#doctor hounds a lot

[tkingfisher]

Right! Apropos another post, let’s talk about lawn crayfish aka The Lobsters Beneath Our Feet!

This is Craw-Bob. He’s about three and a half inches long.

Long ago, when I had only gardened in the Southeast for a year or two, I saw an interesting hole in a flowerbed. It was rather deep and had a muddy front porch. I gazed into this hole, thinking “Ooh! Is it a rodent? A snake? A toad?”

And then I saw…the Claw.

It was unmistakably a crustacean claw. And it was in a hole in my yard. My terrestrial yard! Why was there a crustacean in my flowerbed?!

I could not have been more astounded if an octopus tentacle had come flopping out. I ran screaming for my husband and the internet, both of whom said “Yeah, that’s a lawn crayfish, they do that.”

And yes. There are about 400 species of crayfish* in North America, and a not inconsiderable number of them are burrowing species. The devil crayfish, which builds little mud towers, ranges from the Rockies to the Atlantic and as far north as Ontario. There are a number of other species as well. Some are limited to stream banks, but many burrow in lawns, flowerbeds, and other places with consistently damp soil, which means that there is a non-zero chance that when you wander around the grass, a tiny lobster is lurking somewhere beneath your feet.

You would think that more people would know this, but at no point in my life had anyone ever mentioned it to me.

Being me, I immediately set out to determine if other people knew about lawn crayfish and I had just somehow missed it. I took an informal poll—by which I mean I accosted random strangers at the farmer’s market, the coffee shop, and my doctor’s office—and discovered a stark divide. Half the people looked at me like I was telling them I’d seen a lawn chupacabra and the other half looked at me like I’d asked if they’d ever heard of squirrels.

It was not divided by social class or education. The farmer with the heirloom breed hogs knew about them, his wife did not. My nurse practitioner first thought I was hallucinating, then went out into the clinic, and began demanding to know if her co-workers had heard of this. My barista was like “Yeah, mudbugs,” but he’s from Florida, so may not count.

My theory is that if you know they’re there, it’s just a fact of life so obvious that you don’t bother to comment on it, and if you don’t—well, why would you ever assume that any given hole in the ground comes from a goddamn MINI LOBSTER? And since they mostly just hang out underground during the day and don’t really hurt anything, it just doesn’t come up very often, until one day you’re at the farmer’s market, just trying to sell some organic tomatoes, and a wild-eyed woman with a Studio Ghibli T-shirt descends on you yelling “Are you aware of lawn crayfish?!”

(Yes, they’re edible, but it’s a lot of work popping them individually out of their burrows.)

During torrential rains, they will often leave their burrows and wander around, which is how I got the photos of Craw-Bob. My hound spotted him in the garden and poked him with her nose, whereupon Craw-Bob poked back. Hound, not sure what was happening but that it was probably bad, began doing her “release the humans!” alarm bark, and I came out to find her toe to toe with a crustacean who was waving its claws and presumably screaming “Come on if you think you’re hard enough!” in Lobster.

Despite their willingness to fight everything, they’re pretty harmless. The most they do is move soil from underground to a little pile above. I’m sure golf courses hate them. Our local county extension office suggests “These nonprolific creatures should be appreciated like an interesting bird or turtle living on the property.” Some, like the Greensboro burrowing crayfish, are so rare they were thought to be extinct until somebody found one in the backyard.

So. Lawn crayfish. They exist! And could be lurking underfoot as we speak!

*or crawfish, depending on where you’re from.

[forthegothicheroine]

What to Read After Dracula

If you want to read more Stoker: Dracula’s Guest and Other Stories by Bram Stoker

If you want more foundational genre-defining gothics: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

If you want homoerotic vampirism that’s both intriguing and problematic: Carmilla by J. Sheridan le Fanu

If you want a gothic heroine fighting against the villain trying to possess her: A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott

If you want a protagonist entering an extremely fucked up old money home and fighting for their freedom: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia

If you want basically the same plot as Dracula but a lot more batshit and can put up with 1800s racism: The Beetle by Richard Marsh

If you want a modern take on Dracula that acknowledges the sexual assault subtext: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix (note: this one is very hit or miss, people either love it or hate it)

If you want academics fighting ancient evil and an actual implied cameo by Dracula: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft (my personal favorite Lovecraft!)

If you want morally ambiguous mad scientists: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson (and read the rest of the stories in it while you’re at it!)

If you want rootin’ tootin’ Americans fighting gothic monsters: Pigeons from Hell by Robert E. Howard

If you want a gothic mystery with a spooky villain: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

If you want an implied polycule where a nerdy lady does all the real mystery solving: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

If you want the kind of vampire romance Dracula has become in pop culture: A Taste of Blood Wine by Freda Warrington

If you want something campier: Haunted Castles by Ray Russell

If you want something sexier: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

If you want something weirder: Blood 20 by Tanith Lee

If you want to read foreign bootleg Dracula: Powers of Darkness or Dracula in Istanbul, both creatively mistranslated from Bram Stoker

[hqbaby]

nine — whatcha reading?

mess it up — gojo x reader & sukuna x reader

⁀➴ when i told you i’m fine, you were lied to. when the love of your life falls for someone else, you decide to move on—by pretending to date your best friend, the campus fuckboy.

previous — masterlist — next

word count. 2.2k content. profanity, mentions of injury, descriptions of sex, horny thoughts

Satoru is the perfect boyfriend. He’s romantic and sappy in all the best ways. He’ll show up for surprise dates and wait outside classrooms to hand you a cup of coffee. He’ll give you flowers “just because,” boxes of donuts, teddy bears, bracelets—”just because.” He’ll stay up to keep you company while you work on your papers. He’ll be there for you, anytime, anywhere, just for you.

Satoru is the perfect boyfriend. He’s also ridiculously good at lying about it.

“She’s not here.”

Satoru starts as Kimi’s voice drifts in behind him. He turns to look at her with that quintessentially perfect smile.

“What are you talking about?” he asks innocently.

Kimi just looks at him, unperturbed. “She’s not here,” she repeats. “She’s out for a week. Got injured in the middle of her last game.”

Satoru furrows his brows at her, like he has no idea what she’s talking about. “Who?”

She says your name. He pretends to be shocked by the news.

“I know you were there,” she tells him before he can fake a reaction. “Michiko went to watch her girlfriend. She saw you.”

If there’s one thing Kimi is not, it’s a fool. She’s well-aware that Satoru is in fact not over you. She’s under no illusion that he’s in love with her. The only reason why she’s in this situation in the first place is because her friends wouldn’t stop hounding her about being single for too long and Satoru asked her out at just the right time.

This isn’t a relationship built on love. It’s just a way for them both to pass the time.

Satoru scratches the back of his head in guilt. “I wasn’t hiding it or anything,” he tells her. “I just—”

She raises her hand. “It’s fine,” she says. “I don’t really care.”

She turns to walk away, but Satoru catches her shoulder. He slides an arm around her and nuzzles into her neck.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Kimi just hums, handing him her bag as they walk away from the tennis court to the parking lot, and Satoru starts to list all the things he wants to do with her this week. She looks at him, his eyes all bright as he talks about this new coffee shop that Naoya told him about, and she wonders if he’s just pretending like her—or if he’s actually convinced that he’s selling this whole act.

That he wholeheartedly believes he’s somehow tricked her into believing this.

He turns to her when they get in the car. He tilts his head to the side and flashes her a grin.

“I love you,” he says without an ounce of hesitation.

And all at once Kimi realizes that he’s not trying to trick her.

He’s trying to trick himself.

“Can you get the remote?”

“Sure.”

“Can you charge my phone?”

“Sure.”

“Can you make popcorn?”

“Sure.”

“Will you marry me?”

“Sure—what?”

You, Nobara, and Maki burst into laughter as Sukuna gawks at you from the kitchen where he has dutifully started opening the box of popcorn packets you keep on the top shelf (supposedly to limit your access to it and prevent you from eating too much). He drops the box on the counter and proceeds to sulk.

“It’s funny,” you say like you’re trying to convince him. “You know, you don’t have to baby me. It’s just a sprain.”

He quirks a brow at you. “You say that as if you don’t like being babied.”

“Ew,” Nobara says, grimacing. “You’re such a cheesy fake couple.”

“She loves it,” Sukuna says, picking up the popcorn and reading the instructions on the back of the box. “Right, tiger?”

You toss a sock in his general direction. “I’m gonna kick you out.”

He nods, popping the packet into the microwave. “Sure, sure.”

The three of them are in your apartment against your wishes. After your game a few days ago ended with a doctor telling you that you had a sprained ankle—nothing bad, something you could get over in a week or so—they took it upon themselves to act as your primary caretakers. Sukuna has driven you practically everywhere, Nobara has all but carried you to your classes, and Maki has seen to getting you all the food, painkillers, and ice packs that your heart desires.

It’s annoying, having them hover all the time and treat you like an infant, but you have to admit that it hasn’t been all that bad. You don’t think your apartment has seemed this bright since the breakup. So it’s not all bad. Not at all.

“You have to study,” you remind Maki as she leans back into the armchair she and Nobara are sharing. “You should really head back to your dorm. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

She shakes her head. “You need me.”

“I don’t.”

“How are you gonna pee?”

“Oh, I dunno, maybe I’ll do this thing called walking?”

Maki glares at you and shoves Nobara as the other girl attempts to take over more space on the chair. “You have to rest,” she tells you. “The doctor said so.”

“She actually said that it’s good for me to walk a little,” you say, frowning as your friend attempts to become one with the chair. “Please. I’d feel terrible if you started flunking your classes because of me.”

“I can study here,” she says stubbornly.

“You’ve done enough,” you say. You look at Nobara. “You need to do your laundry. You can’t keep wearing the same jeans forever.”

She sticks her tongue out at you. “You can’t make me leave, bitch.”

Sukuna walks into the room now with a bowl of popcorn. He offers some to your friends, allowing them to take handfuls, before he settles on the floor beside the couch you’re on. He holds the bowl out to give you easy access.

“I can stay with her for the night,” he tells your friends. “And she’s right. The doctor did say moving around would be good for her.”

“Thank you.” You sigh in relief at someone actually listening to you for once. You turn back to your friends. “Don’t make me beg.”

Nobara looks over at Sukuna with the same scrutinizing gaze she always looks at him with. She has to admit that she doesn’t wholly hate the guy as much anymore, not with how helpful he’s been these past few days. Despite their differences, they do have a common ground: You.

“You won’t abandon her for a booty call?” she asks.

Sukuna nods. He picks up a piece of popcorn that you dropped on the floor and sets it aside to throw out later. “I got this,” he reassures her. “You guys should go rest.”

Nobara turns to Maki. They share a look that you can only describe as uncertain but relenting. She looks back at Sukuna. “Fine.”

After much stalling, the two girls eventually find their way out of your apartment, calling their goodbyes and promising to see you the next day behind them before Sukuna waves a final time and closes the door. He leans on the wall and slides down to his knees as he exhales loudly, keeping his eyes on you.

“Why do they love you so much?” he asks. “What kind of spell have you placed on them?”

You chuckle. “I’d give my heart to either of them if they needed it.”

Sukuna rolls his head to the side and smirks. “What if I needed it?”

You pretend to mull over the question, chewing at a bit of popcorn as you do. “I dunno,” you say. “Depends on the situation.”

“You’re so mean to me,” he whines. “I’ve known you longer than they have.”

“Tough luck, bud,” you tell him. “It’s girl code.”

He gets up and walks over to you to flick your forehead. “Mean,” he says, smiling down at you. “Do you need anything else?”

You look over at the pool of supplies that Maki has gathered on the coffee table beside you. “A pile of cash, if you have it.”

“Sorry, I’m all out.”

“That’s too bad.”

Sukuna nods and ruffles your hair. “I’m gonna take a shower,” he tells you. Then, with a warning, “Don’t get up while I’m not here.”

“Bossy,” you say teasingly.

He wags a finger at you. “I’m serious. Be good.”

You flash him a self-satisfied grin. “Yes, daddy.”

“Ew.” He pretends to gag as he walks away. “I’m telling your mom that her daughter is a freak.”

You watch as he disappears into the bathroom. When the door closes behind him, you stretch out on the couch and reach for one of the books Nobara left you. It’s one of those trashy romance novels that she insists she only reads for entertainment but manages to go on a whole rant about when you ask her about them.

This particular book has been tame for the most part, a few chaste kisses from the lead characters, but nothing as wild as the ones Nobara often tells you about. You’ve only just started to believe that maybe it isn’t that kind of book when one character starts to undress another. Then they’re touching. Then the guy slips his hand between the girl’s legs. Then there’s a squelch, a moan, a cock.

Before you know it, you’re reading an absolutely filthy sex scene, complete with sighs, with groans, with thrusting. At some point, there’s a shift into a position you haven’t even considered humanly possible, and yet here it is, all written out for you to read as you feel your face heat up at the obscenity of it all.

You’re so engrossed in the book that you don’t realize Sukuna’s already stepped out of the bathroom and that he’s been watching you flip through pages with the most focused expression on your face for the past few minutes.

“Whatcha reading?”

You practically hurl the book across the room. “Holy shit!” you exclaim, clutching a hand to your chest. “Announce yourself next time!”

He cackles as you will your heart to stop beating so fast. “You’re too easy to startle.”

You open your mouth, about to shoot back some kind of annoyed response, but the words die in your mouth when your eyes finally focus on Sukuna.

He’s leaning against the bathroom door with his arms crossed over his chest, a smug smile on his lips. Nothing out of the ordinary—except for the fact that the only thing he has on is the thin towel wrapped around his waist.

From your place on the couch, you take in his entire appearance. Wet hair and bare skin. His shoulders bulge, thick muscles still slightly damp with water. The tattoos that run across his arms and chest are dark against his fair skin, the patterns curling over his naked torso. His abs are firm, protruding on his stomach like they’re made of stone. And then there’s the trail of hair tracing from his navel down to—

“Like what you see?”

You quickly pull your gaze back up to his face. You swallow.

“Fuck you,” you is all you can say before your best friend bursts into laughter again and heads into your bedroom.

You sit with yourself for a moment, trying to understand what just happened. All you can think is, Was he always this fucking hot?

Sukuna reemerges from your bedroom. He’s dressed now, wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants. He dries his hair and walks towards you.

You do your best to avoid his eyes.

“Wanna go to bed?” he asks, clearly oblivious to the internal crisis you’re having right now.

You toy with the hem of your shirt and clear your throat in an attempt to ground you back in reality. You can’t start thinking that your best friend is hot right now. That’s just wrong.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” you say, swinging your legs off the side of the couch. You’re about to get up when Sukuna crouches down to slide his arm beneath yours. You jerk away from his touch.

He frowns, pulling back at your sudden reaction. “What’s wrong?” he asks. “Does your ankle hurt?”

You don’t even get to answer before he’s kneeling down in front of you, his hand going to inspect your ankle. You swear your skin is going to melt at just how hot his touch feels.

“I’m fine,” you tell him, slightly panicked as you shift your leg out of his grasp. “I can—I can walk by myself.”

He looks up at you and you think your heart might just explode.

There he is, kneeling between your legs, looking at you with concern, unaware of the fact that there’s a steady warmth growing between your thighs.

“Are you sure?” he asks, but you’re already getting up on wobbly legs and shuffling over to your bedroom. He catches up to you, because of course he does, and holds his arm out for you to hold. Exasperated, he says, “Just let me help you, tiger.”

Relenting, you grab onto him and let him lead you to the room. When you get to the door, you grab it, holding onto it for support as you use it to slowly push him out. “Okay, I can do it from here,” you tell him through the crack between the door and the frame. You offer him an easy smile. “Goodnight.”

Sukuna looks more than puzzled, but he just nods and waves. “Night.”

He watches as you firmly close the bedroom door, leaving him to stand in front of it, wondering, What the fuck just happened?

notes. reader reading smut is me like sometimes i just don’t know what to do with myself but i also can’t stop reading 😩 how are we feeling after this chapter sukuna girlies??

[lucifers-rubber-duck]

𖤓 Can we keep them? 𖤓

Characters: Charlie, Lucifer, Alastor, Angel & Husker.

Warnings: None.

Summary: Reader suddenly appears with a baby Hellhound on their arms and asks to keep them, what would their reactions be?

𖤓Charlie

• She's extremely surprised when you appear with a baby Hellhound on your arms, even more when you asks if you could keep them.

• She would probably say yes without thinking, with her eyes shining of how cute the little dog looks, before she quickly shakes her head and tries to stand her ground better.

• She would probably lecture you of how much of a responsability it is to adopt a Hellhound, especially when they're still little and can't do much by themselfs, she would probably also info dump to you about them.

• She makes you promisse that if you're going to keep them you'll take good care of them, she actually helps a lot since she grew up taking care of Razzle and Dazzle. She acts like the cool aunt of your new baby.

• She's probably the best influence you could get for your child, she's just the sweetest and will help you teach the baby what's right and wrong, will read them bedtime stories, will teach them to sing and to dance. She's simply the best person you could ask for.

𖤓Lucifer

• He's a little confused at first, he never put much thought onto the creatures of Hell, but the moment you show him the cute puppy's face, he's melting and allowing you to keep it.

• He would try to help to take care of them but wouldn't be very good at it, he never did a proper research on the beings of Hell, he disliked sinners already, he saw no reason to even pay attention to the other beings his past actions had created.

• But after you adopt the little hound, he will personaly go talk to Beelzebub and ask her what he should do. He asks her tips, about the best snacks to give them, how many baths should a pup get by a day, he's going full dad mode.

• He doesn't take care of a child since Charlie was little and everytime your new baby runs to his arms when he walks in the room to say hi he's in the verge of tears, he'll hold your child on his arms and act like he's the actual father.

