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#— thirteen going on thirty! ☆
lunedits · 1 year
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arctic-hands · 7 months
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I have joined the society of bluetooth earphones
#refurbished for the record#i have been dragged kicking and screaming into the future#my phone doesn't have a headphone jack. my mp3 player does but it also has bluetooth capability. my ereader only has bluetooth for audio#so I figure since I'm going on the eclipse trip in a few months I should get some wireless buds for the train#went with some used skullcandy sesh because they were like twenty-two dollars had had a twenty hour battery life#I ALMOST went with some used Hesh headphones that looked really cool and had fifteen hours but were also forty-nine dollars#which combined with the other things I needed to buy would have put me thirteen dollars over my seventy-five dollar walmart giftcard#I was very tempted if just for the aesthetique~ but realized if I bought the cheaper earbuds I could have enough money for some instax film#and the cheaper earbuds and 2 pack of film plus the household objects I needed put me at a tidy seventy-four dollars and fifty-six cents#so I didn't have to spend any actual money on anything woot woot#the earbuds are blue. which is my favorite color. but they're like a pastel blue. which is like my least favorite shade of blue#ah well I'll sacrifice looks for function and affordability any day#*stares in slight dismay at hideously pink refurbished and thirty dollar instax mini 9*#what I REALLY wanted was some of those urbanista solar-powered headphones/earbuds#but even used/refurbished both were out of the total price range of the gift card(s)#I actually had two giftcards which together totaled seventy-five so that was pretty sweet
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endlessnightlock · 1 year
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I was at Walmart with my daughter yesterday and saw a guy with full on silver hair wearing a Blink182 t-shirt and I just. Reality really punches you in the face like that. 
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caterpillarinacave · 1 year
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guess who has forgotten to do something very important
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poppletonink · 11 months
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Review: 13 Going On 30
★★★★★ - 5 stars
"I wanna be thirty. Thirty and flirty and thriving."
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Jenna Rink doesn't want to be thirteen anymore. She doesn't want to be locked in a cupboard at her own birthday party. She doesn't want her best friend to be the geeky, photography-loving boy from next door. She wants to be popular, and to be part of the beloved Six Chicks that rule the school she goes to. Jenna makes a wish - a wish to be "thirty and flirty and thriving". What she doesn't expect is to wake up the next day living her dream life - thirty years old, with a boyfriend and the perfect job. Yet as she discovers more about her future life, Jenna realises that maybe being thirty isn't exactly what she wants.
13 Going On 30 is a really refreshing romantic comedy - one where the main character makes mistakes and deals with them and where the love interest isn't a "pretty boy" in a leather jacket or flannel shirt. It's childish and it's witty and it's downright amazing. Relatable in its discussion of the longstanding trials and tribulations of teenage-hood: crises over popularity vs originality; the drama of first crushes; and the overall trauma of interacting with other teenagers. It contains outstanding performances from Jennifer Garner as the naive and funny Jenna Rink, and Mark Ruffalo as the sweet, caring best friend and love interest. Frankly, everything about this film makes it arguably one of the best rom-coms to ever be made.
Despite the criticism that the friends to lovers trope often recieves, Jenna and Matt have one of the most adorable romances on screen. It's beautiful and rich in history - they understand each other better than other people do, and they love each other so intensely that those feelings resurge in a matter of days when they reunite. Jenna and Matt make the audience want a relationship like that - and isn't that the point of a rom-com?
Though the friends to lovers trope is used very well in this circumstance, the most wonderful part of this film isn't the romance. No rather the most brilliant part is its depiction of childishness and its discussion of keeping the joy of our childish nature present throughout life. Whether it's the fiercely funny dance scene to Michael Jackson's Thriller, or Jenna and Matt's adorable goodbye routine, this film retains the essence of childhood and reminds us why it is so important to not lose that part of ourselves.
Unlike many other films of this genre which typically stick to one lesson, 13 Going On 30 contains so many important messages. Jenna Rink learns the importance of living in the present, rather than wishing her life away in a flurry to be thirty. She learns to not regret things and to learn from your mistakes. She learns the importance of friendship and authenticity. As we watch, we learn these things too - they seep into our minds, and our souls and they stay with us long after the credits are over.
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i went through this account’s handful of videos from this show, and i’m pretty confident that’s will roland, next to harrison chad as quince, despite the view being mostly obstructed from the angle this whole time. he’s Most Visible for a moment at the very end lol. since the costuming is just a buttonup and tie w/no especial “it’s This character, or Any character” cues, i’ll guess he’s “will roland” at this point, though that doesn’t mean he wasn’t appearing in some other capacity earlier. every pre-2018 xmas wrole cited in that tweet has been accounted for, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been some of those characters more than once, as is definitely true for uncle peenie appearances
#the sixth annual show....twenty thirteen....don't know of any more specific info abt this one. like ''oh xyz pic is from then''#i think the third annual show in twenty ten was Probably his first one / the year of peter the coffee kid but that's still technically#an informed guess as it were lol....and evidently he was in the next yr's show as the christmas burgler / also just [ensemble]#but atm so far as i know regarding definite Dates / the Year; there's only this b/w that & the twenty fifteen 8th annual show there#wherein he was uncle peenie / virgin mary dancer / belly button puppet show puppeteer / will roland At Least#was like hmm twenty twelve/thirteen was The Black Suits times; would he have been able to make it...#but the fact that harrison chad does appear to be there suggests it was entirely plausible for anyone else in the cast to be#what with him playing brandon....and lo & behold does seem to be william next to him there#but yeah can't even speculate ''is This the show in which he played [role listed as having been played but hasn't been seen elsewhere]??''#b/c they've all been seen elsewhere at least the once#the other videos are mostly like twenty or thirty or six second increments of mostly the mister chestnut number & like one other full song#but there was like a forty second recording of Virgin Mary Ft. Her Dancers & i was like god can you imagine. i'll lose it.#by which one means be Head In Hands like keeling over a bit. but none of them was him lmao so [oh lord. imagine] averted beyond that#joe iconis christmas extravaganza#will roland#glad there's a more visible glimpse right at the end but my watching it all prior like Okay Come On Now lmfao#i mean at least it was evident most of the way that there was even a person there to go ''oh huh that could be him'' about#just still thinking about the ''mike wazowski'd but for the viewer / listener looking / listening for him'' experience from the other day#npr affiliate station ep abt gtm:pota that at least cited every oscr cast member by name w/the sole exception of will lmao. cmon#billions wide group shot showing everyone's face except whoops winston in the corner blocked by the group of extras. pointing#but w/these glimpses it's like; hey; it's Anything which is impressive; it's identifiable Enough; also hardly guaranteed. i'll take it
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kitasuno · 2 months
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i'll keep every promise (if it's a promise with you) | oikawa tooru x reader
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oikawa tooru has a bad habit of breaking promises and running from his first love. or: the four times oikawa breaks his promises and the one time he keeps one
( a / n ) - oh my god this is my magnum opus... my baby.. its a little bit of angst and a little bit of fluff and a little slice of life. u go through ages 6 to 28 LMFAO. iwaizumi + you + oikawa were such a fun trio to write for and i hope u guys enjoy !!
gn! reader | 2k words | happy birthday OIKAWA
Oikawa Tooru has a guilty conscience and a bad habit of breaking his promises. 
For every promise made and every promise broken, Tooru repents: 200 yen slid in a saisen-bako, a ninety degree bow, two wishes at a shrine. An offering to counter every promise he breaks, ample water to wash away his sins, and apologies written on wood.
 ( Iwaizumi has made the grand suggestion of: Maybe not breaking your promises? on several occasions, but Tooru can’t help it. ) 
He’s broken four promises and made eight wishes so far: four on blue Tanzaku and four atop Ema boards, followed with a prayer and an offering if the promise broken was particularly heinous or particularly his fault. 
He breaks his first promise at six years old– one made with you and Iwaizumi when the three of you were four and freshly neighbors. It was Tooru’s birthday, and he had promised this: 
I swear that I will take us all to the Ryokan before I turn six.
It’s a small promise: one that neither you nor Hajime had expected him to follow through with. But Tooru believed it, and Tooru had tried. He takes every single chore and odd job in the Oikawa household, scraping together a two-year-old Ryokan trust fund with mismatched coins and crumpled bills. He saves his allowances and puts everything in a glass jar next to his bed, and dreams.
Two Julys pass. Oikawa blows out four candles and then five, the jar gets bigger, you start Elementary school, and you and Hajime forget about the Ryokan. And then, on the third July, when Tooru turns six, you and Iwaizumi find Tooru mumbling about a broken promise— courtesy of his failure to take the three of you on an all inclusive trip to that Snow Monkey Ryokan that Iwaizumi wanted to go to. 
So he apologizes through prayers at a shrine and two wishes under a red Torii gate. It’s a thirty five stair climb to the neighborhood shrine: Hajime and Tooru race up and you come last, but the view is gorgeous and Tooru feels considerably less guilty.
It is 100 yen for each wish on a colored paper strip. Hajime says they’re called Tanzaku. Hajime drops one coin, Tooru drops four, you drop two. Seven thunks, four wishes. 
Tooru gets the honor of tying your tanzaku on bamboo branches as the tallest of your trio, and with it, the honor of reading your wishes.
Iwaizumi’s wish is messy and scrawled on bright red— Tooru tells him to Please work on your handwriting, but it’s legible and all well wishes for volleyball and you and Oikawa and cicadas.
Tooru’s got two wishes— a cyan one and a turquoise one, but he only lets you and Hajime read the cyan one. His cyan one is a little neater than Iwaizumi’s and reads:
Sorry I couldn’t take us to the Monkey Ryokan. 
He hangs the red one on his tippy-toes. Cyan next. Hajime cheers a little when Tooru hangs turquoise next to your pink one, and then asks: 
“Whaddya need two wishes for anyways?” 
He shrugs. 
“Guilty conscience, maybe?”
You’re thirteen when Tooru promises that he is going to ask you out in two years. Tooru is not allowed to date until he’s in high school, so he tells you under a blanket of stars that when the two of you are a little older, he will ask you out properly and maybe take you on a date. 
He walks you to school every morning. Hajime comes too, but the pink skies before the sun rises are for you and Tooru. Moments before you make it to Iwaizumi’s block are moments that Tooru gives you his scarf, and then his gloves, and when the wind bites at your cheeks too hard his jacket is draped over your shoulders. On rainy days, Tooru holds the umbrella and laughs as your fingers brush and your cheeks flush. Some mornings he brings you toast: and tells you in hushed whispers to eat it before Iwa-Chan sees. 
Oikawa and Iwaizumi walk you home after cram school and volleyball practice. Hajime’s house is first— so Iwaizumi bows first, heads back inside first, waves goodnight first. When the door closes and the light turns on, the black sky and twinkling stars are for you and Tooru. He always says Good Night saccharine sweet with a smile like the sun that makes you feel like you really can’t wait to turn fifteen. 
Oikawa blows out fourteen candles. The three of you graduate in blue and walk home like usual. Summer passes, another July goes by, Oikawa blows out fifteen candles, and high school starts.
You learn several things in your first year at high school: you really like the student council, Hajime is actually pretty smart, and Tooru is afraid of commitment. 
Tooru is popular: he is athletic and tall and the Volleyball Club’s golden first year. He smiles at the girls in his class, he slings arms around their shoulders, he winks when he passes by the student council room, and he preens a little and shines a lot.
Oikawa is fifteen when he goes on his first date with a girl from another school: and when he tells you and Iwaizumi after he gets home, he plays dumb as Hajime gives him a look and takes you home, overhearing Iwaizumi’s apologies and your crestfallen voice as you say something about a promise.
Oikawa’s chest hurts that night so he walks to the shrine with 200 yen in his pocket and a sorry scrawled on two pieces of colored Tanzaku. 
Oikawa turns sixteen and goes to the shrine again. 
This time, it’s a broken promise with a girl in his class. She was popular– she smelled like cotton candy and reminded Tooru of strawberries and daisies, so when she asked Tooru out, he had said Sure, and he had smiled like she was the sun. 
But he’s a bad boyfriend– a terrible boyfriend– because he’s only there when it’s convenient and he ditches her for volleyball practice and maybe sometimes he catches himself thinking about a certain childhood friend when she holds his hand and buys him milk bread at lunch. 
She was sweet and she was terribly pretty, but he doesn’t feel anything when she kisses him or when she rests her head on his shoulder.
Iwaizumi asks him what he’s running from after practice one day. Tooru knows Iwaizumi is asking why he is running from you. 
Tooru is a little scared of how you make him feel too much. Oikawa likes being in control and Oikawa likes stability, so when he realizes that his heart thumps erratically whenever you’re around and he finds himself all consumed with thoughts of you and a burning desire to please you; he rejects and refrains. And runs.
His girlfriend dumps him after a few months. Tooru says sorry, removes her phone contact, and faintly remembers a promise he made with her four weeks ago. 
I swear I’m not in love with someone else. 
from: tooru (23:20) shrine time!!! ٩(◕‿◕。)۶
from: hajime (23:21) You broke another promise?? Ur a piece of shit lol
from: tooru (23:22) iwaaa chan U ̄ー ̄U  ur so mean !
from: you (23:24) bro . don’t tell me it was about ur ex ur a manwhore !!!!
from: hajime (23:25) Average Shittykawa moment
from: tooru (23:25) i can’t help it !! (✿ ♥‿♥)  everyone wants a piece of me !!! ill pick u guys up and we’ll go to the shrine and ramen after plsss ☆
from: hajime (23:26) Ur treat?
from: tooru (23:27) iwa-chan’s treat !! i’m going through a nasty breakup, remember ? \_( ◉ 3 ◉ )_/¯
from: you (23:29) hajime we know his address we can burn his room down
from: tooru (23:30) OK FINE my treat! it’s on me!!! everyone say thank you tooru !!!
from: hajime (23:31) thank you tooooruuu chan (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧
tooru and y/n reacted with: Scared !
from: tooru (23:32) um please don’t do that ever again
Oikawa’s fourth promise is one to himself and one to Seijoh. 
We will make it to Nationals. 
He doesn’t leave his room for a week when he breaks it. He’s inconsolable. He says he’s sick: he’s got a bad fever, it’s contagious, he’s bedridden, he’s fine. But the lights are never on in his room, his curtains are always drawn, and you know that Tooru devoted everything for a chance and a dream and a volleyball. 
He comes to you first. He’s standing in your doorway and there are bags under his eyes and he says, Hi, and then, I’m fine. He tries for a smile— and then you give him a look, and suddenly he’s in your arms and sobbing. 
He cries for two hours. Tooru ugly cries– his chest racks when he sobs and his arms are tight around you and digging into your back. Oikawa Tooru is not weak: but he is not a prodigy.  
He falls asleep in your bed with his head in your lap and your hands in his hair, but his eyebrows are furrowed and he’s shifting a lot and he’s probably having a nightmare. You call Hajime before gently shaking Tooru awake. 
He blinks up at you— all puffy eyes and tousled hair and swollen cheeks, but he sees you and he softens.
“Wanna go to the shrine?”
Iwaizumi still grumbles the whole way up the thirty five steps, but he’s quiet as Oikawa slips two coins into the saizen-bako. Hajime wraps an arm around your shoulder as the coins rattle in the box and you know he’s upset too— his hands are slightly shaking and he keeps sniffing. Nationals might have been Oikawa’s dream but Iwaizumi was also a dreamer, and sure, Oikawa was going to go, but they were going to go together.
Tooru hangs two Ema boards and for the first time, he bows at the Honden. Two claps. Head down and hands together as he prays. Iwaizumi joins him: and you watch as Oikawa apologizes to him and Hajime shakes his head- because it was Hajime’s promise too. 
Oikawa is twenty-eight and on a plane when he finally keeps his first promise. 
It’s a small promise: but a promise nonetheless, one that he made before he left for Argentina. He tells you he loves you at the airport but he has his boarding pass in one hand and his passport in the other. And you tell him you love him too, but also that he’s being unfair, and no you won’t go out with him. And Oikawa knew you would say that, but he still finds himself making a promise– a promise you laugh at because Oikawa Tooru never keeps his promises.
If we’re still single in ten years, I’m going to find you, and I’m going to ask you out. 
You cry, and Tooru wraps his arms around you and cries too— and then Iwaizumi’s there, and Iwaizumi’s crying, and you don’t know which part of you is Oikawa or Iwaizumi. Oikawa leaves for Argentina with a heavy heart but a hunger for the future. 
In the ten years that pass he plays a lot of volleyball. He tans a lot. He learns some Spanish. He tries beach volleyball. And then, he buys a plane ticket on his birthday. 
from: y/n (21:12) happy birthday tooru !! me n hajime r having an honorary drink for u. hope ur having fun in argentina!!! hajime and i say te amo !!!!
from: tooru (21:15) i’d like a hot sake plssss thank u!!! ( ˙▿˙ )
from: y/n (21:15) LMFAO. no. me and haji r drinking ASAHI DRRRRRRYYYYYYYY for u bro also hajime got BUFF wat the hell hope ur tanning good in argentina 
from: tooru (21:16) well tell BUFF iwa chan that ill be there in 5 and i want a HOT SAKE and also YES i tanned good SO EYES OFF IWAIZUMI
from: y/n (21:17) ? what? ur funny lol … TOORU?
