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pillow-coded · 2 months ago

Text

Recording In Progress

Summary: A private investigator goes undercover to expose Spencer Reid’s secrets—but when he catches on, things far more personal than she ever intended.

prompts used: A thinks they've successfully tricked B... when B leans forward and speaks directly into their wire. — “Did you really think this was going to work on me?”

Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader

Category: Smut (NSFW, 18+) MDNI!!!!!

Content Warning: strong language, first person POV, penetrative sex, semi-public sex, dirty talk, power play, unprotected sex, light dom!Spencer, mentions of betrayal and emotional manipulation, semi-consensual dynamics/dubcon, Kinda angsty.

A/N: This is my entry for @imagining-in-the-margins Criminal Minds Undercover Challenge (Also my first second attempt ever for writing smut, hopefully it’s not like bad or cringy)!!

Word Count: 6.3K

I’ve done worse jobs for better pay.

Political smear jobs, corporate leaks, scumbag CEOs cheating on their fourth wives. I’ve worn heels into strip clubs and smiled through dinner with men who thought I didn’t know what a burner phone was. I’ve been called a bitch, a genius, and a ghost, depending on who was signing the check.

I was hired to investigate Dr. Spencer Reid. No reason given, no name offered. Just a large sum wired to my account and a single note: Find out what he’s hiding.

Simple enough.

Except… Spencer Reid doesn’t have a digital footprint. He’s like a ghost in the machine. No scandals, no secrets, not even a hint of skeletons in his closet. And believe me, I looked.

And now here I am—three weeks into my “trial run” as the Bureau’s newest PR-friendly face. The temporary Media Liaison job I got thanks to me pulling some strings. I talk to the news reporters, fetch coffee. Pretend not to notice how agents avoid eye contact when they think I’m listening.

But Spencer?

Spencer doesn’t avoid anything.

He looks right at me when he speaks—slow, deliberate, almost too polite, like he’s weighing every word before he lets it leave his mouth. Like he’s watching for a reaction, waiting to see what sticks. It should’ve made him easy to read. But he wasn’t. If anything, he made me feel like the one under observation.

At first, I told myself he was just awkward. A little too smart, a little too soft. All anxious fingers and mismatched socks, like some deer that wandered too far from the herd and was just hoping someone might keep him company.

Innocent, I thought.

Innocent my ass.

Because there’s something behind those eyes—something that doesn’t flinch. Something that sees everything and stays quiet anyway. And now that I’ve gotten too close, I’m starting to wonder if I’m the one being hunted.

And maybe I should’ve been more careful—should’ve kept my distance.

Because it’s getting harder to tell which parts of this are pretend. The way my hand lingers on his arm when I laugh. The way he says my name like it’s always surprised him.

The wire beneath my shirt itches when I lean forward. I pretend it’s nothing, cross my arms to cover the mic. But he keeps talking.

Stories. Facts. Soft opinions. I record all of it. Hours of audio. Dozens of little truths. And yet none of it sounds like a secret.

It started with coffee.

Not because I actually wanted it—God knows the Bureau’s idea of caffeine tastes like it was filtered through a floor mop—but because he always had one. Every morning. Same cup, same lid, same little paper napkin wrapped around it like he didn’t want his fingers touching the surface.

So I started bringing him one. A peace offering. An excuse. A way in.

“No cream, four sugars,” I’d say, like I didn’t already have it memorized from the second day.

“You don’t have to keep bringing me coffee,” he’d murmur, almost shy. “But thank you.”

Then he’d take it anyway. Every time. Like it was a favor he wasn’t sure he deserved.

It disarmed me.

The first few days I kept things casual—too casual. Just enough charm to keep the agents from digging into my file, just enough polish to look useful in a crisis. And Spencer? Spencer was easy to hover near. Everyone else gave him a wide berth. Not because they didn’t like him, I realized. Because they didn’t understand him.

But I did.

Or I acted like I did, which, honestly, wasn’t hard. He talks when you let him. Especially about things most people pretend to care about but don’t. String theory. Linguistics. Microexpressions. Magic tricks.

“The trick isn’t in the sleight of hand,” he told me once, while shuffling a deck between his fingers. “It’s in where you make people look instead.”

“Is that what you’re doing to me?” I’d asked. “Misdirection?”

He didn’t answer.

Just smiled without showing his teeth.

And it messed me up more than I expected.

Because here’s the thing: Spencer Reid doesn’t flirt. Not really. He observes. He listens, catalogues, memorizes. And he gives you just enough of himself to make you want more. That’s the part I wasn’t prepared for.

Like yesterday—he’d asked about my family. Out of nowhere. Soft and curious.

“You mentioned your dad’s a journalist,” he said, halfway through a case debrief. “Is that what made you want to work in media?”

He had no idea how deep that question could’ve cut. But he asked it like he already suspected the answer and just wanted to see if I’d lie.

I did.

“Yeah. Something like that.”

He nodded. Didn’t press.

But something shifted.

He started watching me more closely after that. Saying my name more often. Brushing past me in the hallway, close enough for the hem of his sweater to ghost over my knuckles. A lesser man would’ve tried something by now. Spencer just... lingered.

And then today. God, today.

The bullpen was nearly empty. Just the two of us, caught in that odd hour between too-late and not-late-enough. I made a joke—light, harmless.

“You know, I’m starting to think you don’t actually like coffee,” I said. “You just like holding something in your hands so you don’t have to look busy.”

I waited for that soft half-smile he always gives when he’s amused. The one that makes his eyes crease, just barely.

It didn’t come.

Instead, he looked at me.

Really looked at me.

“You ask a lot of questions,” he said quietly. Not accusing. Just… observing.

I felt it before he even moved—this creeping heat behind my ribs. I tried to keep still, tried not to let the sudden tension show.

“So do you,” I replied, aiming for playful. It landed a little too breathy.

He took a step forward.

Then another.

I could’ve backed up. I didn’t.

He was close now. Closer than protocol allows, closer than he’s ever been. My pulse ticked loud in my ears. I swallowed. I waited for him to speak.

He didn’t. Not at first.

His eyes flicked to my chest, and for a moment, I thought—

But no. He wasn’t looking at my lips. He was looking lower.

Right where the mic was taped beneath my shirt.

“You wore that all day?” he asked, voice low. No heat in it—just something sharp and calm and terrifying.

“I don’t know what you—”

“Don’t lie to me,” he said.

My mouth shut. The weight of his gaze was like gravity, dragging me down into silence.

And then he leaned in. His mouth hovered just beside my ear, breath warm, voice so low it barely stirred the air between us.

“Did you really think this was going to work on me?”

I stopped breathing. My spine locked. My mouth went dry.

“You’ve been recording me.” It wasn’t a question. He tilted his head slightly, studying me the way you’d study a fracture—trying to guess where the break began.

He didn’t pull away.

“You’ve been careful,” he murmured, “I’ll give you that. The questions were subtle. The charm? Believable. The coffee orders were a nice touch. But I don’t trust people who learn too fast.”

I wanted to speak. I really did. But my throat wouldn’t work.

“Especially not people who ask about things I’ve never told anyone.”

And just like that, he stepped back.

My heart was in my mouth. The wire burned under my shirt like a brand. I felt exposed in a way I never had before—caught not just in a lie, but in something deeper. Something personal. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded disappointed. Maybe even hurt.

“Who sent you?” he asked, softer now. Not demanding. Just… tired. Like he already knew.

“It’s not what you think,” I said.

A small smile tugged at his mouth. But there was nothing warm in it.

“Then tell me what it is. Because I’m trying really hard to believe this wasn’t just some elaborate… game.”

I didn’t say anything.

I wanted to. I think I even opened my mouth. But there was no defense I could give that wouldn’t sound like another lie. Another twist of the knife.

So I just stood there, heart thudding against the wire, pulse loud in my ears, and let him look at me.

He waited.

And when I didn’t give him anything—not an apology, not an excuse—something in his face changed.

Not anger. Not disgust.

Something quieter.

Like disappointment. Like resignation. Like he’d already filed me away under lost cause.

“Tell whoever sent you they won’t find what they’re looking for.”

He paused.

“And if they want to try again,” he says, eyes still on mine, “tell them next time… they should send someone I won’t miss when they leave.”

