a convulsive breath and finds nothing but water.

[luveline]

hi jade I would love to see spencer post mexico with a BAU intern who’s nervous about her first few weeks, maybe he makes it his mission to see her settle in? 

ty for requesting! fem, 1.2k

“I still can’t believe I missed out on working with Aaron Hotchner.” 

Spencer nods as he stirs a spoon around his fiftieth cup of tea this week. “It’s genuinely a shame. And he worked here for more than half of the BAU’s lifespan, so if you look at it through a–”

“Mathematical standpoint?” you ask. 

“Exactly. It’s a statistical improbability to work at the BAU without him. Even when he wasn’t unit chief, he was still a profiler.” 

You bite the inside of your cheek, glaring down at a tray of coffee and tea, your note resting beside it. 

“If Aaron were here,” Spencer says, taking his spoon to the sink for a quick rinsing, “he’d tell you that you don’t have to make the coffee for everyone. You don’t have to ask who wants a cup every time you make one. That’s… not very American.” 

“Who cares about being American? I’m trying to be polite.” 

“You’re being taken advantage of.” 

“Thank you for helping.” 

Spencer has taken the tea side of things. “You’re welcome.” And he knows a part of him has changed now after the last few shitty months, a confidence at having seen the worst scenario of your life playing out while you’re completely powerless to stop it, but Spencer has friends who love him, and he’s not really as powerless as he thinks. So when he looks at you and he thinks about how worried you are every day that you aren’t doing enough to belong here, he knows he can change that. “Maybe tomorrow, you can make coffee for you and nobody else.” 

“They like me.” 

“Well, yeah, but everyone will like you tomorrow when they have to make their own coffee.” 

You slow your stirring. Under your lashes, your eyes carry a dark sort of glow, mid-lit kitchen and— Spencer doesn’t know for sure, but he thinks you might have the loveliest eyes in Virginia. “Is it really stupid of me?” you ask quietly. 

Spencer shakes his head. 

Your shoulders relax. You’re wearing this cutesy long sleeve shirt, cream with black piping along the neckline cross-crossing below your chest with a little black bow nestled at the valley, accentuating the line of your shoulders, and the lengths of your arms. Spencer tries not to stare, but you catch his looking and peer down. “What?” you ask. 

“Nothing.”

“Do I have coffee on me?” 

“No.” 

“Spencer, were you…” 

“Don’t even joke about that,” he says, glad to hear you laughing, then, to know that you know he’s not a perv. “I was just thinking that I like your blouse.” 

“Blouse. You must be older than you look, Dr. Reid.” 

“How old do I look?” 

You huff a laugh under your breath and pick up your tray of coffee. “I’m gonna start passing these out. You don’t have to do the tea, I’ll come back.” 

There’s far less tea than coffee. “No, I can do it.” 

You nod with determination and turn away. ”Thank you!” you call as you go. 

Spencer takes the tea out. The second to last is for Emily, who’s digging at her forehead with a fisted hand when he gets through the door of her office. “Hey, Em,” he says quietly. 

“Spence.” 

“Brought your tea.”

“Jesus, thank you.” 

He lingers by her desk, glancing over her things. She kept some of Hotch’s stuff before he left. Spencer knows she can’t part with the photo of the group of them at their favourite bar a few months after JJ had Henry, even if she made a bunch of jokes after Hotch left it behind. Good boss, terrible guy. How could he just leave this here? 

Spencer sees it as a passing of the baton. You’re in charge. “You okay?” 

“Headache.” 

“PMS?” 

“Sure, but you shouldn’t ask me that, Spencer,” she says, laughing and taking her mug of tea eagerly. 

“You’re always tired at the start.” 

“Can you stop? You’re being creepy.” 

“Did you want a hug?” 

Emily sips her tea. “Mm, ask me later. So, who made this?” 

“Me. Why?” 

“The new girl steeps it for too long.” 

“Come on, don’t call her that.” 

Emily’s brows rise. “I don’t. To her face, I don’t. She is the new girl, though.” 

“I think she’s more than aware of it.” 

“Oh, you have a big crush on her, huh?” Emily leans back in her chair, her dark hair curled lightly against her shoulders. “She’s pretty.” 

“If it were that easy, I’d have a crush on you.” 

“You don’t?” 

Spencer rolls his eyes lovingly. On the landing, he looks out over the office and follows you moving from desk to desk. You’re quick, and you sit at your own desk to dive back into ViCAP chores glaringly without your own cup of tea or coffee. 

Emily’s right. He does have a crush on you. But it’s not something any of his friends need to know yet. He knocks Luke’s desk lightly as he passes and grabs his tea where it’s still steaming on his own. As he comes up behind you, he notices your fingers clenching and unclenching on your thigh, the tight knot of your neck. God, he’s not good at this, but he’s gonna try. 

“Hey, angel?” he asks quietly. 

You don’t realise he’s talking to him for a few seconds, then your head tips back, and you’re all softness in the April gloom when you smile shyly. “Yeah?” 

“Tea.”

Your lips part. “Oh. Oh, thank you. I forgot my coffee.” 

“Tea has an amino acid called L-theanine. It’s rare in that it can actually cause relaxation in the body. In comparison, coffee–”

“Sucks?” 

He grins. “Sucks. S’that why you forgot yours?” 

“I forgot mine ‘cos Anderson looked like he was gonna collapse, he’s so tired. Is that my future?” 

“Maybe. But it’s worth it. If you can’t do it that’s fine, obviously, the turnover rate isn’t exactly low, Emily told you that herself. But it’s worth it, I promise.” 

You hold his gaze. “I know.” 

Spencer clasps your shoulder, tentative and deliberate at once. He feels the bone when he squeezes, but he doesn’t do it too hard. 

“Sorry about all the fuss.” 

He strokes your arm with his thumb. “It’s okay,” he says, hand falling down the curve of your shoulder to warm your upper arm, “I don’t mind it.” He takes his touch away, not necessarily because he wants to. It’s too early to know what you’re feeling; he hasn’t learned your tells or whiles yet, but he hopes he will. 

Your face drifts toward your shoulder, as though following his touch unconsciously. Spencer’s heart races like a blinker circuit at the thought. 

“Thank you,” you say quietly. “I appreciate it, Spencer. All your help. I really do.” 

“You’re more than welcome.” 

As he stands up, he rubs your shoulder again, a half a seconds touch he thinks Hotch would be proud of, if he were still there to see it. 

(And you —ViCAP is kicking your ass and the smell of coffee makes your head hurt, but your hot new coworker makes each day easier, ‘cos he touches like he talks. Soft, and gentle, and eager to please.)

[drchucktingle]

I'm a big fan of your philosophy, and interested in getting into your books. Which one would you recommend as a starting point?

this will seem like a BLATANT PROMO for my new book but it is a legitimate answer to the trot of your question. if you are interested in my philosophy then LUCKY DAY is probably my most existential and philosophical book. it is basically a thesis statement for the whole tingleverse and it is coming out this summer. if you appreciate my trot then PREORDERING is a very important way of supporting authors

Lucky Day is the newest novel of terror from Chuck Tingle, USA Today bestselling author of Bury Your Gays, where one woman must go up against the most horrifying concept of all: nothing.

Vera is a survivor of a global catastrophe known as the Low Probability Event, but she definitely isn't thriving. Once a passionate professor of statistics, she no longer finds meaning in anything at all.

But when problematic government agent Layne knocks on her door, she's the only one who can help him uncover the connection between deadly spates of absurdity and an improbably lucky casino. What's happening in Vegas isn't staying there, and the world is at risk of another disaster.

When it comes to Chuck Tingle, the only thing more terrifying than a serious horror novel is an absurd one...

[captain-huggy-bear]

Little Moments

Pairing: Jack Hughes x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Jack occasionally making more mature jokes cause he's just a silly guy

Summary: Jack finds out he's going to be a dad for the first time, maybe he's a little overexcited aka a collection of snapshots throughout your pregnancy.

Notes: Nonnie gave me the confidence to try writing Jack, I'm hoping it's okay...also the jelly cat mentioned is here

Nappies = diapers

Totally happy to take requests/ideas/prompts at the moment in my ask box :)

Writing Masterlist

When they ask you to take a pregnancy test at the hospital because you've been violently sick for 2 weeks, you scoff. You can't be pregnant because Jack and you haven't been trying and you've been using two forms of contraception. It's nigh on impossible for you to be pregnant, statistically speaking it's just not going to happen.

It's not that either of you don't want children, god knows you do, but you're recently married and you wanted some time to settle into that role and dynamic, the new house as well, without an additional person...especially because you knew without a doubt that once you had one, Jack would want another baby, and another, and another. You'd never be just Mr and Mrs Hughes again, it would be Mr and Mrs Hughes and their children.

It's the amount of care that you've both put in to avoiding pregnancy that makes you so certain you're not. So you expect the test to come back negative.

But, there you are...sat on the edge of a hospital bed, slippers almost falling off your feet because Jack couldn't find yours so he brought you his, staring at a pregnancy test with two clear, solid lines.

Pregnant.

Pregnant when statistically it should be improbably, nigh on impossible. Pregnant when you've been married a month...pregnant because your husband is clearly ridiculously fertile. Of course Jack would be, the amount he wants kids and family, it was probably some genetic advantage. Of course you'd marry the one guy who could knock you up when actively trying not to do so.

You don't look up when he enters your hospital room, arms full of snacks and drinks, cap on backwards keeping his hair out of his baby blue eyes. He looks far too cozy and far too sweet for a man who's about to put your body through some extreme changes.

"So, I got you some M&Ms and a orange juice..." Jack trails off noticing the way you're sat, hunched over, staring at your hands, "You okay, baby?"

"Um, I..."

"What's wrong?" Jack's quick to drop everything on the hospital bed, moving between your legs, hands smoothing up and down your thighs. His eyes dip down to the test in your hands, the two strong lines he can see, so strong that there's very little doubt what the result is. The dots starting to connect for him, you being sick for 2 weeks straight, you being tired all the time, wanting to eat foods you normally wouldn't...the ridiculous amount of sex you had on your honeymoon even though you both were using protection, "Are...are you..."

"Yeah..." You finally meet his eyes, the hopefully little look on his face makes you feel mildly better because you can see how hard he's trying to contain his excitement. It's clear from the way he bites his bottom lip, from the way Jack's fingers grip your thighs to stabilise himself.

"Well, fuck..." Even as he says it there's a little smile starting at the corners of his mouth, teeth starting to show, eyes starting to crinkle.

"Yeah,"

There's a beat of silence. You processing the fact that right now there is a human being growing inside you, part you, part Jack and him watching you for your reaction. Jack can't say he's not nervous, not when you don't look overjoyed and it's that apprehension that has him trying to get a laugh out of you.

"Guess I have strong swimmers, huh?"

"Jack!" You whack his shoulder with your hand and he catches it, thumb stroking over your wedding band even as you glare at him. He can't help but stand a little closer, your legs pushing further apart so he can fit.

"What? C'mon, that's impressive right? Condoms, the pill and you still got pregnant?" He's grinning at you proudly, like it's a badge of honour to have managed to knock you up despite trying to avoid that happening at all costs.

You groan out loud, head falling to Jack's chest, forehead pressing into the centre of his hoodie. His hands come up to the back of your head, stroking over your hair soothingly before trailing over your shoulders, down your back. He's gentle, soft with it and had you been able to see you would have seen his expression shift to one of anxious worry, apprehension at your less than excited reaction.

"A...are you...are you not happy, baby?" He's scared that you'll turn around and tell him you don't want the baby, that this isn't what you want. Sure you've talked about the possibility of kids in the future, but neither of you were expecting to have this happen right now. It's a lot for anyone, especially for the person who's body is doing all the hard work. He'd understand if you weren't happy, even though he desperately wants you to be.

"I...I'm just shocked. I want a baby with you, of course I do, you'd be such a good dad...but, I guess I wasn't planning on it right now and I'm..." You're mumbling into his chest as he strokes down your back, your arms wrapping around his waist tight to give you some sense of comfort as your entire world is turned upside down by the reality that you're going to be a mum sooner rather than later.