Tooru is twenty eight and might retire soon. Thirty five stairs is too many to climb and keeping promises is far more fun than breaking them. So he taps your shoulder, hands Iwaizumi your bouquet, and takes your cheeks in his palms to tilt your chin over. 
“Hi!” He says. 
 Tooru bends down to kiss you. 
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pathologicalreid · 7 months
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cryptic | S.R.
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You and Spencer get a surprise beyond your wildest dreams.
who? spencer reid x fem!AFAB!reader category: fluff (hurt/comfort a little bit) content warnings: oh geez. pregnancy, periods, weight, medical inaccuracy, cryptic pregnancy, traumatic birth, NICU, hospitals, maybe a little ooc i'm not sure, breastfeeding, reader is running solely on oxytocin, crying. word count: 6k a/n: does anyone else have an irrational fear of this? is it just me? that's why i wrote this anyways. also i wrote this MONTHS ago so if it's bad i'm not culpable. (yall voted for unhinged fluff, here it is) anyways i'm calling this part of my "spencer reid dilf agenda".
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In his work life, Spencer faced fear every day – that was part of the reason he loved life with you so much. The two of you had just moved to your first house together and were still unpacking boxes when he was called away to upstate New York for a case.
You weren’t frustrated with him; you merely kissed him and encouraged him to go save the day.
So, when he told you last night that you must’ve hurt your back trying to move the couch, he didn’t think anything of it. He just told you to rest and to let him know how you were doing in the morning, but when the morning came, there was a break in the case. Spencer had completely forgotten that he was expecting your call.
As the team waited in the police precinct, he didn’t wonder why Hotch answered a phone call and furrowed his brows at Reid until he called him over to talk in private.
For once, his overactive mind went blank when Hotch explained to him that you were in the hospital and that he should call your best friend, Ivy.
In a daze, Spencer pulled his phone out of his pocket to find that he had missed two calls from you and thirteen calls from Ivy. Isolating himself in an abandoned office, he looked at your friend’s contact and pressed the call button.
The phone didn’t even have a chance to ring before Ivy answered, “Spencer! Oh my god,” she said, sounding relieved to be hearing from him. “I am so sorry for calling your boss. I pulled his number from Y/N’s contacts – I didn’t know how else to reach you, and I- “
“Ivy, what’s wrong?” Spencer asked, teetering between panic and impatience. “She told me she thought he had just pulled a muscle moving,” he explained, wondering what could’ve happened.
On the other end of the call, Ivy took a deep, shaky breath. “She’s okay, but you have to come home,” she whispered, keeping her voice down.
Now he was leaning closer to panic, “Where is she?”
“Northern Virginia Hospital,” Ivy responded. “When you get here, call me, and I’ll bring you to her,” she told him.
Spencer took a deep breath and left the empty office once he ended the call, very nearly running into Hotch, “I need to- “
Holding his hand up in a ‘wait’ gesture, Hotch nodded, “There’s a flight going out, Morgan will drive you to the airport. Don’t worry about anything here,” he instructed him, gesturing over to where Morgan was standing with the keys to one of the SUVs.
After promising to call when he could, a thirty-minute flight, and a ten-minute taxi right, Spencer called Ivy back.
“Hey,” her voice was quiet through the receiver, “are you here?”
He turned around in the lobby of the hospital, “I just came in the front entrance; what wing is she in?” He asked. Which wing would a back injury be in?  He supposed it depended on the severity of the back injury.
She cleared her throat and there was a soft rustling before Ivy answered, “Stay put, I’ll come to you.” Her words came out quickly as if she was trying to prevent him from going looking for her.
Then he began to lean closer to impatience, nonetheless, he waited the couple of minutes that it took for Ivy to come out of an elevator, motioning for Spencer to catch up before they took the elevator back up. “Ivy,” Spencer said, “What is happening?”
“She called me at six this morning, saying that she thought she had pulled a muscle in her back and couldn’t sleep. I told her to take some ibuprofen and try to rest, and if she didn’t feel better by lunch, I’d bring her to urgent care. She called me again at ten and told me something was seriously wrong, but she didn’t know what,” Ivy informed him, her voice sounding distant. “She was crying, and I’ve never heard her sound so scared. So, I called an ambulance and met her here while she was triaged…” Her voice trailed off as they exited the elevator.
Spencer’s heart ached at the thought of you being so scared, but it still didn’t answer his question: What happened?
Ivy sniffled and wiped her nose, “Spencer, have you ever heard of a cryptic pregnancy?”
He stopped in his tracks, eyes as wide as saucers, “She’s pregnant?” His words came out as a whisper, a mix of emotions flurried through him.
Your best friend smiled softly at him, “No, she had a baby. That back pain? She was in labor.”
Questions popped into his head quicker than he could ask him. He took a trembling breath, “Where are they?”
She led him around the corner, crossing her arms in front of her chest, “She’s in postpartum recovery, the baby’s up a floor in the NICU. It all happened really fast; you know? Anyways, they kind of whisked the baby away while saying things about Apgar scores that we didn’t really understand.
They stopped for a moment to get Spencer a visitor’s badge before he motioned for Ivy to continue.
Ivy shrugged in response, “She was kind of inconsolable after that, they gave her something to calm her down, but she keeps asking for you,” Ivy said, stopping outside of a door.
Spencer peeked through the blinds to your room. You’re awake, lying on the white bed, absentmindedly picking at the hospital bracelet around your wrist.
“If you need a minute before going in there, take it. Once you go in there, you need to be strong or brave or whatever,” Ivy instructed, putting her hands on her hips. “I’m not saying you can’t be confused or upset, I’d be worried if you weren’t. I’m saying she just gave birth unmedicated without ever even knowing she was pregnant, and they haven’t come back with an update,” she said, looking at Spencer like she was assessing a threat.
He nodded in understanding. Maybe when his head was clear he’d thank Ivy for being so protective of you, but he just nodded. “I need to be in there with her,” he insisted.
Ivy acquiesced, letting him know that she was going to go to the house to get clothes and was going to the store. At that point, Spencer had only been half listening to her.
You didn’t move on the bed when he opened the door. He looked at the whiteboard on the wall, his heart clenching when he saw the words ‘Baby Reid’ written below your name. Spencer quietly walked closer to you before he pulled a chair up so that it was at your bedside and took a seat. He could see tear tracks on your cheeks, “Sweetheart,” he whispered.
Your eyes closed, and two more tears streaked down your cheeks. There was an IV in your wrist and your vitals were being monitored. It wasn’t until Spencer leaned over and smoothed your hair back that you really started to cry.
Gently, Spencer sat on the edge of your bed, and you leaned forward into him. He just held you, running a hand up and down your back as he gently shushed you, “I’m here, darling. I’m here.”
“I had a baby,” you rasped, so quietly that Spencer wasn’t sure if you were telling him or trying to convince yourself that it wasn’t a dream.
He was quiet for just a moment, letting a few silent tears stream down his own cheeks. “I know,” he murmured, “I’m so proud of you.”
You hummed, leaning back ever so slightly, closing your eyes when Spencer kissed your forehead. “I tried calling you,” you whispered, looking up at him with watery eyes and lifting your hands so that you could wipe away the tears.
“I know. I’m so sorry,” he tried to apologize. There was no way for him to navigate this situation, but if he felt this lost, then he couldn’t begin to fathom how you were feeling.
Shaking your head, you waved off his apology, “Did you catch the bad guy?”
He nodded, smiling at your question, “Yeah, we got him this morning. That’s why I didn’t get your call,” he said as he took your hand and intertwined your fingers. “Can I get you anything? Have you eaten? Do you need water?”
A slight smile grew on your face at his concern, a fact that made his heart soar, “I should probably eat something.” The smile faded quickly, “We should probably talk, right?” You asked, leaning forward in the bed to reach for a pile of papers at the foot of the bed.
Noticing a pained look on your face, Spencer set a hand on your shoulder. “I’ll get it,” he said, guiding you so you were lying back on the pillows. “Please be careful,” he reached for the papers and handed them to you.
Quickly, you flipped through the stack of papers that was now in your lap. “I’ve been thinking, you know, and they gave me all of these papers with my options, but we have space at the new house. I work from home most of the time anyway, and we can afford it and- “
Spencer cut you off, leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss to your lips. “Yes,” he whispered against your lips before he kissed them again.
Studying you, he watched as you visibly relaxed into your hospital bed. He followed your gaze as you looked out the window of the hospital room, “Spence,” you breathed as a nurse wearing pink scrubs walked into the room.
She looked at him, “Hello, are you dad?”
Dad. He was a dad. Spencer nodded enthusiastically at the nurse.
“I’ve got these bracelets for you two then, they’re to help keep little families like yours together,” she says, loping the white bracelets around both his and your wrist. “Baby’s got two,” she lets you both know. “So, Baby Reid had a hard time breathing at first, but we up in the NICU cleared some of the amniotic fluid from her lungs and everything is looking much better now. Another nurse is bringing the bassinet now…” her voice trailed off when someone knocked on the door.
He wanted to make sure he had heard the nurse correctly. Did she say ‘her’?
The door opened, and it was the tiny hat with the bow that gave it away. She wriggled on the white sheet in her bassinet, looking around her new surroundings. Spencer looked from you to her and couldn’t help the tears that pricked his eyes. It was an emotion that he couldn’t quite place.
Noticing the way you leaned forward, the nurse spoke, “Would you like to hold her?”
“I- Can I? Is she okay?” You asked nervously, for the first time that day, Spencer heard the fear in your voice.
Nodding, the nurse wheeled the bassinet closer to you, helping you move your hospital gown so that you could do skin-to-skin. As she did so, she talked about bonding with a newborn, but Spencer was so enamored watching you that he wasn’t really listening. “We’re estimating that she’s about thirty-five weeks, so she’s late preterm, but she should be able to go home when you do,” the nurse informed you, making sure you were comfortable holding the baby before she stepped back.
The concept of being in a home surrounded by boxes with a newborn stressed him out, but then the tiny baby on your chest let out a squawk and he returned to just watching the two of you.
Both of the nurses left to give the three of you time, and you turned to Spencer, “What was thirty-five weeks ago?” You asked, gently rubbing your thumb over your newborn’s back.
“Exactly? July sixteenth,” he responded, watching your daughter as her eyes shut. “She fell asleep,” he observed, dropping his voice down to a whisper.
You hummed in response, bending your head down and pressing a gentle kiss on the crown of her head. “She needs a name,” you murmured, “we can’t keep calling her baby.”
Spencer leaned over the edge of your bed, “Do you have any ideas?” He asked, even though he already knew you’ve been keeping a list of baby names in your phone for years.
Shrugging ever so slightly, you peered down at your daughter, “All I know is that her last name’s gonna be Reid.” Your eyes flittered up to his, “Please don’t cry. If you cry, I’ll sob, and our daughter is asleep on me, and I don’t want to wake her up.”
“I just love you so much,” he told you softly.
“We can do this, can’t we?” You asked him nervously, narrowing your brows. “She doesn’t have a name. Our house is a disaster. Oh… Spence, we don’t have a car seat. We can’t take her home if we don’t have a car seat.”
Realistically, Spencer knew that you had at least twenty-four hours before you were released from the hospital, maybe forty-eight, given the circumstances. He also knew that you knew this, and he was afraid the events of the day were beginning to take a toll on you. He wasn’t going to say that, instead, he leaned forward and comforted you, “We’ll figure something out, I promise, okay? The name thing we can do.” He encouraged you to take one step at a time, “What about Ivy?”
Your head snapped up, “Really?” You asked, staying conscientious of the newborn on your chest.
“She was there for you through all of this when I couldn’t be,” he shrugged. “Did you know she dug through your contacts on your phone and called Hotch when I didn’t answer?” He watched a small smile tug at your lips, “I just think we should honor her in some way.”
Nodding, a full smile bloomed on your face, “Absolutely.” There was a brief silence, “Do you need to call Hotch? You can step out if you need to. We’re fine alone. I mean just for a little while not for- “
That was the second time you had nearly worked yourself into a panic. Spencer set a hand on your shoulder, “Y/N, angel. Don’t stress yourself out, okay? I’ll handle it.” He promised, after all, you had already done the hard work.
You paused and took a deep breath at his encouragement, leaving the both of you in silence while you caught your breath. “What about Eleanor?”
He smiled and looked at your sleeping baby, “It’s perfect,” he whispered.
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The first time Eleanor, who had quickly been nicknamed Nell, cried with the two of you in the room was also the first time Spencer held her. He had been too nervous before, not that he’d tell you that, but when her wails started and he saw you wincing as you sat up in the bed, he instinctively picked her up.
He was still in his work clothes. Granted, he had taken off his tie and the top two buttons of his shirt had been undone, but it didn’t seem to bother Nell, the baby had quickly hushed upon contact. “Sit back,” he gently instructed, “Are you in pain?”
You nestled back into the pillows, “Just a little, they said it’s normal.”
Nothing about this was normal, Spencer wanted to say, but he knew you were well aware. He handed you the baby, knowing that it had been two hours since she last ate and that was likely why she was crying. According to the nurses, she was a good eater. He took their word for it.
Spencer watched you rock gently as Nell ate, you were staring off at nothing, so he asked, “What are you thinking right now?”
“I’m wondering why you’re not more freaked out,” you admitted, looking down at the newborn.
He leaned back in the chair, “I don’t know. I work best under pressure and with a little bit of chaos. It’s also highly likely that the entire situation hasn’t fully sunken in yet.”
You nodded understandingly, “It’s a lot to take in. If you think about it, most parents have months to fully prepare and wrap their heads around it. It’s been about ten hours for me. Maybe six hours for you.”
Nodding, Spencer watched intently as Nell fell asleep, her tiny fists falling and quiet coos coming from her. He heard you say something to him, but the words didn’t process. “What?”
Giggling quietly, you cocked your head at him, “Do you want to hold her?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” he replied honestly. You seemed like you were taking to parenthood exceedingly well, he was afraid he wouldn’t match up.
In the end, it was your understanding smile that prompted him to agree. “Unbutton your shirt,” you ordered, laughing at him when he looked bewildered. “Skin-to-skin isn’t just for moms, Spence. Besides, I want you to bond. I want her to know who you are even when you’re away for work.”
He obliged your request, undoing his shirt so that he could gently place Nell on his bare chest. She squawked while she was being moved from parent to parent but quieted again as soon as she was being held, “she’s so small,” Spencer remarked, marveling at the tiny creature on top of him.
You nodded sleepily, “Four pounds, fourteen ounces. She had to fit behind my ribcage somehow.”
The oddness of the situation began to find a place in him. Were there changes in you that neither of you had noticed? Your period was always irregular, there was no significant weight change, and even morning sickness had seemed to totally pass you by. “I can’t believe we had no idea,” he murmured as he leaned down and pressed a kiss to Nell’s head.
“I went to the doctor three months ago for chest pains, do you remember? I took an at-home pregnancy test just in case and it came back negative. The nurses here told me that there’s a less than one percent chance of that happening,” you informed him, slowly starting to mumble.
Spencer looked up at you to find that your eyes were fluttering shut. “You should sleep. I’ve got this.”
You grunted in protest, “but what- “
“No,” he interrupted. “She just ate, she’s sleeping, and you’re exhausted. I can spend some time with her while you sleep.”
Sleepily, you grinned, sliding down on the bed, and settling your head on the pillows, “Daddy’s girl,” you whispered.
He loved the sound of that.
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you
You had always known that Spencer Reid was perfect, and as you watched him fall into the role of father, that knowledge became concrete. You blinked the sleep out of your eyes and kept your gaze on the two of them, not daring to disturb the peace. Instead, you watched in awe as he held your daughter, softly speaking to her as if she could fully comprehend what he was saying.
For all you knew, she could understand what he was saying. She was Spencer’s kid, after all.
Gently, he whispered to her and one of her little fingers gripped his index finger. “Your palmar reflex lets you hold my finger like that, Nellie. It’ll go away when you’re six months old,” he softly swiped his thumb over her back as he murmured to her. “I don’t usually like surprises,” he admitted to the infant, “but you and your mama might just be the best thing to ever happen to me.”
You grinned, reaching your hand out and touching the green armchair, “I love you.” He reached out a hand to hold yours. “Do you want to try to get some sleep?” You offered. Your body still ached, but getting some sleep had made you feel loads better.
“I don’t think I can,” he answered candidly. “I feel so…”
“Wired? Stressed?” You suggested.
He shrugged slightly, “I was going to say hyperaware, but yes,” he responded.
You wheeled the empty bassinet closer to him, “Set her down. Babies can sense stress. Take a minute, catch your breath,” you told him.
Reluctantly, Spencer placed Nell in the bassinet, adjusting the hat on her head while you watched him. “Don’t worry about me,” he said softly.
Your shoulders drooped involuntarily, “When was the last time you slept, love?” After years with Spencer, you know he would go days without sleeping in order to break a case. His lack of a response answered your question well enough. Quickly, you pressed your call button and asked if a nurse could take Nell to the nursery.
Once you made sure the baby was taken care of, you moved over in the hospital bed and patted the open space. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable,” he told you.
