Hi! I love your Naruto thoughts and meta posts with all my heart and I want to ask your thoughts on something that has been on my mind literally since I was 13: what do you think about the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura? I went from being a hardcore shipper when I was a teenager, to being against any romantic relationship in Naruto after finishing the anime when I was in my early twenties. Nowadays I'm very into platonic love and depictions of friendship and I think the anime's obsession with forcing the "romantic interest" curse upon the main female character robbed us of... so much. There are a few wonderful moments in the anime where Sasuke and Sakura acknowledge each other, but because she's always "the girl with the crush", her actions are so often interpret as irrational or selfish by the fandom.
Hi @riemmetric! It's great to talk to you again! Sorry it's taken me so long to answer this; RL has been making demands of me lately and it took me way longer to finish writing this up than I wanted it to (then again, I knew from the minute I read your original ask that my reply was going to get long, so I suppose I should have predicted a delay XD)
It's funny, my sister once asked me to choose between Sasuke or Sakura for an “unpopular opinion” meme, and I ended up doing Sasuke solely because I think the negative fandom opinions about Sakura are so unhinged and divorced from the actual text that I wouldn’t even know where to start. People are entitled to dislike whatever characters they want, obviously, but there are some fandom takes that are, for me, so obviously rooted in bad faith viewings/readings that there’s no urge in me to discuss them. That said, since you asked, I’m happy to go into my own thoughts on this a bit, with the disclaimer for other potential readers that I only write about fandom things for my own personal enjoyment, not as a contribution to The Discourse. If you don’t like Sakura, great! I have no interest in changing your mind. Please consider this a sincere invitation to scroll on by and go enjoy whatever parts of the fandom appeal to you.
In general terms: I love Sasuke and Sakura’s relationship as much as I love all of the relationships in Team 7. If we’re talking about them specifically as a romantic couple, then I probably fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, because I do like them together in a post-canon (to be clear: non-Boruto) setting, after time has passed and they’ve continued to develop individually and reconnect with each other, but I also wouldn’t exactly call myself an intense “shipper,” in the sense that I have no interest in pulling things out from the text and incorrectly citing them as evidence that Sasuke has hidden romantic feelings for her during the canon period. He cares about her in the canon period, just like he cares about Naruto and Kakashi. That’s not up for interpretation; it’s the text. But Sasuke during the canon time period does not demonstrate specifically romantic interest in anyone.
[A note before people who might ship Sasuke with Someone Else emerge to rail against this statement - please just scroll past and continue enjoying fandom in whatever way is most fun for you. It is cool to ship whatever fanon thing you want; I think that’s great! But earnestly citing any loving or emotional thing Sasuke does re: various characters in this story (yes, Sakura included) as indicative of specifically romantic love isn’t supported by the text. I know there are always going to be enormous subsets of any fandom who insist that it is, and I'm certainly not going to barge into anyone else's space to complain about that (because other people having fun together is harmless and none of my business), but I'm not obligated to indulge it on my own blog, either.]
Anyway, that said - the reason why I love Sakura and Sasuke’s relationship (from here on out I’ll use “relationship” in a general, non-romantic sense) is precisely because Sakura isn’t just “the girl with the crush.” Sakura has an arc when it comes to Sasuke, and its trajectory moves in the exact opposite direction of “irrational” or “selfish.” She specifically goes from “the girl with the crush” to “the girl who steels herself and tries to put her personal feelings for Sasuke aside for the greater good” to “the girl who knows she can’t put her feelings aside, but who also knows full well that Sasuke doesn’t reciprocate them, and who still wants to save him regardless, because he matters to her as a person and a friend.”
[I'm putting the rest of this under a cut to save everyone's dash, and also to emphasize once again that this is a personal post on my personal blog which I wrote in response to a question from a personal acquaintance, the full content of which no one is obligated to read. I am not sending this post to random strangers and forcing them to look at it. I'm not even putting it in the character tags. I'm typing it up on my own blog and putting it under a cut. If you already know that you don't like Sakura, but you still click the link/read the post and then feel an urge to comment and complain, I am going to copy-paste this disclaimer and remind you that I specifically recommended that you scroll past and go have fun with fandom in your own way. Thanks in advance for responsibly curating your own fandom experience!]
So, from the top:
1. the girl with the crush
Sakura is, obviously, completely obsessed with Sasuke at the beginning of Part 1. She’s also deeply clueless about him and his history (bizarre though it is, the story seems to indicate that she initially doesn’t know what happened with his family, the same way young!Obito is initially clueless about Kakashi’s father). But what I like about Sakura and Sasuke’s Part 1 relationship is how this changes over time.
The critical scene that kicks this off happens right at the beginning of the manga, when she and Sasuke are talking by that bench - she complains about Naruto and blames his behavior on him being all alone/having no family to scold him; and even says she’s jealous that he doesn’t have parents to nag him all the time. This obviously triggers an outburst from Sasuke, who tells her she has no idea what loneliness means and that she “makes him sick”/she’s “annoying” (importantly, the exact same thing Sakura said to Naruto in anger earlier that day), which in turn prompts Sakura to reassess herself and wonder whether she’s been making Naruto feel this terrible all the time, too:
From that point on, it’s a process of her putting little pieces together. She still has a MAJOR crush, and she still acts like a twelve year-old, but as we approach the end of Part I, Sakura actually has a more accurate grasp on Sasuke’s current state of mind than Naruto does. Naruto is initially excited to fight Sasuke on top of the hospital, because he feels like Sasuke’s finally acknowledging him, whereas Sakura is the one who immediately recognizes that something is wrong about this situation. She is also the one who, after this fight, is concerned that Sasuke is really unwell and might do something drastic like run off in pursuit of the power Orochimaru promised him, but when she communicates this to Naruto, he assures her that this would NEVER happen:
(Sakura isn't convinced, though, because she goes to monitor the exit out of the village anyway.)
I’m not criticizing Naruto for his response here. I ADORE hearing him say that Sasuke is too strong to need Orochimaru, with such perfect confidence - I love seeing how much respect and admiration he has for Sasuke underneath all their fighting, because that’s the whole reason he’s always baiting Sasuke and yelling at him and claiming “you're not so great!” He looks up to Sasuke; he wants to be like Sasuke; he thinks Sasuke is awesome! (It’s that Obito @ Kakashi behavior, you know?) But the fact remains that he is clueless about what’s actually going on with Sasuke in Part 1, and he remains clueless(ly optimistic) for a long time.
(Eg, when he catches up to Sasuke during the retrieval arc and Sasuke climbs out of that cursed seal coffin, Naruto waves at him and calls "Come on, let's go!" as if Sasuke has been successfully rescued and is now going to come running home. Even in Part II, when Naruto hears that Sasuke killed Orochimaru, he beams and immediately says, “So he must be on his way back to the Leaf Village!” And everyone else in the room is like, “....,” because they know better. Naruto doesn’t yet fully understand [or doesn't want to accept] the extent to which Sasuke has willingly chosen this path, and it’s not until after Jiraiya’s death/the Pain attack/the Five Kage Summit that Naruto really starts to understand Sasuke more clearly, which is something he himself admits.)
Sakura, in Part 1, has access to more information about Sasuke - she’s there for his first dissociative monologue during the bells test, she’s there for the curse mark’s placement, she’s there for his first violent transformation in the Forest of Death - she is, in fact, the unwitting catalyst for it (“Sakura…who did this to you?”), and her compassion is the reason Sasuke is later able to overcome the curse mark’s influence - so she has a more accurate/complete picture of “how he’s doing,” for lack of a better phrase, whereas Naruto, who doesn’t know about the curse mark in the first place, is still in the dark. This means that Sakura is able to accurately discern that Sasuke is struggling more than Naruto realizes, and specifically to predict that he’s going to run away.
(This dynamic is then interestingly flipped in the back half of Part II, since at any point after the Five Kage Summit, Sakura doesn’t have access to extremely relevant [if currently questionable and unproven] details that would in any other circumstance inform her behavior).
Of course, just because she has more info in Part 1 doesn’t mean she has some kind of miraculous insight into Sasuke’s every thought and feeling. There are parts of her attempt to convince Sasuke to stay in the village that are as clueless as any of Naruto’s assumptions, and they showcase the kind of magical thinking common to childhood - like when she says that if he stayed with her, she could give him happiness, she’d do anything for him, even help him get his revenge - this idea that she herself can do something to make him feel better, that she can love him powerfully enough to defeat his pain - obviously none of that is rooted in realism.
Is this part of her approach irrational and immature and inadvertently self-centered? Of course it is! But it’s no more irrational and immature and inadvertently self-centered than Naruto’s stated plan to drag Sasuke back to the village even if he has to “break every bone in [his] body!”
Hating on Sakura for her Part 1 attempt to convince Sasuke to stay in the village while simultaneously lauding Naruto for his feels like a bad faith misread of what is, to me, pretty clear narrative intention. The story doesn’t at any point intend for us to see her begging him to stay as a selfish or conniving attempt to get something she wants. She’s begging him to stay for the same underlying reason that Naruto is: she cares about him. She thinks he’s making a mistake that will only cause him more pain in the end (she’s right) and she wants to make it so he feels less pain right now (she can’t. But she doesn’t understand that/isn’t able to admit that, and she’s willing to try ANYTHING that might help).
