#that final point and the one about apologizing... okay...

[mahmahmahmysharona]

When you don't know why Bob doesn't like you, but a relapse forces you to find out.

(Bob Reynolds x Avenger Reader) Part 1/?

You don't think Bob likes you very much. Especially when the situation goes from being a ragtag group of underdogs to a fully blown Avengers Avengerz(!)-living-together-in-the-tower deal.

In fact, maybe he just doesn't think much about you at all. He's quiet, shy even, with most of the team, but on the rare occasions he contributes more than a mere small smile, you're the last person he's talking to.

It doesn't bother you much. So what if Yelena is his keeper, making sure he's alright and keeping a tactful eye on him? Obviously he'd be more open with her. But still, you wonder if you ever said something wrong, or were too harsh on him when you all first met. (Hell, he'd even rather talk to Walker than you, it seems.)

Okay, maybe it bothers you more than you'll admit.

You've never been one to make friends easily, but when you can't even win the affections of someone who literally has the living embodiment of guilt and resentment fighting for dominance inside of him, then there must be something wrong with you.

But you get on with life. The new version of it, anyway. You train, you go on missions, you sleep, and you do it all again. Occasionally, the team starts to develop into something more important to you. They have your back, and you have theirs.

Still, even with all this, Bob doesn't bite. Not when you offer him coffee, not when you ask him about what book he's reading, and not even when you try to crack jokes about the team's questionable public branding.

So you give up. You keep your head down. But then one day, Yelena asks you to hang back from a mission to keep an eye on Bob, who seems to be in his head more than usual.

"Maybe it'll be good for you two," she says, not unsubtly. "Get to know each other a little."

Great. Now you know everyone has noticed the rift between you.

You stay out of his way, poking your head around the corner ever now and again, catching him sitting in front of the window and looking out at the sky. You know better than to ask him if he's okay, so you stay hidden.

Except one time you look out, expecting to see him there, and he's gone. Shit. You've lost the biggest asset and most dangerous weapon in New York.

You quickly head to his room, certain he's fine, but not wanting to be responsible if he's not.

When you get there, the door is partially open, and you gently push it the rest of the way. The lights are out. You look around, and your heart stops when you see a shadow sitting on the bed. A black silhouette, sitting very still. Your head suddenly fills with memories of that day, when you were forced to relive the most horrific snapshots of your past: revisiting some of your most terrible deeds — ones that you can't outrun, even in your sleep, even now. It’s torture without the pain.

Without thinking, you reach back and pull out your gun, pointing it at the shape. Your hands are steady, but only just. You know from experience bullets will do nothing to stop The Void, but if the team comes back and finds your shadow burned into the ground, you at least want them to know that you fucking tried.

As soon as you do, the shadow moves. "Woah, woah," it says. "It's me." It reaches over and switches on the bedside lamp, illuminating the room in a relieving warm glow. It's just Bob, sitting on his bed, looking rightly panicked.

You immediately stand down, hooking your gun back into place. Your heart is still pounding. "Bob. You scared the shit out of me. I thought you were..." Then you immediately feel bad.

"Sorry," he says. "I just wanted to sit in the dark for a while. I should have thought--"

"No, don't apologize."

When you ask him what’s wrong, he’s cagey. You’ve done this dance before — trying to talk to him and getting little in return. He’s okay, you’re okay, so you give a small grunt and decide to leave.

But he stops you, a guilty look on his face. Finally, he explains. He always feels this way when the team leaves for missions, knowing how dangerous he is but hating knowing everyone is in danger. He wants to help, but has no idea how to harness his powers beyond simply controlling them. He looks up at you, suddenly quieter (if that’s even possible) and says that today feels even worse, because the one person who likes him the least is stuck babysitting him.

“Hold on,” you say. “What do you mean?”

Then it all comes pouring out. Bob thinks you hate him. You think Bob hates you. Neither of you hate each other. The realisation makes you laugh, hard. He doesn’t quite get there, but he does crack a confused smile.

Evidently, your resting bitch face paired with his natural shyness has caused a stalemate.

“Bob, I’ve wanted to be your friend this whole time,” you say, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I just stopped trying because you seemed…I don’t know, scared of me or something.”

“I think I am, just a little.”

“Don’t you have the power of a hundred suns or something?”

“A million exploding suns,” he says casually, shrugging. You don’t really know what to say to that until he cracks a smile, and you realise the only response is another laugh.

“Okay, well, for clarity’s sake, can we be friends now?”

“Yeah, of course,” he says. Emboldened, he holds out his hand. You look at it, remembering what happened the last time you accidentally grabbed his hand a year ago in that damn incinerator. (A trip into the "Void Rooms", even when brief, isn't good.) Your recollection must register on your face, because you see his smile drop. He pulls his hand back, but you know that in order for this to work, he has to trust you. And you have to trust him.

You reach out and grab his hand, gripping it firm in yours, shaking it as he wanted you to. Between your fingers, something is happening. There’s an invisible charge. Can he feel it? You shake it off.

“For what it’s worth,” you tell him. “I don’t see you as a burden. Nobody else around here does, either. I think we need you as much as you need us. And don’t be scared of me, because I’m not scared of you.”

That seems to unlock something in him. His shoulders drop, his chest expands and releases with a loaded, relieved breath, and his hand quickly relaxes in yours.

“Well…” he tears his eyes away from your hands, looking back up at you. “…That’s another person I can add to my very small list.” Another thought crosses his mind, causing the smile to fade.

"What would you have done?" he asks. "If it hadn't been me in here? If it had been...the other me? If I'd dragged you back into that place?"

You feel your fingers flex in your palm by your side. You'd go down fighting, is what would really happen. But you can't say that. You have to say something else: something not as desperate but equally true.

"I would have found you," you tell him. "I would have torn through every memory to find you, Bob. And we'd get out of there, just like we did before. Together."

His brow creases, watching you, ringing his hands, torn by some internal conflict you'll never fully understand. But he does soften still, giving you a grateful nod.

You leave him then, giving him the space he obviously wants. But what you don’t know is that he doesn’t want you to leave. He wants to talk to you, to catch up on getting to know you. There’s so much he missed out on, because he’s stupid, and now he wants to do everything he can to make up for it.

What you also don’t know is that, despite being relieved that you two can now be friends, is that soon, there’ll be a whole new problem.

Soon, just being friends won’t be nearly enough for either of you.

Part 2 (aka: When you realize you're falling in love with Bob, and it sucks.)

[dannyriccsystem]

THE THRILL OF A TRIPLE LIFE!

FORMULA ONE DRIVER X READER

SUMMARY: Some cute moments between you and your boyfriend: Spiderman!

WORD COUNT: 2K

WARNINGS: Light angst, mentions of blood/injury, mostly fluff :), Y/N usage

FEATURING: Spiderman!Oscar Piastri x Reader

NOTE: New layout maybe? How do we feel about the colors? idk… I love you Spiderman Oscar

RAIN POURED AGAINST YOUR WINDOW, the streets of Monaco twinkling from below your high-rise apartment. You huffed a sigh, cradling a cup of hot cocoa in your hands whilst you settled down into the sofa. Your favorite movie was on but you weren’t watching. Instead, your focus was pinned to the doorway. Oscar Piastri, your crime-fighting boyfriend, was roughly thirty minutes late now. As expected.

You were starting to worry. He sounded so serious this morning when he promised dinner at 7:00 PM sharp. It was late, sure, but he was taking his night watches into consideration. He couldn’t promise earlier—that was unrealistic. But it seemed he couldn’t promise this either.

You picked up your phone, ready to dial his number when suddenly you heard the sound of a window squeaking open. You flinched until you saw your boyfriend stumble in, clutching his stomach. He struggled to shut the window behind him, using only one hand. You perked up, setting your mug aside.

“You know there’s a front door, right?”

“That’s too suspicious,” He groaned. “Doors aren’t for Spiderman. Windows are.”

You could tell he was in pain, so you scurried off to the bathroom to locate the first aid kit. When you returned, you pointed to the couch with a stern expression. “Sit.” Oscar obeyed, yanking his mask off as he flopped down onto the couch, his body slumped against the cushions. His hair was slightly messy from the mask. “Move your hand, spidey.”

He shakily lifted his arm aside, revealing a shallow gash that cut through his suit. You sighed, dropping to your knees to carefully dab at the wound. It would heal just fine, but that didn’t mean you weren’t worried about him. He could tell, too. How could he not?

“You promised dinner at seven.” Maybe it was a bad time to bring it up while you were wiping his wound with saline solution.

“I know, I’m sorry, but there was a bus with broken breaks and—”

“And a collapsing building with a bunch of orphans who needed your help trapped inside, yeah?” You finished, and he let out a weak laugh.

“Not this time, no.” You both fell back into silence—uncomfortable silence. He watched you carefully, his eyebrows knitted together. You were clearly upset and he wanted to fix that, but he didn’t know how. “Y/N…” Oscar reached out, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. You looked up at him with expectation. “I’m sorry I keep disappointing you.”

You sighed, letting your head drop with your chin tucked in. After a moment, you started to help him shimmy out of the top of his suit, letting it sit at his waist. You began to wrap his wound in bandages. “You don’t disappoint me, Osc. You worry me.” He opened his mouth to apologize again, but you cut him off, “I just want you to stop scaring me so much. Every time you’re late I start to wonder if you’re gonna show up at all. I start to wonder if I’m gonna hear about your death in the news paper before I even get the chance to say goodbye-”

He grabbed your wrist, because while you were rambling, you had unintentionally wrapped him up too tight. You muttered a sheepish apology, unwinding the wrappings to redo your work. “I wish I could give you a normal life, Y/N.” He muttered as he finally let go of your wrist.

“I don’t want normal, Oscar. I want you. I just don’t want you to shut me out, okay? If you’re gonna be late, just call me and let me know. I can’t stand worrying over you nonstop.” You tore the bandage with your teeth and tucked it in securely. He helped you sit up on the couch next to him, and you brought his bruised knuckles to your lips to gently kiss them.

“I can’t promise you a lot…” He murmured, his eyes soft. “But I can promise you that.”

“Good…”

You leaned your face into his neck, and he held you close. It wasn’t often he got to enjoy your presence like this, free from his duties of being a hero for just a few more hours.

YOU FOUND THE FIRST STICKY NOTE IN THE MORNING. And by sticky note I don’t mean the yellow ones that had adhesive tops, but rather a note card webbed to a surface by your boyfriend. Oscar had stuck it to the toaster, almost as if he knew you were going to make yourself some toast that morning.

‘Are you a toaster? Because a bath with you would send me straight to heaven! - 🕷️’ You laughed at his stupid pick up line, finding the cute little spider drawing to be adorable as well.

The next one was after you finished enjoying your breakfast. You stepped into the bathroom to brush your teeth, finding another note stuck to the mirror. ‘You look beautiful today! Even with toothpaste on your shirt ;) - 🕷️’ After reading the note, you looked down… And then cursed under your breath. Indeed, you had dribbled some of the minty substance onto your top, leaving a white stain. Damn you, Oscar.

He knew you too well.

The last one was in the fridge, on top of the box of leftover pizza from a few nights ago. ‘Don’t even think about it…’ You grumbled, because he also webbed the box stuck, that little jerk.

You found yourself sitting on the fire escape, a small sketch pad in hand. You listened to the sound of vehicles whizzing by and the occasional car alarm going off. Every now and then you could see Oscar swing through the tall buildings, and you tried to push away the heavy feeling in your heart, because you missed him so bad.

“Delivery!” A voice called out from above you. Oscar dropped down right in front of you, hanging upside down by one of his webs. He was in his full Spiderman suit to conceal his identity, but you knew him well enough. You grinned when he held out a brown paper sack, the bottom slightly greasy. “One sandwich from your favorite restaurant.”

He lowered himself onto the platform, upright this time. You both sat on the edge, your feet dangling over the edge as you split the sandwich in half. Oscar raised his mask high enough to eat, but before that he dinked his half against yours, like a glass of fine wine.

“I didn’t know you swung across cities for sandwiches now.”

“Only for my favorite girl.” He scooted just a tad bit closer to you, your shoulders brushing. He smiled, his mouth the only visible feature. “Did you like my notes?”

“I thought they were a bit dorky.”

“But in a cute way, right?” He took a large bite of his sandwich, staring at you while he chewed.

Your gaze softened, your grin somewhat lovesick. “Yes. In a cute way. You’re my cute, super-powered, wall climbing dork.”

He seemed happy with that answer. After a moment, he swallowed, and added on, “You’re still not eating my pizza.”

“Dangit.”

BOYFRIEND BY MORNING, RACER BY AFTERNOON, SUPERHERO BY NIGHT. That’s essentially the life Oscar lived, and you were both fine with that. He dedicated all the free time he could to you, which maybe wasn’t a lot some days, but you were fine with it. You loved him and everything that he came with. The whole triple life thing was just part of the package. If you couldn’t handle him when he came home beat up, then you didn’t deserve him when he was the sweetest boyfriend alive.

However, it was a Sunday, which meant it was time to put the life-saving aside for long enough to win a damn race. It was always dangerous, but he had you constantly checking the news. If anything happened, you’d call a red flag and send your boyfriend out to save the day. He always made it back just in time to finish the race and sweep you off your feet again.

“Good luck out there, Osc.” You spoke as he kissed you on the lips, grinning in response. “Don’t be too dangerous. Monaco needs their hero, still.”

“Yeah, yeah. I promise.”

The race seemed to be going well, until you heard some murmurs from the engineers. You poked your head out of the garage, examining your surroundings. With your headset on, you could hear Oscar over the radio asking if everything was okay. His senses were definitely tingling.

You looked out to the stands, watching as a figure in a trench coat shoved through the crowds, making his way closer to the track. You rushed to Oscar’s engineer, begging for him to be called in and for a red flag, because there was clearly something suspicious going on.

They listened, because for some reason your instincts were always correct. You rushed Oscar into his drivers room where he slipped into his hero suit, and made a grand escape out the window. It didn’t take long for him to return, just as everyone cheered over Spiderman, once again, saving the day.

Thankfully you had Lando standing outside, stalling for more time while Oscar got back into his suit. You gave him one last kiss for good luck and he rushed off.

“You better win!” You called after him.

And he did.

The night was filled with orange confetti and champagne showers for the team with yet another 1-2. When he found you and pulled you into his arms, he was grinning. “Yet another win for Spiderman,” He whispered between the two of you. The cameras were pointed, but you had raised your palm to cover your mouths.

“I don’t get how you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Stop mid race to kick ass, and then get back in the car like it’s nothing.”

“Just wanna make my girl proud.” You rolled your eyes as he sealed the deal with a dramatic kiss on the lips.

OSCAR WAS DEDICATED TO BEING YOUR BOYFRIEND TONIGHT. He was determined to make this a crime-free, Spiderman-free, date. He had his phone off to where only Lando, his partner in crime, could get through to him, so his attention was entirely on you.

It was a breakfast date too, which meant the rates of crime at that time were generally low. You guys both sat down at the quaint parlor, enjoying the ambience. Nobody recognized him, either. Life was great.

“Alright, place your bets. How many pancakes can you finish until you’re called out?” You asked as you speared a cut off piece of one of your own pancakes with a fork, scooping the syrupy bite into your mouth.

“Hey, what makes you think I’ll be called out at all?”

“Oscar, be serious. Our dates are cursed! You’re always called out.”

“I think I’ll make it to the bottom this time. I’ll bet you a whole stack of ‘em.” You held out your hand, happy to take up that bet.

And then immediately after his phone started buzzing.

“No way.” You giggled into your palm.

“No.” He shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No. If I ignore it, it’s not there.”

“Oscar.”

“Y/N…” He frowned, almost like a pout.

“Go. It’s alright, I promise.” He huffed, pushing his chair back and standing up.

“Are you sure?”

“The city needs you, dork. Hurry up!” He rushed off to the bathroom to change, giving you one last look over the shoulder before he disappeared.

You grabbed his plate. “Jokes on him. I’m eating his pancakes…” He did owe you a whole stack, after all.

You didn’t mind. Downside of dating Spiderman was only getting halfway through your dates, but he made up for it in other ways!

[sturniololuvz]

HIII!!! can you write a fic where Chris is mad at Matt for being to quiet during all of the car videos and think he should speak more so Chris and Matt get into a fight, while they are screaming and yelling at eachother there little sister (4-5) gets scared of them both, and only really goes to nick for a while until Matt and Chris both apologize to eachother and there little sister. Thank you!!! Loveee you fics btw!😍😍🙌🏼🙌🏼

Thank uuu

⸻

“Too Much”

They didn’t fight often. Not like this.

Sure, bickering came with being brothers, especially when you filmed your lives together for the internet — but this? This was different.

Chris slammed the apartment door behind him, pacing back and forth in the living room. “You barely said anything in that video, Matt.”

Matt followed in behind, jaw tight. “I didn’t feel like talking.”

“That’s the whole point of talking videos, Matt!”

“I didn’t ask to be put on display every time we get in a car!”

Their voices rose fast, sharp and hot and angry. Nick tried to stay out of it at first, standing off to the side, biting his lip.

And down the hallway — small and wide-eyed in the doorway to her bedroom — stood their four-year-old sister.

She hadn’t heard them scream like that before.

She flinched when Chris yelled. Jumped when Matt barked something back. And when Chris slammed a hand against the counter, she turned on her heel and ran.

Straight past them. Straight into Nick’s arms.