"You're?"

"Scared...what if I do something wrong? What if I'm a bad mum?"

"Angel, look at me," You finally look up at him, chin resting on his sternum and he looks down at you like you're talking crazy, big blue eyes wide and honest, "You are going to be amazing. You're going to be the best mum...and we're going to have a baby!"

It's his excitement, the grin that reaches Jack's eyes that has you finally cracking a smile up at him. That familiar giddy sensation of joy filling your chest because you're having a baby with Jack...with your husband and yeah, maybe this is sooner than you would have liked, but you still wanted a baby with him and...and he's so excited and he's so good with kids and you'd give him an entire hockey team of babies if he asked.

"Yeah, I hope they have your eyes." You smile up at him and suddenly all that fear, all that apprehension that you weren't going to be happy about this goes, suddenly he knows that it's going to be all good, all okay.

"Yeah, baby?"

"Mmm, you have such pretty eyes."

"Well, I hope they look like you...my pretty wife....and I'll teach them how to skate, and how to play hockey, oh and take them out on the lake in the summer!"

Suddenly it doesn't feel quite so scary, with Jack rambling about all the things he's going to do with your child and how he can't wait to tell his parents and his brothers. Leaning against him, just looking up and watching how excited he is, puts to bed any fear because you're not doing this alone, you've got your husband and it'll be okay.

Jack's got you. Both of you.

"What's that?"

"The results..." The envelope shakes in your hands as Jack comes in from the cold, taking his hat off and throwing his puffer jacket over the back of a chair.

"The...the sex of the baby?" You'd done a blood test 2 weeks ago to find out the sex of the baby, too eager to wait another 2 months for the ultrasound to be able to tell.

"Mmhmmm...I'm too nervous, you open it!" You shove the envelope into Jack's hands. Even though you'll be happy with a boy or a girl, there's something about the anticipation that has your stomach in knots. Were you going to be like Ellen and have a million baby boys or would you be the exact opposite and only have girls or would you end up having both at some point?

You watch him carefully, hands at your mouth, nervously biting on a nail as he rips open the envelope and pulls out the letter. His eyes scan the text quickly, giving very little away until...until there's a shift, a raising of his eyebrows followed by a bright grin as he looks at you.

"We're...we're having a girl..."

"A girl?"

"A girl!" He's so excited that the letter is dropped to the floor almost as quickly as his own knees fall to the ground in front of you with such a resounding smack that you wince on his behalf. He's pressing his cheek to your tummy in an instant, even though it's not very large yet at all, barely a noticeable bump.

"Hey, baby girl..." You can't help the tears that start to form as Jack starts to talk to your belly, to the baby, to your baby girl, "It's your daddy here...I'm going to teach you how to play hockey and we're going to get you in the NHL, show all those boys what for, right?" Your hands find their way to Jack's hair, stroking through it as he talks to your belly, his arms wrapped tight around your hips.

"Not the PWHL?"

"Uh, we're a family of record breakers, angel. She's going to the NHL like Manon Rheaume and she's going to be there until she retires." He grins up at you, teeth showing as you brush a strand of hair off his forehead and back out of the way.

"What if she doesn't want to play hockey?"

"Then I'll love her anyway..." He turns back to your belly, talking in a soft, sweet tone, "don't worry, baby girl, you can do whatever you want. I don't care if you hate hockey, as long as you're happy..."

You can't help the tear that slides down your cheek because how lucky are you? How lucky is your baby girl? To have a dad who doesn't care if she hate everything he loves, as long as she's happy, as long as she's healthy...god, she's so loved already.

"Okay, don't look, close your eyes!" You roll your eyes underneath Jack's palms.

"You're covering them, why would I need to close them?!"

"Just do it, angel!"

"Fine!" You close your eyes beneath his palms, trusting him to keep you from walking into a wall as he guides you through the house from the living room all the way to wherever his final destination is.

"Lift your foot, baby." He helps guide you up the staircase, hands on your hips that had started to grow wider as you progressed through your pregnancy. He always had a hand on you these days. He was trusting that your eyes were still closed as he ushered you up each step.

When you reach the top of the stairs his hands return to covering your eyes and you shuffle down the corridor until he tells you to stop. You listen to Jack opening a door, probably propping it open before his hands find yours, tugging you forward and to the threshold.

"Okay, open your eyes, baby." You practically gasp when you do, Jack standing proudly in the centre of a nursery. A nursery that was empty all of one week ago, as if he'd somehow clicked his fingers and filled it in an instant.

The walls are a soft pink, stereotypically girlie but you like it, you like that he was willing to make the nursery feminine for your baby girl, just as much as you know he'd change it if your girl decided she hated pink.

The crib is set up by the window, soft curtains diming the sunshine outside just enough. The walls have photos of you and Jack, a few from the start of your pregnancy, your wedding. There are photos of the rest of the family and some empty frames clearly waiting for photos of your baby girl when she arrives. He's even put a few copies of your first ultrasound up.

There's a rocking chair in the corner next to a small bookshelf already filled with books, a space for you to sit with your baby when you're nursing or to read her to sleep when she's being testy. A changing table is already stocked with nappies, baby wipes and powder.

It's sweet and girlish and so so lovely because Jack knows you've been worried about having the nursery done even though you have like 6 months until the baby comes. He knows you've been worried it would get put off because he's away a lot for the season. You'd been stressed that the baby might come without having a space to properly stay.

"How did you..."

"I got the guys to help, last weekend when you went out with my mom. That was a distraction!" He grins at you proud of himself, "Nico, Dawson, Luke, Timo and Jesper came round, we got it all sorted. I didn't want you to be worrying about it anymore, baby."

"Is that...is that why you wouldn't let me in here?" You're feeling teary already, hormones running high and emotions always on a knife's edge. It's so so sweet that he did it, even with months left, the fact he knew it was bothering you and decided to fix it even with his busy schedule? You didn't think it was possible to fall more in love with him, but it seems he's proven you wrong again.

"Yeah, didn't want to ruin the surprise and I had a few more bits to get so it was perfect."

"Jack..." You sigh out at him, face scrunching as you try to contain your tears. His proud little grin drops, Jack thinking he's upset you and maybe he's just made you hate the entire room. Maybe it's too pink? Or not pink enough? Or do you hate the crib?

"...Oh...you hate it?"

"No, no! I love it! I love you!" You step forward quickly, wrapping your arms around him as you start to cry into his chest because how could he think you hate it? It's the best nursery in the world and he's the sweetest husband in the world. You really can't stop the tears and Jack should be used to them by now, you've been such a cry baby since you found out you were pregnant, hormones doing a number on you and making you even more sensitive.

"Oh, okay! Oh, don't cry, baby!" He's smoothing your hair down, trying to calm you, but once the waterworks start it's seemingly impossible to stop.

"It's...it's the...hormones...'m sorry..." You sob into his chest, Jack pulling you tight against him and rocking you side to side to try and soothe you.

"Hey, it's okay, angel," He can't help but laugh because he knows you're not sad now and he knows how easily you've been brought to tears as of late. Jack presses a kiss to the top of your head, staying there for a moment to breathe in the smell of your shampoo.

At least he knows you like the nursery, he thinks, enough that it made you cry.

"God, I love you, baby..." He sighs into your hair and his words only seem to make you cry just a little harder because how did you get this lucky?

"Jack..." You waddle into the nursery, now feeling so much larger than before. Quite positively and obviously pregnant and finding moving harder each month. Even simply things are harder because you have a beach ball in the way, Jack tells you it's cute and that's the only thing keep you from crying about it.

"What?" He looks up from where he's arranging some toys in the corner. He's developed an obsession with picking up any adorable toy he finds out and about to add to the collection. There's even a cuddly Fin the Orca from Quinn sitting on top of the toy box.

"Why is there a demon in the crib?" You're staring at the bright red plushie, with big elflike ears, horns, pointy teeth and a curly q tail. Trying to figure out why it's there in the first place because it certainly wasn't there yesterday.

You rest a hand on your stomach and the other on the small of your back, watching as Jack picks the weird little plushie up and makes it wave at you with its little arm.

"It's not a demon, it's our baby girl's first jelly cat!"

"Why is it a devil? A gremlin?" You're not entirely sure what it's supposed to be, definitely some sort of monster or creature and obscenely bright in it's colouring. You have to admit it is kind of cute...in it's own way...

"Uh, because of the New Jersey Devils, obviously? Why would I get our special girl something boring like a bunny?" He places the little plush back in the crib gently, patting it on the head in a way that is so endearingly sweet that you can't help but smile at him.

"She's going to be a weird kid, y'know that? You're going to make our baby a weird kid." You joke knowing fully well that you weren't actually popular or cool in school. Jack closes the distances between the two of you, leaning down to talk to your belly, like he's been doing since day one. He yaps at your baby girl none stop, whether she can understand a single word he says or not.

"Don't listen to your mother, you're going to be amazing and awesome and totally popular." He whispers to your belly, hands coming to rest on either side gently stroking your stomach over your t-shirt.

"You want our baby to be a popular girl?" You raise your eyebrows at him and he looks at you in horror like that might be the worst fate imaginable, to have a stereotypical mean popular girl for a daughter. You think it's impossible for her to turn out that way with Jack as a dad, with Quinn and Luke as uncles and Ellen and Jim as grandparents. She's going to be surrounded by so many amazing, kind people that if she turns out mean you'll be shocked. If she's popular you know it'll be because she's kind.

"On second thoughts, be a weird kid, baby girl. Be into taxidermy or something." You feel her kick his hand in response and can't help but laugh at the pair because you already know they're going to be trouble. Your kid is going to be just like Jack, you have no doubt, and you're certain you're going to be constantly amazed by them.

"You're ridiculous."

You're sighing heavily, hands firmly on your lower back at the ache there as you look in the kitchen cupboard for something to eat. You feel so uncomfortable, so heavy, so big, so achy. Everything hurts, your belly is so heavy that it forces your back to arch and as much as you love your baby girl, you really hate how she's making you feel. Even most food isn't appetising at the moment.

"You okay, baby?" Jack watches you from the kitchen doorway, leaning deliciously against the doorframe. How does he manage to look so good all the time? It only makes you feel worse because you want him but don't feel like acting on it.

"No...back hurts, belly is heavy, I can't get comfy and I feel ugly and gross..."

"First off, you've never been more beautiful," Jack frowns at you, hating that you don't like yourself at the moment. He's certain you've never been more gorgeous than now when you're carrying his baby, your baby. But, he can see it, the way you stand uncomfortable and in pain, how that must weigh down on you as your body constantly changes. "Secondly, c'mere."

Jack moves to you, standing behind your back with his head on your shoulder. His arms come around your front, hands resting underneath your belly securely and in one slow move, he lifts and suddenly everything feels better, lighter.

"Oh, fuck..." It's like he's taken 10 pounds off your spine and you can't help but sigh and lean back into him, eyes closing at the feeling because you haven't felt this comfortable in a while.

"That feel good?" Jack grins into your shoulder, happy that he's helping, happy to feel the way you relax into him as he takes the entire weight of your belly into his palms. It's heavy and he knows his baby girl has been giving you a world of aches and pains.

"Mmhmmm..." You hum, sighing deeply with each breath as he just holds you like that, letting you lean your weight back into him and feel free for a moment, feel more like yourself.

"Well, let's stay like this for a little then, yeah?" He doesn't try to move away, not after a minute, not after 3 or 5. He holds your belly for near 20 minutes until your feet hurt from standing and even then he's considering when he can do it again, when he can help make this whole pregnancy just a tiny bit easier for you.

"What are those?" You point at the tiny little outfits that Jack is currently folding on the changing table in the nursery. The clothes you doubt are going to fit into the drawers you have because he keeps buying more baby outfits, what seems like every single day.

"These?" He holds a little onesie up innocently, grey, red and black, with a little New Jersey logo in the corner.

"Yeah, those? You do know she's going to grow out of them within a few weeks, right?" You keep telling him not to buy so many baby clothes because she's going to grow quicker than she can wear them, but he seems unable to resist.