It’s critical that this farewell scene is set in front of that same bench from their first important confrontation - she references that day and how angry he got at her, and this time she tells him that she understands his reaction. She’s learned things and she recognizes how insensitive she was being back then (“I know what happened to your clan, Sasuke”), even though she still can’t fully grasp all the complexities of the situation. She tells him that him blowing up at her back then helped her understand what loneliness actually meant (as opposed to her previous shallow understanding of it), and she challenges him about his choice right now: "So that's it, you're choosing the lonely path?" And when she tells him that she'll be very lonely if he leaves, we're immediately shown a panel of Sasuke thinking of both his friends, with the very clear implication that if he goes through with this, he will be lonely without them, too - that he's still struggling with the idea of leaving them, no matter how hard he tries to pretend:
Sakura at this point knows that Sasuke isn’t interested in her the way she is in him, but she still wants to give him happiness, however fantastical and immature her ideas sound to us (and, I’m sure, to him). “I’ll do anything, even help you get your revenge/we'll have fun every day, and...and you'll be happy! I'll make sure of it!” - of course, it’s completely childish. It’s irrational. It’s ridiculous to think that any of this would ever be effective, but no more ridiculous than Naruto’s belief that he can simply break every bone in Sasuke’s body and keep him in the Leaf by force.
Both Naruto and Sakura are children who have a deeply oversimplified understanding of Sasuke’s situation. They both still think they can fix him themselves. They both think they can save him themselves. They both think they can convince (or force) him to do what they want, what they think is in his best interests. Both of them don’t yet understand that he has to want to come back, if it’s ever going to mean anything. Their attempts to keep him in the village are immature and unrealistic, yes. What they aren’t, however, is selfish, because neither Sakura nor Naruto are doing any of this with the intention of advancing their own interests. They’re only thinking about Sasuke - how to keep Sasuke safe, how to make Sasuke happy - even when neither of them are taking an approach that will actually work.
Naruto and Sakura are children. They’re afraid of losing somebody they care about. Their attempts to prevent that from happening are desperate and messy and ultimately ineffective, but they are also genuinely felt and rooted in a true desire to rescue Sasuke from his pain, which - and this is the single most important thing that should impact our viewing of Part 1 - is something that Sasuke RECOGNIZES. He doesn’t spend that agonizingly long moment bowed over Naruto’s defeated body so we can pretend he doesn’t understand that Naruto was just trying to help him. He doesn’t take the time to murmur, “Sakura…thank you,” before laying her out carefully on a bench, just so we can discount it and pretend that he doesn’t recognize and appreciate her genuine intention to make things better for him, however clumsy that attempt might have been.
2. the greater good
If Stage 1 Sakura is "the girl with the crush," then Stage 2 Sakura is a progression to “the girl who decides to put her feelings for Sasuke aside in order to protect innocent people, including (but certainly not limited to) Naruto.” She’s driven to this decision by interactions with Shikamaru, who all too recently had to grow up fast himself (“We're not kids anymore...we can't allow a war to break out between the Hidden Leaf and the Hidden Cloud because of Sasuke") and Sai, who risks his new friendship with Sakura and Team 7 in order to speak some hard truths and deliver one of my favorite lines in the whole story: “I don’t know what promise Naruto made to you, but it’s really no different than what was done to me. It’s like a curse mark.”
(INCREDIBLE. How can anybody be complaining about a season where Sai gets to say something that goes THIS HARD and Sakura LISTENS and takes DRAMATIC ACTION that actually propels the story forward in a meaningful way - )
[Okay, yeah, brief personal opinion interlude - it is just bonkers wild to me that there are people who complain about Sakura in the Five Kage Summit arc. That entire season is the greatest character arc she ever has. Literally she has never been more interesting and dynamic than in Season 10; it’s the first time she ever gets to be as deep and fascinating as the boys; what is everybody so worked up about? Oh, “she lied to Naruto that one time” - Sasuke joined infant-kidnapping baby-murdering human experimentation machine Orochimaru when he was twelve years old in order to (dare I say it????) selfishly pursue his personal goals and yet, somehow, we are still able to root for him. He abandoned his friends/allies to imprisonment and death (Suigetsu and Jūgo) or outright stabbed them in the chest himself (Karin) in order to (SELFISHLY) get what he wanted, and yet, somehow, we are still able to love him, understand him, and be on his side. Naruto is canonically not upset with Sakura about her lie after receiving context for the situation and I think we can probably take our cues from him without feeling the need to bring her up on war crimes; please calm down]
[Sorry, I just really love most of Season 10 and think it’s one of the best examples of how good this story can be when every single character gets to do something that matters (as opposed to things being all Naruto, all the time) so I get a little bit worked up over people complaining about some of the best writing Sakura ever gets. I don’t understand what certain elements of fandom want from her. People complain about her being “useless” and not doing anything that contributes to the story, but then they complain just as much when she does finally get to act decisively and have just as complex/dynamic an inner world as the boys. She’s “weak” for being unreasonably in love with Sasuke, but when she tries to be “strong” and put her love for him aside and eliminate him in order to protect Naruto and the rest of the world, she’s evil, because she should have been more understanding of his situation (despite the fact that she doesn’t KNOW anything about his situation). But then when she can’t go through with killing him after all because she cares about him too much despite the things he’s done, she’s not "compassionate" or "kind" or "a good friend," she’s “weak” again. Nothing Sakura does in S10 is more wrongheaded or rash than any of the batshit, buckwild things Naruto and Sasuke have done in the past (and will continue to do in the future), but when Naruto and Sasuke have big feelings or take bold action, it makes them interesting characters, whereas Sakura can’t breathe in anyone’s direction without being minutely scrutinized for moral impurities.]
Anyway. Back to a more measured response.
Every single piece of development Sakura has with regard to Sasuke in this season satisfies me so much. Her initial shock and disbelief at hearing that Sasuke had joined the Akatsuki? Good, appropriate. The fact that she starts to acknowledge the reality of what Sasuke’s done sooner than Naruto does? Also extremely appropriate, very in-character for both of them. Her taking Sai’s words to heart and deciding that the promise she asked Naruto to make when they were children is causing him to suffer and she has to relieve him of that burden? Juicy! AND thematically significant (promises!!!! the burden that a promise places on a person, especially when it can't be kept - we've seen that before in this story and we'll see it again). Her anguished pivot from wanting to protect Sasuke to realizing that she has a responsibility to protect the countless innocents who will die because of the war he’s trying to start? HELLO THIS IS INCREDIBLE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. Her knocking out the classmates who agreed to help her so they don’t have to share in her burden (and so the only person Naruto will hate when it’s over is her)? BRUH. Her being so committed and focused on her goal of saving innocents and protecting Naruto (not just from being harmed by Sasuke/the Akatsuki, but by the possibility that Naruto will someday have to hurt Sasuke himself) that she tries to take everything on by herself and walks into a confrontation that she absolutely cannot win?? INCREDIBLE. (Literally the first time I watched this, I said, “Finally!!! It’s Sakura’s turn to go off the rails!” I laughed with my sister about how Kakashi isn’t even mad, because Naruto and Sasuke have been pulling stunts like this for years and Sakura was way overdue for her own meltdown.) And then, after Kakashi intervenes in the fight - Sakura barreling back into the battle when she realizes he’s going to take on the burden of killing Sasuke himself in order to spare her and Naruto the horror - “I can’t let Kakashi-sensei bear this burden!” I love her for that.
And then, of course, in the end - her not being able to do hurt Sasuke after all. Despite committing herself to the act, despite forcing herself to put her feelings for him aside, despite resolving to stop him from starting a war and killing innocent people, she can’t harm him. She cares about him too much. This, too, is thematically significant - think about Itachi’s “you don’t have enough hatred” - she doesn’t have enough hatred to kill someone she cares about, even if it seems like he deserves it, even if would be the right thing to do to protect others. She can’t do it, and Sasuke almost kills her for her compassion.
I love the dynamic this sets up between her and Sasuke, for a few reasons:
1) Personally, I think Sasuke respects Sakura much more for trying to kill him than he would have if she’d just tried to talk him out of his behavior or beg him to come home (a la their original confrontation in Part 1). This is the first significant interaction he’s had with Sakura in years, and the fact that she does something SO contrary to his memory of her is an important demonstration of the fact that she’s not the same girl she used to be. Sasuke spends a lot of time after his defection declaring to his old team “I’ve changed; I’m not that person anymore,” but this is one of the moments where he’s forced to acknowledge that his teammates have changed, too. Time didn’t just stop for them when he left. While he was turning into someone new, so were they. They grew up without him, and his old memories of them can’t encompass the whole picture of who they are now.
(This is a little tangential, but in general, I love the spectrum of reactions that Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi have in this sequence, and the way that all of them are ultimately messages Sasuke needs to hear. Sasuke - who we know textually regrets what he did here, who apologizes to Sakura for it later - for “everything,” in fact - needs Naruto’s aggressively optimistic open-arms policy, yes, needs that potential, that unconditional possibility of return. He also needs Sakura’s refusal to let him hurt her friends and start a war that will kill thousands of people, needs her surprisingly ruthless attempt to take him down; needs just as much her failure to do so, because it shows him that she still loves him too much to kill him even as she condemns him. And he needs Kakashi’s grim line in the sand, needs someone who very possibly won't hesitate like Sakura (despite the horrifying personal cost), someone who will try to reach him but also won't let him escape and become the next generation’s Orochimaru, who won't let him cause untold suffering to untold numbers of people just because a teacher loved him too much to stop him when he had the chance.
(And then even Kakashi chooses not to deliver a killing blow when he has the opportunity -)
(I know that in fandom people are more likely to be all, “oh, Naruto Good, everybody else Bad,” but I don’t think the narrative frames Sakura or Kakashi as “worse” than Naruto in any way. The story goes out of its way to make it clear how desperately they don’t want to hurt Sasuke and how much they care about him. And [this is just my interpretation, so obviously I won’t claim it as fact], I personally think that Sasuke - Sasuke, who, looking back, can see how lost he was then and how tortured he would have been if he’d gone through with many of his plans - would be grateful to Sakura and Kakashi for making an attempt to stop him when he couldn’t stop himself.)