He turns to walk away, and I should let him.

But I don’t.

“Wait,” I say—sharper than I mean to.

He stops. Doesn’t turn around right away.

When he does, it’s slow. Controlled. Every part of him unreadable. Except his eyes—they're sharper now. Sadder too. Like I’d cut him without knowing where the blade was.

“You think I wanted this to happen?” I ask. “You think I planned to care?”

He just looks at me. Long and hard.

“You didn’t plan anything,” he says. “That’s the problem.”

He steps closer. The space between us evaporates. My pulse flutters. His eyes fall to my chest—where the wire sits taped beneath my shirt. His jaw clenches.

“I should report you,” he says. “Walk you out of here myself and forget this ever happened.”

“You should,” I whisper.

He exhales slowly through his nose. Like he's trying to talk himself down from something.

“I knew something was off,” he says. “But you—you looked at me like…”

He stops. Closes his eyes for just a second. Opens them again.

“I was doing my job,” I say.

“You were lying.”

We’re close enough now that I can feel the tension roll off him like heat. His hand lifts—hesitates—then brushes the edge of my collar. Just two fingers. Just enough to press gently over the place where the wire sits.

His voice is low, and it trembles with something between fury and want.

“I’m going to give you five seconds to walk away before I do something we’ll both regret.”

He doesn’t count.

Neither do I.

Because I don’t move.

And neither does he.

Not until the pretending breaks—soft and sudden, like the snap of a wire pulled too tight for too long.

His breath stutters, and I see it—right there in his eyes—that flicker of recognition. That I’m not going anywhere. That whatever this is between us, it’s no longer something we can ignore.

Then he moves.

Slow at first, like he’s giving me time to pull away. Like he’s testing the current between us.

But I don’t flinch. I can’t.

Without a word, he closes the remaining distance, seizing my chin gently between his fingers. His touch is deliberate—measured—there's heat in it, too. His thumb traces the curve of my lower lip, slow and careful, brushing against the sensitive skin just beneath.

His other hand finds my hip—strong, sure—as he pulls me flush against him. I feel the heat of his body through the fabric of my clothes, the hard planes of his chest and abdomen molding against the softer lines of mine like they were made to fit.

He leans in slowly, giving me time to pull away. I don’t.

His lips hover just above mine, a hairsbreadth of space between us. I can feel his breath mingling with mine, warm and unsteady. The scent of him fills my lungs—clean cologne, warm skin, and something unmistakably him.

“Last chance,” he whispers, voice low and rough and dangerous in the best way.

And I don’t take it.

His words hang in the charged air between us, suspended for a single, trembling moment. Time seems to slow—each heartbeat stretching into forever—as I stand there, breath caught, teetering on the edge of something I can’t undo.

He murmurs something under his breath—too quiet to catch, too dark to be innocent—and then he moves.

He closes the final inch between us, and his lips crash into mine in a searing, hungry kiss that steals my breath and sets every nerve in my body alight.

One of his hands tangles into my hair, tilting my head just enough to deepen the kiss. The other tightens at my hip, pulling me harder against him until there’s nothing between us but heat and tension and the press of his body against mine—hard, unyielding, and everywhere.

His tongue slips past my lips, bold and sure, stroking along mine and sending sparks through me so sharp they feel like electricity in my bloodstream. I can taste the desperation in his kiss—feel the pent-up longing in the way his fingers clutch at my waist like he’s afraid I might disappear.

It isn’t a kiss. It’s a demand.

And I give in to it, completely.

He walks me backward, mouth still on mine, until the edge of his desk catches the backs of my legs. I hit it with a quiet thud, breath hitching—not from shock this time, but from the sheer, aching need curling low in my stomach.

His hands skim up my sides, fingertips dragging slowly over the thin fabric of my blouse. His palms are warm and slightly rough, catching just enough to make my skin spark beneath the surface. I feel every inch of contact like a live wire beneath my clothes, and when his hands reach my ribcage, he pauses—just for a breath—before slipping his fingers to the buttons of my shirt.

One by one, he undoes them.

I gasp as cool air brushes the skin beneath, the lace of my bra suddenly far too delicate, too flimsy. But his attention isn’t on the fabric. Not entirely.

His fingers ghost over the mic, still taped below my sternum. He lingers there, the pad of his thumb brushing lightly over it. Then he looks up, eyes dark, mouth curling into something between a smirk and a warning.

My stomach flips. My mouth parts—but I don’t know whether it’s to object or to breathe.

He doesn’t wait for a response.

He leans in and presses his mouth to the base of my throat, kissing a path downward. His lips are hot. His stubble scrapes. He grazes my pulse with his teeth before his mouth latches onto that tender skin just above my collarbone.

He suckles and nips with deliberate intent, letting his jaw rasp against my neck as he pulls another broken breath from me.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?” he mutters against my throat, voice low and uneven.

Without warning, his hands grip my thighs and lift—effortless, like he’s been waiting to do it for weeks. He sets me on the edge of his desk, the cool surface biting against the backs of my legs. In the next breath, he steps between them, settling into the cradle of my hips.

The zipper of his slacks scrapes rough against my inner thighs, and then I feel it—hard, hot, and insistent, pressing right where I need him most.

He doesn’t move. Not yet.

He just waits—daring me to admit I want it just as badly.

His eyes lock on mine, sharp and unrelenting, like they’re looking through me, not at me. There’s heat there, sure, but it’s more than that. It’s intensity. Focus. A fire that catches deep in my belly and threatens to devour everything in its path.

The air between us pulses, thick with tension. A silent standoff. Neither of us willing to look away. Neither of us willing to surrender first.

“Tell me,” he says, voice low and raw, rough enough to scrape down my spine. His hands tighten on my thighs, grounding me. Holding me still. “Tell me you’ve felt this too. The way we… fit. The chemistry—it’s like a live wire between us, and you know it.”

He leans in, mouth brushing so close I can feel the shape of the words before he says them.

“I want to hear you say it. Admit it. That you’re just as lost in this… thing as I am. That you burn for my hands, that you crave my mouth, that you ache to be undone by me.”

A tremble works its way through my spine. I don’t trust myself to speak.

His hand slides from my thigh up my side—slow, deliberate. Fingertips grazing the curve of my ribcage, mapping the slope of my breast. He palms it through the thin lace of my bra, the heat of his touch making me gasp.

Then his thumb finds my nipple.

Rolls it. Just once.

A shock of sensation shoots through me, and I bite my lip to stop the sound that nearly escapes.

He feels it. Knows it.

And his mouth curls, just slightly. Like he’s satisfied—but not nearly done.

He gathers my answer without a single word—reading it in the tremble of my thighs, the sharp hitch in my breath, the way heat blooms across my skin in a helpless, rosy flush. His eyes, now dark and heavy-lidded with want, drag over me like he’s cataloging every reaction… and storing it for later.

I don’t even know what I’m begging for when I whisper,

“Spencer… please…”

But it’s enough.

It’s more than enough.

Something shifts in him—like control has finally slipped through his fingers, and now he’s choosing to let it go.

His hand dips beneath the lace of my bra, his fingers brushing bare skin. My breath stutters as his palm curves around me, warm and possessive. He cups the weight of my breast, rolling it gently, then pinches and tugs my nipple between his thumb and forefinger until it stiffens in his grasp.

The sensation ricochets through me—sharp, heady, electric.

Before I can even moan, his other hand finds its way into my hair. He fists it at the base of my skull, not rough, but firm enough to steal my breath. And then he kisses me.

No warning. No hesitation.

Just heat.

His mouth crashes into mine with a hunger I feel in every nerve ending. It’s the kind of kiss that scrapes thought from bone. The kind that tells me this isn’t just lust. It’s possession.

I’m not kissing Spencer Reid.

I’m being devoured by him.

He devours my moan like he’s starved for it—like the sound alone could satisfy something buried deep inside him. His mouth moves hungrily against mine, swallowing every breath, every sound, as if he’s trying to consume me from the inside out.

His grip tightens in my hair, angling my head with a rough kind of reverence that opens me completely to him. The hand on my breast isn’t gentle anymore. He kneads the soft flesh firmly, expertly, and the mix of pressure and pleasure sends shivers racing down my spine.