"Then I'll just buy more..." He mutters continuing to fold the next item he'd brought.

"Jack..."

"But, they're cute! Look! It's a little New Jersey Devils snowsuit!" He holds up a big puffy snowsuit and you can't help but shake your head at him because the baby is due in June and there's no way she's going to be small enough by the time it snows to even wear it.

"She's going to be too big by the time it snows!"

"But, angel!" He pouts at you so badly that you can't help but laugh. Jack's handome, pretty, adorable, always, but there's something about fatherhood, about his excitement to provide for his growing family that makes him even more adorable.

"Okay, okay...they're cute and if it makes you happy you can keep buying them..." You concede, even as you know half the clothes aren't going to be worn by your baby girl.

"Thank you, beside, if it doesn't fit her it might fit the next one." His comment has you letting out a shocked laugh and you move closer to lean into him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder and holding your belly.

"How many babies do you want me to pop out?"

"Mmm, like a whole hockey team? Call the Hughes' Hockey Club? The Hughes Hornets? The Hughes Harlequins?"

"You're planning on killing me with babies?" You're already imagining how exhausting it would be to grow and birth that many babies...you'd do it for him, but...maybe stopping at 3 or 4 or 5 would be better.

"No, sex, obviously." Jack frowns at you and you gasp at his commentary, whacking his chest with a free arm until he grasps it and pulls you close.

"You're such a dick!"

"Hey, you love this dick." He smirks down at you, pressing a kiss to your hand.

"Jack!"

You're exhausted, 24 hours of labour has made it's mark on you. Your skin is ashy and sallow, dark bags under your eyes and sweat wetting your hair and skin to such a moistness it almost seems like you've just come out of a shower. But, you're beautiful to him, laying there with your baby girl in your arms, letting her nurse from you like that.

He's in awe of the way you shift her so naturally against your chest, the way you gentle rub the small tuft of dark hair on top of her head.

"You did so good, baby...look at her, look at you..." Jack is sat next to you on the hospital bed, he's been here for the entire labour, holding your hand and giving you water to drink. He's been amazing, and you know he'll continue to be as you face the challenges of post-birth.

He's gentle as he smooths the hair away from your sweaty face, getting the small strands out of your way as you smile tiredly down at your baby girl before looking up at him once she unlatches from your breast.

"You wanna...wanna hold her?" Your voice is raw, exhausted but no less sweet for it and Jack can't help his enthusiastic nod, arms already in position to take her like he practiced at home. His mum and dad giving him a run down with a teddy bear on how to properly hold a new born. At the time it had felt silly, now he's glad for the confidence it has given him.

You transfer your perfect little girl into his arms, sitting up a little more and shifting so he can sit with her more directly next to you. Your head leaning against his shoulder while he cradles her carefully in his arms like the most precious cargo he's ever had.

"Hey, baby girl...it's me, your daddy...God, I've been so excited to meet you. You're so perfect, just like your mommy..." Jack's finger carefully traces her cheek down to her little palm and she grips his finger tightly, trapping it in that notorious baby grip that has his eyes filling with tears, "I love you so much, both of you," He smiles over at you, pressing a kiss to your sweaty forehead before returning his gaze back to his daughter.

She doesn't even have a name yet, but he loves her so much already. He knows he'd do anything for you, for her and that's both terrifying and uplifting. To love someone so much you'd risk it all, do anything to keep them safe and happy and healthy.

"She has your eyes," You smile up at him, comparing his baby blues with your daughter's own as she yawns in his arms.

"She has your nose, angel."

"You think?" You squint at her, trying to tell if that really is your nose developing or Jack's more button one...it's hard to tell when she's this small, this young.

"Mmm, poor kid." Jack teases you, grinning, full of excitement, happiness, contentment. His wife leaning against him, his new baby girl in his arms, a sense of humour coming back now you're not constantly carrying around an extra weight.

"Hey!"

"I'm joking, she's beautiful just like her mommy." He presses a kiss to your forehead and you sigh into it, letting the tiredness take you knowing that Jack's got you, he's got you both.

[lowkeyerror]

Death and Dinner

Rio Vidal x Reader

Word Count: 1.8k

Notes: Fluff, banter, minor angst, technically character death (you're dead), mentions of minor character death, more comfort than hurt, comedy aspects

Summary: You are Death's secretary. When she can't remember how you died, she convinces you to tell her over dinner.

An: This idea comes from that one person on tiktok that does the Death and Secretary skits I think you can find them @ FlickerSpark on tiktok.

Masterlist | Masterlist 2

The natural order of things can be very meticulous at times. While it may seem as though things just happen and the process is self-sufficient that is not always the case.

When it came to the process of dying, there were many steps to make it to eternal bliss or damnation or something in-between.

Death used to handle all of those pesky decisions on her lonesome, but eventually to make her job easier, she got a secretary.

Someone who could handle all the mundane aspects of the life cycle, so that all she had to do was collect the souls. It left the grim reaper with an abundance of free time to run amuck.

Rio loved to run amuck.

You hardly think she was Lady Death with all of the fun she had. There was nearly always a smile on her face, she always had something smug to say, she was something like a light. So bright that you could go blind just by looking at her.

“Y/n, how’s my 4 o’clock looking?”

Her presence startles you as it always does. Rio just likes to pop up unannounced rather than use the door.

You click a few things on your desktop, “Not that busy, but it seems like a lot of accidents. Slipped and fell with knife, choked on dinner, ingesting paint.”

“Ingesting paint does not sound like and accident,” Rio places her hand on her forehead.

You shrug, “All that to say you’re not dealing with the brightest bunch here.”

She groans, “I wish you could come with me on the pick-ups, you have way more patience than I do.”

“True.”

Rio scoffs playfully, “You were supposed to disagree.”

You roll your eyes at her, “Oh no Lady Death you are so patient and kind.”

She laughs at your sarcasm, “I’ll have you know I am very patient. Why do you think people get live past the age 30 now? When I was alive 30 was old, now we got people living past 100.”

You nod in faux-agreement, “Sure, if you say so.”

Rio narrows her eyes, “You’re not… you weren’t 30, right? When you died?”

It’s your turn to laugh, “No, I was not.”

She sighs in relief, “Whew, for a second there I thought-”

“I was 27,” you cut her off.

There aren’t many times that Death is left speechless, but this is one of them.

“And you died how?” She says after a long silence.

A small smirk plays on your lips, “You’re going to have to remember that one.”

“Y/n,” she whines. “People die all day, everyday.”

“But only one of those people is your secretary. Now go reap those empty headed souls, it’s 4,” you shoo her away

She points a finger at you, “This isn’t over.”

“Looking forward to it, you retort.”

When Rio leaves you’re somewhere in the back of her mind. She remembers picking you as her secretary in the 90’s? Maybe it was the 2000’s? There was definitely internet.

She remembers picking you because of how smart you were. Being cute definitely didn’t harm the decision making process. She remembers the confusion when she saw someone like you was supposed to float off in purgatory for eternity.

She comes back into the office when she’s done, opting to use the door for once. She put her elbow on the desk, so that head could rest in her palm.

“Did you kill yourself?”

You don’t look up from your keyboard, “Not exactly.”

“What kind of answer is that?”

You shrug, “The true kind.”

“You’re killing me baby,” Rio puts a dramatic pout on her face.

“Statistically improbable,” you finally look up at her.

Her eyes are scanning over your face, “Ok, clearly I don’t recall, but I want to know. How about, as a sorry for not remembering how you died, I take you out of this stuffy old office? We can get dinner and then you can fill me in on your passing.”

“That kind of sounds like date,” you point out.

Rio just counters, “It sounds like dinner.”

“I can agree to those terms.”

She smirks, “Let’s go then.”

“Right now?”

She extends her hand to you, “No better time than the present.”

You put your hand in hers, “I don't get to get ready?”

Rio’s eyes drag over your figure, “You look perfect, but if wardrobe is a big thing for you, I can take care of that.”

With your hand in her’s it’s hard to hide your blush. You can see the cocky smile on her face already forming.

“Let’s just go,” you avert your gaze from her.

With a snap of her fingers you’re at a restaurant table. It’s nothing too fancy, but it’s nice enough to make you wish you’d changed.

“Worrying about your clothes and not having any questions about how you are on Earth again is pretty strange,” Rio whispers from across the table.

“Well in case you missed it I'm having dinner with Death. I feel like the rest is pretty self explanatory,” you toss back at her.

She sends you a lopsided smile, “Then you should trust me not to let you come to a place like this in a hoodie and jeans.”

You glare at her, “You said I looked perfect.”

You look down to find yourself in a more upscale outfit. Something that still felt soft and comfortable against your skin.

“You always look perfect to me,” she says it offhandedly, but there’s something there.

You don’t get a chance to answer before the waiter approaches the table. He’s speaking to you in French. Before you can work out what to say, Rio has ordered for the both of you and sent the waiter along with a joke that makes him chuckle.

“You speak French?”

“Honey I’m Death, I speak every language. Even the one’s that don’t exist anymore,” she teases you.

“So you remember forgotten languages, but not how your secretary died? Interesting.”

Rio pouts, “Did you ever tell me?”

You look at her slyly, “Maybe, maybe not? Shouldn’t you know regardless, I mean you were there.”

She rubs her temple, “I’m always there. For everyone.”

You take pity on her and sit back in your seat, getting a little more comfortable, “Tell me what you remember from when we first met.”

Rio recounts some details, “I remember that your soul was going to purgatory.”

You hum.

She continues, “You had to be wearing that hoodie. You literally wear it almost every day so I'm assuming it sentimental.”

You nod, “I was wearing the hoodie.”

Rio looks in your eyes, “Did you save someone?”

Your eyes turn a little glossy, “I’d like to think I did, but I died before I really knew for sure.”

The conversation doesn’t progress any further before the food comes. You’re grateful for the break. The two of you eat with lighter small talk sprinkled throughout the dinner.

When you’re done Rio pays and you leave the restaurant. You walk the streets together enjoying the fresh air on your skin. You don't remember the last time you felt it.

Rio’s hand slips into yours at some point. She’s cold, but that's nothing new. You always found her cool skin comforting.

She’s lead you to a small park. The wo of you sit on a bench. Her hand doesn't let go of yours.

“I remember now,” she breaks the silence.

You let out a heavy sigh, “A little brutal, but I did it to myself, I guess.”

Her eyes bore into yours, “No, you didn’t. You did it to save his life.”

You close your eyes to stop the tears from falling. You turn away from her. It might not help, but you can’t help it as you whisper, “Did I save him?”

It was a question you never knew the answer to. Something that haunted you relentlessly. Did you act fast enough to save your son?

“You did.”

Squeezing your eyes closed didn’t stop the tears from falling. He was okay. You had always hoped that when you pushed him out of the way, he survived. Part of you was skeptical, maybe you pushed him to hard or maybe it wasn’t fast enough. Hell maybe there was another car driving the wrong way on the one-way street.

“I always wondered if I had been quick enough,” there’s a small patch of relief in your voice.

“Life can be such a mysterious thing sometimes,” Rio murmurs.

You wipe at some of your tears, “Why do you say that?”

Rio gently lifts your face, just enough to swipe away your tears with the pad of her thumb, “I lost my son too.”

Your eyes soften for her, “You had a son?”

Rio smiles sadly, “Nicky was only 6 when I lost him.”

“Did you have to-”

She chuckles bitterly, “Of course, I did. I tried to make it as pleasant as possible for him. On the inside it felt like I was dying all over again. His mother never forgave me. I lost everything in one foul swoop.”

Everything is silent for a moment. There’s a heaviness blanketed over the both of you. Yet there is also some comfort knowing that neither of you is alone in this experience. She knows how you feel, and you know how she feels. Two sides of the same coin, with loss as the common denominator.

“I’m sorry, didn’t know that dinner would end in so many negative emotions,” you attempt to joke.

Rio leans into you, “Usually all the trauma comes long after the first date, but we’ve known each other awhile now.”

“Date, I thought you said it was dinner?”