2) On the other side of this, the fact that Sakura wasn’t able to deliver the killing blow means a lot. Sasuke was incapacitated under that bridge; he was completely at her mercy - but she stopped with the kunai an inch from his back. She couldn’t kill him, even though she knew that he was completely willing to kill her (because he'd attempted to Chidori-assassinate her from behind just a few minutes ago). That’s huge! Sasuke is too out of his head right now to process this or understand it, but later, it's going to matter. She stayed her hand. She spared his life. She loved him too much to hurt him, even when he’d given her every reason to take him down. She hesitated, and he almost killed her for it, but her inability to strike him ultimately gave him yet another chance to come home, another chance to get better, another chance to have a life outside of his pain. Despite everything, some part of her still hadn’t really given up on him, and that knowledge will matter later, when he’s finally able to acknowledge it.
The point of all this is to say that I really have no complaints about Sakura and Sasuke’s dynamic in their S10 confrontation. This season is the point where Sakura fully grows past her “girl with a crush” stage and into her “shinobi must make very harsh decisions” adulthood, but it never means that she doesn’t care about the person she’s trying to take down. Her ultimate inability to deliver the killing blow remains a dangling lifeline for her relationship with Sasuke, an open door that Sasuke is able to walk through at the end of the story (literally, in fact, when Sakura opens that portal for him and saves him from Kaguya’s desert prison, and figuratively, too, when Sasuke apologizes to her).
3. she only wants to save you
The last stage in their relationship is what Sakura settles into during the war arc. She started off Part 1 being just a girl with a crush, then tried to harden her heart and put her feelings for Sasuke aside in service of the greater good, but she was unable to actually follow through and kill him, and because of that, what she’s come to accept by the war arc is actually two things: that 1) Sasuke truly is willing to let her die if it furthers his goals, and 2) she wants to save him anyway.
She has no intention of pursuing Sasuke romantically. She knows full well that Sasuke isn’t interested in her. She even knows that Sasuke isn’t really on their side (there’s a great scene where Sai questions Sakura about Sasuke’s return, and she reassures him that everything is fine, and Sai sadly thinks to himself “even I can tell your smile is fake”). She’s well-aware that Sasuke didn’t try to help her when Madara stabbed her. She’s well-aware that he left her to die in the lava pit. She’s also well-aware that none of this is enough to make her stop loving him. He doesn’t have to care about her - she still cares about him. She still wants to help him. She still wants to save him.
This is not hidden, hard-to-parse character development. It’s explicitly articulated on the page:
Sakura’s not trying or wanting to make you hers! She only wants to save you.
I’m not sure if people look at this last confrontation and unquestioningly take Sasuke at his word (as if we haven’t just read 71 volumes/watched 700 episodes showing us how how painfully distorted his thinking is), or if they stop reading/watching before the end of the scene, or if they don’t understand that Sasuke saying something doesn’t make that statement an accurate representation of reality. The entire point of this scene is to show us how deeply mistaken Sasuke is about Sakura (and, by extension, the rest of Team 7). He’s locked into a false pattern of thinking. His single-minded focus on revenge and destruction has blinded him to the unconditional love his friends feel for him; he’s become so accustomed to using others and being used that he can’t understand or accept that someone would care about him without needing a reason, without needing him to love them back, without needing to receive something from him in exchange.
Sakura’s not trying or wanting to make you hers! She only wants to save you.
Sasuke matters to Sakura as more than a love interest. He always has. She does love him romantically, yes, but she doesn’t only love him romantically, and her desire to help him is not and has never been contingent on him returning her feelings, romantically or otherwise. Sasuke isn’t able to acknowledge that in this scene, but that doesn’t mean we’re supposed to just sit back and agree with his warped perspective. Kakashi is the one who’s explicitly positioned as the voice of the narrative here. We, as the audience, are supposed to recognize that Kakashi is the one telling us the truth.
[tangential thing 1: You don’t have to love Sakura's last plea to Sasuke here. It’s not my favorite, either - the best part, other than Kakashi’s speech at the end, is the moment after Kakashi collapses when Sakura’s expression changes from pained uncertainty to pure rage, when she grits her teeth together - when I first saw that, I almost leapt out of my seat like “Oh my god. She’s finally going to let him have it. It’s finally happening - ” I wanted that so badly, and I still think it would have been a more effective writing choice for Sakura’s last words to lean more into her anger at the suffering Sasuke is causing all of them (himself included!) and less into yet another of Kishimoto’s “let me have Sakura articulate what a shame it is that she can’t do as much as Naruto despite the fact that I literally just went through a major reveal sequence in the war to show that she’s caught up to the boys; I can’t make up my mind about whether I want her to progress or not” - it’s extremely frustrating (and it's something he does at the very end of the S10 Team 7 reunion, too, which is the ONLY moment of S10 that falls flat for me). But at the same time, even if there are ways this sequence could be more satisfying, it doesn’t change the fact that her plea to him is not remotely motivated by a desire to be with him romantically and not anything to condemn her for.]
[tangential thing 2: I do like how she remembers that moment when Sasuke says “Thank you.” That panel precedes her saying “If there’s even a tiny corner of your heart that thinks about me…” (which I’m sure is one of the things that people like to criticize about this scene, aka “oh she’s sooooo self-centered” etc), but that particular line of dialogue is preceded by that particular flashback panel for a reason: Sakura knows that Sasuke DOES think about her. He thinks about all of them. Sakura remembers that “thank you,” and it reminds her that despite everything Sasuke has done and said since, despite all evidence to the contrary, she knows in her bones that his expression of gratitude back then was genuine. He cared about her once. He cared about all of them. She’s trying to reach the part of him that still does, if it exists.]
[tangential thing 3: The fact that Kakashi says “she suffers from loving you,” and it triggers Sasuke to remember his own family - thinking about how much he suffered (and still suffers) from loving them - “Perhaps…those are the ties to a failed past” - the idea that it’s not worth it to have bonds if it means you suffer this much…that it’s too difficult, it’s too painful, and if Sakura and the rest of Team 7 were smarter they would just give it up (all Sasuke knows how to do now is sever potential bonds before they can hurt him; so why aren’t Sakura and the rest of his teammates doing that, why can’t they let it go, why are they making this so hard - ) << yeah, he clearly doesn't care about her/them at all.]
4. the shadow of my family
This has all been a really long way to answer the original question, but the short response to “What do you think about the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura?” is “I really care about it,” just like I really care about the relationship between Sasuke and Naruto, just like I really care about the relationship between Sasuke and Kakashi. And I don’t think the story ever asks me to choose between them.
I’m not sure whether it’s the impact of Boruto-era “canon” that gets in the way of other people approaching things this way (I don’t consider sequel material when I evaluate the original story), or if it’s Kishimoto’s frequent disinterest in/disrespect towards female characters, which yes, does sometimes make it harder, or if it's a shipping thing (bane of my existence), or some combination of factors, but for me, taking one member of Team 7 out of the equation hobbles the rest of the story. I can’t read/watch Naruto while hating one of the protagonists and loving the other three. It doesn’t work like that for me. The story wasn’t written that way, and there’s nothing in the text that would cause me to receive it that way.
That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with disliking one of the main foursome (or any character, for that matter) - obviously we're all going to have different preferences, and everyone is free to enjoy or reject whatever parts of a story they want, or to like or dislike whatever characters they want. I know that some people have more fun disregarding canon and doing their own thing, which is fine. My own personal zone of enjoyment comes from receiving the story as closely to how I think it was intended to be read as I can, and personally, when I look at this particular story, what I see is that all the members of Team 7 clearly demonstrate their love for Sasuke in ways that he himself later recognizes and acknowledges. All of them are driven by their desire to save him and their unwillingness to hurt him. All of them make repeated choices to chase after him when he runs away, to trust him when he hasn't exactly earned it, to give him another chance when he doesn't appear to deserve it. ALL of them, not just Naruto, do these things multiple times throughout the story, and Sasuke owes his life (and thus his eventual recovery) to ALL of them, many times over. Kakashi disobeys Hokage-elect Danzō and breaks the law to negotiate for Sasuke's life with a foreign head of state. Sakura and Kakashi both have opportunities to kill Sasuke in the Land of Iron, and they choose to spare him instead. Kakashi stops Sasuke from killing his only friends at two different points in the story, which would have been a mistake Sasuke couldn't have recovered from. Sasuke would have died in Kaguya's desert dimension if Sakura hadn't saved him (Sakura, who knew that Sasuke wasn't even truly on her side yet, who knew he'd abandoned her for dead multiple times already that day). Kaguya's bone bullet would have killed Sasuke too, if Kakashi, with his intention to die in Sasuke's place, hadn't leapt in front of it (Kakashi, who also knew that Sasuke wasn't fully on their side yet, who also knew that Sasuke had abandoned him for dead earlier that day). Sasuke and Naruto would have BOTH died in the Final Valley if Sakura and a severely injured Kakashi hadn't chased after them to heal their injuries.
Remove any one member of Team 7, and Sasuke never makes it home. Without the combined efforts of all three of his teammates, he doesn't survive. That’s the way it should be, thematically, for a story whose first and most foundational premise was the importance of teamwork, and since Sakura was just as essential to that framework as everyone else, I’m just as invested in her relationship with Sasuke as I am in his relationship with everyone else. You can’t remove one leg from a four-legged stool without damaging the integrity of the entire structure, and for me, discounting any single member of Team 7 irreparably damages the integrity of the entire story.
TL;DR: I love all of the Team 7 relationships, including Sakura and Sasuke's, because despite what some segments of fandom seem to believe, the text of the story never gives me any reason not to.