When he finally tears his mouth from mine, I’m gasping—but he doesn’t give me long to recover.

His lips blaze a trail down the column of my neck, his teeth dragging, tongue soothing, until he reaches my pulse point and lingers there. He bites, just hard enough to sting, then soothes it with his tongue, in a way that makes my whole body clench.

He trails lower.

Mouth warm and wet as he moves down the swell of my breasts, over the valley between them, until he reaches the curve of lace hiding what he wants most.

His lips close around my nipple through the soaked fabric of my bra, sucking hard enough to make me cry out. My hips jerk instinctively, chasing friction, chasing him.

His fingers don’t hesitate. They find the clasp at my back, working with practiced ease, and I feel the tension in the garment give way.

I’m panting now, barely keeping up with the pace he’s set—as the cool air hits my bare skin, kissing over every exposed inch and pebbling it with goosebumps. But there’s no relief. Not from the heat pouring off of him. He’s everywhere. Surrounding me. Consuming me.

He shoves the fabric of my bra aside and his mouth descends without hesitation, closing around my nipple in a wet, greedy heat that makes my head fall back against the wall with a soft thud. He licks, broad, deliberate strokes, then circles the sensitive bud with the tip of his tongue before suckling, hungry and unrelenting, like he’s ravenous for me.

I cry out. I can’t help it.

His other hand cups my remaining breast, fingers rough and insistent as they knead and pluck, teasing the tip until it aches under his touch. Every movement marks me until I feel like there’s nothing left untouched.

And still, it’s not enough.

His hips begin to move—slow, grinding rolls that press the hard ridge of his arousal against my center. Even through the barrier of my clothes, the friction is maddening. Precise. He grinds again, and I feel my thighs part a little more with each thrust, until the thick swell of him is nestled perfectly against the place I need him most.

I arch. I whimper. I burn.

“Tell me what you need,” he growls, voice rough and low in my ear.

I meet his gaze, barely holding it. My voice trembles as I breathe,

“You… all of you.”

His hand leaves my breast, trailing down the center of my body in a path that feels like fire. slow and deliberate. His fingertips glide over my trembling stomach, dipping lower until they reach the waistband of my skirt.

He doesn’t ask permission.

He just slips his hand beneath it, under the thin barrier of my underwear, and groans softly when he feels how soaked I already am.

“Like this?” he rasps, fingers brushing against my center with maddening restraint. “Is this what you wanted?”

The heat in his voice wrecks me. Low, rough, commanding. A far cry from the soft-spoken man I’d spent weeks practically studying. This wasn’t shy, awkward Spencer. This was something darker. Hungrier. A version of him I wasn’t sure anyone else had ever seen.

He strokes me through the slick fabric, circling over my clit with just enough pressure to leave me gasping but not enough to satisfy. Every touch is calculated—teasing, fleeting—designed to unravel me without giving me what I want.

“Tell me,” he says, the edge in his voice tightening. “Tell me how badly you need me.”

I try to answer, but all that comes out is a broken sound—half gasp, half plea.

His fingers press a little harder, his mouth close to my ear now, every word dripping with dominance and need.

“Say it,” he breathes. “Say you want me. Say you want to feel me deep inside you… filling you, wrecking you.”

The pressure builds, unbearable, electric. I’m shaking. I can barely breathe.

And I want it—I want everything.

“Say it,” he growls, fingers pressing harder against my aching center. The friction sharpens, maddening—his touch no longer teasing but demanding, as he rubs firm, relentless circles over my clit. His other hand grips my hip, holding me in place with bruising intensity, like he doesn’t trust me not to fall apart.

“Beg for it,” he mutters, voice low and wrecked. “Beg for my cock like the desperate little thing I know you are. I want to hear you scream for it.”

The words hit me like a jolt to the spine—vulgar, filthy, perfect.

His fingers shove my panties to the side, and one thick, calloused fingertip slides between my folds, slow and deliberate. He drags it through my slick heat, teasing—hovering just at the entrance, never quite giving in. A low, satisfied sound escapes him, like he’s savoring the way I tremble beneath him.

And then, with the hand not working me open, he reaches down to his belt. I hear the soft clink of metal, the zip of fabric sliding apart. He doesn’t rush it. Doesn’t break eye contact. Just keeps touching me—keeping me on the edge—as he frees himself with terrifying calm.

“You feel that?” he mutters, pressing himself into my thigh, the outline of him thick and undeniable through the cotton. “You shouldn’t be able to do this to me,”

His breath stutters against my cheek as he shifts his weight, one hand still working me open while the other reaches down. I feel the stretch of fabric, the quiet drag of cotton being pushed aside. Then the thick heat of him presses directly against me—bare now, heavy and pulsing at my entrance. The last barrier is gone. There’s nothing between us anymore.

He’s right there—right there—poised to push inside, to take, to ruin, and still… he waits.

And I break.

“Please,” I choke out, breathless, undone. “Oh my God, please, I—I need you.”

“I think you do,” he growls, voice low and ragged. “I think you need my cock buried inside this sweet little pussy”

And then he moves.

One swift, brutal thrust—and he’s inside me.

Fully. Completely.

I gasp, no sound behind it, my mouth falling open as he stretches me wide in a single, punishing stroke. He drives in to the hilt, hips pressing flush against mine, forcing my body to take every inch of him.

I’m overwhelmed. Split open. Filled.

“Fuck,” he snarls, the sound rumbling out against my chest, where his body presses hot and heavy over mine.

He gives me no time to adjust—no breath, no mercy. He pulls out almost entirely, just the thick tip left inside, and then slams back in with a force that steals what little air I have left.

Again.

And again.

Each thrust is brutal. Precise. Unrelenting.

The rhythm builds fast—sharp, punishing, perfect—and it’s all I can do to hold on. My cries are ragged, torn from my throat as he drives up into me like he’s trying to etch himself into my body, brand me from the inside out.

One hand clamps around my hip, fingers digging deep into flesh, anchoring me in place as he fucks me like he owns every inch of me.

His free hand moves lower, searching.

I barely register it through the haze of sensation until I feel a sudden tug at my waist—sharp, deliberate.

His fingers find the wire trailing from the recorder clipped to my skirt, and before I can react, he yanks. The movement is swift, almost angry. The adhesive holding the tiny mic to my chest rips free with a sting, the wire snapping taut as he drags the entire thing into his hand like a secret he’s been waiting to expose.

He brings it up, slow and deliberate, until it’s hovering right at my lips.

“Is this still on?” he murmurs, voice wrecked and quiet, eyes never leaving mine. “You gonna send this to them? Let them hear what you sound like when you're being fucked by the person you’re supposed to be investigating?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer.

He just holds it there—steadily, deliberately—catching every breathless moan, every gasp, every desperate sound that spills from my lips.

“All those filthy little sounds. Let it record what you sound like when you're mine.”

And God help me—I moan for him. Loud. Unashamed.

His eyes flicker—dark and satisfied—as he presses the mic even closer to my lips, like he wants it to catch everything.

“That’s it,” he breathes, the corner of his mouth twitching into the ghost of a smirk. “Let it hear how desperate you sound when I’m inside you.”

He punctuates the words with a sharp thrust, forcing another cry from my throat—one I can’t bite back even if I tried.

“You think they’ll recognize your voice?” he murmurs, low and mocking as his hips roll into mine, relentless. “Think they’ll hear how wrecked you sound and wonder what it cost you?”

Every thrust lands with calculated force, his pace unforgiving, grinding me closer to the edge with each brutal stroke. My hands scramble for something to hold—his shoulders, the edge of the desk, anything—but there’s no grounding here. Just him. Just the sound of skin meeting skin and the filthy, wrecked sounds he’s dragging from my throat.

And the mic.

Still held to my lips. Still recording everything.

“You were supposed to be watching me,” he grits out between thrusts, the words strained with effort. “But look at you now.”

Another slam of his hips, and I cry out again—louder this time, legs shaking, breath hitching. I can feel the tremor starting in my core, the tightening that warns of everything about to snap.

“This what they wanted?” he growls, jaw clenched. “You giving them everything but the answers?”