• Don't even think twice if you need anything for your pup, he's going to give it. They got sick and need a doctor? He's calling someone from the Ring of Sloth just for them. Need diapers or clothes? Boom, they're already at your door. Want to take your child somewhere fun? He'll give you two free access to his theme park Lu Lu Land all rights reserved.

• Man is just happy to be able to experience being a father all over again.

𖤓Alastor

• The moment you show him the Hellhound you can hear static piercing your ears and the air getting colder, a green energy coming out of him as his antlers grow bigger and his eyes turn dark with only red dots to be found in them.

• You get that it's a no pretty quickly and hides the puppy away before he can do anything about it.

• But you're not known for giving up easily and keeps the Hellhound even so, making sure they never get too close to Alastor, and by to close I mean in the same room, breathing the same air.

• You'll have to try your best to make Alastor slightly fond of the puppy. First trying to give up some signs that you wanted to adopt a baby, then start talking about all the perks a Hellhound has and then later slowly introduce both of them in the same spaces.

• Is like showing your old pet your newer pet and praying they get along, but the old pet in question is a powerful Overlord that can easily kill both of you and broadcast your screams to all of Hell and the new pet is a creature that is in the bottom of Hell's hierarchy.

• After weeks of trying he would just let you be to be honest, he says you can keep it if you stopped annoying him about and forcing him to interact with them. But sometimes you would find yourself trying to calm him down because the Hellhound decided to walk too close to him or even chewed a part of his coat off.

𖤓Angel

• He probably wouldn't mind and say that you could stay with them, it's not his business, it's yours, you do what you want.

• Would eventualy grow attached to the hound, probably not as much as some others, but he does enjoy their company.

• He likes being the bad influence and would 100% teach your child swear words. He wouldn't be as inappropriate around them tho, he knows his limits and was scolded by you enough times about his actions around such a young figure.

• I think if the hound ended up getting friends with Fat Nuggets he would care more, he treats his little pet pig as his own child and would find it rather adorable if they got along togheter, you know for sure he's snapping photos.

• Likes to play dress up with you and your child, he would already lend you some clothes and help you take care of your skin or paint your nails, etc. He would do the same with your Hellhound, dressing them up to look all fancy, brushing their fur and giving them little accesories. Y'all probably have matching shirts he buyed for fun.

• “Where did you found them again toots?”; “Doesn't matter, check out this new trick they learned.”

𖤓Husker

• Would probably say something like “I'm not your dad, do whatever the fuck you want” and keep going with his day.

• He would try to ignore the Hellhound as much as he can, he doesn't like children very much and his cat instincts can get the best of him sometimes, making him hiss at the sight of the dog.

• But he'll definitely call you out if you end up doing something wrong while taking care of them, he says he doesn't care while teaching you the proper way to hold and to feed them. If you ask how he has so much experience he'll flip you off.

• After some time with the Hellhound around, he'll start to accept babysitting them if you ever need to go out to work or to do a importat thing, don't blame him if the pup ends up learning a bad word tho, you are the one leaving them with a drunk bartender in his bar.

• The Hellhound and him would start to go really well together and you would find them sleeping in the couch of the hotel's lobby when you return late to the hotel thanks to work, your now adopted child sleeping on top of the man's chest, snoring and with Husker's wing around them both.

• You took a photo just to always remember the sweet moments and maybe use against Husker if you needed a favor from him, it always works and you get cute photos so it's always a win-win for you.

[reiding-writing]

hiii, i hope you're well! i saw that you are taking requests for spencer and i really like your angst fics so i was wondering if you could write one with unrequited love?

preferably bau!reader who has feelings for him but he doesn't and she watches him get with someone else and everybody knows how she feels about him but he is oblivious, ending is up to you but i love me a sad ending heheh 😸

transgression [ s.r ]

You’re in love with Spencer Reid. He’s in love with somebody else.

WARNINGS: SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE MAEVE ARC, LOTS of misunderstanding, Spencer is kind of a bad friend, lots of arguing, major character death

spencer reid x gn!reader || ANGST || 8.2k || masterlist!!

a/n: sorry for the delay, but i did warn you it was gonna be long so- also i listened to ceilings on repeat whilst writing this so take that as you will 🫶

did i bend the maeve arc to my will for this fic? yes. yes i did.

taglist (slashed blogs couldn’t be tagged): @babyspiderling @marsxoxo2 @vytvyvy @hpstuff244444 @frostooo @ohmysw33 @radioactiveinvisible @devilsadvcte @the-local-pendeja @kakashis-formal-simp @robinswrld

You suppose you did it to yourself.

Spencer’s migraines had gotten increasingly worse over the last few months, and after a few consecutive days of hounding him, he’d finally decided to go and see a medical professional about it.

You’d expected him to come back with news about how his brain stem was too active from how hard he was working himself, or that he’d managed to raise his blood pressure to an unhealthy high from all the stress he was under.

Instead he’d told you that they couldn’t find anything physically wrong with him and that he’d been referred to a geneticist to check if the cause of his sudden mind-numbing aching was due to an underlying condition that might have been passed down from his mother.

He’d come back and forth to you for weeks about his phone calls with the doctor.

How she was helping him with his sleep deprivation.

How she was helping to manage his diet.

How she loved classic literature.

How she and him had spent four consecutive hours on the phone debating over the logistics of a novel they both enjoyed.

You could see the change happening before your eyes, and you weren’t the only one either.

“Pretty boy’s chipper this morning,” Morgan joins you at the kitchenette, his eyes following Spencer as he takes a seat at his desk with all of the enthusiasm of a golden retriever puppy who’d been let off his leash for the first time.

You hum with a nod, focusing your attention on the two cups of coffee you were making, heaping tablespoons of sugar into Spencer’s Doctor Who mug to satisfy his insatiable need for sweetness. “They’re reading a book together,”

“Really?” You respond to Morgan’s raised eyebrow with a short nod and another hum.

“Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton, apparently she finds the religious analysis ‘fascinating’,” You can’t help the small contemptment that seeps into your tone as you reiterate what Spencer had told you to Morgan, and you can practically feel his pitiful gaze as he watches you make your coffee.

“I’ve heard of that book before from somewhere,”

“I tried to get him to read it a few months ago,” You take a sip of your coffee at the end of your sentence, barely able to taste it over the scolding water but not finding the mind to care.

You leave your conversation with Morgan at that, taking the two mugs in your hands and walking back into the bullpen, placing Spencer’s mug in front of him and walking around the cluster of desks to reach your own.

He’s sure he doesn’t need to verbalise it, but Morgan feels increasingly sorry for your situation, noting how you skirt past Spencer’s “thank you” without a response as you bury your head in your files.

he can’t imagine how much the fact that Spencer had seemingly formed a crush on his geneticist ripped you apart.

And the worst part? He’d never met her in person.

All scientific laws of attraction be damned, Spencer Reid had fallen in love with someone he’d never met in the span of three months, and you we’re resigning yourself to sit on the sidelines and watch as the man you had been in love with for six years find the happiness that you longed for with somebody else.

How you managed to keep up your facade you didn’t know.

You’d offered him change for the pay phone he’d call her from when he was running short. You’d let him rant to you about her opinions on a novel that you had failed to get him to read. You made excuses for him to leave the office early so that he could spend his time on the phone with her.

You were the one that sent him to the hospital and caused him to meet her in the first place.

He never hesitated to remind you of that fact, thanking you vicariously every time he relayed his conversations with the doctor back to you.

As the weeks progressed he stopped calling her that. She wasn’t ‘the doctor’ anymore. She was Maeve.

He didn’t call you by your first name and you’d known him for ten times longer that he’d known her. He didn’t even call Morgan by his first name and those two were practically brothers.

And that part was probably what hurt the most.

Maeve.

A name of Irish origin meaning ‘intoxicating’. How fitting.

Apparently the Irish goddess of love and desire was named Maeve. You could see the glimmer in Spencer’s eye that told you his Maeve was just as important as the mythological goddess he was describing.

His Maeve.

“So why haven’t you two actually gone on a date or anything?” You take a sip from the mug in your hands, swivelling your chair back and forth with your foot as a pivot. “You’ve been talking for what, four months now? Surely it’s about time you actually met her in person,”

“It’s complicated,” Spencer sighs as he collects the loose papers he was working on in a pile. He didn’t want to divulge Maeve’s issues without her permission.

“You’ve been saying that for the last six weeks Spencer,” You roll your eyes as you discard your half-empty mug on the table. “If I didn’t know any better i’d say you’re putting it off,”

Spencer shook his head adamantly at your suggestion. You couldn’t have been more wrong. He did want to meet her. Desperately. He’d wanted to meet her since the end of their first phone call. But he also wanted to keep her safe.

How do you meet up with somebody who’s hiding from a stalker without endangering them?

“I do want to meet her. It’s just- she’s dealing with something personal and it’s put a rift our plans, that’s all,”

“So it’s her not wanting to meet up with you then?” You raise an eyebrow at him over your desks.

“Look it’s- You don’t get it okay? It was a mutual understanding from both of us.” You can hear Spencer’s tone become more defensive as you spoke, and you raised both of your hands in surrender.

“Okay, i’m sorry for prying-” You ended your apology with a laugh, trying to keep the conversation lighthearted despite feeling your heart deflate in your chest at the way the friendliness his his eyes fizzled out the longer you looked at him.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Spencer’s late to work this morning.

It’s 8:06 when he finally walks through the glass doors, the coffee you made him stone cold after sitting lamely on his desk for the better part of twenty minutes. He doesn’t so much as offer an apology as he picks up the mug and makes his way over to the kitchenette to pour the coffee down the sink.

You follow behind him in a mix of intrigue and a want to refill your own mug, swilling it out with some water as you watch Spencer load a coffee pod into the machine. “Phone call last longer than you expected?”

“Hm? Oh- yeah, we were discussing the literary analysis of Annabelle Lee,” Spencer’s demeanour seems to brighten immediately once he’s given an opportunity to discuss the details of his phone call with Maeve, although the beginning of his ramble is quickly cut off by the beeping of the coffee machine.

You wait patiently for his coffee to finish before you begin making yours, raising an eyebrow as Spencer pulls out a regular teaspoon instead of the usual tablespoon he’d incorrectly use to load his coffee with sugar.

Your intrigue only heightened when he pulled a carton of milk from the mini-fridge. Not even normal milk. Soy milk.

“Since when do you drink coffee like a normal person?”

His eyes flickered from his mug to your face as he tipped a single teaspoon of sugar into his drink before replacing the bag back where it came from. “It’s a part of my managed diet, Maeve thinks that my increased sugar intake might be one of the risk factors for my headaches,”

“Did she tell you to put soy milk in it too?” You don’t know why you have the urge to be petty, Spencer had long since needed to change his coffee drinking habits for the sake of decreasing his sugar intake and Maeve’s suggestions were beneficial for his health.

It was just the fact that it was her that ticked you off.

“She did actually, it provides the same amount of riboflavin as cow’s milk, which acts as a soothing agent whilst also helping constrict inflamed blood vessels, but without all of the excess fats in regular milk that might make my migraines more frequent, it’s genius really,”

He thought that her ideas were genius. Him. Mr ‘I have three PhDs and an IQ of 187’, thought someone else’s ideas were genius.

You’re sure that he already knew the benefits of milk alternatives, and yet he attributed the ‘revelation’ of what they could do to Maeve. Of course he did.

“When was the last time you made a decision for yourself?” The question comes out much harsher than you intend it to, and you can tell by the way Spencer furrows his eyebrows that he’s taken offence to it.

“Sorry, that came out wrong,” No it didn’t. “I’m just a little surprised that someone as independent as you is so… willing to follow blind instructions,” Your attempt at saving yourself half-works, that wrinkle between his eyebrows disappears and you can see that the glimmer in his eyes is returning slowly.

“She’s a doctor, of course i’m going to follow her suggestions,”

You give him a soft nod as you pick up your mug from under the coffee machine. “Yeah, no, that makes sense, it’s just a little surprising is all,”

You don’t give him a chance to respond to you before you’re walking away from the kitchenette to retake a seat at your desk, fearing you might say something out of pocket if you continue the conversation any longer.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

You were really pissed off now.

You’d arrived back in Quantico three days ago, and you were still piled up to your neck in paperwork.

Maybe you would’ve had it finished by now if Spencer would stop talking about the fact that he was “-finally going to meet Maeve in person,”.

You had half the mind to snap and tell him to just shut up, although by the saving grace of Morgan you thankfully didn’t have to.

“Reid, give their poor ears a break man,” Your thankful for Morgan in times like this. He knew you were knee-deep in your feelings for Spencer, and he knew that every time Spencer so much as spoke Maeve’s name it carved another hairline fracture in your heart.

You were close to shattering, and Morgan could tell.

“Oh- right, sorry,” Spencer offered you an awkward smile which you mirrored back at him.

“It’s alright, don’t worry about it,” You shake your head in a polite dismissal of his apology before turning your head back down towards your files.

“I take it you’re nervous then?” Alex’s voice cut through the beginning of an awkward tension between the two of you as she entered to bullpen with a cup of coffee in hand.

“Well- I mean- you know…” Upon being unable to find a sufficient response, Spencer resorts to shrugging into his chair. “I just don’t want to ruin anything,”

“But aren’t you curious what she looks like?” Alex raises an eyebrow with concern like Spencer was he son going on his first ever date.

“it doesn’t matter what she looks like I mean- she’s already the most beautiful girl in the world to me it’s just-”

You don’t stick around to hear the rest of the conversation.

You sudden upheaval from your desk stops Spencer’s sentence as his eyes follow you across the bullpen and out of the glass doors, followed shortly by Morgan as he jogs after you.

“Hey- Wait up a minute-” Morgan catches your arm before you have a chance to get in the elevator, and as you turn your eyes towards him he can see the beginnings of tears forming in your eyes.

“I don’t know how much longer I can do this..”

Morgan can do nothing more than pull your head into his shoulder and wrap his arms tightly around your back with a soft mutter of your name. “I know kid, I know…”

“He thinks she’s the most beautiful girl in the world,” You turn your head up from Morgan’s shoulder to meet his eyes, a single stray tear cascading down your cheek, illuminated under the florescent lights. “How am I supposed to compete with that..?”

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Incidentally, Spencer’s date with Maeve didn’t end up happening. Conflicting work schedules or something, you weren’t really listening.

Maybe all of your subconscious thoughts had leaked into reality and finally gave you momentary release from the crushing defeat of having Spencer go on a date with someone else.

Maybe it was them punishing you further by forcing you to sit through him rant about the book she’d left him at the front of the restaurant.

It didn’t help that you already had a headache that made it feel like your eye sockets were being kicked by an annoying kid sat behind you on an aeroplane, leaving a dull ache in it’s wake and making you just want to bury yourself in a hole and hibernate.

“And right at the back she wrote ’Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone; we find it with another’ it’s a quote from-”

“Thomas Merton. Yeah, I know.” You dig the knuckle of your left thumb into cavity of your eye socket over your closed eyelid, hoping to relieve some of the tension that’s lingering there and disrupting your thoughts.

“Thomas Merton’s ‘Love and Living’ specifically,” If Spencer noticed your discomfort he didn’t acknowledge it. “It’s a collection of his essays on the importance of love to live, so for her to have written it specifically knowing that I would read it means-”

“Reid.”

Your tone stops him from continuing any further, and he blinks at you with that sweet puppy-dog expression that would usually have you weak at the knees.

“No offence, but I don’t care about your over-the-phone girlfriend or the quote that she wrote in your book.” Your tone carried a harshness to it that Spencer wasn’t used to hearing from you. It was cold and detached and not like you at all.

“Are- you okay?”

“No, Reid, I’m not, and if you’d bothered to ask about my life every once in a while instead of using me like a human diary maybe you would’ve realised that already.”

You practically slam your file closed as you speak, pushing your chair out from your desk and leaving him sat in shock at your sudden change in attitude.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

After a bit of introspection, Spencer did realise that he hadn’t been treating you very fairly. He hadn’t asked you how your life had been in 3 months and 26 days. Four of those days he’d spent in damn near radio silence. He wasn’t sure he could take it much longer.

He missed you.

It was a bit ironic considering you sat directly opposite him for almost eight hours a day five days a week, but after you’d snapped at him last week, he truly realised just how much of his day he spent socialising with you, and just how much he missed talking to you.

So he decided that he was going to apologise.

And what better form of an apology for being dismissive of your feelings than putting a personal effort into something for you.

He walked into the office that morning with a leather bound copy of The Parasite by Arthur Conan Doyle stored cautiously in his messenger bag, pages scrawled with annotations from Spencer’s own reading of the novel that he hoped would be insightful to you as you read it yourself.

He’d remembered you saying how much you wanted to read the novel a few months ago, so he figured giving it to you as a personalised apology would show that he really did care about you and had listened to what you’d told him.

“Are you busy?” Spencer asks, though he already knows the answer to the question.

He’d been watching you from the other side of the room all morning, hoping for a moment or two of eye contact to see if there was a possibility of a conversation. A look from one to the other; even a smile would’ve been enough to make him feel validated and content. And he would have been willing to settle for that.

But you never looked up. Not even once.

"Mhm," You continue to not spare Spencer so much as glance as he speaks, turning over the page of the file you were working through.

“Can I take a minute of your time?” He tried to catch your gaze again, only to be met by your continued focus on your work. The last thing he wanted to do was disrupt your work routine, but he also knew that he needed to talk to you sooner rather than later.

“Please,” he said softly. “It’s important.”

You exhale heavily through your nose, exasperation written clearly in your expression as you leave your pen as a page marker to close the manilla folder on your desk. You turn your head upwards, raising an eyebrow and opening your hands to agitatedly indicate for him to continue.