49 notes
·
View notes
𝐢 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐟𝐮𝐜𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫
Rafe Cameron x fem!reader
obx masterlist
summary; your best friend, Rafe, finds out that you're dating someone else and he's not happy about it
warnings; some angst, jealous!Rafe, SMUT, praising and degrading, spanking, oral sex (fem receiving), hickeys, p in v, unprotected sex (wrap it up you all!)
a/n; english isn't my first language, so you might find some mistakes; I'm open to constructive criticism. Enjoy!
While you were sitting on your bed doing your homework, Rafe suddenly entered your room, looking at you with anger in his ocean blue eyes.
"When were you going to tell me?" he questioned, not even bothering to say hello.
He had showed up unannounced, clearly annoyed at you; but the thing was you had no idea why he was so mad, since you hadn't done anything that could have upset him.
Or so you thought.
"Tell you what, exactly?" you asked.
Your confusion only grew as seconds passed, luckily, Rafe broke the silence and said, "That you're dating someone."
His statement surprised you, you didn't expect him to figure it out that soon; only a week had gone by since you had started seeing the guy. But guess what, Rafe Cameron seemed to have eyes and ears everywhere.
"I don't know, Rafe," you answered him, then added, "I mean, I've barely know him for a few days." You saw his stoic features harden as you talked.
"So what?" he replicated. "You didn't think I would want to know?"
You rolled your eyes at his hypocrisy; he dated a new girl every week and he for sure didn't talk to you about any of them —not that you wanted to know anyways. Why should you tell him then?
"Know what? That I'm fucking someone? I don't recall you telling me such things" you declared as you frowned, starting to get mad at him.
You stood up, taking some steps in his direction, while his eyes widened at your words. He clearly wasn't expecting to hear that.
"You've fucked him?" the blonde snapped; his jaw was visiblely tense.
"Yes, it is wrong now?" you asked him with raised eyebrows at the same time that you crossed your arms.
Your breasts poked out from the neckline of your tank top, drawing Rafe's attention for an instant. Though he looked away quickly, his intense stare made you blush a little and you let go of you arms unconsciously.
"Yeah, it is," he stated, then he added, "you said it yourself, you don't even know him that well."
He was being so unfair to you that your blood started boiling. When he fucked girls at parties, he didn't care about not knowing them; he didn't even ask for their names.
"So what?" you mocked him. "Do you know every girl you've put your dick into?"
He gasped, not knowing how to argue with that; he knew that you had a point, but he wouldn't recognise it.
"It's different," he ended up saying.
"The hell is not," you refuted.
After a few seconds of silence, in which you gave each other a deathly stare, you sighed and decided to speak again, "Sometimes I don't get you, Rafe, I just don't."
Rafe's attitude pissed you off so much; one minute he was all over you, like you were the most precious treasure he had, and the other he was fucking other girl that wasn't you. And it enraged you because you liked him, a lot, even if you didn't want to admit it out loud.
"Bet he doesn't even fuck you properly." His sudden statement made you gasp because he was, in fact, correct.
You couldn't deny the guy sucked at sex, but he was popular and good-looking and just happened to be at that party where Rafe stood you up for some blonde chick; and given that you wanted him to feel as jealous as you felt when he fucked other girls, you couldn't prove him right.
So you held your head high and, then, you lied, "I think he does it quite well actually."
You had to look up at him after he took a step closer, fixating his fiery eyes in yours. Suddenly, you were so close together that you could feel his warm breathing in your skin.
"Bet I could fuck you so much better."
He left you open-mouthed and your heart started hammering in your chest as he spoke. When he finished talking, he licked his lips with a smirk and your eyes betrayed you, looking closely at his mouth.
On a normal basis, you would have been intimidated by him, but that day you were feeling bolder than ever, so you rose up on your toes to reach his ear and whispered, "Then fuckin' prove it."
He shortened the distance between the both of you, grabbing your chin between his fingers and connecting your lips with his; the action took you by surprise and your eyes widened for a moment. In just seconds, the kiss became so hungry and desperate that your breath hitched and your legs started feeling like jelly.
Your hands caressed his cheeks, feeling the stubble on his jaw, while you closed your eyes. As the kiss deepened, you felt his bigs hands grabbing your butt and then Rafe lift you up so that he could place you in top of your bed. You felt your notes getting crushed, so, without breaking the kiss, you fumbled on the mattress for the sheets to toss them to the ground.
After that, you took off his cap, throwing it aside, to tangle your fingers in his messy hair. You pulled his blonde locks to push him away in order to start undressing; your eyes didn't leave his as you grabbed the hem of your t-shirt and removed it. His eyes dropped from your eyes to your exposed breasts and his breathing became heavier.
He stood still for a few seconds, just staring at your body, before saying, "You're the prettiest thing I've ever seen."
He leaned over you to take one of your nipples between his lips, sucking at it like a man starved. You moaned at his action as your hands sneaked under his polo shirt to touch his soft skin; when he let go of your nipple with a loud pop, you decided to take it off.
As you put his shirt aside, he started to kiss and lick your neck, marking it. You were sure he'd leave love bites all over it and the thought of everyone seeing his marks on your body only made you wetter.
You had waited so long for that moment that it felt unreal.
"I want that fuckin' asshole to know who you really belong to, baby," he stated, gently bitting your collarbone.
His hand wandered over your left thigh, caressing your naked skin, until it reached your shorts. He looked at your face, asking for permission to undress you completely; you nodded to make him know that it was okay. Rafe smirked and, then, took off your shorts and underwear.
He didn't waste any time after that; he just buried his face between your legs. His action took you by surprise and you gasped for air while you grabbed at your bedsheets, moaning loudly when he sucked hungrily at your clit. Your back arched because of the pleasure his talented tongue was giving you, licking every sensitive part of your pussy from your entrance to your bundle of nerves.
Seconds later, you felt how Rafe placed his tongue right onto your clit again, licking it up and down at a tortuous pace. Your legs started shaking and you grabbed his hair to bring his head closer to you; he was almost suffocating in your pussy, but he couldn't think of a better way of dying. You felt a little bit ashamed when you started cumming after just a few minutes of stimulation, however, Rafe encouraged you to do so.
"That's it, baby, cum in my face like the little slut you are," he said, rubbing your clit with his thumb to help you ride your orgasm.
"Oh my god! Rafe!" you moaned, desperately grinding your pussy against his mouth.
The pleasure clouded all of your senses for what seemed minutes and when the feeling went away, you looked down to find his blue eyes staring at you, mesmerised.
"I love you," he admitted, climbing over you to kiss your lips hungrily but you couldn't return the kiss.
"What?" you asked, totally surprised by his confession.
"I love you, baby, do you love me?" he answered, caressing your cheek while he placed himself between your legs.
It took you a few seconds to react, but you finally said, "I love you, Rafe."
He smiled at you, giving you a short kiss before unbuttoning his short dress pants under your attentive gaze. You tried to help him undress but he didn't allow it, grabbing your hips to turn you around and place you over your stomach. After that, Rafe couldn't resist the urge to spank you and his action made you moan.
"Stay still, baby," he ordered while he finished undressing.
"Again," you demanded, ignoring his request.
You heard his laughter.
"So my little slut likes to be spanked... Interesting," he pointed out, positioning behind you and lifting your hips from the mattress.
Then, he slapped you again, harder that time, and you moaned, feeling your pussy getting wetter —if that was possible. You looked back, finding him in all his naked glory and your cheeks turned red at the sight.
He was gorgeous, every part of him.
"Please, Rafe," you begged, shaking your butt in need of some sort of friction.
"Fuck, baby, you have the prettiest cunt," he told you, rubbing the thick head of his cock over your clit and you squirmed in response, "I'm going to fucking destroy you, sweetheart."
He penetranted you in one single thrust, taking your breath away because of the sudden intrusion. He was big and it took you a few minutes to adjust to his size, but he didn't push your limits, thrusting into you slowly and carefully at first, which made it more pleasant for you.
When he felt that you were ready to take more, he started pounding into you faster; his dick filled you perfectly, it was like he was made to fuck you, and in no time you were a moaning mess under him. With each thrust, his pelvis hit your ass cheeks, pushing you hard against the mattress.
"I wish you could see yourself, baby," he panted, slapping your thigh while he screwed you hard, "You look like a fucking goddess."
The bedroom was too hot; his skin was covered in sweat and it felt sticky against yours. He leaned over you, reaching for your neck to cover it with wet kisses. At the same time, his right hand trailed toward your pussy, pressing and rubbing your clit with two fingers. You held onto his arm, digging your fingernails into his skin unintentionally due to the pleasure.
You bit your lower lip so hard that your drew blood. He noticed it, so he grabbed your jaw with his free hand to bring your mouth closer to his and licked your lip clean.
"I'm so close, Rafe," you announced, whimpering on his lips.
"I know, baby, I can feel your pretty pussy tightening around my cock," he moaned next to your ear, giving you goosebumps.
Hearing Rafe's moans was your new favourite thing in the world.
"My little slut is gonna cum all over my cock?" He asked, caressing your back until he reached your ass, spanking you again.
"Rafe, yes! I'm cumming!" you almost screamed in pleasure, trembling in his strong arms.
Your muscles became so thigh that your orgasm triggered his own.
"Fuck, baby, I'm cumming too," he warned, trying to pull out because he wasn't wearing a condom, but you stopped him from doing so.
You didn't want your orgasm ruined.
"Inside, please," you begged.
Rafe pounded into you one last time before he came with a loud moan, filling you with his cum. He kept thrusting into you for a few seconds to ride his climax and then he collapsed over you on the mattress. It took him a moment to move to the side to cuddle with you; both of you were gasping for breath.
"Who fucks you better then?"