He presses in deeper—deeper than before, like he’s trying to bury himself in me, leave something behind. His forehead drops to mine, sweat-slick and shaking with restraint.

“You’re not gonna be able to listen back to this without coming apart,” he whispers, voice rough and fraying. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Spencer!”

My nails dig into his back, desperate for something—release, control, him. I don’t even know if I’m clinging to him or trying to pull him deeper, but he groans when I do it—low and wrecked—like it unravels something he’s been barely holding together.

His pace stutters for just a beat.

Then he grabs my thigh, hikes it higher around his hip, and drives into me again with brutal, unrelenting force.

The desk creaks beneath us. The microphone trembles in his hand.

“That’s it…” he breathes against my mouth. “Say my name.”

Another thrust. My body arches, wrecked and raw.

“Say it like you mean it. Let them hear you fall apart for me.”

And I do.

Each time his name tears from my throat, his grip tightens—on my thigh, on my waist, on the mic still trembling in his hand. He’s losing rhythm now, chasing something just out of reach, buried deep inside me like he can’t stop until we both fall off the edge together.

His movements turn rougher, more erratic, like control is slipping through his fingers and he wants it to.

“That’s it,” he groans, voice breaking apart. “Come on—give it to me.”

The pressure coils tight and fast, unbearably sharp, building from deep inside me like a wave I can’t outrun. I feel it clawing up my spine, lighting every nerve on fire, and I know—I know—I’m about to break.

“Spencer—” my voice fractures.

I shatter around him with a cry that borders on a sob, back arching, thighs trembling, everything inside me clenching hard around him as my climax hits like a lightning strike—hot and endless and all-consuming.

He groans my name in return, low and guttural, pressing his forehead to mine as he follows me over the edge with a final, desperate thrust. His body jerks against mine, hips stuttering as he spills into me, his breath ragged and uneven in my ear.

And then… stillness.

Just the sound of our breathing. Heavy. Shaky. Shallow.

His hand falls away from the mic, letting it dangle by its wire like a forgotten confession. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move.

Neither do I.

For a moment, it’s just quiet.

Then he pulls out of me slowly, carefully, like he doesn’t want to hurt me—but the ache he leaves behind is instant.

I shift, suddenly aware of my half-unbuttoned blouse, the stretch of my thigh still hooked around him, the sweat cooling between us. The shame doesn’t hit all at once. It creeps in.

And then he speaks.

“You can stop recording now.”

His voice is calm. Too calm.

My throat tightens. I reach for the mic with shaking fingers, powering it off in silence. He watches me do it—watches everything—and still doesn’t look away.

“Who sent you?”

I flinch.

It’s not a growl. Not a threat. Just a question. Clinical. Lethal in its precision.

“Was it internal? Press? Private buyer?”

I try to form words, but none come. I look at him, eyes wide, mouth parted, still wrecked in every sense of the word. I open my lips—twice—and still nothing.

He exhales through his nose, eyes flicking away for the first time.

Not angry. Not even hurt. Just… resigned.

“That’s what I thought.”

He moves before I can speak. Reaches down, tucks himself back into his boxers, then zips up his slacks with that same quiet efficiency—controlled, distant, like he’s locking something away. Like he doesn’t want me to see any part of him he didn’t mean to give.

“Get dressed.”

His voice is steady, but the tension in his jaw speaks volumes.

I open my mouth again.

“Spencer, I—”

“Don’t.”

He turns away, running a hand through his hair like it hurts to keep standing there. His shoulders are tense, spine straight, but I see the tremble in his hand. He’s not angry.

He’s wrecked.

Not because I fooled him.

Because he let me.

And he’s about to walk away—leave me in the silence we created—when the word escapes me, sharp and sudden:

“Wait.”

He stops. Doesn’t turn around fully. Just enough for me to see the side of his face, unreadable.

My fingers move before I can think. I reach down, disconnect the recorder, and slide out the memory card. Small. Light. But somehow heavier than anything I’ve ever held.

I walk toward him. Quiet steps. Careful steps. And when I reach him, I place it in his hand.

“Here,” I whisper. “Here’s everything.”

He stares at it for a long moment. Then closes his fingers around it.

“What do you want me to do with it?” he asks, voice low. Tired. But not cold.

I meet his eyes.

“Whatever you want.”

He nods—just once—and slips it into his pocket.

For a moment, neither of us moves.

And then, softer than before, he says, “You know… You could’ve just asked.”

I step up beside him, shoulder to shoulder. Not touching, but close enough to feel the warmth still clinging to him. Close enough to imagine, for a second, that we could leave like this. Side by side.

“Would you really have told me anything?” I ask quietly, not looking at him.

There’s a pause.

Then—just barely above a whisper—

“Maybe not everything.”

Another beat. A breath.

“But I would’ve told you the truth.”

We stand there in the hallway—two liars trying to remember how to be honest.

And this time, when he turns to walk, he doesn’t walk away.

He waits.

take a slow step forward, then another, until I’m beside him again. Close enough to feel the quiet shift in the air between us.

“Well… I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” I say, trying to smile—trying to ease the weight.

He doesn’t respond. Just watches me.

So I drop the joke.

“For the record… even if you don’t believe me, it got real. Somewhere along the way, it stopped being part of the job.”

I glance up, meet his eyes.

“You’re real to me, Spencer.”

And for a moment, he just looks at me—searching. Like he’s trying to decide whether to believe me.

Then, finally, quietly—

“I know.”

And he starts walking.

This time, I follow.

#mentioningmargins #spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid smut #criminal minds

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changes · 9 months ago

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Thursday, September 12th, 2024

🌟 New

When a community post gets 10 reactions (not counting reactions from the post author) the post author will now receive a notification about those reactions. We want to give some kind of notification when you’re getting reactions, but not for every single reaction (that could be a deluge of hundreds of notifications in our big communities). Let us know what you think!

Community admins and mods will now be asked for a reason when they moderate a comment.

Logged out users, likely new visitors to Tumblr itself, can now start requesting new communities to be put on the waitlist. They will be asked to log in or sign up before finishing.

To celebrate the new folks joining Tumblr from Brazil, we have launched a lot of communities features if you’re in that country, such asrecommended communities in the For You feed and related communities carousels when searching and viewing tag pages in the mobile apps.

🛠 Fixed

Dismissed “Check out these blogs” recommendations are now dismissed forever.

New custom domains were not receiving renewed SSL certificates, and thus not properly accessible. This has now been fixed, and new SSL certificates have been granted to the affected domains.

Archives and custom pages on blogs with custom domains were broken. This has now been fixed.

On web, some dialogs did not disable our keyboard shortcuts while they were open. For example, you could like a post with the ‘l’ key even though a dialog was open on top of the post! This is now fixed.

On web, we were displaying an option to block a community in Activity, which is not actually possible, and has now been removed. Instead of blocking a community, you can simply leave a community.

The community tags section has been updated to make it clearer that they will aid in discovery of your community.

We’ve made a few small design improvements throughout communities. Less wasted space FTW!

🚧 Ongoing

We’re aware that some ads may interrupt background audio on iOS and are working on a fix! We have also received reports of a weird “cricket-like” sound in the app, which we think is related.

🌱 Upcoming

No upcoming launches to announce today.

Experiencing an issue? Check for Known Issues and file a Support Request if you have something new. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with other users.

Wanna support Tumblr directly with some money? Check out Premium and the Supporter badge in TumblrMart!

#tumblr update

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tinybeetiny · 14 days ago

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Build-A-Boyfriend Chapter 2: T-Minus 4 Weeks

Why did i write this before my discussion post.....

->Starring:AI!AteezXAfab!Reader ->Genre: Dystopian ->CW: Explicit language, nothing major

Previous Part | Next Part

Masterlist | Ateez Masterlist | Series Masterlist

The morning began with a low chime, the soft, regulated sound of Hala’s approved wake-up tone.

Yn opened her eyes slowly, the sterile glow of her ceiling light filtering in, programmed to adjust in sync with her biometric readings.

But something felt wrong.

She sat up, eyes flicking to the tablet still docked by the door.

1 New Alert. 3 Missed Logs. Urgent: Review Immediately.

Her stomach tightened.

She padded across the floor barefoot, grabbed the tablet, and scanned the notifications.