She gets even closer, smiling when you don't back away, “Well it’s just dinner unless we kiss. If we kiss, then it’s date.”

“Is that so?”

Her eyes dart to your lips, “Last time I checked.”

This time you lean in, “Then what are you waiting for."

She doesn’t waste any time planting her lips against yours. It surprises you to find out her lips are warm. They’re plush like as the carefully mix with yours. You could lose yourself to the sensation.

“You know we could kiss forever. Neither of us need oxygen,” Rio breaks the kiss.

“Then why'd you stop?” You whine.

Rio kisses your cheek, “Because I'm a gentle woman, and this is the first date.”

“Well you have a gap around 2pm tomorrow. Let’s do lunch,” you suggest.

Rio smirks, “Trying to speed up the process, so you can get into my pants?”

You send her coy smile, “And if I was?”

Rio stands from the bench extending her hand to you, “Then I’d say I’m excited for our lunch date.”

You take her hand and she pulls you into her side. Her arm drapes over your shoulder. You nuzzle into her warmth.

“Me too.”

[lacedcompulsion]

SLOW LIKE HONEY

You're co-workers, you really should stay away from each other. But you can't.

pairing: spencer reid x reader

content tags & warnings: 18+, wc 7800+, smut, bau!reader, friends w benefits, situationship moment, smut ofc, yearning, angst, i think drinking but can't remember idk, small allusion to throwing up but not explicitly, death bc they work several cases but it's nothing more than what we see in the show pretty much, not rlly a case fic but it is an aspect of the story, idk what season this is around tbh

notes: hiii first post!! i had this up on ao3 originally w another pairing but reworked it for this yay ok i hope u enjoy and let me know what u think if u want i guess... no pressure... ok bye!

Spencer’s breath on your neck is hot and partly wet, a well-received pacification as you continue jerking lightly against his hips. He has one hand on your waist, rubbing soothing circles with the pad of his left thumb. The other rests on your throat, not gripping, just lingering. He uses the hand on your waist to tap lightly to remind you to roll over and off him. 

When your head nuzzles into the pillow next to his own, you just stare. It’s a justified sight; you think briefly that the laws of unrequited love are probably older than the laws of marriage. 

“You staying the night?” you ask, voice soft. You try to hide the longing within it, the disappointment should he say no. And he probably will say no — rule number one: no staying the night when avoidable. 

Spencer’s nose scrunches, fingers reaching up to brush a few strands of hair from his face. His fingers twitch and you think, just for a moment, that he might reach out and brush your hair, too. 

“I shouldn’t.”

“Yeah,” you agree, turning your gaze to the ceiling, sucking your bottom lip between previously gnashing teeth. 

Rule number two: no kissing outside of sex. It’s fine when he’s inside of you, you guys established. Not when you’re laying in bed, sweaty and breathing hard and outside of the haze caused by a mutual chase for relief.

You anticipate the weight beside you lifting, the cold air rushing into the bed, the pit in your stomach stretching and widening until you think it might swallow her whole.

What comes in lieu is Spencer’s hand resting on your waist. You almost protest — what about our rules? 

Instead, you slip your tongue back behind your teeth and watch the fan circle, circle.

Rule number three: no lying. 

When you wake three hours later, Spencer is gone. 

✶ 

There are four dead women in Texas — strangled, asphyxiated. You know it will be a long case; the marks adorning the women’s bodies and the lack of posing them speak to a textbook sadist. The bodies stuffed in the forest, that total destruction of evidence, indicate an intelligent one. You breathe in a sigh as you watch Spencer’s fingers flip through the pages of his tan file.

“Guess we’re heading to Texarkana,” Morgan says beside you.

Your stomach turns. This job never gets easier.

What does, though, are Spencer’s eyes on you. The softness rushes through you the same way it did when you first shook hands, but it’s grown more comfortable. Steadier.

The turbulence isn’t bad, but it’s enough to jolt Spencer’s coffee, sending a few drops onto the file spread across his lap. He curses softly — which still sounds wrong coming from him — blotting at the papers with a napkin. Across the aisle, you watch him out of the corner of your eye, a faint smirk tugging at your lips.

“Careful, Spence,” Morgan teases from the row behind, leaning forward. “We don’t need you short-circuiting before we even land.”

Spencer mutters something about the statistical improbability of turbulence causing major spills, but you try your hardest to tune it out. You shift your focus back to the folder in your hands and work yourself to think. To work. It’s what you’re here for. You’re not here for Spencer.

Still, his idle hands fidgeting with the dirty napkin tug at your very carefully placed focus. You think of the unsub, instead. He’s precise, methodical, angry. You can feel it in the patterns carved into the victims' skin, in the sheer rage of the injuries.

JJ’s voice cuts through the hum of the engines as she adjusts herself in the leather couch across from where you’re sitting. “Victimology suggests a personal vendetta. Both women have ties to the same gym, but nothing beyond that yet.”

“So we’re looking at someone in the orbit of their personal lives,” Rossi says, flipping through his own file.

“Or someone who thinks they are,” Hotch replies from his seat at the front, voice grim as always. 

You lean back, head against the headrest. Your fingers tighten around the folder. It’s not the first time you’ve flown into a city chasing a ghost, and it won’t be the last.

You glance up. Spencer’s eyes meet yours for a fraction longer than necessary.

It’s not a comfort you allow yourself to acknowledge often, but here, in the warmth of the plane, it feels as inevitable as the sunrise. Something constant, even when you’re on your way to prevent something that’s already unraveling. 

✶ 

Their rooms are right next to each other, and you watch Spencer disappear behind the door without sparing you a glance. Your feet itch to walk over, but it’s late, and everyone’s all tired, and nothing that bears any resemblance to normal feels moral when you have dead bodies on your hands. You tuck one leg beneath you and lay the contents of the file across your bed, organized in a way only you can tell. 

Right before you turn out the light, you hear a knock breaking through the barrier of the wall behind you.

You smile, raise a knuckle to the space above your headboard, and knock back.

✶ 

The precinct is quiet now, save for the faint buzz of dated fluorescent lights and the occasional shuffle of an officer passing by. The case is closed. The unsub — calm, articulate and utterly devoid of remorse — is in custody. His confession was delivered with an eerie precision that still crawls under your skin.

You stand by the evidence board, absently peeling tape from the corners of a photo. The faces of the victims stare back at you, lives now reduced to a few lines of text and grainy images. You pick up an eraser before exhaling slowly, fingers stilling as you hear footsteps behind you. 

Spencer appears at your side, a cup of coffee in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. He offers the latter without a word, eyes soft in a way that you've come to understand means he sees more than he lets on.

You accept the water, twisting the cap open but not drinking. You say nothing about how he remembers that you don’t drink coffee past mid-afternoon. “We don’t leave till morning. You should go back to the hotel. You’ve been running on fumes.”

Spencer tilts his head just enough that no one should notice — you shouldn’t notice — and a faint smile plays at his lips. “Funny. I was just about to say the same to you.”

“Right.” You gesture with a nod of your head toward the now-empty chairs around the conference table. “Feels strange, doesn’t it? The quiet, after everything.”

Spencer nods, gaze drifting to the board. “Yeah. It always does.” His voice at the edge of his sentence lifts up and you wait for him to continue. He licks his lips and it puts an idea in your head that shouldn’t be there. Still, it persists. “You don’t have to feel so guilty about the ones we didn’t save, I hope you know. There’s nothing you could have done differently.”

You want to deflect, to make some dry comment and move on, but his eyes hold you there.

“I’m fine,” you say eventually. It sounds hollow even to your own ears.

Spencer shifts on his feet and inches closer, just close enough that anyone abruptly walking in wouldn’t force you to jump away. “I will head back to the hotel,” he says finally. “But only if you come with me.”

Like a dog, you trail behind him, tossing the eraser back on the table and ignoring how it rolls backwards until it clatters with a quiet clap on the ground. 

✶ 

“Missed this,” Spencer murmurs, hand lazily running up your leg. He’s kneeled before you, hands on each of your thighs, pushing, spreading.

“This?” you prod. He blows softly between your legs, and you can feel him waiting for you to react. You oblige, fluttering your eyelids, falling backward on the mattress until the sterile, off-white duvet catches you. 

“You know what I mean,” he whispers, parting your legs further like a peace offering.

You’re not sure you do. 

Still, you tilt your head back and use a white-knuckle grip to grab at his hair and convey the things you can’t bring yourself to say by way of word.

✶ 

“Have you noticed you use present tense when speaking about the victims?” you ask once they’ve finished.

He pauses, gaze locking with yours. “Sometimes I… I feel like if we speak as if they’re still ours, still here, we can convince ourselves it’s true. It makes this all a little easier.”

His voice is soft, almost breaking in speech, and his meaning hangs between the two of you, undeniable.

“I can’t stop thinking about the timeline,” you say. “There’s something off. If the suspect left the second location at 8:15, they wouldn’t have made it across town in time to—”

✶ 

You guys go without a case for a month, which should feel like a good thing. It is a good thing. The less bodies out there the better.

You’re nursing a scotch at the bar — you don’t even like scotch, you just felt the need for something strong — and ignore the burning in your lower stomach, the ache between your legs. You sit and sip until the leather stool breathes enough courage into you for you to get up and walk out. 

It’s been a month without the feeling of him rolling into you, writhing beneath him, legs twisting, hips turning, only one name chosen to slip past your lips — all reasons why you don’t even make it to Spencer’s bedroom when you show up at his door unexpectedly.

“How’d you find your way here?” he asks, two fingers rubbing circles on your clit. 

“The b-bar,” you say, hands clutching at his biceps. “Was there, but I left,” you add in a hazy rush.

“Good girl,” he says, then rewards you by slipping two fingers inside. 

It takes him two more minutes before he’s pulling his belt off, slipping himself inside of you, and says: “I needed this.” 

(You don’t get caught up on how he said this. You definitely don’t pretend he said you as you were coming.)

You clear his throat when you both finish, shifting away and pulling a blanket over yourself like you’re trying to make yourself smaller on the opposite end of the couch. You get like this some of the time. Distant. Afraid. 

The space between him and you feels wide, even though you can still feel the phantom weight of Spencer against your skin; the wetness of his saliva still resides on your lower lip, sticky and welcome as honey. 

“I should go,” you say finally, tight.

Spencer doesn’t look at you, doesn’t move. “If you want.”

You flinch, but recover quick enough to grab your clothes off the floor. The silence between you stretches, unbearably so. You press your palms into your thighs, digging your nails into your skin, grounding yourself against the ache clawing its way up your throat.

When you stand you smooth down your clothes with trembling hands. 

“I…” you start, but the words die in your throat. You think you could write an empty book full of things unsaid. 

When he finally looks up, his eyes meeting yours, raw and unguarded, neither of you speak. You wait for him to say your name, to place an open palm on the cushion next to his and ask you to stay. Instead, there’s an untraceable, undefinable look in his eyes that you can’t distinguish from indifference. 

So you turn, footsteps deafening as you walk away. Spencer doesn’t call after you. He stays rooted as the door swings shut.  

The scent of him clings to your clothes like decay settling over a room harboring a dead body.

✶ 

You guys get over it within four days, like you always do. 

You’re both on top of the covers, shoes off but shields up, watching some nothing-show flicker across the TV screen like it has something to say. It doesn’t. Neither do you. Not at first.

Spencer’s got his fingers folded under his chin like he’s solving the world again. You wonder if you’re the problem this time.

“You always do that,” you say, voice low like a dare.

He doesn’t look at you. “Do what.”

“That thing. Where you think so loud I can hear the math happening.”

His mouth tilts, barely. “Sorry. Didn’t realize thinking was disruptive.”

“It is,” you shoot back. “When I’m trying not to.”

That gets his attention. His eyes flick over, sharp and unreadable in a way that makes you want to say something reckless.

“You could always leave,” he says, not unkindly, but with some kind of challenge stitched into it.

You shift onto your side, face to his, a breath apart now. “If I wanted to leave, I wouldn’t be stealing half your pillow.”