That was the problem with Spencer. He would always put you, and now Eleanor, ahead of himself. It made your heart ache. “Spence, this has been the craziest day, and I can tell you haven’t slept. So, get over here and lay down with me,” you instructed.
Rolling his eyes, Spencer kicked off his shoes before lying next to you in the hospital bed, “Do you promise to wake me if you need anything?” He asked as he gingerly pulled you into his arms, afraid of hurting you.
You hummed, resting your head on his shoulder, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“I hate that saying,” Spencer whispered, pressing a tender kiss to your hairline.
Closing your eyes, you relaxed into him, “I promise, angel. Get some sleep.”
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You startled awake, looking to make sure you didn’t wake Spencer. Your chest ached as you sat up, cringing at the noise your papery hospital gown made. Gingerly, you placed a hand over your heart, feeling the pounding of your heart and listening to the beeping of the monitor, cursing the screen for making so much noise.
This had happened earlier before Spencer arrived, and the doctor had given you something to calm down then.
When you came into the ER, they thought your appendix was bursting, but when they did an ultrasound, they found that you were in active labor. There was no time for an epidural, they didn’t have time to give you anything for the pain. A kind nurse held your hand and quickly explained what was going to happen.
Within thirty minutes, you arrived at the hospital, gave birth, and had your baby taken to the NICU.
It was too fast; your brain was so overwhelmed that it had shut down. It seemed like a ridiculous thought; how did you miss the birth of your daughter?
Hiccupping back a sob, you felt a comforting hand on your back, but the fact that you had woken Spencer up just made you cry harder. He wrapped his arms around you, and you buried your face in the crook of his neck. “Shh, it’s alright,” he cooed, rubbing small circles on your back. “I love you so much, you know that, right? I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you,” he comforted you. “It’s okay, it’s just all catching up with you, honey.”
You pulled away, wiping the tears from under your eyes. “It’s okay,” you repeated his words.
“What do you need right now?” He asked, smoothing your hair back. “Do you want to make a list? Do you want to move around?”
Nodding absentmindedly, you watched as Spencer pressed the call button and got up, helping you stand. Your legs shook, and you felt a bit like a foal, but it felt good to be out of bed. You haphazardly finger-combed your hair before stepping into hospital slippers and leaving the room. For now, the nurses instructed you to just walk around the maternity ward.
As the two of you walked around, you made several lists. Things you needed to buy. People you needed to call.
By the time you’d returned to the room, Ivy had returned. Spencer opened the door for you and helped you sit on the end of the bed.
“I’ve come bearing gifts,” Ivy greeted, grinning with bags in her hands. She gestured to a suitcase, “First, clothes for both of you. I just grabbed whatever I thought might be good. Toiletries and stuff too,” she said, rolling the suitcase off to the side. “I grabbed a couple of newborn outfits, but again, I was kind of flying blind. The lady at the department store was extremely helpful.” She handed Spencer a bag of baby clothes. “I got a car seat, the same lady recommended it, she was probably getting a commission, but it’s in my car. I have approximately zero idea how to set it up, but I figured, Spencer has a doctorate in engineering. He can do it.”
You glanced blearily at your best friend, “Ivy, you didn’t have to do all of this. This is too much,” you confessed, holding a tiny onesie in your hand.
She dismissed your insistence with a wave of her hand, “I also got this.” Ivy held out a small stuffed duck. “I know it won’t do her much good now, but I couldn’t help myself.”
After you changed out of your hospital garb, you looked at Spencer, “Go call Hotch, we’ll be good here for a while.” You gestured to your best friend, who was filtering through the suitcase she had packed, trying to find your hairbrush. At your request, he told you he’d also ask the nurse to bring Nell back down so that Ivy could meet her.
Once he was gone, Ivy sat behind you on the bed and brushed through your hair, tucking it out of your face, you were finally beginning to feel a little bit more like yourself by the time she had finished.
You watched intently as the nurse arrived at the door, “Do you want to meet her?”
Ivy nodded enthusiastically, lips parting as she observed the small baby. “Is that her name?” She rasped, looking at the card on the bassinet, Eleanor Ivy Reid. “That’s not funny, don’t joke about stuff like that.”
“Yeah,” you whispered, keeping your voice down as Eleanor slept. “It’s not a joke, and for the record, it was Spence’s idea,” you informed her, reaching into the bassinet, and scooping up the now-swaddled infant. “He’s so grateful that you were there for me, and I am too.”
She smiled, “I’m always going to be here for you two – you three now. Number one babysitter,” she said, pointing to herself. 
You sighed and looked from your friend to your daughter, “She’s got a whole FBI unit of babysitters.”
“I’ll be here when they’re away – when Spencer’s away,” she reminded you, carefully adjusting the hat on the baby in your arms.
The last thing you wanted to think of was Spencer being gone, leaving you to take care of a baby you weren’t ready for.
Ivy must have sensed your nerves, “Hey, you know I’m always in your corner, right?”
You nodded slowly, “It’s just all catching up with me. I have to call my mom. I have to call my boss. How do you retroactively apply for maternity leave?”
“One thing at a time,” she said soothingly. “Right now, just enjoy your time with your perfect little family. I’ll call your mom for you,” she offered. “If your boss gives you any grief, he’ll have to deal with me.” Standing up, she placed a comforting hand on your shoulder, “I’m going to go get food, do you two still have the same orders from the deli?”
Confirming with her, you moved so that you could feed Nell, watching her as she looked up at you. “She’s right, you know? You are perfect,” you cupped her head with your hand, looking up to find Spencer watching from the doorway.
“Hotch says congratulations,” he spoke gently, striding over to your bedside and sitting on the edge of the bed. “He also said to let the team know if we needed anything,” he let you know, pressing a kiss to your forehead. He continued to let you know that Hotch had offered to figure out Spencer’s paternity leave, and while you felt bad about giving Hotch something else on his to-do list, it felt nice to have one less thing on yours. 
You nodded, “Ivy’s gonna call my mom, so that’s two things off of our list.”
Spencer squeezed your shoulder, “They asked if they could come to visit, but I didn’t want to answer for you.” He moved back to the armchair, “I just said we’d let them know.”
“At the very least we’ll send a picture,” you murmured. “I’m surprised you’re not researching newborns right now.”
Raising his eyebrows, Spencer shrugged, “I asked one of the nurses if I could get access to the hospital library.”
You snorted, “Of course you did.”
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No one from the BAU ended up visiting while you were in the hospital, mainly because the idea of too many people in the one hospital room made you anxious, but both you and Eleanor had been cleared to go home. Eventually, you would have to allow visitors.
“Spencer, you can go the speed limit,” you said from the backseat of the car, not taking your eyes off of the baby in her car seat.
He glanced back in the rearview mirror, “This stretch of road is bumpy. I don’t want to wake her.” Despite his anxieties, he was taking to fatherhood remarkably well.
You shook your head, “She’s already awake, babe.” She looked around her new surroundings, spending part of the six hours a day that she was awake going home for the first time. Part of the beauty of a newborn was that they slept for eighteen hours a day, but only in about fifty-minute bursts.
Spencer kept glancing back, and you made a mental note to get a mirror for the rear-facing car seat.
As he turned onto your street, you sat up slightly. “Who’s here?” You asked, looking at the cars in your driveway. You recognized Ivy’s car, but none of the others rang any bells.
“That’s JJ’s car, and that’s Morgan’s truck,” Spencer told you as he pulled into the driveway. Once he got out of the car, he ran around to where you were sitting. He opened the door, taking the car seat out of its base before helping you out of the car. “I had no idea they were here,” he said curiously.
You hummed thoughtfully, looking at Eleanor in her car seat. There was a part of you that felt horrible, you didn’t have anywhere for her to sleep set up. Another part of you knew that she’d be just fine sleeping in your arms while Spencer set something up. “Far be it from the BAU to abandon one of their own in their time of need,” you murmured, stepping through the front door as Spencer held it open for you.
Setting the carrier on the coffee table, you undid the clips so that you could hold the baby. As you lifted her, her legs scrunched up until you held her to your chest, at which point she settled.
“Where are they?” You asked, gently rubbing Nell’s back as she started to fall asleep on you. You peeked around the corner into the kitchen, across the counter, there were bottles set out to dry, along with other various baby things. “Oh, Spence,” you breathed.
There was a distinct lack of boxes in your house, they weren’t entirely unpacked, but there were much less than there had been when you left. A crash from upstairs got both of your attention, Spencer’s arm instinctively going around your waist.
Together, the two of you walked upstairs, finding members of the BAU in one of the rooms that was going to be a guest room setting up a nursery. “Hey?” You said, peeking in through the doorway.
“Oh my god!” Penelope said, “Wait, crap, sleeping baby.” She covered her mouth with her hands, horrified at the idea of disturbing the sleeping infant.
You smiled, looking around suspiciously, “What’s going on here?”
Rossi waved a finger at you, “Your best friend is a drill sergeant is what’s going on here.”
Confused, you turned around to see Ivy with her hands on her hips. “I thought you weren’t coming home until the afternoon,” she explained, “I was going to have them all out of here so you could have a nice peaceful house.”
“You enlisted the BAU to unpack our house?” You asked her, tears pricking at your eyes.
Ivy shrugged, “It started as just asking a question, but we all came to the same conclusion. The two of you were never going to ask for help, so we had to take matters into our own hands.” She wiped her hands on her jeans, “Plus, they have kids, so they actually knew what you needed,” she gestured to JJ and Hotch.
You leaned forward to give her a one-armed hug, keeping yourself mindful of the baby. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Penelope hugging Spencer.
JJ stepped forward, “I’m around. Any questions you have,” she assured you. “How are you feeling?”
Laughing nervously, you looked up at Spencer, “Still reeling.”
The rest of the team laughed too, which brought you some semblance of comfort. “I almost thought you were playing a prank,” Emily confessed.
“No, you definitely thought they were trying to prank us. You didn’t believe them until they sent the picture,” Morgan said, exposing her.
Appalled, Emily rolled her eyes, but you spoke up, “I’m not sure I would have believed us either.” Had you not experienced it firsthand, you definitely would’ve been skeptical. Eleanor was going on two days old, and you had still woken up wondering if it was all some kind of dream.
Spencer had previously told everyone that no one could hold her. He was concerned about germs. You echoed his concerns, just maybe not as strongly. So, instead, everyone just cooed at her until Spencer gently ushered you into your bedroom.
You let out a sigh of relief when you spotted a bassinet set up next to your bed. Gently, you set her down while Spencer pulled the bedding down, “You should rest,” he told you softly.
“Spence, I just spent the majority of the last two days in a bed. I’m tired of bed,” you responded, sitting down on the ledge of the bed.
He hummed in response, “You just had a baby.”
Reaching out, you took his hands in yours, “Moving around will be good for me. I promise not to do anything to tear my stitches. I’ll just show Nell the house.”
“Babies don’t recognize their surroundings until four to six months, so she wouldn’t recognize anything you showed her anyway,” he told you.
You narrowed your eyebrows at him, “Spencer."
He held up his hands in concession, “Right, overbearing.”
“Hey,” you said softly, “We’re still figuring this out, right? So, we’ll take it one step at a time.” You offered, having already had an in-depth discussion about being okay with making mistakes. “Why don’t we go check out the nursery?” You stood up, watching as Spencer carefully picked Nell up, cradling her in his arms.
You led the way into the hallway to find JJ, Morgan, and Ivy finishing the nursery. Morgan and JJ moved the crib to a different side of the room while Ivy placed books on a shelf.
Ever so slightly, you leaned into Spencer, glancing at the sleeping infant in his arms, you reached over and cupped her head with your hand. “This is your family, Nell,” you whispered, smiling when Spencer leaned down to press a kiss to the crown of your head.
That was your first lesson in parenthood, it really does take a village.  
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sweetnans · 4 months
Text
Firefighter!bakugo pt 2 pt.1 here
a/c: This bakugo is softer because there's no quirks hunting him. This isn't proofread yet, and please consider that english is not my first language.
You didn't call him. He left his number on the card, the company replaced all your burnt furniture and electronics, and after all, you still couldn't look at your new stove without thinking of him. And that you never called him.
Of course, the next time you saw him, it wasn't your fault.
It was a sunny day. A few months had passed, and you were making your way for a new job interview you had pending.
You did the interview pretty well, considering your strike of bad luck. The boss and the executive of the company said that your resume was everything that they were looking for and that gave you a sort of security you hadn't felt for a while.
You were making your way out of the office after hearing the 'we will call you to discuss minor details' when a rare feeling appeared on your stomach, a slight pinch in your guts that didn't felt like it was a stomach problem.
You shook the feeling away and kept walking to the elevator, pressing the button you realized that you were free all afternoon, so you made a quick plan to go for a coffee and a donut. Lately, you were craving sugary things.
Once the elevator's doors closed, the uneasy feeling made his way back to you. You felt that something wasn't right the minute the elevator creaked before going down. The office's company was on the nineteenth floor, and you were almost reaching the thirteen when the movement stopped abruptly.
Suddenly, the light went off too.
You never thought that you would be in a situation like that, so you obviously tried to remain calm, but it didn't work.
Panting, you reached to grab your phone from the back pocket of your jeans. As you were expecting, you had no signal, mostly because you were trapped in a box made of metal.
"Hello?" You said pressing one of the buttons from the panel, the one that got a bell on it. "I'm stuck in the elevator"
No one answered, and your heart started to beat faster and faster. You tried banging on the doors, crossing your fingers that the elevator got stuck on a specific floor and not in between floors.
You considered yourself a calm person, or at least a good pretending something you are clearly not. You were good at faking because you were more afraid of feeling ashamed, but no one was around to see you panicking.
"Help!" You screamed and then waited to hear any noise coming from outside. The silence was overwhelming. "Shit"
You slid your back until your butt hit the ground and started to remember the breathing exercises you learned on a yoga session your friend made you go. Thinking that it will work was a very optimistic thought.
The feeling of your lungs stretching and trying to find the air that was lacking in the elevator was exhausting, closing your eyes, you pushed one of your hands in your chest to apply some presure on it to feel the movement and connect the moves with your brain so it would process that you were actually not dying and still breathing.
Your eyes started to close, and your body started to sweat. Was it the end of it? You got a decent degree, got drunk with your friends many times, and had a good childhood, but still, you wanted to do a lot of things, like learn how to drive, get a dog, start your own business and even make fucking cookies without setting your house on fire, you were so young to die like that.
Thirty minutes later, that felt like an eternity, you started to hear banging and voices from the other side of the elevator. You were skeptical that it was actually help and tried not to feel so excited about it, but then, a ray of light appeared from the darkness.
"I think she's conscious, guys," a voice you've heard before said.
Many hands and bodies started to work in the steel, using saws and jaws to break the door open to get you out of there.
The door cracked after a few minutes, and you were free and ready to never jump in an elevator again.
You were almost falling asleep, and you felt so weak to move, so they carried you out of the elevator and settled you on the floor.
A blonde man put a little flashlight in your eyes and looked at you very focused on his task. The sight wasn't very clear, everything looked very blurred to you. You could only see two shapes that obstructed the sunlight.
"I think she passed out while she was there. I got a faint pulse too" The same voice you heard before echoes in your ears like it was miles away but you could see the red haired man in front of you.
Oh no.
You felt your senses returning in a whiplash. That man, in front of you, was the man that went to the fire in your house and the one that was next to him was the one that went to your brother's home and gave you the box of cookies.
Fuck fuck fuck.
"I'm okay, I swear." You tried to stand in your feet, but a wave of dizziness didn't let you.
"I don't think you are," the red-haired man told you, giggling. "Wait, I know you" he stated in awe.
"Yeah, her face, it feels familiar, right?" The blonde man spoke to the other ignoring completely that you were there.
"She's the one that burned down her kitchen a few months ago"
There he was, taking off his gloves, a drop of sweat in his forehead, and looking as good as the last time you saw him. You cursed yourself in your mind. He was hot, and now after you never called him, there was a ninety-nine percent chance that he hated you.
"Move aside. I'm going to check her vitals. You two can talk with the building manager about his excuse of an elevator. " he spoke lowly to the others, and that volume of timber scratched that unworkable brain of yours.
The two firefighters stood up and patted the shoulder of his friend while he kneeled down in front of you.
You were left alone with him, the guy you turned down.
"Hey, you know I'm very sorry and -" You started to apologize.
"Do you consider yourself claustrophobic?" He interrupted, putting the oximeter in your index finger
"Mhm, I don't think so." You avoided eye contact because his serious facade was something you couldn't bear at the moment.
"Doubtful, why is your heart rate so elevated then?"
You felt how the blood in your system rose to your cheeks. He must have noticed because he lowered his head at the same time that a smug smile appeared on his face.
"I think I got what I deserved, a scare that almost ended up in death," you dramatized while he lifted a finger in front of your eyes with a tiny flashlight following the movements of your pupils. "I think that's the karma acting"
"What do you mean?" He clicked the flashlight off and reajusted himself crouched on his knees.
"You were nice to me, and I never responded" you shrugged.
Bakugo put on a face you couldn't decipher. It was a mix between thinking and not giving a shit about everything.
"Have you tried baking again?" He asked, reverting his glance from nothing to you.
You denied with your head.
