#Gotta pull a game theory and try to figure this out

[001creel]

Henry and [REDACTED] Brenner (Stranger Things VR game spoilers inside!)

Pretty much just crossposting my Reddit post (would've added link if tumblr didn't think that's sus) cause I'm sure some of y'all appreciate this more ahaha... hi tumblr i haven't been here in ages.

Hey guys! I'm finally gonna try to put some of my findings and theories out there that I've dug up during my deep dive into Dimension X via the Stranger Things VR game. As the title implies, the post will primarily focus on, well, what the title says.

Some general info: There seems to be no mention of Henry having been to that dimension before, as opposed to what is told in The First Shadow. It seemingly follows the timeline established by the series: Henry is twelve years old when he’s brought to the lab by Dr. Brenner. Virginia Creel reached out to him in her effort to find a place where he might be happy, somewhere she hoped he’d have a chance to be normal. It’s implied Henry k-worded his family to "escape the doctor". The 'Soteria' device is implied to have been implanted from the start.

To start off, I first gotta explain a vital thing about this [REDACTED] version of Brenner, so the spoilers are right there from the start.

Last chance to back out...? No escape now!

So we’ve been given more or less two main theories: It’s either the Shadow/Mind Flayer controlling Henry, or it’s Henry as the one in control.

But the game gives us a glimpse at just how much more complex and nuanced it could really be.

In the game, upon first awakening in this strange new dimension he'd been banished to, Henry starts to explore the environment. He eventually comes across some wildlife, namely the bats, then a demodog and he decides it's going to be his dinner – very brave choice in my opinion – so he starts to hunt it. He injures it and follows its blood trail until he finally catches up after it collapses dead. The earth shakes violently, and he's suddenly swarmed by those dark particles.

At first he hears the voice of his sister, Alice, calling out to him. After demanding to know who’s there, the voice switches to that of his mother, Virginia, and the particles even take on the silhouette of her. At this point, Henry figures out that, whatever this is, it’s in his head and trying to get to him. The particles briefly switch to Victor but very quickly realize that isn’t going to work, either, and a new shape is taken: that of Dr. Martin Brenner.

Henry’s less than thrilled, but this is the birth of Shadow Brenner.

Brenner, as a whisper: “No. No, that’s not right. Language fails me. But… we will grow together. I am… the leader of this lab…”

(Henry gasps as the particles take on the shape of Dr. Martin Brenner, in a much more solid way.)

Shadow Brenner: “You can call me Dr. Brenner—”

Henry, immediately: “No.”

It is important to note that there’s no connection to the real Dr. Brenner other than what the Shadow could get out of Henry’s memories. It is the person that the shadow realizes Henry associates most with "authority", and that Brenner's form would be the ideal guide for Henry… and the ideal way to study him and all his memories that he wishes to "digest".

Shadow Brenner: “Good. Here, I can savor you further. I have absorbed everything in this world. But you are new material. I crave to know you further.”

Henry: (tense and agitated) “You won’t keep me here. I am not a thing to be studied!”

Shadow Brenner: “Well, your memories say otherwise. Shall we review your past?”

A struggle for control ensues. Shadow Brenner forces Henry to relive different memories, and Henry learns how to escape those projections. Everytime he does, he starts to dominate wildlife and plantlife alike within the hivemind, one mind at a time, until the Shadow finds him again and pulls his mind back into yet another round of memories. (To be honest, the gameplay gets a bit repetitive here, but the different environments are so icky and gross and different and alien, it’s great!!)

Through the memories, we get some glimpses into Henry’s past at the lab. We get to see him demonstrate how he can read minds and is tasked with k-wording a bird with telekinesis in another. (In the tutorial phase of the game, we get to see Henry use remote-viewing to find a Russian spy in Hawkins, among listening in on a lady talking to her dog and somebody ordering a burger with no pickles for his wife at Benny's.)

What I find interesting is the Shadow’s reaction to Henry escaping and begining to take control over more and more of the hivemind. At first it just discourages him to escape, to ignore the rifts (which are the game's way out of the memory replays), claims he would bloat from taking in too many minds and explode eventually, then later retracts that statement as a lie. It discourages him then from becoming too powerful by consuming more minds and eventually suggests they need to have a chat:

Shadow Brenner: “I’d like to propose a truce. We have always been at the top of this world. And now, we must yield or become irrelevant. Your ruthlessness is as admirable as your escape attempts.”

Henry went far enough for it to discuss a truce.

From this point on, the Shadow just tries to get Henry to consider something resembling a partnership in this endeavor. I just can’t quite read if it’s doing so because Henry actually has the power and/or potential to subsume the hivemind entirely, if it would actually suffer from being dominated (there’s instances when it says it would lose its will to spread, would become stagnant or it would go back to being 'wild and primitive') and Henry actually doesn’t understand that... or if it has a completely different agenda.

Henry claims that he would absorb the Shadow and take its power, to which Shadow Brenner replies: “Oh Henry. You could never consume us completely – we are multitudes.” Henry responds that he had “already mastered this world”.

Shadow Brenner counters: “Mastery requires control. But it is you who is controlled (pause) by fear.”

I included that pause in my transcript, because it really throws me off everytime I encounter that scene. And it’s one of the reasons why I really just can’t tell the Shadow’s agenda or who really controls the other. Especially the last big confrontation between the two leaves me wondering what the Shadow’s goals are and how Henry fits into it all:

Henry: “Did you think I became an explorer of your world and found nothing? I have let you in. Only to learn how to devour you. To become you. And now, now I will crush you.”

Shadow Brenner: (laughs) “You can not… from the moment of our first contact, You were one of us: symbiotes. We were drawn to you and your desire for revenge. Your hunger which has merged in us. Is so like our own. We wish to devour… everything. In this world and the next. Within us, your power could be ultimate. Surrender and we will help you take revenge. But first, you must follow our lead. Don’t you want to reset the clock on those inferior beings? To release them from the shackles of time? They will be free in our possession. Just as you are free now, to hunt down that girl.”

Shadow Brenner: “You need us Henry, and we need you to infest new worlds. To spread until everything is us and we are omnipresent and ubiquitous. We know what you most crave, and we will not leave you unsatisfied. We are a parasite meant to find new hosts, new worlds on which to feast. And you will be our vessel.”Shadow Brenner: “If I can continue this study on all humanity, I will allow you to think you are in control. Because you are the most magnificent thing I have ever encountered.”

That “moment of first contact” is the only reference that could be drawn to Henry having had contact with this dimension before as touched on in The First Shadow. Or it was simply that first contact after Henry hunted that demodog. If being a 'vessel' could be what we’ve come to call the Flayed, then it’s either lying to Henry to lure him in or it can actually choose to have a vessel retain some form of agency. In Chapter 6, we get to see the perspective of a Flayed: Billy. And he's just driving his car while the Mind Flayer gets his business done, so there's not much control there.

Either way, Henry doesn’t go for it and takes control, finally escaping the hivemind and finding himself back in his own physical body and the dimension as a physical world. Shadow Brenner is enraged and confused, and Henry just tells him that he has waited while it played doctor and would now make this world his. Shadow Brenner goes back to pleading, seemingly growing really desperate to dissuade Henry.

Shadow Brenner: “You resent him. Maybe you fear him. Is that why you ruined our experiment? We are coming to override you, Henry. Stand still and do not defy us again or you will never get revenge on the monster that ejected you from your world. If that child could defeat you, it should be easy to devour you whole right here. Until you understand the natural order of things, we can’t yield control of our minds. We will waste our will to spread and we will simply become stagnant, confined to your mind. But our hunger is more expansive than revenge. We wish to possess everything. Your desire is narrow. It can’t satisfy the will of multitudes. Do you really mean to reign us in? When one day, …”

…

Shadow Brenner: “Henry. Perhaps, I should have taken a different approach. Don’t be hasty. Think about this. You and I, we could be partners. You are uniquely fascinating. Capable. We could continue. This study on all humanity. How about you take some time to think about it.”

…

Shadow Brenner: “Henry. You are not thinking rationally. What will happen to this world, if we are pulled apart? It will go back to being wild and primitive. You will wander and waste away. Never achieving your revenge. Let me help you. No, no, let me teach you. Together, we could rule this world and the next. Together, we could devour everything. Together, we could satiate our hunger.” (sounding increasingly desperate) “Henry?”

It is then that we reach the scene we get in the series, where Henry twists the particles into the shape of the Mind Flayer. And I absolutely love that it had only come to this after a lengthy battle as opposed to the short version we got to see in Season 4. Shadow Brenner's last two "Henry" pleas sound like absolutely pathetic whines.

Henry’s and Shadow Brenner’s relationship is shown as a constant back and forth, an ongoing war for absolute control and who’s on top. A partnership unified mainly by similar goals and dependency. Including a lot of instances where Henry/Vecna just tells Shadow Brenner to shut the hell up. (Can we blame him? It really likes to comment on things a lot, and not always nicely.)

In general, the Shadow’s behavior is really interesting. I’m certain that 'Shadow Brenner' is highly influenced by the original, but it’s just… so damn petty, for lack of a better word. Earlier in the game, when Vecna gets as it says 'emotional and distracted' by what’s happening around Eleven, the Shadow uses that focus slip to actually wreck Vecna’s carefully crafted mindscape just because. It’s impatient, doesn’t understand why Henry is so tied up with his past and remembering, the trophies. At one point during Chapter 5, when Henry is getting increasingly angry, Shadow Brenner pulls him into its “office”, standing beside a flipchart with the 0-10 smiley pain scale on it. Shadow Brenner then literally asks Henry to use the chart to help it understand how he feels, and asks: “Would you say what you’re feeling is… the most extreme frowny face?”

If I were Henry, I would’ve fucking flipped at him for that. The Shadow's got attitude.

But seriously, this game has so much lore material, and not just for Henry. I knowww, we have no idea how canon it is, but it shows just how nuanced this could be instead of settling for Henry = BBEG or Henry = controlled but good. What if Henry is doing this willingly and had to partner with the Shadow to be able to achieve his goals? What if he simply wants to be in control of his life for the first time ever, after all this time of having every aspect of his life controlled by others? (Or, as noted by Shadow Brenner: controlled by fear?)

One last thing I wanna touch on a bit: All this takes place in Chapter Five of the game, Shadow Brenner forces Vecna to relive this chapter of his life after his failed attempts in 'Chapter Four – The Spy'. Not going into those chapters in detail here, but it basically revolves around Vecna failing to infiltrate Mike, Lucas and Dustin’s minds via his 'spy', Will. He's beaten by kids, again, and Shadow Brenner ridicules him for it. I think it could be taken as a parallel or even mirror to the NINA project, where Eleven too goes through the past to find her powers again. (Aside from it being an interesting narrative for the game.)

Through the memories we get to see thanks to Shadow Brenner, we of course also get a look at Henry’s relationship with the real Dr. Brenner during his time at the lab, and even some glimpses of what his life as an orderly was like – he cannot sweep floors well, or can't be bothered to and his co-workers are annoyed. All these scenes where we see just how little control Henry ever had. A scene I wanna highlight simply for Jamie’s supreme voice acting (all throughout, but this is one of the stand-out performances for me; Jamie I love you, also shoutout to Matthew for an equally amazing performance) and just how interesting it is: Dr. Brenner takes Henry to have his tattoo re-inked, but just wants to have a chat and catch up, likely assess how he's doing mentally. Directly from my transcript:

Henry: “Do people often get their tattoos reinked?”

Dr. Brenner: “On occasion. But in truth, I’d simply hoped to speak with you as we used to. Just you and I.”

Henry: “Oh?”

Dr. Brenner: “It has been quite some time, hasn’t it?”

Dr. Brenner: “Seems the other children have grown quite fond of you.” Henry: “Well, I am one of them after all. I could teach them so much, if you let me.” Dr. Brenner: “The experiment isn’t over, Henry. The chip will have to stay in.”

Henry: “No, you’re not understanding. You keep trying to teach them things that— concepts they can’t even access, because they’re so young, haha…” (Brenner goes back to tattooing after having paused to listen) “... I get what it’s like to be them. You don’t.”

Dr. Brenner, sitting back a bit to look at Henry, deceptively calm: “Is that so?”

Henry: “Half of them can barely bend a spoon and you–you wonder, you keep telling them to ‘focus’ and ‘clear their minds’ like that will fix anything. We aren’t monks meant to do the same thing over and over and over again with no feeling–” (tensions mount, Henry gets more intense and Dr. Brenner turns away, putting aside his tattoo gun and getting up off his chair, he stands by the desk) “–no investment.”

Henry: “But you don’t know that, do you? You can’t.” (Brenner touches the old fan on the table) “You’re a supporting character needing validation from children because it’s as close as you can get to the real thing.” (this seems to hit quite hard, Brenner straightens, tenses) “You’re normal.”

Henry: “Being in close proximity to special people doesn’t make you special. Controlling greatness doesn’t make you great.” (Dr. Brenner now turns away fully, back turned on Henry as he stands by the opposite wall) “It just shows everyone that you’re a parasite. You forgot that fact. So hey, take it out, okay?” (that was said gently, before turning harsh again) “Take. It. Out.”

Henry yells, losing composure due to lack of reaction: “BRENNER!! WHY AREN’T YOU LISTENING TO ME??” [memory ends, since Henry didn't escape this one, Shadow Brenner thanks him for his cooperation]

Y’all, we just know he got punished for that one. Because that must’ve cut deep. But it once again shows how little control Henry ever had over his life and how little he could actually do against it. He could thrash and rebel against his bonds placed by authority, and it would amount to nothing. But when he resists Shadow Brenner, it actually does something.

I hope this post didn’t turn out nearly as convoluted as I fear it is. TL;DR I think Vecna is Henry’s way of finally gaining control over his life, and partnering with the Shadow/the Mind Flayer was his best shot at succeeding – especially when stuck in another dimension. But I don’t think there’s any actual trust there. And judging by how smart Henry is, I don’t think he’s without a plan to break off that business agreement and go his own way if it comes down to it.

Thanks for enduring my HENRY Talk. Honks my clown nose. And please check out the game, it’s underrated.

[new-tella-us]

I have awoken with A N G S T

Okay so I couldn't figure out a good Sam angst but I did figure out a good universal angst!

So, as the asshole father he is, the Demon Lord decides to pull some mind fuckery using Aezera again but this time it's all of his sons in the human world. Also let's assume this is some sort of non-romance route but the boys stay or the harem route.

Now, this is ambitious. The Demon Lord is going to run Aezera's magic into the ground for this attempt and won't be able to pull this stunt again for a long time so he's gotta make this stick. He's going to put his sons through-

Wonderland Hell

Their perception of reality is twisted and warped into this alternate reality bringing out their worst fears and these dark versions of themselves that hunt them in their attempt to turn the actual boys into them.

Each world is themed: James is in a palace of slowly melting gold. Erik is in the ocean with the terrain being sharp and uninhabitable. Sam is in a forest with the greenery moving on their own and invading his space. Matthew is in a cave of crystals, their reflective surfaces showing a funhouse like set of reflections that distort what he looks like. Damien is in an empty greyed world like those placeholder games; only the paintings and mirrors are here -all reflecting some version of Damien- and they start to come to life like his clones.

The longer they are in this wonderland hell and the harder they fight, the deeper they fall into their father's trap. And what is the ultimate goal? To slowly take over his sons' minds to use them as puppets. If he changes their perception enough, he can get them to do whatever he wants. And to test that theory, he wants his sons to kill the owner of the house they stay in. He knows if they kill Mika, they'd snap. All of them. Plus it would just be funny to watch so, when Mika goes to check on the boys, he changes their perception of Mika. She now looks like the Demon Lord and they attack her with the same power they would use to fight their father.

Mika can only dodge as the dining room gets torn up from the fight but she knows that she can't dodge all five of them forever. She needs to find the root of the issue and FAST. She looks around the room and finally notices the mirror, the warped figure in it and how it laughs at the scene. She also notices the gemstone on the mirror glowing dimly. She knows she has to get to the mirror but she'll have to go through the boys first. She takes her chance and runs past each boy but (since this is still the Sam angst thing, he's gotta be prioritized) Sam manages to get one good hit on her. Yeah that arm is broken.

Nevertheless, she fights back the pain and breaks the crystal on the mirror. The magic fades from the boys' minds and they see the damage they've done. It's horrifying to look at the results. The room is torn to shreds, magic weapons are embedded in the floor and walls, and most terrifyingly, Mika is injured. Any semblance of denial they could conjure is shattered when Damien's mindreading reveals that they have been attacking her this entire time. And as a last nail in the coffin, the Demon Lord -salty at losing but seeing an opportunity- using the last remnant of his spell to tell his sons that this event was them going mad like him.