You couldn't help but smile and answered, "You do, Rafe."
3K notes
·
View notes
Every Single Day
Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female Reader
Synopsis: When his daughter demands him to tell the story of how the two of you met, Spencer can't help but oblige.
Warning(s): dad spencer🥰, established relationship (eventually), parent-child relationships, alcohol consumption, brief interaction with a douchebag, made-up astronomy facts, made-up places, idk if there's any cursing but I'll throw it in here to be safe, implications of sex and nsfw themes (minors be advised), pregnancy, mentions of illness, mentions and/or implications of character death, topics of loss and grief, angst and fluff because I love the best of both worlds👍 (pls lmk if I missed anything)
Word Count: 7700-ish
Author's Note: hi 👋 I'm back again with another dad!spencer fic bc apparently I'm a sucker for him. I got a lil carried away with this one lol but anyways, I'm also writing this for the meet cute challenge hosted by the amazing and talented @imagining-in-the-margins so pls go head to her profile and show some love cause she's a peach ❤️ don't forget to leave a LIKE+COMMENT+REBLOG
Criminal Minds Masterlist
The air smelled of freshly brewed coffee. Against the wind, shades of crimson and orange swayed on the trees. Fallen leaves crunched underneath his feet to the cadence of his leisured steps.
Two deep breaths, in and out. Spencer Reid greeted autumn with the deep longing of an old friend.
Next to him walked a source of light bigger than the sun, jumping and bouncing excitedly on the sidewalk. Her tiny fingers emitted warmth inside of his hand. There was a skip to her step that reminded him of the innocence he had long lost. The innocence she now possessed.
Spencer loved this little girl beyond everything he had ever known.
"Puddle, Dee."
The tiny bundle of joy jumped to escape the small pool of water, grinning up at her father, who then began ruffling her hair until she evaded his onslaught with a shriek.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, Pumpkin?"
"You never told me how you met Mommy."
Spencer glanced down at the 6-year-old, dressed gorgeously in her favorite floral dress, complete with a sweater that had entailed a hearty discussion about humans' perception of cold. It was only after he bribed her with the promise of a chocolate cupcake from Wakey Bakey did Spencer finally convince her to wear the woolen piece of clothing.
His daughter stared at him with a radiant smile peeking out behind a curtain of hair. A smile which Spencer always argued had belonged to you, even though the rest of Diana Aurora Reid was the splitting image of her beloved father.
"Surely I've told you before, Dee."
"Nuh-uh."
"Of course I have."
"No, Daddy. You haven't."
"Pumpkin, you know I don't forget stuff ever," Spencer said, looking at the little girl who was swaying along to the rhythm of her footsteps. "I used to tell you that story all the time. Back when you were still a baby."
Just as predicted, Diana let out a dramatic gasp as if Spencer had uttered the most offensive thing known to mankind; like claiming the earth was actually flat, for example. Spencer couldn't contain his grin upon seeing her reaction.
"But Daddy, that was so long ago!"
"Do you not remember, Dee?"
Diana shook her head.
"Fine. But Mommy must've told you the story already, right?"
"She has, but--"
"But?"
"But I wanna hear it from you."
Little Diana knew that her father could never resist her puppy dog eyes, especially garnished with that adorable pout on top. Once upon a time, you declared it sickeningly cute and annoying whenever Spencer would pull the same trick on you. When Dee started doing the same to him, you had simply laughed and kissed his cheek, letting him get a sweet taste of his own medicine.
Spencer smiled at the young girl next to him, squeezing her nose and relishing in the gleeful squeal that echoed from her chest.
"What do you wanna hear, Pumpkin?"
Diana held her chin, seemingly deep in contemplation before deciding, "Everything, Dad! I wanna hear it from the start."
"The start, huh?" Spencer hummed thoughtfully, his mind already reeling back to the first moment he ever laid eyes on you.
The story began on yet another ordinary Friday night.
Luck was on the BAU's side when the team managed to wrap the case they had been working all week just before Friday afternoon. By the time the sun was setting, their jet was already high up in the sky, en route from the state of Delaware to Quantico, Virginia. Spencer was looking forward to going home at a reasonable hour for once--maybe catching up on the four reading materials he had promptly pushed aside after his team was called to Delaware to work on the latest case--but that plan dissipated when Derek Morgan suddenly appeared by his side.
"Drinks. Tonight. Everyone's coming, and I'm not taking no for an answer," Derek said before dragging a reluctant Spencer away with him, ignoring the protests that the younger man kept grumbling under his breath all the way to the team's favorite bar.
Spencer just hadn't known it yet, but later down the road, he would spend the rest of eternity thanking Derek Morgan for dragging him along that night.
The Friday night crowd at Shaw's was borderline brutal, but fortunately for the team, a booth in the corner became vacant the moment they stepped into the threshold.
Two hours later, Spencer's fellow teammates weren't even close to calling it a night. The last chorus of "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" by Whitney Houston had just finished blasting from the speakers when Derek sauntered back to the booth, twirling a flushed Penelope Garcia in front of him. Spencer slipped out of the booth to allow them in--preferring to stay on the most outer seat instead of crammed between his tipsy friends' bodies--before sitting down once more.
"Hey, Genius," Penelope called, waving her empty beer glass in front of Spencer's face. "Be a darling and get me a refill, will you?"
"Garcia--" Spencer quickly snatched the glass from her hand before she could send it smashing against someone's head, "--are you sure you want a refill?"
Penelope scrunched her nose. "Why do you ask?"
"Because I think you're plenty drunk already."
"I'm not that drunk," Penelope denied, giggling when an unexpected hiccup interrupted her slurred words. "Derek, tell the beautiful Doctor I'm not that drunk."
"She's not that drunk, Reid." Derek grinned. "While you're at it..."
Spencer could only sigh when Derek slid his own empty glass across the table.
It was past 10 o'clock at night, and the crowd of people in the establishment seemed to have doubled in the couple of hours that the team had been there. Spencer had to squeeze himself through the ocean of patrons flooding the bar, barely able to move his limbs without other people's arms or elbows bumping against his ribcage.
Spencer was waiting for the bartender to complete his order when he happened to glance towards his right, catching sight of the concealed panic that triggered every profiler bone in his body.
Any other person would have taken one look at your face and presumed that everything was alright, but Spencer knew better. He recognized the frantic movement of your eyes, the tight press of your lips, and the impatient knocking of your fingertips on the counter. He only caught the tail end of your voice before discreetly listening to what the man you were talking to had to say.
"--so, unfortunately, I can't."
"I told you, Baby. My Veyron runs at over 260 miles per hour. We can go to Red Clover Hill and get you back home safely by twelve. It's simple math," the guy slurred smugly.
"Actually, that's not true."
The drunken man turned around at Spencer's interruption.
"Excuse me?"
"The Red Clover Hill State Park is approximately 229 miles away from here. Though theoretically, you could drive your Veyron at its maximum velocity, which is around 268 miles per hour, it's very unlikely you'll be able to maintain that speed for the entirety of the ride, considering the terrain you would have to go through between here and there. The fastest you can probably get to the park is in 60 minutes, give or take, and that's being generous. You would have to drive back to D.C. as soon as you arrive at the park if you wish to be back by twelve. It's just realistically impossible."
The man in front of him couldn't be less impressed by Spencer's lengthy rant.
"And who the hell are you?" the drunken guy said, pinning Spencer with a stare that was clearly supposed to be intimidating.
Spencer didn't even flinch. "No one. Just a guy who happens to know a lot about... simple math."
Your loud cough tore Spencer's attention away from the drunk man and towards you, who looked ready to burst from the laughter you were holding underneath. Even under the terrible lighting of the bar, Spencer could still pinpoint the hint of unspoken amusement glimmering inside your eyes.
"Sorry, Bill," you said to the man. "I really do need to be back home by twelve tonight. Maybe some other time?"
Bill didn't need to be told twice. He received the message loud and clear.
Spencer watched the other man scurry away, tail between his legs, before your charming smile enraptured him once more.
"Thank you for that. I was beginning to think he might never leave."
"Happy to help." Spencer smiled thinly, scratching the back of his neck even though the spot wasn't itchy. "What did, uh, why did he want to take you to Red Clover Hill, of all places?"
"Oh. That was... partially my fault." You grinned innocently. "I didn't know he was gonna be an insufferable drunk when he came over, and I was in the middle of watching this."
You pulled out a silver tablet from your lap. Spencer took a peek at the screen, seeing what looked like a live feed of the night sky--over North Carolina, judging by the visible constellations on the vast scene--stamped with the day's date at the bottom of the footage.
"You're watching the Roux-Nell?" Spencer deduced after gathering the facts: the live feed of North Carolina sky, the mention of Red Clover Hill State Park that harbored one of the highest grounds in North Carolina, including a collection of some of the most sophisticated telescopes in the country; you must have been planning to view that night's sighting of the Roux-Nell comet, its first time since the last one in 1927, and only its third one in history.
"Yes! How did you... don't tell me. You're an avid astronomy fan, too?"
Spencer's responding smile only made you beam even brighter.
"Anyway, that guy earlier, Bill, he approached me and asked what I was watching. So, I started talking about the Roux-Nell and about how I wish I was at Red Clover Hill right now since everyone keeps saying it's one of the best spots to view tonight's sighting. I thought he was genuinely interested until he started talking about his Veyron this, his Veyron that. I didn't even realize until a whole five minutes later that he was talking about his car!"
When you finally finished explaining, your eyes locked with Spencer's hazel ones before you seemed to cower shyly.
"Sorry. I can get a little excited when I'm talking sometimes."
"No! Don't be, it was--" Spencer stopped himself before he could complete his sentence.
What was he about to say?
Insightful? Entertaining?
Endearing?