ATEEZ UNIT 06 — DEVIATION DETECTED — AUTONOMY SPIKE UNAUTHORIZED VOCALIZATION: "YN"

Yn stared at the final line for a beat too long.

Then she moved. Walking as fast as she was legally allowed through the streets of Hala.

She gave polite smiles to her coworkers as she made her way to the elevator.

The lab floor was still cool from overnight lockdown when she arrived. The biometric scanner buzzed awake as she approached, confirming her identity with a flash.

YN — Lead Engineering Tech— Clearance: Gold-Level

The steel doors hissed open.

She stepped inside, and there he was.

Unit 06 — Mingi. Exactly where she had left him.

Seated on the calibration chair, eyes closed, posture perfect, skin dewy with the faintest shimmer of dermal regulation oil. His expression was peaceful. Unnaturally so.

Yn walked around him slowly, tablet in hand, watching for signs of movement, a twitch, a breath pattern, a pupil shift. But nothing changed.

He looked inert. Safe. Dormant.

But she’d seen the log. He’d said her name.

She ran diagnostics. Nothing flagged. Heart-rate simulation: normal. Memory cache: intact. Audio response logs: empty.

Empty.

She checked his neck port. Still capped. Voice box still sealed in storage.

She swallowed hard.

The rest of the ATEEZ prototypes stood silent across the lab in their maintenance docks, each assigned to their own calibration alcove.

She walked past them one by one, watching.

Unit 01 — Hongjoong. Still as stone, but his fingers had been rearranged on the synth keyboard overnight. A composition Yura didn’t recognize blinked on his screen.

Unit 02 — Seonghwa. Always the most immaculate. But his reflection in the lab’s polished glass didn’t match his real posture, just a degree off. Barely noticeable, unless you were looking.

Unit 03 — Yunho. Smiling. Just faintly. No trigger.

Unit 04 — Yeosang. Eyes fixed on a ventilation grate in the ceiling. He hadn't looked away in over two hours, according to logs.

Unit 05 — San. Kneeling. Not in his programming. Position logged as "rest" but the posture was… reverent.

Unit 07 — Wooyoung. Chestplate cooling mechanism activated 4 times during the night — autonomously. He hadn’t been powered up.

Unit 08 — Jongho. Cracked the pressure sensor on his maintenance chair. No movement recorded.

They were silent, motionless. But Yn felt eyes on her.

Even now, standing among them, it felt like walking through a forest full of predators, beautiful, engineered predators pretending to sleep.

She leaned against the edge of the workbench, rubbing her temples, heart still racing. Four weeks to launch. The marketing campaign was already filmed. The architecture teams had begun installing the holographic interface rooms in the flagship store.

There was no time for failure. Not now.

And still… the voice chip logs were empty. The playback files had no entry. But Mingi had said her name.

And the others were changing, too. Quietly. Together.

The sound of heels against polished tile snapped Yn out of thought. Chairwoman Vira Yun entered the lab like gravity itself, sharp suit, spine straight, expression unreadable. Two aides flanked her, both scanning progress reports in real-time.

Yn straightened instinctively.

Vira’s eyes swept across the prototypes, Mingi still seated, the others upright in their calibration docks. Everything looked pristine. Controlled.

“I wanted a visual update before this afternoon’s numbers meeting,” Vira said. “How are we looking?”

Yn forced a nod. “On track. All eight are responding to recalibration. Minor bugs, but nothing that won’t be handled in time.”

Vira gave a tight smile, satisfied. “Good. The store opens in four weeks. And we’ll be announcing the Ateez line one week after that. The Board’s expecting a flawless rollout, we all are.”

She walked slowly along the row of silent units, pausing a moment longer at Mingi.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” she said softly, almost admiring. “So much potential in one room.”

Yn’s throat tightened. “They are,” she murmured.

Vira turned back to her. “Let me know if anything... unexpected comes up.”

Yn kept her face neutral. “Of course.”

With that, Vira nodded once, then exited, heels echoing down the corridor.

The moment the door slid shut, Yn turned back to Mingi.

He hadn’t moved. Not an inch.

But she could feel it again, that subtle wrongness humming underneath the code. A tension in the room that didn’t come from the lights or machines.

She picked up her tablet. The earlier alerts were still blinking faintly in the corner of the screen. Her fingers hovered over the reset command, but she didn’t press it.

Instead, she stared at Mingi’s still, perfect form.

Voice chip disabled. Logs empty. Command queue blank.

And yet… he had said her name.

Yn stayed long after the lab lights dimmed into their night-cycle hue.

The others had gone home, the halls had emptied. Even the air felt quieter.

She pulled up lines of diagnostic code, checking through every flagged anomaly, double-checking behavioral protocols, reviewing voice input logs that should have been blank.

Mingi still hadn’t moved. Neither had the others.

Still, something itched at her spine, not fear, not exactly. Just… unease. Low-level. Manageable. At least, that’s what her biometric monitor kept reporting.

Yn sighed, rubbed her eyes, and leaned back in her chair.

“Four weeks,” she muttered aloud, glancing toward the ceiling. “And they want them flawless. I can’t even get one of you to follow your own default pose cycle.”

Her voice echoed in the quiet.

She glanced toward Mingi again. “You glitched out before you even had a voice box. How the hell did that happen?”

No answer.

She stared at the ceiling again, her voice softer now. “I haven’t slept more than four hours in weeks. Not that my vitals allow much more. Sleep too long and the regulators flag you for depressive lethargy.”

She let out a dry laugh.

“I miss silence. Real silence. Not the kind that hums at you all day to remind you it’s working. I think I miss… something else too. Something I’ve never even had.”

She shook her head, pulling her hair up into a loose knot. “Maybe I just need caffeine. Or to scream. Or to throw my tablet out the damn window. Can’t even do that anymore. Everything’s reinforced. Everything’s... safe.”

Behind her, in the corner of the room, a pair of synthetic eyes remained open.

Unmoving. Watching.

In the back-end system, a hidden data stream pulsed to life:

[UNAUTHORIZED RECORDING — ACTIVE] Listening… — “I miss silence.” — “I think I miss something else too.” — “Can’t even scream.” Tag: Emotional Pattern Acquisition Subject: YN File saved. Labeled: Soft Sounds of Sadness.

The eyes closed again. And the lab went still.

Taglist: @e3ellie @yoongisgirl69 @jonghoslilstar @sugakooie @atztrsr

@honsans-atiny-24 @life-is-a-game-of-thrones @atzlordz @melanated-writersblock @hwasbabygirl

@sunnysidesins @felixs-voice-makes-me-wanna @seonghwaswifeuuuu @lezleeferguson-120 @mentalnerdgasms

@violatedvibrators @krystalcat @lover-ofallthingspretty @gigikubolong29

If you would like to be a part of the taglist please fill out this form

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auburnitzy · 9 months ago

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September 27, 2024 | Progress Report

Did second cleanup (I noticed some mistakes) and shading

Adjusted camera movement

There's finally lip-sync on the third scene

Added extra movement to SWK on the fourth scene

The overlapping lines or colors means that they are on a different layer.

The lines on the background is the Title / Action Safe so I can align stuff properly (like putting things on the center, symmetrical, etc.)

The audio is from Kakarot (video game) from a cutscene.

#☆ technical ☆#☆ wips ☆

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lyss-overcomplicates-everything · 3 months ago

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audio drama progress report:

Finished (to availability):

● The Magnus Archives

● The Magnus Protocol

● Midnight Burger

● Malevolent

● Archive 81

Listening to right now:

● Welcome to Night Vale

● Wolf 359

I listened to like. 1-5 eps and just stopped.:

● Camp Here and There

● Red Valley

● The Punumbra Podcast

Any recs?

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sezez · 7 months ago

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So the Poppy Playtime Chapter 4 ARG has been shining a load of light on Harley Sawyer so I figure it's time I talk about it. (I just realize I've been dead for the past...two months? Anyway-)

So we know by now that Harley was part of this program when he was a child or teen possibly and he was favored by Elliot because of his intelligence. But he lack one thing that made the founder worried.

Humility

Harley did not care at all for other people and rather focus on the process and progress of things. He even lashed out at Elliot for being too soft, then stormed out. In a shred up document, he calls Elliot a backstabber for believing and having high-hopes for him only to be let go.