If this was targeted at anyone else all of them, James especially, would note that this isn't how madness works. Madness is more like a slowly growing mold, not an instant effect. But because of their own deep seeded fear of becoming their father, this was an effective way to mess with their psyche and make them unable to trust themselves or each other.

Meanwhile, despite being injured, Mika catches on to the mind fuckery that was going on here so she's, ironically, the only one who isn't concerned about the boys going mad. Instead she's concerned about the thing trying to control them.

[decks-writing-blog]

I Think I'm Sick Chapter 2/2 Our Best Option

Chapter One

~

Back in the game room the TV was still on. The commercials were at least over, not that the cartoon playing instead held much more interest. But Benrey was too in and out of sleep to play much more than the simplest game and the PS3 controllers needed charging anyway so cartoons it was for a little while.

Instead of lying back down with the heated blanket as he’d been before, he sat with Gordon. At first just leaning into him but that wasn’t enough and he shifted to sit in his lap instead, slouched enough that his head rested against Gordon’s chest. The sound of his breath and heartbeat was soothing. Not that Benrey needed help drifting off again. He was just so tired all the time. It wasn’t fair. Sleep was nice sometimes but it was boring to do so much. And if he was going to die for good soon, he didn’t want to spend most of his limited time sleeping.

Before he could finish drifting off even despite his annoyance with doing so, his phone chimed in his pocket. With great effort, he forced open his eyes and reached to pull it out. It felt almost like he was moving through deep water, making it more difficult than it needed to be but he managed.

It was worth it too because the text was from Bubby. ‘I know what’s wrong with you. Maybe. I have a theory. We’re coming over.’ Not an opening to a fun conversation as Benrey had hoped but maybe something better.

“Who is it?” Gordon asked.

His head too foggy to try to summarize, Benrey held up the phone where Gordon could read it.

“Oh, already? I guess that’s not too surprising coming from him. You wanna head out to the living room to meet them or you wanna stay here and wait?”

“Wait.” They had keys and thus could let themselves in. Just sitting and waiting sucked but he didn’t want to get up yet, he was comfy.

~

With how close everyone lived, the wait was only a few minutes. Long enough that Benrey fell asleep again despite his best efforts not to but not deep enough to not be roused by Coomer’s, “Hello Gordon!”

“Yes, hello Dr. Coomer and Bubby and Tommy.” Gordon spoke not much louder than a whisper. “Benrey’s asleep so…”

“Wake him up then,” Bubby interrupted. “I gotta ask him something.”

Before Gordon could try to argue, Benrey shifted and sat up a little more, forcing open his eyes as he did so. He could get off Gordon’s lap too but didn’t particularly care to. “I’m awake.”

Bubby had stepped up to stand directly in front of them, Coomer and Tommy a bit too his side. The TV was still on behind him but Gordon picked up the remote off the couch’s armrest and muted it.

“Good,” Bubby said with a slight nod. “On the phone, Gordon said something about you saying all your powers are fucked up. Is that true?”

Damn. Turns out Benrey had to talk about it anyway. “I think so. Um, I can’t phase through stuff and my sweet voice isn’t very sweet anymore and uh… other stuff. Nothing works like its supposed to. So yeah, probably all my powers are fucked.”

“You can’t heal either?” Tommy asked. “Like if you get cut or shot or something.”

“Uh… dunno. We could test it.”

“Let’s not,” Gordon interrupted before Benrey could ask if anyone had a knife to test it with. “If you can’t heal from whatever’s making you sick, it’s probably safe to assume you can’t heal from physical injuries either.” A good point.

“And on top of all that you’re extremely low on energy, right? You’ve been sleeping more and more every day for like the past week.” Bubby’s tone was the one he used when he was being smart, implying he was onto something with whatever his theory was. What it could possibly be was a mystery. Benrey was sick, they already knew that. All that Bubby had learned was that it was also affecting his powers.

“Yeah. It sucks. I’m tired of sleeping but uh… too tired not to.” Exhaustion dragged at him like a lead weight trying to pull him underwater.

“Ah,” Coomer said apparently getting whatever Bubby had figured out. “It’s not dissimilar to when my power cells run out; I get tired and none of my implants work the way they’re supposed to. So I believe I know what you’re getting at, Bubby. I’ll let you say it of course since you did figure it out first.”

“You’re sick because you’ve been away from Xen stuff too long.”

“What that does that…” Gordon started before trailing off as something seemed to click with him too. “I guess that is possible, huh? How did I not think of that before?”

“You were uh… probably being too anxious to think clearly,” Tommy answered. “I know I can’t think straight when I’m uh… anxious about stuff too. Being worried make its hard to figure things out.”

“I don’t get it.” Maybe if Benrey weren’t so tired and distracted by the deep ache of something being wrong with his entire form, he could figure out why exactly not having been to Xen in so long was making him like this. He’d only been there once.

“You’re literally made from Xen stuff,” Gordon explained. “And you spent your whole life in a lab with multiple portals to Xen and people going through them all the time. Then when you actually went there yourself, you got a big boost in power or whatever that was.”

“Something in the air there is what fuels you,” Coomer cut in. “You’re like a battery and can store it but you’re running out now. Hence your current state.”

“Huh? I’m a battery.” Benrey had never thought of it like that but it made sense. He could store power in things which implied he stored power in himself. “That’s kinda cool.”

“Probably you’ll die if this continues for much longer,” Bubby said. “So we need to figure out a way to open a portal to Xen sooner rather than later. Anyone got any ideas?”

The silence held, heavy and uncomfortable, for several seconds before Gordon broke it. “The uh… the thing. The way we got there before. It’s dismantled currently so the construction workers rebuilding the broken parts of the old facility won’t see it. But it was never broken and we got all the parts in boxes at the temporary lab with all the other sensitive stuff.”

“It’s big though. Where you gonna build it?” Benrey had been to the temporary lab a few times now. It was far too small for a machine that size.

“Uh… well the only place we’ll be allowed to put it back up is the old facility. And that’s probably also the safest place for it to keep it from people and in case something comes out of it. The old facility’s not done being fixed yet but… I could maybe convince Breen to okay putting it back up anyway. It’d be hard though with the construction workers there.”

“Regardless of where we do it, rebuilding it is going to take weeks at a minimum,” Coomer said. “Probably more like months. It took weeks to pull down after all, putting it back up will take at least as long if we’re being optimistic. Do we have weeks or months?” He addressed this to Benrey.

“I uh… dunno. I started feeling bad a few weeks ago but it started affecting my powers or whatever like a week ago so… it got bad kinda fast. It gets worse every day like um… noticeably.” Heck, it felt worse now than when he’d woken up. It hurt more but even with that, he could easily fall back asleep right now if he let himself. How much longer before he couldn’t even hold his shape anymore? Then from there how much longer before he fell asleep and never woke up?

“Yeah,” Gordon said. “He uh… deteriorated rather quickly. I’m pretty sure he spent more time asleep today than awake. So even just a couple more weeks would be… a rough wait.”

Benrey was going to die, wasn’t he? Not just a maybe he’d realized a little while ago after hearing Gordon voice the possibility, but almost for sure. He didn’t want to die for good in general but especially not like this; wasting away, asleep for more of his dwindling life than not.

Gordon was likely having the same, if not similar, thought process as his grip on Benrey tightened. Pulling him closer as he curled slightly around him. “There’s… there’s gotta be something we can do, right? Maybe make a small one somehow? I mean we can’t just…” He trailed off.

Tommy raised a hand as he stepped forward. “I can… I can open a portal to Xen.”

Oh! How could Benrey have forgotten about his buddy, Tommy? Granted he hadn’t known Tommy could open a portal to Xen but it made sense that he could because he was Tommy. Everything would be fine… hopefully.

Gordon relaxed too, letting out a relieved almost chuckle. “Oh of course. I forgot your dad is some kind of… whatever he is.” He shifted his hold on Benrey, getting ready to stand up with him. “That’s great though. Awesome. Do it now. The sooner, the better, right?”

“Um… I should mention that it’s uh… kinda dangerous. I’m not as skilled as my dad is at that kind of stuff. Particularity the being sneaky part. There are things out there that could uh… they could notice me opening the portal and um… that would be bad. Like real, real bad.”

“End of the world kind of bad?” Bubby asked.

“Yes.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. We should maybe ask Dad instead.”

“How likely is he to say ‘yes’?” Gordon asked. According to what Benrey had heard of the guy, it was unlikely.

“He… he might. But if he does he wouldn’t do it for nothing, even for me. He rarely does things to be nice because he’s not nice. Another option though is I could put Benrey in stasis while we work on building the thing. Human made portals to Xen are also a risk but much lower. The uh… problem with that one is I’m not… I’m not sure that he wouldn’t continue to drain power even in stasis. Dad’s time freeze didn’t work on him so… I don’t know if his current state would change that or not. And uh, I’m also not as good at that as he is too. He has a lot more experience with this kind of stuff than me.

“You’re a baby time god,” Benrey said.

“Um… ‘god’ isn’t the right word. You need worshipers to be a god, I think. Compared to Dad, ‘baby’ probably is a good word though. I’m only thirty-eight and he’s like… I don’t, several hundred years at least. I’ll try a portal or stasis for you though. I just wanted to go over all our options because it’s important to weigh the risks.”

Benrey wasn’t surprised. Of course Tommy would employ his powers for him even with the risks, they were pals after all. But it still felt nice to hear him say it.

“So,” Coomer said as he lifted a hand to count on his fingers, “our options are ask Tommy’s Dad and ensure safe passage to and from Xen but we owe him a favor. Tommy opens a portal to Xen and we risk the end of the world. Or Tommy puts Benrey in stasis and we build a portal ourselves but we risk the stasis not being as complete as we hope.”

“No particularly good options,” Bubby said with a frown as he crossed his arms. “What do you think, Benrey? It’s your life at stake.”

“Uh… I don’t wanna go in stasis.” Based off of what Benrey knew of how such things were portrayed in science fiction, stasis was too close to death to be a comfortable idea. And he’d just developed a fear of death less than an hour ago. It was way too soon to confront it. He’d like his powers back so that fear could go away already.

“No stasis then,” Gordon said with a comforting finality. “How bad would owing your dad a favor be, Tommy?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to me much about the people who owe him stuff. I just know he has people who do.”

Apparently having reached a decision, Gordon stood, bringing Benrey with him. Unfortunately he didn’t keep holding but instead, carefully put him back on the couch. At the end of it so he could face everyone but he still would’ve preferred Gordon keep holding him. But whatever, it was a bit awkward to have a group conversation while cuddling anyway.

Straightening, Gordon stepped back to address the group. “I’ll do it. It’s our best option. Benrey doesn’t want to go into stasis and if you opening it risks getting noticed by potentially world ending entities, we probably shouldn’t if we don’t have to. So… owing Tommy’s dad a favor it is. I can handle that.”

Despite all the unknowns of it, he was volunteering. No hesitation either. And it was for Benrey.

“We’ll do it, dumbass,” Bubby said. “Or did you forget he has more people who care about him than just you?”

“The Science Team can stand up to anything Mr. Coolatta tasks us with,” Coomer added. “You’ll be right as rain in no time, Benrey.”

Tommy perked up. “Yeah, don’t fuck with the Science Team. We can handle anything even… even my dad. I’ll go talk to him then. Be right back.” He turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

Benrey should say something, shouldn’t he? What though? He was so tired and the whiplash of learning to fear permanent death to all of them proudly stating they’d be willing to be indebted to a time god for him was a lot. More than he know how to deal with. It made his eyes water. Which made no sense. Crying was supposed to be for bad emotions, this wasn’t. He didn’t know what it was exactly but it certainly wasn’t bad. Being so sick was putting him in weird emotional head space.

Gordon turned to him, opening his mouth as if he say something but whatever it was died unspoken. Instead he stepped closer, leaning in for a whisper. “You okay? Or I guess… dumb question but uh…”

“I’m uh… okay as I can be. Thanks for… just thanks.” The second part he said loud enough for Bubby and Coomer to hear too. He’d thank Tommy too later. “Now uh… come back. I wanna cuddle. And I’m sick and dying so you gotta do as I say.”

“Yeah, sure.” Gordon chuckled softly as he picked Benrey back up so he could turn and sit back on the couch with Benrey on his lap again. He kissed Benrey on the forehead as he settled against his chest again.

“You two and your damn PDA,” Bubby complained even as he sat next to them.

“This isn’t public,” Coomer corrected, sitting on his other side. “And even if it was, they get a special pass because Benrey’s is indeed sick and dying.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m just annoyed about having to wait for Tommy’s dad.”

Having to do more waiting to find out what was going to happen next did suck. But Benrey’s last nap had been interrupted by everyone’s arrival. He’d feel a bit better if he returned to it. “Wake me when uh… Tommy’s gets back, kay? So I know… what’s gonna happen and stuff.” What they were going to do if Tommy’s dad declined to help or if what he wanted in exchange was something they couldn’t give, they’d figure out when they got there.

“Okay.” Gordon gave him another kiss on the forehead as he drifted off.

~

It wasn’t Gordon or any of the others that woke Benrey though but instead something he couldn’t possibly name. Whatever it was made Gordon flinch.

With effort, Benrey opened his eyes and sat up to see Tommy’s dad standing in front of the couch now. Tommy stood slightly behind and to his side. The TV was on but frozen. Tommy’s dad was doing his weird time stop powers again. Whether he was trying to freeze Benrey too or was letting him go this time was unclear. It did feel different than before though or maybe that was Benrey’s imagination.

“Does this mean you’re going to help us?” Coomer asked as he and Bubby stood from the couch.

Mr. Coolatta let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, I suppose it does. Having you… four, I suppose, since you’ve seemingly tamed the beast, in my debt isn’t something to scoff at after all.”

“He’s not a beast and we didn’t tame him,” Gordon said as he pulled Benrey closer. Standing up for him like that wasn’t necessary, Benrey didn’t care about being referred to as a beast, but it was nice that he’d done so anyway. He cared enough about Benrey as a person to talk back to a time god.

“If you say so, Dr. Freeman. Now let’s…”

Bubby interrupted. “And what the fuck are you gonna have us do for you in return?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I’ll get back to you on that when I call in the favor. Now, as I was saying, let’s get to fixing this little… problem, shall we?”

The world shifted around their group. Benrey was suddenly standing next to Gordon instead of curled up in his lap. Rude, he’d been enjoying cuddling. They were in a blank void but only for a moment as everything shifted again and the sky was suddenly a familiar purple and blue. The ground beneath Benrey’s bare feet felt felt soft and spongy.

Instantly he felt better. One breath was all it took for him to go from barely awake to feeling normal. The next had him energized. From there it grew more and more until he his whole form was tingling with it. It was too small and restrictive to hold all of it. He held it in though, savoring it.

“You feel better?” Gordon asked as they all turned to look at him, even Mr. Coolatta.

Yes! He felt so much better in fact that words didn’t feel like they could possibly convey it. Instead, he laughed as he turned and sprinted off the edge of the floating island they’d landed on.

He let himself fall, the boundless sky blurring all around him as he plummeted past floating rocks and there was even what looked like another small island. The rush of air was exhilarating as it made his baggy clothing flap around him like a flag in the wind. Taking a deep breath, he let out a string of sweet voice, all the colours, adding to the swirl of visuals around him.

The first time he was here, he’d discovered Xen gave him new powers as well as improved all his other ones. Namely he could make his clothes change shape with him and he could fly, sort of, standing on air didn’t really count but it was close. It allowed him to freely expand his form, slowly at first but then rather quickly until his was big enough that all the power flowing through him didn’t feel like it was about to make him explode anymore. He then reluctantly slowed and stopped his fall before righting himself to a standing position.

Stepping up was a bit of a pain but he had big legs now so he could go quite far up with just one big step up. And thus in only a matter of seconds he was on level with the floating island he’d started from. Gordon had gone to the edge of it to look down. Reaching to touch him, maybe even pick him up, was tempting but… humans were fragile. It’d be way to easy to accidentally hurt him. Instead Benrey settled for just coming in close, staying low so he wasn’t towering over everyone too much. A little bit of towering was cool though, right?

“Asshole,” Bubby said. “You almost gave Gordon a heart attack. Fucking idiot, running off a cliff.”

Oops. Benrey hadn’t thought about how it would’ve looked to them, especially given how long he’d let himself fall for. “Sorry.”

Gordon pulled back from the edge – good, him being that close probably wasn’t wise lest the edge decide to crumble away – and sat down so he could lean back on his hand and look up at Benrey. “It’s… okay. I take it that uh… you feel better?”

“Yeah. I feel great.” Being in Xen came with a odd feeling as if he and the air around him were constantly vibrating slightly. It hadn’t been pleasant last time in how quickly it had grown to be too much. But after so long being endlessly exhausted and hurting, how energizing it was, was amazing.

“Congratulations on not dying, Benrey!” Coomer said.