"Just looking at the oven freaks me out," you let out a sigh, followed with a shiver when your mind put the memory of that day in your head.
He grinned at your words and you couldn't help the smile that appeared in your face.
"What's so funny?" You tried asking.
"How do you burn your kitchen and end up trapped in an elevator in less than a year?"
You rolled your eyes at him and handed the oximeter to him. He extended his hand to yours, and you dropped the device before his hand reached your hand. The two of you were quick on catching the device before it landed on the floor, but in the process, his hands covered yours.
Bakugo stared at your joined hands for a second before taking his away. You thought that you were the only one who felt attracted like a magnet to him, but the slight pink on the tips of his ears gave him away instantly.
"You know, there's a chance you might have hurt yourself, so we have to take you to the hospital so they can check on you properly," he explained while closing the paramedics bag.
"Great, no coffee and donuts for me, huh?" You muttered under your breath while gaining momentum to stand from your seat.
He helped you to get steady, and then he guided you to the truck.
Before you could jump to one of the seats, he stopped you.
"My shift ends up in like an hour. The doctors would want to check your vitals and see if there is any concussion from when you fainted, well that, and the time you were there without much air... I was wondering if maybe, if you want, I mean...-
"Bakubro, did you ask her out yet?" The red-haired guy appeared from the back of the truck.
Bakugo stared at him like he could burn the man down.
"He was actually doing that," you said, biting your lip and looking back at him. "And I was about to say yes so..."
"Ah man, I'm sorry... Now that I'm here, I remember I left something back there. " he left the scene very quickly.
"You thought I was going to ask you out?" He said with his eyes going straight to his hairline.
A cold shiver ran through your spine from embarrassment.
"Shit, no? I'm, oh my god, this is so...I should've died, " you whined, praying in your mind for a hole in the ground that could swallow you down.
You could feel how your body was burning from the shame. Your face red and you felt your own temperature rising.
"You thought right," he said after a moment, enjoying your suffering. "But I was expecting you to make the first move, I mean after you turned me down"
"Please, stop, I beg you," you cried. "I'll take you out, meet me in the hospital, and I'll take you to wherever you want to go, just stop"
He almost laughed at your suffering. Bakugo thought that you looked so cute when you were ashamed and blushed.
"Nah, this one is on me. You'll have your donuts and coffee after all"
He pushed you, putting his hand in your lower back to get you on the truck.
...
Taglist
@spinninoutwaiting4you @gsyche @hanacheryl @itzjustj-1000 @kiridagremiln @reads-stuff-quietly
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rie-092 · 6 months
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FATHER, CAN I DIE?
✶﹒ platonic yandere! manhwa fathers x suicidal/overworked daughter! reader
summary : maybe they should just lock you in your room to make sure that you won't do something dangerous.
a.n : i plan to make this a series, what do you think?
abel heilon
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let's start with the most chill platonic yandere! out of the guys that i will feature in this post! abel heilon, the duke of the north with a simple mindset of 'if you mess with me then i'll mess with ya' we all know how protective he is with fiona and siegren. but just imagine, what if— just what if he has an illegitimate child who's related to him by blood that he hid from the public's eyes.
anyways, the first time he met you. he became sure of one thing. damn, you were indeed his child. with that silver hair, blue eyes and personality of yours— you were indeed his child. he can't deny that because you looked like a kid version of him. well, it's not like he is denying it tho— but what the fuck is wrong with your brain anyways?!
he doesn't know if you were abused before he met you. but why in the hell are you so obsessed with suicide anyways?! why the fuck are you even throwing yourself in battles when you were a support mage?! for the fuck sake! stop! yes, you have above average amount of mana! but the hell?! you're not as strong as fiona nor siegren! stop it!
if it's not for siegren then he wouldn't know the fact that you happily greeted the assassin that was sent by the imperial family. according to him, before siegren saved you from the assassin you even have the guts to propose to that damn assassin about committing suicide together since according to you, you have fallen in love with him— hearing that story, abel couldn't help but facepalm. (first name), you're thirteen! and that assassin is already thirty-six or worse, older!
maybe because of the stress of managing the north and keeping you safe from your suicide attempts. abel finally snapped.
look, abel likes watching you enjoying your freedom. but damn, if he doesn't do anything about this— he might end up burying you before you even reach the age of 18. he won't hurt you, he swears. that was the last thing that he will do to you. but that doesn't mean that he can't take preventive measures to make sure that you were safe.
platonic yandere! abel heilon was one of the chillest platonic yandere that existed. he will let you do anything that you want, he won't take away your freedom nor hurt you. he isn't also overbearing to the point that it was suffocating. but don't make him snap, because he can be the most suffocating and controlling parent existed.
now, on your sixteenth birthday— to celebrate it. you decided to jump onto the freezing river near the manor. you expected that you'll wake up inside your room— but no. when you opened your eyes, you were inside an unfamiliar room that has no windows. seeing that you can't use your magic, you were sure that there's a magic restricting device placed around here. what the hell is happening?
the door had opened, you looked at who it was and saw abel looking at you with a smug grin. you tried to ask him what is going on but instead of replying— abel only ruffled your hair saying that it will be only him and you from now on. and that was when you realized one thing— abel had taken your freedom away from you.
but abel didn't care. cry until you have no tears left, he doesn't care. the only thing that he cared about was keeping you alive. and this is the only thing that he know to achieve his goal. but don't worry, he will visit you everyday and give you books to make sure that you won't get bored. so, can you stop being a btch and appreciate his efforts?
he doesn't care if your eyes lost its usual enthusiasm and spark. he doesn't care if you stop eating at some point— because abel can shove the food inside your mouth to make sure that you stay alive.
oh, by the way— fiona was the one who made the room where you were staying now. she just wanted to make sure that you were safe! and the only place where you can be safe is the place where you can't use magic! so, forgive them, will ya?
“should i just cut off your arms? so that you won't be able to use your magic again?”
gallahan lombardy
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okay, as far as you know— you are not really a suicidal type of person. but for your father, gallahan lombardy you are. because for gallahan, overworking is another way to try to kill yourself after all.
gallahan is a sweet person, i swear. he won't hurt you at all and isolating you? no, no, no, gallahan won't do that! but he still couldn't help but become paranoid when it came to you. you were way too focused on studying— maybe because of the pressure that you were getting from the other people.
your sleep only lasted for two or four hours, you always isolate yourself inside the library. and gallahan didn't like it at all— look, you need to take it easy and rest. the only time you leave the library was when gallahan and tia drag you outside to eat in a cafe or buy new clothes.
platonic yandere! gallahan loves to spoil you. you wanted to buy books? here you go. want to try home-cooked foods? sure, he'll cook it for you. do you want to go to the festival with tia? alright! as long as he will go with you two.
but then, a certain event made gallahan snap. it was a normal day and gallahan entered the library to drag you outside so that you could socialize with the family. but then, he saw you unconscious on the floor, buried in the books and your nose was bleeding. gallahan was panicking, he didn't know what to do. what if you don't wake up? what if something bad happens to you? or worse— what if you die? if it wasn't for shananet who saw her younger brother's panicked face and her niece's condition. then gallahan won't be able to calm down and call the family doctor.
and what is the doctor's diagnosis? you were overworked. and after hearing that, rulac lombardi, your grandfather along with your auntie and uncles saw how your father's face darkened while looking at you who was peacefully sleeping on the bed.
and then, after that incident. you couldn't help but become confused when gallahan didn't scold you— instead, when you woke up. you saw him smiling softly at you. he didn't even ask you to take it easy. he just lets you do what you want.
but what you found odd was your father started giving you foods and drinks everytime and after consuming those things. you started feeling tired and before you knew it, you always ends up asleep. and once you woken up, you were already on your room. with tia cuddling with you while your father was asleep while sitting on the chair next to your bed also asleep.
knowing how innocent your father was, you never suspect a thing. you just kept on eating and drinking the things that he was giving to you. and you never questioned why you always get tired after it. your father loves you so much, so he wouldn't do anything— right?
plot twist, gallahan actually puts drug on your food and drinks to make sure that you will take a rest and never overwork yourself again. but a year later, you started losing your sense of sight because of it. but gallahan and tia don't care when you have them? oh, just thinking about their sweet (first name) being dependent on them was enough to make them very happy.
“sorry, honey! this is just a precaution, okay?”
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lunedits · 1 year
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nereidprinc3ss · 5 months
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do you believe me now? | 4
in which spencer reid and inexperienced fem!reader are interrupted at the most inopportune of times. he calls you on the first night of his case. dirty talk turns into a hard conversation. we get a glimpse into spencer's past, and we finally learn why he's so hesitant to sleep with you.
series masterlist
18+ (smut) warnings/tags: dirty talk, phone sex/mutual masturbation, softdom!spence, obligatory he talks u through it, lots of graphic discussions of sex, established relationship, angst (sorrryyy!) a/n: so remember how i said you'd need the bonus chapter to fully appreciate/understand this part? i was wrong!! it will come in handy probably in the next part tho:) also idk how these parts keep getting so long im sorry! anyway, i love you all so bad. thank you for bearing w/ my craziness. PLEASE let me know your thoughts on this part!! i adore hearing from you!! kisses
(also special thank you to @fliesforeyes who convinced me phone sex w/ spence could be done!! i will link his phone sex blurb here :)) thank u binx!!
“Three million six hundred eighty four thousand three hundred thirty two times fourteen million seven hundred sixty one thousand nine hundred seventy one.”
You’ve lost count of how many stupid math questions you’ve asked your human calculator boyfriend, just to see if he can actually do them. Spencer is silent for a second, and you think you’ve finally stumped him. 
“That one is complicated.”
You sit bolt upright in his bed, looking down at him and pointing an accusatory finger. His brows raise at the manic look in your eye. 
“You don’t know.”
“I do know. I meant it would be hard to explain if you aren’t a math person.”
“Bullshit!” You scoff, “you don’t know!”
“It would display on a calculator as five-point-three-eight-eight-E-thirteen. It’s a really big number.”
“Oh, really big, huh?” you mumble, searching for your phone blindly in the sheets and scrambling to open the calculator app. “Um… what numbers did I say?”
Spencer repeats them back to you and you press the equals sign. 
You look at it. 
And then you set your phone down. 
“I was right, huh?” he smiles up at you, probably reveling in your pouty wrongness. 
Too proud to admit it, you collapse on top of him, burying your face in his shoulder. 
“I don’t like this game anymore. What the fuck even is an e? Why are we doing algebra?”
Spencer laughs, brushing your hair aside. 
“The e stands for exponent. It’s to the power of ten.”
“Ever heard of a rhetorical question?”
“Yes, I have.”
It’s hard not to snort even at his dumbest jokes. 
“You’re annoying. Let’s do something else.”
You roll over onto your back again, letting your head flop over to look at Spencer, whose hair is exactly the right amount of messy after a long day, falling in impossibly soft waves over the perfect lines and contours of his face. Despite lounging, he’s still in his suit from work—he’d left Quantico and immediately picked you up. There were no solid plans for the evening, so after both of you pretended that you wanted to go out for a while, you ended up back at his apartment. 
He looks good. Almost too good. 
“Something like what?” he smiles lazily, reaching over and tracing his fingers over your cheek. 
“Something… naked?”
His grin widens and he shakes his head. 
“Me naked or you naked?”
Pretending to think about it, you roll your bottom lip between your teeth. 
“Mm… why not both?”
“Hm. Why do I feel like I know where this is going?”
The mattress sinks underneath your elbow as you prop yourself up, dropping your head over Spencer’s to kiss him. 
“Because you’re so smart, and you think it’s a great idea.”
He entertains your kiss for a moment. Just a moment.
“You sound sure of yourself.”
“Because I am!” You finally give in to your impulses, tangling your fingers in his hair and looking at him meaningfully. “It doesn’t make any sense for us to have not had sex. I don’t care about any of your weird, cryptic moral reasoning.”
He grabs your wrist carefully. 
“It is not moral,” he scoffs. “We haven’t even talked about it yet.”
“Really? Because I feel like we’ve talked about it a lot.” 
He begins to reply, but you realize you don’t want to get into a debate over whether you’ve technically talked about it yet. “I don’t even care! If that’s all that’s standing in your way, then let’s talk about it. Right now.”
Spencer sighs, his eyes darting between yours as he reaches up to cradle your cheek. 
“Fine. But I have things to say you’re not going to like.”
“So business as usual?”
He rolls his eyes. You allow yourself a tiny self-satisfied smirk, forever relishing in his poorly-hidden soft spot for your constant teasing. Spencer ignores this. Which is probably for the best. 
“I know you probably won’t see it this way, but—sex is different than everything else we’ve done so far. It can be really fun, obviously it feels good, it facilitates deeper feelings of connection—that’s all true. Which is why, in my opinion, it’s incredibly important that you be selective with who you sleep with. Because it’s so easy to do something you regret, and sex is vulnerable. It should always be with someone you trust and—and… care about.”
A pink flush stains his cheeks like watercolor as he stumbles over the last few words. It makes your heart flutter against the confines of your chest.
Maybe best not to think about the absence versus presence of certain four-letter words and what they may or may not mean. You’ll move on to more pressing matters and pretend like it doesn’t ache just a little in your whole body. 
You cover his hand with your own. 
“Are you going to break up with me anytime soon?”
Spencer’s eyes widen, filling with genuine horror and confusion. 
“What? No!”
“Are you going to cheat on me?”
“Absolutely not, I—”
“Then I’m not going to regret it. Issue resolved. Moving on.”
“Honey, I just want you to be 100% sure that I’m what you want.”
“Oh my god,” you groan, flopping onto your back once more. “I have begged you to sleep with me on multiple occasions. We have been dating for months and I liked you even longer before that. I think about it literally every time I see you. I don’t know how to be any surer.”
It’s quiet for a moment as you study the imaginary pattern on the ceiling. The rebuttal you’d been anticipating doesn’t come—instead, the mattress shifts next to you. Spencer enters your field of vision, now leaning over you with a little smile on his face that gives you butterflies. 
“Every time?”
“…yes, every time,” you agree, voice considerably thinner than it had been a moment ago. Spencer glances at your lips as he speaks. 
“Interesting. And what is it that you think about exactly?”
You groan again, attempting to roll facedown, but he pins your shoulder to the bed. The way he’s sweetly kissing down your cheek and jaw is infuriating because you know it’s a false pretense. 
“Ugh, I don’t know! Don’t make me answer that!”
“You said if talking about it was all that was standing in my way, we would talk about it. Now I want to talk about it. Come on,” he says, voice low and cloying against your throat as he attempts to tease the answer out of you. “Tell me what you think about when you think about us having sex.”
You let out a shaky breath at the feeling of his lips skimming your neck, hating how easily he can reduce you to this. 
“I… I always wonder what it will feel like. Sometimes I wonder if it will hurt.”
Spencer sighs, interrogation by way of seduction momentarily forgotten. You silently curse yourself for saying something so un-sexy. 
“It might, sweetheart. That’s one of the reasons we’ve held back. I… really don’t want to hurt you. I don’t even know if I can.”
You grab his face in both hands, forcing him to look at you with more confidence than you feel. 
“Sometimes I worry about it, too. But I like you a lot more than it scares me. I still want to.”
He kisses your palm. 
“You’ll be okay. It doesn’t hurt for everyone, and even if it does, you’re resilient.”
“Exactly. So you have to get over yourself.”
Spencer laughs like he wasn’t expecting to, eyes sparkling as he regards you.  
“Yeah. Yeah, maybe I do.”
He’s smiling again as he leans down and kisses you—a slow, lingering thing which tastes like spearmint as you part your lips for him. 
“Please?” you whisper against him after a long moment. He hums, keeps kissing you. 
“What is it that you think you want? You don’t even know what you’re asking for.”
“Tell me,” you beg, chasing his lips. “Tell me what you’re going to do with me. We can talk about it. This is talking about it.”
Spencer exhales deeply, wedging a thigh between yours. Immediately you clamp around it, trying not to grind against him too overtly. 
“You want to know what I’d do to you?”
“Yes—” you paw at his jacket. Surprisingly, he doesn’t stop you from pushing it off. Your heart pounds. 
“Well… we both know how anxious you get,” he muses, pressing his lips so delicately to your fluttering pulse-point in emphasis, and then back to your mouth. His thigh pushes harder against you to supplant the absence of his lips as he speaks, though he kisses you sporadically and between sentences. “You’re hard to get out of your head when you’re nervous, you know that? I watch it happen. One minute you’re with me, and then you start overthinking, and getting self-conscious. The only thing that seems to relax you is letting me touch you—so first I would touch you like I’ve touched you before. I’d make sure you know how pretty you are and how good you deserve to feel.” You whimper inadvertently at his words, arching into him and grinding against his leg as he pauses to kiss the sensitive soft spot below your jaw. “You’re going to need to be really ready to let me in. Do you know what I mean by that?”
As he asks, he pushes his thigh against you harder. Your body responds immediately, arching into him and seeking more friction. When you squeak, he takes it as a no. 
“I mean I need you relaxed and wet. You’ll excuse my crude language.”
You pull at his tie, breathing heavier now and so turned on it’s almost painful. 
“What are you gonna do after that?”