Which is why Elliot had to let him go and tell him to try and reconnect with other people.

(Which basically him politely saying "Go outside, touch some grass and visit a mental hospital)

And then when Harley became an adult, Leith is the one to hire him back into the factory. Which makes me curious as to why.

This could take place after Elliot's passing, but I watched a few SheepRampage's video and he theorize that Harley is the one behind his death; via using a Bigger Body toy to kill him. So if Elliot was in fact alive when Harley got hired, the doctor could have pretended to change and only go back to his usual self behind the founder's back.

And let's just take a quick moment to realize something; Harley could have very much been the one to place the dead body of a young boy in Elliot's house, to ruin his good name and his image as a family man.

(which is a extreme petty move, Harley. You really did that because Elliot said "No more experimenting" to you all those years ago?)

Anyway, back on track; I can guess that Harley was brought back as a desperate move by Playtime Co. after the Catnap Controversy. Which is where the Bigger Body Initiative was made then the rest is history.

Now, let's talk about the audio we hear when dialing the phone number the ARG gave.

So in the audio, we hear Leith, Eddie and Stella in a private room discussing about a mistake/incident that angered the Head of Innovation so much. It's also must be very bad because Leith ask Eddie if this will get out, to which the latter said they'll be in the clearing zone.

And Gerald Lockheart is back, (the same detective who investigated the Theodore Case back in the PPT Chapter 3 ARG) and he soon entered the room, and told the three Heads who is responsible; Harley Sawyer.

And that leaves a major question; WHAT is this mistake? WHY did it anger Leith so much to the point he wants to strangle the person responsible for it?

For the former, I think the ARG is giving a clear hint; the Theater Incident.

The theater has been mention quite a lot in most of the ARG updates, it started with a ripped apart Incident Report from a employee who was touring a bunch of people that led to a child getting hurt, they pleaded to not ever be mention and willing to do anything as long as they aren't blame for it because they honestly don't know what happened because it was so quick.

And now thinking about it, I think this is what the higher-ups were talking about.

But I decided to take it one step further, what if not only this resulted in a injury of a child, but also the death of Elliot Ludwig and the people who were being toured.

As for how it plays out (forgive me if it's so bad) ; So one day in the factory, a group of people were being toured around and reached the theater. Elliot was also present at the time, then suddenly Yarnaby comes out and kills the founder. Leading to a panic and possibly more deaths, and it's like a fire also broke out, base om a few pictures that have shown burnt toys and a poster.

And I know it's a sudden leap to think Yarnaby is the one who killed Elliot. But people kept pointing out Yarnaby is a yarn lion toy, and I like to imagine he is meant to be in the theater as entertainer. Along with the other characters teased such as the Piano Dinosaur and the Jester character we have yet to see.

Also Harley is likely the one to tell Yarnaby to attack Elliot, because he purposefully isolated himself with so he can make it very obedient to him.

So with the founder dead and a few bodies, this obviously furious Leith. And I think what Stella was trying to say before the Head of Innovation cut her off, is that they most likely had to kill any survivors of the attack to keep things quiet.

And even after all of that, they still kept Harley around because he may have threaten to blackmail them or because he is like the one thing that's still keeping the factory together. As much as they hate it, they knew the doctor can just kill them any time he wants.

#poppy playtime #poppy playtime theory #poppy playtime chapter 4 #poppy playtime arg #elliot ludwig #harley sawyer #leith pierre #stella greyber #eddie m. n. rittermam #eddie ritterman #yarnaby #poppy playtime yarnaby #harley got beef with elliot #leith sounded like he was ready to throw some hands in the call

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vague-humanoid · 1 year ago

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MADISON — Civic Media, a Wisconsin-based progressive talk-radio network, said Thursday it had agreed to make two edits to an interview with President Joe Biden at the request of his campaign before the broadcast aired, a decision the station said fell short of "journalistic interview standards."

Still, the station said, it stands by its popular host Earl Ingram, who conducted the interview with Biden following the June 27 televised debate with rival Republican Donald Trump during which the president lost his train of thought and at times made nonsensical statements. Ingram's interview was recorded on July 3 and aired on July 4.

"On Monday, July 8th, it was reported to Civic Media management that immediately after the phone interview was recorded, the Biden campaign called and asked for two edits to the recording before it aired. Civic Media management immediately undertook an investigation and determined that the production team at the time viewed the edits as non-substantive and broadcast and published the interview with two short segments removed," the station said in a statement released on Thursday.

The station said it would make the full, unedited interview available online.

The two edits, according to the station, were:

At time 5:20, the removal of “...and in addition to that, I have more Blacks in my administration than any other president, all other presidents combined, and in major positions, cabinet positions.”

At time 14:15, in reference to Donald Trump’s call for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, the removal of “I don’t know if they even call for their hanging or not, but he–but they said [...] convicted of murder.”

"With a high-profile interview comes a listener expectation that journalistic interview standards will be applied, even for non-news programming. We did not meet those expectations. Civic Media disagrees with the team’s judgments in the moment, both with respect to the handling of the interview questions and the decision to edit the interview audio," the statement read.

@bmoreisapunkrocktown @ubernegro @meanmisscharles @thecolorsfucked

#if you don't support him #you aint Black #lmao #we are fucked

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meret118 · 8 months ago

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As Donald Trump campaigns to be a dictator for one day, he’s asking: “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?” Great question! To help answer it, our Trump Files series is delving into consequential events from the 45th president’s time in office that Americans might have forgotten—or wish they had.

Six years on, families remain separated. The Trump administration’s so-called “zero tolerance” policy of splitting families at the border to deter migration is not just a shameful chapter of US history but an ongoing disaster. To this day, the Biden White House is still scrambling to clean up the mess. Some families may never reunite.

The cruelty of that policy defined the first Trump term. Images of separated children held in Walmarts converted into shelters sparked comparisons to the detention of Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II. Audio obtained by ProPublica and released in June 2018 underscored the brutality: Guards joked, over the sounds of children wailing and calling for their moms and dads while in custody of Customs and Border Protection, “Well, we have an orchestra here, right? What we’re missing is a conductor.”

. . .

Ultimately, around 5,000 children were separated and, as of earlier this year, 1,360 hadn’t been reunited with their parents or legal guardians, according to a progress report by the Family Reunification Task Force launched by the Biden administration.

. . .

Even in face of the irreparable harm done to thousands of children and their parents, the Trump campaign won’t rule out bringing back family separation in a potential second term.

“Well, when you have that policy, people don’t come,” Trump said during a CNN town hall last year. “If a family hears they’re going to be separated, they love their family, they don’t come.” When pressed further about whether he would reinstate the policy, Trump added: “We have to save our country, all right?”

#Trump #2024 #Child trafficking #Child abuse

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drabblesandimagines · 2 years ago

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Dove (part four)

Leon Kennedy x female reader Part one. Part two. Part three.

The time for Leon’s next perimeter check comes and goes, yet he remains in place on the sofa, you cuddling into his chest. He knows he could try and shuffle along a little bit, get you to lie down, but he doesn’t.

You must be exhausted, both physically and mentally, to have fallen asleep on him after all. He doesn’t want to risk waking you up when it’s the first time he’s seen you properly relaxed in the last 24 hours. It’d be more awkward if he did try to move and woke you up, too. Plus, if he did successfully pull it off, it’s not the widest of sofas either - what if you rolled off when he was outside and damaged your shoulder even more? You’re already bruised and battered from your encounter with the Lickers and he’ll be damned if he’s gonna let you get hurt again under his watch.

It’s everything to do with that and nothing to do with the fact that he can’t remember when he last held a woman like this, content in his embrace. He’s not a big one-night stand guy – won’t deny he’s had them, but they’re not a preference - so intimate moments like this are few and far between. Besides, you’d asked him for a hug, you’d fell asleep in his arms. It might not be proper, but he’s not overstepped professional boundaries by reassuring a victim in their moment of need.

Just like he totally hadn’t overstepped when he helped you undress last night.

God, when you’d asked for his help with your bra… Memories of awkward fumbles with girlfriends under covers had flashed through his mind, still isn’t sure how he pulled it off one-handed.