“Woah—hey, hey, it’s okay,” Nick murmured, crouching down as she curled into his chest, crying. “I got you, sweetheart. You’re safe, I promise.”

Chris blinked. “What—?”

“She heard you,” Nick said flatly. He didn’t raise his voice, but the disappointment was loud enough. “Both of you.”

Matt’s face fell. “I didn’t mean—”

“She’s four,” Nick snapped. “She doesn’t know that.”

Chris stared at the hallway where she had come from. Guilt started sinking like lead in his chest.

She didn’t come near either of them the rest of the night.

No bedtime kiss for Chris. No story from Matt. Just Nick, curling up on her bed, letting her fall asleep against his shoulder while they whispered apologies she was too little to understand.

⸻

The next morning was quieter.

Chris poured cereal. Matt stood beside him with dark circles under his eyes.

“You mad at me?” Matt asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Chris didn’t answer right away. Just stared into the bowl.

“No,” he said finally. “I just… I don’t want us to be mad in front of her. She got scared.”

Matt nodded. “I know. I feel sick about it.”

Chris sighed. “I don’t care if you talk or not. I just care if you’re okay.”

“I am now,” Matt muttered. “We good?”

Chris looked up at him — really looked — and then pulled him into a quick, brotherly hug.

“Yeah. We’re good.”

⸻

Later that afternoon, they both walked into their sister’s room, one behind the other.

She was playing on the floor, stuffed animals in a circle.

Chris knelt first. “Hey, bug.”

She looked up, wary.

“I’m sorry,” Chris said gently. “For yelling. It wasn’t your fault.”

Matt knelt beside him. “I’m sorry too. I was mad, but I shouldn’t have yelled in front of you. That was wrong.”

She was quiet for a second.

Then she handed each of them a stuffed animal.

“You have to say sorry to Teddy too,” she mumbled.

They did.

And by bedtime, she let both of them tuck her in again — Chris on one side, Matt on the other, while Nick snapped a photo from the doorway and muttered something about “softies.”

It was quiet again.

But this time, in the best way.

⸻

[bleue-flora]

Something that I see a lot is the reasoning that Dream’s motive is unity. That staged finale was about uniting the server against him to bring them together even if he couldn’t be apart of that. And honestly I’m just not sure that’s the case. For starters, in the big moments when he talks about his reasoning he doesn’t mention unity he mentions together, he mentions family, he mentions team.

[from early days]

“We just wanted to have a good, safe, productive team. And when one person has a tyranny over everybody else—that keeps killing them, then you can’t have a team.” [clip]

“Listen, from now on we’re going have a civilization, okay? That lives in harmony and… and there’s no ruler. Not even me—not even anybody.” [clip]

[Punz and Dream planning]

“Always, the goal has just been that—it’s all one united server that everybody follows the same rules, there’s no countries, there’s no—you know, any of this. It’s just… One giant like—family, right?” [clip]

[prison]

“I just wanted to… I just wanted to bring the server together. Have it be a happy family, you know?” [clip]

[finale]

“Once we know everything, we—we’re able to live and everyone can be invincible and everyone can live together and be in harmony and—and not have to worry about death or pain or anything, then it’ll be worth it. The ends justify the means.” [clip]

“I want everyone to able to live and be happy and together… and you’ve—you’ve ruined that—you’ve ruined that yourself. You’re the one who separates everyone!” [clip]

And I know for some people unity and together might seem synonymous, but in this context I don’t think they are. I think it’s important to realize that Dream wanted people to not be divided, he wanted them to be a happy family, but families aren’t always united. They don’t always agree, they aren’t always peaceful, they don’t always have the same goals or agenda or beliefs, but a close family always makes up in the end and when all is said and done, generally gets along and is there for each other.

Additionally, the way I’ve always understood it was that Dream didn’t want peace, he wanted people to do the right thing [clip] and he wanted people to be happy which means that conflicts where people are getting upset opposes that. Dead pets, items not being returned, houses being burnt, people being insulted, and offenders refusing to simply apologize [clip] that tends to cause a conflict without resolution that leaves a lasting divide and unhappiness, which goes against Dream’s goal. But I don’t think he was against violence or wars as a whole, after all those happen at the beginning, when things were still simple. The point was that people stayed as a whole happy or content and as long as no one got too upset it was fine.

To keep people happy and safe, Dream also needed to prevent any one person from holding the power, because they would abuse it and use it against people, which we see happen over and over again. This is one of the reasons why he had a problem with Wilbur’s self appointed presidency, it’s why he kills George early on and takes his stuff when he became op before everyone else, it is why he kills Tubbo’s villagers. He didn’t want anyone to be too overpowered and then use that power to harm others. Dream considered himself the mediator and one to balance out the sides, the one to make sure people had their stuff back when all was said and done, the one to help people get revenge for their dead pet. Yes, he broke the very rules he made, which people love to point out makes him a hypocrite and therefore his gripe with Tommy has no footing, but notice what he says in the finale:

“You break all the rules. Tommy, there wasn’t even that many rules. They were simple things: respect others, don’t destroy things. You broke everything—every rule.” [clip]

“Respect others,” that’s the first thing he mentions, because that’s the most important. That’s the one that Tommy broke that bothered Dream the most. It wasn’t really about the stealing or the killing or griefing, after all George and Sapnap did that too. No, it was the lack of respect he had for the people he hurt that bothered Dream the most. It was that lack of respect which led people to be unhappy even when the war was over and sustaining that divide even after the war, which goes against the civilization Dream strived for.

It’s not about unity, it’s about the opposite of exclusion. It’s about Sapnap and Punz who were both friends with clingy duo, but not able to join L’manberg because they are American. It was the divide and separation. Like Ranboo who because of nations and politics struggled to be friends with both Techno and L’manberg.

Dream didn’t want people to be truly united in a cause nor did he want true peace - the absence of conflict and chaos. because you only get those by enforcing them through dictatorship and oppression when you force everyone to have the same opinion and obey. But Dream didn’t want to be a tyrant, that’s one of the reasons why he kept handing the power to a king. He wanted everyone to live in harmony by doing the right thing themselves and he thought that if he could keep the server from splitting that they would.

So then, the reason I think he put himself in prison and planned staged finale, wasn’t about uniting the server even if that’s against himself, but because it was the only way he could see a path to be allowed to be accepted back into society. That if he served his time in prison maybe they would see him as a person again and think he got better and let him out, which I’ve talked more about [here] and [here].

“Maybe—maybe I’ll be better and then you’ll let me out.” [clip]

He wanted a family. As Tommy points out in the finale: he just wanted to have friends. He didn’t want to be alone. So it doesn’t make sense for his goal to be a self sacrificial move to unite everyone against him for the sake of unity, he wanted to bring people together into a happy society again, where they spend the afternoon fishing and playing hide and seek, not wars and executions and politics. But he wanted to be apart of that society and family too, because he didn’t want to be alone. Honestly, he probably wanted to be friends with everyone, but the division was preventing that, the propaganda was preventing that, and so prison became the only option he could see to undo that. To allow him back into the family that he was trying to keep together. That’s what staged finale was about - protection for him and Punz and the opportunity of reconciliation [post]. If he really just wanted unity then he would’ve have been fairly pleased with Doomsday, where most everyone sided against his side. If he wanted the whole server against him, then staged finale was an abysmal success, as he points out to Sam plenty of people like Techno weren’t involved. But of course, it was never about unity because that doesn’t make sense, it was about friends, and family, bringing people together so that no one was alone and excluded, forming a simple happy community again…

[angelshizuka]

Seeing someone on YouTube refer to Stolas as “Bojack Horseman if his habit of playing the victim was validated by the narrative”

First of all, Bojack Horseman is a six-season long COMPLETED series that everyone looks at fondly, one because it is a great show, but two because we SEE where everything was leading to because the show is DONE and has been done for YEARS.

Helluva Boss is STILL ONGOING, and we are 20 episodes into a 50-episode-long story, barely over a THIRD of the way done.

But also the claim that the show “validates his victim mentality” it literally DOESN’T???

I could see this argument being a thing when Apology Tour was still the latest episode to have come out, but now that the season is done, the narrative has literally forced Stolas into a situation where he has to address the problems he has put off and address the ways he has fucked up with the people he loves.

He took a gamble at freedom, he fucked up along the way, and his recklessness cost him EVERYTHING. If the narrative validated his “victim mentality” he wouldn’t be estranged from his daughter right now, who called him out on how badly he hurt her.

Is it because the show still wants us to feel bad for him, because not to pull a “back in my day” like a boomer, but I thought people used to understand that a show can ask you to feel bad for someone and STILL hold them accountable for their actions?

Us feeling bad for Stolas doesn’t mean we don’t get how he fucked up. Blitz comforting Stolas at the end of Sinsmas doesn’t mean he thinks Stolas handled things correctly.

Is it because Stolas spent Sinsmas “whining” and not doing anything about it? Because first of all, the guy is off his meds, he’d be homeless if it weren’t for Blitz, he has no money, his daughter hates him, and his abusers got everything they wanted from him.

He is at the lowest he has ever been, so YEAH he’s gonna whine about it!

Second of all, this is what we call a character flaw. Stolas has grown up on a silver spoon never having to worry about basic necessities because it was all handed to him. So to go from that to living in a cramped one-bedroom apartment where the bedroom is already occupied is probably gonna make him a little bratty, and Blitz gently but firmly shuts that down: “You know what’ll fixed that privileged little attitude of yours? Paperwork!”

Third of all, to reiterate my first point, the show is STILL ONGOING! Stolas is in the MIDDLE of his character arc, he’s not gonna snap his fingers and become a better person just like THAT, and S3 is going to begin with him in a place where he needs to rebuild his life and learn from his mistakes.

I swear to fuck these people would never have survived ATLA with Zuko’s redemption arc.

I've never seen Bojack Horseman, so I can't comment on that, but everything else you said is definitely correct.

These "critics" have made up their mind on Stolas long ago, making up whatever arguments they feel justify their hatred for him, and even now that the narrative has full blown debunked their arguments, they're too stubborn to let them go.

These people need to understand they don't have to make themselves look media illiterate just to hate a character, sometimes you just don't vibe with them and that's okay. I have plently of HH/HB characters I find overrated, but just don't bother with, because people are allowed to have fun with them.

But yeah, it's like saying Zuko is a godawful character when we were only 1 season in, or just got to the s2 finale. I get being worried about a character not being written well, because I definitely have my fair share of getting emotionally invested in a character with so much potential, only for the conclusion to be literal ass. But when a show has a clear finish line in sight that we're clearly still building up to, you need to acknowledge your arguments on the matter can change when new information/developments are presented.

(The main reason I said "a clear finish line" is because one of the reasons I salt about Miraculous so much is because it just keeps going and going and going and going, so there's never a satisfying conclusion, because "there's always more to come".)

Speaking of, just imagining ATLA airing in modern day and the discourse that would've come with it... I mean, it already happened when it came to the US Netflix some years ago. I'm so happy I just peacefully watched it as it aired on Dutch TV and even if there was online discourse going on, I wasn't aware of it.

[non-un-topo]

Axis | bluetigerlilies

Fandom: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)

Rating: M

Words: 29,671

Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova & Quynh | Noriko

Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, POV Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Team as Family, Flashbacks, Memories, Tense Switching, it's deliberate don't worry, Post-iron maiden, Animal Death, Grief/Mourning, Liminal Space, Mythology References, Mild Sexual Content, Angst, Catharsis, Horror, Nicky + horror. So nice I did it thrice., Pathetic fallacy

Summary:

Andromache whispers into the silence, “You don’t remember, do you?” Nicolò is still looking at Yusuf as his mind begins to take him back. It’s the feelings first. The shift in gravity, then the all-encompassing bitter cold. No deck beneath his feet, no tether to hold. A great nothingness for eternity. He flexes his toes against the wood floor. Solid, still, stagnant. “No,” he says.

--

Decades into their relentless search for Quỳnh and shortly following a disastrous event that threatened their numbers, Andromache, Nicolò, and Yusuf rest in Iceland where the seasons seem to be moving backwards and forwards at once.

[inseobts]

Busted! (Secret Relationship)

what if the two of you are in a secret relantionship and suddenly everyone start to realize something is going on?

characters: zoro, sanji, law, koby, ace

(luffy, sabo, kid, shanks, bartolomeo)

words count: around 0.8k - 1.3k each

masterlist || ao3 || ko-fi

── .✦ Zoro:

The Thousand Sunny is quiet most days, but today feels especially peaceful. The crew’s scattered across the deck sunbathing, napping, playing cards, and you? You’re on a mission.

Zoro’s disappeared again.

“Where did he go this time?” you mutter, padding softly down the hallway. You’ve checked the deck, the crow’s nest, even behind the kitchen. Nothing. Then you think... of course! The training room.

Sure enough, you step inside and spot him, dead asleep on the floor, his swords lying beside him like loyal dogs. He looks peaceful, his breathing deep and even. You smile. He really can sleep anywhere.

You don’t mean to sit down next to him, but somehow, you do.

Just for a minute.

Just long enough to rest your head against his shoulder.

Next thing you know, it’s dark. The room’s dipped in shadow, the ship creaking gently. You jolt upright, a little dazed.

“Zoro—sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

But he just grunts, shifting a little. His shoulder doesn’t move from under your cheek.

It becomes a pattern after that.

You find him again a few days later, this time slumped in a corner of the dining room. You lie down nearby. Sleep drags you under before you can think twice. When you wake, your head is in his lap.

“You’re fine” he murmurs, when you apologize again. Like it’s no big deal. Like he’s used to you being there.

And you start to think… maybe he is.

The naps become frequent. Easy. Comfortable. You stop trying to come up with excuses. You sit beside him on the deck while the others chatter. You lean against him while he sharpens his swords. He never pulls away.

One night, you find him leaning against the wall of the storage room, eyes half-lidded, arms crossed. The moment you walk in, he straightens, just barely, but enough for you to know he was waiting.

He pulls you in without a word. A kiss. Slow, familiar. His hands are warm on your back.

“I missed you” you whisper against his collarbone.

Zoro exhales through his nose “You saw me four hours ago.”

“Still.”

He doesn’t argue. Just leans his forehead against yours.

It’s sweet. Undisturbed. Until you hear footsteps and both of you freeze.

“Shhhit” you whisper, slipping away as quiet as you can.

Neither of you sees Chopper peeking from behind a barrel.

The next day, the crew is watching. Not subtly.

You notice Nami watching you with a knowing smirk. Robin sips her tea, but there’s amusement in her gaze. Sanji is glaring daggers at Zoro (okay, that’s normal), but Usopp is squinting at you both like he’s trying to solve a puzzle.

You clear your throat “What?”

Usopp narrows his eyes further “You and Zoro have been acting weird.”

Your heart nearly stops.

You glance at Zoro, who doesn’t even flinch as he takes another bite of his rice “What the hell are you talking about?”

“That you two are obviously acting weird lately...” Nami finally says.

Zoro doesn’t even blink “You’re imagining things.”

“You’re eating your vegetables...” she points out.

Zoro shrugs “Coincidence.”

“You showed up early to dinner” Usopp adds, suspicious.

“Must’ve been a fluke.”

Brook, not missing a beat, says, “I saw you napping with her head on your lap again. Yohohoho~”

You wish you could melt into your chair. But Zoro? Calm as ever.

“She was tired,” he says flatly “What’s the problem?”

Luffy gasps dramatically “You’re dating!!”

Zoro sighs “We were resting.”

You stare at your plate, but a warm touch to your hand under the table grounds you.

Zoro, looking at you like the whole world could wait.

Days pass. You try to be extra careful. Less glances. Less sneaky meetings. Less…everything.

But it doesn’t matter.

Because one night, the crew catches you.

It happens so fast. One moment, you’re on watch duty, and the next, Zoro is there, dragging you into a kiss. It’s heated, his hands gripping your waist, your fingers tangled in his hair, completely lost in each other.

Then “AH-HA!!”

You jolt apart.

Usopp is pointing at you both, eyes wide with betrayal “I knew it!!”

The entire crew is gathered behind him, staring.

Luffy tilts his head “Wait, were we not supposed to know?”

Sanji is fuming “Why him?! You could do so much better, Y/N-chan!”

Robin chuckles “It was quite obvious, honestly.”

Chopper bounces excitedly “I saw them sneaking around weeks ago!”

You cover your face in embarrassment “Oh my god, it was you!”

Zoro groans, rubbing the back of his neck “Tch. Should’ve known you idiots would figure it out. You never mind your own business.”

Luffy grins “Well, at least you don’t have to sneak around anymore!”

Zoro pauses, then shrugs “Guess that’s true.” He turns to you, smirking “Means I can kiss you whenever I want now.”

Your face burns “Zoro!!”

The crew erupts in laughter (except for Sanji, he cries louder).

Secret’s out.

Now you nap by his side without hiding. You lean against him on long afternoons. You sit close at meals. Luffy teases you both constantly. Sanji mutters curses under his breath. But it’s fine.

It’s more than fine. It’s peaceful.

That night, after dinner, you find yourself heading below deck. The ship rocks gently with the sea, moonlight shining through the portholes.

You already know where you’ll find him.

He’s sitting in the training room, back against the wall, swords neatly stacked beside him. When you walk in, he glances up, but he doesn’t say anything.

You sit beside him, stretching your legs out in front of you.

“I thought I might find you here” you say.

Zoro grunts, not disagreeing.