“We’ll have to make coming here a regular thing now, right?” Tommy said. “Probably we wanna… you know, build a teleporter for next time because my dad might not want to do this again. We have time though.”

“About a year,” Coomer cut in. “Based off how long it took Benrey to power down this time. My batteries last about a year too.”

“Are you done yet?”

Benrey looked up to see Mr. Coolatta still standing exactly where he’d come in at, his hands folded behind his back. “Or would you like to… ‘hang out’ as the kids say?” he continued.

“Hang out a bit.” Benrey was still enjoying the feeling for now. “To make sure that uh… I don’t feel like that again anytime soon.” Spending more time here might mean he retained more energy upon returning.

“I’ll be back in two hours. Be ready to go by then.” Mr. Coolatta vanished.

“Guess were here for two hours then,” Gordon said. “As long as Benrey’s okay that’s fine. Even if this place is uh…” He trailed off. His face was too small to get a good look at but he sounded like he was grimacing.

Right, yeah. Last time he’d been here, he’d been scared of Benrey and scared and stressed in general. A lot had changed between them and Benrey had learned more about how far was too far. But that wouldn’t necessarily make this a comfortable place for him.

Benrey shrunk himself. Not a lot, only so that he wasn’t towering quite so much. He leaned it, resting one arm on the floating island and laying his head down on top of it so that he was looking mostly at Gordon but the rest of them too. His other hand he moved towards Gordon.

“Can I uh… can I…” How did he ask? Should he even? He wanted to touch and hold and make it better but he was so much bigger now. That made him scary, right? Was Gordon scared of him?

Gordon stared at him in silence for a few seconds, visibly tense before relaxing with a sigh. “Sure. Go for it.” He didn’t even know exactly what Benrey was asking. Having so much trust was… scary. Benrey didn’t deserve it. Things were different now but he’d still hurt Gordon once upon a time. He knew better now and Gordon had hurt him back, ultimately winning their fight, but… still.

Questioning good things wouldn’t do much though so he moved his hand closer. Gordon probably would’ve been about as tall as the tip of his pinky to the base of his palm if he were were standing up, maybe a bit shorter. He was sitting though and thus Benrey’s hand engulfed him rather well as he cupped it around him. He was tense but didn’t struggle so before Benrey could chicken out and careful not to grab, he scooped Gordon up into it.

“Okay,” Gordon said as he wrapped his arms around Benrey’s finger. “This is fine.”

Benrey pulled him closer to his face, careful not to jostle him too much. It was tempting to straighten and bring him up too but he wasn’t going to do that yet. Maybe in a bit when he was more sure he could do so gently. “You’re so little.”

Gordon’s face was harder to read when he was so small but that earned a small smile. “Nah, you just got big, dude. Which is pretty cool actually.”

“You’re not scared?”

He thought about it for a few seconds before replying. “No, I don’t think I am actually. When you ran off the edge I was but… that’s not what you’re asking about. Things were different last time we were here. But we’re cool now.”

“More than cool.” Things were great, especially now that Benrey wasn’t dying anymore.

“Yeah, they’re pretty great actually. I’m glad you’re okay. But since we’re here anyway and you’re already holding me, um… maybe lift me a bit higher so I can see more stuff.”

As gently and carefully as he could, Benrey obeyed. Straightening, he lifted Gordon as smoothly as he could before raising him a bit higher to give him a good view of the alien landscape surrounding them.

“Wow uh… this sure is something.” He sounded nervous.

“I won’t drop you.”

“I know.” More of that trust, voiced now. Still not entirely deserved but that was okay. He’d somehow earned Gordon’s trust anyway and he wasn’t going to squander it.

“There are so many inappropriate jokes I could make about this,” Bubby said. “But I won’t because I’m a good guy like that.”

Benrey looked down at him. “Want me to pick you up too?”

Tommy raised his hand. “Ooh, ooh, pick me up!”

Coomer raised his hand next. “Me too!”

Finally Bubby had time to reply. “Eh, I guess if everyone else is doing it, sure. Just make sure you don’t drop me over the edge.”

Taking inspiration from Gordon’s extra robot arm, Benrey grew two more arms out of his shoulders so he could pick all three of them up. One in each hand and one at a time, careful as he possibly could be. They weren’t as fragile as Gordon but still, they were so small they felt fragile.

Once he had all of them in his hands, he pulled them close to his body where they felt steadier. “Let’s go for a little walk then, huh? This place’s got lots of cool stuff too look at that we didn’t get to explore last time.”

A fun little adventure with his friends in Xen certainly beat sleeping on and off until he died for good. He probably wasn’t ever going to forget the fear he’d gained of permanent death though. It was too upsetting of an idea. … It was also a fear Gordon still faced though, had never not faced. Maybe Benrey would try to see if he couldn’t do something about it.

~

[A/N] The request I was talking about at the top of this fic was for them going to Xen. Which I already had this idea for so it fit perfectly. I held off on doing the idea for a bit since it's further in the future than anything else which probably contributed at least a little bit to how long it ended up being; I had a lot of time to build the idea.

[god-disposes]

gotta ask about the Piano Man wip!!

- @hmstartnell 🐻‍❄️

for the WIP game: tell us about the Piano man except they're not all depressed feat. hodge cause I need every Hodge possible from @thesmartestpotato

Okay so we all know the Piano Man edit (which I cannot track down for the life of me right now) but then Christos Lawton, the absolute madlad, goes and adds it to his own Hodge playlist and then I was like okay alright I NEED to write this. I know the actual song Piano Man is about a bunch of people who are all kinda miserable and just shuffling through life, and I want to let these poor boys just be happy and enjoy a night out for once! That's where the wip title of piano man but they're not all depressed comes from.

George is between 'real' jobs right now but he works nights as a bar pianist at a place owned by Francis. I'm trying to assign each of the characters in the song to one of our cold boys and so far:

The piano man- Hodge, of course

The manager- Ned, poor guy was always doomed to end up here

The old man sitting next to me- John Ross, because I will never pass up an opportunity to make fun of him for the fake mountains

Waitress practicing politics- law student Silna who's definitely had to help get the entire establishment out of a rough spot or two

John at the bar- the obvious choice here is Jirv (he gets Hodge his drinks for free cause he's hopelessly in love with the hot piano player) but I think Blanky could also be a kickass bartender

Paul the real estate novelist- originally this was going to be Jirv and Davy was going to be Ned, but then I made Ned the manager, so. I'll take suggestions!

Davy who's still in the navy- I really want this to be Sol but I've also fit him in somewhere else, so we'll see

The businessmen who are slowly getting stoned- either the marines or some of the older explorers from this same era (Parry, Ross, etc)

And now after all my yapping, an actual excerpt from this for you!

Francis Crozier is the bar owner who only occasionally bothers to poke his head in to see how things are running. He’s ex-military, navy or something, and there’s a betting pool with the staff trying to figure out what the man’s backstory actually is. George has a good bit of money invested in the theory that he’s some sort of James Bond type spy who’s been on secret missions to the furthest reaches of earth, which Edward says falls solidly into the or something category. His son Thomas is usually the one who keeps an eye on things, though, because Crozier does seem to spend most of his time gallivanting around the world with his husband (wife? Unclear, as George has never actually met the oft-mentioned-but-never-seen Jas) and is only rarely back in London. “You’re literally dating his son,” George complains as he pulls off his scarf and gloves. “That doesn’t get you a single extra key privilege for your best friend so I'm not waiting out in the cold?” “He barely seems to remember I exist on a good day,” Edward grumbles. “So, no.” “And yet I’m here more often than he is and he doesn’t even pay me.” “Hodge,” Ned says very seriously, “You make more in tips on a good night than the rest of us combined.”

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

Exit on your left: Part 1.

Um...Mr Kamukura?

I know I probably shouldn't be the one to question your escape methods but...Why are we going THIS way?

...

*Kanata, Fuyuhiko, Kazuichi and Hiro closely follow Uchui as he leads them through the base. Uchui remains stone faced the entire time.

Where exactly...IS this place?

This is the first time I’ve seen the building outside the cells. I figured we were in some kinda institution but...this looks more...

To put simply...it’s a factory. Though, I had assumed you would have come to that conclusion just by looking around.

You don’t gotta be a smartass about it. When did Zetsubou take the time to BUILD all this?

Well, it’s all been built up over the last 10 or 11 years...Since Shirogane came to our reality. But the actuality is Zetsubou secretly sieged this place from a previously existing company, wiping out or silencing all associated with it for their own ends.

Hold on...11 years? But I thought the V3 kids came through 4 years ago?

You really think it would take 4 years to build up this big an empire? Only Ultimate leaders could pull something like that off. And Shirogane is anything but.

But...how...? You said you pulled them through, right? And you only got that idea in the last few years, so how could Shirogane have come through a decade before?

...I don’t know...I do have some working theories, but I assume even if I was to talk about it, you wouldn’t get it.

*They emerge into a room with several monitors and computers.

...I knew it...

Knew what?

Sorry, but truth be told, this is the central security room of this entire base. Before I get you out of here, I just needed to make a quick detour and grab something from here?

THIS is the central hub?

Is that a problem?

...It’s just...for the main security mainframe its...pretty quiet around here.

...Exactly.

...

You don’t think Zetsubou have caught on, have you?

*Uchui starts fiddling with the large keyboard in the middle of the desk.

They’ve been on edge ever since Maki Harukawa went missing. I wouldn’t put it past them.

For real!? You mean they might be looking for us right now!? Then why are we HERE?

Shh! If you make that much noise, then they’ll find us a lot quicker!

Oh! Sorry...!

But if that’s the case...do we really even have a chance at escaping?

*Uchui stops fiddling, then rises and turns to look at Kanata.

I don’t believe in chance, doctor. Chance never saved anyone in the Killing Games, nor did it save me from the hell that was my upbringing.

I believe in the flow of time, and the value of effort. If we stick together, we’ll stay alive...and you WILL see your families again.

Uchui...

Well, in the very least, I can get YOU out of here. Whether or not I get out with you...

You’re not coming with?

No. I still have a lot I need to do here. I still haven’t found a way to destroy what remains of the Hope Serum.

You still haven’t done that!? I thought that’d be priority number one!?

This is gonna sound really cheesy and lame, but I value your safety more than destroying that serum. I got you into this mess...now I’m gonna get you out.

This is just step one of my mission to atone for me and my family’s sins.

...And what’s step two?

...Taking down this whole base...and destroying Zetsubou from the inside out.

And how do you plan to do that?

Not alone. But I don’t want you guys in here when this place crumbles.

And you? How do you plan to get out?

That’s in my interest only.

So much for sticking together...

I...! Gah...

*He grips the edge of the desk.

Look...with all due respect...I betrayed the Future Foundation and cost many people their lives when I sold them out to Zetsubou. There’s no reason for Kirigiri, or Fujisaki, or anybody else in the higher ups to worry about saving MY life. 

What about Reaper? You’re his best friend; you really think he wouldn’t try to save you!?

KURIPA knows that we have priorities. Even he wouldn’t jeopardize such an important mission just to save MY life...

I’m sure...

You don’t SOUND sure...

What’s it to you anyway?

Because I’ve seen that kind of thing before. This overwhelming guilt that makes you think everything would be better off if you were gone, or if you paid for your mistakes in the most painful way. 

*Kazuichi starts to pace the room.

Look, I get it Uchui, but you can’t do this. You think you’re making a heroic and brave sacrifice, but all you’re doing is continuing to have your life weighed down by-

“Terror...?”

GAH!?

!!?

!!?

Oh crap! RUN!

Heh...Going somewhere!?

YAGH!

Heehee! Nice try!

Shit!

*All three entryways in the security room are blocked off as several Zetsubou goons armed with rifles emerge from the blackness! Akira, Celeste and Narumi take one, Yukari and Mikihiko take another, and Tsumugi stands with a few henchmen in the third.

And thus the whole pity party is here. Sorry to come crashing in.

Celeste! Wait, it’s not what it looks like!

Shut it Hiro! You’re not helping!

So this really WAS an ambush?

You don’t sound surprised in the slightest?

I had a feeling when I saw this room was empty that you’d caught on.

And you came anyway? That’s either very brave, or very stupid.

Well, I’m clearly smart enough to have gotten away with it up until now, right?

Au contraire, Kamukura. Maybe I didn’t know about a few details of your plan, which prevented me from stopping you up until now...

But I’ve known about this escape plan and your conspiracy for a LOOOOOONG time...

What...!? How!?

...

...

...

*Nagito and Matta emerge from the darkness in the doorway behind her.

Matta here filled me in on all your suspicious activities. Plus, I didn’t quite trust you, Uchui, from the start. I’m not THAT brainless.

Komaeda, you bastard...!

Don’t misunderstand...! I didn’t-

Mr Gyalusetsu!? You...!? Then...!?

Humans are desperate creatures, Dr Inori. In a world of despair, where there is a light of shining hope, they cling to that hope without thinking of the consequences it might bring.

Which is why, when I offered you that safe room to plan, I knew you would take the opportunity.

Don’t you agree? Komaeda?

...? Um...

You mean you trusted him!? What the hell is wrong with you!?

I...

That man is every bit of a demon as the rest of them! And you let him get inside your head.

Don’t listen to him. Typically, I am not as profound a manipulator as I may seem. Normally, I get the job done, no nonsense.

But ever since I arrived here...It’s been nothing but nonsense. So I decided to play along eventually.

I’m so sorry...

Don’t apologize Doc! It’s not your fault!

Yeah...I kinda figured he was different from the rest too. I guess we were all fooled.

You were also fooled into thinking that the treatment I’ve shown you all until now was the worst I could muster...Now that you’ve attempted this escape...

You’ll see just how NASTY I can be...! Now BACK TO YOUR CELLS!

...

*Uchui carefully shifts towards the desk and swipes something from it.

*SHUNK!*

GAH!

Hey...back away from my PC buddy...

*Akira’s ring weapon shanks the death and very nearly cuts off Uchui’s fingers. He backs away and raises his hands in the air.

What are you doing...!?

Shush! Play along!

So let me get one thing straight...This whole thing about wanting to help me make Ultimate Hopes was just a lie? You really just wanted to stop me from the beginning and destroy the Hope Serum for good?

You really should’ve done that first.

I know right!? I said the same thing!

Hiro, seriously, shut up!

Don’t act like you wanted it for a higher purpose or something.

Normally I would say “you have no idea just how dangerous that serum is to us all!” but no...You DO know, and you DON’T care!

You wanted to create Ultimate Hope’s because you know how much chaos Izuru Kamukura’s creation caused. Even if it spirals out of your control, it will cause so much carnage, it won’t matter!

Not to mention this serum of yours is even worse than the project...Fujimori and Komaeda...Both of their minds were fucked, and they lost sight of themselves and their original goals because of what that damn drink did to them.

...

My father’s batshit crazy work served as the catalyst for everything that went wrong with this world the first time...

And when I brought you to this world, I created the catalyst for the SECOND...The difference is I acknowledge that, and I won’t run away from that responsibility...!

...Well, I’ll give you credit...You certainly didn’t RUN from it...

Junko? Kamukura did something to central security system when he got here. Run a scan and find out whatever virus he downloaded. Akira, help her.

Got it.

On it boss.

*Akira saunters over to the computer to aid Junko, controlling the pieces of his ring to surround Uchui and the survivors, while Zetsubou soldiers point guns at them.

You know...In hindsight...

It takes a great deal of patience and confidence to be the best friend of Kuripa Kurafto...I should’ve figured you would go to such extremes...

Don’t talk to me about extremes, Miss “I’m-gonna-wipe-out-everyone-with-the-power-of-Ultimate-Hope-because-I’m-so-desperate-for-attention.”

Ooh, you kiss your mother with that mouth?

I never knew my mother, asshat.

So what’s the master plan “Mastermind?” You despair-y types always have one, no?

Hm...I could kill you and capture the Survivors again...Or I could explain my master plan and THEN kill you and capture the Survivors again...

...I think I’ll just kill you!

*With a wave of Tsumugi’s hand, all the Zetsubou soldiers aim their rifles at Uchui and the others.

Son of a...!

Hey...Kamukura...!? Please don’t tell me your master plan was us walking into the jaws of death!

It looks like it was a big mistake thinking following this heathen was the best course of action...He’s sacrificed you...then failed you...

I’m not a heathen, you prissy, pink-haired monster...

*BEEP!* *BEEP!* *BEEP!*

I’m a SCIENTIST...

What is that horrid-?

Um...Junko? What’s going on?

Tsumugi! It’s bad! The security mainframe is RIGGED TO BLOW!

NOW! RUN!

*KAABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMM!*

GAUGH!

Both: AKIRA!?

RRAAGGAGGGGH!

YEEAAAAAHAAAHAAAAAGH!

Both: YUKARI! 

...!?