Leon swallows as you unconsciously nuzzle your cheek up against his chest, bringing him back to the present moment. He chides himself for the distraction, shouldn’t be thinking about that when he should be thinking about the job at hand. There’s been no reply from Hunnigan, though he wasn’t expecting one unless there was any sort of development. She’s probably waiting for his full report before she’ll give him a crumb of anything in return.

He looks at the laptop sat open on the coffee table, though it’s long gone to sleep. He was maybe a little ambitious with his timeframe of having it in her inbox by 2000, as now he’s going to have to type it up, listening to the audio, all in the same room as you as he does.

Problem for later, he decides, as is you being asleep on his chest preventing him from doing his perimeter check. His hand remains on the small of your back - keeps you steady against him, whilst he compromises for scrolling round the camera feeds a few times one-handed.

There’s nothing to note visually from his last outing - though he definitely wants to be able to double-check with his own eyes rather than put his full trust in pixels on a 3.5-inch screen. There’s been no motion detected either, so it’ll do.

It’s turning into a nice evening, he muses, warm enough to be out without a jacket. It’s a shame he can’t take you outside for some fresh air, stretch your legs with a walk around the perimeter – after he’d checked it first, of course – and maybe make you feel less like a prisoner. Knows from experience that it won’t be long until the frustration of being restricted to three rooms is going to surface. Always does. You’ve already shown some over the medication being locked up last night.

He also knows how much the restrictions and protocols seem overkill, but if anything were to go wrong on this mission, all his actions are going to be scrutinized under a microscope, discussed at length by a panel who will either sign him off for active duty or accuse him of being a traitor to the good old US of A.

You jerk almost violently on his chest then, nearly clocking him in the chin, your good hand scrunched up in the fabric of his shirt – all tell-tale signs of a bad dream. Leon begins to rub slow circles with his hand on the small of your back, hoping it’ll be soothing enough to stop the dream progressing, perhaps enough to draw you out of that REM state but not enough to wake you up entirely.

He slips his phone back in his pocket as he continues to rub large circles on your back, can’t help but smile as he watches you settle, your face relaxing once more.

Leon closes his eyes, then, relishing the weight of you on his chest. It’s not selfish, he reasons, no, because although those sleeping pills work wonders, they can never replace a true night’s sleep – again, he knows that from bitter experience. It’s enough to shut your brain down for a solid eight hours, but it’s never going to be a restful sleep when it’s synthetic.

Not in the way you’re napping right now, safe in his arms.

God, Kennedy, pull it together – you just met the girl.

Still, doesn’t open his eyes though.

He’s about to drift off himself when you whimper and he swears it breaks his heart. Your grip tightens on his shirt, face twitching once more, now alongside furrowed brows and hitched breaths as you face invisible demons. He strokes your hair with one hand, still rubbing circles on your back with his other but it doesn’t have the same effect this time as your restlessness continues.

“No…” You whimper again, nails digging in his chest from your grip and he admits defeat. He sits up slowly, stills his hand on your back and moves his other to rest lightly on your arm to give the most gentle shake.

“Dove, it’s okay.” Leon says, softly. “You’re all right. It was just a dream.” He moves his head down, in dangerous territory of being headbutted, speaks a little louder in the hopes the movement and his voice will break through your slumber. “I’m here, Dove. You’re safe with me, okay?” Your eyes shoot open and you lift your head off his chest but his reflexes don’t fail him as he moves his head back from the collision. You emit a sharp gasp from your mouth, catching your breath and look at him briefly in alarm, feeling entirely disorientated and confused, heart pounding.

“Hey.” He smiles.

It takes a beat for you to properly gather your bearings – never been a fan of napping during the day, always made you feel worse more than anything. You’re in the safe house, in the living room, with Leon – the kind DSO agent who made you oatmeal and sandwiches for lunch – whose warm palm still is pressed solidly against the small of your back…

“You fell asleep. I… It seemed like you were having a bad dream, so…”

You remembered asking him for a hug, how nice it had felt in his embrace, how you thought it would be fine to close your eyes for just a moment. Afterall, they were so dry and tired from all that silly crying and how nice and warm Leon felt, with your cheek pressed up against his chest.

Yes, you were just going to savour all that for a couple more minutes and then you’d sit up.

But it hadn’t happened that way, waking up whoever knows how long later, holding onto him for dear life.

“I fell asleep… on you.”

It’s a statement, not a question.

His smile turns somewhat bashful. “Yeah.”

You realise then that your hand is flat on his chest, right over his heart – you can feel it pound underneath your fingertips and you snatch it back into your own chest, sitting up poker straight, looking embarrassed.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine, Dove. I can add emergency pillow next to the first aid qualification.” He teases, relieved it seems to make you relax a little by the way your shoulders drop. You smile, placing your good hand back on the sofa for balance to shuffle back along. A little reluctantly, Leon brings his hand back to rest on his thigh.

“Do you, er, want to talk about it?”

“Not much to tell.” You shuffle in place again, trying to get comfortable as your injuries begin to ache. “I was being chased… But that’s all I can remember.” You shake your head as if you could shake the uneasy feeling out of it. “How long was I asleep?”

“Not long.” Leon shrugs, though he knows exactly how long it was. Doesn’t want to say he let you sleep on him for over 90 minutes because he liked the human contact.

You look up at the TV, not knowing what to say, and see it’s still on at a low volume – the channel unchanged and the house renovation show ongoing. Must be some sort of afternoon marathon.

“So, I need to do my, er, perimeter check. I won’t be long, but can I get you anything before I go?”

“Can I have the next dose of painkillers?”

Leon checks his watch and frowns - you’re over an hour away from the next dose. Maybe he shouldn’t have let you sleep in that position after all, torso twisted to lie across his chest – the fall down the stairs had to have a done a number of your ribs. “I’m afraid not for another hour or so, Dove. Is the pain really bad?”

“No, I’m just starting to ache a bit. I’ll be all right.”

“We can arrange a call with a medic if the painkillers aren’t bearing up, see if we can get you on something stronger.” He offers, getting to his feet.

Your stomach flips. There it is, that horrible niggle of doubt in the depths. Leon seems sincere enough in his offer – hell, this is the man who prepped your toothbrush for you this morning, made breakfast and lunch, let you sob and then nap all over him. That’s surely not how a government agent who suspects you’re a bioterrorist is going to treat you, yet you can’t bring yourself to fully relax around him, painfully aware that he might be feeding back everything you say or even do to superiors.

Is this a trick or a test, to see if you’ll take up stronger pain medication after you insisted yesterday that what you were given had been adequate? Oh, you lied about that, did you? Did you lie about your whole statement too, Dove?

“No, that’s not necessary.” You’ve taken too long to reply, so time to try and deflect. “I’m just being a baby.”

“No, you’re not.” He replies, firmly. “Have a think about it, okay? You’ll have been running off adrenaline for a while, might have numbed the real extent of the pain when you were being assessed. Been there a few times myself.”

You nod, unsure of what else to say, still feeling a little awkward in the way you’d woken up.

“Okay, I’m heading outside. See you soon.”

You lean forward and grab the remote control. “Take care.” It comes out before you even think about what you’re saying and you turn up the volume on the TV, as if it could drown out what you’d already said.

Leon smiles as he picks up his duffel bag, slings it over his shoulder – he’s locking it in the garage on his way out. If you’ve noticed he keeps it in his line of sight at all times -besides the time it was behind him but you had been very snug in his arms - you’ve been polite enough not to mention it, or maybe you just don’t want to hear the answer. He wishes he could make the call, but until those above him officially deem you as a victim who needs protection and not a suspect under surveillance instead of the hybrid moniker you’re under, he needs to keep you and the weapons separate.

Like you could do any damage to him with your arm in a sling, bruised, grazed and sore, all whilst on sleeping pills and painkillers for God’s sake. If you were faking all of that, call the Academy cos there’s a new Best Actress in town.

---

Part five.

Masterlist . Requests welcome . Commissions/Ko-Fi

Comments, follows, likes and reblogs make my day!

#ghostdogwrites #leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy x female reader

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swanpair-music · 2 months ago

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Garden of Arctus

Progress Report.