Silence settles in. Comfortable. You shift slightly, laying your head in his lap. He doesn’t move, just lets his fingers find their way into your hair, slow and soothing.

It’s a simple thing. The kind of closeness that doesn’t ask for anything in return.

His hand runs gently over your scalp. You feel your eyes drifting shut again.

“I like this” Zoro says, voice low, almost a rumble.

You blink sleepily, your cheek still pressed to his thigh “Hm?”

“You. Sleeping like this.” He pauses “On my lap.”

Your heart flutters at the quiet honesty. You glance up at him, but he’s not looking down, he’s staring straight ahead, the barest hint of pink on his cheeks.

“I like it too” you murmur.

Zoro’s thumb brushes just behind your ear, then down the back of your neck, repeating the motion. A steady rhythm. Grounding. Careful.

His fingers slip into your hair again, and he continues tracing lazy circles on your scalp. His other hand rests lightly on your arm, as if to say, I’ve got you.

You drift off to the sound of his breathing, calm and slow.

The next morning, sunlight filters through the windows.

You wake slowly, still curled up in Zoro’s lap. His fingers are tangled gently in your hair, and his thumb brushes your temple in slow, steady passes.

You tilt your head, eyes meeting his.

“How long have you been awake?” you whisper.

Zoro smirks, eyes warm “Long enough.”

You stretch, reluctant to move.

“I’m comfortable” you mumble.

He doesn’t stop touching your hair “Good.”

“Zoro?”

“Hm?”

“I think I’m getting used to this.”

He finally looks down at you, something quiet in his expression, softness, maybe. Peace.

“Yeah,” he says “Me too.”

And you smile, because in this floating world full of chaos, monsters, and adventure… it’s the quietest moments like this that feel the most real.

── .✦ Sanji:

Sanji is always everywhere. In the kitchen. On the deck. Serving drinks. Flirting with Nami and Robin. Spinning around like the lovestruck idiot he is.

Which is exactly why no one suspects a damn thing.

No one notices how his hand brushes against yours just a little longer when he passes you a plate. No one questions why he always makes extra of your favorite dish. And no one, not even Usopp, the self-proclaimed detective, realizes that when Sanji disappears from the kitchen at night, it’s to be with you.

Like right now.

It’s past midnight, and the kitchen is dimly lit. The scent of fresh tea and something sweet lingers in the air as you lean against the counter, watching Sanji work. His sleeves are rolled up, his vest discarded, and the soft glow of the lantern makes his golden hair look even more unruly.

“You’re spoiling me” you murmur as he places a small plate in front of you a delicate pastry, still warm.

Sanji grins, wiping his hands on a towel “Of course, mon amour. What kind of man would I be if I didn’t?”

You take a bite, humming in satisfaction “Mmm. Amazing.”

His eyes soften as he leans in, resting his palms on the counter on either side of you “I can think of something even sweeter.”

Before you can respond, he captures your lips in a slow, lingering kiss. You melt into him, gripping the fabric of his shirt as his fingers gently tilt your chin up. His lips taste like mint and a hint of the dessert he just made, and you lose yourself in the warmth of him.

Then a loud BANG from outside the door.

Both of you freeze.

Sanji pulls back, glancing at the entrance “Shit—”

You practically shove him away, wiping your lips as the door swings open.

“Oi, I swear, I'm not here to see your ugly face, I need—”

Zoro stops mid-sentence, looking between the two of you. His eyes narrow.

Your heart stops.

Sanji, ever the smooth talker, immediately turns to glare at him “Moss-head, do you have no manners? Barging into my kitchen?”

Zoro scowls “Tch. Like I wanna be here. Luffy’s whining about meat, and I—” His gaze shifts back to you. Suspicious.

You force a casual smile “Uh… late-night snack?”

Zoro doesn’t look convinced. His eyes flick between the two of you once more before he grunts “Whatever. Just bring food before Luffy eats Chopper.”

He turns and leaves.

You don’t breathe until the door clicks shut. Then you glare at Sanji “We almost got caught.”

Sanji just smirks, brushing his fingers over your wrist “But we didn’t.”

You always try to act normal. You really do. But Sanji makes it so damn difficult.

He’s always sneaking glances at you across the table. Always brushing against you when he walks by. Always bringing you your favorite snacks, acting like it’s nothing.

And apparently, the crew is starting to catch on.

“You guys ever notice that Sanji doesn’t flirt with Y/N as much as he does with Nami and Robin?” Usopp suddenly asks one day.

Your spoon nearly slips from your hand.

Franky strokes his chin “Huh. Now that you mention it…”

Brook chuckles “Ohhh, that is unusual.”

Luffy, mouth full, tilts his head “But Sanji flirts with everyone.”

Zoro scoffs “Yeah. Except Y/N.”

Your stomach drops.

Sanji, who had been stirring a pot at the stove, doesn’t even flinch “I’m just being a gentleman.”

Nami raises an eyebrow “Are you, though?”

Sanji turns, flashing his usual charming smile “Of course, my dear! Why would I treat Y/N-chan any different?”

You force a nervous laugh “Right! That would be weird, huh?”

They don’t look convinced.

Robin simply sips her tea, giving you both a knowing look.

In the end, it’s Luffy who ruins everything.

One day you and Sanji are in the storage room, tucked away between crates of supplies, wrapped up in each other. His hands are in your hair, his lips teasing against yours, and the rest of the world doesn’t exist... at least until the door slams open.

“SANJI, ARE YOU IN HE—oh.”

Luffy stops. Blinks. Tilts his head.

You and Sanji are frozen in place, practically tangled together.

Luffy’s face slowly lights up “OOOOHHHH!!!”

You scramble back “L-Luffy, it’s not what it looks like—”

“YOU GUYS WERE KISSING!!”

Sanji sighs, rubbing his temples “Goddammit.”

Before you can even try to shut him up, Luffy sprints out of the room.

You stare at the door in horror “Oh no.”

“OH YES” Sanji groans, already dreading what’s about to happen.

“GUYS!!” Luffy yells at the top of his lungs “SANJI AND Y/N ARE KISSING!!”

A beat of silence. Then an explosion of multiple “WHAT?!”

Usopp “I knew something was up!!”

Franky “That’s SUPER unexpected!”

Brook “OHOHO, young love~!”

Chopper “How long has this been going on?!”

Nami “You guys really thought you were being secretive?”

Robin chuckles knowingly “Adorable.”

Zoro grinning smugly “Called it.”

Sanji groans, burying his face in his hands “Kill me now.”

You sigh, crossing your arms “Well. Secret’s out.”

Sanji straightens, huffing dramatically before flashing you a smirk “At least now I don’t have to hold back anymore, mon amour~”

He dips you backward, kissing you full on the mouth right in front of the crew.

Cue, another round of screaming.

── .✦ Law:

Dinner on the Polar Tang is always loud. Jokes, clinks of silverware, and Bepo’s laugh echo off the metal walls.

You sit between Shachi and Penguin, pretending to listen to their story about a giant sea bass they swear was “this big”, but your eyes keep drifting across the table to Law.

Your secret boyfriend. Your captain. The man who never smiles in public, but melts when you’re alone.

No one knows. Not even Bepo. You’ve kept it quiet for months. Private looks, quick touches in dark halls, and soft kisses in his room late at night.

Today, before dinner, you stopped by his quarters. Things got… heated.

“Hold still” you say, laughing as you straddle his lap, pressing kiss after kiss on his jaw, his cheek, his neck.

“You’re gonna leave marks” Law murmurs, but his hands stay firm on your hips.

“Good,” you whisper against his throat, lips painted with your favourite lipstick “Let everyone wonder who’s bold enough to kiss the Surgeon of Death.”

He smirks, but you clean him up after. Or so you think.

Now, mid-dinner, you notice it.

Right on the collar of his white shirt, just above the neck, there's a soft red smudge. Lipstick. Your lipstick.

Your eyes widen.

Shachi nudges you “Hey, is that… is there something on Captain’s shirt?”

Penguin leans forward “Yo, Captain. You spill something?”

Law blinks. Looks down “What?”

Bepo tilts his head “No, that looks like lipstick.”

Silence falls over the table. Everyone stares.

You try to act innocent, chewing your food and glancing around like you’re just as confused.

“Lipstick?” you say, blinking “Who around here even wears lipstick?”

They all look at Ikkaku.

She doesn’t even look up from her bowl “Not me,” she mutters “That's not even my color.”

Penguin raises an eyebrow “So… that means…” He turns his head slowly toward you “You’re the only one who does.”

Shachi points between you and Law “Wait… Are you two…?”

Law doesn’t say a word. He just sips his tea like nothing’s happened.

You smile, wide and unapologetic “Guess I missed a spot.”

Silence.

Then chaos.

“WHAT?!” Shachi practically jumps over the table “YOU AND THE CAPTAIN?!”

“How long?!” Penguin shouts, eyes wide “Since when?! HOW DID WE NOT NOTICE?!”

Bepo stands up so fast he knocks over his stool “You’re dating the captain?!”

You raise an eyebrow “You guys okay? You look like you’re gonna pass out.”

“Don’t play innocent!” Penguin waves his spoon “You’ve been sneaking around with him! That’s our captain!”

Shachi gasps dramatically “All those times you disappeared after dinner… And that one time you came back with messy hair! I thought it was just wind!”

“Eheh, I am the wind” you say with a smirk.

Law sighs “You’re all loud.”

Bepo stares “So it’s true? You and Y/N?”

Law glances at you, then shrugs “Yeah.”

Another wave of panic.

“THE WAY HE SAID THAT!” Penguin screams.

“SO CALM—SO COOL—WHAT THE HELL!” Shachi is holding his head like it might explode.

Ikkaku finally looks up, deadpan “You’re all idiots.”

You lean into Law’s side, resting your head on his shoulder.

“Told you they’d freak.”

“Mm,” Law mutters “Still worth it.”

Bepo sniffles “I feel so betrayed… I thought we were a family.”

“We are,” you say “Just… a family with a very attractive captain who’s taken.”

“STOP,” Shachi yells “I CAN’T UNSEE IT.”

Law smirks just a little. And you can’t help it, you kiss his cheek in front of everyone, just to drive them a little more insane.

It’s been two days since The Lipstick Incident.

Two days of nonstop teasing.

“Morning, Y/N.”

“Or should we say Mrs. Surgeon of Death?”

You roll your eyes as Shachi and Penguin trail behind you like annoying seagulls.

“Captain! Can Y/N still go on missions or is she on girlfriend duty today?”

“Should we start knocking before entering the medbay now?”

Law mostly ignores them. Mostly. Except that time he dead-eyed Penguin and said, “Keep talking and I’ll switch your arms.”

The jokes died down for a few hours after that. But Bepo has become the most dramatic.

“I still can’t believe I found out at dinner like that,” he says, curled in a blanket like he’s mourning “I needed time to process.”

You plop down next to him on the couch “We didn’t mean to keep it from you. It was just… easier that way.”

He looks at you “Are you happy with him?”

You pause, then smile “Yeah. He makes me feel safe. And seen. Even if he doesn’t say much.”

Behind you, Law’s voice chimes in “I say plenty.”

You turn, surprised “You were eavesdropping?”

“It’s my ship.”

He walks over, drops a kiss on your forehead right in front of everyone. You expect chaos again, but the room is quiet.

Then Bepo grins “Okay. I approve.”

Shachi sighs “Fine. But if we ever hear weird noises from the engine room again—”

“—I will personally sedate you” Law cuts in.

The crew bursts into laughter.

Penguin raises his cup “To our captain and his secret weapon—Y/N!”

Everyone cheers. Even Ikkaku raises an eyebrow and gives you a subtle nod.

You look up at Law. He doesn’t smile much. But you see softness around the eyes, just for you.

Secret’s out. And honestly? It feels kind of nice.

── .✦ Koby:

The marine base is quiet at night, almost peaceful. You walk along the edge of the courtyard, your boots barely making a sound on the stone floor. The moon is high, casting soft light over the base. You pause near the training field and look around. No one’s there.

Good.

“Koby?” you whisper, stepping behind a storage shed.

A soft rustle comes from the shadows. Then he steps out. His hair is a little messy, his uniform jacket open.

“You’re late” he says, but he smiles.

You roll your eyes “Only by five minutes.”

Koby glances around. He takes your hand and pulls you closer into the shadow of the wall. His hand is warm. You lean into him, your heartbeat fast.

“If anyone sees us…” he says, his voice low.

“No one will,” you say quickly “They never do.”

He chuckles “We’re getting good at this.”

“You mean I’m getting good at it,” you tease “You still get nervous when someone says my name.”

“That’s because Garp keeps watching me like he knows something” Koby says, eyes wide.

You laugh “Maybe he does.”

Koby groans “Don’t say that.”

You lean up and kiss his cheek “Relax. We’re always careful.”

He smiles at you, that soft look he only gives when it’s just the two of you “I missed you.”

“I saw you this morning.”

“That doesn’t count. You were in uniform. You called me Sir.”

You smirk “Would you prefer Captain Sweetheart?”

Koby covers his face, laughing quietly “Please don’t.”

The sound of footsteps suddenly cuts the moment short.

You both freeze.

“Did you hear that?” you whisper.

Koby nods, already pulling away. You both hide behind the shed just as two lower-ranked marines walk by, talking about some drill tomorrow. They don’t see you.

Your heart pounds. When the footsteps fade, you let out a breath.

Koby looks at you, serious now “We can’t keep doing this forever.”

You know what he means. But you don’t want to think about it. Not tonight.

“Let’s just have this,” you say “Right now.”

He nods slowly, fingers brushing against yours again “Right now.”

Neither of you say the words out loud, but they’re there, floating in the silence.

This is dangerous but it’s totally worth it.

The sky looks angry today.

Wind whips through the courtyard, and the clouds hang low like they’re ready to fight someone. Fitting, considering your brain’s in a brawl with itself after what Helmeppo said the day before.

"Koby, huh?"

You can’t stop hearing it. His smirk. That I-know-something-you-don’t-want-me-to-know tone.

You march past the barracks, straight toward the supply shed, your usual spot. You pace in tight circles. The door creaks. Koby walks in, drenched from the rain already starting.

“I heard Helmeppo” he says.

You nod “I didn’t tell him anything.”

“I know. But he knows. He’s probably telling his pillow right now.”

You snort, even though your chest feels tight.

“What do we do?” you ask.

Koby looks out the cracked window “I don't think anyone would even care about what Helmeppo says, but I’ve been thinking about it all day.”

You wait.

“…What if we stop hiding?”

You blink “Just like that?”

He shrugs “We tell the truth. If we get in trouble, we get in trouble. At least it’s not lying anymore.”

You walk up to him, water dripping from the edge of the window onto your boots “You’re serious?”

He nods “You’re worth the risk.”

Before you can answer—BOOM! The door BURSTS open like it owes someone money.

There stands Vice Admiral Monkey D. Garp, holding a giant sack of snacks.

“I KNEW IT!” he bellows, pointing a meat bun at both of you like it’s a pistol “I KNEW YOU TWO WERE SWAPPING LOVE NOTES INSTEAD OF LOGBOOKS!”

Your soul nearly leaves your body. Koby jumps like he just got hit by lightning.

Garp stomps inside, water puddling under his boots “You think I’m old and blind?! I see everything! The glances! The disappearing acts! The suspiciously timed bathroom breaks!”

You and Koby look at each other, stunned.

“I—uh—we weren’t—” you stammer.

Garp holds up a finger “Don’t lie! I’ve seen more romance in your sneaky hallway nods than in a whole damn soap opera!”

Koby finally finds his voice “Vice Admiral Garp, we—”

Garp grabs two rice balls from his bag and tosses them at your heads.

“About time! I was betting with Sengoku you two would crack by this month!” He slaps Koby on the back so hard he almost falls over “Make it work, kiddo. Or I’ll make you regret everything.”

He stomps back into the storm, yelling at the sky.

“I WANT A WEDDING INVITE WHEN THIS BLOOMS INTO MARINE-SANCTIONED LOVE!”

Then he’s gone.

The silence is unreal.

“…Did he just bless our relationship and threaten us at the same time?” you ask.

Koby looks dazed “I think he also gave us lunch.”

You both stare at the rice balls on the ground.

You reach for one “So… no more hiding?”

Koby grins “No more hiding.”

You nod “Good. But that wasn’t romantic. That was a jump scare.”

By the next morning, everyone knows.

You’re not sure how.

Maybe it was Garp yelling across the courtyard. Maybe it was the rice ball slap. Maybe it was the way Koby smiled at you in front of a full squad meeting like it was no big deal. But now, it’s official.

You’re walking through the halls and two marines actually wink at you.

One gives you a thumbs-up. Another whispers, “Cute couple” like this is high school.

And then there’s Helmeppo, waiting by the stairs like he’s been practicing his lines all night.

“Well, well, well,” he drawls “Look who finally stopped sneaking off like a pair of guilty raccoons.”

You roll your eyes “Don’t you have training or something?”

“Oh, I do. But this is more fun,” he says, grinning “You two really had me fooled. All those ‘Yes, sir’s and ‘Permission to speak freely’s. Cute. Very professional. Very fake.”

“I will tape your mouth shut” you say calmly.

“Spicy,” Helmeppo whistles “No wonder Koby’s in love.”

You expect Koby to stammer. To panic. To turn bright red and pretend none of this is happening.

Instead, he wraps his arm around your waist and says “Yeah. I am.”

What.