*Uchui grabs the escapees and they make a mad dash for an escape! The explosion of the computer launches Akira back into the wall and knocks him unconscious, causing the ring pieces to fall and the armed soldiers to fly back too. Additionally, the direct damage done to AI Junko in the system brain fries Yukari, and causes her to collapse!

GO GO GO!

DON’T STOP RUNNING!

EEEEEKK!

WE’REGONNADIE! WE’RESOGONNADIE!

URGH!

*Tsumugi casts out a hand once her ears stop ringing.

KILL HIM!

...

Huh?

*Matta places a hand on her shoulder.

Let him run...

It makes it more fun for me...!

*WHOOOSH!*

[j0ecool]

UI Crescendo

So now I gotta extend the UI to draw more than just buttons I suppose

My first thought is to do the obvious thing and have a UIElement base class, from which individual elements can derive. The problem with this is that we're hot-reloading the game from a .dll, so vtables have a tendency to get thrashed when we reload, so we'll jump into stale memory and try to execute malformed instructions (what we professionals call a "big yikes").

We're persisting UI elements because we've split the update and render steps, so we just need to clear the stale state on reload. So we'll add a callback that we can fire right before unloading the dll, and use that to clear all the stale elements

We also add an Allocator struct so that we can bundle malloc AND free and simplify that plumbing.

Then in the main (non-dylib) part,

and when we unload the game, clear the UI elements

(a simpler thing to do would be to clear the buffered UI elements after rendering them so that we never persist them across frames regardless of whether we reload the dll. However we *do* persist interaction data (button state) from frame to frame, so it's pretty important that we not do that. This does mean we lose clicks in progress when the dll reloads, but that should never happen to non-devs (and is impractical to reproduce for devs, at that), so #NAB #wontfix)

Then I realize that we still have problems, because we need to store some kind of runtime type information (RTTI) so we know how to actually update the elements in question. So if we have to add an enum per derived class, store that in the base class, and make sure that stays in sync, that seems way messier than just using an ADT-like design in the first place. (Dr. Hindsight here: dynamic_cast would probably have worked just fine, I just didn't think about it until typing "RTTI" just now)

So uh what are ADTs? Well if you go full expanding brain memes and do pure-functional programming, you wind up in the land of Algebraic Data Types. Specifically Sum types, so called because the members of a type are the SUM of possibilities of its components. Which is to say a UIElement can be a Button OR a text Label. And another way to say sum/or is "union"

this is basically the mechanism behind how Haskell's sum types work, only with more footguns because we're dealing with the plumbing directly. Fortunately we're using these as essentially an implementation detail, so we control access to a very limited number of public interfaces, so what could possibly go wrong?

(I should probably split some of this stuff out of being all in one big game.cpp file, which would let me actually hide these implementation details, but we'll deal with that cleanup when it becomes more relevant)

back in the UI class, let's pull out the code that validates our element index, because we'll need to duplicate this logic for every type of thing

and now our button preamble looks like this,

that elem.kind jiggery-pokery is something we'll need to repeat at least once per element, which is annoying, but the cleanest way to reduce the repetition is with a macro, and frankly I'd rather not

Now then we just add a label method to add text elements,

and some helper methods to handle formatting numbers (todo: formatting)

All of that leads us to this rather-svelte result for actually building a UI

which rendered in-engine, finally, nets us,

If you can't tell, I am very much of the "MIT approach" to software, where I will spend tremendous amounts of effort in the Implementation, in order to have a cleaner Interface. I did used to be a compiler engineer after all. This is probably related to why I have yet to ship a commercial product solo, isn't it.

anyhow, all that was a bunch of architectural gobbledygook. Mostly just figuring out how to partition the problem and what mechanisms to use in order to not explode within the confines of dll hot-reloading, while still scaling linearly with additional elements. In theory, adding different types of elements at this point should be straightforward, not requiring much additional infrastructure. (In theory, theory and practice are identical. In practice...)

Now, the thing that's cool about the imgui-style of UI architecture is that it lets you make compound custom widgets via simple composition of existing elements. Meaning that application logic doesn't need to deal with any of the complexity of the underlying system.

So the specific thing I wanted a UI for was to tweak the parameters of the texture generator. At some point I pulled out all the different constants I was using, so I could have them all collated in the same space

I don't have default values there, because I set the values in the onLoad callback, so they update whenever I change the code and rebuild

(and I do mean whenever I change the code; I have it watching game.cpp for changes and rebuilding in the main .exe, so that's automated too)

So that's *pretty good*, but it's still a two second compile every time I want to make a tweak to the parameters, along with being in a separate window from where the textures are actually displayed. It would be way smoother to get that down to near-instantaneous

yeah yeah you get the idea

so now I can create a custom widget for each parameter I want to change, consisting of a button each to increase and decrease the value, plus displaying the current value

this is just a normal function that takes parameters totally orthogonal to the UI, that does whatever arbitrary logic it wants, with no custom rendering logic or anything. (Ideally this would use a Slider element, and lo/hi would dictate the range of values, but that would be a new element type, and I'm sick of dealing with UI internals and just want to move on to doing other stuff for a bit)

so now we can remove the onload logic ("I fucking love deleting //todo:s" etc), set those values as defaults, and update our UI code:

which does Pretty Much What You'd Expect

reducing iteration time down ot the 50ms it takes to generate a new batch of 16 textures. amazing

note that we're setting min/max manually, and we could probably reduce repetition by factoring out the common case where we just +/- one with some minimum, this is Good Enough and sufficiently obvious that I'm fine with it

so of course I start playing around with it (noise size = 7, tex size = 16, noise scale = 1, mode = 3, tex repetitions = 8)

ok this one too (noise size 31, noise scale 4, tex size 1024, tex repetitions 1)

and mode 2, noise scale 9 (3 repeating bands of blue, red, green)

mode 3, noise scale 3, noise size 13, repetitions 16

so, the moral here I guess is that by making it more fun to mess around with, I'm more likely to explore the possibility space. Which was the whole point of investing in better tooling in the first place :)

[artemistorm]

Headache anon, I feel your pain (literally). Here is a list of lifehacks that I recently discovered that may help you with your headache:

The normal stuff: painkillers, caffeine, drinking lots of water

Keep your environment dark and quiet and don't force yourself to do anything mentally or physically strenuous. Making yourself try to function like normal could make the pain worse, but letting yourself rest will give your body the opportunity to heal

Really try hard to eat regular decent meals and to get lots of sleep at night and don't be afraid to take naps during the day. Cuz your head might be extra sensitive to migraine triggers right now so try to avoid anything that can be a trigger.

One website I saw said to try wearing earplugs to help keep the air pressure in your ears steady instead of fluxing constantly with all the stormy weather. Haven't tried it though.

Peppermint essential oil or vicks vaporub to the forehead and temple can help a ton, (but the strong smell may make your eyes water). (This works really well for me but the effects are short term and you have to keep reapplying it).

Take a magnesium supplement if it is safe for you (apparently that's one ER treatment for severe migraines or so I've read.)

Figure out whether heat or cold makes your head feel better and use ice packs or hot packs on your head and neck. If heat helps, then take a shower!

Put your feet in hot water. The theory is that it may help pull excess blood away from your brain and reduce head pressure/inflamation.

Distract yourself from the pain. Play a game, listen to a podfic, groom your pet. Just as long as it isn't too bright/flashy/noisy/strenuous. Avoid doomscrolling/distressing news/stories/talk at all costs. You gotta baby yourself cuz you're sick. There's no honor in making yourself suffer more.

Try to figure out if you have a new trigger. For me, my migraines have decided skipping meals and poor sleep habits are going to be a new trigger. Maybe you've got a new trigger too.

Sinus rinse or antihistamine. At one point in my life, I did sinus rinse and took an antihistamine every day religiously and I did not have a migraine for months, meaning at least some of my migraines are allergen induced. Maybe yours are too.

The normal chronic illness lifehacks: don't cook, get food delivered or eat tv dinners, in the shower it's okay to sit or to skip soap/shampoo if it's too hard for you right now, ask for help from your friends/relatives, don't drive, skip all nonessential commitments, wear comfy clothes, do relaxing things, etc.

Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not a medical person and I don't know your situation so take all this with a grain of salt. These are just a bunch of things that either work for me or I've read works for other people.

Anya device for headaches, I’ve had one for about 2 weeks straight and pain/headache medicine only helps for a few hours, any advice since you’re in medicine?

Honestly, the advice I would give is go to a doctor. :-/ Unless this is normal for you, a headache really shouldn't be lasting that long. This could be something more than just a migraine.

If this isn't something underlying, perhaps a cold compress to the head to relieve muscle tension, or turn the shower on super hot and breathe in the steam. I don't know of a device specifically, but these are some home remedies that might at least help relieve temporarily when the meds wear off.

[manor-tea-time]

(TW! Description of torture, death, insanity, and human body parts)

A letter is sitting on the survivor's desk, with a small wooden box next to it. The letter reads :

"Good morning! Now, I know what you are wondering, "How did you even get in here?", well, lets just say that I have my ways. Anyways, back to business! As you can tell, there has been a little rat giving out my personal information, and as much as I hate others getting into my personal business...... Well, the fear and paranoia in everyone's faces is quite amusing.

Because of that, I've decided to spice things up by proposing a little game of Whodunit! Don't worry, there won't be any consequences if you get it wrong. The rules are simple, all you have to do is figure out my identity, and you win! You can do it alone, in a group, whatever. Now, you might be wondering, "Why the hell are you doing this?", Well, let's call it an investment for my very own entertainment!

It's been quite a long time, but I still remember that day....... A little game of mouse and cat with three others. Despite how easy they went down, it still provided quite a large amount of entertainment! Yes, they were blindfolded, yes, they had a fractured ankle, however, no one forced them in the path of my knife!

Anyways, I've decided to leave a gift, one that brings back some fond memories I had......... Please, take good care of them!

Love, You Know"

Inside the box is 3, well-preserved, human fingers.

The survivors gathered around the box hesitantly. Each one had already read the letter they'd received in their rooms. The air around them being undoubtedly tense as they each tried to think of what to say.

Ivy gagged as she opened the box, nearly dropping it at the sight of the 3 fingers. Slamming it back shut as she slid it away from the group on the table. "Disgusting! Vile! What the hell kind of present is that?!"

"One where the sender is trying to give a gruesome message. I'd say it was well received." LeRoy pointed out, staring at the box in horror. "I think this mystery killer is trying to get us to shoot ourselves in the feet while trying to figure out who it is."

"The bastard is trying to get us to turn on each other. Playing with our emotions as they pick us off one by one!" Wayne said shakily, desperately trying to hold onto some semblance of calm. "They've already broken into our rooms easily! Killing us in the night would be a walk in the park!"

"Unfortunately Wayne, you do have a point in your fearful tangents. This mystery killer was able to sneak into our rooms fairly easily and not disturb anything along the way. It almost makes it seem like they'd gone in there before to plan it out." Ivy muttered as she looked back to the box in disgust. "In any case, we should take care not to play into the trap of going against one another. It's probably best if we form a plan to keep each other safe till we figure out who this killer is. I don't fully trust that there really aren't any consequences to not figuring out what our mystery killer's identity is."

"I agree! Perhaps we could find a room in the manor that's not being used and camp out there? It would be less expected and we could possibly set some sort of trap for if the killer sends another note." LeRoy nodded. "We will probably do better as a group than separately anyways. I'd imagine it would be easier to subdue a killer with three people than just one."

The group continued to work out their plan to avoid the killer for the time being to give themselves more time to piece together who exactly was behind it all. Occasionally feeling watched as they glanced around the darkened areas of the manor. Surely it was just their mind playing tricks on them though, right?

-ξ(❁) ⊕) ξ  , (-⊕ ζ ⊕-) <  , 🗝️>(⊗▼⊗´)•ζ 

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-

[presidentstalkeyes]

Compton Boole Beeswax:

Earlier today I was thinking about Compton's Cookoff, and I have a Crackpot Theory-slash-Headcanon: the four animals that help Raz prepare the meals are all based on other people from Compton's life.

Pork Chopper is based on his father, a police officer (i.e. a pig) who Compton remembers as being very 'tough' with him, encouraging him to fight back against bullies ("they'll be much nicer once you've put 'em through the slicer!"). Their relationship deteriorated once Compton got involved with the Animal Liberation movement, eventually deciding he was 'sick in the head' after blowing up those animals with his mind - something Compton apparently agrees with, as Pork Chopper calling the hosts 'sick' is portrayed as an attack of conscience. Compton still has positive memories of him and may have wished to reconcile, going from Chopper's sudden turn for the upbeat (in contrast with Butch Oleander who was portrayed as a monster).

Frog Flipper is his son - and the father of Dogen and Sam - a high-strung, nervous, overworked individual ("I gotta pull a double shift?!") who tries to stay positive but always seem on the verge of flipping out. Compton had to raise him fresh off the heels of losing everything in the fight against Maligula, an experience comparable to trying to fry an egg over a constantly-moving fire. Later, his son came to him for guidance on how to manage Sam and especially Dogen, only to be pushed away - by then Compton had isolated himself and believed his advice would only make things worse. He'd ultimately turned his son into the same parent he had been.

Patty Puree is his ex-wife and the mother of his son. Compared to Cassie, who he saw as a friend and someone he could approach, his relationship with his wife was far more uneven - she'd always seemed like a high-and-mighty figure, well beyond his reach (hence why she's the hardest to get to), who carried herself with a regal air. He convinced himself trying to reach out to her would just end with his hand getting blended into paste. In the end, he thinks, she only married him out of pity and to help raise their child. The fact she divorced him once their son became an adult only confirms that for him.

Hippo Pot I'm not so sure about, since he only has one line and it isn't anything especially noteworthy. My best guess is that he's an old partner-in-crime from Compton's Animal Liberation days, someone reliable who kept him focused and relaxed, hence why the ingredients relax while boiling... but they are still boiling, and Compton believes he can never relax, otherwise he'll boil over.

The fact that all four of them are involved in Ram It Down but never actively judge him like the Ford, Hollis and Otto stand-ins do suggest that, to some extent, he's 'moved on' from them and doesn't care so much about their judgment specifically. However, he still can't forget them, so they're relegated to side-roles in his mental game show. This also shows that, despite everything, a part of him wanted to move on even before Raz arrived, he just gave him a push in the right direction. Tellingly, they're still on the set if Raz comes back to the level later, unlike all the Judges.

[dawnstarranger]

@kimmurielscryingmirror Thanks for the tag! Drow Smash or Pass game sounds right up my alley ahaha

Jarlaxle: Easy, smash. This man knows what he's doing, or at least wants the world to believe he knows what he's doing. I'd say he's not afraid to try new things, but lets be real, there's probably very little he hasn't tried. He's crazy rich so I do expect him to treat me to a nice dinner and a bottle of wine. Knowing that there's a sweet, caring heart underneath the flamboyant and chaotic exterior just makes him more attractive. This man would be perfect but I sense commitment issues and know he's got that tendency to self-sabotage relationships. Oh, well. A night of passion I'll never forget is more than enough from this handsome mercenary. I also want us to play dress-up in his closet after. Maybe during. I bet this man owns some gorgeous leather body harnesses. Probably a whole trunk of magical toys. Anyways.

Kimmuriel: ayyyyy you all know me well enough by now to know this is a SMASH for me. Love the fact that the fandom on here likes to put his height right around 5'; I've always wanted to try to pull off slinging a cute drow over my shoulder and walking off with him like the dragon sisters did with Jarlaxle, and I'm confident I can pull that off with Kimm here assuming he's into it and cooperates. Does he have Jarlaxle's experience in this arena? Probs not, but you just KNOW there's some freaky shit one could do with psionics, so lets uh, pioneer some new techniques if you know what I mean. I've got so many questions about psionics in general actually, so I'd hope this turns into at least a few dates and not just a one-night thing. Want to learn more about stars, sweetie? Here, lemme whisper infodump in ya ear, that's hot, right?

Rai'gy: He's confident and I like that, but I don't date or sleep with priests, esp. not priests from a super controlling religion. Sorry! It's kind of a "you gotta be at least thiiiiis much agnostic to ride" situation.

Valas: Listen, I met a guy once that was kind, loves to just leave situations, GREAT navigator, knows his constellations, and figures a great first date is a quiet late night nature walk. I wifed that man up so fucking fast.. and I'm not even talking about Valas here. But back to the drow at hand, this isn't just a smash, this is a respectfully smash and then marry. Or it would be if I wasn't already, yknow, married. But for the sake of the game, I'm telling you. I see marriage material right here.

Zaknafein: Sooo sadly I'm gonna take a pass on this one. I haven't got to the later books yet but fandom osmosis tells me daddy Zak has anger issues? Sorry, If I wanted a guy with kids, a crazy ex, and a tendency to lash out when pissed I could just drive my ass back to my hometown and have my pick of the litter.