He doesn’t answer for a beat. Maybe two. Then: “You always do that.”

You raise a brow. “What.”

“Make it sound like we’re not one wrong breath from kissing.”

There's silence after that. But not the safe kind.

You smirk — because it’s easier than feeling things. “Guess we’re both good at pretending.”

He swallows. Says nothing. The space between you gets smaller in that strange, invisible way where bodies don’t move but everything else does.

On the TV, the fake people keep laughing. You wonder what it’d take to join them.

✶ 

You don’t have a TV in your room, so when the two of you finally catch your breath again, the room is filled with nothing but static silence. The kind that creeps in under the door and settles on your chest like it paid for the room.

You’re sitting up, knees drawn to your chest like armor, picking at the seam of your old blanket like it wronged you. Like if you unravel enough knots, you’ll find the part of yourself that didn’t start caring. Spencer’s still lying back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling like it has answers you don’t. Like it ever did.

“You weren’t supposed to stay,” you say, tone razor-light. Like it’s nothing. Like it doesn’t matter. Like he doesn’t matter. Except it does, and he does, and the air between you feels like it’s holding its breath.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. “Didn’t realize you were keeping score.”

You snort. “I’m not. I’m keeping boundaries.”

Your voice is too steady. You hate that it’s too steady. It betrays nothing, and that’s the problem.

“Oh, right. The imaginary fence around your feelings.” He says it flat, like a fact, but there’s that flicker — barely a crack — in his voice, and it lands heavier than he thinks it does.

You turn, slow, eyes sharp. “Don't psychoanalyze me just because you're losing your grip on casual.”

His jaw tightens. You watch it happen. Watch him go from soft to steel in half a second. “You think this is me losing grip?” He’s not loud. That’s the thing. He never needs to be.

You don’t answer. You pull the blanket tighter, even though you’re not cold. Your hands won’t stop moving — tucking, smoothing, anything to keep from reaching for him.

“You said no spending the night,” you murmur. “You said that. You’re the one who made that rule, not me.”

You’re trying not to sound like a little kid pointing fingers, pointing out a broken rule, but it’s there, the crack in your throat. You feel it more than you hear it.

“I did. And then you fell asleep on my arm and I—” he exhales, bitter-soft, “—didn’t feel like being alone. Sue me.”

It’s the first time he’s sounded tired. Not work-tired. Not jet-lag-tired. Real-tired.

“You should’ve left.” It comes out too fast, too loud. You regret it instantly. You want to shove the words back in your mouth and stitch your lips shut. You want to rewind five seconds and say please stay instead.

He sits up now, finally, finally meeting your eyes. “Say what you mean.”

The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s crowded. With everything you’ve left unsaid since the first night, the third night, the one where he kissed your wrist like it meant something.

You clench your jaw. Mean is dangerous. Mean is everything you’re trying not to be.

Once you start meaning things, it stops being safe.

“I mean,” you start, voice quieter now, threadbare, “that I can’t keep waking up next to you and pretending it’s not ruining me a little.”

You don’t look at him when you say it. You look at your hands. The blanket. The space between your knees. Anything but his face.

And there it is. Your little apocalypse, out loud.

Spencer blinks, slow. Like he’s trying to rewind it, parse it, file it under Things To Analyze Later. But he just nods.

“Okay,” he says. “Then I’ll go.”

The words fall like bricks. No heat. No argument. Just resignation, folded neatly like one of his pressed work shirts.

He stands, grabs his coat from the chair, movements stiff like they’re too careful. Like if he moves too fast, he’ll shatter. You don’t stop him.

But you don’t look away, either. You make yourself watch. Like penance.

The door clicks behind him like punctuation. Not a period. Not quite. Maybe a semicolon.

And you lie back, staring at the ceiling, waiting for it to explain how you got here.

It doesn’t.

✶ 

The chill of mid-November isn’t much to speak of in Tallahassee, but the air feels heavy nonetheless. It’s bone dry and still in the cramped precinct, but you’re used to this — the unrelenting silence that builds until it threatens to rupture. The walls are yellowed with age, the lights too bright for such a small space. It smells faintly of burnt coffee and paper left too long in damp drawers. 

You stand at the center of it all, the evidence spread across the table in front of you, photographs and crime scene reports arranged with surgical precision. Hotch’s doing. 

You’re deliberate in your movements, every action honed to keep your mind focused on the case rather than the ache lodged under your ribs.

“Two couples, three weeks,” Hotch begins, more a reiteration to himself than anything.“No apparent connection between the victims beyond the methodology. He’s escalating.”

“Look at the posing,” Spencer says, coming around from the other side of the table to slightly rearrange the photos. “It’s too deliberate. Too symmetrical. This isn’t just about killing. It’s like he’s… creating something. A tableau, maybe.”

Rossi shakes his head. “Could just be obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Order for order’s sake.” Spencer hums in distant deliberation as he sets up a geographical profile on the room’s opposing board. 

You’re not so sure Rossi’s right, but seniority rules. You turn your attention back to the board, adding another photo to the cluster.

Across the room, Spencer hovers near the whiteboard, arms crossed. You’ve barely spoken since you all arrived. You feel the weight of him pulling at your attention despite yourself. You feel too aware of how fragile everything feels.

✶ 

Later that evening, Spencer finds you in one of the precinct’s side offices. The room is dimly lit, the blinds half-drawn, casting striped shadows across the desk where you sit, scrolling through files on your laptop. You feel him hesitating in the doorway.

“You’re avoiding me,” Spencer says.

“You’re not exactly making yourself easy to approach,” you say without looking up, voice flat.

Later that evening, Spencer finds you in one of the precinct’s side offices. The room is dimly lit, the blinds half-drawn, casting striped shadows across the desk where you sit, scrolling through files on your laptop. The screen’s glow makes your face look washed out, otherworldly. Like something pulled from a memory instead of a moment. You feel him hesitating in the doorway.

“You’re avoiding me,” Spencer says.

“You’re not exactly making yourself easy to approach,” you say without looking up, voice flat.

“I wasn’t trying to make it hard,” he says finally, stepping inside like the floor might give out. “I just didn’t want to make it worse.”

You click your pen twice, too fast, like the notes you’re absentmindedly writing matter more than what he’s saying. It doesn’t. But you need something to touch, something to do. “Well,” you mutter, “congrats on that front.”

His breath catches. Just a little. Enough to register.

He walks further in, careful steps over scuffed linoleum, until he’s standing across from you. Not close, not far. Neutral territory. “I didn’t mean to stay that night. Or the time before that. I mean — I meant to leave. I just…”

He trails off. Looks away. Picks at a hangnail like it might distract him from how vulnerable he sounds. “It didn’t feel like a rule anymore. It felt like a punishment.”

You stop scrolling. Not because of what he said — though that hits somewhere low and raw — but because you’re tired. Tired of parsing every glance, every touch, every maybe.

“Then maybe we shouldn’t have made rules at all,” you say. “Maybe we should’ve just let this thing crash and burn from the beginning instead of dragging it out like a slow-motion car wreck.”

Spencer leans against the edge of the desk. His hands hover near yours but don’t touch. Like he’s asking without asking.

“I don’t want it to crash,” he says. Quiet. Steady. “I just didn’t know how to keep it from doing that without breaking something else in the process.”

You finally look up. Meet his eyes. They’re soft and stormy and apologizing in ways his words haven’t gotten to yet.

“You hurt me,” you say. It’s not meant to be an accusation, nor a weapon. Just the truth.

“I know,” he says, and he means it. “I hurt myself, too.”

You blink. Slow. The words don’t fix anything, but they peel the edge off the tension.

“So what now?” you ask.

Spencer shrugs, but it’s the careful kind. The kind that doesn’t want to shake the fragile thing between you. “I stay. Or I go. Your call.”

You scan his face like you’re trying to read a foreign language you only half-remember. But the burn’s still there. Under your ribs. In your throat. 

“I can’t keep doing this,” you say, softer now, but not gentler. “It’s always almost. Always something you almost say, or almost feel, or almost admit.”

He looks down at the floor like it might offer him a script. It doesn’t.

“I didn’t come here to fight,” he says.

“You didn’t come here to fix anything either.”

That one lands. You see it in the way his hands stiffen at his sides, in the way he doesn’t argue.

You glance back at your notes. Eyes unfocused.. “You should go,” you whisper. 

He lingers like he might say something. Might reach out. 

This time, he leaves without closing the door. 

✶ 

Your feet carry you past your own room and straight to Spencer’s once you step into the hotel. It feels like second nature, the way your hand reaches for something you can’t have but can’t get enough of. 

You guys don’t do this — fuck during cases. It’s always after. It has to be after, or else what are they doing? Trading in humanity for a fire that’s always sure to cease once the moment passes?

He doesn’t answer at the first knock, so you just knock harder. It’s a threat: open up or let everyone see me standing here at your door. Spencer chooses the former.

“May I help you?” Spencer says, and it’s a half-joke, but you hear the hesitancy. His eyes dart around the hallway like this is a trap.

“Actually, I was thinking I could help you.” 

There’s a brief moment where a spark filters through his eyes. It’s gone just before you can decipher whether it’s real or not. In its replacement, the door cracks open not even an inch, maybe a centimeter. 

You take it for what she wants it to be. You step in and kiss him hard, rough, like you want to bite him. You almost do. Spencer breathes back into you, hands still at your sides before coming up to pull you in closer.

He pushes your back against the door in what you take to be a feeble attempt at reclaiming power. Instead of letting him have it, you pull his sweatpants and boxers down in one go, kissing as you descend down his body.

“I’m sorry,” you say, then place a kiss above his navel. “I’m sorry.” Another below it. “I’m so sorry.” 

Spencer sucks in a breath after the placement of the next.

✶ 

“Tell me you don’t want me,” Spencer whispers, so low you almost lose it in the sound of your meshed bodies. You’re on top of him, rolling your hips against his like you might die without this — without him.

“What?”

“Tell me you don’t want me,” he repeats, nails digging into your skin. 

Your stomach turns. It feels brittle and hard as you roll the thought of it around your mouth. You distance yourself when you let the words escape you, so far out of your own body you barely notice Spencer coming beneath you.

✶ 

Spencer winds up being right about the story aspect of the case. The killer had dropped out of college years prior, ditching his creative writing major for a subordinate position in his dad’s construction company. The need for a creative outlet came out in a less than favorable way.

You pat his shoulder on the plane, tell him he did a good job. He squeezes your shoulder before choosing the seat across from you. You glance around. No one saw. 

There’s a fluttering in your stomach you don’t want to call butterflies, so you think of them as dull, brown moths.

✶ 

December bleeds slowly as it reaches the end of the month, and Strauss approves a winter break of some sort. One week off, but they have to do a certain amount of file work while at home. Everyone takes what they can get.  

Morgan speaks with pride about the trip he’s taking to New York City — of the liquor and the women. Emily raises an eyebrow and jokes that he’s just looking for trouble. Spencer, predictably, launches into a tangent about holiday traditions around the world, but no one interrupts him. You’ve noticed the others think it’s endearing when he rambles.

You’re quiet, but do your best to not seem unhappy. You sit beside Spencer in the round table room as the team winds down. Your elbows bump occasionally, but neither of you moves to shift away. 

As goodbyes are exchanged, Spencer lingers. His steps are measured, slow, as they both head toward the exit. The cold air waits for them outside, visible through the frosted glass of the door. He hesitates, hand stilling on the strap of his bag.

“You’ve got plans?” she asks, breaking the quiet between them.

He shrugs.

“Come on, share,” you say, but you’re not sure why you’re prying. Not sure you want the answer.

“I’m going to Las Vegas,” he says, then swallows hard. “I’m visiting my mother.”

You make a noise akin to ah, nodding. It’s a good thing, truly. You’ve only met his mom once but instantly loved her, the way she complimented your taste in literature and the smell of your perfume. 

“Tell her I say hi?” 

He nods. “What about you?” 

“Just me and eggnog,” you reply, your tone light, though it falters slightly at the end. “Maybe a movie marathon if I get through the paperwork.”