You turn to him “Who are you and what did you do with the shy marine I was dating in secret?”

He grins, a little pink in the cheeks, but steady “I’m done hiding. I like holding your hand. I like saying it.”

Helmeppo looks personally attacked “You’re gonna make me throw up.”

Koby shrugs “Go drink some water.”

You’re still trying to recover from the whiplash when Koby turns to you again, softer this time. No audience, no drama, just him.

“I missed being close to you,” he says “Even just walking next to you without pretending it means nothing. I hated pretending.”

Your heart tugs.

“I know,” you say “I did too.”

He leans in, forehead resting lightly against yours “Now I can do this.”

He kisses you. Just a short, sweet kiss. Right there in the hallway.

Someone behind you gasps. Someone else claps. It’s probably Garp. Or Helmeppo. Or both.

You laugh into Koby’s shoulder “We’re never gonna hear the end of this.”

“Good,” he says “Let them talk.”

── .✦ Ace:

It starts small.

Ace, lover of chaos and borderline inedible food, begins pushing onions off his plate.

At first, nobody says anything. Maybe he just wasn't in the mood. Maybe he’s just not feeling it today.

Then it happens again.

And again.

.........And again.

By the fourth time, Thatch is watching him like he’s trying to solve a murder.

“You good, man?”

Ace blinks, mid-push “Huh?”

“You keep banishing onions like they stole your ship or something.”

Ace shrugs “They just taste weird lately.”

Thatch narrows his eyes “You used to eat them raw.”

“Tastes change.”

“You once drank onion juice.”

“I was bored.”

“You said it ‘cleared the sinuses.’”

Ace looks up at him with a done expression “…And it did.”

Thatch is unconvinced. He stares at the sad pile of abandoned onions like they hold answers.

A few days later, Marco walks across the deck and almost trips over you.

You’re napping.

Not unusual. But you’re napping exactly like Ace. Flat on your back. Arm flopped over your face. One boot still on, one off. Dead to the world.

Marco leans down “You good?”

You snore lightly and mumble something about “I hate onions... mh”.

Marco’s eye twitches.

He walks off slowly and finds Thatch.

“We have a situation.”

Izou, Marco, Thatch, and Jozu sit in a huddle like they’re planning a heist.

Thatch slaps down a napkin with dramatic flair.

“Exhibit A: Ace has stopped eating onions.”

“Exhibit B,” Marco adds, “she naps like a dead log in the middle of the deck. Just like him.”

“Exhibit C,” Izou says, adjusting his coat, “he brushed his teeth twice in one day.”

Silence.

Jozu blinks “…What does that mean?”

Izou sighs “He’s trying not to taste bad, obviously.”

Marco nods slowly “Only one reason for all this.”

Everyone says it at once “He’s kissing someone.”

They all lean back like they’ve cracked the code.

Thatch grins wide “And we all know someone who always hated onions.”

Back on deck, you yawn and stretch, bumping into Ace as he leans on the rail.

“Morning” he says, smiling softly.

“You smell like mint” you mutter, surprised.

He leans in slightly “That a bad thing?”

You shake your head, trying not to grin “Nah. Kinda hot, actually.”

What you don’t notice is the small army of Whitebeard pirates across the deck, hiding behind barrels, crates, and a suspiciously placed sail, watching you both with the intensity of trained spies.

Thatch whispers, “Look at him. He’s glowing.”

Marco squints “Is that a love glow?”

Jozu nods “He’s never glowed before.”

Izou fans himself “My heart can’t take this.”

Thatch whispers like he’s narrating a nature documentary “Observe: the rare, emotionally available Ace, brushing his teeth and avoiding onions for the sake of romance.”

Marco chuckles “Should we say something?”

Thatch shakes his head, evil smile creeping in “Not yet. Let’s have a little fun first.”

The crew knows. You just don’t know that they know. Which is why things get weird really fast.

First, Thatch starts offering you food. All the time. Which wouldn’t be strange except “Here, Y/N, extra meat, no onions. Just how you like it” he says sweetly, placing it in front of you with a wink.

You blink “Thanks…?”

He beams “Y’know. For important stuff. Like kissing for example.”

You choke “What?”

“Kissing your enemies goodbye in battle, of course. Wouldn't be cool if you smell like onions.” he says innocently “What else would I mean?”

You narrow your eyes. He walks off humming the wedding march.

Weird.

Later that day, Marco corners Ace.

“You ever think about switching toothpaste brands?”

Ace looks up from his nap spot, squinting “What?”

“I heard mint’s nice” Marco says, deadly casual.

Ace raises a brow “I already switched. Why?”

“No reason,” Marco shrugs “Just figured you’d want to impress… someone.”

“…Like who?”

Marco just walks off.

Ace stares after him, confused.

Then there’s Izou.

He appears next to you while you’re doing your hair, watching like a hawk.

“Hmm” he says thoughtfully.

“What?”

“You’ve got a new little strand tucked behind your ear. That’s new.”

You frown “So? My hair just got a bit too long.”

“Just reminds me of how Ace tucks his hair sometimes. Cute. Subtle. Copying your crush is a classic move.”

You freeze “Wh-What crush?”

He smiles slowly “Oh, I didn’t say you had one.”

You almost trip over the comb.

And don’t even get started on Jozu. He starts playing “matchmaker” out of nowhere.

“Hey Y/N, what do you think of guys with freckles?”

You pause “I mean, freckles are nice... why?”

“No reason.” He grins “You like fire powers too?”

“…You’re literally describing Ace.”

“Am I?” he says, like he’s shocked at himself.

You walk away suspicious. The crew snickers behind your back.

By the end of the week, you’re starting to get twitchy. Ace too.

“Are they acting weird?” you whisper one night as you sit beside him on deck.

“Definitely,” he says, arms behind his head “Thatch winked at me when I refused onions at dinner.”

“Marco suggested I take a nap ‘in a more open, sunny place.’” You glance at him “Sound familiar?”

Ace groans “They’re onto something.”

You whisper, “Do you think they know?”

He shrugs “They’re dumb. I think we’re safe.”

The crew, literally hiding, listening in with cups pressed to the wood.

Thatch whispers, “They think we’re dumb.”

Marco snorts “They’re in love and hiding it like toddlers under a table.”

Izou fans himself “Give it another day. Then we strike.”

It starts over breakfast.

Again, totally normal day. Birds chirping. Sun’s out. Pirates being loud. You stroll in beside Ace, acting casual. Like you didn’t kiss him good morning five minutes ago behind the barrels.

You sit down.

He sits next to you.

Everything is fine. Until Thatch slams his fork on the table and stands up dramatically.

“Okay, this has gone on long enough.”

You and Ace both freeze.

Marco leans in lazily, sipping his coffee “So. You two are dating, right?”

Your eyes go wide.

Ace doesn’t even blink.

And at the exact same time:

You: “No! Who would even date him?”

Ace: “Yeah, we’re obviously dating.”

Silence.

A beat.

Then Jozu chokes on his juice. Thatch drops his spoon. Izou wheezes like he’s been punched.

Marco just blinks “Well. That answers that.”

You turn to Ace in slow motion “WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY??”

He frowns slightly “That we’re dating? What—why did you say that so disgusted?”

You hiss “Because you weren’t supposed to just admit it!”

“Why not? We’ve been caught.”

“I was trying to lie!”

Thatch is howling “Oh my god—‘Who would even date him??’ Babe, the man LITERALLY has your name carved into his pillow.”

You whip around “He WHAT?!”

Ace shrugs “Just the initials. It’s cute.”

Izou fans himself “I’m going to die. This is the best breakfast of my life.”

Marco grins “This is better than I expected”

Jozu “It’s like watching a romance novel crash into a comedy sketch.”

You bury your face in your hands “I hate this. I hate ALL of you.”

Ace pats your back gently “I think it’s going great.”

You glare at him “You’re enjoying this.”

“Of course. I don’t have to sneak around anymore. I get to call you mine out loud now.”

That… makes your face heat up. You try not to smile. You fail.

Thatch yells, “THEY’RE BLUSHING. IT’S REAL.”

Ace slings his arm around your shoulders, smug and unbothered “Don’t worry, babe. We’ll survive the embarrassment.”

Izou smirks “Barely.”

Marco raises his cup “To the worst cover-up attempt in Whitebeard history.”

Everyone cheers.

You groan and slump against Ace, who kisses your temple like the traitor he is.

Soft. Smiling. Loud and proud.

And now you’re never living this down.

[ratherchili]

𖹭 cw: suggestive, edgy, mdni

part one | two | three | four | five ‹soon›

Unfortunately for you, your big brother's friend sukuna can be surprisingly light on his feet for someone so large. It seems that startling the living hell out of you is his new favorite pasttime. And he's around all the time now. He shows up unannounced and lets himself in. When you ask Toji why he has a key, he just laughs and says, "He doesn't. He wants in. He gets in."

Okay? That's cryptic and annoying, but you'd rather feign indifference than ask questions. Why overcomplicate things?

Mostly, he just sneaks up behind you and shouts, "Hey, brat!" In his stupid, booming voice as he claps all four of his large hands down on your shoulders. You count it as a victory when you detect his smokey scent first and actually manage not to jump out of your skin. Although you still break out in goosebumps at his touch, he doesn't seem to notice, judging by the satisfying look of dissappointment on his face. Your satisfaction is short-lived, however.

The sound of the two men crashing through the front door in the wee hours of the next morning startles you awake. You flick the bedside lamp on just in time to see sukuna crash through your bedroom door. Of course, you scream and clutch the pink duvet to your bare chest. "Oops," he says, with a shit-eating grin. "Wrong room." Toji drags him out with some half-assed muttered apology about drinking too much. You're not so sure that's a pertinent excuse. The smug look he shoots you before the door slams shut seems pretty much par for the course, at this point.

Sadly, that was not the end of early morning encounters with the monster. Now he has you caged in against the counter, nearly breaking your back in an effort to lean away from him. Evidently, he had seen fit to creep up behind you and you between the kitchen counter and his mountain range of a body. And you wee only trying to steam milk for your latte. What the fuck is his problem, anyway? Can't a girl make her morning coffee in peace? Your protests remain lodged in your throat, however, along with your racing heart.

He's so large and so close you have no choice but to look at him, which, to your horror, still renders you temporarily speechless. Being so close to him reminds you a little of the first time you ever saw a tiger at the zoo. The animal was so unlike anything you had ever seen before, so deadly and beautiful, that you could hardly believe it was real. Could hardly believe that it was roaring and pacing close enough that you could reach out and sink your fingers into its thick coat if not for the bars. The bars kept you safe, then. What is keeping you safe, now?

It is unsettling, the way his upper set of eyes remain locked on yours while the lower set look down at the hand scalded by your spilt coffee. "What's the matter brat? Hurt yourself?" He mocks as you clutch the injured hand to your chest. You hardly notice that one of his hands has left the counter, but somehow you don't flinch when he lifts it to your cheek to tuck a lock of hair behind your ear. "Did I scare you?"

The gentle gesture alongside his mocking words is so disconcerting that you remain a quivering-lipped mute as seconds crawl by at a snails pace. You wonder if the action was subconscious on his part. Seems the only viable explanation.

You don't find your voice again until Toji's breaks whatever hypnosis the monster has you under. "Let's go," he says, and, just like that, Sukuna pulls away and you are finally able to pull air into your lungs again. "Gonna be gone for a couple of days-" Toji begins, addressing you.

"Please tell me you're taking it with you," you interject, stabbing an index finger in Sukuna's direction.

"Yeah," he says. And sukuna gives you one last smug, spider-eyed glare before he disappears through the door.

You're so relieved that it doesn't occur to you how quickly a couple of days can pass. Or that, when they do, your brother might not be the first to return. Relieved, not only to be free of Sukuna's bullying for a time, but also because what you feel is not truly fear. It's more like awe, if you really had to put a name to it. But you make a point not to think about it too much, or at all if you can help it.

part one | two | three | four | five ‹soon›

taglist ‹ age in your bio to be added ›

@orikixx ; @scorpiosugar ; @just-lilita ; @shesabeeler

[beloveds-embrace]

(firefighters!141 x chubby reader… 👁️👁️ )

A friend of yours is a fire chief for your town’s local fire station. They ask you to help the fire station do some training drills for rescue operations. Your friend says it’s because you have acting skills, but you both silently acknowledge it probably has to do with the fact that you are chubby. Not fit, not thin, not easy to carry as evident by all the partners you’ve dated before- whatever you wanna call it.

It’s alright, you are pretty used to it. If they weren’t your friend, you would have honestly refused and saved yourself the inevitable humiliation, but alas. You are used to it, you really are.

You are introduced to Captain John Price, who holds your hand so warm and snug you have to will your blush away, but there’s nothing that can help you as he lays a big hand over your lower back and leads you to the waiting firemen. Three men, though you expected far more but John- Call me John, sweetheart. Captain is just for thos muppets- explains that they’ll be doing it in groups.

You are introduced to the three firemen (a Scot, and two Brits. Johnny, Kyle and Simon respectively. Unlike the other two, though, Simon is wearing a balaclava) and by god, you almost want to say that just for today, there is a different source of water they can use-

“Lay down here, sweetheart.” John’s voice breaks you out of your thoughts, and with a blush, you scramble to obey. The good girl you receive in return might as well be the best thing you’ve even been told in your entire life and the heat between your legs agrees as well.

Though you are quickly reminded that this will probably not go so well, considering your size and everything and maybe you should just apologize and leave already-

Before you can think about leaving, Johnny steps forward with that smirk he’s had since the beginning and a glint of mischief in his eyes. He crouches down next to you, stretching his arms out. “Alright, lass,” he says with a wink, “don’t be shy now. Let’s see if I’m up for the challenge.”

Before you can even process it, he slides his arms under you and lifts you up effortlessly- still mindful of your “injury”. Your face goes bright red as he shifts you in his grip, making sure you’re comfortable and safe. He gives a low whistle as he run around with you in his arms, a teasing grin plastered on his face. “Not too bad, eh? Thought I’d be struggling, but you’re light as a feather.” His grin widens, smug, as he watches your flustered reaction. “Didn’t expect me to be so strong, did ya, lass?”

You mumble something incoherent, trying to avoid his eyes, and he laughs, his deep chuckle vibrating through his chest. When he finally sets you down, you’re left feeling a little dazed, and before you can catch your breath, Kyle steps in and helps you lay back down.

“Alright, my turn,” he says with a gentle smile, his hands warm and careful as he reaches down to lift you. His grip is steady and secure, and he holds you with a tenderness that has your heart pounding in your chest. Unlike Johnny, Kyle doesn’t say much, but he gives you soft, reassuring smiles that somehow fluster you even more to the point where you really, really just want to bury your face in his shoulder. His arms feel solid around you, and there’s an easy confidence in the way he carries you that leaves you a little breathless.

“You doing okay, doll?” he asks, his voice low and soothing, and you nod, struggling to keep from blushing harder. He catches the faintest smile on your lips and chuckles softly, his gaze lingering on you for a moment longer than necessary before he gently sets you back down.

Simon is next. He’s quiet as he approaches, his intense gaze flickering over you. Without a word, he slides his arms under you and lifts you in one smooth motion that leaves you drooling (in more ways than one). His hold is firm, and you can feel the strength in every part of his frame. If you weren’t playing the role of an injured, barely-conscious woman, you would honestly be begging to feel under his clothes.

He doesn’t say much as he carries you, but his steady breathing and the quiet intensity in his eyes speak volumes. You can barely hold his gaze; there’s something about his silent, stoic demeanor that sends your heart racing.

Finally, John steps up, and you realize you’re already blushing before he even touches you. Honestly? You doubt your face will return to normal anytime soon. “Alright, sweetheart,” he murmurs, his tone soft yet authoritative. He wraps his arms around you, lifting you with an ease that leaves you a little lightheaded. The warmth of his embrace and the strength in his arms make you feel small and delicate in a way that you’ve never felt before. It leaves you breathless, but in a good way. John holds you close, his breath tickling your ear as he chuckles. “Not so bad, is it?”

By the end of it, your cheeks are burning, and the four of them are all sharing knowing smirks- you can even see the slightest crinkles of Simon’s eyes.

“Well, I’d say you’ve helped these muppets passthe test alright, sweetheart.” John huffs, his voice warm and full of amusement, and the others chuckle in agreement, each of them clearly enjoying your reactions far more than you anticipated. You can barely meet any of their eyes, your heart still pounding from the attention- and the teasing glances they keep exchanging make it clear that they noticed every flustered look and blushing smile.

As you’re still catching your breath, John tilts his head, an amused smirk tugging at his lips, and continues. “Well, we’ll have to call you back soon for another round, sweetheart. Can’t let the boys get rusty.” he teases, giving you a wink.

Johnny chimes in with a grin, taking your hand and kissing your palm. “Aye, can’t let you off that easy, bonnie. We’ll need plenty more practice to make sure we’ve got it down, yeah?”

Kyle nods as well, his gaze fixed on you. Never before have you had so much attention on you, and you never realized how much you quite love it. “Wouldn’t be proper training without our favorite helper.”

Simon, ever the quiet one, just gives you a small nod, but there’s a glint of promise in his eyes that makes your stomach flip.

You can’t help but smile, feeling a warmth you didn’t expect filling your chest. “I’ll… I’ll look forward to it. I’m glad to be of help.” You manage, your cheeks still tingling from the attention.