Beniago: Have not really met him yet (maybe I should redo this when I'm actually done with all the books lol), but from what I hear, smash? Probably?

Drizzt: v respectful pass bc this man is married and also has a kid now. Hit me up twenty+ books from now and I'll let you know if I change my mind. I will say, if it were I and not Innovindil up on those mountains... anyways.

Gromph: Sorry, pass. Too old 4 me. Also kind of an asshole. He invites me back to his room to "meet his familar" and he's not talking about Kyorli. I tell him I'll do better on my next Transmutations Theory exam, thanks for your time professor, but I gotta go uh, do something. Maybe next time, thanks for the offer.

@solvicrafts and @maritimelass and @villainslut NO PRESSURE since not everyone is into this kind of game! I don't know who else to tag. If you want to jump in, go for it.

[hotwings0203]

I feel like Dabi would be the type of dude who would bully you incessantly at the LOV and for the life of you you can’t figure out why. He’s always around you and making snarky comments or pulling your hair, trying to catch you messing up on missions. You’re sure he hates you, and you do well to stay out of his way, or sometimes when you feel bold you’ll offer a quip of your own. The bullying increases whenever you talk to other guys at the bar, especially when you make Tomura crack a smile, Dabi’s breathing down your neck the second your leader leaves, calling you terrible names and pushing past your boundaries.

Cw: language, nsfw, noncon, manga spoilers, some angst?

In a perfect world, Touya would not have been abandoned and rejected by his family. In a perfect world, Dabi would not exist, and Touya would be eating dinner with his family right now as he shows his little brother how to properly wield fire to its fullest extent.

But there was no such thing as a perfect world, and therefore Dabi did exist. And Dabi doesn’t care for anyone, or anything.

Or so he tells himself.

“Slut”

“Nothing but eye candy, and shitty eye candy at that”

It’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but it doesn’t make it any easier to ignore him

“What was that all about, huh? The fuck are you and crusty snickering about?”

Fed up with his continuous antics, you decide to mouth off a little too.

“Oh nothing, just talking about how adorable you and Hawks would make as a couple. And wipe that sneer off your face, it looks like some of your staples fell out of your mouth.”

It’s nothing too snarky, but in a second he’s shoving you in some dark room, forearm pinned against your throat as his hand is lit up with blue flames merely inches away from you, snarling in your face.

“You wanna be funny, bitch? I got jokes of my own too, why dont I show you what happens to dumb little girls who don’t know their fucking place? I think that would be real funny.”

But his hand is stopped from drawing near your wide eyes when you both hear Twice and Toga calling everyone for their next meeting.

He pushes you away from him, giving you a murderous look over his shoulder as he leaves the room, not paying mind to the way you slide down the wall in the dark.

You take extra precaution to try avoiding him for the next few days, not even making eye contact with him when you two get teamed up for tasks. He never mentions the room incident, if anything he acts as if it never happens. It’s like whiplash for you, he tries to weirdly talk to you more but all you offer him is mumbles and hums of agreement.

The conversation is never long, but it starts to be less talk of degrading you and more of begrudging questioning of what you’ve been up to. You never engage, opting to pretend like you never heard him, and strangely enough he leaves it be.

You give him a side eye one day as he joins you at the bar (much to your discontent), downing your glass just to fill another.

He says nothing as he slides into the stool right next to you, and pours a glass of whiskey for himself as well.

It’s awkwardly silent, you’re not sure if you should leave or not, but you’d be damned if you try to initiate small talk with this psycho.

But then, he speaks.

“Is Shigaraki sending you on the mission to get that UA kid?”

His gravely voice rumbles and cracks from his usual lack of use, and he clears his throat after he talks.

“No.”

“Oh.”

This is excruciating, you think to yourself as he mulls over the drink in his hand for a silent minute or two.

Toga calls you over thankfully at the exact same moment, and you breathe out an inaudible sigh of relief as you slip off the stool to join her.

“Wait-“ Dabi grabs your arm and you flinch out of instinct, expecting a slap or a burn to come from him.

He sees your reaction and shakes his head dismissively, letting you go and muttering a “Nevermind”. You don’t ponder over it as you trip over your own feet to join the eccentric blond.

A week passes, and then two. With each day you maneuver your way around him, request to be partnered up with different people in private, and busy yourself in random tasks. Every time you pass him by the bar he lifts his head from whatever he’s doing and tries to maintain eye contact with you, even going so far as to open his mouth to say or ask god-knows-what.

You try to ignore the foreign hopeful glint in his glacial eyes as you walk right past him, ducking your head as you do so.

It drives Dabi crazy.

He can’t handle any more rejection, he thought his family would be the last straw for him to ever want recognition or love validation from again. He wants to talk to you, to hear your voice as it snaps back with witty comebacks of your own that he secretly enjoys so much, even if it means he has to force it out of you with hateful words. He wants to feel your hair underneath his scarred hands, even if he has to mask the soft wanting of you in forms of yanking the strands. He wants nothing more than to see your eyes fill up with no other sight than him and think only of him, even if it means he has to corner you and scare you into submission.

But your silence is something he’s not used to.

Well, to be fair, you weren’t silent completely, but the only sentences he was hearing from you nowadays was when you were speaking to Shigaraki or the other League members.

You were the only idiot who didn’t notice the smoke curling from his nostrils and ears comically when he’d finally see you stop your stoic act just to open up to other men apart from him. Spinner, Twice, and Compress backed off almost immediately from talking to you for too long when they’d see the look on his face as he watched you surrounded by them, but Tomura would merely smirk from behind your shoulders and keep a level gaze with his subordinate, knowing fully well why he was so pissed off.

You began to notice the weird energy at the base soon after the rest of the men would keep curt conversations with you in comparison to your long talks about video games, sex, and life after you would all win the war.

So you thought it would be best to ask the most semi-normal person there that wasn’t fueled with testosterone and aggression.

“I just don’t get it, why are they all being weird? I mean, we all used to talk so much and now they just...try avoiding me. Except for Tomura of course, he’s still normal I guess. But he always has this smirk on his face when I’m with him and I can’t figure out why.”

Toga stops cleaning her blood-laced needle to give you a sly look, all fangs and glinting white.

“And Dabi?”

“What about him?”

She sits back on her haunches and cocks her head at you. “You really don’t know what’s happening here, do ya?”

“No,” you roll your eyes in exasperation. “But I’ll gladly take any theories here, since apparently I’m the only one who doesn’t get it.”

“He likes you.”

You gape at her for a moment and then burst out laughing.

“What? That’s crazy, he doesn’t like me, he hates me!” He can barely stand being in a room with me, all he does is talk shit and harass me.”

The blond curiously licks at a bead of red from the top of the weapon and you cringe when her own tongue rips from the sharp point.

“You say he can’t stand being in a room with you, so then why is it that he’s always there? He might talk shit, but he talks to you out of everyone else right? Regardless of if it’s something mean.”

You’re thoroughly flabbergasted. She had a point, but it was too much to wrap your head around. She cheerfully hums and gets up to flounce around the room, cleaning her already-tidy room up to a T.

“And that little silent treatment act you’re giving him isn’t helping either. I swear, Jin told me Dabi almost burned his mouth off that one day you, him and Spinner were talking about GTA. He totally cornered the poor guy and threatened his life if he didn’t stop talking to you.”

“You’re joking.”

“Am not. He wanted to do the same to Tomura but I figure he wants to keep his job, so he won’t. Doesnt make it any better for him when you’re all chummy with the one person Dabi can’t stand the most, though.”

No wonder your leader was so smug whenever you two were in the same room, your attention solely focused on him.

You run your hands down your face, moaning about the whole situation being fucked. It’s just your luck that you couldn’t take a clue, but to be fair, how could you? Being called worthless and a waste of space wasn’t exactly what you had in mind for flirty banter.

“Soooo what’re you gonna do now? I heard he’s gonna try talking to you for realsies like, tomorrow or something.”

“Tomorrow?” You yelp, jumping up to your feet. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I can’t face him!”

“Oops,” she giggles, twirling with outstretched arms around her room and falling down onto her bed.

“Oh god, I can’t do this. I don’t even know if I like him! He’s such an ass, and even when he tries to come off as normal he’s just so..unsettling. I don’t think I’ve ever had a good conversation with him.”

Toga props her elbow up to rest her chin on her hand, frowning in thought.

“Why not just tell him how you feel?”

You snort and fold your arms. “Yeah, because the psycho arsonist is really gonna take the word no well.”

“Hmm.. I see what you mean. Oh well, whatever you choose, I’ll support you!”

And with that she skips out of the room sing songing for Twice to make a clone for her.

You were fucked.

And sure enough, the next day he approaches you, hands stuffed in his pockets and an almost bored look on his face.

“Yo newbie, I gotta talk to you for a second. Come with me”.

You look blearily up at him through eye bags and mussed hair, a direct telling of your sleepless night. Your stomach drops when you hear his words, but you nod your head and take a deep breath, mentally preparing yourself of the speech you practiced till the sun rose.

No one else is bothering you both today, Shigaraki having gone to visit All For One and the rest of the League left to their own devices. It was something you weren’t so comfortable with, but you doubted a hero would come to save you.

He leads you through the short winding hallways, each step of his growing louder and heavier as the space started growing smaller. Finally, he reaches a dimly lit room and stops outside the door, gesturing for you to go in with a casual wave of his patched wrist.

“After you.”

You raise an unsure eyebrow at his uncharacteristic show of consideration, and do as he says. You’re sweating bullets, fists balled so that your nails are digging into your palms, and vision going in and out of focus as your eyes begin to adjust to your surroundings.

A loud bang pulls you out of your stupor, and you whip around at the sound.

Dabi is already staring back at you with lidded eyes, leaning his weight against the door, his arms crossing over each other.

You shift on both feet, picking at your nails nervously.

“So, what did you wanna talk about?”

He says nothing, but just observes you, his head slightly tilted as if you were some abstract art piece.

“Dabi.”

“You got a lot of nerve, y’know that?”

He pushes himself off the wall and advances slowly towards you, hands stuffed in his trench coat pockets.

You immediately back up with raised palms, sputtering indignantly at his offensive movements coming closer and closer. However you thought his ‘confession’ would go, this was most definitely not starting out like how you planned

“Excuse me? What’re you talking about-“

“I know what you’re doing. You think whoring yourself out to ol’ crusty and the rest of the guys here is gonna make everyone forget just how useless you actually are. What the fuck do you even do here? You fuck up half the missions which I have to come bail your ass out of, you constantly put us in jeopardy by being all friendly with everyone, and you can’t even keep your mouth shut when I need to let off a little steam, as I rightfully should.”

In a perfect world, Dabi would be the light of your eyes, the hero of your world. In a perfect world, Dabi would be able to hold your hand in his smooth one and tell you that he wants you so much that it impairs his rational judgement and makes him say things he doesn’t mean. He’d tell you that your presence is like a weight lifted off his chest, your presence means he doesn’t have to think or worry about the outside world, he just wants you all to himself without anyone interfering.

But this is not a perfect world, and Dabi is not a hero, but rather one of the worst villains.

So he does exactly what one does as a villain.

Instead of a loving look that he knows he’s incapable of, Dabi looks down into your horrified gaze as he traps you against the wall between his scarred arms, spewing misplaced venom at you.

“I don’t know what your problem is, but you need to chill out. First you go ballistic on me ‘cause I talked to Tomura for no reason, then you act all weird and quiet as if you’re some decent person, and now you think you can just bring me in here and tell me how worthless I am? Go fuck yourself, seriously.”

You scoff and make your way to push him but stop when he does what he did a couple weeks ago. You hold bated breath as he casually brings an inflamed hand to scratch at his face as if he can’t feel the hellfire emitting from it, and let out a whine of distress as he lowers his head mere inches from yours, lips almost touching.

“Stop talking to the rest of the guys,” he breaths. “Stop smiling, laughing, or going near anyone who isn’t me.”

You wonder if he knows how insane he sounds. He does, but that’s nothing he doesn’t know already. If anything, it solidifies in his mind that if he is to be as bad as the world has made him out to be, then he is acting exactly fit for the role.

“Why?”

“I don’t need to give sluts like you a reason. It should come as easy, right? What’s putting out for one more person?”

Your eyes are brimming with tears now, your stoic facade showing cracks as you sniffle a little bit.

He eats it up and groans watching salty rivers cascade down your cheeks. Suddenly, he feels as though he can no longer hold back anymore, he feels as though if he thinks for one more second he’ll combust.

So, acting on instinct, he surges forward and presses his lips against yours, swallowing your cries of distress and holding your hands above your head in midst of them frantically beating on his chest.

Your lips are so, so soft compared to his and it’s making him sink deeper into this instinctual daze. He puffs against your writhing lips as he thrusts his hot tongue in your mouth.

You try to bite him but when his hands heat up against your skin you resign to your fate and wail, allowing him to pull his hips flush against yours and start humping your thighs.

He draws back and bites your lips, teeth clacking against yours as he does so. You open your terrified eyes and blanch when you see the look on his face.

Lust is clearly drawn everywhere, from his blown pupils to his heaving chest, all the way to his flushed face and wild eyes. He looks as though he’s about to eat you alive and it’s appropriate that you feel like a lamb about to be slaughtered.

“Dabi, wait, please stop-“

But he cuts your pants off again in favor of slamming his hips against yours again and grinding impossibly hard on your legs, the friction of his jeans catching on your clothed cunt and forcing a mewl out of you.

“I’m not gonna stop. I’ve had enough of you teasing. You’re mine now, and if it takes burning our dear leader alive and this whole place down for you to understand that then I’ll fucking do it.”

He thought that terrorizing you would ease the empty feeling in his heart, that continuously berating you would force him to see you as what he always said you were, just another empty headed cunt. He thought that distancing himself from you and focusing on other things would make him forget about the soft feelings he longed to share with you, feelings he thought perished in the fire he was in when he was a young boy .

Even now, there is an ache in his chest as he hears you beg for him to stop, to let you go, that you’re sorry for whatever you did.

But this is not a perfect world, and not everyone gets their way in life.

You should really learn that, because Dabi already has.

And so Dabi will act accordingly to what life has put out before him .

[samuel-de-champagne-problems]

I’ll Take X-pecting for 200, Alex

Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid plays a trivia game at the request of his wife, Y/N, but he’s in for more than some heaving hitting questions. 

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Wife Reader 

Word Count: 1.5k 

Author’s Note: I really don’t think that this summary does this justice

I’ll Take X-pecting for 200, Alex 

Shuffling the cards with a shake in her hand, Y/N tells herself to just breathe. This is something that Spencer and her have been looking forward to, dreamed about, and constantly discussed. Regardless of how much she knows Spencer loves her, there’s a lingering seed of doubt that only grows with the sound of Spencer walking into their house. 

“Y/N!, I’m home, darlin’,” Spencer calls from the hallway, dropping the “g” because he knows that Y/N finds it endearing. 

“Baby,” Y/N yells from the table. “I’m in the dining room. I made us a trivia game! Come play with me, I need your brains,” she finishes, smiling at her husband, who has been away for nearly two weeks.

“You know do I love trivia, Y/N,” Spencer says. He takes a seat next to his wife, but before he can kiss her, she pushes him out of his chair and motions for him to take the seat opposite of her.

“Before we start, how was the case? Everyone make it home in one piece?” Y/N asks concerned over the wellbeing of some of her closest friends. 

“Everyone’s fine, Y/N. The unsub ended up being a team. Two women hellbent on getting revenge for their children’s murders. One of them got away,” Spencer explains, solemnly. 

“Oof,” Y/N says, letting out a sigh. “It’s at times like these that I’m glad I don’t have your job. I’m kinda glad she got away, between you and me.” 

“It’s hard, sometimes we don’t really know who we’re bringing justice too. But, I’d do anything to protect my future children, and you. Anything I needed to do to keep you safe,” Spencer tells her, leaning across the table and kissing Y/N’s hand. She gives him a sheepish smile, but inside her mind is eager to get this trivia game started. 

“You’re a charmer, Dr. Reid,” Y/N flirts. 

“Just for you, Y/N. Now you mentioned something about trivia,” Spencer says, clapping his hands together excitedly. 

“I just thought you’d like to rest your brain after a case but shifting though all those facts you got stored up there. And I always said you should try out for Jeopardy,” Y/N says as she collects the cards with the clues. 

She spreads out the categories, Child Psychology, Children’s Books, Labor & Delivery, Nursery Rhymes, X-Epecting, on the table. They were all handwritten on different colorful pieces of cardstock and decorated with baby animals and block letters. Y/N read the categories aloud to her husband, allowing herself to steal a glance at his face while he concentrated on the categories, as if he already could answer the questions. 

“All right, Spencer, you pick first,” Y/N says, in her best Alex Trebek impression. 