You wouldn’t lie and say that it didn’t hurt being so openly cold towards Spencer, but you’d reached a breaking point, and you couldn’t bare sitting idly on the sidelines and letting him tear your heart to pieces anymore.

Spencer was relieved that you’d granted him your attention, but the look you directed towards him was enough to make him wince. You weren’t looking at him through a lens of indifference but rather cold, hard disappointment.

He took a deep breath, trying to gather the right words for what he had to say.

“I’m sorry,”

He seemed almost breathless as he spoke, like he’d just finished a tangent about something without taking the time to breathe. “I know that I’ve been spending too much time talking about Maeve and not enough paying attention to you.”

"You don’t say," You mutter the words under your breath to yourself, but your sure that Spencer heard you based on the way his eyebrows knit and the small gleam of hope in his eyes dwindles to barely a flicker.

He was trying not to react to your snide comment. Spencer knew that your tone didn’t leave any room to deny your meaning. He’d been selfish in talking exclusively about his relationship and hadn’t realised how it was affecting you.

“I’m sorry,” Spencer repeated. “You mean so much to me and I haven’t been showing that.”

"Thank you," Your thanks are polite but dismissive, like you were acknowledging his apology but choosing to not actually consider it as one, and it left Spencer with an expression of clear frustration.

He was used to being able to read your facial expressions and emotions in the past, but now you were just an unreadable wall of disappointment. He had hoped the apology would've been enough, but it was clear that you weren’t going to let him off that easily.

Time to pull out the last resort.

He bent over and fumbled with his bag for a few moments before pulling out the novel he’d brought with him face up.

“I uh… got you this,” He holds out the book towards you. “You said you wanted to read it right? So I uh.. annotated it for you to make it more enjoyable,”

You take the novel from him with a raised eyebrow as your eyes scan the cover, a clear flicker of confusion in your expression.

Spencer noticed your expression and furrowed his own brow in confusion. You didn't seem to recognise the book. In fact, the look on your face made him wonder whether you even knew this book existed at all before this moment.

“I hope you… like it,” he said nervously. “I was going off what you'd talked about before. You mentioned the book was a classic?”

"I… have never seen this book in my life,”

“B-But…” Spencer knew this was going to be awkward at some point, but he'd hoped not this early into the conversation. He could feel his cheeks burning from embarrassment, and it was only getting worse as he searched your face for an answer to this awkward situation.

“I… swear I heard you mention it once.”

You give him a short shake of your head and a pursed smile of awkward thanks as you put the book down on your desk.

Spencer looked away, embarrassed beyond belief. He hadn't even been able to deliver an apology properly, let alone make you feel special like he'd originally intended to.

How had he gotten it wrong? He had an eidetic memory for god’s sake.

When you put the book down on your desk, his eyes flicked back to the book. He'd spent almost 4 hours annotating and researching it and now it felt like all that effort had been wasted.

If you hadn’t mentioned it then who had? Someone must’ve. Someone he obviously equated with you to the point where he’d somehow managed to override his eidetic memory to mix the two of you up.

It takes him a few moments before you hear him whisper out a name under his breath, the palm of his hand dragging down the front of his face at the realisation.

"Maeve…"

The mention of her name had your eyes flickering away from the leather cover and right back to Spencer’s face, awkwardness completely rid of your features and replaced with a mix of negativity that Spencer wasn’t sure he wanted to dig into.

"Are you serious?" Your words come out less questioningly and more accusatory, and you hold the book up so that he can see it once more, the gold embossing on the cover glinting under the overhead light as if to only taunt Spencer further for his mistake.

“You apologise for continuously disregarding me for your girlfriend by giving me a book that she showed interest in?”

You could see Spencer's face fall as your words sink in.

He hadn't even taken the time to think over what he was apologising with. It was almost as if his brain automatically just reverted back to his girlfriend's interests as an escape from dealing with his own guilt and sadness.

"Damn it," he whispered to himself. And in that moment he realised he'd just committed the biggest crime someone could make when trying to apologise.

“Like you constantly flaunting your relationship in my face verbally wasn’t bad enough.”

"I'm sorry I-" he says again, voice teeming with sincerity and guilt.

"You are truly and utterly unbelievable Spencer Reid." Your words didn’t carry anger as much as they did disappointment, and he could see the astoundment in your eyes as you pushed your chair backwards to stand, dropping the book straight in the trash bin by your desk before walking off.

It’s where it belongs; Right alongside the small sliver of respect you still had for him.

Spencer could've said so much more: he could've admitted how ashamed he felt for his careless actions and he could've apologised again and again a million times if it meant you'd stick around and give him a chance to make it up to you.

But you had already made it clear that you weren't in the right state of mind to discuss this matter further.

The best thing he could do now was give you space as he watched you walk away, a deep pain in his heart that slowly ate him alive from the inside.

He’d well and truly fucked up.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“Oh sweetheart, what’s wrong?” You were bordering tears by the time you reached Garcia’s office, unintentionally interrupting her lunch break with Alex in the process, though the two seemed to care less about the interruption and more about the fact that you liked like you were about to cry your eyes out.

You take in a sharp breath through your nose as you try to tape together the cracks in your composure, although with every one you seal three more seem to appear in it’s place.

“I-” You can barely get the first word out before the tears start rolling down your face, and Alex immediately stands from her seat to guide you to sit in her place.

“Hey, you’re alright, slowly,” Alex’s hands find your shoulders and rub reassuring circles against your shirt. The slow breath you take in doesn’t stop the flood of tears that’s blurring your vision, and you only manage to get out a single word, but it’s all the two need to understand what’s got you so overwhelmed.

“Spencer-”

“I swear I am two seconds away from smacking that boy over the back of the head,” You can hear the clear frustration in Garcia’s tone. “Surely he’s got to realise how much he’s hurting you by now,”

“He does… I lashed out at him and then left to come here…” You rub your eyes with the back of your hand alongside a small sniffle, trying to rid your vision of it’s blurriness from your tears.

“Good, the boy deserves to have some sense knocked into him,” You appreciate Garcia taking your side, but you can’t help that small lingering feeling of guilt that invades the back of your mind.

“He’s just in love, it’s not his fault…” The words almost physically pain you to say. The verbal acceptance that Spencer Reid was indeed in love with somebody. Somebody who wasn’t you.

“That doesn’t mean that he should be disregarding you though sweetheart,” Alex’s tone is soft and almost maternal, and your sure that it doesn’t help how emotional you are.

Garcia’s right hand reaches forward to straighten out the collar of your shirt, unintentionally crumpled as you try to wipe your face of your emotions. “You’re his friend, and you have been his friend for longer than he’s known this girl he’s talking to, it’s not fair for him to completely push you to the side,”

Garcia was right. It’s not fair. Nothing about how Spencer had been treating you since he’d started speaking to Maeve had been fair. And you were done making excuses for the boy just because you knees deep in your feelings for him.

You didn’t deserve to feel guilty. You didn’t deserve to feel bad for lashing out at Spencer for apologising for not showing interest in your life by further proving just how little he’d actually payed attention to you. You didn’t deserve to cry because he was the most stupid genius to ever live and couldn’t see that you were hopelessly in love with him. You didn’t deserve to suffer by his hand.

It wasn’t fair.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“Maeve’s been kidnapped.”

You have to consciously suppress the small voice in the back of your head that celebrates the possibility that she might not be a part of Spencer’s life for much longer. It’s a horrible thought. You should never wish ill upon anyone, no matter how much you internally despised them.

Still, that part of you that was still petty, that was still infuriated with Spencer and Maeve, wanted you to tell Spencer straight to his face that you weren’t going to help him find her and that it was karma for how he’d treated you.

But you weren’t a bad person.

As much as you might hate her, she was still important to Spencer.

“I have a wealth of knowledge i should be applying to this case, but- i can’t focus on anything for more than four seconds at a time… which makes me the dumbest person in the room-” Spencer’s eyes are full of desperation as they scan across your teammates.

“So please help me… Please help me find her…” The desperation in his voice is heartbreaking, the remnants of tears staining his face as he explains the context of the situation through broken sentences.

“We don’t have an official case, so we’ll be working on personal time,” Hotch’s voice is much quieter than you’re used to. Softer, more considerate. “Does anybody want to leave?”

You can feel his eyes linger on you as he asks the question, and you subconsciously purse your mouth into a tight line to stop yourself from impulsively pulling out of the investigation.

You might be detrimentally frustrated with him, but you did want to help. Even if it ultimately resulted in your downfall.

Hotch gave you a short nod before turning to the rest of the team. “Good, let’s get to work,”

It didn’t take Garcia very long to track Maeve down, mostly attributed to her unique name and specialised job.

Dr. Maeve Donovan, a professor at Mendel University who took a sabbatical leave 10 months ago.

The group split into different groups once they’d found her, JJ and Morgan heading off to a loft her parents owned, Alex and Rossi heading to the lab she used to work at, and you and Hotch, accompanied by Spencer, going to speak to Maeve’s parents.

“Reid,” Garcia’s tone is soft as she looks over her laptop screen towards him as he begins to stand from the conference table. “I have a picture of her, do you want to know what she looks like?”

“No,”

Spencer’s answer is immediate, joined by a shake of his head.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

You and Spencer watched from behind the one way mirror as the interview progressed.

They’d last spoken to Maeve five days ago. Her mother had cancer. She was also a geneticist. They were suspicious of her ex fiancé Bobby.

Her fiancé?

You can see Spencer’s face drop at the words despite the low lighting in the room, and you can’t help but furrow your eyebrows yourself.

She had a fiancé?

Spencer practically storms out of the office after the questioning is over, and Hotch has to remind him to calm down as they reach the apartment of Robert Putnam with Morgan and Rossi in tow.

When the door opens the five of you aren’t greeted by Robert, but rather a girl, a girl who looked very confused.

You invite yourselves inside at the girl’s recognition that Robert was inside the apartment.

“And who are you?”

“I’m Diane, his girlfriend,” She raised an eyebrow as the five of you looked around, confusion cut short as Robert rounds the corner questioning the sudden voices coming from his living room.

“Hey babe what’s-“

“Robert Putnam, FBI we’d like to-” Spencer’s voice cuts him off harshly as he rushes to speak, although he stops his sentence halfway as a flicker of recognition falls across his features and his anger turns to dread.

“Hey, I know you,” Robert doesn’t have the time to say anything else to Spencer before Hotch forces him out of the room, shutting the door behind him to speak to Spencer privately whilst you Morgan and Rossi remained inside.

Hotch returned a few minutes later. Spencer didn’t.

You end up taking Hotch’s place as you push yourself out of the apartment with a small “excuse me,” to follow after Spencer as he walks out of the apartment building.

“Spencer- wait up a minute-”

He doesn’t stop at your call, and you’re practically running down the stairs by the time you get to him, already out of the front doors of the apartment building.

“Hey-” You take a second to catch your breath before turning your eyes back towards him again. “Are you alright?”

You could see the flicker of confusion in his eyes as he met your gaze.

The last time you spoke to him you threw away any remnant of your friendship with him in the bin alongside the book he’d given you, and now here you were, chasing after him to make sure that he was okay.

“Why did you agree to help?”

Your face falls from concern to surprise at his question, and he takes it as a sign to continue.

“I know that you don’t like her, so why are you here?” You could see the beginnings of tears forming in his eyes, clearly overwhelmed with how the investigation was going.

“She’s important to you Spencer. Like her or not I care about you. So therefore I care about her,” You don’t think as you speak, words spilling out of your mouth with no conscious filter.

“I’m sorry.” Spencer’s apology elicits a sigh from your mouth, and you shake your head softly at him.

“Forget it, let’s focus on getting Maeve home safe alright?” He obliges to your request with a purse of his lips and a small nod, turning his eyes towards the ground.

“What’re you thinking about?” His eyes fall on yours once more at your question, round with confusion and glistening with the starts of tears. “I can see it in your face, you’re calculating something in your head,”

He exhales through his mouth in a small laugh. You’d always been able to figure him out, and not just because you were a profiler.

“2,412 hours,” His tone is uncertain, mixed between gratefulness for you observance and something far more upsetting. “That’s how long Maeve and I have contacted each other counting letters and phone calls…”

“That’s what-” You take a second to do the calculation in your head. “100 days?”

“100.5…” He runs his hand backwards through his hair, pressing his eyes closed like he’s afraid tears will spill from them if he doesn’t. “What if that’s all I get?”

“It won’t be Spencer…”

“You don’t know that-“

“Yes Spencer, I do,” You have to consciously suppress the sigh that threatens to leave your mouth, pushing your lingering distaste for Maeve down with it. “She is going to be fine, I promise,”

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Turns out Maeve’s ex fiancé wasn’t the stalker. In fact, he was being stalked himself, and whilst JJ and Garcia were looking over the images posted to Robert whilst him and Maeve were still together they discovered something that changed the entire direction of the investigation.

Maeve’s face had scribbled out in eyeliner.

You and the team spent the next thirty minutes rebuilding the profile from the bottom up.

“Celebrity stalkers are usually non violent,”

“You want to tell that to John Lennon Rossi?” Spencer looked up from his lap towards the group at the table, having separated himself from the group to sit on a sofa lining one of the walls so he couldn’t bias the profile.

It wasn’t going too well.

“What was it that Mark David Chapman said after he shot him?” Spencer stood from his seat, anger flaring in his nostrils. “‘It was like all of my nobody-ness and all of his somebody-ness collided’,”

You could hear the rise in his tone as he worked himself up the more he spoke.

“Spencer-“

“Maeve is somebody. And this- bitch is a nobody.”

“Spencer.”

Spencer caught your gaze, and immediately fizzling out of his eyes and replaced with guilt. “I’m sorry- I can’t be very helpful right now I should leave-“

“Yes you can Reid, you have 100.5 days of communication with this girl and a recall everything verbatim,” Morgan’s gaze is entirely concerned with Spencer’s outburst.

“There’s too much of it, and I can’t sort through any of it clearly-“ Spencer is clearly on the edge of breaking, and you can tell he’s not going to be able to keep his composure for much longer.

“Then pick one of us and we’ll go through it with you,” Hotch leaned his elbows against the table, his voice again portraying that soft, parental tone that said he knew how overwhelmed Spencer was getting.

Spencer didn’t even say anything, his eyes just silently flickered over to you and you knew you couldn’t refuse him.

You return his silence as you get up from your seat and pat your hand on his shoulder for the two of you to exit the room together.

Time to torture yourself for the sake of Spencer’s wellbeing.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Diane Turner, a research assistant working for her PhD in the same lab as Maeve. A student who had her thesis rejected because it contained a heavy sample bias that included both of her parents.

It took a while, but Garcia eventually managed to track down a loft that was owned under Diane’s parents’ names, less than 10 minutes away from Maeve’s apartment.

“Take your gun and vest off,” Diane’s voice is harsh through the receiver attached to the front of the building, and Spencer’s eyes flickered up from the silk blindfold in his hands to the metal box.

He doesn’t question the orders as he immediately begins stripping the vest from his torso, dropping it and his gun on the floor.

“Now come in alone.”

“Spencer.” You call out to him as he reaches for the door handle, and he gives you that look that makes your stomach do flips in your torso. Except this time it’s not that pleasant fluttery feeling, but instead an existential dread at the fact that he might not walk out of the building alive.

“I’ll be okay,” He gives you a nod of reassurance as he pushes the door open, and you find yourself clenching your hands around your gun to stop yourself from following after him.

The six of you wait outside for what feels like hours, and you lean back and forth on the balls of your feet as you become increasingly restless with the situation.

Then, a gunshot.

And a second.

And your heart drops in your chest.

You’re not entirely present as you rush into the building with the team following behind you, gun raised at your eyes.

Spencer had to be okay. He had to. He was going to be fine. You were going to walk into that room and he was going to be perfectly fine.

You hoped Maeve was alright too. As much as she was unintentionally causing you literal hell, you knew that she meant everything to Spencer.

You knew that he’d choose her over anything. He’d choose her over you.

And right now you don’t care. You just want him to be okay.

You force the door open to the loft with your foot, gun pointed straight ahead at the first person you see.

“Stay back-“ Spencer practically shouts from where he’s half lying on the floor, right hand clutching tightly at his left bicep, trails of blood cascading down his fingers and onto the floor.

“Stay back stay back don’t shoot-“

You let out an audible sigh at the fact that Spencer wasn’t critically harmed, although upon a whimper of his name from further across the room you turn your eyes up to the noise.

And you finally meet the girl that’s caused you ten months of hell. Held at gunpoint.

That small voice in the back of your head tells you that this might be your chance to finally rid her from your life, to let her succumb to whatever Diane had planned and leave Spencer to you.

But you take one look at the desperation in her eyes and any loathing that remained in your mind immediately fizzled out.

It wasn’t her fault. Of course it wasn’t. She was just a girl that happened to be in love.

“Diane,” Spencer pushes himself to stand, and you can see the pain in his face as he does. “There’s still a way out of this,”

“You never wanted me. Never!” Diane pushes the gun she’s holding hard against Maeve’s neck, and you can see her eyes squeeze closed as she attempts to keep herself from crying. “You lied!”

“I didn’t.”

Spencer shakes his head adamantly, and you glance over at Hotch as you spread across the back of the room, guns raised in Diane’s direction. “Diane, I offered you a deal, and you can still take it,”

“Me for her. Let me take her place,”

You only have a view of the back of Spencer’s head now, but you can tell by the tone of his voice that his expression is a pure display of desperation, one that you’re happy you can’t see because you’d lose your composure in an instant.

“You would do that?” Diane’s question is angry and accusatory, tears rolling down her face as she presses the gun against Maeve’s neck once more.

Spencer nods with no threat in his tone. “Yes,”

“You would kill yourself for her?”

“Yes.”

You practically feel your heart stop.