As you turn to leave, maybe go and ask your friend what else they could need you for since you are such a gracious friend, John’s voice calls after you, low and steady. “Soon, sweetheart.” The words linger, making you wonder just how soon “soon” might really be.

You hope it’ll be soon enough. Very soon enough.

[cursingtoji]

cw: office au, nanami x loser!reader, semi public, oral, praising, slight emotional dependency? geto version gojo version toji version

nanami is so in love with the little office loser. he doesn’t give you much attention when you first arrive, just another presence in the office. then he starts to, unwillingly, listen to the conversation of others about giving the new clumsy girl a little rough time.

nanami watches from the corner of his eye as you quietly accepts your boss’ request to work overtime, he frowns as your boss implies under many corporate jargons that it’ll be unpaid and you should do it for the team.

“so naive” he murmurs watching you smile.

he can’t help but become infatuated with you when watching your skirt raising when you try to reach a tall shelf in the communal kitchen.

“here” he catches the coffee beans bag for you, without even needing to extend his arm much. nanami arrives so quietly that his voice scares you and you take a step back bumping into his strong body behind you and leaving a tiny squeal out, “sorry, are you okay?” he puts his hand on your shoulder.

“y-yes, thank you” he gives you space and you turn around looking at him over the thick frame of your glasses. it reminds nanami of those ads where a gorgeous woman has a pair of glasses down her nose and the caption says something like ‘single hotties in your area’. he then understands the appeal.

he keeps himself busy most days, so one day as soon as he sends an email he relaxes on his desk rolling his shoulders and looking around just in time to watch you knock a box of staples off your table. he raises from his seat to go help you but he gets a call at the same time so he sits back down to answer it while keeping his eyes on you.

you kneel picking the small items one by one. he likes seeing you on your knees. then you push your chair and crawl under the desk, trying to reach a few staples that went under the cabinet, at this point you’re with your head down on the carpeted floor and your ass up, nanami watches it with lusty eyes, just agreeing and humming to whatever the person on the phone is saying while wondering if you remember you are wearing a skirt. he watches in awe the black semi transparent pantyhose you have on stretch at the back of your thighs and the panties peeking out from underneath it.

when you get up your hair is messy and your face is flushed, you don’t think most of it, just glad to have caught every little staple. meanwhile nanami pulls his chair closer to his desk so you don’t see the volume in his pants when you pass by after basically flashing him.

nanami knows he wouldn’t last long with you around. one night he also stays overtime and you, being the extreme people pleaser you are, bring him some coffee and different sugar packets since you don’t know how he takes his coffee, but even with this simple self-assigned task you still manage to screw up and spill some on his pants immediately apologizing and getting on your knees to clean it with your sleeve. the friction on his upper thigh is making him grow hard but your teary eyes is what pushes him over the edge.

“nanami-san, don’t go home too late” the last person in the office says stepping on the elevator and waving goodbye.

“have a good night” the blond manages to say over the desk divider that hides your figure. finally knowing you two are alone kento throws his head back and allow his muscles to relax and enjoy the warmth of your mouth as you suck him.

“that’s right, sweetheart, good girl” he praises with a guiding hand on the back of your neck. it’s so good to have someone praising you in this place that your eyes water with joy. kento never meant to nut in the office but here he is, watching his cum run down your chin.

you take the small bin under his desk to spit the incriminating evidence of his pleasure so you don’t have to swallow it, “here, let’s make the clean crew think that’s matsuda’s” kento switches the bin with the one under his coworkers desk.

he hates to admit but over time he starts to look forward the times you feel overwhelmed and come to him for affection.

which leads him to the tiny copy room way too many times, making you hold the edge of your skirt and pulling your underwear and tights down to eat you out on top of the copy maker.

“keep quiet, darling” he warns knowing fully well how thin the walls are.

although you have done many unspoken things to him in this office, nanami still flusters you. every time he’s near, your thighs start to shake and your clit throbs untouched.

“come here, i’ll show you” he motions you over his desk when you ask for help with a task. you watch him perform it on the computer screen, “now you try it” he moves his chair a bit to give you space to use his keyboard and as you bend over slightly to replicate his steps he uses the opportunity to feel the skin of the back of your legs since today you don’t have any tights.

“go back, click here” he corrects still touching you, his hand comes higher, laying just under your ass cheeks, “why are you shaking? type the code there” he says like he doesn’t have a hand under your skirt.

“s-sorry” you say when making a mistake.

“it’s okay, start over” he commands, now playing with the hem of your underwear, it’s hard to do what he showed you when you can’t even guide the cursor right.

nanami pushes the material of your underwear into your folds making out the shape of your pussy through it.

“do it again with this file” he points sounding so collected it makes you even more nervous, he rubs your core so lightly, it’s almost like he’s doing it for his own pleasure, like he’s trying to make out the shape of your clit with the tips of his finger only.

“save it, and send to yourself” as you finish the task he starts to pull down your underwear looking around to make sure no one is watching when he helps you step out of the white lacy material, “well done” he bends to pick your panties, giving your leg a quick kiss — since that’s the most he can do in the office during the day—, and putting the soaked fabric in his pocket.

“thank you” you smile and slowly make your way back to your desk, though your boss calls you middle way about a mistake you made on a file and to come to his office, now you wonder how you’re supposed to make it through the day not only without underwear but also dripping wet.

[prosypepper]

this is love ft. kento nanami

a/n: a few sappy slices of life with my main man :3 enjoy as i dig up motivation to finish kinktober. 18+ mdni!

"honey?" kento's voice is muffled through the door as he calls out to you, "everything okay?" the door rattles as he tries to open it, knob jingling.

"uhm, yeah! everything's fine!" you nervously shout, much too loud, and rush to unplug the iron that had melted your husband's favorite shirt. you panic and yelp when the hot iron scorches the side on your hand, throwing the stupid device to the ground in a clatter.

"why is the door locked—are you okay?" he asks, voice becoming more concerned as he hears the movement inside.

"i'm—i'm fine! promise! just give me a minute!" you're rushing into your shared master bathroom to run cold water over your hand, and kento’s using a screwdriver pulled from thin air to break into your bedroom. tears well in your eyes when you catch the sight of kento seeing his favorite shirt burnt and melted to his own ironing board. "i’m so sorry…"

in reality, he doesn’t care about the shirt—he’s already at your side to inspect your burnt hand. after a few seconds, he speaks.

"did you try to iron my shirt for me?" nanami asks, a small smile on his face, "you didn’t have to do that." he turns off the faucet and takes a small towel to dry your hand off.

"i tried to, i’m sorry—i didn’t know it would do that." you apologize, looking down at the cold tile flooring in defeat.

"oh, honey." he coos, "it’s only a shirt."

"have you seen your father?" you ask your son, yū, who’s sat at the dining table, eating breakfast. he shakes his head no, and when you look at your daughter, mayu, she does the same.

"jeez," you grumble to yourself, bedroom slippers pattering down the hallway as you go to search for your husband. saturday mornings were his time to sleep in, but realistically, he never slept past 9am. and currently, it was nearing 10am.

you check everywhere. he isn’t found in the bedroom, living room, his office, the garage, the patio or in the little garden he kept. upstairs, downstairs, everywhere, he isn’t there. and when you check in your bedroom for the last time, you hear a soft buzzing coming from the bathroom. upon entering, you see your husband bent over the counter, leaning close in the mirror as he shaves his stubble with an electric razor.

"there you are—when did you get that?"

kento had always been a clean shaven kind of man, going to a barber shop once every two weeks for his straight razor shave. it hadn’t even crossed your mind he didn’t go after work yesterday.

but when he looks at you—you burst out laughing. he’d shaven most of his beard off, but a few fuzzy patches remained on his cheeks, along with a mustache grazing his upper lip. peach fuzz and a few knicks litter his chin. this was the first time you’d seen him unable to do anything perfectly. and he looks ridiculous.

"is it really that bad?" he groans, pouting when you wrap your arms around yourself in a giggling fit. you shake your head, although your unforgiving laughs are a testament to the opposite.

"no—no, let me help," you say after calming down.

after gathering a new razor and some shaving cream, you sit atop the counter and your husband stands between your legs. kento is surprised how flawlessly you shave his face, without creating any more marks or cuts. you giggle and kiss him, getting some shaving cream on your face.

"ken?" you shout from the kitchen, where you’re sat, working on your dissertation. it’s been a long road of blood, sweat, and many, many tears; but you’re finally getting towards the end. about to earn a doctorate.

"yes, darling?" kento replies, walking into the kitchen on queue, his timing impeccable.

"can you read over this paragraph, please?" you kindly ask of him, pointing to your most recent written paragraph. he leans over you, planting one firm palm on the table, the other on your back; his eyes read along the sentences and his fingers tap along your spine.

"ah," his finger becomes more focused on a certain word, "wrong 'there', honey."

"no it's not..." you instantly retort, squinting your tired eyes to read over your writing. and you're right, it was the correct one the first time. this was his version of teasing you. but kento couldn't keep up the face much longer before he's giving in with a shit-eating grin you didn't see that often. "you're funny." you groan as kento stands back up.

after reading over the paragraph for about the nineteenth time, you notice kento silently slipping you some tea before turning back around to keep himself busy with cleaning. you absentmindedly take a few sips, then some more...and you find yourself becoming more and more sleepy...

and you're out like a light, forehead pressed directly against the table as a puddle of drool forms on the papers below. kento already has a warm blanket straight from the dryer to drape over you, and you stir just enough to get comfy on your arms.

kento knows that his back will hurt in the morning, but he sits around the corner of the table next to you, settling his head into his arms to drift off to sleep alongside you.

music of your taste plays rather quietly in the kitchen. you stir the pot of soup and inhale the flavorful aroma that wafts through the air.

kento sets two bowls next to the stove, then rummages through your silverware drawer to find two spoons. the kids are at their grandparents for the weekend, it's only you and your husband, converted into the duo you were long ago.

you step away from the stove to go fill up two glasses of wine, the brand kento had as his favorite had slowly turned into your favorite over time, too.

kento fills up the two bowls to the brim of the delicious food, grinning on the inside at the simplicity of it all. just you and him. he lids the pot with the matching glass top and makes his way over to the table.

you set out place mats for the both of you, then place the wine glasses in their prospective areas. kento places the bowls on top of the mats as you grab the spoons from the counter.

in the kitchen, your bodies subconsciously dance around each other. carefully, in perfect tune and pace. delicate steps of a routine formed over so much time together.

in the universe, your souls are tied, striding alongside one another in each lifetime repeated.

and this, is love.

[nereidprinc3ss]

spring into summer

the highest highs and the lowest lows of your on-again off-again relationship with spencer reid, tracked through the seasons of a year.

18+ (smut, angst, fluff) warnings/tags: (spoiler tags at the bottom of post) reader gets drunk a few times, questionable consent (not between Spencer and reader), much codependence, softdom Spencer/sub reader, oral m receiving, finger sucking lol, deep pen piv/intense sex, mention of marks being left, praise tho dw he is soso nice and loves her, fighting/yelling/sex as reconciliation, general toxicity and lots of it DDDNE!! avoidant!reader, panic attacks, joke abt r being high off cough syrup when she’s sick and Spencer is taking care of her, implied trauma, IM MAKING IT SOUND CRAZY BUT THERE IS A LOT OF STRAIGHT UP FLUFF IN HERE GUYS PLS THEY ARE SO CUTE A BUNCH OF TIMES. wc 23k (!) longest nereid fic ever!also had to squish 167 lines together so the first half is a bit compact I apologize!! a/n: yeaaaah…. Thanks for being patient w me guys :”)) I miss posting sosososo much and I out genuinely probably days into this fic like once I was writing for 15 hrs straight. So. Yeah. I so so hope u enjoy and I love u miss u MWAH

February 17th

You don’t know when you last blinked. 

Flickering blue and white light washes deep into the backs of your eyes as you stare at some old film without watching it. A knight atop his steed warps and stretches gruesomely under your apathetic observation, and whatever noble speech he’s giving turns to monotone slurry before it hits your ears—old-fashioned English smeared in 1960’s transatlantia. A buzzy drone in iambic pentameter. The sluggish pound and gush, pound and gush, of a failing heart. 

Spencer said you’d love this movie.

“You okay?”

The question draws you from your fugue state, and you turn, eyes so dry they sting when you finally blink. He’s comfortable. You’ve been here for hours—enough time for his hair to tousle, enough time he decided to trade his contacts for glasses. When you look at him, there is only static. 

You must be having one of those nights again. Something in your body refuses to succumb to the comfort his presence should offer, regardless of how many hours you’ve spent together. Or days, or months. 

It’s awful because you fought to be here, sitting on his couch, sharing a blanket. You fought every instinct in your body for so long just to get to this point because you wanted it so badly, and now that you have it—now that you’ve had it, this weekend, and last weekend, and every weekend you haven’t been out of town on a case for months—you struggle to let it feel good. 

Spencer is looking at you like he loves you. He doesn’t know how to look at you any other way. 

Sometimes you don’t feel like this. Sometimes it’s easy.

That doesn’t make the guilt in the pit of your stomach any smaller when it’s not. 

The only thing you know is that you’ll want it again. This is what you’ll want tomorrow morning, or in an hour, or the second he’s gone. You’ll want it so badly you’d humiliate yourself for it. And humiliation in front of him is a fate worse than death. So you find ways to want him in the present. 

This is the right thing. 

“I’m fine,” you promise. His brow flickers. The knight’s shining armor makes a glare off the lenses of Spencer’s glasses. 

Before he can say anything, you lean into his side, dropping your head to his shoulder and settling your weight against him. Immediately he’s wrapping an arm around you like you knew he would, because he doesn’t have a choice. Not when it comes to you. You don’t give yourself time to feel bad about that. Instead, you press your lips to the bit of collarbone visible over the neckline of his shirt. A series of kisses litter the warmth of his throat. You take and take like an invasive species. A hand pushes into his hair. 

There’s hesitance in the way he kisses you back as you sling a leg over his lap. So you take more. You kiss him harder. You need his hands on you, you need him to hold you by your thighs or your hips or your waist like he’s not afraid. At least one of you mustn’t be so scared. 

Spencer only requires a few more moments before his will melts, and he grabs you how you knew he would. Like he’s going to make something of you. He’s going to make you his. He’s going to break you and put you back together stronger, and he’s going to tell you what you are. That’s all you need—you just need him to keep trying. This is a promise you need him to keep making. 

“Pause the movie,” you breathe into his waiting mouth. 

He’s warm. He keeps you safe. 

March 9th

The heat in your apartment kicks on with a rumble that seems to shake the whole place. It’s the first noise in minutes. 

Spencer is at your little wooden dining table, hair mussed, pajama pants rumpled, staring into a chipped mug half-full of black coffee. You stand in the kitchen, countertop digging into your hip as you watch him. Outside, the sky is still spilled winter ink. The only light comes from a lamp you’d bought with him months ago at an antique shop. The stove clock flicks from 1:31 to 1:32. 

The ringing silence is killing you. 

“Spencer—”

“I—” he stops and you watch his throat bob. “I don’t understand—”

“I explained it to you—”

“You explained what? That you—you don’t care about me as much as I care about you, and you want to be together, but you don’t want me to think of it as a real relationship, and you’re letting me know out of courtesy? What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Don’t twist my words. I do care about you. A lot. I just—when we started this a few months ago you knew where I was at with commitment, and we agreed we’d be honest and communicate about what we were feeling—and what I’m feeling is that I’m not ready for this to be more than what it is! You knew that was a possibility, I knew that was a possibility. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. It just means I’m not ready for… for labels, or telling the team, or—or putting pressure on ourselves to try and be something we don’t have the time to be right now.”

Spencer looks at you with something close to disdain. It’s sort of like a bullet to a flack-jacket—it won’t kill you, because you’ve made sure to protect yourself. But it hurts. 

“I make the time. That’s what you do when you care about someone. I mean—where am I, when we’re not on a case? I’m here. I coordinate my entire life so that I can be here when you want me to be. Do you think I do that because it’s convenient for me? We have the same 24 hours. We have the same job. It’s not about time. Don’t insult me by saying that’s what this is.”

“I’m not trying to insult you.” The words come out an unsure waver—but it’s not because you don’t believe what you’re saying. 

I coordinate my entire life so that I can be here when you want me to be. 

Why? Why would he do that?

Spencer is not gracious in the face of your silence. Maybe he interprets your inability to put words together—the way you froze as soon as he casually admitted something that feels so oppressive and suffocating—I coordinate my entire life so that I can be here when you want me to be—as your silent way of admitting he’s right, and you don’t care about him. 

But he’s not right. You just can’t breathe. Why does he care about you so much?

Someone would have to be looking very closely at you in order to care that much. To think you’re worth the trouble. But you’ve taken steps, your whole life, to ensure that nobody will ever be able to see you close enough. If they did, they’d notice all the structural flaws. The deep cracks and the sagging floorboards and the mold you’ve been covering in paint. 

You feel your throat closing as he stands. 

Yes. Leave. Get out. Don’t look at me. 

March 13th

“Spencer.”

The name drips from your lips like melted sugar. Like a term of endearment. Just saying it makes you warmer. It’s maple syrup in your veins. You try to tug your dress down your thighs and stumble in place. The bartender holding your phone twists his wrist to speak into the microphone. 

“Hey, man. Your girlfriend is wasted. Cabs aren’t running and you need to come pick her up before she throws up all over my bar or wanders into traffic or some shit.”