“I’ll take Child Psychology for $200,” Spencer chooses, looking up to smile at Y/N. 

“This is the substitute mother that baby monkeys formed an attachment to in Harlow’s psychological experiment,” Y/N asks.

“Terry-Cloth,” Spencer interjects. 

“Not uh, Spence, you need to answer correctly,” Y/N teases. She looks up at him expectantly to choose the next clue. He rolls his eyes at her, but secretly he enjoys the playful banter they still share even after all these years. 

“Um, Children’s Books $200,” 

“This is the story of the clever spider that can weave words in her web,” 

“What is Charlotte’s Web?” 

“Correct, pick again please,” Y/N says, as she tries to maintain a stoic composure. 

“This is the average of days that newborns keep up their sleepless parents,” Y/N asks, sure that this question would stump her genius husband. But to no avail, Spencer answers the question correctly. 

“Okay! Next time try-outs are around, I’m forcing you to take the test,” Y/N says running over to kiss Spencer on the cheek. 

“You know judges are supposed to remain impartial, Y/N” Spencer tells her, putting his arm around her waist as if he’s signally her to sit in his lap. 

“I can’t help it, how about you win kisses every time you get a question right, Spence,” Y/N proposes. 

“I guess it’s worth more than fake money,” Spencer teases.

“You offend me, baby!” Y/N pretends to be hurt by Spencer’s words, but urges him to continue the game. 

“You only got a couple more left, Spence,” 

“Okay, how about X-Expecting for $200,” Spencer chooses. 

“This chromosome is linked to the baby’s mother,” Y/N quizzes, finding it difficult to keep her smiles and secrets at bay when Spencer’s arm tugs around her waist tightly and his fingers draw patterns under her shirt. 

“What is X-Chromosome,” Spencer answers before Y/N can even finish the clue. 

“You know that you’re supposed to wait until the clue is read, Spence. I should redact kisses,” Y/N fake threats. 

“No! Y/N I’ll die without your kisses, please!” Spencer cries out in pretend disain. Much to his amusement his goofy behavior leads Y/N to plant small pecks on his forehead. 

“There, that should hold you over,” 

“I doubt it, Y/N. I miss you already,” Spencer mutters into her shoulder, as if he’s trying to get closer to his wife more than he could already be with her sitting on his lap. 

“Two more clues till Final Jeopardy,” Y/N announces, ignoring the fact that she’s bypassing the rest of the clues and totally disregarding Double Jeopardy. 

“Hmm, let’s go to Nursery Rhymes for kissing for the rest of my life,” Spencer picks, peppering Y/N’s shoulder with kisses. 

“Huh! Look at that, Spencer, you got the Daily Double, so whatcha going to wager?” Y/N asks, knowing she’s pulling this Daily Double straight out of the air, but Spencer’s affection for only one lifetime is not nearly enough for her. 

“I’ll make a true Daily Double, darling. That means double the amount of kisses,” Spencer tells her, ticking the sides of Y/N waist. 

“Here’s your clue, Jack is urged to be nimble & quick, helping him do this,” Y/N reads from the card. 

“What is to jump over the candlestick?” Spencer guesses, closing his eyes to be assaulted by Y/N’s eager lips. 

“Yay! Double kisses!” Y/N yells happily as she pecks Spencer’s eyelids and nose, causing him to laugh at her light affection. 

“Next question, it’s the last one so you don’t get a choice, but I have so much confidence in you, my genius husband. These are the names of the 3 stages of labor?” Y/N questions, looking over her shoulder to get a glimpse of Spencer’s mind at work. 

“What are dilation, expulsion, and afterbirth,” Spencer answers, once again perfectly. 

“Okay, Dr. Reid you’ve accumulated a total of double kisses for the rest of our lives. Your Final Jeopardy category is, Ready For It…” Y/N announces. 

“Last one,” Spencer says, and Y/N wonders if Spencer’s figured it out by now. She hands Spencer the small cardboard box. He looks at it curiously and Y/N can feel her heart in her stomach. He must know by now, she thinks. He’s brilliant, but sometimes he can be a little clueless when it comes to things like that. Y/N thinks back to how they danced around each other for years before Derek practically had to force them out on a date. He must know. 

“You’re clue is inside the box, Spence,” Y/N tells him, her voice shaky and unsure. 

Spencer carefully opens the cardboard box and reaches in to pull out the small pregnancy test that lay hidden inside. He looks it over, reading the test twice, three times, maybe even four times. He honestly can’t remember taking longer to read something. Spencer looks up at a terrified Y/N. 

“You’re pregnant? We’re going to have a baby?” Spencer asks, desperately wanting to believe what he holds in his hand. 

“You’re gonna be a daddy, Spence,” Y/N tells him, her smile struggling to conceal itself in between the bouts of happiness and joy that courses through her veins. 

“A baby! Oh Y/N. A baby!” Spencer shouts rushing over to where his wife stands in between the entrance from their kitchen to their dining room. 

“You’re happy, right Spence. You want this with me-” Y/N starts, a sudden rush of fear lodging itself in her heart. 

“Of course I’m happy, Y/N. I’m so happy to be a dad. You’re going to be a mom! You’ll be the best mom, Y/N. I love you, Y/N,” Spencer says, crouching down to rub his hands on Y/N’s belly. 

“Hi sweet baby,” Y/N says softly, looking down at her belly and covering her hand over Spencer’s. “I want you to meet your daddy. He’s going to take care of you so well, he might talk a lot but you get used to it” 

“Hey, baby. It’s your dad,” Spencer murmurs quietly into Y/N’s belly. “I’m so glad that mommy told me about you. You gotta do some growing in there before you can meet us, but we love you so much, baby,”

“I really love you so much Y/N,” Spencer says as he sits up to kiss his wife. 

All his life Spencer’s loved science. He loves discovering the undiscovered. Memorizing all those theories and facts and methods could never prepare him for the awe that sat before him. He realizes that he’s looked at science all wrong. There's a beauty in science- a natural, unadulterated beauty that’s so rare to find. But he’s found it and he’s never letting go.

Thank You for Reading!

Taglist: @calm-and-doctor​ 

If anyone wants to be tagged in new posts, feel free to comment and I’ll be thrilled to tag you <3

[h-worksrambles]

Overdue thoughts on Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

I’ve been meaning to talk about my reaction to the latest Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes trailer, and now I’m finally gonna do it. This isn’t some super in depth theory crafting. Much like my Kingdom Hearts IV post this is just some early reflections.

I’ll start with what I’ve noticed in terms of gameplay because this’ll be the shorter part. Also, I’ll just quickly point out that most of my Musou knowledge comes from the two Hyrule Warriors games. So if I sound ignorant about specifics of Dynasty Warriors gameplay, it’s because I am. Just a heads up. 

One thing I’ve been consistently impressed by in Koei Tecmo’s latest Musou spin-offs is how committed they are to trying to make them feel like part of the series that spawned them. Persona 5 Strikers and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity both perfectly match the graphical style of the games they’re based off. They also both pull a ton of aspects from the gameplay of their source material and blend them with Warriors gameplay. Sure enough, we have already seen Combat Arts, Gambits, Adjutants and the class system in these trailers. Combat Arts are particularly neat, since OP special moves are a Warriors tradition, but letting you choose from multiple ones is a neat bit of customisation (or maybe it’s already been done idk). Teaming up with allies on the battle field for group attacks is also cool as is more control over AI allies, but I hope this doesn’t replace actually swapping characters which I think is a great mechanic for these games both to keep variety, and bolster their light strategy elements. Three Houses’ training is also back, and hopefully will be used to cut down on the typical Musou grind rather than increase it.

Ok, that’s all I can observe from the gameplay as far as I can make out and it all looks great. Here’s hoping there’s not any egregious performance issues.

Anyway, onto the story. So far I’m getting major vibes of Age of Calamity. This very much appears to be an alternate timeline, much of which revolves around our new protagonist, Shez. The idea seems to be that Shez’s absence was the main reason Three Houses played out the way it did, and now that they’re here, things may go differently. 

Incidentally I’m glad Shez isn’t a silent protagonist. Byleth had more characterisation than your average silent protag, but they really couldn’t carry a story without the three lords (see Silver Snow for proof). I’ve already praised the new redesigns, and yes they are all chef’s kiss. But I wanna talk chronology. Anime ages are hazy at the best of times, but from what I see, there is definitely a timeskip here and they do look older, but the changes are way less pronounced than they were in Three Houses. The war has not been going on for five whole years it seems.

The game also seems to be going out of its way to tap into some unexplored ideas from the original. For instance, we see a pink haired warrior in the trailer who could very possibly be Holst, Hilda’s previously unseen brother, as well as a new character who resembles Claude (another member of the Almryan nobility?). Even Monica seems to be here, though the jury’s still out on whether this the real or Monica or simply a disguised Kronya. 

Shez also has a companion figure much like Sothis named Arval, but this guy’s whole colour scheme resembles the Agarthans. I know that, as such, some people are expecting a twist villain but I actually hope not. The Agarthans were probably the weakest part of Three Houses’ story as they hindered the game’s gray morality by being obvious villains who masterminded many of Fódlan’s worst aspects. Giving them a sympathetic god figure similar to Sothis, or at least having one Agarthan who isn’t cartoonishly evil could provide them depth, much like the Nabateans.

And of course, we gotta talk about Byleth. 

I think posing Byleth as an antagonist is a great reversal. It takes their silent, borderline Gary-Stu/Mary-Sue nature and turns it into something threatening by turning it against us. Nice to see them living up to the Ashen Demon name. And supposedly, they nearly killed Shez at some point in the past and the story is hyping up a rematch of sorts. However, I highly doubt they are a true villain. We see that their name and gender is still decided by the player, which implies they’re playable. So I’m expecting a dual perspective story simillar to Gaiden and its remake Shadows of Valentia. This would mean switching between Byleth and Shez at story intervals much like Alm and Celica, leading up to their second confrontation. Then again, this game apparently has three routes, so I don’t know how this could logistically work in that context. Interestingly, Sothis’ narration in the first trailer makes some comment about revenge and given how, normally, only Byleth can hear her, that implies to me that maybe Jeralt’s death plays out differently in this timeline. Could Shez themselves be involved? We’ll see I guess...

Lastly, there’s the question of whether this game will have any kind of ‘everyone lives’ golden ending. On the one hand, Three Houses is supposed to be a tragedy. It has no completely happy ending and I think it’s a better game for it. That being said, the Warriors crossovers have often been kind of fanfic-y. They’re bombastic fan-pleasing spectacles that run on hype, and Age of Calamity specifically set itself apart as an AU so it could run wild without contradicting Breath of the Wild. I see no reason Three Hopes couldn’t do the same. Though the fact that it still has multiple routes means that unless there’s some Fates/Sonic Adventure 2 ‘last story’, it probably won’t have a fully happy ending. So maybe bring tissues to be safe.

There’s still a lot we don’t know, but I’m still really excited. I loved Age of Calamity (though I suspect some people would shoot me for saying that because something, something ‘false advertising’) and this looks to bring a lot of the same buckwild AU energy to one of my favourite Switch titles. Plus I’m just looking forward to seeing these characters again, AND using them to curbstomp entire armies. I just hope the playable roster is up to par, considering how much I love Three Houses cast. 

But yeah, long story short, I’m incredibly excited. 

[undercoveravenger]

Closing Cases

Written for my 2021 Halloween event

Pairing: EJ Caswell x Male!Detective!Reader

Prompt: EJ with a Nancy Drew/Scooby gang reader investigating something haunting the school and EJ steps up to help. With “I am running on two hours of sleep and fifty tiny candy bars” and “Can we go five minutes without talking about ghosts, ghouls, or goblins?”

A/N: This is prompt # 2 for my Halloween event! The next prompt will be posted Thursday, October 7th.

-------

East High was being faced by an unexplainable problem. Each night, lockers were being broken into and various class and club rooms had been found vandalized. The faculty had examined the footage from all of the security cameras near the areas that had been attacked, but weren’t able to see anyone in the videos; only that the halls looked normal in one frame, and had been trashed in the next.

As someone who had spent his entire childhood looking up to all of the great detectives, you took it upon yourself to get to the bottom of the situation. You had told Miss Jen, the theater teacher, that you’d be missing rehearsals one afternoon in order to conduct your investigation, but she had been the only person you told.

You supposed that was why it came as such a shock to find EJ Caswell, a popular senior and star of the water polo team and drama department, leaning against the locker beside yours after school.

You disregarded his presence, moving to open your locker and tuck away your textbooks.

“So I hear you’re not going to be at rehearsals today,” EJ said after a moment, turning to face you. “Care to share why?”

“I’ve got more important things to do,” you said easily. You knew it was kind of a weak response, but it was the first thing that’d come to mind.

He rolled his eyes, lips quirking up into a grin. “Yeah, we both do, I guess.”

That gave you pause. You turned to look at him incredulously, and you had to force yourself to ignore the way the amused glint in his pretty blue eyes threatened to make you smile. “Excuse me?”

“You’re investigating the break-ins, right?” EJ asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he watched you.

“I’m not convinced that they have been break-ins, but yes,” you said, grabbing a different backpack entirely out of your locker and leaving the one with your school supplies in it before shutting the door. “Is there a reason you’re talking to me?” You turned away at that, making your way down the quickly emptying halls.

EJ scrambled to keep pace with you, weaving around the remaining students and faculty to stay at your side. “I want to help! I’ll be the first to say I don’t really have experience with investigations, but I want to help stop what’s going on.”

You let out a sigh, turning abruptly to face EJ. “Fine. You can help,” you held up a hand to interrupt him when he made to let out a victorious whoop, “But if you get in the way of my investigation, I will tell you to leave and you will listen. Do we have a deal?”

The brunet nodded vigorously, falling back into step beside you as you resumed your previous path, “Deal. So,” he said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “Where do we start?”

“Here,” you said as you came to a stop outside of a janitor’s closet on the second floor.

EJ’s brows furrowed in obvious confusion. “Our investigation starts at the janitor’s closet?”

You nodded, twisting the door open and entering the small room. You sat down, nestling your way between a set of shelves and several empty garbage cans. “Well, this is where we’ll be waiting until the time is right.”

“And when is that?” he asked as he crept into the closet with you, wincing as the door slammed closed behind him.

You snickered, pulling out your phone to set an alarm. “Well, the thief only strikes at night, right? They’ll probably emerge at around nine o’clock, which means we have,” you glanced back at your phone, “About five hours to kill.”

“Five hours?” EJ asked incredulously, blue eyes wide as he looked at you. “What the hell are we going to do for five hours?!”

“Well, I was going to play games on my phone since I wasn’t planning on having company until a few minutes ago,” you said, glancing pointedly down at the device. “You’re still more than welcome to leave, if you don’t want to wait?”

EJ shook his head stubbornly, shifting to sit with his back against the opposite wall from you. “No, but my phone definitely isn’t going to hold up for that long.” He paused, thinking, “Maybe we could play twenty questions while we wait?”

You shrugged, figuring that humoring a cute boy wouldn’t kill you. “Alright, sure. But since it was your idea, you have to go first.”

He smiled widely, clearly delighted that you’d agreed. “Okay!” He hesitated for a moment while he thought, but a question seemed to strike him pretty quickly. “So, do you make it a point to hang out in sketchy janitor’s closets often?”

You barely managed to bite back a snicker, but the upward tilt of EJ’s lips made you suspect that he knew about your poorly concealed amusement. “I do when my cases require it,” you said by means of explanation, but you found yourself elaborating further at the confused-puppy expression on his face. “Today’s a Tuesday, which means that the cleaning staff isn’t in tonight, so no one will be checking this closet for stragglers like they would the library or a classroom. Waiting in here means that I’ll be able to remain in the building after the doors are locked, which means that I’ll be able to find out if anyone else comes into the building after it’s locked down for the night.”

“Wow,” EJ said, eyes wide as he processed everything you’d just said. “You put a lot more planning into this than I would’ve thought?”

“What, you thought I’d just wing it?” you teased. You had to admit, you were enjoying his company far more than you had anticipated. “I like to think that I take my job pretty seriously.”

He gestured wildly with his hands, like he was trying to wave away his previous words. “No, no, no; that’s not what I meant- I meant that-” He cut himself off as he noticed you beginning to laugh, “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?” He faked offense, but the appearance of his dimples gave away his amusement. “Fine, you got me.” His grin widened as he looked at you, “Alright, Mr. Holmes, what’s your leading theory?”

You let out a thoughtful hum, “Currently? Vengeful spirits.”

EJ let out a surprised laugh. It was deep, uncontrollable and infectious, and you were helpless to hide the grin it brought to your face, though it faded after a moment, “You’re serious?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure what else to think,” you started softly, fingers twisting nervously in your lap as you were forced to admit that, for once, you really weren’t sure about what the outcome of your case would be. “Any normal person would have been caught on camera, and the only people in this city that have the ability to manipulate the footage to make it look like no one was there either wouldn’t care enough to do it or they’ve got an alibi.”