“What else is there to do but fuck you after that?” he breathes. “You want me to tell you how I’d fuck you?”
Something about it makes you whine salaciously. You’ve heard him curse—you’ve even heard him talk about fucking you. But it feels more real now; when it’s low in your ear and you’re covertly undressing him and he’s pushing your shirt over your stomach promisingly. 
“Yes, please.” 
He hums against your jaw, nipping and brushing his lips over the skin as he considers. Leaves you waiting. 
“I would have to take my time with you. You’ll be overwhelmed. I know you think you won’t, but you will. I’m going to have to be so, so careful with you, angel. It’s going to drive me insane. But it will feel good for you.”
“Why careful? I don’t want that.”
He chuckles. A chill runs down your spine. 
“Yeah, you do. You’re going to want me to be careful when I’m—” he pauses, pressing his thumb to your bare lower tummy and dragging up to a spot below your belly button. He presses down lightly again. “Right here. Approximately.”
The surface of the sun has nothing on the temperature of your skin in this moment, as you writhe underneath him in both arousal and embarrassment. Mostly, burning need. You feel almost sick with it. 
“Please don’t make me wait anymore. Just do it, please, Spencer. I need it to be you, I don’t want it to be anyone else. I promise I’m ready.”
It’s silent for a moment. Your heart quickens. You sense his walls wearing away, his instinct to keep you intact for god knows what reason crumbling. He’s finally going to give you what you’ve been begging for. 
Spencer opens his mouth, eyes glimmering—
And then his phone rings. 
You both freeze—he melts dejectedly before you do, more accustomed to an ill-timed phone call and realizing the finality it can present. 
He’s breathing heavily against your neck, as if maybe whoever it is will just hang up. But the phone keeps ringing. 
“I’m sorry.”
Your stomach sinks as he sits up, grabbing his phone from the side table and rubbing circles on your inner thigh as he answers.
“This is Reid,” he says, lackluster. 
If you wanted, you could hear what Penelope is saying—but you don’t bother listening. It’s going to be a case. Spencer is about to leave. The details are his problem. 
“Okay. I’ll be there in an hour.”
He hangs up, tossing the phone onto the mattress and not speaking for a moment, just continuing to rub your leg apologetically. Watching you almost mournfully—taking in your disheveled hair, your likely blown-out pupils, the shirt pushed almost over your chest. 
“I have to go right now,” he finally manages with a heavy sigh, gently pulling your shirt back into place. 
You sit up, shedding all the hopes that had been building for the evening, and try to sound chipper—though all you feel is bitter disappointment that goes deeper than you understand. 
“I know. Go ahead, I can get a cab home.”
He frowns, running his hand over the back of your hair. 
“I don’t love the idea of you standing on the sidewalk waiting for a car in this part of town so late. Do you just want to stay here for the night and go home tomorrow?”
You force a smile. Great. So you’ll be spending the night in his bed after all—just without him. 
“Sure. Thanks.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of you are feeling particularly grateful. 
Soon you’re walking him to his own door. Both of you come to a stop in front. 
“I’m sorry,” he sighs again. 
“Spencer, it’s fine. It’s your job. You don’t need to apologize. You were very clear about this part when we started dating.”
“I know, but… it’s easier in theory than in practice.”
You smile. If Spencer is a reflection of you, it doesn’t quite reach your eyes. His hair is still messy from your fingers running through it and he’s missing his tie. You hope all his coworkers see and feel bad about taking him away from you. 
But it’s not their fault. You just want someone to blame. 
Instead you mould yourself to his body, wrapping around him like you belong there. He returns your embrace, pressing his lips into the crook of your shoulder and rubbing your back in that way he always does with you. 
In that moment, your affection for him becomes so profound it’s like a chemical reaction—everywhere he touches burns and you love him so fucking much it aches in every inch of your body the way your muscles do when you have a bad fever. Love is the most terrible of afflictions, you realize. It is a fever dream. It’s every fiber of your being screaming to tell him how you feel, to beg him on your knees not to go because you love him like a child loves a parent or a bee loves honeysuckle or the ocean loves the horizon. Pared down to your most basic components, the barest version of yourself, you require him. Your soul needs his soul. 
“Spencer?”
“Hm?” 
It’s nothing more than an absentminded hum against your skin. 
“I…”
Should you be looking him in the eye when you say this? Should you say it right before he has to leave? Just because you say it doesn’t change the fact that he’s about to be gone for several long days. Maybe this is a terrible time to admit something that suddenly feels so true and so consequential. 
He senses your internal conflict, pulling back despite your resistance and holding your face between his hands. 
“You what?” He murmurs, soft eyes bouncing back and forth between your own. Fuck—you feel so observed, now. Like he can read your mind. 
“I forget.”
FUUUUUUCK. 
Spencer blinks. Processes. You watch the disbelief crystallizing over his eyes like ice freezing over a lake. 
He knows. 
He knows you didn’t forget, and he probably knows what you were going to say, and he’s going to tell himself he was wrong to spare your dignity. 
Everything hurts when he kisses you. You wonder what regret tastes like. 
“Well, let me know if you remember.”
It’s too gentle and at the same time he can’t hide the edge with all the tenderness in the world. You nod as if in a trance, already looking forward to dissociating as you lie in bed and stare at the dark ceiling.
Two small goodbyes are exchanged, slightly stifled now, as if shared between drunk strangers who have sobered up and are mutually embarrassed about how candidly they’d interacted before. 
You close the door behind him, doing up all the locks, and meticulously flick every light switch in the apartment off before climbing into his bed—though you don’t really feel like you deserve to be there anymore.
But perhaps this is all an overreaction. It’s not like you owe it to him to say I love you, or anything—it was bad timing, anyway. And why can’t he say it? In fact, why hasn’t he said it? 
Maybe you have it all wrong. 
Maybe he doesn’t feel that way about you. 
You fall asleep before you allow these questions to make you sick. 
24 hours go by. 
24 hours go by and you really had meant to leave his apartment—it was just that you woke up late, and your phone was dead so you couldn’t call a car, so you charged it while you made breakfast, and then you ate, and then you decided to take a shower and wash your clothes, and then it was two in the afternoon and you hadn’t left yet and you decided to walk to the store and replenish the groceries you’d used up. 
Maybe you got a bit distracted looking at flowers and other beautiful things at the market and by the time you got home it was 5:00, so you decided to wait until seven to skip rush hour. And then eight, just to be sure. 
Before you know it, it’s midnight, and you’re dozing off in his bed again (teeth cleaned with the brush you’d bought at the store—maybe this whole situation hadn’t been entirely unwitting on your part.)
Throughout the day, you tried to let all your anxiety about the previous night melt away. If it’s something that needs to be addressed, Spencer will address it. Everything will work out in the end. That thought is how you’re able to doze off. 
You’re almost asleep when your phone lights up and begins buzzing on the side table. You wince as your eyes open, not adjusting well to the harsh bright display and unable to discern who’s even calling you at this hour. Stupidly, probably because you’re half asleep, you answer without checking. 
“Hello?”
Your voice is groggy, quiet with sleep. 
“Shit, did I wake you?”
“Spence?” you whisper, stomach flipping at the sound of his voice on the other line. You feel caught, still sleeping in his bed. 
“… yeah,” he chuckles. “Did you not check who was calling before you picked up?”
“I was asleep,” you pout. “Kinda.”
“Okay. Go back to sleep, honey. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
You sit bolt upright, phone balanced between tense fingers and speaking directly into the microphone. 
“No! No, I’m awake. What’s up? Why did you call?”
A longer stretch of silence—you’re too sleepy to comprehend what it might mean, though never too sleepy to worry about it. With a pang of pain, you recall your strange goodbye, the words you hadn’t said. 
“I just needed to hear your voice,” he sighs. You frown, staring at nothing in particular in the pitch black room. 
“Oh. Is everything okay?”
“As much as it can be.”
“Right.”
More quiet. You chew on the inside of your cheek, stricken with a sudden feeling of awkwardness that you haven’t had with Spencer in a while. 
“I’m sorry… I don’t really know what to say.”
“That’s okay,” he says, and you can hear the smile in his voice which makes you feel a bit better, “why don’t you tell me about your day? Or you can absolutely go back to sleep, if you’re too tired.”
“Don’t ask me about my day,” you whisper, flopping down on the bed once more. Shame seeps into your voice. He laughs. 
“What? Why?”
“Because if I tell you you’re going to think I’m super weird and you’re going to break up with me.”
Laughter tapers off into gentler tones. 
“I already think you’re super weird. It’s actually one of your most attractive qualities.”
Blood rushes to your cheeks. 
“But it’s like… borderline crazy.”
Immediately, he replies, “for better or worse, I also frequently find myself attracted to crazy.”
“Thank you for calling me crazy and super weird,” you grumble. 
“I also called you attractive twice. Tell me.”
When his tone takes on that easy, assertive quality, and it’s sort of raspy and low because it’s late and he’s been talking all day, and you can hear the lazy smile on his face—you imagine him laying on his hotel bed, arm slung over his eyes in the dark as he grins into the microphone—you have a very difficult time saying no. 
“Fine. Guess where I am right now.”
“Um, I would hope you’re in bed?”
You smile to yourself, basking in the victory of successfully throwing him off his game even slightly. 
“Guess whose bed.”
Silence. 
“What an interesting question.” That cocky smile, the low drawling is back, and you chew on your lip, ignoring the shiver that runs down your spine. “If it’s not mine or yours, we’re going to have issues.”
“But if it is yours? You’re not going to call the police on me?”
“Why would I call the police? To tell them there’s a pretty girl in my bed and I don’t want her there?”
“To tell them your psychopathic girlfriend broke into your apartment and might be holding hostages there.”
Spencer laughs; a brittle, drawn out thing, flat and quiet as the desert.
“If you were a psychopath, calling the cops would be a waste of time. I would handle you myself.” The idea of being handled has your thighs clenching. “But—yeah, don’t invite anyone else in.” More humor finds its way into his voice, momentarily relieving some tension that had sneakily begun to build. “Having people in my space makes me anxious.”
“But not me?” Your whisper is half flirtatious, half insecure. Spencer’s reply is soft, as if he’s picking up on this from hundreds of miles away.
“No, not you. You are always the exception.”
“Good,” you say, cheeks aching as you half-bury your warm face into his pillow. “Because I made myself really comfortable. You have a nice shower, by the way.”
Spencer groans. 
“You’re killing me.”
“What? What did I do!”
“Don’t talk to me about my bed and my shower. I might start to think you’re intentionally being a brat.”
“You asked me about my day! I’m just telling you what I did!”
But you’re also intentional teasing him for sure.  After a pause, he sighs in defeat. 
“You’re right. I did do that. Tell me what else happened.”
“Well,” you begin, all too eager, “I had to put my clothes in the dryer after I got out, so I borrowed some of yours. But then they were way comfier than mine, so after I went to the store I put them back on, and—”
“Okay.”
“Okay what?” you frown. 
“Tell me what this is.”
“I—I don’t know what you mean.”
Lying to a profiler is usually pointless. 
“I’m not stupid, sweetheart. Tell me why you keep talking about my shower and my bed and my clothes.”
Caught red-handed. Your skin heats up. 
“I don’t know. I miss you.”
He hums in a way that blurs the line between sympathetic and patronizing. Even through the phone you can feel the bass of it in your bones.  It changes the frequency you’re vibrating at. It’s hypnotic. 
“But that’s not really why you’re being intentionally provocative, is it?”
“No,” you admit quietly. “I’m still upset you had to go last night.”
“So you’re frustrated and you’re taking it out on me?”
Your brow furrows. Well, when he puts it like that…
“I’m not taking anything out on you.”
“I think you are. And I don’t appreciate that, because I’m on your side, honey. Do you think I prefer being in a hotel bed by myself or being in my bed with you?”
Somehow, he makes you feel like a scolded child. But he makes it appealing in ways you don’t understand. 
“Your bed with me,” you murmur, skin prickling with the coldness of his absence even as you curl under the blanket. 
“Right. So why don’t you tell me what I can do for you right now, instead of punishing me for things that are beyond my control?”
“I wasn’t punishing you,” you mutter. 
“No? You weren’t intentionally talking about using my shower and sleeping in my bed and putting on my clothes so that I’d have to think about what I can’t have right now?”
“I—”
“Believe me when I tell you I have been thinking about what I can’t have, all day. Your efforts are entirely redundant and you can’t say anything about yourself that is even close to as dirty as the frankly disrespectful thoughts I’ve been having about you for seventeen hours.”
The lack of air is making you so dizzy your vision goes gray at the edges. 
“What… what thoughts?”
“None that you need to concern yourself with.”
“You can’t just say something like that and then not tell me!” you insist. He’s obviously giving you a taste of your own medicine and it’s fair but it doesn’t mean you have to like it. 
“I can do whatever I want,” Spencer corrects cooly in a way that pisses you off beyond belief because he’s right. It triggers some adolescent immaturity within you—a desire to get back at him, so to speak. He wants intentionally provocative? He can have it. 
“Fine. Then so can I. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it even if I could.”
“Spencer,” you warn. “If you don’t tell me what you were thinking I’m gonna—” you look around the room for ammo. “I’m gonna look through your nightstand!”
“Go ahead. I’ll warn you, it’s not very interesting.”
“Sounds like what someone who has something hide would say,” you mumble, crawling across the mattress through tangled sheets and using your phone flashlight to open the drawer. 
Spencer is patient and silent as you take in its contents—a small blue leather-bound notebook (full of what looks like Russian), a fountain pen, a glasses case, various kinds of vitamins, and—
“Spencer Reid,” you say, dragging out his name and pretending nothing is fluttering in your stomach, “what are these?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see what you’re referring to.”
“Take a wild guess.”
“Oh, I have one. But I’d like to hear you say it.”
You realize you may have gotten yourself in deeper than you meant to by going through his stuff. Well—they don’t say karma is a bitch for nothing. 
“What are you doing with a box of condoms?” 
He chuckles and you feel it in your whole body, warm as you stretch across his mattress and eye the box like it might jump out at you. 
“Those are years old. I’ve used three since I bought them.”
“Don’t tell me that,” you whine. “I don’t wanna think about all the other women you’ve seduced.”
“You wanted them to be for you, huh?” 
You flush. Honestly you hadn’t even thought about that. 
“I… I don’t know. I kind of just assumed…”
It’s silent for a second and you frown, realizing you hadn’t even considered protection when you’d imagined sleeping with him before. 
“You assumed what, honey?” he asks, voice soft. 
“It’s dumb. I can’t tell you.”
“You can tell me anything. I’m not going to think it’s dumb, I promise.”
You chew on your lip, letting your eyes unfocus on the box as you muster the courage to be honest. 
“Whenever I imagined it… we didn’t… use anything.”
The words make you cringe even as you’re saying them. So does the quiet that follows. 
“When you imagine us sleeping together, we don’t use a condom?”
“Ah!” The phone drops to the mattress as you cover your ears and roll onto your side, curling into yourself once more. “You didn’t have to say it! You make me sound so weird!”
“It’s not weird,” he laughs, because he can probably imagine exactly what you just did, “I just wanted to make sure I was understanding you. That said… we would definitely use protection.”
“Do we have to?”
The quiet words take even you by surprise—and they seem to stun Spencer as well. Several false starts are punctuated by a sigh as he gathers his thoughts. 
“We really should, baby. That’s the kind of thing we need to take seriously.”
“But you’re… you’re good, right?”
Thankfully he picks up on your meaning. 
“I am. I wouldn’t touch you if I weren’t.”
“And I’m good. So...”
“Hm. And has anyone ever explained to you where babies come from?”
You groan in frustration. 
“Spencer, I’m being serious! There are ways to negate that.”
“Honey,” he murmurs, “I understand that. But it would be irresponsible of me to say yes. We can talk about it in the future, but—”
“I’m telling you it’s already dealt with. The chances of an accidental pregnancy are slim to none.”
The new information hangs in the air for a moment until Spencer speaks—to your surprise, his voice is low and humorous. 
“That is… good to know. But even so—I’m setting a dangerous precedent if I always let you get exactly what you want.”
“Is it such a bad thing that I just wanna—I wanna know what it feels like? You don’t want that?”
“That’s not what I said. I want to know exactly what you feel like. I’m just hesitant to give in so quickly because it makes me look weak.”
You laugh breathlessly, caught between being turned on by the first part of his sentence and amused by the sarcastic second half. Your thighs clench and your hand absentmindedly wanders between them. 
“You know what I was thinking about?” you ask. Spencer hums curiously. “I was thinking about when you let me, um… when you let me touch you how you touch me.” He hums again, but you can hear the amused curve of a smile in it now.
“When you had your mouth all full of me and you looked so pretty?”
“When I—yeah,” you agree, too caught up to deny his compliment as your fingers brush your most sensitive spot through clothing. “And  how you got me all messy after. And I was wondering what it would feel like… inside me.”
He sucks in a breath. Your legs brush against each other and you twist slightly as you pretend like you’re not touching yourself just a little bit. 
“You want me to come inside you?”
“Yeah,” you whisper, brain short-circuiting at the way those words sound in his voice. 
On the other side of the line, Spencer isn’t doing a fantastic job of thinking clearly either. His dick is half-hard already and it’s only getting worse with each little noise you make that you don’t seem to realize you’re making. 