The Lost Garden of Arctus

Mountain Goat

Mischievous Caverns

Jumping Jacks

Falconer’s Migraine

Strike First

Reckless Caverns [demo]

Bazaar Brunt [demo]

Pitiful Desperate Struggle [demo]

Fight or Flight (lost most of the progress)

(1) The Lost Garden of Arctus

(2) Mountain Goat

(3) Mischievous Caverns

(4) Jumping Jacks Extended

(5) Falconer’s Migraine

(6) Strike First

(7) Bazaar Brunt (demo atm)

(8) Reckless Cavern (demo)

(9) Pitiful Desperate Fighter (demo)

(10) Fight or Flight (lost demo)

I’m far from done and may need to separate different “volumes” of soundtrack posts in the case of audio storage per tumblr thread.

However, I’ll still work on them from time to time.

#swanpairmusic #beepbox #music posting #beepbox song #beepbox demo #beepbox songs #beepbox music #garden of arctus #pixel art #album progress

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turnabout-plus-one · 2 years ago

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another audio update tp1 gang ^_^

finished version of the famed song that plays when you're gaming by @veysa-loser !!!! everyone clap for them this goes so hard and it literally sounds official . genuinely crazy

- squid 🦑

#squid 🦑#progress reports: audio #ace attorney

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see-arcane · 2 years ago

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The Vampyres--The Bones and Blood of the Book

Good news! I’m not dead and the book isn’t either! Just shambling slowly through the wasteland of the publication process. It’s been a bit since I last waved this bloody morsel around. So, consider this a progress report on the state of the novella, the prospective publishing options, and a few other questions that have been bouncing around in the inbox.

EDIT:

I have a website now! For some reason.

It's See Arcane Scribbles.

Smaller Edit:

Got a Spotify too for story soundtrack goodness:

COVERS

First things first—and the first part of a finished book is the cover. Here are some mockups I’ve been juggling, starting with the original placeholder. They’re far from perfect, but I’m proud of what I managed with a fairly skinny graphic art skill set.

FINISHING, FORMAT, AND FINANCE*

*(OR, THE HEADACHENING)

Copyright: Technically speaking, you have the copyright to your own writing once you put it to paper or screen. But this is somehow a different thing from a legally-binding registered copyright, which everyone declares is a must-have if you want your work to be protected with more than a non-textual trust-fall exercise, hoping nobody steals your work and runs.

That said, electronic registration with the copyright office is $65, or $45 to register one work by one author.

ISBN: I only recently learned the words behind this acronym. ‘International Standard Book Number.’ It’s the ID on a book that marks it as unique and helps commercial booksellers and libraries circulate it. Each iteration of a book—paperback, digital, hardcover, new editions, et cetera—has its own ISBN. When you’re publishing on your own, you purchase ISBNs through a service called Bowker.

One book/version’s ISBN costs $125.

There are better bargains the higher the number of books and/or versions you go, starting at a bulk of 10 books for $295. But as I only have the one (1) skinny novella on the table, that’s a no-go. Which begs the question of how many ISBNs are in store for this little monster. It depends on how many formats I go with.

eBook: The quickest and most cost-efficient option across the board for any self-publication service. Short, sweet, no printing pains of trim sizes or distribution costs or formatting, oh my. Nice.

Paperback VS Hardcover: …But I am now and forever a sucker for physical media. Even though it’s a teeny brochure of a thing, I want to hold a physical copy of The Vampyres in my hands! So bad! And every service I’ve looked through has stated the obvious: Hardcover costs more than paperback. My heart won’t break if I have to stick with paperback to spare everyone’s wallets—hardcovers are pricy in both directions!—but I am a little torn. Especially as physical size might affect the price too.

Here we have two of my favorite quick reads, an anthology of Poe stories and Clive Barker’s novella, The Hellbound Heart.

The Poe book is a clothbound hardcover. 6.5 x 4.5 inches, a bit over 120 pages.

The Hellbound Heart is roughly 8 x 5 inches (about standard for a novella), at 164 pages. But unlike Poe, it looks like Barker took some liberties with the spacing and font size.

Standard size dimensions cost less than unique cuts, which means that whether paperback or hardcover, I sadly have to say goodbye to the petite palm-sized edition I was hoping for. On the upside, good news to us crap-vision readers—the font’s going to get H U G E in order to make the book more than a pamphlet with delusions of grandeur.

Audiobook: The fact is, my voice is not up to the task of reciting anything with appropriate gravitas and I think we’ve all been spoiled by @re-dracula and assorted other podcasts’ skill in orating. I don’t have the cash to hire a professional and I’m not about to accept anyone’s freebie offers. I won’t pickpocket friends for their talent. If an audio version ever comes along for any story of mine it’ll be down the road when it proves worth the format’s effort and cost.

REVIEWS (and a Foreword!)

It was the best of times (People reading the thing! Commenting on the thing! Good good good—), it was the worst of times (The Mortifying Ordeal of People Reading and Commenting on the Thing). Time for what every advice site declares a book absolutely must have the moment it’s thrust into the wild.

Reviews, reviews, reviews.

I’ve already bitten several bullets and passed copies out to a handful of fellow scribblers to scrutinize, their reviews destined to be hung up like literary gold stars on their bookselling site of choice, my own included. Now comes my preliminary grovel to readers en masse to please drop a review, a comment, a blurb of any shape or size where you can once The Vampyres drops. I’ve already gotten some early comments that have consisted mostly of screaming. Screams also count as a review.

As an aside, there are two folks in particular who I reached out to who exist in the stratosphere of Coolest People in the Vampiric Lit scene. They promptly exploded me into disbelieving giblets when they told me, yes, they’d be happy to read my little story and offer up a review and a foreword for the book respectively.

I’m not sure what the decorum here is, but for safety (and surprise’s) sake, I’ll not name names. But they are names I’ve been happy to come across for the past two years while neck deep in the undead book club. I’m infinitely grateful to both of them and am waiting on pins, needles, stakes and kukri blades by my inbox so I can pin their words up inside the book itself.

FUTURE SCRIBBLING

To get one of the biggest questions out of the way, let’s talk about Barking Harker.

My very own object lesson on sunk cost fallacy.

I wrote my way through a goddamn cinderblock of text without even grazing the finish line of the first section of the story. A story made of so many convoluted triple-decker layers of subplots and side characters that it had the structural integrity of a monolithic Nature Valley granola bar, just waiting to fall apart under its own weight. Such is the hubris and curse of too-many-words-itis. The Vampyres remains a miraculous fluke, jotted down during an overdue break from BH’s slog. Not just because I tripped and fell into finishing the story, but because it’s comparatively compact! Brevity at last!

For those still craving the assorted gothic and ghoulish promises of the initial novel idea, don’t worry, those aren’t going anywhere. I’ve just crumbled the metaphorical bloodstained granola by my own hand and have done the sane thing of parsing out the various subplots to become the foundations of their own stories. Which they really should have been from the get-go. Insert 100+ clown emojis here.

On that note, I am turning into WIPs Georg over here. Good god.

I hesitate to throw myself all-in again and make promises of X Story that may leave me spinning my mental wheels or ballooning the plot out into a behemoth that can’t be steered back on course. Even so, here’s a peek at a few ideas I currently have on the brain.

So.

Not exactly lacking for stories. It’s just a matter of seeing which of them breaks ahead of the herd and squeezes out into the publication ether first.

LAST BIT

Blah, blah, requisite reminder that I have a Ko-Fi where you can donate a buck or commission my best attempt at art, blah. Any pennies are a help.

But I’m betting very few of you came around here for my doodles. Somehow, a good amount of people tripped into this pit with me because you enjoy the rambles and horrors I’ve written over the years. Maybe some of you will even buy my book once it’s out. And you, there, on the other side of the screen—you’re reading this right now. You made it all the way to the bottom of this pile of exposition just because you wanted to. So, thank you.

Thank you for reading this far. Thank you for reading before and reading what’s to come. Thank you for giving me the confidence to even consider shouldering my own work out into the wider world.

Thank you.

P.S. If you want to re-read the preview, go here!

#this one is a Big Boy #the vampyres #my writing #my art #horror #the vampyre #dracula #barking harker #Spotify

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