EJ’s brows furrowed, “And none of them could have lied about the alibis?”

“Mr. Mazzara could’ve, I suppose,” you mused, “But I double-checked it with Miss Jenn and it sounds legit.”

“So ghosts then, huh?” he prompted, scooting a little closer to you until his knees brushed lightly against yours. “Seems like a little bit of a leap in logic.”

You shrugged helplessly, a tired grin forming on your lips, “I am running on two hours of sleep and fifty tiny candy bars. Ghosts weren’t the least probable option, if I’m being honest.”

“How would you even get rid of a ghost-” He stopped as the rest of your statement caught up to him, “Wait, you’ve had fifty candy bars?!”

“Just the little ones.” You said, waving off his concern and checking the time on your phone. “Depends on the type of spirit, but I’ve talked to some sophomores who practice witchcraft and they say that sage and pure intention to banish it should take care of whatever we’re seeing, as long as it’s a normal ghost or spirit. I just want to eliminate any other options before I take action.”

“Can we go five minutes without talking about ghosts, ghouls, or goblins?” EJ demanded, taking your phone from you and setting it aside so he could get you to focus on him, “You’ve gotta take better care of yourself,” he said quietly, normally bright eyes turned stormy with concern, “You’ve got a lot of people that care about you-”

You scoffed, rolling your eyes, “Like who?” At his stunned silence, you pressed on, “Everyone at this school thinks I’m a weirdo. You don’t think I’ve heard people call me Scooby-Doo or Nancy Drew or Sherlock?” You shook your head, pushing yourself to your feet as your frustration mounted, “This was a mistake. I’m leaving; I’ll solve this case on my own.”

“Wait,” EJ exclaimed, shooting up to his feet and grabbing your wrist to stop you from going. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m wrong?” you asked incredulously, raising an eyebrow as you looked up at EJ. “About what part?”

He nodded seriously, eyes locked with yours, “About no one caring about you and about everyone thinking you’re weird.” He took a deep breath, and, for the first time since he’d joined your investigation, you watched his confident facade falter. “I care about you,” he started softly, like he was afraid to finally say it. “And I really like that you’re so passionate about solving mysteries.”

Your brows furrowed as you turned to look back at him, “You… like that?”

“I like you,” he said, so quiet that he was barely audible, but when you didn’t pull away he continued, volume picking up as he did so, “I really like you and I can’t believe I get to help you do something I love, and that probably sounds pretty dumb since we don’t really know each other that well, but I would really like to get to know you better and maybe even take you out to dinner sometime if that’s okay with you?”

It took you a long moment to find your voice again. “Okay,” you found yourself saying as you tugged your wrist from his grip to link your fingers with his instead. “Okay,” A wide smile spread across EJ’s face and you could feel an answering one as it tugged at your lips, “When we close this case, I’ll let you take me on a date.”

“Really?” he asked, like he almost expected you to tell him it was some cruel joke. He let out a breathless laugh when you nodded, “Then what are we waiting for?” he asked joyfully, tugging you towards the door by your joined hands. “We’ve got a case to solve!”

You couldn’t help but laugh as you were led out into the long-abandoned halls of East High, glad to have finally found someone who matched you. After all, all the greats came in pairs; Daphne had Fred, Sherlock had Watson, and now you had EJ.

[differentkettleoffishalltogether]

I’m On Fire [Chapter 2]

With her sister’s wedding fast approaching and her Mom hounding her about finding a date, Y/N makes a terrible decision that lands her and her least favorite genius in a confusing situation.

Chapter Summary: Y/N and Spencer start to put a plan together.

A/N:  I’ve got a head cold at the mo’ but I had to get a covid test just in case so I’m not allowed leave my room till I get the results! So enjoy a bonus chapter while I wallow on my own for like 36 hours :( On a positive note, thank you guys all so much for the response to chapter 1 I really didn’t see that coming! I’ve tagged everyone who asked, let me know if you wanna be added

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem Reader

Category: Fake Dating, Enemies to Lovers, (Eventual) Smut, Fluff, Angst, it’s a Slow Burn Baby

Warnings: Cursing, some NSFW language/themes

Word Count: 6.1k

Previous Chapter -- Next Chapter

Series Masterlist

Masterlist 

"Are you coming up or what?"

The question was still ringing in my ears. It caught me completely off guard. 'Up' as in up to Spencer's apartment? Where he lived? I knew he lived somewhere in theory, just like I knew deep down that he wasn't made in a test tube. 

Without noticing I've undone my seatbelt and I'm hopping out of the car, following him around to the front door. I guess I am coming up.

Spencer's apartment is more cosy than I thought it was going to be. It's warm and lived in. It's not big, but I think that might be what makes it homely. Something about the way he behaves had me thinking it would be fully decked out in stainless steel or glass or something. But it wasn't pristine, it was messy. 

There were books bursting from the shelves that lined the walls of the apartment, along with books laid open over nearly every surface in the place, it looked like he was in the middle of reading all of them, and honestly, I didn't doubt it. Maybe I'd misjudged him. He even had some photos of what looked like his family, and maybe friends, even some of the BAU, lining his walls or propped up on his mantle. He had little trinkets and souvenirs on his shelves too, evidence that he'd been around the country for reasons other than a case. I would never admit it to him but there was a real charm to the place.

Once we got inside he took off his bag and suit jacket, tossing them on the desk just inside of the door. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do, and he seemed to pick up on my awkward energy.

"You can make yourself at home" he said, his confident streak remaining. I had no idea what to do with that. What would even make me comfortable in Spencer Reid's apartment? I took a seat on his sofa and just sat with my hands resting in my lap. Really not even sure where I should look without feeling like I was invading his privacy. Even though I wanted to. I think it was morbid curiosity, looking for clues on who this man might actually be outside of the BAU. What I really wanted to do was stand up and walk around, soaking in every bit if this place as if it would help me decipher our messy relationship.

He returned to the living room a few moments later, two mismatched mugs in his hands. He places one in front of me on the coffee table. I pick it up and take a sip. It's lemon and ginger, how did he know what kind of tea I liked? I held the mug in my hands inhaling the steam in an effort to relax. When I look up he's watching me, arms folded across his chest.

"So, how does this thing work. What's the game plan?" I honestly have no real idea. This evening really got away from me, I was still expecting to snap out of it and wake up in my bed at any moment.

"Well I can't say I've ever been in a Sandra Bullock movie before either so this is uncharted territory for me too" I say with a chuckle, trying to ease the tension. Even a little. I can see him crack a small smile but hides it almost instantly, his face hardening again.

"My sister, Margot, she's getting married in like 4 months." I can feel myself tense and I shake out my shoulders, I have to remind myself that he's agreed to this already, "Fuck it, I'm just going to be honest with you. My Mom's mostly freaked out that I'm too attached to this job and that I'll just never find someone again." I shouldn't have said again, fuck. I hope he didn't pick up on that. Who am I kidding. "Even though, I'm not sure I care if I do or don't?" he doesn't say anything, like he's waiting for me to continue. I know I've shared a little too much already but I keep going.

"Margot's 2 years younger than me, I introduced her to her fiancé Philip, we met in college, he's a sweetheart. But since they've gotten engaged Mom's gotten exponentially weirder. I think she's convinced I'm fully going to die alone, as if that would be the worst thing that could ever happen? Anyway, she's been trying to auction me off to all these guys, using this wedding as an excuse. I'm not sure how much of that phone call you actually heard earlier but Mom was trying to sell me on this guy, David, and I just… snapped." I look up at Spencer and he unfolds his arms, leaning in ever so slightly coaxing the story out of me.

"David, he uh, he worked for my father for a while back in high school, filing documents and stuff, busy work mostly. He used to make out with me when he was at our house after school, but then he'd ignore me in the halls the next morning. I know it's because I was a pariah back then or something but I didn't want to think about it today and I just got worked up. I shouldn't have let on that you were my date, I was just going to ask if I could bring Garcia or something, and I'm sorry." I cover my face in my hands, "I'm insane, you can back out if you want to."

I can hear him move from his spot on the opposite side of the sofa, he takes my wrists and gently pulls my hands from my face. He looks into my eyes, "I'm in this now Y/N, what do you need me to do?" he asks, and there's a genuine earnest in his voice that I think I've only ever heard a handful of times. And it's never been directed at me.

"Okay, well we've got a few months before you ha–, wait, fuck!" I throw my head back, there's already a complication, "shit" I curse under my breath. His eyebrows knit together, sitting upright.

"What's the matter?" he asks.

"I forgot about my Mom's 50th, it's next month. They've got this whole huge party planned back home in upstate New York. I've gotta go and they'll probably want to meet you, or they're gonna have a load of questions for me at least. I can try and get you out of it I'm sure"

He gets that cocky look again, he shakes his head "I don't know, I've always liked a bit of competition" he reclines back into his corner of the sofa, taking a satisfied sip from his own mug before speaking again. "You know, if I've got to learn enough to pass as your boyfriend in a month, surely that means you've got to learn enough to pass as my girlfriend within the month, no?"

Oh god. What have I done, why didn't I think this far ahead. "I mean, yeah I guess you're right." I had to remember he was doing me a favor. I had to get over myself. "Okay, if you're sure you're up for that?" I ask, and he nods, and I think he looks excited, or maybe he just finds the whole situation funny.

"If anyone's up for the competition it's you" he says, and I'm not sure if that's a compliment or a dig but I nod in agreement.

He takes another sip of his tea, collected and relaxed. I can't help but notice how at ease he is when he's in his own surroundings. I'm so used to seeing him sitting at a desk surrounded by paperwork, or combing through file after file in the make-shift office in a small-town police station, usually flustered or anxious, or antagonizing me whenever he wasn’t. This was a different Spencer. Completely in control, at ease.

"Alright, shall we get started then, we can't really afford to waste any time can we?" he was actually sort of right, so I nodded. It was only now occurring to me that I'd have to share parts of my personal life with him if I wanted this plan to work. We already knew the basics about each other, I'd read his file when I started at the BAU, I'd read everyones. And I feel like it was safe to presume he'd done the same.

His eyes bore directly into mine as he leaned forward, I think he was enjoying how uncomfortable I must've looked.

"How about I ask you some rapid-fire questions and you have to answer 'em?" he asks, and it's as good of a plan as any, and I can't think of any other suggestions, so I nod.

"Okay, shoot." I say, unsure and nervous, so I brace myself. I'm just grateful that he's making my life easier rather than harder for what feels like the first time since I met him.

I really should've known better.

He leans in, "So Y/N, first question, when did you lose your virginity?"

I almost choke on the mouthful of tea I just took, that can't be what he just asked, and he looks like he's savoring my shocked expression.

"I uh, I don't think you need to know that?" is all I can get out.

"Really? You think that's something your boyfriend wouldn't know about you?" he's right, but I didn't want to admit it outright.

"I feel like I sort of already hinted. It was that same guy David, I was 18, he was 19. We had sex on the couch while my parents went out one evening. I kept my bra on the whole time, he came, I didn't. It was all very standard stuff." I wasn't sure what compelled me to add that last part. I think I was giving in to the open honestly thing. "So what about you Doc?" I challenged.

He didn't seem embarrassed, or even shy. "I must've bloomed little later than you" he admits with a soft chuckle, "Vivian Stewart, I was 21, she was too. It was the last semester of my last PhD and I figured I must be missing out on something. And I sure was" he smirks to himself. "I came, she did too, 3 times. I did a lot of research ahead of time" he mirrored my story and I rolled my eyes. It was hard not to feel a little impressed but I tried with everything I had to stifle it so he couldn't tell. I wish it didn't make me feel something but it did. I gulp down the mouthful of tea that's been sitting in my throat.

I have to shake myself back to reality. I can't give him the satisfaction of throwing me. "My turn." I command, "When was your last relationship Dr. Reid?" I ask, "I mean like, serious one, not like hook-up" I clarify before he can ask. He thinks on it for a moment.

"I'm not sure what you classify as fully serious, but I guess it was this girl, Rebecca, we dated for a while when I first joined the BAU but it didn't work out. What about you?" he flips it back.

"So that was what, like 6-ish years ago?" I ask, he just nods.

"Mine was like 3 years ago now I think. I met this guy Nathan on my first week of college, we dated for like 4 years. He moved here for me when I got accepted by the BAU." I had to stop myself from delving into the detail. It was a long time ago now but it still hurt. "Long story short, the hours were demanding and they got in the way more than I would've liked. We ended up splitting a couple months after I got the job." I tried to play it off like it wasn't one of the more devastating things to happen in my life. But something told me he’d registered that, so he didn't push.

His energy picks up and he looks at me with a grin, but there's something a little sinister behind it. "I've got a more fun question for you." he leans in closer to me, "Y/N, when was the last time you got laid?" I just looked at him in shock. 

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me, I can go first if you really need me to?" his voice didn't waver,

"Fuck you Reid, I know when it was!" I snapped back at him. I did have to think back a little farther than I'd like to pull up the memory.

"Met this guy in a bar when I was out with Pen one night, we went back to his place and hooked up." I say as deadpan as I can make it.

"Well that's not very exciting is it?" he jokes, "Did you at least cum that time?" I know he's just trying to rile me up, but I answer anyway.

"As a matter of fact I did" I earn back a little of my confidence.

"I'm so happy for you, but you did manage to avoid my initial question" fuck "when was this exciting night of yours Y/N?" he probes, like I really, really wished he wouldn't. I could lie, but I'm sure he'd be able to tell. I cringe before I can say it.

"About 8 months ago" I mutter, just low enough for him to hear.

"Sorry, did you just say 8 months ago?" He nearly shouts in disbelief, he seems to find it funny.

"Hey fuck you Spencer!" I go on the defensive, "When was the last time you even got laid?"

"Like two and half weeks ago" he says, confident, and still laughing, "Wait wait, when was the last time you got yourself off? I know you're not waiting 8 months!" he giggles and I think I could kill him. I know I kept giving him outs but was it too late for me to just get up and leave?

"I'm not doing this with you if you're just gonna make fun of me Reid, I get enough of that at work" I get out, my voice is serious but I'm trying to hide how awkward all of this is making me feel, and I don't know that I'm doing a very good job.

I can tell that's gotten to him, he relaxes and eases up on the giggling. "Look okay wait Y/N. I'll stop, I'm not actually trying to make fun of you. I was being serious, I think stuff like this is important if we're gonna have to be comfortable around each other enough to seem like a real couple. Plus, it'll just help break the ice?" he shrugs. "But you don't have to answer if you don't want to."

I soften, because I agree, even thought I hate that he's right. "Fine" I collect my thoughts, "2 nights ago I'm pretty sure." I regret it almost instantly, but breaking the ice is supposed to feel awkward.

"Same here actually," he chuckles, "what'd you do?" I'm so startled by the question I almost forget how to answer.

"I, uh, my, my vibrator? I just felt like uh, I watched some..." I still can't force out a whole sentence. It's not like I was always awkward about sex or anything, I could talk to Garcia, or honestly probably any of the other team members about it. But with Spencer it didn't feel as comfortable. He still sat calmly, smiling just a little.

"Same here, 2 nights back, but with my hands I guess. I wonder if we were doing it at the same time?" he mutters the last part gently and my head goes a bit fuzzy. My eyes drift away from his face and settle on his hands, the mug he's holding looks so tiny with his fingers wrapped around it, I wondered how they'd look wrapped around my-

"Okay I think that's enough for one night, don't you think?" I jump up off the sofa and turn, mostly so that he doesn't catch the blush thats creeping from my neck up to my cheeks. And because I don't know what I'll say, or regret saying, if this conversations continues on its current trajectory.

"Sure," he says, standing up next to me, and I want to move further away instantly, "you're probably right, and it's getting a little late now anyway" he glances at his watch. Ushering me back towards his front door and opening it up. Before I can walk out he lightly touches my shoulder to turn me back to face him, and I wonder if he can feel the heat radiating from every part of me.

"So are you free next Friday after work?" he asks, and I'm so flustered I almost forget why, I just nod. "Perfect, how about we come here again and we can dive into preparing? You could also make a start on getting these onto a hard drive?" he gestures to the antique looking hardbacks adorning the shelves.

'Sounds great!" I perk up, feigning enthusiasm, "See you then!"

"Well, see you Monday morning actually Y/N" he smirks as I walk out the door. Fuck, he was right.

I really hadn't thought this through.

——

The weekend was a bit of a blur. I decided to try and put some useful information into a document for Spencer. It felt strange to try and condense my life into as few pages as possible. I knew Reid had an eidetic memory, and nothing would necessarily overwhelm him. But I also knew that he was someone that the team relied on to fill in a lot of the gaps in the rest of the our knowledge. So I felt bad about dumping a load of information on him, especially considering it was a favor he was doing for me.