“Really? That would be very messy, baby. I’m surprised that’s what you want.”
“But I really want it,” you breathe. He’s not even looking as he slips his hand under the waistband of his pajamas and palms himself, his other hand rubbing tiredly over his face as his phone rests on his chest. This was not how he intended for this call to go, believe it or not—but he’s here now. 
“Yeah? Is that why you’re touching yourself right now?”
You go silent—which is more or less exactly the reaction Spencer had been expecting. Patiently he waits for you to deny it, in three, two—
“’M not.”
Now, he could explain how he knows that’s a lie. How your breathing pattern changed, and your voice got softer and airier, and how you started speaking with smaller words in fragmented sentences. But he doesn’t feel like explaining any of that. 
“I know that’s not true,” he murmurs. “You know what? It wasn’t fair to get you all worked up last night and then leave. I don’t want you frustrated, honey. I want you to do whatever you need to do.”
You make a little gasping noise, and Spencer can imagine the way your back would arch when you did it. His own hips buck slightly as his dick twitches under his fingers. 
“Where are you touching?”
“Um—over my clothes.”
Cute. 
“Go under them for me. Tell me how it feels when you’re touching yourself like that.”
It takes a moment, in which all he hears is the rustling of fabric, until you’re whispering, “feels… it feels good. I wish you were here.”
He inhales, freeing his cock and squeezing the base. 
“I know. Just listen to my voice, pretty. I’m right here.”
Spencer allows himself a few slow tugs as he imagines what’s happening in his bed. You make a squeaking noise, like a held-back moan, and his eyes screw shut. 
“I need them inside,” you whine, and he knows you’re referring to his fingers—the ones currently stroking his own leaking cock. 
“You can use your own, just give yourself a minute first. Remember what I said about needing to be ready?”
“I am ready—” judging by the surprised chirp you interrupt yourself with, you’ve proven yourself right. What surprises Spencer is the weak sound of disappointment you make next. “Spence, it doesn’t feel the same.”
“We’re different sizes, honey. Your hands aren’t as big as mine. But you can still make it feel good.” 
He almost says, 90% of the nerves in the vaginal canal are located in the lower third—in other words, within approximately 2.36 inches from the opening, which you can most certainly reach—but he refrains. He’s not sure if that’s good dirty talk. 
“You have a really sensitive spot about three inches up, right in front. It’s going to feel a little different than the rest of you when you touch it. I want you to try and find it for me, okay?”
“Okay,” you breathe, ever-eager to please even from a great distance. There’s a quiet moment. “I can’t—I don’t think I can r—oh,”
The moan is so pretty Spencer can’t help speeding up the motion of his hand, hissing slightly as his fingers brush against the angry tip with every pump. 
“Did you find it?”
“Yeah,” you whine, a weak, high-pitched thing. “Oh my god.”
“Be gentle,” he warns with some effort as his own hips jump slightly. “You’re really sensitive there. If you’re not careful you’ll make yourself sore.”
“I don’t care—holy shit—” the way your voice rises and tightens to a squeak at the end has Spencer moaning as he fucks his fist. A black hole forms and warps time, turning every minute into a second and every second into an infinity until he has no idea how much time is going by. He drags his thumb over the tip, smearing precum over his cock and whining as his jaw drops at the feeling. “Oh my god, Spencer,” in that same strained, high voice. “’M gonna—ah!”
He gets the general sentiment. 
“What, baby? You’re gonna make yourself come all over your fingers? Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“Mhm!”
“Yeah, I bet you are. It feels good, huh?”
“Yes,” you cry. 
“See? You don’t need my fingers to feel good. Mine barely fit, you know that? I have to hold your fucking hips down whenever I put my fingers in you because you can’t stop squirming. I don’t know how you think you’re going to take my cock.”
“Spencer!” 
He knows. 
“Come, baby. Let me hear you.”
The delicate sounds you make as you bring yourself to orgasm tip him over the edge of his own—grunting as he comes all over his fist. 
“Jesus,” he strains under his breath, the word dragging out into two long syllables as his hips buck involuntarily and cum drips down his knuckles. He’s lightheaded and he’s created a mess and it all happened so quickly. “Fuck,” he breathes, a rasping chuckle as he reaches for the towel he’d dropped on the bed after his shower earlier. “You conscious over there?”
“I’m conscious,” you slur, breathing heavily. “I’ve never had an orgasm by myself before.”
“Are you proud of yourself?” Spencer smiles, wiping his hand off and making sure he’s otherwise clean. “You should be. I am.”
He’s barely kidding. 
“I’ll be proud when I can do it without your help,” you tease. 
“But I’ll always want to help you with that.” His already warm face flushes further as he goes over what he’d said. “Sorry I was so vulgar.”
You laugh. He blushes even more. 
“Are you? I think you secretly love being vulgar.”
“I don’t know why! I have no idea where it comes from. I would never speak that way in any other context. I should probably work on that. Sometimes I look back on the things I say and I’m genuinely appalled.”
“Well, don’t stop on my account. Personally I enjoy it.”
“Yeah, I think I’m corrupting you. You probably shouldn’t enjoy it.”
The truth of it weighs heavy on his mind, but he’s pretty sure his voice alone doesn’t betray that and you can’t sense it through the phone. 
“Oh, my god. Do not do that falling on your sword shit. I like being corrupted by you. If you stop I’ll be very upset.”
“Well god forbid you get upset,” he teases gently. Idly he wonders if the reason he’s suddenly feeling so depressed is because his cortisol levels were already high from the case, and then he jarred his system with an orgasm, spiking his dopamine and ultimately causing it to plummet without the oxytocin release that post-coital physical contact would usually provide. 
Or if it was something else. It could also be something else. 
For the millionth time, he wishes he was with you. Part of him also wants to go to sleep. But mostly he wishes he was with you. 
A comfortable silence settles over the conversation. In the ditch between words, you’re mapping constellations in the texture of Spencer’s ceiling. If you squeeze your eyes almost shut, you can imagine it really is the night sky. You can imagine he’s really here. 
You think about what he said—his apparently mindless vulgarity. Did it mean anything? Or was he just rambling to get you off?
“Spencer?” you murmur. 
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
He sounds earnest, perhaps a little tired, as he replies, “always,” through the little metal rectangle on your chest. He likes me and my questions are important to him, you repeat to yourself silently as you work up the strength. 
“If Penelope hadn’t called, last night… were you going to have sex with me?” 
Your lip tastes like his toothpaste as you chew it. Spencer sucks in a breath of air like he’s about to speak—and lets it fizzle out like foam on a carbonated drink. 
“I don’t know,” he finally admits, lamely. “That wasn’t my plan, but you can be extremely convincing when you want to be.”
“But why can’t it be your plan?” It’s an almost whine, pouty and childish—but the next words are quiet and pained. “Is it something I’m doing wrong?”
“No, no! It’s not you. You’re perfect. It’s—it’s complicated. It’s a me thing.”
Such trite words—such a ubiquitous, simple excuse sounds almost comical from his mouth when you know he’s capable of all the eloquence in the world. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s ridiculous. 
“Okay. Let me simplify this for you,” you begin with an uncharacteristic assertiveness that surprises even you. “I want to have sex with you. Either we are going to have sex or we’re not. So your future branches in two diverging paths. In one, we have sex, and then we keep having sex. In the other we never have sex ever. If you want to ever have the privilege of fucking me, then we just have to do it. Otherwise it simply will never happen. And I’m not eternally patient, Reid.”
Go me, you think, slightly breathless from your monologue. 
“Watch your mouth,” he says dryly. Something about the chastisement makes your stomach flip and your whole body tingle. “When you talk to me you call me Spencer. I will also accept Doctor Reid.” You wrestle down a smile, refusing to let him change the subject. A delayed sigh from him sobers up the conversation. “You know what I want. I’ve been very clear with you about that. But…”
“But…?”
Another sigh. A deeper, shuddering sigh, like his breath is searching for balance. Like Spencer is in a precarious position for which he was unprepared. 
“But—but to be completely honest… I worry that you’ll regret choosing me. And I know virginity is a social construct and I’m not implying that your worth will somehow be diminished if we have sex but regardless of my views on virginity as a construct, having sex for the first time can be weird and scary and it’s incredibly intimate and I don’t want you to regret your first time like I regret mine because you chose the wrong person.”
The words come at you so rapid-fire it takes you a moment to process them. And aside from all the ways you want to reassure him that you will not regret choosing him—that you could never, ever regret anything about him—one thing stands out. 
“You regret your first time?” 
Something between a scoff and a sigh travels through the line. You can tell he’s not annoyed at you for asking so much as he’s flustered himself with all his own words as he occasionally does. 
“Yeah. Yes. Sometimes I do. The person—she didn’t… like me as much as I liked her. And I was really, really in love with her, and she knew that and she knew she wasn’t in love with me—or maybe she was, I don’t know—but my point is, when one person likes the other more than the other person like them, things get complicated. And however you feel about me—that’s fine. It’s fine. I don’t want you to feel bad if we don’t feel exactly the same way about each other. I understand that this is newer for you, it’s different, I—I just don’t want us to do something we can’t undo because I don’t want to relive that. And I’m not saying it will never happen but I just don’t want you to make this choice when… when right now, I think we’re in different places emotionally. Regardless of that, I want you to choose the right person. I don’t want you to choose me and then find out that we feel differently after we sleep together and leave you feeling like you signed up for something you didn’t understand. I’m sorry. Maybe telling you this is selfish. But I’ve been thinking about it and trying to ignore it and I think I just have to be completely honest.”
Your ears ring like Spencer just fired a blank right into the microphone. Like you just got backhanded across the face and now you have the world’s worst case of whiplash. 
Every finger is numb and your blood is so cold it feels blue as it slithers thick through your veins. 
What you want to do is scream. What you want to do is go back to last night and stop yourself from almost telling him I love you, slap yourself and keep your cards a little closer to your chest. Because now he knows, and he doesn’t feel the same. 
You want to scream bloody murder. 
But when you try, when you unhinge your jaw and part your chapped lips and expect a bellow to come hurdling up the corridor of your throat with so much force it rattles your bones, all that falls out is a small, “oh.”
Maybe that’s worse. 
Spencer doesn’t reply. You hate yourself for feeling obliged to fill the silence. 
“I didn’t realize you…”
I didn’t realize that you don’t love me back. 
I didn’t realize I like you more than you like me. 
I didn’t realize you’d tell me to masturbate in your fucking bed and then drop this not even five minutes later. 
If Spencer Reid was able to talk to you over the phone with the same amount of affection and familiarity as always, like everything was still okay, knowing you love him and he doesn’t love you the whole time, he is not who you thought he was. 
“I’m sorry,” he lamely says again, like it could ever help. 
More silence. Now you can’t bring yourself to speak, so Spencer does. 
“I realize how awkward this is. I really didn’t mean to put you in this position. Especially not over the phone when I—god, I’m stupid. I’m sorry. But can we—can we talk about this in person when I get back? Please?”
Is that what grownups do? Is the proper etiquette for him to take you out to dinner and explain why he’s not in love with you? Is he going to break up with you?
What does one even wear to a breakup date?
“Okay,” you whisper. Your eyes sting, your everything stings, like you’ve been wrapped in a shroud of briar. Sheets that were soft a moment ago feel like sandpaper on open wounds. You feel like an open wound. 
Spencer sighs. It’s a sound of relief that confuses and hurts you even more. 
“Okay. I—okay. Thank you. Um—I’ll let you go back to sleep, now.”
“Okay,” you repeat—as if any of this were okay. But you can’t keep being that stupid girl who feels it all so much harder, who loves easily and begs to be loved in return, too naive to assume that someone who treats her so kindly might not reciprocate her feelings. It has to be okay, because if it’s not, you’re silly and dramatic and you’re just proving him right. 
“Goodnight,” Spencer whispers, and you can’t help but feeling that it’s the last time you’ll ever hear those words from his mouth while you’re in his bed. And he’s not even fucking here.
So you pull the blanket a little higher. You let your tears stain his pillow because they’ll be invisible by the morning. It will be like they were never here. Like you were never here. 
“Goodnight.”
-
part five
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f1byjessie · 7 months
Text
SUGAR, SPICE, AND EVERYTHING NICE ━━ FA14.
being the wife to a formula one driver is hard, especially when they're far away.
( fernando alonso x wife!reader )
━━ one shot.
When you were ten, you baked with your grandmother for the first time and fell in love. With the flour up to your elbows, an apron two sizes too big looped twice around your waist, and your grandmother's sweet voice crooning along to Sergio Endrigo, she taught you the differences between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, that a pinch sometimes means two, and when it comes to cinnamon you can never have too much.
“My angioletto,” she called you, her little angel, “it doesn’t have to look pretty when it’s done. When I was younger, I made my husband, your nonno, the ugliest cookies you could imagine. But I put my love in it, and he loved me very much, and he ate every single one and for the rest of his years claimed they were the best cookies I ever made for him.”
She’d lifted you onto the stool at the counter, so you could peer down at the mangled mess of cinnamon rolls. “It may look odd on the outside, but it is just as delicious as the others, and you know what? It’s even more special because it was made by my granddaughter.”
She’d wrapped you up in her arms then, pressing a kiss to your forehead and laughing loudly and warmly when you tried to squirm out of her arms with a giggle of your own.
“One day, my angioletto, you will find someone who loves you with their entire heart, and it won’t matter how pretty your baking is, because they will eat it, and to them it will taste like heaven.” She’d pulled apart the cinnamon roll, looked you in the eye, and smiled— “Until that someone gets here, I will stand in.”
You ate the whole pan together, and neither of you cared that it ruined your appetite for supper or gave you a stomach ache a little while later.
She’d driven you home that night after the sun had set, and when you got to the little shop on the corner of the market square, a little storefront overgrown with ivy, she’d slowed to a cruise and pointed out where the old sign used to be— where there was just an off-color splotch where the walls around it had been bleached by the sun.
She had regaled you with another story of her time as a girl in the kitchen baking bread with the owner, as she did every morning before school in exchange for a few dollars a month, and then she told you, as she always did, that one day she’d buy it for herself and turn it back into the best bakery Italy had ever seen.
When you were twenty— a law school dropout, struggling to find your place in a world that didn’t seem to have any room for you— you bought the small shop on the corner of the market square, turned it into a bakery, and named it after your grandmother.
It was all on a whim, a result of what you're pretty sure was some quarter-life crisis brought on by feeling as lost as you were. Still, you were living out the lingering ghost of a pipe dream from your teenage years that your father's harsh words and mother's disapproval had shattered to pieces, and following in the footsteps of the woman who inspired your passion for creation.
You’re nearly thirty now, and you still don’t regret buying the bakery. It’s your home away from home now— your home when your heart is halfway around the world and waking up as you go to bed. You love what you do, and you feel grateful that you’ve lucked out in being able to spend your days doing something that makes you so genuinely happy.
But that doesn’t mean that every day is easy.
Today is one of those hard days. Valentine’s Day is just a week away which means orders are coming in like crazy, and on top of the hecticness it’s also the thirteenth anniversary of your grandmother’s passing. Even though you’ve made it these thirteen years without her, the reminder of her legacy— her dream, which you now live for her— is no easier to deal with now than it was all those years ago when you’d just lost her.
The smell of fresh bread from the kitchen and the deep lull of Sergio Endrigo over the bakery’s speakers do nothing but remind you of her and the afternoons you spent in her kitchen, kneading dough and icing cookies. You feel like a little girl again, laughing over old stories of your mother and flushing bright red when she’d bump her hip against yours and ask if there were any boys at school that had caught your eye.
You’d give anything to hear her talk about her days at the bakery one more time, have her guide you through another recipe, or listen to her sing along to old Italian classics.
“Are you okay, Y/N?” Beatrice asks. She’s a young American woman you met a few years back when she was studying abroad. She hadn’t known much Italian back then, and you were the first person she’d met who could speak English, so she’d asked you for directions to the nearest bus station and you had walked her there to make sure she wouldn’t get lost, which had led to you both talking, trading contact information, and eventually you offering her a job at the bakery when she announced to you months later after continued talking that she’d be staying for the foreseeable future.
You wipe your hands against your apron and offer her a smile. It doesn’t come as easily as it normally does, and you feel like it shows. “Just being a bit nostalgic today,” you admit, turning your gaze to the picture of your grandmother that hangs on the wall across from the display case.
There are other pictures hung up with her— you in front of the bakery on the day you bought it, the bakery back when your grandmother still worked there nearly sixty years ago, you and your husband the day you got married, and Beatrice with her three dogs to list a few, all things and places and people you love and want to remember.
“My grandmother, who I named this place after, have I ever told you about her?”
Beatrice hums, thinking back to the many conversations you have both shared you imagine. As she does so, she reaches for a cloth to start wiping down the front of the display case. “I don’t think so,” she finally answers, rounding the counter to the glass front. “I knew the bakery was named after her, and that she taught you to bake, but not much else. You don’t really talk about her much.”
You frown, “I guess I don’t.”
“But it’s okay,” Beatrice adds quickly. “I know family can be a touchy topic. If you’d rather not talk about her, I understand. I’m not very fond of talking about my brother, to be honest.”