Spencer laughs gently, the sound brief but warm, like a candle flickering. He shifts on his feet, his eyes tracing the edge of the door before finding yours again.

“Well,” he says, volume dipping into something quieter, more deliberate. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Yeah,” you reply, but you don’t move. The door feels like an end, more final than it should. It’s just a week, you tell yourself, and wills it to comfort you.

Spencer turns toward it, pulling it open just enough to let the cold seep in. She steps halfway through before pausing. He glances back over his shoulder, the light catching in his eyes, and he looks at you like he wants to say something else but thinks better of it.

“I’ll see you,” he repeats..

“Yeah.”.

And then he’s gone, the door swinging shut behind him. You stand there a moment longer before exhaling and pulling your scarf tighter around your neck, then stepping into the cold.

The wind stings your cheeks, but you hardly notice. Something about his words linger loosely long after you’ve begun the drive home.

✶ 

When you rustle around your sheets that night, tossing and turning, you can only find refuge in the movement of your own wrist against you, fingers slipping in and out, in and out. 

“I see you,” you whisper to the empty room. 

When you shut your eyes, you do. Brown hair, hazel eyes and all.

✶ 

There’s a knock at your door. Three short, then one after a beat — like whoever’s on the other side changed their mind halfway through.

You open it and there he is, shoulders dusted in snow like some ghost from a poem. Collar turned up, curls damp, cheeks pink from wind or nerves or both. You blink once, slow, like your brain needs a second to load him.

“I thought you had a flight,” you say, not moving.

“I missed it,” Spencer replies, like that explains anything. Like that doesn’t set your pulse lurching.

You lean against the frame. Not letting him in. Not sending him away either. “Accidentally?”

He huffs a laugh, breath clouding between you. “Only in the sense that I bought the ticket knowing I wouldn’t get on the plane.”

You glance past him — at the streetlight flickering like it’s shivering, at the snow piling quiet and soft on the railing. The air smells like cold metal and unfinished conversations.

“You came all this way just to stand on my porch and be cryptic?” you ask, but your voice gives too much away. It’s not teasing. It’s something slower, more dangerous. Want, laced in denial.

“My mom’s not doing well. I was kidding myself. She—” He looks down, then up again, eyes impossibly warm under all that winter. “She called and told me not to come.

You shift. Bare feet cold on the tile. The heat behind you spilling into the threshold, painting his skin gold.

“Spence—” you start, but the sentence falls apart in your mouth. He’s looking at you like you’re a solution he just solved too late.

“I’m not asking to come in—” 

“Come in,” you say, swinging the door open perhaps a little too fast. 

He brushes past you but pauses when you’re just an inch apart. He pulls his purple scarf off his shoulders, apologizes softly when snow falls to your floor, melting instantly against the heat.

You tell him it’s fine, lifting a hand to his cheek. Then, quieter: “You’re freezing.”

He smiles, small and wrecked. “Yeah.”

You don’t move, but the distance is shrinking anyway, second by second, breath by breath.

“I missed you,” he says, like it’s the first true thing he’s said in weeks. Maybe months.

And something in you thaws, just slightly. Not much, but enough to say enough to say I know and mean it.

When he kisses you, it feels like he means it.

✶ 

He doesn’t stay the night under the guise of paperwork. You know what he really means. He doesn’t text the next day, or the day after that, and for some reason this whole break feels like a complete waste if you’re not with him. 

On the sixth day, you snap. Your chest is burning, hot and cold all at once. You pick up your phone and type a message to him, fingers trembling.

Are you even thinking about me at all? 

The reply comes swiftly: You know I am. After twelve seconds, he clarifies he’s having dinner with a couple friends from college who are in town. You don’t have the dignity to ignore it. 

He picks up on the second to last ring. 

“I’m at a restaurant.”

“I know.” You didn’t have any words planned. So, you say: “Tell me what you were thinking about.”

“I’m in public.” 

“You’re in the bathroom,” you correct. The running sink — which you know is on to hush the sound of your call — audible on the other end of the phone proves your point.

“I was thinking about…” his voice trails off. You can hear him fight it. You will him to lose. “That first time. After that case in—”

“Alabama,” you finish, then slip a hand under the waistband of your yoga pants.

It dissolves into hushed whispers, soft moans, and a slick mess between your thighs. Your back is lifting off the cushion, head pressing hard into the arm of the couch. 

“Tell me you love me,” you hear, and don’t register it’s you saying it until silence lolls on the other side of the phone. “Tell me,” you repeat, destined to what you hadn’t meant to say, dropping your volume to a whisper.

He says your name like a warning he’s not sure he wants to call.

“It’s not commitment, Spence,” you plead. “I won’t hold it over your head.”

A few more beats of silence, and you glance at the phone resting atop your knee to see if he had hung up. He hadn’t. You contemplate hanging up yourself. 

“I love you.” The words come like the burst of flowers in mid-April. You wave between believing him and recognizing that part of his job is lying. Your fingers roll quicker inside of yourself all the same. 

When he repeats it a second time, you come with tears pooling in the dips of your collarbones.

✶ 

Spencer doesn’t text or call you when he gets back home. That familiar pit slides itself open in your gut. You’re not owed anything, you know this. The pit storms down self-poisoning pellets regardless. 

When you see him in the office, Spencer’s some kind of distant, eyes glossed over, devoid of anything you would be able to pick apart. You’re left to analyze the sudden shutout instead. 

It wouldn’t be odd to swing by and catch him by the coffee station, you are friends after all. Still, your arrangement leaves you paranoid and anxious and unsure of how to conduct yourself. 

It’s outside the bathroom where you catch him three hours later, shaking his slightly damp hands as you walk by.

“Hey,” you say, a little too rushed, and you refrain from wincing. “How was your vacation?” It sounds fake even with all you practiced under your breath sitting at your desk, so you compensate by trying hard to not let it show on your face.

“It was good,” comes Spencer’s reply, before he slides past you and steps in the direction of the bullpen. 

“Just good?” you ask. Spencer eyes a person rounding the hallway and into the space you’re both occupying, and you follow his line of sight. 

“Mhm.”

“Okay,” you say with a nod, then grab his forearm to drag him farther away from the restroom and into the stairwell. There’s minimal protest on his end, likely to save face, but you take it anyway. 

Once you’re inside, you drop your voice to a whisper. “Why didn’t you say anything, call when you got back?”

“I got busy.”

“That’s- that’s a lie,” you huff out. “Please. Please answer.”

He gnaws on your lip like it's a final meal. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not an answer,” you breathe out, on the brink of exasperated laughter. You drop his shoulders as you soften your tone and add: “Don’t be sorry.”

“This is killing me,” he whispers back. “It’s killing me. I—” He cuts himself off, brows furrowing in what looks like distress. “I’m always thinking about you.”

That’s not what he wanted to say, you realize. That’s not what he was going to say. The thought of the alternative words leaving his mouth curdles in your stomach, rises in the form of bile to your throat. 

Someone walks into the stairwell and carelessly pushes past you. You fix your posture while Spencer ducks his head and uses the distraction to walk away. Your mouth opens to say something, but you trade it in for silence. You’re not sure what you’re fighting for. 

You walk into the bathroom and throw up the contents of your stomach into the shiny white bowl. It feels like honey on its way up.

✶ 

“Two victims in the last week,” JJ says, passing them all a file before resting on the beige leather couch of the jet. “Both found in their homes, no signs of forced entry, and no evidence of sexual assault or robbery.” She sighs. “Just... gone.”

“They’re being strangled,” Spencer says. “But not with hands… some sort of ligature?”

JJ nods. “The medical examiner says it’s likely something soft, like a scarf or a tie.”

Hotch leans forward, voice calm and direct. “What do we know about the victims?”

“They’re all married women,” Spencer says, voice low as he flips through the beige file. “Late thirties to early forties, no kids, and their spouses were out of town when the murders occurred. The killer left no note, no message.” He glances up. “Like JJ said, it’s like he just wanted them gone.”

Spencer’s shoulders stiffen almost imperceptibly, but you catch it.

“Could be someone they knew,” Morgan says, his tone contemplative. “If there’s no sign of a break-in, they let the killer in willingly. Someone they trusted.”

“Someone they trusted but didn’t suspect,” you murmur. 

Spencer glances down at you, and your eyes meet for the briefest moment before he looks away. 

✶ 

Your hotel room stays dark. The file lay unopened on your desk. There’s a mini fridge you stare at, like even the presence of unsipped alcohol might just do the trick. You hate that he’s letting this impact your job, which doesn’t stop you from doing so. 

With your back against the mattress, you raise a fist, then knock against the yellow wall. 

No one knocks back.

✶ 

Emily cracks the case — a woman, she realizes, when it all feels too much like jealousy. The unsub, a thirty-something woman named Victoria Ackers, doesn’t put up much of a fight when Morgan kicks down her front door.

“It should’ve been me,” Victoria wails when you put her in cuffs. “How come they got to be loved, and I didn’t?”

You rarely sympathize with the people you lock up. This isn’t an exception.

Still, you place Victoria in loose cuffs, and when it comes to closing the door of the cop car, you close it softly.

✶ 

You go home alone and wait until three. Spencer doesn’t come.

When you finally lie in bed, it feels like a grave. 

✶ 

You’re running on three weeks of sleep deprivation when you decide to approach him. It’s long after work is supposed to be over, and the only person left in the office beside them is Hotch, who can barely be seen through the pile of paperwork adorning his desk. 

Spencer has concerned himself in an online debate forum on the overuse of arguing against the cosmological argument in atheist literature to notice you slipping into his view, pulling Morgan’s chair around to sit in it.

“Hey,” you speak first. You wait for him to invite you into a conversation.

“Hi,” he says, moving his mouse away from his hand. 

���I figured we should…”

“Talk?” Spencer guesses.

“Talk, yeah.” You bite your lip. 

“I didn’t mean to shut you out.”

“But you did.” The words have little bite in them. 

“I’m—”

“You don’t have to say it.”

“I want to.” A beat passes. You allow it. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” you say after several long seconds. You surprise yourself with the sureness behind the meaning of it.

“What do you have to be sorry for?”

You don't respond. You watch his shoulders drop. “Oh.”

“It’s okay,” you assure. “This… isn’t how it’s supposed to be.” Your eyes stall a moment too long on the team photo atop his desk, the only photo he has up. Like it’s instinctive, Spencer fiddles with a file on his desk.

“So… it’s just over.” 

You don’t have anything to say — he hadn’t posed it as a question. You’re not sure where you’re going when you stand, but you stand regardless. You pause as you shove things in your bag back at your desk. “I was lying, by the way,” you say. “In Tallahassee, when I said I didn’t want you.” 

You could stick around to see what Spencer has in response, but you don’t. It’ll hurt at the same rate, whatever it is. 

✶ 

It felt like finality, so you go to bed early. It isn’t an easy feat, and it feels nothing like winning. 

With your eyes shut, sleeping but not dreaming, you aren’t expecting the pounding sound that’s coming from your door, the intensity of it to jolt you awake. Too delirious from a lingering state of hypnagogia, you swing the door open without checking to see who it is first. Spencer stands there, soaked through his long-sleeved shirt. You weren’t even aware it was raining.

It happens fast, Spencer’s lips against yours. He kisses you the way you had kissed him back in Tallahassee, rough and cleaving you open like a god that doesn’t belong. You don’t have to work hard to meet the same level of desire. 

“What are you doing?” you get out between kisses, stepping backward as you head to your room with Spencer still pulled close to you.

“Please don’t ask any questions right now.”

So you don’t. Instead, you let him strip you of your clothes, soothe your surprised body with a palm on the small of your back as he leads you to lie on the bed. 

“You’re freezing,” you mention. A droplet of water cascades down his hair and lands on your cheekbone, then another on your shoulder until your whole body seems wet.

“It’s raining.”

“I gathered.”

You’re wet somewhere else, too, you think, as he dips his hand between your legs and leaves feather-light touches against your core.

“Please,” you whisper.

“Please what?”

“Touch me.”