I'd complied the majority of my life into a 15 page document and printed it out. Hopefully that would address most of what my family could guerrilla attack him with. There was also something unsettling about the imbalance. I was going to give him so many of the intricate details of my life in a little file, whereas all I really knew about Spencer was what I'd taken it upon myself to learn about him throughout the past few years.

I'd read all of his work while I was in college, given how he was the gold standard of getting into the BAU at a young age, I wanted to know who this guy was. I think I'd pictured something different. And I couldn't deny there was something enticing about finally getting to know him after all of these years of working together. Maybe this could actually be fun, or interesting at least.

----

I arrived early on Monday morning. I thought I was first into the office as usual but Garcia was sitting in my desk chair waiting for me. The second she saw me walk in she tensed, she must've known we were the only people in this early.

"What happened! You've been avoiding me all weekend?" she asked, and she was right. I'd drafted enough texts to her, trying to explain what the plan was, mostly without wanting to admit that she was right. Maybe I was stubborn.

"Alright okay, I drove Reid home." I admitted, dropping my bag by my desk. She rolls her eyes at me, dramatic as always.

"Well I knew that already Y/N damn! What happened next?"

"Fine, we went into his apartment and talked for a while. Trying to sort out the details, get a handle on things I guess?" I said, unsure of how much I should actually give away about our conversation.

"What things!?" She shouts, standing up from my desk,

"I don't know Pen, like logistics and stuff, I still haven't decided how I feel about that little stunt you pulled on Friday night!" I let my frustration get the better of me, and maybe that's why I haven't talked to her. It could also be because I know she's able to read me like a book and I'm not even sure how I feel about this whole situation.

"I call bullshit." She counters, "I know you were relived as hell when I sorted that whole thing out. You would've had anxiety tummy all weekend if I hadn't called Spencer!" I just go silent, she was right. I'd gotten so caught up in the whole, 'how to have a fake boyfriend' that I'd almost forgotten about how stressed I was about Spencer hearing my call in the first place.

"Okay, shit" I sigh. "Maybe you were right Pen. We're actually meeting up again this Friday after work to make a plan for the next while, so I guess that's progress?" I shrug, trying to play it off like this whole situation doesn't make my stomach flip.

"Ohhhhh! So like a date?" She probes, her enthusiasm rising drastically.

"Oh my God Pen no! Like an appointment at best" I diffuse the situation

"Ugh that's no fun" she says, not even trying to disguise her disappointment.

As if on cue Dr. Reid walks through the double doors into the bullpen. Both Garcia and I wave, overall awkwardly, but making an attempt pretend like things were completely normal and like nothing had changed since the last time we were all in the office together.

Penelope heads to her office as the bullpen starts to fill up quickly. Less than an hour later though Garcia's back at my desk and there's a new case that needs the teams attention in Boston. I follow her into the conference room and wait for the rest of the team to join. Spencer follows a moment later with 2 cups of coffee in his hands. I can see my mug in his hand and my automatic response is that he's messing with me. But he places my mug in front of me in the circular table before taking the seat next to me, listening to Garcia's briefing. I don't know if he's ever sat next to me in this conference room, at least not by choice.

I barely had any time to finish my coffee before I have to say goodbye to Garcia and hop on the jet to Boston.

----

The case was grueling. More so than usual. It was wrapped up late on Thursday night and the team decided to fly back home first thing on Friday morning. I was exhausted. Even if there was enough time to get sleep each night it wasn't like I got any. Whenever a case got on top of me like this it made it hard to rest, or get it off my mind at all until it was wrapped up. So even though it was over, that didn't mean I wasn't exhausted.

Hotch gave the team the rest of the day off, given that we have until submit our paperwork by Monday. I wasn't sure if Spencer's invitation from the following week still stood. I didn't want to ask, partly because I was so tired, but also because I was scared. I wasn't about to show up at his house in an effort to have a heart to heart, or hand him a condensed version of my life story on a manilla envelope if he was as drained as I was.

Standing by my desk I packed up everything I'd need to get my paperwork done over the weekend, I was just about finished when Spencer snuck up behind me, perching himself on the edge of my desk. "So, you almost ready to go?" he asks, like it's the most obvious question in the world. I couldn't really hide my surprise.

"Oh yeah. That's fine, I mean, if you're still cool with that?" I ask, and I hate how flustered I sound, like he makes me nervous.

"Of course, why wouldn't I be?" He chuckles, standing up straight.

"Cool, gimme a sec and I'll be good to go."

I pack up the rest of my stuff quickly and we make our way out. There's something that feels a little eerie about the two of us being in an elevator together alone again. It was a different kind of awkward to how it felt a week before hand. It almost felt like a kind of tension rather than a hatred or a rivalry. Either way we rode down in silence.

Once we got to the basement Spencer walks out of the elevator and walks straight to my car without having to ask. I unlock it and he hops into the passenger seat. Like this is a natural interaction. Something we do all the time. And I don't hate it as much as I thought I would.

"So," he says, buckling up his seat belt and breaking the silence, "do you know how to get to my place from here or do you need directions again?"

"Well I've got to turn on the engine first" I tease, hoping he picks up on the reference to our last car ride, he chuckles like he does.

"Are you hungry?" he asks

"Starving."

The delivery guy get's to Spencer's apartment at almost the same time we do.

---

Once the food's been demolished the two of us finally sit on his sofa, the same sides as the week before. "So, shall we get back into this?" He asks, sitting forward slightly to pull a notebook out of his satchel on the floor. It's small and lavender, and it's got a pen clipped into the spine. He cracks it open and flips to a specific page.

"Sorry, what's that?" I ask, pointing to the book, he looks confused,

"They're my notes?" he says, like it should be obvious

"Your notes?" I ask,

"My notes on you." he smirks, again like I'm silly for even asking.

He had notes on me? He had a whole notebook on me? What was even in that thing?

"You've got notes on me?" I ask, my hands reaching out to grab it, but he retreats faster than I can catch him. "What have you got in there that's so serious?"

"Nothing." and his tone's a bit too stern and I don't really want to push it when he's being so uncharacteristically nice to me.

"I've actually got this ready for you" I pull the file out of my own bag and toss it to him. "I'm not sure exactly what you need to know but that should be the majority of it at least."

He opens it up and glances over the the pages. It takes him all of 2 minutes to get through the whole thing. It feels unsettling that he's taking in a boiled down version of my life while I'm just sitting on the opposite side of the sofa. Trying to avoid the attention I pipe up.

"Um, hey, maybe it would be a good time for you to show me where to make a start digitizing your books over here?" I stand up and make my way to the shelf. He jumps up off the sofa and walks toward me, visibly excited.

"That's actually a great idea, I thought that the theses from my degrees could be a good place to start, since I'm pretty sure they're not backed up anywhere." he guides me to a section of the book case by the window. There's a series of leather bound hardbacks, the same gold font embossed on the spines. I recognize all of them, pulling out the first one.

"This is my favorite" I say without thinking about it and he does a double take, clearly thrown.

"You've, uh, you read my work?" he asks, completely puzzled. I'm sort of proud that I've managed to make him this awkward, and I nod.

"Mmhm, back before I joined the BAU actually. Before I really knew you" I regret saying the last part, it comes out a little meaner than I really wanted it to so I back track. "Spencer, I read all of your work while I was in college, you were like the gold standard. I don't think I slept more than 2 hours a night throughout my PHD because I was just trying to get as much done as you." and his face softens at the admission. But it takes him a moment before he responds. Leaving the two of us in silence a little too long.

"I had no idea" is all he says.

"I think this one was best" I say propping up the one in my hand, "you get a bit cockier as you move on” His eyebrows shoot up in surprise, "but I'll start with all of these I guess" I grab the matching books and stack them in my arms. Walking over to his desk and setting up. Glancing at the clock it was only 7pm so I decided to just make a start.

Spencer didn't contest. Letting me just get settled at his desk, I pull out my laptop and begin work on transcribing the first volume. After a few minutes he silently places a cup of tea down beside me and goes to sit on the sofa. The time rolls in quickly after that, each time I look up at Spencer he's carefully combing through the file I'd given him. Re-reading it and making little markings in his lavender notebook. I'm not really sure what I put in there that was worth making a note on but clearly he was reading between the lines on some things. That little notebook was like a profile of me.

When he seemed like he'd finished writing he pulls out his phone, scrolling through it aimlessly like I'd never seen him do before. It made him look so normal. His eyebrows knit together as he's looking at something on his screen and he stands up. Making his way over to me at the desk and shows me what he was looking at.

"Who's this?" he asks, "This guy you're with?"

I recognize the photo instantly. It's from a few years earlier, Nathan and I on the beach, my head resting on his chest. He'd taken it while we were on vacation celebrating our anniversary. That was about a month before I got into the BAU, I had no idea that was going to be our last anniversary. I gulp down the emotions that it stirs. I'm mostly over the whole thing by now, but looking at old photos like that, photos of happier times, it can still sting.

"That's uh, the boyfriend I was telling you about last week. Nathan, we broke up not long after I joined the BAU?" he nods, but he's smart, and I kind of figure he already knew that.

"Ah alright" he takes out the hardback and jots another note down. Maybe he's trying to get a read on me.

"What are you doing?" I gesture to the phone,

"It's research, do you not think that if you and I were really dating that stalking your social media profiles would be on my agenda?" he's smug, and he's right. But I guess I just didn't expect it from him.

"Well that's not really fair now is it? I can't reciprocate, you've got no social media presence whatsoever!" he finds that funny, letting out a deep chuckle and tucking his phone away in his back pocket.

"Maybe so, but that imbalance is hardly my fault. Besides, you've read all my dissertations apparently..."

"Bastard" I joke, slamming my laptop shut and throwing a pen from his desk at him so that it lightly bounces off the top of his head.

"Hey, there's no need for violence Y/N!" he rubs the spot beneath his curls, "Maybe it's time you took a break actually?" he says, sitting himself back down on the sofa.

I was reluctant to admit it but he was right. My eyes were starting to go a little fuzzy after looking at the screen for so long. I stand up and stretch my arms out above my head, feeling my spine stretch out after sitting for so long, letting out a low groan. Spencer waves me over to the sofa and I join him.

"How about we go back to basics?" Spencer asks with a small grin, and I can't help but let out a long sigh.

"I thought I was taking a break, no more questions" he just laughs at me,

"Relax, you're not that interesting, it's just a simple question." he states, and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to find it funny or offensive

"Ugh, fine, shoot"

"Well, actually it's two questions" he corrects, "what's your favorite movie, and what's your favorite snack?"

I'm confused mostly by the fact that it actually is a simple question, I was expecting something a lot more contentious, but also because he looks eager to know the answer.

"I'm not really sure what my favorite movie is to be honest, one of them is Night of the Living Dead?"

He nods to himself, and jots it down in the notebook again, "Alright, I can make that work" he stands up off the sofa before turning back to me, "and snack?"

"Peanut butter cups I guess?" I respond and he grins ear to ear, which is a completely new sight, and I like it way more than I thought I would.

"Perfect, gimme 2 minutes!" he leaves the living room and wanders towards the kitchen.

Spencer returns a few minutes later with a DVD, a packet of peanut butter cups , and a thick knitted blanket gathered in his arms. He drapes the blanket over me and gently places the peanut butter cups on top of it before popping the DVD into the player and sitting down beside me. I'm not really sure how to process any of the situation. Am I about to watch a movie on Spencer Reid's sofa? Sitting next to Spencer Reid?

"I... I, uh, thought you were just asking for your notes?" I ask, pointing at the notebook resting in his lap. He picks it up and throws it onto the coffee table.

"Sometimes I find experience is the best teacher, don't you?" he asks before pressing play, “And besides, it should keep you quiet for a whole 96 minutes” of course.

I can only nod in agreement, I'm not really sure what I'll say if I try to speak. I get myself cosy under the warm blanket and we watch the movie in near silence.

Once the credits roll Spencer finally speaks up, "I actually went to see a screening of this last month downtown, there was this little old horror movie fest-" I cut him off without really realizing, I'm just strangely excited that we've genuinely got something in common.

"Holy shit, I was there!" I say, more enthusiastic than the situation calls for.

He laughs at my excitement, "Well, I guess we have more overlap than I thought, that should probably help with the whole charade." he stretches his arms up over his head and let's out a small, gentle yawn. I'd been enjoying myself more than I thought I would, or would ever tell Spencer, that I'd almost forgotten that we'd both been on a case for almost every waking moment of the past week. I really should feel a lot more drained than I do.

I was just after midnight when I suggested that I head back home. I offered to take some of the books home to work on throughout the weekend but Spencer insisted that I just work on them whenever I came over again. I sort of felt like I should thank him for the evening when I was on my way out the door, or give him a quick hug, no that felt wrong. In the end all I could really muster was a lousy, "goodnight" and a meek wave on my way out the door before I drove home. And couldn't get to sleep.

— —

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Series Masterlist

Masterlist

Taglist:

@mustbeaweasleyginger

@rexorangecouny

@haylaansmi

@blameitonthenight21

@prettybirdi

@justanothetfangirl

@cielo1984

@bxtchboy69

@collectiveuniverses

@cm-imagines-07

@criminalmindzjunkie

@rainsong01

@70sreid​

@andiebeaword​

@arctic-duchess

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@thebadassbitchqueen

[classic80sand90smovieloves2]

Making out with Benny O’Donnell would include~

(My crappy gif)(Requested by @mayalopezzzz )

(I’ve already done nsfw headcanons for Benny so you can find those in my masterlist)

- Benny; being a handsome football player, has been with a lot of girls, so he’d obviously know how to kiss and would; arguably, be pretty damn good at it.

- It doesn’t matter what time it is or where you are; he’ll make out with you. He even sort of likes when people see the two of you kissing, considering it shows everyone that the two of you are a couple. The only exception to this would be your parents or other authority figures since he’s gotta keep up that good boyfriend™ image.

- While, in theory, he could kiss you whenever/wherever, he has a habit of doing so when you’re in his car and/or after football practice/games. He just can’t help it, every time his blood starts pumping, he feels the need to kiss you until you’re both gasping for air.

- The two of you will usually start things off with small kisses; probably because he’s trying to coax you into kissing him kissing him. He’ll give you one then you’ll pull away, and he’ll give you another, longer one, and you’ll pull away, and this will happen again and again until you’re completely swept up in a makeout session.

- Another of his coaxing tactics will be to kiss and nip at your jaw and neck, though he avoids giving you hickeys since; once again, he’s gotta keep up the perfect boyfriend image for your parents; ...and his own.

- He’s an intense kisser no matter how fast or slow you’re taking things; though his intensity does vary on occasion.

- While Benny is definitely a dominant person, he also sort of likes just laying back and enjoying the action so how he kisses you really just depends on his mood.

- If he’s in a more dominant mood then he’ll have his hand tangled in your hair or on the back of your neck while he crushes his lips to yours. He’ll also be relentless as he kisses you, barely wanting to part; even for air.

- When he’s in a more relaxed mood then he’ll; more or less, let you kiss him. He’ll sit back and be more playful, usually giving you more chaste and sweet kisses, rather than passionate and breathtaking.

- He likes pulling you into his lap so that you straddle him. It gives him perfect access to the part of you he loves the most.

- As per usual with Benny, your ass is not left alone. His hands are parked there like 90% of the time, that and he likes to spank you at random and make you gasp.

- Since he occupies himself with your bodacious backside, he doesn’t really feel the need to try and get some of your clothes off, but you might feel the need to get his clothes off. He secretly really likes when you want him to take off his shirt or just run your hands over his muscles; it makes him feel all cocky.

- He borderline likes to dirty talk between kisses which is why so many of your makeout sessions evolve into ...something else. All of a sudden he’ll give you like a “good girl” or other equally sexually charged comment and then it’s all over for you.

- Benny; most likely, drags you to a lot of parties so a lot of your makeout sessions do end up happening when you’re both; at least, a little tipsy.

- He sort of loves sloppy kisses which usually coincides with French kisses; usually while drunk. He just likes that “I’m too into you to care about making things seem perfect” type of feel when it comes to kissing.

- You’ll occasionally be interrupted by his friends; especially if you’re making out at a party, usually with a knock and a chuckle at his truck window.

- Every now and again, he’ll give a little nip; especially when you’re pulling away from each other.

- He loves when you just plop down and his lap and kiss him. He’ll immediately pull you closer and smile into your kiss as he moves to deepen it.

- As much as he loves having you on his lap, there is something very ...enjoyable about being above you, like when you’re laying on your bed and he’s pressed between your thighs.

- When things start to fizzle out, he’ll tilt your face so that he can press just one last, soft kiss to your lips before things really come to an end. He just likes stealing that final kiss from you.