The only time Beatrice does talk about her brother is when she’s drunk, which she usually tends to be when the two of you sit down over a bottle of wine and gossip about the happenings of your lives. You’ve heard plenty of stories about him, and thinking back to the most recent one in particular startles a laugh out of you.
Beatrice seems relieved when you glance back over to her with a soft smile.
“My grandmother was the greatest woman I ever knew,” you start. “Do you mind if I talk about her?”
Your employee— your friend— smiles gently at you and continues polishing away the smudges on the display case. “I would love it if you talked about her.
“She used to call me her little angel…”
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yourusername i’ll leave a piece just for you, nonna.
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user that looks delicious!!
user it’s actually my dream to visit y/n’s bakery 😍
↳ user no cuz literally same, idk anyone else who makes smth as simple as bread look so amazing
↳ user it’s like how irl some foods don’t look that good but somehow in cartoons they make it look like it’s the most appetizing thing in the entire world i would actually cut off my own arm and leg just to get to try a single bite
user così carino!! ❤️❤️
user how is it possible to make food look heavenly 😳
user every time she posts food it makes me want to marry a husband that can bake bc there’s no way i could ever do this myself but i do in fact want to live a life like this so very badly
↳ user FELT THIS OMG
user what a beautiful way to remember someone 🫶
user she’s gorgeous aND SHE CAN BAKE???
↳ user she’s really the most wag of all wags 😩
↳ user fell down a rabbit hole of wag interactions throughout the years and y/n’s introduction into the group is so iconic bc she baked them all cookies and brought them when she first met them all
↳ user i read that in an interview that she knows all their favourites and tries to make them all throughout the season when she goes to races
↳ user she’s actually such a sweetheart irl too, i visited the bakery before i ever knew who she was or what f1 is and if i hadn’t already seen that ring on her finger i would’ve shot my shot no joke 😔😔
↳ user what’s alonso’s secret??? where can i find me a wifey like that???
user this is gorgeous
user using food to celebrate a loved one is one of the most loving things a person can do in my opinion. so much love goes into food, but especially baked goods which take time and patience and practice. this is a really touching and beautiful way to honor someone, and i hope she’s watching down on you and thinking the same thing ❤️
↳ user didn’t think i was gonna be crying today but here we are ig 😭
fernandoalo_oficial mi vida, she would be so proud of you 💛
↳ yourusername i hope so, i am who i am because of her 💛
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yourusername arrivederci 💛
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fernandoalo_oficial and may it be soon, mi vida 💛
user obsessed with the way fernando is obsessed with his wife
↳ user the fact that he calls her mi vida every time he addresses her has me walking into oncoming traffic 🙃
↳ user “my life” in spanish 😭😭 i literally fucking can’t when is it my turn to get a man that loves and cherishes me like this
↳ user honestly i think it’s just time to accept we’ll be alone forever cuz if he don’t treat me the way fernando treats his wife then i don’t want him
user for the ppl asking, arrivederci means until we meet again in italian, it’s a pretty common way to say goodbye in italy
↳ user AND FERNANDO SAID AND MAY IT BE SOON OH I AM ILL
user when will he return from the war…
↳ user it’s only february the season hasn’t even started yet so why isn’t he with her??
↳ user aston martin’s hq is in the uk and fernando has to be there for the car reveal, testing/sims, training, promo content, etc. it’s the logistical pr side of formula 1 that makes the season start a lot earlier than what ppl might think
↳ user AND OVER VALENTINE’S DAY TOO??? 😭😭😭😭
user mama y papa
user i want to grow old with someone and have pictures of our vacations to look back on and remember and i don’t think that’s too much to ask for
user she’s posting like he’s dead or smth 💀
↳ user i mean i would be too if my husband was missing valentines day bc of work tbf 🤷‍♀️
user i can’t believe fernando alonso bagged a baddie who ain’t even 30 yet
↳ user i can have you SEEN fernando alonso?? 👀👀👀
↳ user have you SEEN y/n?? 👀👀👀
↳ user two baddies bagged each other guys there’s not a lot to try and comprehend
Fernando being gone has never really mattered to you much. You miss him, of course. He’s your husband and ideally, you would be able to travel the world with him on a whim without needing to worry about who’s in charge of the bakery, but despite how perfect your life seems with Fernando by your side, there are a lot of things that don’t go according to plan and Fernando’s hectic work schedule is one of them.
The constant traveling across the season is exhausting for both of you, even though you’re not the one doing the majority of it. You attend his races when you can— usually when Beatrice forces you to, which is more and more recently as of late, with the logic that you should get the chance to see the world while you’re still young and while Fernando is still racing— but even when you’re home in Naples, the worry that you feel for Fernando as he flies around the world and races in a dangerous car takes its toll.
You wouldn’t even think of ever asking him to give it up, but not being by his side is hard and you cannot afford— for the sake of the bakery— to follow him wherever his sport takes him. So for now, you will always worry and stress about the toll it all takes on him as well.
You honestly hadn’t given much thought that he’d be missing Valentine’s Day this year, but it occurs to you now as you scroll through the comments on your post.
It’s by far the first time he’ll be gone for the holiday, but something about this year just feels different. Maybe it’s the stress of the extra workload you’ve taken on at the bakery to make up for the extra orders this year and the employees that have had to call out, or maybe the anniversary of your grandmother’s passing is hitting you harder this time than it has in the past, but whatever it is, the idea of Fernando not being here to celebrate with you has your eyes filling with tears as you sit curled up in bed.
Alone.
As you have been for the last few weeks now.
Fernando is in Silverstone, preparing for the launch of the new car and getting back into the swing of things before the new season starts, and this is part of the job you understand. You’ve been his wife for many years now. The racing may start in March, but the real season begins much sooner, and to a certain degree it never truly ends.
There’s always a push to be staying in shape, eating healthy, and staying up to date with all the up-and-coming news. Fernando has worked hard to try and find the middle ground, to enjoy his break while he has it, and take a step back from the Formula One world if only to de-stress from the sport’s particular brand of pressure.
And you’ve worked hard to accept that he will always be thinking like a race car driver.
Nonetheless, though you have enjoyed the interview clips and photographs of him being posted around on social media, and you love even more the pictures your husband’s teammate has been sending you and you alone, you can’t help but want to be selfish. You want to have him with you, in your home, cuddled up beside you instead of 1700 kilometers away in another country.
But that’s the way of things.
You’re about to turn off the lamp and, maybe, cry yourself to sleep while ignoring the very cold and very empty other half of a bed that’s too big for one— a bed you haven’t slept in the middle of since before you ever met Fernando, too used to occupying one side and finding another body on the other— when your phone lights up with an incoming call and his contact image flashes across your screen.
It’s late in Italy, nearing midnight now, and the UK isn’t too far behind. With the strictness of his daily schedule and the importance of a full night of rest, he should already be in bed by now. He should’ve already been in bed hours ago, if you remember correctly from past seasons.
“Fernando?”
“My love,” he greets, soft and sweet and sounding like just hearing you say his name has left him breathless. You can practically hear the smile in his voice. “I am sorry that it’s so late. I hope I did not wake you up, but I am calling because I simply could not bear to fall asleep without hearing you.”
You sniffle, wiping away at the tears in your eyes, but the quiet noise must’ve been enough for him to hear because he makes an inquisitive sound.
“Mi vida,” he calls to you, concern seeping into his words. “What is wrong? Are you okay?”
“Mhm,” you hum back to him, shifting around in bed to face the window and the scenic view that lies beyond. You can see the ocean from your home— the dark water pulling in and pushing out and glittering with the reflected light of the moon, and the boats docked at the marina, still, silent, asleep. The moon’s glow paints the cityscape in an ethereal haze, like something from a fairytale. “I’m okay. Just a bad few days. I miss you, Fernando.”
“I know, my love,” he coos. “But we will be together soon. Do you remember what I told you when I left?”
As if you could possibly forget. The morning he left, a fog had rolled in from the sea and you’d swathed yourself in a shawl to chase away the early, damp chill as you stood on the stoep to see him off.
Fernando had wrapped you up in his arms, an embrace so warm and safe that the feeling had lingered for hours afterward still, and he’d whispered in your ear that he would move mountain and sea to get back to you if you ever needed him.
“But I always need you,” you’d teased. He’d chuckled and pressed a gentle kiss to your lips, a promise, and then pulled you in even closer, tucking your head beneath his chin and letting his fingers run through your hair and comb through the remaining bedhead tangles.
You would similarly move earth and sky to be with him again now, just to feel his arms around you, or in the bed beside you.
“I meant what I said,” he says over the phone, drawing your attention back.
You hum again, “I know. But sweetheart, you have a job to do. It’s a very important job, too.” You curl the blankets around you tighter. “Pay no mind to my musings, okay? It’s just been a rocky start. The bakery has lots of orders to get through for Valentine’s Day, and I am short-staffed now.”
“What has happened?”
“What hasn’t?” You joke, heaving a sigh. “Rodrigo broke his hand in a biking accident this past Sunday, and the doctor says he’ll be out for a month at least. I can have him work the register and do minor cleaning chores, but we really need him in the kitchen because Andrea hasn’t yet been trained to use the equipment. I am trying to have Beatrice help with that, but it will take time we don’t have. On top of that, Samuel’s wife is having her baby so he has taken paternity leave, and Gemma has gone back to France for her mother’s birthday.”
Fernando makes a noise of understanding. “You are so stressed, mi vida. I wish there was more I could do. I am sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You have no reason to. In fact, I should be thanking you because I’m feeling so much better just hearing your voice,” you answer. Feeling the tears dissipate as your husband’s joyous laughter trickles into your ear from the phone’s speaker.
“And I am better just hearing yours,” he says. “But I will leave you to sleep now. It’s too late for you to be awake. Te amo, mi esposa.”
“Ti amo, marito mio.”
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lance_stroll i’m really only here to take pictures for his wife
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fernandoalo_oficial the heart is for her only
yourusername and i appreciate you very much for it lancino 🫶
↳ lance_stroll at least someone cares about the work i put in 😔
astonmartinf1 Breaking News: Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll challenges Aston Martin’s social media admin for their job
↳ lance_stroll thanks but i think i’ll stick to driving fast cars. it’s less stress.
user FERNANDO MAKING FINGER HEARTS FOR HIS WIFE 😭😭😭
user if you look closely you can actually see me about to jump off the roof in that last picture 🫠
↳ user real
user why is the first one so cute??
user lance is really just fernando and y/n’s kid at this point, he’s the disgruntled son who reluctantly takes pictures of his dad to send to his mom, and he complains about it, but he secretly loves doing it
↳ user i mean have you SEEN what y/n does for his birthday each year??
↳ user no????
↳ user she specifically learned how to make bannock and a bunch of other traditionally canadian desserts and baked goods for him
↳ user i bet lance’s trainer hates that lmao 😂😂
↳ user you all are talking about them like y/n isn’t just a few years older than lance himself is 💀
↳ user leave fernando and his controversially young wife alone
↳ user guys?? he’s literally only 42?? y/n is almost in her 30s, it could definitely be worse. at least they’re both well into adulthood
user nobody talk to me for the rest of the day this is all i can think about now
user HE MAKES LANCE TAKE PICTURES TO SEND TO HIS WIFE PLS OH MY DAYS
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fernandoalo_oficial throwback thursday, as they say, except it isn’t thursday and i just wanted a reason to post my beautiful wife. te amo 💛.
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yourusername i love you more mio carissimo 💛
↳ fernandoalo_oficial impossible, i love you the most
user adding “posts me just bc he can” to my list of standards for men
user SCREAMING CRYING SOBBING
user “just wanted a reason to post my beautiful wife” oh my god fernando alonso the man that you are… 😩😩
user guys he’s the blueprint
↳ user she’s so lucky
user WHEN IS IT MY TURN???? CAN I NOT BE HAPPY TOO????
user she’s actually so beautiful omg 😳😳😳
↳ user they’re such a power couple
↳ user super excited for y/n to be back in the paddock this year (fingers crossed it happens more) cuz she’s actually so stunning and her outfits are always very classy and fun to look at
↳ user is there a reason she doesn’t go to many races?? they don’t have kids iirc, so idk why she wouldn’t be able to attend more 🤔
↳ user she owns and runs a small bakery in italy, which means she can’t just travel for 9 months out of the year. she shows up when she’s able to, don’t get me wrong, but it’s definitely less frequently than some of the other wags
user gen imagine being fernando alonso’s wife
↳ user i think i would cease to exist
user cuando es mi turno 😭
Valentine’s Day arrives and with it comes the added stress of knowing you’ll be stuck in the bakery all day helping last-minute patrons sort through pastries and treats for their partners. This in and of itself is not a problem, you’ve always liked helping people and baking is your passion after all, but the idea of rising before the sun and being on your feet until long after it sets is not the most appealing, and even worse, your usual happiness is still overshadowed by the cloud of gloom that’s been following you since last week.
Ever since his first late-night call, Fernando has been good about making sure to ring you in the morning before he heads into the factory, and at night when he leaves. It’s helped, certainly, but nothing ever compares to the real thing and that thought makes you feel guiltier every day that you think it.
He has a job to do, a job that he loves. Neither of you should be forced to give up your passions, and that just means needing to make a few sacrifices every once in a while.
He doesn’t call you that morning, however, and though you hide it behind as much of a cheery grin as you can manage, it stings and you’re disappointed.
But throwing yourself into your work is always something you’ve been good at, so you focus instead on kneading dough, mixing pastry filling, and icing cupcakes.
Beatrice finds you back in the kitchen an hour before the bakery is scheduled to open, and the look on her face tells you she knew it’s where you would be.
“You shouldn’t be working today,” she says in lieu of a greeting.
You shrug, sliding a pan of bread from the oven. “We are too short-staffed for me to not be working today. Plus, what would I do anyway? Sit at home alone pretending that I’m not? At least in the bakery, I can put myself to use and be distracted.”
All she does is sigh.
The morning goes well. There’s a bit of a rush when you first open, the most notable of customers is a disgruntled older gentleman who you consider to be a monthly regular. He explains a long-winded story about his daughter’s boyfriend breaking up with her over text last night, and needing something to help cheer her up. He leaves with a box of cannoli, and an extra loaf of bread you threw in for him on the house.
Near the afternoon is when it starts to pick up, but in a lull between customers just after lunchtime, Beatrice corners you in the back. Her arms are crossed over her chest, her eyebrows are furrowed, and her mouth is set in a line.
“Go home,” she orders.
You huff. “Beatrice, I am the boss. Not you.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“I am not going home! The rush will get busier later this evening and we are short-staffed—”
“Rodrigo’s coming in to work register in—” she checks the watch on her wrist, “—fifteen minutes. I ran Andrea through kitchen duty the other day and I’ll be supervising her the entire time, and Marco and Silvia both said they could pick up a shift. I also have a text from Samuel’s wife saying if we need even more help she would gladly get her husband out of the house if it means he’ll stop hovering over her, and I’m prepared to take her up on that offer should the need arise.”
You blink at her. There’s a reason she’s the one you leave in charge when you travel, but whenever you’re reminded of just how good she is at managing the bakery you’re always left a little shocked. She orchestrated everything in the span of a morning and you didn’t even notice.
“Why do you want me to go home so badly?” You ask her, shoving your hands down into your apron’s pockets. “Nothing is waiting for me there anyway. Even if we weren’t short-handed, I would’ve still been here.”
“You sure about that?” Is all she says before turning on her heel and exiting back into the front of the bakery.
You don’t pretend to understand what she’s talking about as you hang your apron up and head for home. Beatrice shoots you a wink as you wave goodbye, and it feels like some sort of foreshadowing for whatever awaits you.
Nothing, however, looks any different than it had when you left. You park your car in the empty driveway, collect the newspaper from the stoep, and unlock the door.
Your keys and the newspaper are both tossed onto the counter just inside the kitchen as you toe off your shoes. You hang up your jacket on the dining room chair as you make your way into the living room, and then you pause.
There, resting on the couch is a stuffed toy bear and a bouquet of your favorite flowers. In the bear’s arms is a little sign, and the handwriting is already enough to have your eyes filling with tears.
“Fernando?” You call out to the silent house.
You check the ground floor and find no other sign of him, so you take to the stairs and begin the ascent up to the next, continuing to call out the many different pet names you have given to him throughout the years.
You peek into the bedroom, “Mia vita?”
Stood in the center of the room, a big grin on his face, is your husband. Fernando looks mighty proud of himself, a glint in his eyes that tells you he’s had this planned for a while and he’s smug that he’s managed to keep a secret from you. He opens his arms wide when you just continue to stand in the doorway, and like a flip has been switched, you rush into him when a sob of happiness.
He wraps himself around you, and the feeling of his arms holding you so firmly in his embrace is warm and comforting, and everything you had missed in the weeks he was gone. Your face is pressed into the crook of his neck, and the smell of his cologne has you sagging even further against him, sinking as far as you can into his hold.
He presses a kiss to your head and sways the both of you back and forth.
“Mi vida,” he murmurs. “I’m here, my love. I’m here.”
“I didn’t know you were coming home,” you cry against him, voice muffled from where your face is still pressed against him.