“I am touching you, honey.” He’s teasing you, you know. He wants you to beg. It’s so rare he gets you at his mercy. In moments like these, you can tell he savors it. Relishes in it.

Instead of responding, you grab at his wrist, forcing his fingers inside of yourself. Spencer lets out something akin to a moan even though it's not him on the receiving end. 

You think he likes you like this, wide open for him. Your lips are parted, like you’re one big portal Spencer can slide into, move his tongue against, curl his fingers in. He takes the opportunity, pushes his pointer and middle into your mouth and lets you clamp around them. You suck, causing him to instinctively up the pace of his other hand like it’s a reward.

“Thought we weren’t gonna show up anymore,” he says. He curls his fingers to reach that one spot he knows makes your pupils blow. You push back the thought that he might’ve found that spot on other women, too. Worse, the thought that someone might’ve taught him where it is. “But you let me in. So what happened to that, hm?”

You mumble something incoherent around his fingers, so he pulls them out and grabs you by the chin instead. “Go ahead.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t what?”

“Keep you out.”

You want him to kiss you then, but don't know if that’s too intimate. You opt for bucking your hips against his hand instead. It takes another calculated curl of his fingers before you tighten around them, legs shutting tight as you ride it out. 

“I wanna do something for you,” you say. Your breathing is slow again but your legs are still shaking a little. Spencer grabs the opportunity to spread them.

“Yeah? You’re sweet.” He pulls you farther up the bed, spreads your legs and slots himself inside of you. There’s a gasp at the connection, though you’re unsure which one of you it comes from. It might’ve been simultaneous.

You watch his eyes gloss over as he allows himself this one moment of selfishness, fucking you harder. You hold him by the face and feel your authority dissipate. The whole ordeal is shrewd and loud and messy, and a drop of sweat collects at the top of your spine and slithers its way down. It feels like a raw kind of heaven; like you’re pulling apart.

Pleasure is a tight coil in the bottom of your stomach, in the tips of your fingertips, in the curling of your toes — some invisible lyre strung with vibrating wire, sticky with the friction of nearness.

When you come, you’re crying. You glance down. Spencer looks impassioned, too, so you kiss him to hush you both. 

When his lips leave yours, pull from yours, you feel the absence as acutely as the touch itself. The tender ache threads like grating twine through your chest. He leans his forehead against yours, breath mingling, shallow and uneven.

The silence between you is its own language, so you don’t speak. You don’t trust yourself to. You focus on the curve of his jaw, the faint quiver in his lips, the way his eyelashes cling together with sweat — or maybe unfallen tears. 

He pulls away first, his hands slipping from your grasp. He sits up, turning his back, shoulders tense in the way they always are after release proves itself to be fleeting. For a moment, you want to reach out, to pull him back into the bed, but the weight in his posture tells you it won’t matter.

“I wasn’t lying, though,” Spencer whispers, back turned to you as he sits at the edge of the bed, “when I said I loved you.”

Your gaze settles on the curve of his spine, the way it rises and falls with each uneven breath. Your hands twitch against the rumpled sheets, caught in the futile instinct to reach for him. You curl your fingers into fists, nails biting into your palms. Your throat tightens, swallows the air before it can reach your lungs. The dim light catches on the slope of his shoulder, illuminating a vulnerability you’re not sure you’re meant to see.

Emboldened by newfound fulfillment of self-interest, you crawl toward the edge of the bed where he sits and kiss his back. 

In a few moments, Spencer will leave. You know this. This time is different, though. 

You know he’s not coming back.

[chiotri-loves-davekat]

Classpect power traits to give the beta kids in a no sburb au or even a pre sburb kinda dealy

Dave - Very good at guessing time. Figures it's weird ninja stuff he picked up from bro at some point. Often gets it down to the minute. Also he's got a really fucking accurate internal metronome. He manipulates the hell out of these.

Rose - Commonly predicts the direction in which her interactions will go before she has them. Just kind of knows the general type of thing she should say to get more of what she wants out of the conversation. Thinks she's just smart, which she is, but the degree of which she does this is unnatural.

Jade - Unnatural, uncanny, fantastic ability to visualize things in space. Knows for certain that furniture would fit in different spaces with just an inch to spare without ever actually measuring it. Packs cars like the world best Tetris player. Actually probably pretty good at Tetris. She never questions this.

June - Weather is very convenient, a Statistically Improbable amount of the time. It seems like a warm breeze follows her everywhere. Wind chimes always make a ruckus near her. She loves the wind and doesn't think twice about her engrained knowledge that the wind loves her back.

[chadobi]

I just thought of this funny scenario: The rise boys (or just Mikey and Leo separately)have been pining after reader for YEARS, and one of reader’s guy friends (who knows about the turtles) gets more touchy and affectionate towards her. Cue jealous turtle that leads to them confessing. BUT when the boys are officially dating their crush, and prolly try to rub it in, the friend admits that he never liked reader that way, and just wanted to get the guys to confess (secret wingman lol)

Operation: Confess or Die

Hi guys! I hope everything’s good with you! Sorry I haven’t been very active lately, but I’m on medication from the doctor and it’s causing a hormonal storm, so I’m basically in a constant PMS mood 😭

Rise!Leo x Reader

Summary: Leo’s been secretly in love with you for years, but it’s all been stolen glances and half-baked plans. When your best guy friend Eli suddenly starts getting… touchy? Affectionate? Flirty? Leo loses it. The twist? Eli’s doing it all on purpose.

The city was buzzing below, all soft golden streetlamps and distant car horns. The spring air was warm with that faint scent of subway steam and night jasmine from your fire escape planter. It would’ve been perfect for a quiet night in—if Leonardo Hamato wasn’t currently having an emotional crisis in your living room.

Leo sat stiffly on the armrest of your couch, arms crossed, trying to act like he wasn’t calculating how many punches it’d take to knock Eli’s smirking teeth out of his face.

Three. Maybe four. But that’d be rude.

“I’m just saying,” Eli said, leaning a little closer to you with that lazy smile of his, “you should’ve seen her trying to win that claw machine last week. Fourteen tries. Fourteen. I had to physically drag her away.”

You gasped, shoving him playfully. “That thing was rigged!”

Leo watched as your shoulder pressed into Eli’s side. Your laughter rang out like a damn bell, and something sour twisted in his stomach.

You didn’t even notice his glare. Why would you? You were too busy watching Eli like he hung the damn moon.

Leo tried to calm himself. He’s just a friend. He’s always been around. Nothing’s different.

Except now Eli was brushing hair behind your ear. And calling you nicknames like “sweetheart” and “doll.”

And the worst part?

You weren’t stopping him.

Two hours later, Leo was back in the lair, face down on the floor of the dojo while Donnie ran diagnostics on a busted drone.

“I’m done,” Leo muttered into the mat. “I’m just gonna lay here forever. Maybe if I stay still long enough, time will rewind and I can delete all of tonight.”

Mikey flopped beside him, propping his chin on his hands. “You still didn’t tell her?”

Leo groaned. “I couldn’t. She was with him again.”

Donnie didn’t look up from his tablet. “The statistically improbable friend who’s suddenly acting like a human Labrador retriever?”

Raph crossed his arms from the doorway. “Maybe he’s got a thing for her.”

Leo flipped onto his back, face pale. “Do not say that.”

“Then do something!” Mikey chirped, poking his plastron.

“I had a plan,” Leo grumbled. “Phase One was charm. Phase Two was rooftop dinner. Phase Three included ambient jazz and maybe sparklers—”

“Yeah?” Donnie interrupted. “What phase are we in now? Emotional self-destruction?”

Leo groaned again. This time louder.

The next time Leo visited you, it was worse.

It was so much worse.

He arrived just before sunset, perching outside your fire escape to wait for your usual “come in” knock—except he didn’t knock. He froze instead, listening to the laughter spilling out from your living room.

You and Eli were on the couch, curled close over a shared phone screen, watching some dumb TikTok compilation. You were laughing so hard you had to clutch his arm for support. He didn’t pull away. In fact, he put his hand over yours.

Leo’s hands clenched the railing. He swore his blood pressure hit critical.

He jumped down, stormed across the fire escape like a soldier entering enemy territory, and knocked. You answered with your usual warmth, your face lighting up like it always did when you saw him—and for a split second, Leo’s fury melted like ice.

But then Eli appeared behind you.

“Leo!” you said, smiling. “Come hang out with us!”

“Yeah, c’mon in,” Eli added with a casual wave. “We were just watching fail videos. You’d be surprised how funny goats can be.”

Leo stepped inside, every muscle tight. The apartment smelled like popcorn and vanilla candles, and the sounds of bleating goats and screaming skateboarders echoed from the TV.

He sat on the farthest edge of the couch, as physically distant from Eli as possible.

You didn’t notice his glare. You were too busy rewinding a goat parkour clip.

But Leo noticed everything.

The way Eli kept “accidentally” brushing your hand. The way he leaned toward you to whisper some joke. The way you leaned back without hesitation.

And then—just as the next video loaded—Eli said it.

“Y’know,” he murmured, voice soft and just intimate enough, “I really love spending time with you lately.”

Leo blacked out for a second.

Then he stood up.

Fast.

“Okay—NOPE,” he snapped, pacing a tight line in front of your coffee table. “Nope nope nope nope—I can’t do this anymore, I’m gonna explode, I’m literally malfunctioning—”

“Leo?” you said, blinking. “Are you okay?”

Eli just sat back with a suspiciously neutral expression.

Leo whirled to face you, shoulders tense, eyes blazing.

“I like you,” he blurted. “Okay? I like you. Like—like like. Not just friendly ‘I’ll carry your groceries’ like, or ‘I’ll beat up a creep for you’ like—real, actual, romantic like. And I have for a long time.”

You stared at him, lips parting.

“I wanted to tell you ages ago, but then Eli was always around, and then he got weirdly touchy and then I panicked, and now I’m confessing in front of a goat video and this is not how I pictured this going—”

You stood slowly. Moved toward him.

“Leo.”

He stopped rambling.

You looked up at him—his cheeks flushed, lips parted, eyes wide with panic.

And you smiled.

“About time,” you said softly.

His heart stopped.

You leaned up and kissed his cheek. “I’ve liked you forever, dumbass.”

He blinked. “Wait—what?”

“I figured you’d tell me eventually,” you said, laughing. “But watching you squirm was kind of fun.”

From the couch, Eli stretched, popped his knuckles, and casually said:

“Well, my job here’s done.”

Leo snapped toward him. “Excuse me?”

Eli stood, brushing imaginary dust off his jeans. “I’ve known for like… years that you were in love with her. Figured if I upped the affection, you’d grow a spine.”

Leo’s jaw dropped. “You—you were faking it?!”

Eli winked. “You’re welcome, Blue Boy.”

Then he slung his hoodie over his shoulder and strolled toward the door.

You stifled a laugh behind your hand.

Leo turned back to you, flustered beyond belief.

“So… does this mean I get to kiss you now?”

You grinned. “Only if you swear you’re not gonna wait another three years to ask me out.”

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt for Slide behind the cut, who asked for interdimensional shenanigans and is getting “interdimensional whoring for Timkon”. Bullying your alternate self into having the best sex of his life with his bestie counts as "shenanigans", right? Right?? (( chrono || non-chrono ))

Well, at least his other self knows how to package a check-in in a way Kon will be able to relax for. And Tim himself knew enough to loop an arm around Kon’s waist when his other self said “good boy”, which is the only reason his other self doesn’t get knocked on his ass by two hundred and fifty pounds of incredibly dense half-Kryptonian muscle made out of DNA evolved for a much higher-gravity environment than Earth’s. 

Well, that’s why he’s the one facilitating this interdimensional threesome.

“There we go,” Tim hums. His other self shoots him a dirty look again–probably on principle at this point, really, he figures–and Kon doesn’t even try to stutter out an apology or make an excuse. Bonus benefit to sleeping with an easily-overwhelmed version of him, Tim notes: he stops apologizing for existing a lot sooner, and therefore Tim is kept much farther from manifesting any Gun Batman thoughts. Well–his version of “Gun Batman” thoughts, anyway. 