“I’m not—I’m not wasted,” you mutter, pushing hair out of your face. Neither of them are listening as the bartender relays your location and assures Spencer that an eye will be kept on you until his arrival. As soon as they’re done, you’re leaning forward over the bar. “Gimme him,” you whisper-shout, making a grabby-hand. 

The bartender passes you your phone with raised eyebrows. “He’ll be here soon.”

“But he’s—he’s not on the phone?” You realize, closing your eyes and frowning as the heartbreak processes. 

“Nah. Drink this and sit tight. And don’t fuckin’ throw up. Please.”

You sigh and sip on a lemon water, smearing lipgloss all over the rim of the glass and wiping a dribble off your chin after you swallow. “Spencer’s my boyfriend,” you tell the man, dreamily. 

“So you’ve told me.” 

“He’s so handsome… and smart… and we’re in the—the FBI. Can you believe that?” You cackle and slap the bar top. Mr. Bartender only hums an uh-huh as he focuses on making someone else a drink. 

When Spencer does finally arrive, you’re elated. Glitter courses through your veins. More than that, you’re relieved—you catch his eye and light up, and when he makes his way through the throng to you, you’re ready to melt all over him. You haven’t spoken to him in days. 

“You’re here!” You sing, hooking an arm around his back and resting your head on his bicep, looking up at him with big, bleary eyes. Spencer supports you with an arm and doesn’t let go even as he’s fishing out his wallet to settle the bill you racked up. “Wait, Spence—we should have one more drink.”

He’s not looking at you as he speaks. “Absolutely not.” And then, to the bartender, “Thanks, man.”

“Spencer,” you begin again, savoring his name on your tongue and admiring his profile as he walks you out of the bar. “I told everyone I met tonight that you’re my boyfriend.”

“I heard,” he says simply, scanning the street before you cross. Presumably the wind is whipping at your bare legs, but you don’t feel it. “Why’d you do that?”

“Because…” you hum thoughtfully. “Because I like you so much. And I liked thinking about you being my boyfriend.”

He doesn’t respond. Even now, even drunk as you are—a very small part of you knows this is cruel. Just last weekend you’d let him walk out of your apartment precisely because you weren’t willing to label things. 

In the morning, that will still be true. But this is just play-pretend. 

“Also, because—isn’t it—isn’t it crazy, that you’re the nicest, prettiest, smartest, best guy ever, and they believed me? I showed them pictures and told them about your degrees and everything and they still believed me. They believed—they believed when I said you’re my boyfriend. They didn’t even question it at all. Like, what? They thought I was good enough to deserve you.”

The sidelong glance he casts you then is like a grappling hook, and you stumble into his side. His brows are knit over eyes that have gone glassy black in the dark, illuminated only by the shifting reflection of each haloed street lamp you pass. It’s hypnotizing. “You think you’re not good enough for me?” He asks. 

You hiccup and clap a hand to your mouth, stickying your palm with remnant gloss. “Oops. No. I mean, yes.”

He’s on the verge of replying when the smell of something fried and sweet has you perking up like a bloodhound. A blinking neon sign behind him catches your eye. “Oh my god,” you interrupt. “They’re—holy fuck, Spencer. That donut shop across the street—oh my god. We have to go. Please? Pleasepleasepleaseplease?”

One thing about Spencer you know to be true—and, perhaps the characteristic of his that defines your entire relationship: he has a profoundly difficult time telling you no. 

Which is how you end up eating donuts in his bed. The ones you couldn’t finish end up in a paper bag on his bedside table—tomorrow’s hangover remedy—and you end up safely tucked under his comforter, in his shirt, smelling of his bodywash. His touch still burns everywhere, like the paths of his fingertips had etched glowing tributaries into your skin. 

All of this to say, you couldn’t possibly be happier with the way the night unfolded.  

It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust to the complete black of the room after he flips the bathroom light off on his way out, but you manage to track him nonetheless. You relish in the familiar dip of the mattress under his weight, the careful tug of the blanket as he gets in bed with you. As he pulls you into him, without hesitation, it’s like ecstasy. Everything is okay again.

It doesn’t take long for you to get close to sleep—it’s been days since you’ve been able to. Just before you go under, Spencer secures you to him. He presses his lips to your temple. 

“I love you,” you mumble. You want to say it before you can’t. 

He strokes your hip. And then you’re gone. 

March 26th

“Did you mean it?”

You look up from the transcripts you’d been studying—the latest victims both had behavioral issues at school. Spencer is across from you, on the other end of the big glass conference table at the Memphis field office. Binders and notebooks and thick Manila folders form a sort of abstract frame around him as he leans back in his chair, gripping the plastic arms. His eyes are laser-focused on you. How long has he been staring at you, thinking about this?

“Did I mean what?”

“When you said you loved me.”

The door is closed and the blinds are shut. You almost wish this were more public so you could reasonably (and urgently) change the subject. Instead, you laugh awkwardly and cast your gaze sideways as if something in your peripheral vision could save you. “When did I say that?” 

It is very clearly the wrong question to have asked. Spencer blinks and looks down through the table at nothing, brows knitting slightly like he’s accounting for new information and adjusting his frameworks accordingly. You swallow. The trouble is, you remember saying it with perfect clarity. You’d just been hoping he would let you off the hook for it. 

“Okay,” he says, after a few eternal moments with only someone’s ringing landline in the office beyond to bridge the gap of silence. 

“… Okay what?”

He picks up his pencil without making eye contact. Twirls it between nimble fingers. Pulls his chair close to the table like he’s going to settle back into his work. There are times where he is capable of immersing himself in whatever he’s reading completely and immediately, but you know this is not one of those times. The petulant flash of his eyebrows, the chin balanced on his fist to hide his mouth. And that perpetually tapping pencil. For all his genius and every one of his quirks, you know he can’t focus on reading and fiddle at the same time. You’re not a profiler for nothing. 

“Spencer.”

“What?”

The immediacy of it is almost enough to have you wincing. 

“I… I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. I asked you a question and you didn’t know what I was talking about, so it’s fine.”

“But you’re obviously upset.”

“I’m not obviously anything. You’re reading into it.”

You can’t help but roll your eyes. “Oh my god. Says you.”

The pencil hits the table—as does the other hand. Spencer sits up straight and looks you right in the eye. Uh oh. 

“You responded to my question with another question to avoid giving me a real answer because you think I won’t like what you have to say. Am I wrong?”

Your face goes hot as your mouth opens and closes uselessly a few times. A moment passes and you hate watching that vindication, that hurt, freezing him over, more solid with each second you don’t speak. Mostly you hate that feeling in your throat—it’s either bile or the truth. You’re not sure which one will come out when you open your mouth. But you have to try. He’s backed you into a corner. You swallow. 

“Yeah. Yeah, actually, you are.”

Spencer blinks. “Oh.”

“Oh,” you huff mockingly, averting your eyes to the paper in front of you and strangling your pen as your cheeks positively burn. 

More buzzing silence. 

“Sorry,” Spencer tries, having softened considerably and now obviously remorseful. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I’m sorry. You don’t have to… say anything before you’re ready. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

Still avoiding his gaze, you hum. It’s a manic, anxious sort of sound. The nail of your thumb wears away between your teeth before you switch to picking at the dead skin on your lip. Your foot bounces as you read the name of the victim over and over again, just to have something to do. Kelly Shelton. Kelly Shelton. 

You don’t realize he’s rolled his chair over to you until there’s a gentle hand around your wrist. 

“Stop,” he murmurs, not letting go even when you look at him indignantly. He produces chapstick from his pocket, because of course he does, and presses it into your palm. His eyes are so big and so brown and so warm, almost calf-like, that it’s very difficult to stay mad. “I’m sorry. That was unfair of me.”

“Yeah. It was.” You drop your eyes to where you’re fiddling with the lip balm. His hand still rests over your wrist. If he won’t let you pick at your lips, you’re at least going to chew on them—especially with the concession you’re about to make. “But… I mean… you held out for a while. I guess I’d probably be curious too.”

“So you do remember saying it.”

You look up at him with eyes that you hope effectively say don’t push your luck. At this, he has the audacity to smile—something smitten and stupid and cute. God, he really is easy on the eyes.

“If you tell anyone, you’re dead,” you warn, but it comes out all wrong when you’re fighting back a twisty grin of your own. “And they’ll never know it was me.”

“Noted.”

“Because I could really get away with it. Like, really. I know exactly how to throw off an investigation.”

“Easy, tiger. Put that on. I’m going to get you some water so maybe you’ll stop dessicating your lips.”

“Why are you so worried about my lips?” You ask his retreating back. 

Spencer barely looks over his shoulder as he clicks his tongue, like you should already know. “Vested interest.”

You slink low into your seat and try not to be flustered. 

April 15th

“That tastes like lawn clippings.”

You laugh at the face Spencer is pulling as he lets your gelato melt on his tongue. “No it does not! It’s so good! You seriously don’t like matcha?”

“Matcha is fine.” He points at your cup with his dinky wooden spoon. “That is grass.”

It’s the first warm night of spring, and you and Spencer weren’t the only ones who had an itch to get out of the house. Bars and restaurants have set up their sidewalk seating. Food trucks seem to dot every corner, and on this street alone there have got to be nearing a hundred people, milling about or seated, all talking and laughing. The two of you are ambling back toward his apartment. Efficiency has not been a priority of the journey. 

“The lady said it’s one of their most popular ice cream flavors. It wouldn’t sell if it actually tasted like grass. You’re just delusional.”

“Not ice cream.”

You frown and suck on the wooden end of your spoon, looking up at him through narrow eyes. His hair is getting long. “What?”

“It’s not ice cream. Gelato and ice cream are fundamentally different.”

“How?” 

“Gelato uses more milk, less cream, and usually doesn’t contain eggs. It’s also meant to be served at a warmer temperature. And they have entirely different regional origins. Thus, not ice cream. If your opinion is going to be wrong, you should at least try to get the facts right.”

Spencer is smiling at his cup when you shove against him. “If mine is so bad, let me try yours.”

“No,” he laughs, eating another pitifully small spoonful. “Because I know if you try mine, you’re going to realize it’s better, and then we’ll have to go back.”

“That is not going to happen. Just let me try! Please? I let you try mine!”

“Forced me to,” he mutters, smile still pulling at the corners of his mouth as he slows to a stop in front of a mostly-budded spindly tree. You stand toe to toe on the sidewalk as he scoops a bite for you and holds out the spoon. As soon as you lean forward to taste it, you realize he was completely right. His is infinitely better than yours. Spencer’s lips twist and his eyes sparkle at this recognition, and you’re pissed it’s so visible on your face. 

“You’re making me go back, aren’t you?”

“… No. Yours isn’t even good.”

“Oh my god,” he laughs. “Come on.”

“Mm… okay.”

You turn around, and immediately freeze. There, at the edge of the crowd of food-truck goers, you see a distinctly colorful and familiar silhouette. Penelope Garcia is facing away from you, but even from the back you’d never mistake her for someone else. Those metallic green platform heels had very nearly crushed your toes in the elevator just this afternoon. 

“We need to go.”

Spencer frowns when you turn right back around and he has to take a few quick steps to catch up when you feel no qualms about leaving him in the dust. “What? What happened?” He asks, craning his head to scan the crowd shrinking behind you. “Is that Penelope?”

“And Kevin,” you agree. 

“Oh. You don’t want to say hi?”

At first you think he’s joking. But when you feel his eyes on the side of your face for a moment too long, you meet his questioning gaze. “No, I don’t wanna say hi.”

A familiar pause. The one that always comes right before he starts a fight with you. “You don’t want them to see us together?”

You sigh. “I—no. You know I don’t want the team to know yet. And if Garcia finds out, it’s gonna be the whole team. They’ll just… they’ll make it weird.”

“I think you’re making it weird right now. We’re allowed to spend time together outside of work. I sincerely doubt that if they had seen us back there Penelope’s first assumption would be that we’re together.”

We’re not, you want to say—but you bite it back. Because, even if not by name, in effect you are. The only reason to remind him of that at this point would be to hurt his feelings. And you’re not cruel. Or at least—you don’t try to be. 

“I just—I’m not ready for that.”

“We wouldn’t have to tell anyone.”

“Can we please just drop it?” 

You didn’t mean to snap. Luckily your brisk pace has taken you far enough away that the ambient sounds of the city will surely muffle your voices before they reach your coworkers. 

Spencer is silent. Your gelato hits the bottom of a nearby trash can. 

Back at his apartment, things remain slightly tense. You don’t like it—his reticence, the physical distance he maintains. 

Spencer’s getting water in the kitchen when you wordlessly excuse yourself to his bedroom. A few minutes later, you emerge, padding quietly across the antique tile, and he turns around—eyes shamelessly scanning you up and down as he notes your lack of shoes. And pants, probably. 

“I thought you were planning on going home for the night.” He sets the glass down on the counter when you don’t stop coming. 

“Don’t feel like driving.” You wrap your arms around his middle and rest your cheek against his chest. “Can I stay?”

He’s quiet a moment. You don’t always reward him with overt, unapologetic affection like this. Especially not after the recurring what are we argument. “You know you can.”

“Thanks.”

After one more moment of hesitation, or reluctance, or something—his arms snake around you. You relax further into him, eyes fluttering shut. “I’m sorry about earlier. With Penelope.”

The thrum of his heart could lull you to sleep. 

“Me, too,” he murmurs—and there is something like grief laced into the words. You pretend not to notice. 

April 29th

“Sorry I’m late. Crash on the beltway,” you breathe as you blow into the roundtable room one morning, tossing your bag on the table and falling into a seat. 

JJ nods, leaning back in her chair. “Oh, yeah. Spence got delayed, too. Maybe it was the same one.”

You clear your throat and focus on flipping open a file. “Yeah. Maybe.”

Spencer is holding back a grin so bright that you can practically hear the crystalline twinkling as it fights to be freed. 

Later, you corner him by the coffee machine. 

“You have to stop doing that,” you mumble. 

He’s leaning against the counter, one hand in his suit pocket—your favorite suit of his—as he watches you smugly from behind his cup. “Doing what?”

The look you give him then could boil water. He maintains his innocence. 

“Are you accusing me of something?”

“Yeah, asshat. Making us late,” you hiss, only after a proprietary scan to make sure nobody’s standing close enough to hear. 

“Friday is statistically the most dangerous day of the week on the beltway in terms of vehicular collisions. But there’s nothing I can do about that. You look nice today, by the way. Had a good morning?”

The audacity on him. Your face burns as you try to think of a retort, but all the signals have been intercepted—playing clips from your rather leisurely morning in a hazy highlight reel that is most certainly not appropriate for the work place. But he doesn’t let you flounder for long. Instead, he’s pushing off the counter and standing too close, just barely resting a hand on the small of your back as he reaches up to grab your mug from a shelf and you try not get dizzy from the proximity. 

“I’ll bring the coffee to you, sweetheart. Go sit down.”

The words, the gesture, are all too subtle for anyone else to notice. They turn you into a puddle of idiot. He’s never called you sweetheart. He’s never condescended to you like that before. You’re pretty sure you’re not supposed to like it so much. 

A few minutes later, the mug hits your desk. With ten words, he’d reduced you down to something shy and nervous, and you look up at him as he slides the coffee toward you like he might do something else crazy and unreasonably attractive. “Thanks,” you murmur, accepting the drink and exerting excessive willpower in order to turn your attention back to the computer screen. 

Rossi calls from the catwalk. “You do deliveries now? Fantastic. I’ll take a cappuccino.”

“Yeah. I’ll get right on that,” Spencer mumbles, and makes a beeline for his desk. You hope his face is red. Serves him right. 

The rest of the day, you’re almost… clingy. At lunch, you silently slide your chair over to his and begin eating without a word. It’s not like you have anything to say, really. You just crave the comfort of his knee against yours. When he fleetingly rests his hand on your thigh under the desk, for the briefest of moments, you’re far too pleased. 

Soon, JJ joins you, and then Penelope. But you don’t mind. Sometimes the nature of your relationship with Spencer and the secrecy of it all is a major source of stress for you—but today, it feels more like an alliance. Something special between the two of you that nobody else gets to share in. 

You keep casting glances at him, just for the pleasure of the view. Hoping he’ll be looking back. The third time you make eye contact, he shakes his head subtly and smiles down at his salad. You bite back a grin of your own, and try to focus on the story Penelope is telling. Sometimes, keeping secrets is fun. 

May 3rd

When Garcia said the case was local, you didn’t think you’d know the final victim. You didn’t think you’d have to watch her die. 

After the EMTs clear you, Spencer takes you to your apartment. You don’t speak a word the entire drive. Not in the parking lot, not in the lobby or the elevator or the hallway. You don’t speak in the bathroom when he quietly asks if you want help getting out of your bloodied clothes. Gently, tactfully, he coaxes a nod from you, and then he’s unbuttoning your shirt. It’s not your blood. 

The shower is started. Do you want me to come with you?

Another shake of your head. He respects your wish for privacy, but leaves the bathroom door cracked. You’d never tell him how much you appreciate that. 

After the shower, after you’re dressed, Spencer brings you tea and sits on the bed with you. At some point he changed from work clothes into pajamas he’d left here, even though he didn’t ask if he could sleep over. You’re grateful. Maybe he noticed that you’d left all the lights off, and he doesn’t try to turn them on. You’re grateful for that, too. 

“We don’t have to talk about it right now. But we can, okay? We can talk about it whenever you’re ready.”