Eventually, Spencer opted to settle for something safe and simple. "I get that way too, sometimes. A lot of the times, actually. So you don't have to apologize."
The fire flickered back inside your gaze following Spencer's admission. It burned brilliantly beneath the kindness you radiated, forged by the sharp intelligence he could see shining out of your eyes.
"So--" Spencer cleared his throat, attempting to shift the conversation in order to distract his racing mind, "--why did you tell him you needed to be back home by twelve?"
"Oh, that? I told him I'm donating blood tomorrow morning, so I need to at least get seven hours of sleep for the night."
"That's a clever lie."
You tilted your head slightly at his statement. "What makes you think it's a lie?"
"Because you're here. Nobody drinks alcohol before they're supposed to donate blood."
Your eyes flashed with surprise. "Not bad, Mister. You're very perceptive."
Spencer shrugged, trying not to appear too flustered by your casual compliment. "It's what I do."
You raised an inquisitive eyebrow at his reply.
"I'm a profiler."
"Profiler?"
"With the FBI."
"FBI, huh?" You hummed, something akin to intrigue swirling in your eyes. "So, you study criminals? Trying to decipher their way of thinking, why they do what they do. Dissect their past history for any related trauma, maybe even pinpoint a psychological stressor that could trigger a criminal behavior, that kind of stuff?"
Upon hearing your response, it was Spencer's turn to be intrigued. "Exactly that kind of stuff. How did you...?"
Grinning sheepishly, you pulled a professional badge out of your pocket, holding it up in front of Spencer so he could see the emblem covering its surface.
"Edgewater Psychology Center," Spencer read the words aloud, understanding dawning on him as he found your eyes once more. "You're a psychologist."
"Guilty as charged."
Spencer couldn't fight off his amused smile. "That explains it, then."
"You know," you began, leaning further against the bar counter to shorten the distance between you and Spencer, "I've never met a profiler in person before. Most of my colleagues, they have consulted on a federal case at least once in the past few years, but the bureau hasn't yet contacted me so far."
"Really?" Spencer took a step forward, closing the distance by a mere inch. "Sounds like a big loss for us. We're idiots."
You bit down on your bottom lip to suppress a smile, your gaze flicking between Spencer's own lips and eyes. For the shortest of minutes, nothing else existed in Spencer's world but you; your smile, your scent, and your kind eyes. You were a magnet carved out of his wildest dreams, and Spencer, well, he might as well have been made out of the purest of irons.
But before Spencer could get lost deeper in your relentless gaze, a shout of his name slashed through the air from across the bar. Back at the booth, Derek was waving his hand frantically in the air, stopping only when Spencer signaled him to sit back down and that he was returning in a minute.
"I have to go." He smiled tentatively, apologetically.
"Oh?"
Spencer tried not to revel too much over the small dip of disappointment at the edge of your voice.
"My friends. They, uh--"
"Oh, no, it's alright. You don't have to explain," you told him gently. "See you around, Mr. Profiler. Hope you have a great night."
With that said, you went back to watching the live feed on your tablet while Spencer, begrudgingly, trudged across the room with two refilled beer glasses in his hands, back to where his friends--minus Rossi and Hotch who were conversing among themselves at one of the standing tables--were waiting.
"Finally," Derek groaned once Spencer slammed the glasses down on the table.
"Who was that?" Emily asked as he slipped into the booth.
"Huh?" Spencer followed Emily's gaze, finding you perched up at the very end of it. "No one."
"No one?" Emily's eyebrows rose. "She didn't seem like no one from where I was sitting."
Spencer took an insanely large sip of his leftover beer.
"Holy shit, you like her, " Derek muttered. "He likes her. Pretty boy's got a crush."
"No, I don't."
"Yeah? Tell that to those red cheeks of yours." JJ chuckled.
Instinctively, Spencer touched his own cheeks as if he could physically feel the change of colors on his skin.
"I'm just tipsy," he tried to reason.
A collective scoff reverberated through the entire booth.
"What's her name, Spence?" JJ asked.
When a full minute ticked by without so much as a grunt of acknowledgment from Spencer, Penelope reached out and slapped the man right across his shoulder.
"Ow!"
"You didn't ask for her name?!" Penelope exclaimed.
"It didn't come up!"
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say, Reid," Emily noted before sipping her margarita.
"Nope. I'm not having this. Not tonight. Look at me, Sunshine." Penelope grabbed Spencer's face in her hands, forcing him to stare directly into her glasses-rimmed eyes. "I'm not letting you spend the rest of the night like this. You will get your cute little tushy out there and talk to that girl. You will get her name and also her number, maybe even ask the nice pretty lady out while you're at it. Now, have I made myself clear?"
Spencer barely managed to swallow his nerves before he offered Penelope two tiny nods.
"Good. I don't wanna see your face back here if you're not at least pocketing her phone number. Now shoo."
Penelope sent Spencer flying across the bar with a dramatic stumble. By the time he reached your side, Spencer was nothing less than a stuttering mess and a thundering heart.
"Hi," Spencer breathed out once he found your welcoming eyes.
"Um, hi?"
"I'm Spencer."
"Okay... Spencer?"
"Reid. Spencer Reid." He cleared his throat. "Sorry, it's just... I realized while I was sitting over there--well, my friends actually made me realize--that I, uh, never got your name. Which, you know, of course I never got it because I didn't ask. So, I was coming here, wondering if maybe you'd like to give it... to me?"
You blinked once. Twice.
By the third blink, Spencer wished the earth would open up and devour him whole.
"You want my name?"
Spencer nodded.
"What are you planning to do with it?"
"Call you?" At your bemused expression, Spencer quickly elaborated, "Not call like call. I meant referring. Yep. That's it. Although, maybe if you want to, I would love to call you as well. Sometime. And perhaps, you know, ask you out... on a date?"
Spencer swallowed the lump of nervousness in his throat. In front of him, you were pretty, even with the conspicuous scrutiny in your eyes as they assessed Spencer as if he was some sort of an enigma. Embarrassment burned hotter through his veins with every second that passed by. He was merely two exhales of breath away from dashing out of the door when you finally spoke up.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
Smiling, you produced an old receipt seemingly out of thin air and asked the bartender to lend you a pen, scribbling something down as soon as you had it between your fingers. When the tiny piece of paper emigrated to Spencer's hand, the Cheshire cat in him jumped out once he noticed the ten digit numbers written neatly underneath a name he could only assume as yours.
"Will that be enough, Spencer Reid?"
"For now," Spencer replied before grabbing his wallet and shoving the paper containing your name inside. "I'll call you."
"You better."
After Spencer's departure, you returned your attention back to the tablet in front of you. Barely five minutes later, though, your serene watching session was once again interrupted. Only this time, it was by the ringing of your phone.
"Hello?"
"Hi, this is Spencer."*
Surprised, you swiveled your head left and right, stopping once you spotted Spencer standing on the other side of the room. His eyes were trained towards you, and behind him, a booth of four people seemed to have directed their attention at you as well.
"Spencer?"
"I know this is very untoward," he began, "but would you like to go out with me?"
"Boy, you certainly don't waste any time at all, do you?"
"I believe it's called being efficient," he countered, making you laugh. "So, what do you say?"
"Sure," you answered, enjoying the way Spencer beam at you from across the room. "I would love to, Spencer."
A breeze blew gently against Spencer's face, caressing the tendrils of curly hair that had fallen over his forehead. Diana's little fingers started to grip his tighter as the wind strengthened.
"Did you take Mommy on that date, Daddy?"
"Of course," Spencer replied, reminiscing the exact day when he had picked you up in your apartment, sweat glistening on his palm as he clutched the bouquet of flowers in his right hand. "We went to see a Mark Rothko exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, and before I took her home, we stopped by Wakey Bakey to buy some lemon tarts."
Diana gasped. "Wakey Bakey?!"
The little girl's reaction compelled a chuckle from Spencer's chest. "Yes, Pumpkin. Wakey Bakey."
"What happened after that, Daddy?"
"What do you think happened after that, Dee?"
"Um--" Diana pursed her lips, deeply lost in thought, "--did you become girlfriend and boyfriend?"
"Yes, we did."
"And you got married?!"
Spencer laughed at Diana's apparent excitement over the prospect of her parents getting married. "We did, yeah, eventually. After I proposed to her."
"Oh! Oh! The proposal!" Diana exclaimed, jumping up and down in the middle of the sidewalk without a care in the world. Spencer had to tug her back towards him before she could harm herself or the other pedestrians. "Tell me! Tell me! Tell me about the proposal, Daddy!"
"You wanna hear the story about how I proposed to your mother?"
"Yes, please!"
Chuckling to himself, Spencer mumbled a quick fine before his gears had started turning towards a specific memory in his mind. Spencer was sure, even without his eidetic ability, there was no way he could have ever forgotten about the day in question.
The day you agreed to have him as your forever.
Spencer had fallen in love with you during the first date, right around the time of yet another one of his animated ramblings, where instead of shaming him to shut the hell up, you had simply stared at him in awe and said, "You're pretty when you talk."
The young agent was sure he couldn't get rid of the blush adorning his cheeks for at least an entire week.
By the time the fifth date rolled around, Spencer was absolutely certain that you were the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. It wasn't a surprise, then, that a few weeks before your first anniversary came up, Spencer had pocketed a diamond ring with a promise of forever on the tip of his tongue.
Combing the courage to take this historical leap was easy. Difficult was trying to conjure up the perfect proposal plan that he would deem worthy enough for someone like you. There were no rooms for mistakes. Spencer wanted everything to be perfect because he believed you deserved nothing less.
Which was why, in moments of desperation, Spencer ended up turning to his fellow teammates in the FBI for help.