“Thomas Merton,” Maeve’s voice is almost exactly as you imagined it to be. Soft, smooth and, as Spencer had called it all those months ago, ‘dipped in honey’.

“Who’s Thomas Merton?” Diane’s tone contrasts Maeve’s tenfold, pitchy, uneven and overrun with manic anger.

“He knows,” You can see Maeve’s eyes flicker, and you assume that they meet Spencer’s as his shoulders drop. “He knows.”

“Who’s Thomas Merton?” Diane shakes Maeve in her grasp as if to intensify the urgence of her question, and you tighten your grip on your gun in instinctual response. “Who is he?”

“He’s the one thing you can never take from us,” Maeve’s voice is confident and defiant despite the clear tears in her eyes.

Thomas Merton could’ve been something between Spencer and you.

“No.”

You can see a clear change in Diane’s expression at Maeve’s words, and she lowers the gun from Maeve’s head only to hold it up against her own, staring directly into Spencer’s eyes.

“Wait-”

Spencer barely has time to shout the word before the gun fires, and you flinch at the sound as you watch Maeve and Diane both drop to the floor, dark red blood pooling around the two.

You can feel the tension in the room as everyone computes what just happened, guns lowering slowly as their eyes lock onto the two women on the floor.

You’re not focused on that. You’re focused on the tightness of Spencer’s shoulders as he takes sharp breaths in and out of his nose.

The way he seems to forget about the bullet wound in his arm as his legs give out underneath him.

The way a sob that leaves his mouth despite the fact that he tries to muffle it with his hand.

The way that Spencer broke.

He's crying. Big, heaving, heart-wrenching sobs.

His shoulders are trembling.

His hands are shaking.

His head is hanging downwards so that his hair is covering his face.

You approach him slowly, kneeling down at his side and placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.

His eyes slowly shift from Maeve, his sobs only seeming to amplify as he meets your gaze. His eyes are red and closely with tears, his cheeks running hot and his lips trembling.

You don’t speak, knowing that you’ll break if you do. Instead, you guide his head into your shoulder and let him crumble in your arms, grieving the loss of the love of his life.

You’re sure you’re going to cry yourself to sleep when you get home, but right now, you needed to be strong. For him.

“I’m so sorry-“ Spencer speaks through broken sobs as you hold him, the rest of the team moving to secure the scene.

“Shh,” You shake your head against his softly, rubbing the palm of your hand up and down his back as you let him cry until he physically couldn’t anymore.

“I treated you so horribly-“ He pulls away from your shoulder to look into your eyes once more. “I’m so sorry- Please don’t leave me…”

You purse your lips into a line, your expression full of so many emotions Spencer can’t distinguish any of them.

“I’m not going anywhere,” You pull his head back into your shoulder, leaning your head against his. “I promise…”

[malereader-inserts]

Be Your Boy

Fandom: Criminal Minds Pairing: Spencer Reid x Male!Reader Summary: Spencer and you are smitten like a pair of mittens; you do wonder how your team are qualified profilers. Word Count: 1,682 A/n: I hope this read well, I feel like it's all over the place. And as a present for hitting 9K followers, sorry for the empty promises or returning, i'll be there, just when you don't expect it. All the love ❤️

You and Spencer have been dating for almost eight months; if you have ever been in a serious relationship - eight months might not be a long time or even a big deal; but it was sort of a big deal because it's eight months of dating this Doctor in secret.

It wasn't because the two of you were ashamed or embarrassed to be out in public, but there was something about the thrill of sneaking around like teenagers. Plus, it was somewhat concerning for a bunch of profilers not to even clock on to the fact that you feel like you and Spencer have been painfully obvious. It doesn't diminish the option that they do know but not getting into your business; but at the end of the day - they're not just a team, they're friends outside of work, and you guys are very close together.

"Any plans for the weekend, pretty boy?" Morgan asked Spencer, who looked up from his paperwork.

"Yeah, (Y/n) is hanging around, planning to try and do a Harry Potter marathon."

You look up upon hearing your name, Morgan looks over to you as you flash a smile and a thumbs up. Morgan simply smiles and turns back to his work. You look at your boyfriend, who stares at you, both of you (promptly) shrugging your shoulders and returning to work.

It was almost a weekly occurrence that one of you two would slip up and make it obvious that you two are dating.

"When did you start wearing hoodies?" Penelope asked Spencer, pulling on the hoodie strings as Spencer swats her hand away.

"It's (Y/n)'s."

"Oh, that's nice of him, I know you can get cold easily."

You stood behind Penelope with a baffled look that she had not connected the dots. Spencer sighs out a chuckle before changing the subject.

"Cute lockscreen."

You looked up from your phone to see JJ next to you with Emily, who peered over to look at your lock screen, which was a picture of you and Spencer with your family dog between the two of you. You could mistake it as a friend picture, but what type of friends have their temples touching and basically cuddling up together?

At this point, you gave up. It was much more funnier to see them be more confused as to why you and Spencer spend so much time together. But, sometimes, you are thankful that you and Spencer can enjoy each other's presence without being teased and hounded by your team. It was nice to have each other and be each other's escape from reality.

"So, Spencer," You hummed, lying in your apartment, which was bigger than his, "I was wondering when you wanted to move in?"

He looks at you, eyes shimmering like a child on Christmas day, his heart is thumping loudly against his chest as he can't help to feel the heat rise to his cheeks. You couldn't help but smirk at his reaction, booping his nose as a tease causing Spencer to smile so bashfully.

Your apartment was bigger than his and a lot more cosier; he was most often than not at your place, he had started bringing his stuff over and leaving at yours; slowly he was invading your home, but you loved it.

"I like the idea of that."

You shrugged your shoulders, snuggling closer to your sofa as you looked at him. Beautifully lit under the warm lamp as he read his book, and to you, he had looked like a piece of art, upon seeing him - you couldn't help but smile to yourself; wondering how you got so lucky.

Spencer thinks the world of you, from an outsider, most often not, you are the one to protect him. You were the more threatening-looking one, you were always blunt and sometimes rude, but he still thinks you are one of the most sweetest person he has ever met. You have been there for him, you know him so well, and you've been there on the days he struggled the most. You are so understanding and patient, he couldn't believe you're his boyfriend.

Like Frida Khalo said: 'Take the lover who looks at you like you’re some kind of magic.'

"You're soft," Spencer teased, lying in bed with you, you turn to look at him in the dark, and he can't help but notice that you, once again, have taken his breath away from your darling eyes.

"I'm soft?" You mused out, a slightly humourous tone to your voice, "I am soft in the way the fabric of a tattered blanket is soft. I could be ripped to shreds and still hope someone finds comfort in me."

"You are comforting," He reassures you, you let out a breathy laugh, as you bring your hand to caress his cheek.

"Oh, to be your boy, Spencer Reid," You gently say, sending shivers down his spine, tenderly placing a kiss upon his lips, "Turn over, we gotta sleep and I want to cuddle you.

"I heard that (Y/n) is ill," Morgan says during lunch break, the team sitting about around Spencer's desk.

They had noticed that Spencer have been on his phone more often than not. He looked worried sick and every hour he seemed to be checking his phone; it's not usually like him. The team were sharing concerned looks and usually, the person who could calm him down was off ill.

"Hey, Spence, are you going over to (Y/n)'s later?" JJ inquired as Spencer looked up as he heard your name, "If you don't mind, I'd like to tag along, (Y/n) isn't usually ill and I get worried sick when one of us gets sick."

"Awh," Morgan had a playful tone, "You care about us, JJ?"

"Maybe not with you," JJ playfully snapped back before looking at the young genius with a questioning look, "Well?"

"I mean, I guess?" Spencer finally responded though he debated with himself whether or not to inform you.

"Great!" Rossi says, Spencer did not know that he was listening to the whole conversation, "We can all check up on him!"

"Er.. I don't think-"

"Nonsense, Reid," Rossi interrupted, giving him a look, "You need to learn how to share."

Spencer was rendered speechless before making the decision to message you that he couldn't stop the team from tagging along with him to check up on you.

You had completely forgotten that the team was also coming along with your boyfriend, you had spent the better half of your day lying in front of the television catching up on your series as you battle the winter flu. You hear the door unlock as you tiredly sit up from the sofa.

"Babe?" You called out, though it was hoarse and you tried to clear your throat, but to no avail, you were inevitably going to lose your voice.

"I'm home, baby."

The sound of your boyfriend's voice was so comforting that you slunk back into the comfortable position on the sofa.

"Babe?"

You sat up almost immediately as you realised that was not Spencer's voice, then remembered that he had brought visitors. You internally groaned, not wanting to be putting up with the antic of your team. You slowly got up as you stood in the arch way that stood between the hallway and the living room, the blanket wrapped over you.

"What are you guys doing here?" You croaked out, it was so pitiful, you turned to look at your boyfriend helplessly. He put his hands up in defence.

"I tried to tell them no," You hummed in disapproval as Spencer sighed at your state, "You look worn out."

"'Cause I am."

He gently place a kiss upon your forehead, and you had to stop yourself from letting out a coo. You just couldn't help but slink yourself into the comfort of your boyfriend's arm.

"Hang on, you two are dating?" Emily asked, she had an offended tone and you know why she would be offended.

"I mean, we haven't exactly made it sublet," Spencer says bluntly as you snort, he looks at you with an annoyed expression but that was soon washed away and replaced with a fond expression, "I spend too much time around you."

"You love me, Spence," You teased, a playful twinkle in your eyes.

"Well, why didn't you tell us!" Morgan says afterwards, almost pouting, "I'm your best friend, Reid!"

"Like he said, we haven't made it sublet, we just didn't think we needed to tell anyone, plus Hotch knows."

"Aaron knows?" Rossi asked, surprised that their stoic team leader had not said a word about the pair of you.

"He had caught us making out in the cleaners' closet at work," You answered dryly, "He's known for about five months, we go on double dates with him and Beth every so often."

"Five months?" Penelope exclaimed, it makes sense why Hotch declined the offer to come to check up on you and it makes even bigger sense that he had teased Spencer about it afterwards.

Spencer nodded, ushering you back to the living room so you could rest, "We've been together longer than that, about eight months."

"How?"

"It was after a night out we all had, we got drunk, stupidly confessed our feelings and the rest of history, to put it short."

"Well, I don't want the short story, I want the details," JJ demanded, sitting on the other sofa that was adjacent to you as you sent a glare to Spencer.

"This is your fault," You mumbled, as Spencer rubbed your shoulder, you couldn't really be mad at him.

"You love me really..."

You really did love him and loving him was so easy. You love being his boy and you love to call him yours. Eventually, the rest of the team was going to find out about you two, at least it was now and not when you planned to propose to Spencer down the line - but, Spencer doesn't need to know that, for now anyway.

[animeyanderelover]

I did something like this before with Dazai but I just sort of redid it again because I was in the mood.

Tw: Yandere themes, toxic relationship, possessive behavior, obsession, delusional mindset, clinginess, touchiness, stalking, paranoia, controlling behavior, manipulation, guilt-tripping, isolation, abduction, pregnancy, C-section, mentions of non-con, Stockholm syndrome, baby-trapping, afab s/o

Tags: @lovley-valentine7 @leveyani @chxxz @shumidehiro @izanami78

Pregnancy Hc’s

Pluto

🐺​You've always wondered if Pluto due to being a Demon Hound would go into rut as well now that apparently he has chosen you as his mate. You remember having done a lot of research on wolves. Now that you are permanently stuck with him in a den filled with clothes and blankets he has stolen from villages to keep you warm, you can't help but feel scared when you see the worst fits of winter slowly passing by and the snow melting. Breeding season is from February to March as you can recall and so you watch with growing caution and worry Pluto's behavior. He's recently acted strange. He always rubs his scent all over you, growls as soon as you dare to leave his vision and has been getting a lot more aggressive and irritated with every living being around his den. You fear the worst as he grows clingier and clingier until one day your worst fears are confirmed when sharp nails rip your old and worn-out clothes from your body as red pupils dilate and you feel his erection rutting against your entrance, irritated that he can't get in before he finally slips into you. He barely separates from you during his rut as he spends his time either breeding you or cuddling next to you protectively.

🐺​You know that he would be the one who would notice your potential pregnancy first due to his enhanced senses and when he soon starts nudging your tummy with a satisfied rumble coming from deep within his chest and starts licking it, you take it as a confirmation that he succeeded in breeding you. You don't take the news well because you know that you have no doctor to visit and no midwife to help you when you'll eventually give birth. You only have Pluto with you who resembles from behavior and intelligence a wolf. You can't help but sob a bit when you realise that you'll have to essentially go through pregnancy and birth all by yourself. Pluto, distressed by your sorrow and stress, starts whining and tries to ease your distress by cuddling himself physically close to you. Obviously he doesn't understand what you are thinking right now or why you are so stressed in the first place. He only knows that he doesn't like to see you so panicked and sad, especially now that you carry pups.

🐺​As the male wolf who sired the offspring developing in your tummy, he grows exponentially more protective as his instincts remind him that he is protector and provider for the mother of his children as well as the babies themselves. He starts hunting animals and even buries them for later. You do your best to light up a fire in here to cook the raw meat or just command Pluto to breathe fire for you, a useful trick you've taught him ever since he abducted you. A part of his brain also recalls occasionally what food you consumed when you were still living in a town and since food is now more important than ever with you gestating his young, he raids towns in his Hound form for food and brings it to you. You don't want to touch food that has been directly touched by his saliva when he spits it out in front of you but you accept canned food which Pluto remembers for his next hunt. Besides his hunt for food and his pursuit of everything that dares to get too close to his den, he spends all of his time wrapped around you. Either in his human or hound form.

🐺​You notice that Pluto is confused when you don't give birth within spring and you assume it's because his kind usually gestates young quicker than a human. He whimpers as he presses his nose and ears confused against your swelling stomach as he looks up at you with concerned eyes. You assume that he can sense that the babies are developing fine inside of you as well as that you are healthy which only leaves him majorly confused. You can't help but wonder if you are still growing faster than a normal pregnant human would or if you are actually expecting more than one because you could swear that your stomach looks bigger than it should be already. The only thing you can do for now is wait though. Pluto grows more protective and anxious the more time passes by as his confusion and unease only grow as you don't give birth as well as seeing you starting to struggle as your belly swells and starts hindering you from moving around as much.

🐺​As soon as you can confirm first movement and you realise how much movement it is, you can only silently confirm that you are definitely carrying more than one baby. When Pluto sees and feels the movement in your belly too, he lets out a few excited howls and starts licking your belly more from that day on to show you as well as the pups inside more affection. You really wish that he could talk like a normal human whenever he presses his ears against your stomach because you think that with his enhanced senses he might even be able to hear the heartbeat of the babies and can count them. You can only leave the den when he is with you and the more pronounced and rounded your stomach becomes, the more he insists that you ride on his hound form so that you don't tire yourself. He ususally remains in hound form as he watches you cleaning yourself in the river, his ears twitching and turning around with every small rustle and sound.

🐺​When autumn arrives and the babies are still not born, his anxiety increases. He frantically starts stealing more food as well as clothes and blankets for you to prepare for winter. He's often wrapping himself around you in his hound form nowadays to keep you and your big belly all the time warm. You expect to give birth soon as you have done the basic calculation and at this rate you can't wait as your stomach has gotten so huge. Your labor starts and your water breaks in early winter as you spend hours upon hours with contractions. Pluto is emotionally just as distraught as you are as he cries and whimpers, licking your sweaty head as he tries to comfort and encourage you as you birth his kids. Nearly a day filled with pain later, you've given birth to three boys, all with his silver hair. If he'd have a tail right now, it would wag like crazy as he lets out what you assume are excited barks as he tenderly chews off their umbilical cord and licks them clean before he carefully pushes all of them against your chest. He pulls a few stolen blankets over his new family before turning into his hound form and wrapping himself protectively around his mate and freshly born litter.

Snake

⚕️​Snake is a hybrid himself so chances of him experiencing something akin to mating season aren't unlikely. It will probably not be as strong with Snake who is normally always a more shy and insecure around you but there is an intense need for him during such periods to mate with you and breed. He is conscious of his sexual urges though and generally tries to avoid you during such times. He doesn't want to force the sexual act on you even if all of his snakes try to coax him into believing that he shouldn't resist his nature. Snake refuses though even if temptation is sometimes very strong when he feels the warmth of your body on his skin as his pupils go from their ususal slits to growing, black orbs as he feels his desire flaring up hotly inside his body. Sex during this period of time is rougher as the normally more submissive male becomes more dominate, although he tries to be more careful with you despite essentially being in heat.

⚕️​As he eventually calms down from his heat and returns to his normal self, although highly ashamed and apologetic afterwards, his snakes and him soon sense that he has succeeded in what his heat-addled brain wanted to do. You're pregnant. He doesn't know how he should tell you and hesitates for a while. Snake is terrified that you'll be angry with him for impregnating you and also worries that you might reject the child to whom he seems to already form an attachment to. His golden eyes often focus on your stomach as he grows more protective and starts following you around more often. His snakes seem to try to tell you what Snake hesitates to speak out as they wrap themselves around your stomach protectively to protect the precious life inside. You can tell that something is going on but Snake still can't speak up. So far no one besides Sebastian seems to have caught on, the butler telling Snake in an amused tone that he should tell you soon as you are already suspicious.

⚕️​He apologizes as soon as he has told you and you can see that he is visibly anxious and nervous for your reaction. At this point you've had your own suspicions already as your period has been late and you've started to experience some typical symptoms like a change of smell. You are a bit unsure because this pregnancy wasn't fully planned even if you were aware of Snake's intentions when you agreed to have sex with him during his heat but you also don't hate the baby and just decide to raise it together with him. Snake is visibly relieved when he hears your answer as his eyes water a bit. He's shaking a bit when he hugs you because he is excited, nervous and anxious all at the same time. Snake seems to be a bit unwilling to share the news initially with Ciel and all the other human servants as he is quite protective but he knows that it's necessary so he soon tells the Earl of Phantomhive about the fact that you're expecting. When Mey-Rin, Bardroy and Finny find out, they're busily congratulating him as well as suggesting names for the baby, even arguing over it.