He runs a hand through your hair, scratching his nails against your scalp in the way that always calms you down, and hums. You feel it in the vibration of his chest more than you hear it. “I wanted to surprise you after you told me how stressed you were. I told you, no? I would move mountains and seas to be with you whenever you need me.”
“Ti amo,” you whisper against his skin.
“Te amo,” he whispers into your hair.
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yourusername to the luce dei miei occhi, i love you more than life itself 💛
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fernandoalo_oficial mi vida i'll love you in this life and the next, until the very end of time itself 💛
↳ yourusername ti amo mia vita
user LUCE DEI MIEI OCCHI = LIGHT OF MY EYES
↳ user oh my days 🫢
↳ user i’m actually ill that is too cute
user they ARE that couple and they have every right to be
user WAR IS OVER
user i need them to adopt me right tf now it’s not a want it’s a need
user GUYS HE WAS JUST IN SILVERSTONE LIKE A DAY AGO??? FOR THE CAR LAUNCH??? THAT MEANS HE FLEW ALL THE WAY TO ITALY LAST MINUTE JUST TO SEE HIS WIFE FOR VALENTINES DAY
↳ user fernando alonso once again proving why he’s the best husband on the grid
↳ user i’m obsessed with them a totally normal amount
lance_stroll every time i saw him he was talking to someone about how he had plans to surprise his wife, i’m so surprised he didn’t end up ruining the secret somehow
↳ fernandoalo_oficial have more faith in your padre
↳ lance_stroll well i’ve seen my “padre” make the most cartoon heart eyes at a picture of baked goods so i don’t think faith is really gonna cut it. you’re whipped man 🤷‍♂️
↳ yourusername lancino you must put up with so much from this old man
↳ lance_stroll you know what? i really do
━━ tags: @maih23 @urfavnoirette @casperlikej @pear-1206
━━ a/n: this is the longest fic i've ever written, coming in at a whopping 5.4k words! and it's also the first request i've written for! so, cheers to that. this is my little valentine's day story, because i'm actually a big sap and i really do love good fluffy romances, so writing this distracted me from the fact that i'm actually very alone at the present haha! anyways, hope you all enjoyed! i also wrote this in under 24 hours, and it's a lot, so if there's any editing mistakes please ignore them, i genuinely could not bring myself to re-read all of this looking for every single mistake.
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anyone else remember this weird little show that toon disney used to air back in the nineties?? inside out focused on the lives of the emotions inside the mind of thirteen-year-old riley andersen, as they worked together to guide her through each day. while essentially just being a workplace comedy, the show quickly garnered praise from critics and fans alike for its unique premise, strong and relatable characters, and positive messaging on emotional regulation for its young audience.
at first, it looked like the show was going to become a staple saturday morning cartoon. season 2 even added four new emotions to the original cast of five! unfortunately, it seemed like disney had other plans. clocking in at 52 episodes, inside out only managed to reach around half of the golden standard of 100 episodes for rerun syndication before it abruptly got cancelled. the reason why has been the subject of speculation in hundreds of online forum threads over the past thirty or so years. but who knows! if we drum up some more conversation about it, maybe we can get a reboot!!
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tteokdoroki · 9 months
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☆༉ — RYOMEN SUKUNA. santa’s little helper.
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about. dressing up as slutty santa warrants some unwanted attention, luckily, sukuna is there to play santa’s grumpy little helper. merry christmas.
warnings. minors, blank and ageless blogs do not interact! sfw, fluff, meet cute, reader gets harassed/cat-called, reader is wearing a dress, modern!sukuna, fem!reader. it’s still christmas somewhere - enjoy !! (1K).
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you meet modern bf!sukuna at a train station on christmas eve.
all your friends have gone home with guys that they fancied from the club, all the ubers in the area are either booked out or have sky high prices just to get you thirty minutes away not to mention the fact that it’s ice cold and your stupid mean girls themed santa outfit keeps riding up.
if you huff hard enough a cloud of smoke appears in place of your breath — like that of a mighty dragon, accumulating in the night air. it entertains you for all but a moment and doesn’t waste enough time for your train to come faster.
it’s not due for another thirteen minutes.
in that time you watch gangs of girls, groups of guys and just about anybody come and go from the station. your platform isn’t packed but it’s not too empty to the point where you feel unsafe.
“hey pretty girl.” ugh. as if your night couldn’t get any worse, a dingy looking stranger appears from nowhere — breathing down your neck, nastily drinking you in as if you’re a free shot at a bar. like you’re easy.
waving your hand away, you focus your gaze on the platform across the track and pray that someone notices your predicament. “no thank you.”
“oh come on gorgeous, give a guy a chance!” they press, crossing all of your boundaries to be in your space. even as you try to walk away, you can still feel the ghost of their sleazy words against the bare and exposed parts of your skin.. “where are you going all dressed like that, with no one to admire you?”
on instinct, you pull down your skirts as if to hide yourself from greedy eyes — storming down the platform. “none of your business!”
“hey now, little miss santa! don’t you wanna know? i’ve got a sleigh you can ride!”
“not interested! i’m all good.”
“why? you got a boyfriend?”
“yeah, i do.” you lie smoothly.
“then where is he?” the stranger mocks and closes in on you — you look around pathetically, waiting for some good passer-by to come and help you.
a heavy hand land’s on the stranger’s shoulder — making them jump in shock. you watch as the hand squeezes down, almost tight enough to break bone. “right here,” says a gravelly, husky voice that instantly fills you with warmth and relief. stepping aside, your hero reveals himself — tall with rippling muscles and spiralling black tattoos, lazy blood red eyes and a snarl that reveals sharp fangs and canines. all topped off my tufts of soft pink hair, which don’t do anything to dim his threatening aura. “you got a problem?”
“n-no! sorry man, i didn’t—“
“fuck off, will ya?” your hero spits out venomously and the stranger nods — practically disappearing into thin air after that. your shoulders sag and tensions dissipate from your body. “you okay…miss?”
tentatively, you give the pink-haired man your name — you owe him that much after he’d more or less saved your skin. “all good, thanks to you…”
“sukuna.” he doesn’t look at you, instead pulling a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and lighting one with a flicker of a flame. it’s like he feels you watching him in dismay, and laughs as he takes a drag. it’s kind of sexy, you’ll admit — the way he throws his head back let’s you see the thick lines of black ink extending down his neck. “ticket office is closed and security is shit here. small station. no one’s watching me smoke.”
“right…thanks, sukuna.”
he finally turns to you, deep and blood red eyes drinking you in — almost scrutinising you. you squirm under his gaze, heat prickling at the back of your neck and providing some protection from the cold. “where were you off too?”
“christmas party with some friends.”
“where are they now?”
“sucking face somewhere, and no, they didn’t offer me an Uber before they left.”
sukuna taps the ash from his cigarette and it falls away in the icy breeze. “shit night.”
wringing your fingers, you shrug a little bit. “i guess it could have been worse. so thank you for helping out,” you hum appreciatively. “all i have to do now is wait for this stupid train.”
a beat of silence passes between you both, only broken by your chattering teeth and sukuna’s occasional sniff between puffs of smoke. you hate smokers, but you don’t ask him to stop. not after he’d helped you and is willing to be your human shield until your train comes. anyone else would have left by now.
“i can give you a ride home, if you want?”
you frown… was he, trying to make a move on you?
“if you have a car why are you at a train station.”
sukuna smirks slowly, dropping his cig to the floor and crushing it under his sneaker. you don’t remind him that there’s a law against smoking on the platform. “i’m waiting for my little brother to get home from a trip with his friends. we don’t live too far from here and i offered to pick him up from the station.” he shrugs.
you blink up at him with wide eyes. you’d never imagine a man that looks and carries himself like he does to care so deeply for someone else. you suppose you’re judging a book by his cover.
you’re dressed like slutty santa, so you honestly have no right to do so.
“what’s your brother’s name?”
“yuuji. it’s just us, no parents. that’s why i’m picking him up.” sukuna turns to you, running a hand through his messy pink undercut. “look, i promise i’m not some creep. y’just look cold and i’m not about to let some girl get fucked over by weirdos at this time of night. i won’t touch you, but you can sit in the back with yuuji if it makes you feel better. people usually prefer his stupid face over mine anyways.” he mumbles that last part to himself, but is pleasantly surprised by the cute flutter of laughter that escapes you. “what’s s’funny?”
with a hand resting on your bare stomach, you try to contain yourself. “is it the tattoos or the fact that you have resting bitch face?”
“both.” sukuna sniggers in response, shoving his cold hands deep into his pockets. “so, you takin’ up the offer or what?”
“yeah, thank you…sukuna,” you smile, subtly sliding up beside him for warmth on the chilly platform. “i’d like to meet yuuji for myself, see which brother i prefer.”
“oh fuck you.”
“maybe some other time.”
and even though he’s sure that you’re joking, sukuna detects a glint of honestly in your sparkling eyes as the train finally approaches — it’s yellowing light from inside the carriage only illuminating that spark. you turn your head, trying to spot yuuji while he ponders your words.
sukuna is definitely going to ask for your number after he drops you home. he’ll have to thank that brat of a baby brother yuuji for the opportunity next — without him begging for sukuna to come get him, this would have never happened.
you would have never met.
it’d be a great christmas story to tell the grandkids too. so he’d really have to thank yuuji, even though sukuna would never hear the end of it.
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꒰ end. — all rights reserved © tteokdoroki 2023. do not copy, repost, translate & recommend elsewhere.
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natalievoncatte · 2 months
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Lena tipped back the last of her scotch and savored it, letting the smooth, piquant insistence of it roll across her tongue and sting between her teeth. She’d poured herself three fingers of a thirty year old single malt from the Macallan and had tasted it every drop, letting it stay a while. Indeed she’d indulged so slowly that she was barely buzzed.
A distant memory struck her. The sting of heavy smoke in her mouth, acrid and unpleasant but as rich and complex in flavor as her single malts. The effect was ruined by her idiotic decision to breath it in rather than allow a brief visitation in her mouth before being set free into the night air. She had been thirteen and Lex had given her a puff on a cigar he’d stolen from their father’s humidor while he and Lillian were away.
“This is a Dominican,” he’d told her. “I’ll give you a Cuban when you have enough experience to appreciate it.”
She turned the glass in her hand before setting it in the sink. She thought of Lex almost every day- not the raving, incoherent loon who’d tied her to the chair or the bitter shell of a man he was when she fired five bullets into his chest, but the boy he was, about to go off to college, full of adolescent bravado that matched his genius. She thought of the man he might have been if he hadn’t let his base jealousy consume him, if he’d had enough empathy to follow a better path. Her path.
It was a hard one to walk, but-
There was a tap at her balcony door and she nearly jumped out of her skin, wheeling.
It was Kara.
Lena motioned for her to open the door and she did, stepping inside.
“Can you ever use the inside door like a normal person?”
Kara shrugged. “I went for a fly to clear my head and I ended up here.”
Lena sighed. “I was just heading to bed, darling. It’s late. Too late to watch cartoons on my couch.”
“Will you fly with me?”
Lena quirked a brow. “You know it’s not any fun for me. I really do hate flying.”
“I know but, I was just… would you?”
Lena looked at her. Kara looked back, her eyes soft, expression hopeful and fearful, inviting. It made Lena fight the urges that dogged her. She felt a need to stride across the distance between them and tuck away a few wind-tossed locks of Kara’s hair, cup a warm hand to her cool cheek, soothe the pain that always seemed to hide in her eyes, like the reflection of something dark in the gloss of a family photo.
“Okay.”
She got her jacket first to protect herself against the night chill, then wondered how to do this. She was used to Kara flying her, but it was usually after being caught from a fall or scooped from danger and whisked to safety. Casually flying hadn’t really been their thing.
She settled on looping her arms about Kara’s neck.
She hesitated. “Lena, are you sure? Your heart is beating pretty fast.”
“You won’t drop me?”
“Never.”
Lena nodded and Kara swept her arms under Lena, one arm under her knees, the other curled around her waist. Of course it was effortless- for Kara, raising a cement mixer over her head was effortless. She stepped up to the railing of the balcony and paused when Lena tensed.
Lena closed her eyes as Kara stepped into empty air. She realized that she didn’t know how Kryptonians fly; she suspected Kara didn’t know either. It just happened.
Lena kept her eyes shut. Kara flew, holding her gently but firmly. If not for the wind buffeting her, Lena wouldn’t have known she was hundreds of feet in the air.
Finally she felt the soft impact of Kara’s boots on the ground and opened her eyes as Kara lowered her to her feet.
“Where are we?”
Lena looked around. They were in a baseball diamond, probably for little league games, in a small park.
“The suburbs. No one bothers me at night if I stop here. It’s a good place to think.”
Kara walked over to the bleachers and sat down. She looked so forlorn, so terribly sad, and Lena quickly sat beside her.
Kara didn’t speak. She saw the slight tremor of Lena’s restrained shiver, and without a word unclasped her cape and swept it around Lena.
“Thanks,” said Lena. “This makes a good blanket.”
Kara smiled. “That is a blanket. Kal… Clark’s birth parents, my aunt and uncle, sent it with him to Earth. Martha made it part of his first suit. The one she made.”
Lena stared at her for a moment. She rarely spoke of her cousin, and when she did, it had an odd, detached tone to it. A kind of resentment. She sounded fond now, and familiar. Lena knew who he was, of course; once she knew who Kara was, deducing who her cousin was turned out to be a simple thing. Yet Kara had never dropped his name so casually in conversation. It was intimate. Familiar.
“Speaking of Clark,” said Kara. “He sent me a message today. He’s staying on Argo with Lois and their child. He’s not coming home.”
Kara caught herself, eyes wide. Lena waited, holding a tense breath.
“Kara, what is it?”
“I can’t remember when I started thinking of Earth as home,” said Kara. “Just like I can’t remember when I started thinking in English instead of translating my thoughts.”
Lena poked an arm out of the cape to rest a hand on Kara’s shoulder.
“You’re thinking about joining them.”
Kara looked down. “I almost did before, but I was needed here. I don’t feel needed so much anymore. There’s so many more heroes now- Bruce has a whole team he’s built, and there’s Diana now and of course Barry and Oliver and… they can handle a lot of it. I don’t even put the suit on every day anymore.”
Lena felt a terrible, frigid chill. Colder than the night, colder than death. She looked at Kara, really looked at her, lit by lamplight, a golden beauty in the dark. She was so hauntingly, achingly beautiful. Lena could still remember the feeling when she saw Kara for the first time in her office, how her face must have betrayed her. My God, who is this?
“Are you thinking about going?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. I don’t know what to do. My people need every Kryptonian to come home and rebuild our culture and way of life. I have a sacred duty.”
Lena met her gaze levelly, feeling undone by it. Kara’s eyes were soft, full of an aching, unasked question.
“You keep talking about being needed, about duty,” Lena said. “The whole time I’ve known you it’s been about oaths and obligations and responsibilities. What do you want, Kara? What is your heart’s desire? Whatever it is, if you ask me, you deserve it. Whatever debt you think you owe the universe, you’ve paid it back in full with interest and gratuities.”
Kara looked away. “I know what I want, but I’m scared to ask for it.”
“I’ve never known you to be scared of anything.”
“I’m scared of being hurt. I’m scared of hurting someone else. What if I’m wrong? I’ve always been wrong about this one thing. I don’t want to lose you by asking the wrong question.”
Me? Lena thought. Why would…
Lena’s heart raced anew. The shock felt like she’d spilled cold water from her heart, racing down her limbs. She felt as heavy as stone and as light as a feather, and the flutter in her belly made her regret the scotch.
“I don’t want to go,” Kara sighed. “This is my home now. Krypton… Krypton is gone and it probably should be. I hope Clark can show the survivors a better way. There were a lot of things my people did wrong.”
“Kara, you can’t go. Okay? You can’t. You are needed here. I need you.”
Kara turned abruptly, eyes wide.
“Why did you wait so long?” Lena whispered.
“After everything I did, I… I was as afraid. I hurt you so much, caused you so much pain. Why would you…”
“Because you get so excited when you land on Park Place,” said Lena. “Because you sing to yourself when no one is looking. Because you’re bored to tears watching documentaries with me but you do it anyway. Because you always flex your muscles when you pop a cork from a bottle. Because you save me and cherish me and treat me like a queen, and you always have. Yes, Kara, you hurt me, but no one is perfect. I’m just as guilty.”
“What do you want, Lena? What’s your hearts desire?”
“I think you already know that and you’re just too scared to admit it.”
Kara swallowed, hard.
“Stay with me. Choose me,” said Lena.
“Can I kiss you?”
“I seriously thought you’d never ask,” said Lena.
Kara tilted in close. Sitting on the old faded wood of the bleachers with a blanket around her, she felt so young. She hadn’t been this giddy about a kiss since middle school. No; she’s never been this giddy ever, not a day in her life. Kara’s lips touched hers and despite the chasteness of it, she let out a soft moan.
Kara took it as an invitation and the kiss deepened, and she slipped under the blanket so they were both wrapped in it and her arms found Lena’s waist. When she tucked her head under Kara’s chin and pressed into her arms, she felt so safe, so sheltered. It was perfect, like finally finding home, and they were still there when the sun found them and Kara carried her into the morning sky.
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