"I don't know if I'm the right person to ask about this, Spence. Will only ever proposed to me after finding out about Henry, and we only got married after I thought he was gonna die on the field," JJ explained. "It was never the most ideal of situations, but I would never change a thing even if I could."
Unsatisfied with JJ's answer, Spencer proceeded to find the BAU's tech genius in her bat cave.
"Go big or go home, my friend," Penelope said following a 10-minute hysteria she erupted into upon learning about Spencer's intent to propose. "Splash out on the bottle. Don't hold back on the grandeur. Spend all of your savings if you have to."
"Garcia--"
"Fine, maybe not all of your savings. You should leave some for the wedding."
Spencer spent weeks mulling over Penelope's advice.
Working as an FBI agent didn't pay as well as most people thought it would, and Spencer's tendency to collect first edition books wasn't exactly an affordable hobby. It meant that as much as Spencer wanted a proposal filled with the greatest grandeur--just as Penelope had suggested--he didn't have a fat enough balance in his bank account to make his ideal proposal concept a reality.
And Spencer probably would have spent the limited fund in his savings down to its very last cent, had it not been for Derek catching him browsing through the internet for the cost of a hot air balloon ride.
"I just want to give her the perfect proposal," Spencer admitted after he finished revealing everything.
"Kid, it doesn't matter," Derek said. "Don't you see? She doesn't care about hot air balloons or any kind of grandeur. She only cares about you. There's no such thing as a perfect proposal. You're just using it as an excuse to put off asking her 'cause you're scared of what she's gonna say. But you don't need to. You two are so devastatingly in love, it's disgusting."
In the end, grandeur wasn't even present in the room when Spencer decided to pop the question.
On that particular night, Spencer arrived in his apartment just a few minutes before midnight. His aching muscles were calling for sleep as he toed his shoes off, but his footsteps soon ceased when he caught sight of his dimly lit living room.
You were fast asleep on the couch, face illuminated by the television light. Spencer's movements were careful as he knelt in front of you, studying the soft and hard edges of your features like historians would an ancient scripture. He couldn't help it when his fingers reached out on their own accord, brushing the softest of touches against the high point of your cheekbone. Inside its cage, Spencer's heart started to stir.
You were so beautiful.
Even after one year of being together, Spencer was often still taken back by how lovely you were. He adored every detail of your being, most fervently the scars that littered your skin in a constellation of stars. All of the places in your body where your scrutiny had wandered in a fleet of insecurity were the same places that Spencer wanted to worship for the rest of his life. In his eyes, you were eternally magnificent, and this thought clouded Spencer's mind as he went to shake your shoulder gently.
"Spencer?" Your groggy voice sounded meek in the comfort of Spencer's apartment, the same one he had been sharing with you since you moved in three months prior. Your lips tilted with the tiniest hint of a smile at the sight of him, and Spencer thought he would melt when your fingers instinctively reached for his face. "You're back."
"I'm back," he confirmed, leaving a trail of kisses on your palm. "Why aren't you in bed, my love?"
"I was waiting for you," you admitted. "I have something to say."
"Really? Me too."
"Hm?" Curiosity flared in the center of your eyes. "You first."
Smiling, Spencer leaned down to steal a quick kiss before saying, "Marry me."
Your breath hitched.
After a few seconds of silence, your nervous laughter filled his ears. "Right. That's a nice one, Spencer. Very funny."
"I'm not joking, sweetheart."
Spencer reached into the inside pocket of his satchel, pulling out the velvet box that had weighed down his bag by several grams for the past few weeks. Any remnant of sleep you still had in your eyes was instantly washed away the moment he opened the box to reveal a pretty ring sitting inside.
"I've had this for a while now," Spencer admitted. "I kept putting off asking you because I believed I wanted everything to be perfect, until Derek knocked some sense into my head and made me realize that I was just afraid of taking the leap. He's right, as always, but don't tell him I said that."
Spencer paused at your teary laugh, relishing in the melodic sound that made his heart nearly burst in two. "My love, I don't need the perfect proposal when you're the promise of a perfect life. Any life with you is the one I want to live for the rest of my time, and I want to start living that life from this point onward. What do you say, sweetheart? Will you marry me?"
Spencer never thought the word yes could sound so incredibly spectacular.
The celebration had started right away, commemorated by the shedding of clothes from each other's bodies, finalized by panting breaths and entangled limbs beneath rumpled sheets. You lay on the bed with your palm on Spencer's chest, his own hand tracing invisible patterns on the vast canvass of your skin.
Spencer watched as you stared at the ring circling your finger. "Do you like it? We can exchange it for a new one if--"
"Spencer Reid, don't you dare."
"Apologies, ma'am." He grinned, continuing the random patterns he was drawing on your skin before he spoke again, "By the way, you said you also have something to tell me."
You looked up at him with a blinding smile before scooting out of Spencer's arm and reaching for the nightstand. When Spencer saw what you had rummaged out of the bedside drawer, Spencer thought his heart had forgotten how to beat.
"Is that--"
"Surprise," you murmured giddily, handing over the object in your hand into Spencer's awaiting palm. "I found out yesterday, but I wanted to tell you in person."
Spencer sat up on the bed, staring with disbelief at the small item in his hand. He only realized he had started to cry when a drop of tears fell down, blurring the two tiny pink lines in his vision.
"This is... you're..."
"I'm pregnant, Spencer," you professed.
Just an hour earlier, Spencer thought the word yes was the best thing he could ever hear falling from your mouth. But as he held you in his arms, his lips catching yours once more in a heated kiss, Spencer realized that you had many more surprising admissions waiting to be said out loud.
And Spencer couldn't wait to spend the rest of his life listening to every single one of them.
"Daddy, are you saying I was already in Mommy's belly when you proposed to her?"
"Yes, you were, Pumpkin," Spencer said, smiling at the blatant curiosity in Little Dee's eyes. "You were a surprise we didn't see coming."
Diana's responding smile was a picture of satisfaction. The father-daughter pair continued to walk down the street until Dee's voice tore through the silence once again, "Daddy?"
"Hm?"
"I thought you said a man and a woman can only make babies after they're married."
Spencer's footsteps halted on the pavement.
The silence must have stretched for only a partial of a minute, but the expectant stare Dee was nailing against his face, along with the internal panic that had short-circuited Spencer's brain made it seem as if the world had skidded into a standstill. Frantic eyes darted everywhere for a chance at rectification, and Spencer couldn't stop the words from tumbling off his lips when he saw the worn-down sign of a florist up ahead.
"Dee, would you like to buy some flowers for Mommy?"
The little girl squealed an excited yes before skipping the few steps left towards the flower shop. Spencer let out a relieved breath at having narrowly escaped such a harrowing crisis.
Once Spencer stepped into the shop, a multitude of fragrances immediately enveloped his surroundings. Diana was lingering back and forth around the vibrant displays when Spencer approached, her tiny eyebrows frowning in the most adorable way as she assessed the rows of flowers in front of her.
"Have you decided yet, Pumpkin?"
"Can we get some of Mommy's favorites, Dad?" Diana requested, pointing her tiny finger at the display of flowers she knew to be your favorites. "And then we can add some of these daisies, too!"
Spencer couldn't fight the smile blossoming on his face as he asked the florist to assemble a bouquet made out of daisies--Dee's favorite type of flowers, the same one printed all over the dress she was wearing--along with your favorite flowers in the center. Diana stared in awe at the deft work administered by the florist, her mouth forming an "O" once the bouquet was wrapped and ready to go.
"Do you think Mommy will like them, Daddy?"
"I know she will, Pumpkin," Spencer answered earnestly, his memory replaying that first time he had come home bringing the same arrangement of flowers in his hand.
Spencer came home to the apartment in utter disarray, and yet, it still was the best view that he had ever witnessed in his entire life.
Ever since his office was transformed into a nursery, the books he previously kept in there had to be relocated to the living area. Most of them had gone by now--some donated, and some others sold at second-hand bookstores--but piles of them still littered in various corners of the room.
Apart from his mountainous collection of books, small trinkets also covered every available surface of the place. From the empty nursing bottles in the kitchen sink to the breast pump on the counter, and the tiny socks on the coffee table to the pacifier jammed between the sofa cushions; every single one of them contributed to the mess that his apartment had become. Yet as he paused to inspect every inch of the place, Spencer couldn't find any other emotion besides warmth flooding his chest.
Muffled footsteps padded towards the living room before you appeared from the hallway with a freshly bathed Diana in your arms. As soon as your eyes locked with his, the crease between your eyebrows automatically vanished.
"You're home."
"I'm home." Spencer grinned before welcoming you into his embrace.
He stole a quick kiss from your lips before bending down to smother a 7-month-old Diana who yelped in glee when Spencer began attacking her with kisses all over her face.
"She's been fussy since yesterday," you told him. "I think she missed you."
"Did you, baby? Did you miss Daddy?" Spencer cooed. "I can take her for a few while you rest. You look tired. Are you feeling okay?"
"Gee, Spence. What a way to a girl's heart."
"You know what I meant, sweetheart."
"It's fine, Spencer. I just got a headache, but it's all better now that you're here."
Spencer smiled as he kissed your free knuckles. "If it's any consolation, you're still the most heavenly creature that I've ever laid eyes upon."
A sneaky laughter rumbled past your chest. "Fine. I'll let you go just this once," you said before letting Spencer take a yawning Diana into his arms.
As Spencer carried Dee towards the couch, you noticed a bouquet of flowers lying next to the kitchen sink in the corner of your eye. You glanced at the young genius with a discreet smile before aptly transferring the flowers into a vase.
"These are pretty," you commented, joining your family in the living room. You put the vase in the middle of the coffee table amidst the books and various baby clutters before dropping yourself against Spencer's side.