⚕️​Snake feels increasingly more uneasy and worried whenever he has to leave you alone so to not feel as anxious, he always leaves a few of his snakes in your company. All of his animal friends gladly do him the favor of looking out and guarding you and there is always at least one poisonous among those who stay with you. Just to be completely sure that nothing happens to you whilst you are pregnant. So you end up always having one snake gently wrapped around your neck whilst the other one is wrapped around your stomach for as long as it is still possible. Snake gets all flustered when you slowly start developing a baby bump, his hands trembling slightly when he touches your tummy with his hands carefully as if afraid that even the slightest touch could harm the precious life inside. He's more warily than ever when he brings you over to the mansion because all other servants, besides Sebastian, have been kind of asking him if he could let you visit. His snakes have been against it, it's only because you wanted to come over that he yields. He's still cautious and stays alerted because he knows that the servants in this mansion can be quite clumsy and he wouldn't want anything to harm you.

⚕️​He has been sensing it for kind of a while now and his snakes have been too but Snake waits for a while to confirm his suspicion as your stomach swells with new life until the first kicks eventually happen. It's then that he can confirm that he has been sensing two lives within you and all of his snakes have done so too. He looks anxious when he tells you this because one child is already such a big responsibility. Two at once is even bigger of a responsibility though and he can't help but worry even if he is also equally as excited. At one point your stomach gets too big for some of his snakes to comfortably wrap around so instead they curl themselves over your stomach comfortably as soon as you sit down or lay in bed. You notice that they are often hissing, their tongue flipping out as their head moves closer to your stretched skin. Snake informs you that they're communicating with the babies inside your stomach and often translates to you what they're saying. Both of you actually wonder if the babies will also be able to understand snakes like he does and judging from the increased movements whenever a snake is talking to them, you like to imagine that they do.

⚕️​As happy as Snake is, he's also more prone to insecurities. He's worried that his children might also be made anomalies due to him being their father. He manages to convince Ciel with the huge support of the other free human servants to be given some time off when you approach your due date. He rejects the offer that you could come over to his mansion and give birth in his room as he wants his solitude with you when your water breaks as he prefers to stay in your house. He does accept the offer of letting a midwife stay with you now that you're so incredibly close. He definitely reaches the peak of his protective behavior in those final days when him and his snakes can all sense that it could happen anyday now as he barely leaves you out of his sight. He's not leaving your sight, clutching your hand tightly in his own as soon as your contractions start as if he's the one in need of support, golden eyes observing sharply the midwife from time to time too. You give birth to one boy and one girl and they're surrounded by all of his snakes instantly, the animals determined to protect both of those children. They have some scales littering a few parts of their body but he doesn't care as he tears up when he sees how cute they are.

Dazai Osamu

🤎Dazai wants to start a family with his darling at one point and he has always been hinting at this. Whenever he sees a young family when he’s walking around with you, he jokingly asks you how your children would be if you would have a few. As soon as he sees a pregnant person walking around, he tells you that you’d probably look very cute with a pronounced baby bump that would make you waddle wherever you go and would force you to rely on him for a lot of things. He says all of those things with a harmless and teasing smile on his face yet he also gauges your reaction to his words very closely, brown eyes observing every twitch of your mouth and eyes. Perhaps it would be best for you to have nothing against the thought of children because otherwise you might be succumbed to his manipulation and gaslighting. Jokes eventually turn serious as Dazai makes it clear to you that he desires a child with you, his own hands gently grasping your own as he presses his forehead against your own. Don't you want it too? Leaving a physical trace of your love and adoration on this earth even after your death in form of a sweet child?

🤎​Perhaps you should have expected this outcome even if you yourself never desired a child to begin with. As your period doesn't come and as you slowly start experiencing symptoms such as cravings, a suden change in smell as well as nausea you can feel his eyes trailing after you. It's like he has been waiting for signs of pregnancy from you and now that you experience those changes, Dazai starts feeling extremely giddy. He soon goes out to run an errand and asks you to wait for him at home before he leaves, giving you a quick kiss before he does so. When he returns, he has bought a few pregnancy tests and asks you excitedly to take them. He waits in front of the bathroom, although he knocks on the door every few seconds to ask if he can come inside now. As soon as you allow him, both of you wait for the results. When two red lines appear on all of them and confirm that you are indeed expecting, he starts to let out a genuinely happy and excited laugh. Arms wrap gently around your waist and you feel warm lips travel all over your face before he starts spinning and swaying you around whilst humming happily.

🤎​Dazai decides to keep it a secret from everyone in his workplace for now and is especially more careful to keep the news away from the Port Mafia. He is no fool, he is aware that at one point they will find out. For now though he just wants to enjoy this special time with you whilst also preparing for the baby. For the first time in a while he seems to become conscious of his own life lifestyle and suddenly he does a 180 now that he knows that a baby will soon live here. Dazai starts cleaning everything, clothes and other stuff that used to lay everywhere randomly is sorted away because he doesn't want you to trip over it. He even makes a list what he needs to buy but he still likes to make spontanous decisions as he goes out with you, a hand always wrapped around you as the both of you buy a crib, diapers and choose babyclothes together. He discovers his fervor as he buys everything even if it threatens to tear a hole in his wallet. Both of you find quickly out during an appointment with a doctor that you are actually having twins and he couldn't be more happy as he showers you in kisses as soon as the news are out. So that means that he can name one child and you can name one too.

🤎​He always keeps a picture of the ultrasound pictures in his wallet and whenever he has the time, he just stares fondly at the two little babies in your womb. This is what he'll soon protect and have in his life. He has had his hands on your stomach and even talked to the babies before you were showing but as soon as you start developing a baby bump, he glues himself even more to your side. Hands are always rubbing over your swelling tummy as he all but dotes on you and his two babies. As soon as you are in your second trimester he becomes especially touchy as he eagerly awaits the first kicks of his precious children. It's probably around this time that the other members of the ADA find out about your pregnancy. It's either that they caught him staring at the ultrasound pictures or that Yosano caught sight of the two of you during her shopping trips and connected the dots quickly when she saw your growing belly. Initially his reactions are more careful when all members find out and congratulate him but eventually he becomes more open and starts gushing about how precious and adorable you are with your baby bump and how he can't wait for the babies to be born.

🤎​Dazai starts taking pictures of you at one point too because he wants to capture how beautiful and motherly you start looking the bigger you start to grow and is all but cooing and doting on you during this time as you slowly start struggling with the size of your belly. Dazai on the other hand truly starts blossoming as your situation as well as his babies motivate him to take better care of himself because you and the babies need him to take care of them. He helps you with all tasks that start to become more straining for you, he cleans the house, does the laundry and even starts to pick up some meals to cook so that he can prepare them for you as well as for the babies at one point. He always insists to spoonfeed you whenever he cooks something for you, all excited for you to try them. He does keep you on a diet appropriate for your pregnancy but at one time he starts to become so putty in your hands the further along you are that he starts stocking the food that you start craving a lot whilst you are carrying his twins.

🤎​He is constantly torn apart between wanting to know the gender of his babies and wanting to keep it a surprise. There were multiple times during appointments with the doctor where he wanted to ask or even at home when he already had his phone in his hands and was about to call them only to change his mind in the last moment. He takes some time off from his work in your last weeks as he yearns to spend those last few weeks with you. It'll be the last time for a long time that both of you will be alone after all. He savors the last bit of your pregnancy, his hands and lips cherishing your big tummy as he spends every waking hour with you. When your labor starts, he decides to wait as he packs everything he thinks you two might need for the hospital all whilst giving you soft kisses in between whenever you feel a contraction. When your contractions come in certain time intervals, he drives with you to the hospital and then he stays there with you, his hand rubbing over your stomach as he asks the twins to not give you too much of a hard time and that he can't wait to meet them. His eyes are filled with nothing but love as soon as you give birth to his daughter and his son as he admires his new family.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

🍎​Fyodor has never mentioned anything about children to you for as long as you can remember. And honestly, with the situation you are in with him you have never had the time nor the care to ask him what his opinion of children is. Until Fyodor succeeds in invading your heart and mind and you stop caring about about everything else that isn't him either. Your days from that day on are spend with Fyodor being much more gentle and affectionate with you although sometimes he just needs to ignite the sadistic spark inside of him and see you in pain only to kiss the pain better afterwards whilst uttering sweet nothings to you. You've completely forgotten about thoughts of a child until one day he suddenly brings it up to you whilst you are placed on his lap, his lips brushing against your ear as he asks you how you'd feel about a child. You're a bit surprised but eventually you tell him that you wouldn't mind having a child with him. He gives you a small smile as he replies that he's glad to hear this as you feel one of his cold hands resting on your stomach.

🍎​You realise a few weeks later that he must have already known at that time that you were expecting as you are hunched over the toilet again, Fyodor behind you as he caresses your back and your shoulders whilst you throw up. He's sure that it must be uncomfortable but he hopes that you'll get used to it since this might happen more often now that you carry his child. You've already asked him a couple of times before if the child was intended from his side or if it was an accident. All you always get from him is this mysterious smile and a gentle kiss somewhere on your head as he tells you in a low tone that he's happy and that is all that matters. He quickly arranges everything for you and the child. Fyodor can't risk anyone tracking you back to him and possibly go after you now that you are carrying his baby but he is generous enough to know that it would be wiser to have medics assisting you and helping you, especially once you'll give birth to his baby. He's very picky though as he chooses a selected few doctors and midwives to do the ultrasounds and to cater to your and your baby's needs as soon as he has to drive you to the hospital.

🍎​His hands caress your stomach gingerly as soon as you start showing as he even starts occasionally talking to the baby, mainly in Russian. He's given you already a nickname in Russian and he gives one to the child inside of you too and always addresses the baby by his chosen pet name when he talks to your stomach. Fyodor wants to find out the gender of the baby soon though so as soon as it is possible to find the sex of the baby out through the ultrasound, he asks the doctor to tell the both of you. A small smile appears on his face when he hears that he'll have a little daughter, his eyes twinkling with pride and fondness whenever he touches your stomach from that point on and talks gently with his litte girl. His sadistic desires completely vanish during your pregnancy because he would never be so cruel to hurt you whilst you carry something so small and pure inside of you. This little girl is a gift from god after all, physical proof that both of you are bound together.

🍎​The whole nursery is colored in white and light blue and you don't get much of a say in it. White is the color of purity after all and his daughter will be born pure. She'll be a precious and innocent child, born without any sin tainting her. And light blue to symbolize the clear and blue sky on a day without any clouds hiding it from the human's eyes. The further along you are, the more Fyodor tries to make more time for you instead of spending it scheming and planning his crimes or wasting hours in front of multiple screens. Even whilst he is working, he always has one screen showing him live footage of a camera he has set up in your room for safety. Sometimes he forgets about his work as he instead admires you through the screen. His admiration for his darling definitely grows during the pregnancy. It's so beautiful to see how your body adjusts and prepares for his daughter you grow and nurture inside of you. You are so breathtaking as your belly swells with child and your breasts slowly inflate with milk to nurse the baby as soon as she is born.

🍎​The man finds himself low-key starting to worship you and your body as you grow with his child and he admits to you so as he whispers words of affirmation and praises into your ears whenever his arms are wrapped around you gingerly and his hands rub over your stomach soothingly. He has a smug and content grin on his face whenever you tell him that the little girl starts kicking and moving around inside of you whenever he starts talking Russion to her as if she reacts to his voice and his words as his hands instantly rest on your bump to feel her little feet and hands. He always tells you in an almost teasing voice that he's just starting very early to teach her his mother tongue, glad that she seems to react so strongly to him speaking in Russian to her. He chooses a couple of different names for his daughter, all in Russian as well and all of them have some meaning including purity or God in it. He tells you about those names he has chosen so far and asks you which name sounds prettiest to you. You tell him your honest answer although you don't know if he'll actually consider your answer.

🍎​He removes himself completely from all of his work when your due date is getting close as he spends all of his time from that point on with you. His purple eyes are always on you as he watches for any sign that you might experience the first signs of early labor. Similar to Dazai, Fyodor decides to wait for a while until your contractions are coming within a certain time. You spend early labor with him as both of you pack everything he thinks you might need whilst in the hospital whilst he softly assures you that even if what is to come might be scary and will be painful, it's the last and ultimate act you have to do in order to bring your beautiful daughter into this world. He has booked a private room for you as soon as he brings you to the hospital because he doesn't want too many people around you and his newborn daughter as soon as she is born. There's only the midwife occasionally checking how far you are dilated, otherwise you are left alone with Fyodor who soothes you as good as he can until they tell you that it's time to push. Fyodor tells them to leave as soon as the baby is safely delivered and cleaned, his eyes focused on his daughter as he tenderly caresses her head.

Jouno Saigiku

♦️​Here you are, permanently imprisoned as the government has taken you under special protectionall because Jouno has asked them to do him a favor. You know that this is in reality just a more civilized abduction but no one gives you any help as you are stuck as Saigiku's lover, a doll who can do nothing but wait for him to return from any missions or other business he had to attend to and hope that he won't be in any sadistic mood. You never even thought of any children and you honestly get chills when you think about Saigiku being father to a child, especially if it should be your own. You don't even think that he would want any children if you would have to make a guess based on his possessive behavior he exhibits around you. You barely take notice when your period is a bit late because it wouldn't be your first time that you've missed your menstruation due to the stress you've felt ever since you've been taken. You don't assume anything, not until you see Saigiku's frown as his head tilts into the direction of your stomach.

♦️​You can only freeze in shock and confusion when he suddenly leans down and presses his ear against your stomach and before you can even attempt to ask what has suddenly gotten into him, he hushes you as he starts focusing on something. You see his normally smug and composed exterior fading as you see surprise, then shock and eventually unease all appearing on his face before he pulls away. He furrows, appears conflicted before he asks you when you've last had your period and it's his question that makes you realise that you've been quite late by now. You want to ask him why he wants to know before your breath gets caught in your throat as you connect the dots and Jouno can hear that you've caught onto why he asked this. He instantly makes an appointment with the doctor and not too long after he gets the confirmation of what he already knew. You're pregnant, the embryo already having a heartbeat which he is able to detect now. There is a thick silence as soon as the news are out and you look anxiously at Jouno who seems to contemplate the situation right now.

♦️​You're surprised when he actually asks you of your opinion on the pregnancy and since he would be able to tell if you would have lied or not anyways, you decide to give him an honest answer. You aren't sure how to feel about this. He seems to think the situation through for the next few days, the second heartbeat he can pick up when he is around you a constant reminder of what is going on inside of you. Eventually he makes the decision to keep the child. You don't know if he would force you to keep the baby even if you were against it but you are still unsure to make up your mind about the situation so whilst you aren't distraught when he announces his decision to you, you also aren't thrilled. Saigiku lets out a sigh when he picks up on your hesitance, one of his hands ruffling your hair gently. He knows that this wasn't the plan but now that this surprise happened you two might as well just make the best of it. He takes your hesitance over any hatred directed against your child though. Jouno just hopes that you'll have made up your mind by the time the child is born. He trusts you to make the right decision.

♦️​He would like for this to remain a secret but the other Hunting Dogs find out far too soon for his taste. Fukuchi congratulates him as he pats Saigiku on his shoulder, Teruko is having a laugh imagining Jouno with a toddler whilst Tetchou and Tachibana fret for the way the baby will be raised by Saigiku. Whilst Tachibana at least keeps quiet about it even if Jouno can still pick up clearly on his emotions, Tetchou is a bit more blunt as he openly admits that he is a bit concerned for how Jouno plans to raise his child. Saigiku can only feel his temper rising as this is the precise reason why he wanted to keep your pregnancy hidden for a while longer. How dare he to question his abilities to take care and look out for his own child? Fukuchi stops the two of them before anything grand might happen as Jouno leaves, fuming on the inside. What is probably even worse is that he knows exactly that you think the same way Tetchou does so when he visits you shortly after his argument with Tetchou, he feels the need to make it very clear to you that he wouldn't harm his own child. Honestly, for what kind of sociopath do you take him to even consider such a thing?

♦️​You have regular appointments with the doctor to make sure that the baby as well as you yourself are both fine. Truthfully though, Jouno is playing partially a medic too. His enhanced senses to cancel out his blindness cause him to pay very close attention to everything he can pick up. He listens closely to the heartbeat of the baby as it grows stronger and stronger each week and seems a lot more concerned as soon as he notices that you're stressed or anxious. Whenever he notices that your emotions go a bit haywire he quickly walks to you, asking you with a frown on his face if something is wrong. He wouldn't want you to stress yourself too much since it might be bad for the baby as he starts refraining from hurting or scaring you during your pregnancy. He becomes very touchy with you because of his blindness. He can't see you growing round and looking all adorable and he would lie if he would say that he isn't a bit upset about it so instead he feels your pregnancy. His hands are often on your stomach, slowly running over the surface to feel how much you've grown since last week and to imagine what you might look like now.

♦️Since the pregnancy was already a surprise he decides the sex might as well be a surprise until birth as well. He gets some time off before your due date as requested by him and Fukuchi who insists that he gets some time with his new family. Everything is ready by now. From the nursery to the people who will assist you the moment your water breaks as he tells you that you can't just go into a public hospital like this now that you're under his protection and carry his child. You'll have your own special room just for yourself and your own team. Your little daughter isn't born the natural way though as you experience stalled labor throughout the process and suddenly stop progressing as you stop dilating. You decide to wait for a while yet as you still experience contractions without dilating further, the doctor advices that a C-section might be an option and Jouno agrees as he's worried for you and his child. She's still born healthy though as Jouno gets to hold her first, listening to her gentle breath and the sound of her heartbeat. His fingers trace tenderly over her face, trying to imagine what she looks like before he hands her over to you and asks you to describe her to him.