Technically, as far as Tim is aware, his home reality is possibly the literal only one without a potential “and then I became fascist Batman” timeline that was at least at some point lying in wait for its version of Tim Drake–including several where he was never even a Bat, go figure–but that doesn’t actually preclude annoying visits from alternate reality versions of himself. Which is whatever, since most of them just seem to be just genuinely bewildered that all of Tim’s personal technically-supervillain-oriented plans begin and end with “one sec, lemme just see how open to the question ‘hey can I borrow your lipstick and if so does it come in this one hyper-specific shade of red?’ Dr. Isley is feeling this week”, but still kind of annoying anyway. 

Tim finds the “and then I became fascist Batman” path very narrow-minded and not very resourceful of his alternate selves, honestly; seriously, do none of them know how to deal with their cortisol levels actually productively, as opposed to by just getting unhealthily invested in casework and training and contingency plans to the severe detriment of all their personal and professional relationships and own mental health? 

. . . . . . maybe this is not the only sexually-repressed reality out there, considering. Which, come to think, might help explain why there are such a statistically-improbable amount of potential Gun Batman timelines in Hypertime. 

Hm. 

Tim idly wonders if he could spin “for humanitarian reasons, I am going to be running a long-term background project where I get as many versions of myself interdimensionally laid as possible” to Bruce and/or the Justice League. Probably not, but like, if he tried the Titans . . . 

Alternately, he guesses he could just ask Kon for some backup. There’s definitely some interdimensional whatever or another that Kon would be willing to nick from the Fortress of Solitude to facilitate that definitely just noble goal, and also there’s really not better backup for that particular project anyway. Bernard doesn’t have enough vigilante-grade field experience, he is not gonna take another Bat, and Cassie and Bart are great but like, if Tim was picking who he’d want to drop in on him from another reality and ask to ride his dick for the sake of the timeline . . . 

And given Tim is the one picking, well, that’s just the logical option, then. 

He’ll look into it, he decides, and if it’s feasible he’ll pitch a bimonthly boys’ weekend. Do some preventative work in a few realities/timelines or whatever, just in case. 

Seriously, that Savior dude was a real goddamn trip. 

Tim clearly takes himself way too seriously in way too many timelines. 

Okay, though, all tangents aside, he does have shit to do here, so yeah, time to get back to that. 

“Here, let me actually get your good boy out of these,” he says as he shifts back just enough to help Kon out of his pants and jock. He is not remotely merciful about letting his other self pretend not to notice what a fucking mess Kon made of them both during the process. It’s not like Kon didn’t already come all over his jock, so it’s not particularly subtle exactly how much he comes either way. “Where are your wet wipes? Or . . . maybe that’s optimistic of me, actually, maybe you’re not prepared enough for cleaning up your sexcapades, given I’m not entirely sure you’ve ever had a sexcapade.” 

“I’m not–I’ve had sex before!” his other self sputters, turning red. Tim raises a pitying eyebrow at him. “I have!” 

“I didn’t say you hadn’t,” he points out mildly. His other self turns red. “I consider a sexcapade more of an event, personally, so they’re just . . . hm, messier? Yeah, ‘messier’ works.” 

“Rob,” Kon mumbles against his other self’s neck as he curls a hand against his shoulder, sounding a little drunk about it. Or, well–a little concussed, maybe. Kon gets concussed a lot more often than he gets drunk, for obvious reasons. “Y’wanna . . . ?”

“We want to take care of you, sweetheart,” Tim says, taking a moment to press a kiss against the back of the other’s shoulder before folding up his pants and carefully setting them and his jock aside with his shirt. And, well, sparing a moment to admire the come smeared across his S-shield again, because it really is something to appreciate, when Kon’s willing to give that up. “C’mere.” 

He slips up against Kon’ back again and puts his hands on his hips, and it only takes the slightest little tug or two to guide the other into following him back. Which is actually significantly more effort than it usually takes, but Tim’s going to assume it’s safe to assume Kon’s feeling a little torn between Robins right now. 

He gets Kon to sit down on the edge of the bed and cups his face in his hands, and Kon immediately tilts his face up into them. He looks dreamy and dazed and all flushed and fucked and goddamn adorable. Especially adorable because he hasn’t actually gotten fucked, or really even all that much attention. They haven’t even touched his cock all that deliberately. Or really deliberately at all, in fact. 

Tim feels some kind of a way about the fact that this Kon’s never bottomed before and still let him fingerfuck him without even putting a hand on his dick for it–still let him fingerfuck him without putting a hand on his dick for it, and came for it; came for it easily, even. That super-sensitivity is a goddamn gift. 

Or just Kon is, really. 

And Tim knows how to appreciate a gift. 

“Good boy,” he says the same way he’d say “good work” in the field, and leans down to press a kiss to the other’s forehead. Kon melts into a functional liquid under his mouth and hands and starts purring louder than he’s purred all night. 

Definitely, definitely a good boy.

[haydenthewitch]

okay so. can you imagine

the 118 gets called to a spirtual spot due to some cristal-ball mayhap (it was left in line of direct sunlight and it set a bunch of curtains on fire.) Luckly no one was hurt, and the sprinkler system is up to date, so the shop doesn't even have major fire damage to it either. While there, tho, Buck ends up in the possession of a rabit's foot. And suddenly he's having a streak of AMZAING INCREDIBLE LUCK.

"It's not a thing!" eddie insists.

"You can't argue with facts!" buck tells him. "And the fact is, i've been having a statistical improbible bought of luck today, AFTER i got the rabbit's foot. Should i go to vegas this weekend?"

in a cosmicaly comedic twist of events, their next call is to the office building of a private jet's comapny. and buck pulled some crazy stunt, saved the ceo, and now he's being offered two free round trip tickets to anywhere in the country.

so buck packs a bag for vegas. and he tries to invite maddie, but she's WAY too pregnant for all that. So instead he guilty asks if she'd mind taking chris for the weekend so eddie and him could get away. ("yes, but only if you ask him out at somepoint durring your trip." "MADDIE!" "WHAT? i'm getting impaient, buck.")

So he manges to convince eddie to get on the plane with him, and watch him gamble the weekend away ("for sceince, eddie. to prove that i actualy do have a bunch of luck!") and for the first day they have a BUNCH of fun. Buck doesn't actualy gamble more than $50 at any table or slot, Becuse he's not stupid and he knows how these things work. He does lose close to $200, But he wins it all back (And then some!)

"See, eddie! i'm winning even when the machines are rigged! that has to be luck!! i made a net profit in vegas! it has to be lucky!!"

so anyways, they go back to their fancy hotel room (paid in full by the time of their arvial thank's to buck's INCREDIBLE save at the fancy privte jet company) they are wiped out, and they plan to both take a good nap when...

"Oh." Buck says. "There's only one bed."

"So?" eddie says. "That thing looks like a hiwaian king +!! there is plenty of room for the both of us, buck."

(Is this part of the rabbit foot's luck?)

so they climb into bed together (climb into bed! together!!!) and take a nap.

By six pm they are back out on the town, and boy is vegas after 6 pm WAYYY diffrebt than vegas in the full sunlight. They go out to this SUPER COOL (most likely tourist trap) resturant on the vegas strip, and the bill has to be MIGHTY but buck doesn't get to see the number before eddie snatches it up to pay.

("eds, let me pay. vegas was my idea, come on." "Buck, no. i've got some fun money stashed away. plus, you got us private flights and a room for free with your herotics. i'm paying tonight." buck is blushing so much he can't come up with a proper counter argument.)

Buck sees a poker lounge, and he insists that they go in. Thay have fun, and by the time buck has played two games of poker, they are both plesantly buzzed and gigling up a storm. eddie, of course, didn't play. he much prefers watching buck play, watching him work his charm and read pepole like open books. His boy is sooo good at that, fuck.

and then. someone is talking to buck. pepole have been talking to buck all night, and it felt. fine, normal, okay, fun even. this chick... does not feel like any of those. good lord. she's fucking flirting with buck right in front of eddie's goddamn salad. he instantly gets hot under his collar.

and it's kinda petulant, more than it's anger. anger is too scary of a word... he doesn't feel anger, not his hands curling into fists or hot short clipped thoughts. Yes, it does feel petculant, like a child who doesn't like to share. Couldn't this lady see that buck was clearly his?? couldn't she see how eddie felt too, how eddie was, quite simmalarly, clearly buck's? they were practicaly married, couldn't she see the wedding band mark branded into his soul??

fuck. maybe eddie was drunker than he thought.

buck is taken aback when eddie leans over to him, and says right into his ear. "You know, there is one more vegas thing to try."

"What's that?" He asks, trying to pointidly ignore amy (the lady who was clearly flirting with buck even though he only wabted eddie) and her attempt to lean closed to hear this cobversation.

"Vegas wedding. you and what's her face could totaly go get married right now, if you wanted." eddie says and... oh my god. eddie is jellous.

"Nah," buck says. trying to remain casual about the whole thing. "I'd rather get married to you. Make this whole 'necular fam' thing we got going on in Cali' offical."

and eddie... fucking glows at that.

"Hey!" the dealer snaps. "Do you want to be delt in for the next hand or not?"

"No." eddie tells him. "We've got a wedding to plan."

when they show up to their next sceduled 24 hr shift, they can't stop looking at each other and giggling. hen and chim clock the energy hard, but they decide to ignore it for the first half of the shift. that is until...

"How did vegas go? any elvis weddings?" ravi asks.

Buck freezes in place, but eddie doesn't even look up from his phone as he says: "Oh, elvis wasn't there."

Hen IMMEDATLY sits straight up on the couch. "Who Got Married????" She asks, a hint of urgent hilarity on her voice. Buck puts his head in his hands, blushing wildly becuse. good god, he's never going to live this down. "Buck!! WHO GOT MARRIED??"

"Yeah, Buck! who got married??" eddie says, mocking hen but ALSO teasing buck. The little shit. So, to get back at him.

"You know, you aren't being a very good husband right now, eddie buckly-diaz."

10 long seconds of silence, and then all HELL breaks loose in the firehouse. but you know what? it was fucking worth it to see eddie blush all pretty like that.

("Did you tell maddie yet?" Chim asks immedatly, and buck swears. "no, fuck, i havent." chim just grimaces, and says "that is NOT a secret i'm keeping from my wife. you better text her now if you want her to hear it from you." Buck groans, becuse fuck. chim is so right. this leads to:

Buck: eddie and i got married in vegas

maddie: what

maddie: the

maddie: fuck

maddie: this is NOT WHAT I MENT when i said you should ask him out, evan buckley.

buck: it's buckely-diaz actualy

buck: and it's still unclear if we're together

maddie: buck. EXPLAIN

Buck: Oh my god what's that sound it's the bell haha gtg maddie ily

maddie: I HATE YOU )

[cantheykillmacbeth]

Could Phineas and Ferb kill Macbeth? I think it’s possible they qualify for a special exemption, due to the fact that they have a probability field around them that allows their plans to always come to fruition (As revealed in the Milo Murphy’s Law crossover episode)

(Bonus, Perry the Platypus definitely could because platypuses lay eggs)

I'm pretty sure the point of Phineas and Ferb's "Probability Field" is that it allows them to achieve the best possible outcome for their plans, not just that their plans automatically work, and I think that's a very important distinction here. Like, if Phineas and Ferb decided to speedrun Minecraft, for example, they could get the exact number of Ender Pearls that they would need from Piglin trades, but they wouldn't be able to just obtain End Portal Frames from them because that's fully impossible with the mechanics of the game.

There are many times in the show(s) where P&F are described to have done something "impossible," such as time travel, though in-universe, it's more likely that these feats were really just extremely statistically improbable. When it comes to Macbeth's prophecy, the implication is that it is entirely impossible for a man of woman born to kill Macbeth, not just statistically improbable.

So, since both of them are male and presumed to be naturally born of women, I'm inclined to say no, Phineas and Ferb from the eponymous Phineas and Ferb could not kill Macbeth.

(Perry could, but we've already covered him)

Thank you for your submission!

-Mod Anthem