"They're your favorites."
"I know. As usual." You smiled affectionately. "And daisies. You've never bought me daisies before."
Spencer's eyes gleamed. "I bought the daisies for Dee."
"Oh?"
"I think daisies are gonna be her favorite."
"You do, huh?"
"One hundred percent."
Spencer's eyes looked up from Diana to you then, whose own gaze had been kept intently on your husband and daughter. Darkness embellished the area underneath your eyes, and Spencer couldn't help but count the lines of fatigue that seemed to have multiplied on the contours of your face. Even then, Spencer thought you had never looked more stunning than you did at that moment; as his wife, the mother of his child, and the woman who owned the sole reign of his heart.
Confusion wandered into your eyes when you noticed Spencer's stubborn stare. A surprised squawk escaped your lips as Spencer unexpectedly captured them in a rather long kiss. When he pulled back, Spencer looked the very image of a man who was drunk on love.
"I love you. You know that, right?" Spencer confessed as he squeezed your hand twice in his palm.
"Spencer, what's going on with you?"
"Nothing. I just--" he paused for a chuckle, seemingly trying to find the right words to say before he could continue, "--I owe my life to you, sweetheart. For all of the times you have pulled me out of the darkness, to the light you've brought into my life. You and Dee are the reason I keep on breathing. Without the two of you, I'm nothing."
"Spencer," you breathed out. "Where did all of this come from?"
"I don't know." He shook his head. "I just wanted you to know how grateful I am to have you in my life and that you've brought Dee into ours. Everything worth fighting for about me is because of you."
The telltale signs of tears began to cast a shadow over your eyes. You pressed your hand to Spencer's cheek, feeling the rugged sensation of his newly shaved stubble stroking your skin. Spencer melted into the warmth of your touch.
"You're giving me far too much credit here, Spencer," you whispered. "Everything you are has always been your own doing rather than mine. All I ever did was cheer you on from the sideline. You would still have become the person that you are today even if I weren't in your life."
Spencer physically shuddered at your last statement. "Don't say that. I can't even begin to imagine a life without you in it."
"Well, even if such day does come, when I won't be a part of your life anymore, I know you're gonna be just fine. Because you'll have Dee with you--" you stroked Diana's head lovingly, "--and I know that the two of you will give each other enough love and strength that you won't even notice I'm not around anymore."
The frown on Spencer's face deepened.
"You're not allowed to leave me. Ever," Spencer decided childishly.
"Fine. I won't. But you have to remember--" you brought your palm towards Spencer's chest, feeling each rhythmic thrum of his heart which seemed to flutter ever so slightly underneath your fingers, "--I'll be right here if you need me. Always."
Spencer's own hand landed on top of your hand, entwining your fingers together without ever tearing his fierce gaze away from yours.
"Always."
The sun was shining down in flimsy rays when Spencer and Dee finally walked past the familiar gate. Glimmers of gold sneaked past the reddish leaves on branches before falling upon the ground.
Next to him, Diana was humming a melody that Spencer recognized from one of your specially curated playlists. Her little hands struggled to carry the gigantic bouquet that she couldn't wait to present to you. It didn't matter that the bouquet itself was nearly as tall as she was, Diana still refused to let Spencer assist her.
"I wanna give Mommy the flowers myself," she had told Spencer in a manner that reminded him too much of your own stubbornness.
After a couple more minutes of walking, Spencer's reverie was soon broken by the excited squeal coming from the little girl beside him.
"Mommy! Mommy!"
Diana dashed into a sprint before words of warning could fall from Spencer's lips. He watched intensely as Diana's little feet moved upon the ocean of fallen leaves on the ground. Her tight grip around the bouquet never wavered even when she ran up the grassed hill, all the way towards the destination in her mind.
All the way towards the headstone with your name written on it.
When Spencer finally got there, Diana was kneeling next to your grave with panting breaths, but the smile stretched on her lips was the biggest one that Spencer had ever seen.
"Hi, Mommy. I'm back with Daddy," Diana announced. "Daddy, go say hi to Mommy."
"Hello, my love." Spencer smiled before taking a seat next to his daughter.
"We brought flowers, Mommy! They're your favorites. I added daisies to make them prettier." Diana beamed before putting the bouquet against your headstone. "You're not gonna believe what happened in class yesterday!"
As Diana animatedly began to recount the funny incident in her classroom--somehow involving a boy named Patrick and a cup of slushie--Spencer watched over her with a permanent smile on his lips. The little girl loved to talk--a trait she obviously acquired from both of her parents--and Spencer knew just how much you used to adore listening to Dee's rambling at any time of day.
It must have been at least ten minutes later when Diana's story eventually whirled to an end. Her attention instantly shifted to the family who was paying their own respect just two headstones over, a small squeak of puppy tumbled from Dee's lips before she dashed towards the boy with a golden retriever pup beside his legs.
Spencer shook his head affectionately at his daughter's antics.
"I know we were just here a couple of weeks ago, but Dee wanted to tell you about the slushie incident herself," he said. "And, well, I can never deny the chance to visit you, love."
A loud laughter boomed a few feet away. Spencer watched as Diana ran around jubilantly with the little boy and his dog. The boy's father waved at Spencer from the distance, which he replied with an acknowledging nod.
"She's getting so big, sweetheart. Sometimes, I just wanna stop time and keep her as my little girl forever. I wish you were around to see how much she's grown." Spencer smiled ruefully. "I can't believe that it's been more than a year since you were gone."
Spencer thought back to the last few moments you spent on this earth. How just a few months prior, the doctor had advised you to stop the treatment and take a rest at home instead.
The chemo isn't working, was what the doctor was really saying. You should be spending as much time as you can with your family.
So, that was exactly what you ended up doing.
Spencer had quit his job at the FBI shortly after you were diagnosed, opting to take a full-time job of teaching where the hours were more humane and reasonable. The day you were discharged from the hospital, Spencer made a vow to himself to make every day as memorable as he could, and he was keeping true to it. Those last few months were filled with countless road trips, an unforgettable weekend at Disneyland, and visits to various museums across the states. Spencer made sure that each day was charged with love and laughter, a perfect day culminated by an equally perfect night, with you falling asleep in the safety of his arms.
Until one morning, when Spencer woke up to your cold and lifeless body lying by his side.
"Do you remember what you told me once? About how Dee and I would never notice you were gone because we would have each other?" Spencer recalled. "You were wrong about that, sweetheart. Your absence is the first thing I notice every time I start my day. The moment I open my eyes, I notice that you aren't lying next to me on the bed like you're supposed to be. I notice the cold imprints on the sheets where your warmth used to linger. I notice you in every corner of our home, but most importantly, I notice you in Dee."
Spencer glanced at his little girl, playing and running around a pile of fallen leaves with her newfound friend and his pet dog. His heart floundered at the scene.
"Everyone keeps saying that she's an exact copy of me, but I see glimpses of you in her more and more every single day," Spencer admitted. "She's the only anchor I have left now, my love. Without her, I'm lost. I try constantly, with whatever strength still resides in me, to give her everything she would ever need. Shower her with every ounce of love I have left in my heart."
A lone tear cascaded down Spencer's cheek. He quickly erased it away with a wry chuckle.
"What I would do to have a minute with you again, my love. I hope you know I'd give my heart and soul to have those extra sixty seconds just to stare at your beautiful face. To hold you in my arms one last time. I try my best to fill the void that you left for Dee's sake. Some days are difficult, and I keep thinking about how much better it would be--how much better off she would be--if it were you here with her instead of me. I'd trade places with you if I could. I fear that all of me would never be enough for her, because she needs you. We both do."
Spencer inhaled a breath, forcing the imminent wave of tears from breaking the dam he had masterfully crafted since the moment you were gone. He promised a long time ago never to allow the grief to consume him.
He still had his daughter to think about.
"I'm beginning to think people are wrong when they say time makes everything better. The pain never lessens. It just becomes bearable with time. Dee makes it bearable," Spencer confessed. "I can only hope I'm doing the same for her."
"Daddy! Daddy!"
Spencer hurriedly wiped away any sign of tears from his face before he caught Diana in his arms. Her innocent laughter was a balm to the gaping wound in his chest, and Spencer allowed himself to bask in the bliss that his little girl brought to his life.
"What is it, Pumpkin?"
"Look what Brian's mom gave me!"
Spencer looked at her tiny hand to see a plastic daisy ring gracing one of her fingers. He looked up towards the family in the distance, mouthing a thank you to the mother who waved him off with a smile.
"It's very pretty, Dee."
"Like me?"
The young dad chuckled. "Yes, very much like you."
"Like Mommy, too?"
Spencer's smile softened. "Very much like Mommy, too. Yes."
The exhilarated smile Diana rewarded him could probably light up the entire state of Virginia at night.
Five minutes later, Spencer found himself bidding you a goodbye, with Diana promising to visit again very soon to give you an update over the slushie incident that supposedly got Patrick in a lot of trouble at school. The air was getting even chillier as the two walked the path they had taken after arriving at the cemetery. Spencer tugged Diana closer to his side once he saw the familiar gate lurking a few feet ahead, keeping her safe while simultaneously seeking her warmth.
"Daddy?" Dee's voice arose shyly once the pair had reached the main street.
"Yes, Pumpkin?"
"I miss Mommy," she admitted quietly.
Spencer's fingers instinctively tightened for a split second around his daughter's hand. "I know you do, Pumpkin. You just need to remember, even if she's not physically with us anymore, that she's always watching over you and keeping you safe."
Diana nodded her head understandingly. "Do you miss her, too, Daddy?"
"Every day, Dee." Spencer smiled, glancing back towards the gate of the cemetery behind him. "Every single day."
2K notes
·
View notes