Sigma

☁️​Sigma is a person who just came like this into existence by being written into the Book without any way to ever find a reason why he came into existence anyways. He has found his purpose ever since then in you as he has made it his whole point to exist to look after you and to protect you. You are his purpose in life so he can't allow you under any circumstances to leave him which has led you to be permanently stuck in the Sky Casino and even all the gifts and riches he gets you don't do any good yet he still does his best to appease and please you in any way he can. Sigma as the one who has dedicated his entire existence to you will be relatively quick to notice the small changes occuring in you. He notices how you suddenly crave food you've never particularly liked before, he notices how you're suddenly more sensitive around certain smells as well as some headaches. He frets about your health as he wonders what might be wrong with you but it is you who one day approaches him to tell him in a serious tone that you're quite late for your period and that is when he realises what is wrong. It's something he didn't really want to consider.

☁️​You can't help but wonder that it should be the other way around as you can see Sigma's whole face twist in fear, anxiety and stress as his eyes widen, his heart starts beating out of his chest and his breath quickening. He looks like he is about to have a meltdown and a panic attack so you try to calm him down as he clutches onto you as soon as he feels your warmth, his palms and forehead covered in cold sweat as you help him to regulate his breathing. As soon as he has regained some semblance of composure he apologizes frantically to you. He-he had no intention to get you pregnant! He's so sorry he should have been more careful with protection! You try to put a stop to his anxious rambling as you inform him that you aren't angry with him or anything. He still apologizes as he informs you that he'll arrange you an abortion if you desire one. You tilt your head at him as you ask him what he actually wants and he insists that he'll do whatever you want him to do in this situation. You fall silent as you consider everything before you tell him that you'd like to keep the child. You see him swallowing nervously as he purses his lips but he eventually gives you a nod.

☁️​He spends entire nights reading through every file and online article he can find about pregnancy and memorizes everything in there. From development of the child to the changes your body will undergo to what he can do to make this pregnancy as easy as possible for you. Honestly, he knew before all of this very loosely that unprotected sex would lead to pregnancy but he can't help but be shocked and even slightly disturbed as he reads through everything. The thought of growing an entire life within your womb is so strange but he wasn't exactly created the normal way so perhaps that's why he finds this all so foreign. He insists on knowing the sex of the baby as early as possible as he assigns a few medics to monitor your pregnancy. He needs to order and prepare a nursery after all and instead of constantly second-guessing everything he wants to have delivered, he just wants to know the sex of the baby as early as possible. He still second-guesses everything though because he wants it to be perfect for you and the child so you end up helping him to choose, literally meaning that you say what you like and he buys it without giving his own opinion. Your opinion matters after all.

☁️​It's kind of cute when he randomly tells you how big your son is right now if he would be a fruit and what he is already capable of doing within your womb. He's been still somewhat in denial and disbelief up until a certain point that he has gotten you pregnant yet the reality of the situation crashes down onto Sigma when he notices that you start developing a baby bump. He just stares and stares and stares as you start to grow bigger as if still thinking that he is hallucinating yet he can't deny that he's curious. How does your stomach feel now that you're carrying a baby inside of you? He always wonders but never asks. Not until you yourself take it upon yourself to invite him to touch your belly as you have noticed those curious eyes on your belly for a while now. He asks you if he really can before he carefully touches your tummy, amazed by it's roundness and firmess. You find his fascination with your belly cute though. Sigma is perhaps a bit strict with your diet and activity though as he has only the advice of the doctor and the advice online to trust so he is a tad bit controlling because he really doesn't want anything to happen to you whilst you're pregnant.

☁️​He's initially bewildered but then quickly intrigued when the baby starts kicking around inside of you. Honestly, he is admiring you for growing another human being inside of you whilst enduring the changes that come with it and the further you are along, the more protective and paranoid he becomes. He's constantly checking the cameras in your room to see how you're doing only to pause and always get so fascinated when he sees how big you have grown already. The more you start swelling and the less foreign and strange the concept of you being pregnant with his child becomes, the more another feeling starts blossoming inside of Sigma. He starts feeling an attachment to his son you're carrying as he starts feeling responsible. Responsible to protect him, cherish him and raise him well. He's going to be a father to your child and as much as this knowledge stresses him, it also makes his heart pound in excitement as he realises that his son will be one more reason and justification for his existence. Sigma will have another purpose to exist as soon as his child gets born.

☁️​Besides a few chosen people who Sigma closely monitors, no one else finds out about your pregnancy though. Sigma is too anxious to let anyone else know about it. He's counting days and hours the closer your due date gets as he simultanously worries and marvels over how much you've swollen and changed with his baby developing inside of you and he tries his best to alleviate you of any pressure and pain you might feel by giving you a massage or doing anything you want him to do. He tries and fails to keep his composure the moment your water breaks as he instantly cancels all of his work to instead spend it with you and tells all guards to not let anyone get close to your room. He's sweating, he's hyperventilating and he feels like he's about to suffer a mental breakdown as he watches you going through labor. He's constantly fearing for the worst yet luckily he is disappointed when his boy is born healthy. You fall asleep soon after you've given birth which leaves him pacing back and forth in the room with his son in his arms as he is unable to sit still. His eyes constantly go back and forth between you and the baby, hoping that you'll soon wake up before glancing down amazed at the baby he created.

[fluff-n-cookies]

Hey!! I was wondering if you are taking requests.

If you are, then. Couln you please write and Father Aizawa x daughter in which she is like really really depressed and he is sick worried for her?

Thankss 🤍🤍

Hello! thx for requesting! I'm not sure if you wanted a little story like a drabble or headcanons so I'm just going to default to do a mix of both. I also wrote it with clinical depression in mind I hope that's okay.

TW; clinical depression, angsty shit, I wrote about the symptoms of depression here: if you have multiple of these symptoms please consider getting diagnosed by a doctor. Aizawa had depression, fem reader.

Aizawa never was good with emotions, he was never the one to express his feelings because he never exactly needed to. Aizawa wouldn't exactly talk to her at first, instead opting to see it as her having an off day.

however, the weeks flew by and he saw less and less of her around the dorms, her friends who once talked to forever never seemed to see her anymore, and her smile. her smile had now been replaced with dead eyes and a soul corrupt.

another week, when disrupted she would bite back. her usual reply to the question "how are you today?" was once "wonderfully really!" about now it was either a comment overflowing with sarcasm or a harsh "leave me alone."

she then start to bounce her leg a lot more, scratch her arms, and doom-scroll on her phone like a life line rather than train to be a hero like she would during her previous years at UA or read her favorite book genres.

and the dead look in her eyes told him everything.

he too had that look in his eyes in his life too.

he had the tattoo of a semicolon with a heart to show for it.

it was the dead of night when he finally approached her, the sun had set and the stars that night felt as dull as her mind. the blinding white lights of the kitchen remain on as she wept amongst her sorrows. sleep deprived eyes turned redder than they already are from the sting of her never ending tears.

she did not deserve this.

the air was cold in that room, clammy hands shaking didn't help much either.

Aizawa said nothing when he saw the slight before him,

he had done the same at one point too.

this situation was delicate glass, for the person before him was not the strong girl he "knew". this was the soft, misshapen, confused, and scared blob that no longer had the hard and heavy armor to protect her.

he wanted nothing more to hug her when she looked at him with scared eyes and a tear stained cheeks.

"Aizawa Sensei I-" she started, the voice cracks made it all the more pitiful.

"I came to get water." his voice unwavering, there was only room for one mentally unstable person in that tiny kitchen and he loved her too much to take the position of being the one crying.

he felt bad, he knew that feeling of either being empty or being overridden with that burden in your heart you don't know the name of. a constant reminder of doom that has your heart in a choke hold.

but this was still as fragile as anything.

he poured himself a glass of water,

the tension was thick and odd.

he sat down,

he could practically feel the labored breaths she took, the shaking, the empty feeling in her chest. like she was dying and from the inside out. the crying must have taken a toll on her too for her cheeks were red from the tears.

he sat next to her, sitting in front of her may make her feel like he was going to scold her.

"would you like to talk about it?"

"...please... no... I don't think I can..." it was hard to believe this was the voice of the girl he remembered so fondly as his favorite student.

I suppose even the moon has a dark side.

"okay, you need to though." voice steady like a rock you trust never to crumble.

"what?" her voice quivering.

"It know it's hard,

I know it's going to take a while,

but you can succeed,

just please let me help you."

the room went silent for a moment, he passed you the glass of water.

"drink, tomorrow, you are spending your day with Hound Dog, you don't have to talk with him about this specifically, just talk with him until we can understand what is actually happening. you need someone to talk to. you can bail at anytime."

"what is happening to me though? I- I don't know anymore."

he knew that feeling so well.

"I'm not entirely sure," those words came from his heart. "but I'm willing to help you through it. we can take you to a psychiatrist to know for sure."

"...okay."

Aizawa got up, pushing the glass towards you again, excessive crying often leads to dehydration. and he started doing what his mother would do, he started prepping fruits, in this case it was oranges. he lined them all up on a plate, smiling a little at the thought of waking up from a nightmare as a child and defaulting to devouring blueberries.

he put them in front of you, started speaking as a usual person would, about stupid criminals he had recently put behind bars and crazy super fans that created elaborate photo shopped photos of him and them for social media.

for the first time in a while

the phrase

"are you okay?"

wasn't even mentioned.

for the first time in a while

she felt human.

----------

edit: while writing this I noticed I had a lot of the symptoms, so I went to the doctor and turns out it wasn't just burn out it was severe depression! and asthma apparently...

[pearikp]

It's said that the only way to access Mhin's red choice is by choosing the Alchemist background, and that fact alone has me thinking about how the origin stories will actually impact the course of the game at full release. I wouldn't assume that you have to choose a certain origin to get a "good" or "bad" ending for a specific character, but (as stated by RSS directly) different origin stories will allow the main character to connect differently with each of the main five love interests.

Obviously, this isn't revolutionary, but I wanted to touch on which origins I think will be best suited for each route, based solely on scraps from the demo lol

For Kuras, I think the Alchemist and the Unnamed suit him the best. The former really comes from the fact that Ais' relationship chart suggests Kuras likes to ramble about alchemy, and because it has a lot to do with his role as a doctor, I would assume it opens up a lot of opportunities for him to connect with the Alchemist MC. I am more convinced of the latter based on the actual content of the demo. If you played the Unnamed origin, you may remember when the MC states that something about Kuras "nags" at them, "like a half-formed memory". This small line can obviously allude to Kuras not being human (and the Unnamed MC can pick up on it because of their sensitivity to the supernatural), or it could also imply that maybe this background gives the MC and Kuras a deeper sort of association with one another. I also encourage you to consider the dynamic of an excommunicated oracle in love with an excommunicated divine eldritch being.

It shocks no one that the Alchemist is probably the best route for Leander, and I maybe want to say the Hound could possibly be a good option in the future. The Alchemist can pinpoint exactly what about Leander's magic abilities makes him powerful, and obviously, this mutual connection will probably allow for plenty of unique interactions in his route. Sit on the fact that the MC had been mentored (manipulated) by an ex-Senobium mage, only to fall right back into the hands of another (pseudo-Senobium-affiliated) mage with sketchy intentions and big secrets... hmmm interestinggg... As for the Hound, I realize (admittedly upon limited playthroughs with this origin), that the dialogue never really changes for Leander's scenes. However, he is still an enigmatic socialite running a cult-gang, so surely the Hound will have some unique thoughts on Leander in his route and may eventually be able to see through this "nice guy" facade that Vere is so insistent he's parading around with? Just a thought.

As for my thoughts on Vere, I somehow have many and none at the same time. The one I'm pretty certain about is the Alchemist because they have unique dialogue acknowledging that Vere's collar is enchanted. I think the Hound may also work with his route, but I'm only basing that on the unique dialogue after the first encounter with Vere, wondering how he managed to pickpocket them without a sign, tell, or slip-up. The Hound has good social intuition, which is at least somewhat useful in dealing with Vere and his contradictory personality.

Ais comes naturally to the Unnamed, having an abundance of unique lines towards him more than the other characters. Not only does the Unnamed MC feel uneasy and hear unnatural sounds leading up to the Seaspring, but they also are the only one out of the three origins who has a distinct connection to "groupminds". The main character also notes that his tattoo (relating to Ocudeus) almost looks like it's moving. Similarly to Kuras, I like to think of the dynamic between a runaway ex-oracle crossing paths with a demonic being with cult-like worshipers... I predict the Hound will also suit Ais' route, based on how extensive their unique dialogue of Ais' natural leadership skills is. This origin is also the only one that actually details why his "gang leader" status contradicting the lack of an actual gang is so strange. The Hound comes from a more directly rugged life, and Ais takes an interest in the MC being feisty and defiant, so I'd guess that'll come into play somehow.

Back to square one on this whole overexplained talking point, Mhin obviously has some special connection to the Alchemist (or vice versa), if it wasn't obvious by the fact that Mhin's only red choice in the demo so far is only available with the Alchemist background. I think the Alchemist's unique connection to the Senobium through their mentor may come up, as Mhin's bio page says that they like the Senobium. The bio page also says they enjoy conducting alchemical experiments, which will connect the two even more. Once again, I think the Hound will also suit Mhin's route, based on little evidence and mostly just because Mhin and the Hound have similar vibes.

All of that said, I want to reiterate that I'm not under the impression that one origin will give you better or worse endings than the others, but rather unique choices and extra details based on their strengths. Regardless of how well one origin pairs with a LI, I will still probably be playing through each route with my own biased favorite (the Unnamed, if you were curious (I know you were not)). At the end of the day, it allows us to replay the game over and over to see what special changes and choices are available, so that will be very exciting.

[lariskapargitay]

One thing I loved about Witchfinders is it’s the first and really ONLY time that the Doctors gender works against her.

Yeah the bad guys got a LOT more closer to her than they would have if she was a man, and there were a few ‘the Doctors a man, you can’t be them’ but it was never explicit.

Here’s the first time she understands ‘hey it’s not just a fun set decoration, there’s actual real life consequences to being a woman.’

Like here’s she’s genuinely shocked that James would threaten her not bc he’s a bad guy and she’s the Doctor, but solely bc she’s a woman, something that she never had to deal with before

And then here’s the first time she gets told she’s not in charge, she’s less intelligent, she’s less than, she’s degraded by being called ‘wee lassie’ when she’s the oldest, smartest and most experienced person in the room, and she’s being told she can’t be a leader bc she’s a woman and she has to pretend the least competent companion is in charge of her (after she just risked her life to save someone) and she is absolutely stunned and PISSED, like it never crossed her mind before she would have to deal with that.

Like I love this episode bc of that so much, and no I didn’t want every other episode hounding it into us that for a large vast amount of history women were seen as less than, but one episode in 3 seasons could have been expanded a bit.

[thatsmzbitchtoyou]

Stranded FINAL Chapter 5

Summary:  Tossed overboard and lost at sea, Bucky washes up on an uninhabited island.  Injured, lost and scared, with little to no wilderness training, he fights to survive.  But is he really alone?

Warnings: bodily injury, mentions of sexual harassment/assault, eventual smut

Previous chapter

Bucky was quiet from then on.  He knew he was being ridiculous, but couldn’t find it in himself to try to be better.  He started messing with the plane’s motherboard after finding a manual under one of the seats.  He had taken a few classes in school about electronics and needed something to keep his mind off of the unlivable situation he lived in now.  

A few weeks later he figured out how to turn it on, the plane thrumming as he picked up the radio and held the button.  Static rang out in the cabin and he smiled.  It was worth a try, right?

“Hello?  Can anybody hear me?” He said loudly into the receiver.  He waited a moment before trying again.  “We are stranded on an island.  Last known location was near the southern coast of Costa Rica.  SOS.”  He waited again.  He thought he heard a blip of some kind of noise, but it quickly disappeared back into static.  He sighed and repeated the message one more time before leaving the radio on for a few more minutes, then turning off the plane altogether.  

He did it every day at about the same time.  He never heard anything, but he figured that at least it was something new to try.  The sour mood between him and Y/N eased up slightly, but the tension was still there.  At night they didn’t dare touch each other as they slept next to each other, and if they woke up entangled they would quickly apologize and move away like each other’s touch stung.  

Bucky woke up one morning to a strange sound.  He waited until he heard it again and then shot up out of bed.  The jostling woke Y/N.  “Buck?  What’s going on?”  Bucky ran out of the plane and towards the beach he had washed up on.  The blaring noise happened again, and as he broke through the tree line he saw a huge cruise ship coming their way.  He started laughing and waving his hands above his head.  “We’re here!  We’re here!”  

He could faintly see a few people aboard waving back at him.  Bucky turned back to the tree line and saw Y/N slowly walking out of it.  She gaped at the ship coming toward them.  “It worked!!  Y/N it worked!”  Bucky ran up to her, picking her up and twirling her around.  Y/N barely reacted, her eyes still watching the ship as a few smaller boats were lowered with people in them coming to shore.

“The radio?”  Y/N asked, her eyes finally meeting his.

“It worked,” Bucky breathed, surprised by himself.  “We’re saved.  We can go back home.”  

Y/N broke down into sobs, sinking down to her knees and crying heavily as Bucky held her.  The small boats finally made it to the shore, some people walking up to greet them and helping them grab what they wanted to keep and bringing them back to the cruise ship.  