Another morose nod. You stare into the amber depths of your tea. Not now. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. 

“I just wanna go to bed,” you whisper. All the screaming has shredded your throat. The words come out like rice paper. 

Spencer holds you until the room fills with milky grey dawn light. And though neither of you are speaking, he doesn’t fall asleep. You can tell from his breathing that he’s staying awake for you. 

-

You’re supposed to take a week off, at the least. This is not something you want. Being alone for eight hours a day sounds like it’ll be the opposite of helpful—but so what. You can handle it. When Spencer calls to tell you there’s a case—that’s when the panic starts to well. 

You pick at your lip, and then when you remember how he’d scold you for it, switch to pulling a loose thread on your sock, phone poised in your free hand. “I’ll come in.”

“You can’t,” he says, voice tinny through the speaker. “You cannot be in the field right now. You know that.”

You sit up a little straighter, nails biting into the skin of your ankle. “What am I supposed to do—just—just rot here for however fucking long you’re—you guys are gone?”

Spencer sighs. “I don’t know. I don’t want you to be alone. I’m… I’m considering sitting this one out, too.”

Your blood goes cold. “Spencer.”

A beat. “What?”

“You’re not staying behind for me.”

“I’m—”

“No. That’s not—that’s not what this is. That’s not what we do. You’re going to go do your job, and I’m going to stay here.”

“You just said—”

“I don’t care what I said! You’re not putting me ahead of the job! You’re not staying behind to check up on me. I’m an adult.”

“You don’t need to lash out. I’m just worried about you.”

“Worry about doing your fucking job. And don’t call while you’re gone.”

You hang up and throw your phone at the end of the couch. 

-

Spencer gets home at the end of the week to find his apartment broken into. The first clue was that the culprit forgot to lock the door after they used their key. The second and third clues were haphazardly untied and dropped in the middle of the living room. 

He finds you in the dark, curled up on his side of the bed under the blanket. Spencer drops his bag and rounds the bed to you, sitting on the edge and carefully taking your head into his lap, where, as if on cue, you begin to cry. For a long while, he doesn’t say anything—only pushes your hair out of your face with a gentle hand and fruitlessly wipes away tears. You’re not sure you’ve ever cried like this in front of him. 

Eventually, you try to breathe, pushing the heel of your palm into your eye as if you could forcibly hold the tears in. “I c-can’t believe that she’s gone,” you gasp. 

“I know, honey,” Spencer murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”

You sob harder. “It sounds so s-stupid, but I can’t—I don’t underst-stand how she’s dead! I saw her last week!”

“It’s not stupid. Human brains struggle with loss because we constantly function under the assumption that people are still there even when we can’t see them. Your brain is trying to contend with two incompatible realities, and it’s exhausting, and it hurts a lot. I know it does, angel.”

“I just—I saw it happen—I haven’t slept, because—” A cleaving cry pushes through your sentence, cutting you off. The air in the room is vacuous around your grief. 

“I know,” Spencer whispers again. His voice is so tender it bruises more than it breaks. “I know. I wish you hadn’t. I’m sorry.”

The fact that you went days without talking or even exchanging a text goes unmentioned. Your outburst goes unmentioned. Still, Spencer wishes you had told him what was going on sooner. He would’ve come back in a heartbeat. You wish that, too. 

May 20th

Spencer is sick. Over the phone he insists that you don’t come over. So you show up at his door and use your key. What is he going to do? Get up from the sofa and physically remove you? Not likely, in his state. 

As soon as you enter the apartment, you see his head poke up from the couch. Then he groans, hoarse and congested, and drops back down. “I told you to stay away. I’m still contagious.”

“I brought you three kinds of soup,” you say, completely ignoring his bid to send you away as you breeze into the living room and sit on the coffee table across from him, paper bag in tow. “But I think you should start with this one. It’s chicken noodle with garlic, ginger, and turmeric.”

“Anti-inflammatories.”

You give him a dazzling smile. “Exactly. So you’ll get better quicker. I looked it up.” Spencer smiles at this too. Despite the sallow skin and the darker-dark circles, the brilliance of it still has the ability to fluster you—so you move right along. “Um—I also got—I brought honey-herb cough drops, like the ones you keep in your desk. Oh! And this immune-boosting tea. I don’t know if it works, but it sounded good. And… I brought you orange juice for vitamin C—and, okay—you don’t have to try this, but it’s one of those, like, immune-boosting shots? It’s just a tiny little bottle of ginger and turmeric juice, I think. It’ll probably taste bad. But I got one for me, too, so we can take them in solidarity. And maybe then I won’t get sick.”

Spencer just watches you for a moment. You smile awkwardly and pick at a thread on your jeans. “Sorry, I know this is a lot. Sorry if I overdid it. I can go, if you want—I just wanted to make sure you had—”

“Stop. This is amazing. You’re genuinely like an angel. Thank you.” Spencer reaches out and sets a hand on your thigh. The idea that he wants to show you affection but doesn’t want to risk your health is so endearing that you can’t help yourself—you slide to your knees in front of the couch and wrap your arms around him best you can. He chuckles and hooks an arm around your back, rubbing a few short lines over your shirt. 

After a moment you pull back, and press a fleeting kiss to his warm forehead—but you stay kneeling in front of him for a bit longer. Unwisely close, most likely. His eyes are bleary, glazed with illness and watercolor soft on you. 

“What are you gonna tell the team if you get sick?” he murmurs, gaze tracing your face in gentle lines. 

You hum, wrapping your hand around his forearm. “We were doing mouth to mouth resuscitation?”

-

Turns out the immunity shots were a gimmick, because the next week, you’re sick as a dog. The team doesn’t ask any questions—it’s completely reasonable that Spencer could’ve infected you without getting his spit in your mouth. 

“Guess what?” You ask from his couch as soon as he opens the front door, making a beeline for the kitchen to set down his groceries. 

“What?”

“Penelope called me today asking why I wasn’t home. Apparently after work she stopped by to bring me soup. I told her I was at the doctor’s, and she was like, at six PM? And I was like, yeah, she’s a weird naturopathic doctor, and then she started naming all the naturopathic doctors she knows.”

“Technically you are at the doctor’s,” Spencer reminds you as he comes to sit on the coffee table, much like you’d done last week. “You still sound congested. Are you feeling any better?”

You lean into his touch when he checks your temperature with a cool hand to your forehead. “A little, maybe.”

Spencer frowns as he brushes his thumb across your febrile cheek, sporting that little worried line between his brows that you find so cute. “You’re not coughing. Have you been taking that cold medicine?”

“Plenty.”

A slow smile blooms on his face in spite of the concern. “Oh. So you’re high.”

“No!” You giggle, though you’re definitely a little loopy. “And hey—even if I was, that’s medical malpractice on your part. One, you should never share prescriptions, and two, you should never let the patient administer her own doses when she’s really sleepy and out of it.”

Spencer lets you grab his hand, running his thumb over your knuckles. “Can’t leave you alone for even a day,” he scolds through a grin that oozes affection. 

“You know what would make me feel better, Dr. Reid?”

“What?”

“A kiss.”

“Can’t risk it. The virus could have mutated. It might reinfect me.”

“It wouldn’t do that to me,” you promise. Spencer smiles even wider, squeezes your hand tighter. 

“Yeah? Why not?”

“Because we go way back. Like to last week when you got sick.”

“Right. You’re getting cut off the cough syrup, Typhoid Mary.” At that he tries to get up, presumably to go make you dinner—but you refuse to let go of his hand. 

“Hey, wait.”

Spencer, now standing and still holding your hand, looks down at you expectantly. Your head lolls on the pillow as you blink up at him. “Love you.”

He smiles, softer now, and kisses your wrist, right where the feverish blood flows closest to the surface. “I love you.”

After that, it’s hard to feel too bad. 

June 6th

“Can you slow down?” Spencer follows you into the bedroom where you immediately begin yanking open drawers and shoving clothes into your duffel bag. 

“No, because you’re going to try and fix it, and I already told you I don’t want—”

“Jesus Christ—I’m asking you to stop for one fucking second so we can talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But I do. There are two of us in this relationship, and I want to talk about it.”

“And I just said I don’t.” Half the clothes you’ve accrued here are on his floor because they wouldn’t fit into the bag. Both of you stomp carelessly over them toward the bathroom. You’re grabbing products at blind from the medicine cabinet. 

“You are unbelievable. How many more times are you going to do this? How many times are we going to break up because you—”

You whip around, brandishing a toothbrush. “We’re not breaking up. We’ve never broken up because we have never been together. That’s the fucking problem—you always think everything means more than it does. You’re obsessive and clingy and smothering and so fucking exhausting to be around. If you want to talk about it, there. That’s why this is happening.” You shove past him and he tails you down the hall. 

“You’re pathetic,” he calls. “Truly. This is pathetic.”

“Stop talking to me.”

“You know what your problem is? You know why we keep doing this? You’re a coward.”

“Oh my god. Great, yeah, this again. Let’s have this conversation again, please.”

“If you don’t like it maybe you should fucking listen to me this time!” 

The yell rings. It might be hard for the average person to get him this angry. To you, it comes naturally. It comes like switching the shower water from hot to room temperature, washing cool down your neck and shoulders. 

“Goodbye.” You’re making for the door, and you get so far as to open it—but then, Spencer has his hand in a vice grip around your wrist, and he’s slamming the door shut. You startle, almost jumping back into him and then whirling around. He’s so close you can see the freckle in his iris. “What the fuck is your problem?” you shout—when he goes low, you go lower. “Let go.”

“I am not going to keep doing this with you,” he breathes, and his eyes are so dark, so full of gravity and swirling with anger—that for the first time, you actually sort of believe him. “I will say this one last time.” Your heart is pounding as his tongue darts over his lips. You’re frozen. Battered silence hangs all around, waiting to be broken and put back together for the umpteenth time this week. But he keeps his voice low. “I have been patient with you. You were taught that the people closest to you are going to let you down and hurt you. It is not your fault that those lessons are biologically ingrained into your nervous system. I understand that sometimes it doesn’t feel safe to let someone in, and you’re just doing what you think you have to do. But you are an adult. I’m done letting you use me as a scapegoat for your own attachment issues. I love you, and I care about you, and I’m never going to punish you for caring about me. I’m not going to hurt you for it, ever. But I am not your doormat. So I need you to understand that the smokescreens and the manipulation tactics are not going to work anymore. If you leave, it’s going to be because you are afraid. Not because I’m clingy or obsessive or exhausting to be around. You’re going to take accountability for what this is.”

Your wrist flexes in his hold. The words are like searing fire in your veins, in your whole body—burning you clean from the inside out. This is the worst thing he could have said to you. The worst thing he could’ve done while he made you look into his eyes like this. You’d rather be stabbed. If you could, you’d play dead. But you have a terrible feeling that he’s ready to stand here, watching you, for hours. For as long as it takes you to move again. 

“You need to let go of me,” you whisper. 

And he does. For a moment, you stand there, afraid to move, watching him wearily like he’s going to grab you and drag you deeper into some cave—somewhere he can wrap you in a web and keep you there to poke at forever. But he doesn’t. Not when your fingers twitch at the doorknob. Not when you twist it open. Nobody chases you down the hallway. 

He simply lets you go. 

June 11th

The team doesn’t know about your most recent split with Spencer. They never do. No matter how many times it happens, no matter how many brutal arguments you get into, no matter how many disgusting things are said, no matter how many of his dishes you shatter—always, without fail, the two of you will go to work the next morning, stand peaceably next to each other in the elevator, and your coworkers will remain none the wiser. How could they possibly suspect a breakup when they never knew you were together?

It makes you feel insane. It’s like the relationship is a shared hallucination, and the only person who’d assure you that you you’re not going crazy is the one person you don’t want to talk to. And, of course, it puts you into situations like this. You and Spencer have been tasked with going to the medical examiner. Just the two of you. Aside from the hum of the wheels spinning against the wide road and the purr of the engine, the SUV is silent. 

“Take a left up here,” Spencer eventually says. 

You shoot him an irritated glance from the driver’s seat that he does not reciprocate. “The GPS is on, Reid.”

“Yeah, but you have it on silent. You keep missing turns. It’s rerouted three times.”

You grimace, glancing between the road and the mapping system several times. “Wh—and you didn’t think to tell me?”

Spencer doesn’t respond. It’s probably for the best. 

Fifteen minutes later, car doors are slamming in almost-unison. LA is hot today—white sunlight bleaches the sidewalk and beams off the shiny car in death rays. You flip your sunglasses down over your eyes and breathe in the wind coming off the ocean, ruffling the towering palm trees and your shirt. You don’t wait for Spencer. All you can think about when you look at him is what he’d said to you against his door—how he’d laid out the truth bare and in turn made you feel stripped and humiliated. Little more than a specimen, belly up, for him to sink his scalpel into. 

“Hold on,” he calls from behind. For decency’s sake, you do. After all, he is your co-worker. You don’t take your hand off the knob as you watch him coming up behind you in the door’s paned reflection against a wide, aggressively cerulean sky. He’s got sunglasses on, too—too many layers of glass between your eyes and his. You wait for him to speak. He takes his sweet time. “We need to be functional.”

“We are.”

“We need to be more functional. No more avoiding talking on the job.”

You open the door, baptizing yourself in the freezing rush of lobby AC. “That was a you problem. I would have vastly preferred if you hadn’t spent the first five minutes of the drive not telling me that I was going the wrong way.”

“I know,” Spencer agrees, holding the door open above your head. “Sorry. You’re just… kind of scary, sometimes.”

A probable understatement. The corner of your mouth twitches as you flash your badge to the receptionist, and she picks up the phone to alert the examiner of your arrival. 

June 30th

The elevator door was sliding shut as you and JJ chatted about where the two of you were going for dinner—perhaps that new Mediterranean spot with the nice outdoor seating—and then, there was a hand. The door stopped and slid back open. Spencer clearly wasn’t anticipating that it’d be you and JJ, but only the briefest flash of hesitation is visible before he’s plastering on an awkward smile and stepping in. 

“Oh, Spence! We were just talking about going out to dinner—do you have plans?”

You bite your tongue at JJ’s invitation and stare at the glowing panel of buttons. Spencer falters—you can feel his eyes on you. 

“Uh—tonight’s not a great night for me, actually.”

“Are you sure? You cancelled on me last month. And the three of us haven’t gone out in a long time.”

That’s how you end up at a smooth wooden table in a stucco courtyard under a big blue umbrella, serenaded by the burbling of a central tiled fountain and some bouncy stringed instrument coming through a wall mounted speaker with JJ and Spencer. And then, because of course, JJ gets a call from Will—something about the kids throwing up—apologizes profusely, and then leaves. Leaves the two of you alone. Together. At a restaurant. 

Silence hangs from the umbrella. You get impatient under the pressure of it. “Wow. We’re already having so much fun.”

The sarcasm does not go over Spencer’s head. “In my defense, I tried not to come.”

You sigh, cheek squished against fist and studying the way sunlight bounces off the splashing water as you slurp forlornly from a straw. “Not your fault.”

“Should we go?”

You turn your attention back to him, squinting and nibbling at the end of your straw. “I don’t know. We already ordered.”

“So… you wanna wait?”

A shrug. “It probably won’t be that long.”

And with that, a silent treaty is signed. 

“You know,” you begin, fishing a strawberry from your glass, “JJ was right. I can’t remember the last time the three of us hung out.”

“September 24th.”

You nod. “Wow. So, like… eight months. We kind of suck.”

The reason you’d stopped going out as a group was as much the changing of seasons as it was the shifting in your dynamic with Spencer. Around that time you’d started to see him one on one a lot more. This truth goes clearly acknowledged, but unspoken, as he tracks a drip of condensation down your glass and then regards you with a cool sort of curiosity. 

“Eight months is quite a while, huh?”

You eye him right back and lean down to your straw. “Basically forever.”

Later, easy chit-chat dots the short walk to your vehicle—it’s been hours, and you haven’t run out of things to say. You could keep going, you realize once you’re standing next to your car. A month without his company, and you’re brimming over with stories and anecdotes you’d been saving for him. He’s the first person you think about when you hear a funny joke or learn something new. That doesn’t just go away when if you’re not on good terms. It simmers. Waits for inevitable release. 

The sky is a gorgeous cocktail of pink and purple and yellow. You tilt your head back and close your eyes, just briefly, breathing in, letting the setting sun soak through your skin. 

“Beautiful,” you observe once your eyes flutter open again, tracing the wispy edges of rose-colored clouds. 

“Very.”

You sigh, taking in just a bit more vitamin D—and then you’re looking back at Spencer. He’s already looking at you, gilded in the heavy aureate light. Studying, in that way of his.

“Are we good?” He asks, after a moment. 

You blink. And then you offer him a small smile. “We’re good.”

July 13th

The trouble of being friends with Spencer is this: once you allow yourself a taste, no matter how small, no matter how innocent—you’re overcome with the desire to bite down. You want him between your teeth and on the back of your tongue. Messy, starving, gnashing, you don’t care. You want and want and want. 

Victim number one of your relapse: the coat tree. It clatters to the ground and spills everything everywhere when Spencer stumbles against it, trying to walk backwards into the apartment after you blindly lock the door. Of course, he couldn’t see where he was going—he was too busy tracing the seam of your bottom lip with his tongue. 