They were hurried along to the doctor on board to be assessed, then given a shared room to get clean and settled as the ship moved back towards a port in Costa Rica.  The captain asked them a lot of questions and gave them his phone to call whoever they could think of.  News spread on the ship quickly of the rescue mission and that one of the people was the famous lost singer.  

Y/N and Bucky hid in the cabin they were given, not wanting to be hounded by passersby and watching eyes.  After another dinner had been brought to them Y/N stood out on the balcony, watching the water and the sunset.  Now that she was cleaned up Bucky found it even harder to look at her.  The wild nature of how he’d found her would probably always be his favorite, but this clean, glowing woman in the setting sun was another nail in his coffin.

Bucky approached her, standing next to her and leaning on the balcony like she was.  They stood together for a moment before the sun disappeared off the horizon, then Y/N quickly turned and went back inside.  Bucky sighed then followed her in.

“How much longer are you going to ignore me?” He asked.  Y/N looked at him in shock.  “Or are you just waiting til we make port and then you’ll be whisked off to your awaiting entourage and try to forget this ever happened?”

“For fuck’s sake Bucky,” Y/N grimaced.  “It’s like you don’t know me at all, after what, almost a year on the island together?”

“Apparently I don’t, because you won’t speak to me.  You won’t even look at me most of the time.  I really thought that maybe someday if we got off that godforsaken island we’d have a chance at a happy life together.  You made it pretty clear you wanted me,” he said as he walked up to her.  Y/N backed up until her back hit the wall.  “And I’m pretty sure I made it clear I wanted you.  So now that we’re free, and safe, did you change your mind?”  He gave her a wounded look as he tried to control his frustration.  “Or was I just a convenience to you?  Something that made you feel good for a minute?”

Y/N looked hurt at his words.  “Of course not, Buck.”  He stared at her and waited.  She sighed and hung her head.  “You scare me.”

Bucky recoiled at that.  “Scare you?”

“Yes, you scare me.  Because from the moment I saw you I wanted you,” she said, her voice raising.  “Not just because I was lonely.  And I fought, I wrestled with myself that entire time, to keep it friendly.  We were using each other to survive, to have companionship in the struggle.  And then you helped me not freeze to death, and then you looked at me like that,” she gestured towards him.  “And then I was weak and wanted just a moment of something good, just one moment to feel you.  And you gave it to me, and it felt so good, I didn’t want to stop.” Her eyes closed and she rubbed her temples with her fingers.  “But I couldn't handle it, being near you, after that.  I wanted more, all of it, all of you, what we could be.  And now we’re safe,” she looked back up at him.  “And now…I’m scared of what this means for us.”

Bucky sighed again, a small smile on his lips.  “Well we’re here.  We’re going home.  And we can make that whatever we want it to be,” he stepped toward her again, reaching for her hand and lifting it to his lips, kissing her knuckles.  “All I want is you, lovey.  I’m all yours.”  

Y/N gave him a dreamy look, her eyes fluttering at the feeling of his lips on her skin.  “I’m yours,” she whispered back to him.  

Bucky couldn’t wait anymore and gently grabbed her face and kissed her.  Y/N immediately responded, her hands winding around his waist and pulling him close, a soft whine passing her lips.  Bucky walked backwards until his legs hit the bed behind him and he sat, bringing her with him to straddle his lap.  His hands slid from her face down to her waist, settling on her hips and pulling her flush to him.  Y/N was feeling him all over, her hands gripping his shoulders, the back of his neck, his face, his arms, everywhere she could reach.  He opened his mouth and tasted her lips with his tongue, making her whimper and opening her mouth to let him in.  

Y/N scratched her nails down his scalp and he moaned into her mouth.  It all felt so good, too good, that he felt like he was vibrating from the inside out.  His hands slid to her butt and he pushed her down onto his growing erection.  Y/N gasped, her hands pulling the hair at the nape of his neck.  Bucky started kissing down her cheek to her neck, licking and sucking different spots, finding out what she liked.  When he reached the top of the sundress someone had given her from the cruise gift shop he pulled the straps down and started kissing the swell of her breasts.

“Oh god,” Y/N sputtered, her hips starting to grind down on him.  She started pulling at his shirt, which he quickly helped get off before going back to her chest.  Her fingers softly ran along the scar on his sternum then her nails scratched down his chest, making him slightly rut up against her hips.  He suddenly turned so that she was laid on the bed and he crawled over her, pulling her dress down til her breasts were exposed then hiking up the bottom half of the dress til he could see her pussy.

“No underwear?” Bucky breathed incredulously.

“Well when you haven’t worn them for a few years…” Y/N teased, giving him a shrug.

Bucky moaned as he looked at her, one of his hands reaching down and his fingers exploring between her legs while he went back to nipping and licking her breasts, his tongue flicking one of her nipples as he found her clit.  She arched her back at the dual sensations as she choked out a moan.  Bucky’s thumb rubbed and flicked her clit while his other fingers slowly entered her.  He groaned from feeling how wet she was for him.  As he pumped his fingers in and out her moans became increasingly louder, her legs shaking and her hips bucking against his hand.  He kissed back up to her mouth and pumped his fingers faster, curling them slightly inside her.  Y/N panted against his mouth, feeling the tightening deep inside her get pulled taught until it snapped and she yelped as she came around his fingers.

Bucky kept pumping until her hips stopped shaking, then he pulled his fingers out and tasted them.  “Taste so good, Y/N,” he groaned as he shifted himself over her.  He shimmied out of his pants and underwear and pulled her legs up and over his hips.  He dragged his cock through her wet lower lips, the head rubbing on her clit and making her whine.  “We don’t have any protection…” 

“We can figure that out later,” Y/N said hoarsely.  “Please Bucky, let me feel you.”

Bucky thanked the scientific gods for after-sex birth control as he held his cock, pumping it a few times before lining himself up with her.  He slowly pushed the head in, making her mouth drop open, a long groan coming from each of them.  Y/N’s feet hooked behind his back, pulling him in faster.

“Fuck, Y/N, you want my dick that bad?” Bucky gasped.  Her pussy felt like it was swallowing him whole and he had to wait a moment so he wouldn’t immediately lose it.

“I need to feel you…all of you, everywhere,” Y/N said, her hands scratching up and down his back.  

Bucky could tell she was touch starved but wasn’t prepared for how badly she would want him.  The thought flattered him but made his heart ache for her.  “I’ve got you,” he promised, keeping his upper body close to hers.  He rolled his hips, making her eyes roll in her head.  “I’ve got you, Y/N.  My girl…”

He thrust slowly at first, letting her adjust to him and feel him fully.  Y/N’s brow furrowed, her eyes shut tight, her hands sliding down to his butt to pull him in again then tickling up his sides.  Bucky had been with people before, but none of it had felt this intimate, this special or personal.  He picked up the pace of his hips and thrust a little harder, helping him reach a little deeper.

“Buck…” Y/N moaned, kissing his cheek and down to his neck, licking and sucking along his throat, her fingers running through his hair again.  Bucky’s hips shook as he thrust even harder.

“God, Y/N,” he moaned into her ear.  “Taking me so well…so deep…you feel perfect.”  He kissed her again, their tongues entangling as he thrust in and out of her.  He could feel her pussy flutter around him and he shivered.  “You gonna cum?  Cum all over my dick?  Huh?” he spoke against her lips, not letting any space come between them.  

“Fuck yes,” Y/N said, then sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, nipping it with her teeth.

“Gonna fill you up–”

“Please,” she gasped, her back arching.

Bucky slipped a hand between them and started flicking her clit as his hips pummeled into her, chasing his own release.  “My girl…my pretty girl…” he grunted.

Y/N tensed as she came again with a loud strangled moan that he quickly covered with his mouth.  Her pussy squeezed his cock so hard that he gritted his teeth, a long whine coming from his throat as he came inside her, continually rutting against her to make sure she could feel it all.  Y/N groaned feeling him fill her up, a little bit of cum dripping from in between them.

They panted against each other as they tried to breathe normally again.  Bucky’s face was tucked against her neck, his lips randomly kissing her neck and her ear, whispering praises to her.  She shifted her arms so that she was holding him around his shoulders, her fingers running through his hair like they used to when they would fall asleep together in the plane.  She started humming “Nature Boy” softly like she used to and he smiled.  When she finished the song Bucky sighed and squeezed her.

“God I love you,” Bucky sighed.

Y/N tensed slightly and looked down at him.  He looked up at her to see her reaction.  She was smiling softly and leaned down to kiss his nose.  “I love you, too,” she said quietly.  

***

Bucky had been right about one thing.  Once they made port Y/N was surrounded by people and cameras that separated them.  Bucky was greeted by his parents and sisters, their tearful reunion recorded for the world to see.  Y/N’s family tried to whisk her away but she wouldn’t leave without Bucky, pushing through photographers who were screaming questions at her and him and their families.  Airport and police officials took them all away to a private room and asked Y/N and Bucky extensive questions about what happened to them.  After a few hours they were finally released, and Y/N jumped into action with her family and people who had been involved with and in charge of her estate upon her disappearance.  She arranged for everyone’s flights home and figured out a time for her and Bucky to get back together soon once everything calmed down and they got things settled in their lives.

“This isn’t goodbye,” Y/N said, tears falling from her eyes as they held each other.   “You hear me?  I will get things settled and come get you.”  Bucky nodded, a few stray tears of his own falling that she quickly wiped away.  “You’re mine.  And I’m yours.”

“You’re mine and I’m yours,” Bucky repeated, kissing her nose.  “I love you.”

“I love you,” Y/N said, her tears falling more heavily.

They separated, each of them going back to their respective homes.  Bucky had a slow, steady flow of tears the whole way home, his family trying to console him.  He cried for the friends he’d lost and all the questions the officials had about them and having him go through what happened the day of the storm.  He cried for being able to see his family again.  He cried for the fact that he had survived and was rescued.  He cried for finding love that he so far had only gotten to enjoy for a short period of time, and he wasn’t sure when he’d feel it from her again.  Bucky was a mess as he tried to get back into normal life.  All the things he used to take for granted now were overwhelming.  He couldn’t sleep when she wasn’t there next to him to hold him.  The silence in his life was so loud without her there always humming or singing a song.  His parents tried to get him to cut his hair but he wouldn’t because he knew when the time came that she would want to run her fingers through his hair again.

A few weeks later he got the call and was instantly on a plane.  As scared as she was of flying it was the fastest way to get him, and so he found himself on a private plane.  Y/N had been able to get her estate fixed and was bringing him back to her.  The minute he was on solid ground Y/N was running to him on the tarmac, jumping into his arms then holding, crying and kissing each other.  She brought him to her apartment that she was renting for the time being.

“How have you been?” she asked once they were finally alone.

“Not great,” Bucky said honestly, a grimace on his face.

“Yeah me neither,” Y/N laughed sadly.  

Bucky pulled her close, holding her face in his hands as he just sat and looked at her.  “Can we just…lay down?”

“Yes,” she whispered, staring at him like she was memorizing him all over again.

She led him to her room and they changed into more comfortable clothes and got into her bed together.  Bucky snuggled into her chest as she held him, her hands running through his hair.  He breathed shakily.  It was like he was taking his first full breath in over a month.  Y/N moaned as she felt him against her.  “It’s been too long, my love.”

“Never again,” Bucky sighed.  

“Yeah you’re not going anywhere,” Y/N snorted.  “You and I are going to go get a house together.  And anywhere I go, you go.  I mean…” she looked down at him.  “You can obviously say no…”

“Please,” Bucky scoffed.  “I’m not going anywhere.  You’re going to get so sick of me.”

“Impossible,” Y/N scoffed back at him.  

As they cuddled Bucky felt like he could finally relax.  He was willing to give up anything he ever wanted or planned just so he could stay right there with her forever.  As hard as the experience had been, he was grateful to have been stranded with her. 

THE END! I hope y'all liked this one. And I'll keep churning out more stories as they come to me. Thank you for the likes, comments, follows and reblogs!!

[denaliwrites]

What Beautiful Things I'll Wear

Tenth Doctor x Fem!Reader

Summary: The Doctor takes you to a masquerade ball during the Renaissance.

Soundtrack: Marry Me by Emilie Autumn

Requests: Open!

Tag List: @nyxiethesimp (I always forget this bit, I'm so sorry!)

Warnings: Canon-Typical Peril.

"Oi! We're gonna miss it!" the Doctor called into the TARDIS wardrobe, startling you out of your reverie.

"You have a time machine!" you snapped back in lighthearted exasperation.

"We can't cross our own timelines!"

"I'm sure there are other balls we could attend, Doctor!"

"Yeah, but this one's got Machiavelli!"

"Wait, seriously?" you asked as you poked your head out of the wardrobe. "The Machiavelli?"

"Yeah," he said teasingly with a big grin. "So hurry up, before the party's over and he leaves!"

You sighed with a roll of your eyes and withdrew back into the wardrobe, adding the final touches to your ensemble in a rush.

Finally, you exited, adorned in a lavish dress of midnight and periwinkle. Sat delicately over your face was a silver wolf mask, which hid an equally wolfish smile. "How do I look?" you asked, giving the Doctor a twirl for effect.

He stood in silence, simply taking you in for a few moments. He looked somewhat awestruck, eyes wide and full of something you couldn't quite put a fully accurate name to. And the smile he gave you -- it was adoring in the way his smiles often were when he was faced with humanity's charm and brilliance. But it seemed deeper than that. More personal. Intimate.

It sent a shiver down your spine.

"Doctor?" you prompted him gently.

He blinked back to himself and his smile easily slipped into something more casual. "You look stunning," he told you as he held an arm out for you. There was still something in his voice that tickled your senses, but you left it, eagerly taking his arm. Without further ado, the two of you were off to the ball to meet Machiavelli.

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

Machiavelli had turned out to be a rather boring individual.

Well.

That wasn't fair. He just wasn't the kind of man you'd expected the writer of the Prince to be. He was a lot more mild, comparatively, and didn't seem to possess any of the traits that you, in your modern attitude, would consider Machiavellan.

Except maybe the way he seemed rather eager to get to know you biblically.

You swore, if he cooed one more "good lady" or "lovely mistress" or "darling girl" in your general direction, you'd lose your mind.

The worst offense, though, was that he'd separated you from the Doctor. You'd tried looking for him, but he'd seemingly vanished entirely from the ball.

Tired, lost, exasperated, you made your way to a bench out on a nearby balcony and flopped gracelessly onto the seat with a groan. It had already been such a night, and now all you wanted was to crawl into your bed.

You groaned again as a shadow fell over you. You turned, fully expecting to see the Machiavelli there to hound you into another dance.

Instead, you saw... nothing? But also something.

It cast a shadow, so you knew that there had to be something physically there. But as you looked, it seemed to shimmer and glide right out of your field of view, like the dancing dapples of light on the surface of a pool.

You'd spent enough time with the Doctor to know when things were a little... off. You weren't sure if this was the work of a perception filter, or something similar, but it definitely wasn't normal and it definitely wasn't human.

And it definitely wasn't throwing you off the trail.

You opened your mouth to speak, but before you could, a voice called out. "Don't!" You turned again to see the Doctor running towards you.

There was a sudden sting as something slid into your neck, and then heat spread out from the injection, dazing you. You heard the Doctor calling your name, even felt his hands on you, but couldn't see anything other than the shimmering man behind you.

"What have you done to her?" the Doctor shouted. You were startled, you felt it, yet your body didn't move. "Whatever you did, fix it! Cure her!"

You could feel the heat spreading. It felt like fire, razing through your veins like an inferno. You had the sense to know it should hurt, yet you felt no pain. Even so, you knew that without some kind of antidote, it'd kill you.

The Doctor seemed to know that too.

"Please," he said, and you realized he'd moved on to begging. "Please. Not her. Let me save her." Begging for you. For your life.

You watched as the entity produced something new -- it still shimmered, never letting you get a good look at it, but as it slipped into your neck you realized it was another needle.

This time, the plunger sent ice into your veins. It moved quickly, eating up the fire and leaving you shivering... but alive. You realized as the ice spread that, not only were you wracked with tremors, but you could move your own body voluntarily. You lifted your arms with difficulty and wrapped them heavily around the Doctor's neck. And gently, he tipped your head forward so that your eyes were finally on him.

"Doctor," you whimpered. "About damn time..."

He laughed a little at that, though it sounded hollow and the smile that came with it didn't reach his eyes. "Fashionably late as ever, eh?" he asked gently.

Your head lolled when you tried to nod. That made him laugh again, and that time it didn't sound so hollow.

"What did you do to her?" he asked the shimmering man again. There was no reply, and you almost thought that maybe the strange entity had left.

"She required correcting," a dozen voices said at once.

"Correcting?" the Doctor asked, pulling you closer protectively.

"The female carried disease. It's now eliminated, and she is corrected."

"Disease?" you and the Doctor asked simultaneously.

"She is corrected." With that, there was a whoosh behind you, and you knew that whatever that thing was, it was gone.

The Doctor stayed with you until you'd recovered, holding you close and stroking your hair with one hand while the other rubbed circles into your back.

Once you could move without fumbling like a ragdoll, he helped you to a stand and guided you towards the door.

Music still played in the ballroom, though most of the attendees had filtered out and the party was definitely in its final throes. Machiavelli, blessedly, was gone.

The Doctor brought you to a halt in the middle of the room and turned towards you with a light smile. "May I have this dance?" he asked, and though he tried to sound casual, you could hear that deeper note in his voice once again.

"You may," you answered thoughtfully.

He began leading you through the steps of a waltz you didn't recognize, but it wasn't too hard to pick up. You imagined he'd chosen something that would be easy for you, in case any effects from your "correction" still lingered.

"Doctor?" you murmured into his ear after a while of dancing in silence.

He hummed in acknowledgement, and you could've sworn his arms around you got tighter.

"You've seemed... a bit off, for a while... is everything okay?"

"Oh... everything's wonderful," he answered, and you could hear in his voice that he meant it. He shifted his arms so that he could cradle your face in his hands, one on your cheek and one on your neck, thumb rubbing circles into the spot where the entity had injected you with those strange substances. "Everything's perfect, in fact."

"Y-yeah?" you asked, looking into his eyes, your own wide as he watched you with such intense and bare adoration.

"Yeah."

You didn't pull away as he leaned forward, didn't move back as his lips pressed to your own. It was a sweet and tender kiss, the kind of kiss that sent an entirely different kind of warmth through your veins. You smiled sweetly into it, and you could tell the Doctor felt it as you felt his lips quirk up in response.

He pulled away, and while you leaned into his chest with a contented sigh, he peppered little pecks over your bare shoulders in reverence.

You stayed like that, swaying gently in a dance not from your planet, to music not from your time, up until the moment the band stopped playing.

[thekeeperof-thefandoms]

TW: sensitive topics

Adam slowly becomes more tolerate and less misogynistic over time via osmosis but won't admit it and instead hides it.

Adam thinks women bitch too much about the pink tax until he's sent out to get period products for Reader and Lute, only to realise that his cost of his shopping just doubled in price from just one pack.

Adam thinks women bitch too much about not being welcomed to normally male occupied spaces until he's playing late night online and hears a woman join only to leave after five minutes because everyone kept harassing them.

Adam hounds a girl for her number, thinking that he's so smooth for getting it in the end, but then decided to lose it after watching a film with Reader and Lute where it showed a girl terrified of what would happen if she didn't give a guy her number and hears Reader and Lute, two very capable women, talk about how they've been in similar positions.

Adam has done a lot of thinking lately.

Personally, I'd like to think that Heaven, while flawed, is above some of the nonsense like the pink tax. I do still think catcalling and being harassed happens, probably mainly in result to a lot of men modeling Adam's behavior.

But once he gets with you and you start calling him on his shit, and therefore Lute gets more comfortable calling him out, and especially after the period simulator, he's more aware of certain things.

I feel like eventually he'd ask you if this is how bad it is now, what did you do when you were alive? When you had to work constantly, sometimes 2 jobs at a time, just to afford basics. That's when you tell him you didn't really have a choice but to suck it up. That you weren't allowed to get a hysterectomy, you couldn't take sick days just for a period, and that most doctors wouldn't believe you anyway.

Especially if you're a trans person this is a big foot in the door to explaining how poorly women and queer people are treated. Hit em with the fact that religious nuts use Adam and God as examples for their behavior and he's going to feel physically sick. I think he'd have to take a few days to just be by himself and really think about how he acts and how people interpret that.

From there it's a slow build up to correcting his behavior. And it's not always gonna be easy. He's going to be defensive, he'll tell you that you're overreacting and that him persistently following a girl around to ask her for her number repeatedly isn't bad, it shows he's interested. He's a nice guy.

Tell him that's what other men thought too until "insert any woman you can think of who was assualted".

Lute's more direct, she sits his ass down and has him watch as many true crime stories of women getting kidnapped, SA, tortured, and murdered as she can find. Usually she picks ones based off the names you drop. He really only has to hear 4 or 5 before it sinks in. (Tiktok reminded me of the girl who was tortured to death for 45 days and assualted with lit fireworks so, have that fresh horror in your minds).

Tell him about any personal experiences you had and how terrifying it is to be a woman or queer. Show him the responses to the man or the bear question. Let him fully realize how many people, people he knows as strong and capable, would rather face the bear because "the worst the bear can do is kill me". Or "Nobody accuses me of liking being attacked by a bear"

"No one asked me what I was wearing when the bear attacked"

"People would actually believe me if I said I was attacked by a bear."

"The bear sees me as a person."

"The bear lives in the woods, the man probably followed me."

Each answer is gonna send a new shiver down his spine.

Reforming Adam isn't an easy or fast process but it's fully possible because I don't think he's bad or a fullblown narcissist. I think he's been told his entire existence that he's a good guy, a pinnacle of creation, someone to be admired and obeyed without question.

You could argue he may be a bit controlling and narcissistic because of how he treated Lillith and requested a submissive wife with Eve. And I don't think he's ever not going to be full of himself and expect his ideal partner to be a bit more traditional in the sense that they're a housewife/domestic type. But he also likes people who go out and have fun, can get wild, and he definitely thinks it's hot if you can defend yourself even if it strokes his ego if you let him do it.

But overall, I think with enough time, patience, and exposure Adam could become a better person. Probably the type who would throw hands with himself if he could. Definitely becomes the type to start borderline hating other men.

[astyrial]

old souls meet spencer reid x fem!reader (fluff) synopsis: fbi's annual halloween party word count: 840 warnings: mention of alcohol, a day late because i forgot i wrote this masterlist | requests are open

    "i hate company part-"

  "yes, we all know you hate company parties. but today they're also naming williamson as head of department so we're going to make the most of it, miss astronaut," your coworker, sarah, gives you a smile while grabbing ahold of your hand to pull you into the party. 

  you walk behind her slowly, your lips curled into a disappointing frown. the whole party is lit with green lighting and a punch that is likely spiked and spilling with dry ice. you free your hand from sarah's and quickly tell her over the noise that you'll be getting a drink.

  that drink becomes water as you smell the alcohol coming from the punch, not wanting to get drunk with your coworkers. you open a plastic water bottle and take a quick drink while you wait for your supervisor to receive his raise so that you can leave. your hope is that it'll start in less than ten minutes and then end in five. however, most things don't go to your liking.

  however, it's a little better as you notice a fellow agent lingering by the water bottles with you. his slender hands grab one of the bottles near you and he stands a couple of feet away. you would be stupid to say he isn't handsome, in an awkwardly adorable kind of way. 

  "sally ride, right?"

  "excuse me, what did you say?" 

  "your costume, you're dressed as sally ride, right? first american woman to travel to space? i loved the physics work that she did for the university of california," he mentions, taking a step towards you.

  you give him a wide smile, nodding your head, "yes, you're the first one to get it! i love her and almost became an astronaut because of her, so i had to," you look at his outfit and determine it to be one of the doctors from doctor who. 

  compared to most fans, you weren't the most knowledgeable, but you did know a couple of things. "and you must be david tennant's doctor for the show doctor who! the sideburns and the sonic screwdriver circa the tenth period give it away a little," you look down at the scarily accurate sonic screwdriver before meeting his eyes again.

  "quite right! the name is spencer reid, i'm part of the behavioral analysis unit. gosh, great to see someone here who knows what costume this is. which you seemingly relate to," spencer holds out his hand, letting you shake it as his eyes search yours.

  his brown, hazelish, eyes can't seem to take themselves off of as you bring your hand to your side once more. you nod, shrugging your shoulders a little before taking another drink from your water. "right? i only really came to watch williamson's announcement, and i had this from a past halloween, so.."

  spencer nods, understanding your need to escape the place and find somewhere quiet to be. "yeah, i agree. my coworkers are probably watching us over here and will hound me for details later, especially derek. it was great meeting you..."

  "y/n, i work in vicap, violent criminal apprehension.. which you already know and i probably don't need to spell it out for you," you sigh and wrinkle your nose, realizing that you were treating him like he wasn't a part of the fbi. 

  "it's fine, i spell bau out for a lot of people too, i get it. now, i will probably need to head back and tell them that you're a great person so that they'll get off my back," spencer shrugs, his hand raising and scratching the back of his neck as his smile falters a little.

  normally, you're not a hand out your number kind of person. especially not to someone who works nearly side by side with you at work. however, his knowledge, his humor, they're just undeniably worth the risk. you nod, "okay.. if you'd like my number, i'm open to sharing it. we could continue this conversation sometime."

  "um- your number?"

  "that was way too forward, wasn't it?" 

  "not at all! i was just surprised that someone like you would give me their number. i mean you're funny and clearly know your history. sure, i'd love your number, which i will also need to tell my coworkers," spencer grabs the small paper from your hand and stuffs it into his pocket.

  your cheeks begin to warm up as you listen to him give you simple compliments that warm the heart. “of course, just as i need to tell sarah,” you say as he walks off towards his friends, one of them, presumably derek, pats him on the back as he pulls out your number.

  when you look back towards the stage, you see sarah walking over with a drink in her hands somehow. she ushers you over, saying that he'll be announcing soon and all of you can leave soon after that. you take one look back at spencer and his friends and take in a deep breath. your mind races with when you’ll talk to him next.

[myemuisemo]

In approaching the first chapter of The Hound of the Baskervilles in this week's Letters from Watson, I initially felt that I was sort of cheating as I know I've read this more recently than middle childhood. Then I read the first chapter and realized my memory of the story consists of a vague impression that it has a moor and a dog. Oh well.

Mortimer's staff being referred to as a "Penang lawyer" reminds us that when you live in a colonialist society, the mindset is everywhere. The staff is presumably made from Licuala acutifida, a sort of cane native to China, southeast Asia, and Pacific Islands. By 1889, when the novel is set (five years after the date on the walking stick), British Malaya had been under direct crown rule for a couple decades. The Brits had owned Penang since at least the secret Burney Treaty of 1826.

Dr. Watson's initial wrong guesses provide a window into his world and preconceptions. My first reaction was "how did he think hunt rather than hospital when he himself has medical training?"

Growing up in the genteel countryside would explain "hunt." But Charing Cross Hospital, then located just off the Strand, would have been only about two miles from Baker Street. How do you miss a large hospital?

There might be a titch of snobbery in play, as Watson did his residency at much, much older Barts (St. Bartholomew's). Barts dates from the 12th century, while Charing Cross Hospital was an early 19th century upstart. Watson also went for additional training at the military hospital at Netley.

Watson really puts up with a lot, though.

James Mortimers' publications focus on the idea that illness stems from throwbacks to a more primitive state, an idea also applied to criminology of the day. Through 2024 eyes, this is unlikely to be a good thing, but let's see where Doyle goes with it. I have faith in Holmes due to his love of that book that attributes much of human civilization to non-white world cultures. (Coveting Holmes' skull reeks of phrenology, but I can't believe this was meant as an appealing trait.)

After being informed that Sholto was based on Oscar Wilde, I'm wondering which of Doyle's acquaintances was the pattern for James Mortimer (who is not addressed as "doctor" because he's a surgeon; it's a British thing).

While Holmes describes Mortimer as "amiable" before meeting him, he does not find being described as "the second highest expert in Europe" all that simpatico. There's some impatience in Holmes' chapter-ending request that Mortimer explain why he's there.

At this early stage, I dislike James Mortimer. It's partly the nature of his publications, but also the false humility of calling himself a "dabbler in science" when he in fact has publications, an award, and a degree. It's dabbling to collect bones or bugs or whatever and be perpetually working on a treatise that never gets finished or published. It's not dabbling when you have official recognition within your chosen career for your research.

So what is Mortimer here about?

[thetaoofzoe]

‘It Was Fun to Be Wanted by Someone Like Elvis Presley’: An Interview With Darlene Love

The gifted singer reflects on Elvis’s collaborative presence and his relationship to gospel music

by MICHAEL MUSTO August 7, 2018

The swaggering real-life Jeff Koons statue named Elvis Presley is hot again. Eugene Jarecki’s June-released documentary The King involves a road trip taken in Elvis’s old Rolls to survey his impact on the culture and determine that the American dream the singer represented is officially dead. (But oh, when it lasted!) Even darker is the film’s exploration of Presley’s appropriation of African-American culture, covering songs like “Hound Dog” — originally a non-hit for the brilliant Big Mama Thornton — and making them rock and sell. For singers like Thornton, the American dream never existed.

Enter powerhouse singer Darlene Love, who is represented on another new project, Where No One Stands Alone, a fourteen-track compilation of Elvis’s gospel work due out August 10 on RCA/Legacy. The L.A.-born minister’s daughter started singing in the church choir at ten, on the road to being scooped up by producer Phil Spector to belt hits like “He’s a Rebel,” “Today I Met The Boy I’m Gonna Marry,” and “Christmas (Baby,Please Come Home).” The lead voice of such groups as the Blossoms and Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, Love ended up working as a maid in the Eighties, but when she heard one of her old hits on the radio while she was scrubbing, it inspired her to get back into performing full-time. Her appearance in the Oscar-winning 2013 documentary 20 Feet From Stardom was memorable, especially when it addressed the way Spector promised her a solo career, but gave other singers credit for her work.

I recently talked to Darlene about her backup singing for Elvis, and how she feels about the King’s relationship to the music he both co-opted and celebrated.

Hi, Darlene. What is some of the gospel work you did with Elvis?

There is “Let Us Pray,” the one from the movie we did with Elvis, Change of Habit. That was his last film.

It was in 1969, with Elvis as a doctor and Mary Tyler Moore as a nun.

We, the Blossoms, are in the first scene. And we were in his 1968 comeback special [Singer Presents … ELVIS].

His new gospel compilation album should be quite interesting.

They [recently] had me do some fill-ins, what we call ad libs, throughout the album to make it sound more gospel. I haven’t heard it yet. Hopefully it’s a wonderful thing.

Elvis went to church and listened to gospel singers to soak up what they did, right? 

Even today, it’s more mixed than it was in the Fifties and Sixties. Whites and blacks didn’t go to church together back then. What Elvis told me he would do — we had night service on Sunday night when we did what we called “praise songs.” A lot of them were songs he loved, what we called “hymn songs.”

We didn’t have air conditioners. We had pushup windows, with a little rope. Elvis said he would stand outside the church rather than going in, because they didn’t think black and white should be in the same churches together. He said he would listen through the windows. It gave him such a thrill. It’s a big difference between the way blacks sang gospel and the way whites sang gospel.

Do you feel he was dedicated to the music or he was just taking it for himself? 

I found out years later, when we were doing the comeback special, that his mother’s favorite music was gospel. He would always sing gospel around her. I think if he could have had a big career in gospel music, that’s where he would have been. But you can always make more money off secular hits. Elvis had 10 or 15,000 people come to his shows to see him. Today, they have mega churches that hold 25,000, but back then, you were doing great if you had 500 people.

I bet they have air conditioning now.

Oh, lord, yes. [Laughs] I lived in Texas for five years as a young kid with my father, and it was so hot we couldn’t even breathe. There was no air conditioning in church or the house. What a difference it makes to have a cool ensemble. You still sweat because of the energy, but back then, we were soaking wet, when we sang in church.

I love gospel music. If I had a calling — meaning from the Lord — just to sing gospel, I would have, but the secular music got to more people. I bet a lot of secular singers like Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin felt the same way. They never paid us no money. “Do it unto the Lord.” “OK.” [Laughs] We would drive to the gigs and they’d give you an offering — gas money. They were hardly giving us a whole lot of money. But it was worth it, every penny of it. It was a wonderful experience singing gospel.

But was Elvis appropriating the music, or that’s just the way it was?

That’s just the way it was. A lot of people think a white person is copying the black person. He just loved the music and he was singing it the way he felt. He sang “Hound Dog” completely different than Mama Thornton. [Elvis’s version was rock, whereas Thornton’s was blues.] Even today, they take secular music and put it in gospel, and vice versa. You know, Elvis won three Grammys, and they were all for gospel records. 

What were your experiences like with Elvis?

One time, Elvis decided we’d all go to the movies. He bought this theater out that night.

What did you watch — Change of Habit?

Don’t even ask me. I don’t remember. [Laughs] We had a lot of free time when we were recording and when we were making the movie. That’s when the Blossoms and myself got a chance to know the gospel side of Elvis. He’d want to know the songs we knew. He’d get his guitar and say, “You know this song?” “Yes, we grew up on it.” He’d say, “Let’s do it.”

Was he funny or serious?

He was funny and he was serious sometimes. If he didn’t think he was doing great, he’d say, “Hey, girls, how’m I doing?” He was very, very funny. I call it that “country funny.” He would do his moves in the studio the way he was gonna do them onstage. It made it easy to be around him, but sometimes it was not easy because his bodyguards were keeping people from him. He wanted to be with the Blossoms, where he could pull out his guitar. We’d say, “We think you’d better go. You’re gonna get us in trouble.” We’d never forget, because he’d be giving us his personal time.

You’d just be hanging out and singing?

Yes! Whatever song he knew — “Amazing Grace” or “River of Jordan” or “Heaven Is a Wonderful Place” or “Sweet Hour of Prayer.” We called them hymns of the church. There was another one called “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior.” The Blossoms were known for their harmony. We’d harmonize with him. There’s something we had with Elvis that others didn’t have. It was fun to be wanted by someone like Elvis Presley.

He had tremendous respect for you.

Yes, he did. That was great. I always say he left us way too soon. He is where I plan to go one day, so I’ll see him again.

You were all rather young and great-looking. Was there any sexual tension in the air? 

There was. It could have been. But I was too scared to do anything.

You fool! [Laughs] Kidding. You wanted to keep it professional.

And I definitely did. Something about dating someone you’re working for, it takes away from that. “I know he’s never gonna look at me the same after this.” [Laughs] He’d start playing with me. He’d tap you on the shoulder or do a hip shake, and me and Elvis knew what that meant.

Flirting?

Yeah, I think so, and I think it showed his human side. I wasn’t bad-looking — and I was thin, too. [Laughs] He wanted to take out time and be around us. The reason we sang on his ’68 comeback special is he was the one that insisted that the Blossoms sing in the music section of the show.

So Elvis treated you better than Phil Spector did?

Oh my God, I’d say so.

That’s an easy one.

That’s a real easy one. Phil took advantage of me and my talent. With Elvis, he wanted us to work, and we got paid well. It wasn’t like Phil Spector cracking the whip and us running around!