“Shit,” he breathes, nearly tripping again as winter coats and scarves, dormant for summer, wrap around his ankles and threaten to pull him down. You giggle breathlessly, slipping off your own shoes as he kicks at the heavy fabrics like they’re going to bite. Then he’s pulling you back into him, deeper into the apartment, tongues clashing. It’s been a long time, and he’s demanding. Not that you mind—not at all. Though, when he pulls you the opposite direction of his bedroom—toward his desk, in fact—you’re certainly confused.

“Bed?” You whisper against his mouth. 

“Can’t. Rebinding books, they’re laid out on the bed while the glue dries.”

Okay. “Couch?”

Reluctantly, Spencer pulls away. You yelp in surprise when he grabs your hair and uses it as a handle to direct your attention toward the sofa. Also covered in books. It’s amazing, actually, the sheer volume of them when they’re not neatly tucked into the shelf. And he’s got them all memorized. You look back at him, a wave of renewed awe washing through your veins. He’s so fucking strange. You missed him awfully. 

Pressing close enough is impossible, then, as you kiss him hard. There is a blatant, unapologetic hunger in his touch which completely ignores the border that the hem of your short dress presents, grabbing the back of your thigh in a bruising grip. Your breath catches against his mouth at the way his fingers dig into you like you’re wet clay and he knows best, he knows how to make you into something better, as the slow ache crawls up the back of your neck and furrows your brow. Spencer’s not afraid to touch you. He knows exactly how to make sure he’s got all your attention.

Nobody else has ever been able to do that. From other hands, when you’re forced to go begging for the cheap version of what you really want, it’s little more than untrained violence. Spencer knows how to make it feel righteous. Nobody is ever him. That hand comes to slide up the front of your thigh, thumb skimming the hem of your underwear while he dives back into your mouth and you let yourself be completely washed out in the riptide of his desperate affections. All that you’d been missing for months—you want it now. You want to show him how much you missed him. 

“Spencer—” you gasp between kisses. He hums against your mouth, and you let your hand slide down his stomach to hook in his belt. “Spence, can I—please, baby—”

“You don’t have to beg me, honey. I’m gonna give you whatever you want.” Lips against your warm cheek, your forehead, as he lilts sweetly, breathily. “Anything.”

So you’re nodding, dizzy in your anticipation and your desire, wordlessly pleading for more of his mouth on yours while you take off a belt you’re intimately familiar with. The clinking metal wakes up a part of you that’s been asleep since the last time you’d had him like this. When you drop to your knees, he seems vaguely surprised, eyes soft and all love on you. 

“Really?” he croons, hand already at your temple, already smoothing baby hairs. Already being the person you want him to be, because he’s been waiting, because it’s natural. Your nod, your eyes, the way your hands find his legs—it’s all enough for him. You get what you want. 

The hardwood presses against your knees, shifting and squeaking beneath you. Spencer takes his time pushing your hair out of your face, gathering it between his fingers and holding it to the crown of your head with an impossible kind of tenderness as you move. He strokes your cheek, brushes his thumb feather-light over the soft line of your lashes, once, twice. The fabric of his trousers bunches in your hands where they rest on his legs—he’s so kind to you that it hurts, it makes you want to cry, it makes you want to stay here forever just so he’ll keep looking at you like that, so you never forget how his pinky feels against the nape of your neck or the heel of his palm feels against your temple as he plays and plays with your hair, as even when you’re the one on your knees, he worships you. Christens you his own little angel, angel, angel—whispered like he really believes it, like you’re a miracle. Spencer loves in a way that feels like soothing, that feels like an apology for all the bad things that have ever happened to you and a nullifying of all the bad things you have ever done. 

Afterward you press your forehead against his thigh, mostly to hide the welling of your eyes when there’s no longer any good excuse—partially as a kind of supplication. Never let me go again. Please. No matter what I say. I’m sorry. 

Spencer fixes himself, crouches to your level, drops your hair just to push it out of your face and make you look at him. Your chest rises and falls rapidly as your glossy eyes dart between his. But you don’t look away. You don’t want to. When a tear rolls down your cheek, he sees it, and there’s nothing you can do. And you realize you’re not sure you’d want to hide it after all. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” he murmurs. “We’re okay. What do you need? What can I give you, sweetheart? Do you want to be done? Want me to move the books so we can sit down?”

“No, no—I don’t wanna be done. I just missed you so much. I was dumb before. I’m sorry.”

He softens impossibly at this, to the point where he’s hazy around the edges, melting into the warm ambient light. “You weren’t. You weren’t dumb. Come here, stand up. You’re never dumb—here, is this okay?” He’s sat you on his desk, shoving things aside to make room—casualties for a later consideration—and he’s already littering kisses over your neck. “I missed you too. I think about you all the time, angel, you don’t need to apologize, just… god, I missed you. Please let me touch you. Please.”

It’s hard to say no to that—what with the begging, and the pull of your lip between his teeth, and the heat of his breath fogging your brain. There’s not a lot of room to work with, but you manage to lean enough of your weight back that he can tug your underwear down your thighs. They end up on the floor, and you feel his hand sliding beneath your dress again, where you’re bare for him, and he doesn’t make you wait. 

“Oh my god, you’re perfect,” he mutters upon discovering just how ready for him you are. You hiss as he slips past the initial resistance. Spencer responds with his lips pressed to your head, but he shows no mercy with the slow rock of his hand, the drag against where you’re softest and where you need him the most, the exact right place to touch you. Your arching, squirming, whimpering, doesn’t deter him in the slightest. When your thighs clamp shut and you shift back, he follows you. When you look up at him, brow furrowed, lips parted—in disbelief but without the words to say it—he’s already looking at you. “I know,” he assures you. “That’s it, huh? Right here?”

Rapidly you nod. His exhale is almost one of relief. “Yeah,” he sighs, knowingly. Melting closer to kiss you again. 

It doesn’t bother him when your nails dig into his flexing forearm as you cum. Judging by the groan, you think he might like it. 

You’re barely recovered by the time he’s lining himself up to you, but you find your bearings quickly. It’s a slow, bated burn, when he finally does it. You’re both silent, tense, hardly breathing in anticipation. What has at times been a slip feels now more like an endless push—it is its own kind of back-arching, toe curling, deep-in-your-spine ecstasy, as he breaks you open slow. Your legs part wider for him, and your hips yearn to push against his.

His words burst forth with the same expelling of pressure, at the same time, as your first sudden cry. “Fuck, angel. Jesus.”

There’s a stinging point of light inside you that he’s pushing against. You close your eyes and watch it flash and spark. “Feels so good,” you promise, nothing more than a whisper. Whatever this is, this pain and pleasure, it’s landed you in some divine plane. You never want it to end. 

“Relax for me, honey. Let go a little.”

“I am, I am,” you defend on a quick exhale, looking down when he stops fighting to get in. “Please—why’d you stop? Please—”

“You’re not ready.”

“Yes, I am, fuck, please, Spencer!”

Something in you is desperate and starving and you need it now—you’ve needed it for a long time—but he doesn’t capitulate. Instead, he kisses you. Softly. Slow and sweet, like you have all the time in the world. You have no choice but to drown in it. It’s a short-circuit in your body when after a minute of this, after he senses the way you’ve dissolved, suddenly his hips are flush with yours. You gasp and a pencil cup clatters to the ground in your search for purchase. You’re little more than a pulsing, glowing star, lightheaded at the depth and the pressure and the way that band of resistance he’d pushed past aches around him in time with the pound of your heart. Spencer is leaning against you, gripping the edge of the desk behind you hard and breathing heavily against your neck. 

Words have every opportunity to pass from your dropped jaw, but you’re actually speechless. Your heartbeat is a white flashing in your eyes. The only verbal expression at your disposal: “Spencer.”

For a moment time suspends like that, and you wonder how the fuck you could ever have made any decision that would take you away from him, away from this. This is so obviously the only right answer. 

Slowly, he draws out, and you stop breathing. Come back. Come back. Your legs spell it out as they wrap around his hips. It’s just as slow on the uptake, and you loose a shuddering, rattling breath. Your body tenses and shifts, trying to pull you up and away from the feeling—but not because it hurts. It’s just so mind-numbingly fucking deep. Everywhere. The base of your spine, the tips of your fingers. Out. While you have a fleeting moment of sentience, you whisper his name a few times in quick succession. This successfully draws his attention and he lifts his head from your shoulder, pupils blown to hell as he’s already dragging back in. A too-honest, too-raw cry pulls from your soul, turns half disbelieving laugh as he presses against your deepest part and black spots dance in your vision. 

His eye darts to the way your knee pulls up, clearly beyond your control—the way your body tries to make sense of him, tries to respond to what he’s doing to you. You watch as it happens—that flash in his eyes. That shift into a kind of determination that always ends with you dead asleep on his pillow, face streaked with dried tears borne of sheer overwhelm. Spencer fits his arm around you and pulls you flush to him, the other hooking under your knee and holding you open. He sets a new pace, and it doesn’t take long to get you gripping at the back of his shirt and tearing up on his shoulder, making due with gasping sips of air and having completely given up on holding in the keens and the pleases and the occasional sob that to the trained ear sounds much like his name. 

You feel it coming—the searing heat, the pound of your heart, the drop of your stomach. It hits as hard as you knew it would. 

Usually he’s a little more talkative—but that comes later. With you pushed over his desk, and his arm around your chest, and his lips pressed to your ear. Blindly you reach back for him—you need him, you need something—and without question he catches your hand, pressing it hard into the dark surface of the wood. His thumb strokes at your hand, his fingers curl with yours, and Spencer continues with those murmurings, like spells—things nobody who knew him would ever imagine him saying. Things that have you making promises, breathing uh-huh’s, telling him you love him. Things that have your vision going black and your throat tightening around choked moans. He’s never had you this vulnerable before. You’re dizzy, drunk on it. This time when the end comes, it’s a heavy crash. It pulls you under. It does whatever the fuck it wants with you and tumbles you in its current forever because he’s not stopping, still slowly closing in on his own peak. There are moments where it goes beyond good. It’s just complete and utter sensation, on all fronts—thoughts come as colors and textures instead of words. You don’t even feel tethered to your body anymore, your grip on reality tenuous at best. 

Eventually all the crashing does end, and you whine brokenly, and he shushes you softly, and finally, finally, stills inside of you. 

Slowly, you come back to yourself. It’s dark outside, now. You can hear weekend traffic on the streets below. His apartment is clean (aside from the shit that got knocked over and the books on the couch) and it’s sticky summer warm, and it smells like home. It’s safe. And everything is okay. You don’t know if you’ve ever felt so okay in your life. 

Spencer adjusts his hold on you when your weight signals that you want to lie flat on the desk, face pressed against your forearm, catching your breath in the wood-lacquer darkness. He follows you down, arms braced on either side of your head. His weight on your back is a comfort, as are his lips at the nape of your neck. 

“Okay?” he murmurs. Two gentle syllables, marked with exertion. You nod against your arm. “Not ready to talk?” Another nod. Another okay. 

For a stretch of time, he’s pressed his face against the back of your shoulder. You’re still seeing dancing colors behind your lids. 

The twinkly laughter comes as a surprise. “I don’t know where to put you, baby. All the places for lying down are covered in antique books.”

There’s not much air in your lungs. You spend it on laughter.

August 3rd

Spencer corners you outside the bathroom. 

“Who was that?” He demands, eyes worrisomely clear on you, voice alarmingly steady. You glance around to see if any of your coworkers can see the way he’s practically got you up against the wall down the dark passageway. The way he’s looking at you. Like he owns you. 

“Who was who?”

“I’m not willing to play stupid with you right now. Answer me.”

It’s easier to hurt your feelings these days. They’re closer to the surface. Sometimes it makes things feel really, really good. Sometimes your eyes sting at the smallest of provocations—things you would’ve brushed off without a second thought a year ago. You meet his eyes and swallow. “You’re being a fucking dick.”

Spencer is unfazed. His response is whip-fast and too loud, even among the chatter and laughter and music and clinking glasses. “Did you sleep with him?”

“What? What is your problem?” you hiss, pushing Spencer just hard enough to get some breathing room. 

“Why won’t you answer the question?”

“God, are you—you know what? No. You are so fucking out of line right now. Fuck off.”

You leave Spencer in the hallway and emerge into the bar. It’s bustling tonight. The whole BAU is here, scattered around, but suddenly, you feel aimless. Your nervous system is rattled after being accosted as soon as you left the bathroom, on what had previously been a good night. So you stand there, looking around and fiddling with your bracelet. 

It’s one Spencer recently gifted to you. A simple, delicate chain, but clearly well-crafted. The clasp is the only real ornamentation—two interlocking circles of equivalent circumference. There is no tail of wider chain loops to create an adjustable size—it is exactly what it is, and it fits you perfectly. To some, it’d be an underwhelming gift. No lavish stones, no poetic engraving, no garish costume-jewelry gold. But it means more to you than you could ever explain to somebody else. More than you’d ever feel comfortable explaining to somebody else. Spencer knows that. Two interlocking circles. 

When he gave it to you, you had a panic attack. Jewelry felt like a big step. But you didn’t do your usual thing where you start a huge fight and then dump him, and he didn’t take offense to your overwhelm. He only comforted you, and when all was said and done, you held out your wrist, and he put the bracelet on for you, and kissed the back of your hand. You haven’t taken it off since. It’s quickly become something of a talisman—you worry at it when you don’t know what to do with your hands. Even now. When you feel like punching him in the face. 

Did you sleep with him? What an asshole. What a fucking asshole. Spencer grovels and simpers and promises he’ll never hurt you, and then he goes and does something like that. The him in question—the one who recognized you when you were ordering a drink, and who held you up for maybe five minutes—is nowhere to be seen. That’s for the best. The recognition was not reciprocal. But rather than humiliate yourself in front of this man who knew your name by admitting you couldn’t place his face, you’d played along. Laughed awkwardly at his jokes like you knew who he was.

You don’t get why Spencer is so angry. He’s not the type to get jealous just because you spoke to another man. Sure, the man was perhaps a little over-familiar with you. He was flirty.

But Spencer is so overreacting. 

Before you can stop yourself, you’re looking back in his direction. 

He’s still in the dimly lit hallway. He’s watching you, hands in suit packets, and for all that you’ve seen his face, all the times you’d swore to commit every bit of it to memory—you can’t read his expression. 

That only pisses you off worse. 

You pointedly turn away, carving a path through the Friday night patrons toward the jukebox. 

The machine takes your quarter, but there’s something of a queue, and you realize you’re in too much of a bad mood to stand around getting jostled by drunk people who are having way more fun than you are. 

That’s how you end up out front, letting the rough stone wall bite into your bare arm and watching the cars go by, surrounded by patrons who’d stepped out for a smoke. 

Maybe you shouldn’t let Spencer ruin your entire night because of some stupid outburst. But you can’t shake it. 

Is that what he thinks of you? That you sleep around? That you cheat? Sure, the two of you haven’t explicitly had the commitment talk. But you thought it was pretty fucking implied. 

The moon is a bright white spotlight overhead. Despite the season, a breeze nips at all your exposed skin, and you cross your arms against the chill. Earlier, in your classy-enough white minidress and blue pumps, you’d felt beautiful. Now you just feel gross. 

Spencer comes out a few minutes later. 

“They’re playing your song.”

You can tell by the way he stops a few feet away that his tail is between his legs. Your head rolls toward him. 

“I can hear.”

It’s true—the buzzy, bouncy twang is distinctive even through a wall, and every drum beat is clear as day. So is the cheer that goes around as a bunch of drunk Generation X-ers and millennials recognize the synth riff. 

Spencer narrows his eyes and searches for the words. “I can’t help but feeling it’s slightly… pointed.”

What? Playing a song called Love Will Tear Us Apart? 

Pointed? 

Surely not. 

You don’t bother using your words—the exaggerated faux-bafflement on your face gets the message across. 

Spencer nods, looking appropriately contrite as he steps closer. You let him. 

“You were right,” he murmurs, speaking just for you now. “I was out of line.”

“Oh, really? Thanks for telling me. I hadn’t noticed.”

He says your name gently. You shut up and cast your glare sideways, watching a crumpled plastic cup make its way down the sidewalk. 

“I’m sorry. I just—I know you’re beautiful. I know people notice you. But we’re not usually in environments where I have to watch it happen. Or… or maybe it just goes over my head. That’s entirely possible. Either way, I’m not used to seeing you get hit on, and I couldn’t tell if you knew the guy, or if… maybe you were just hitting it off, and—I—I panicked, because we’ve never really had that talk before. I know what you are to me. But I’ve never clarified what I am to you. I’m not going to push you on the labels thing. You know I’m not. We should be on the same page about this, though.”

You sigh. Fiddle with your bracelet and watch it glint. “Spencer, I swear that guy—”

“I don’t care about that guy. It wasn’t about him. I’m sorry. I just want you to know that regardless of what we call it, it matters to me that we’re not doing this with anyone else.” His voice takes on that intimate tone—just barely more than a whisper. You look down as he grabs your hand, and drags it back up to his heart. Your breath catches. “You are my person, and I need that to be clear. Is that okay with you?”

His sincerity has stunned you speechless, and the proximity isn’t helping either, so you can only let your fingers catch on his lapel and nod—quick, eager little dips of your head. Yes, yes, you think. I can’t say it like you can. But yes. Please. That’s what I want. 

“Yeah?” he asks quietly, mirroring your nod and fondness twitching at the corners of his mouth. 

What you want to say is, oh, god, I love you. I love you so much it hurts. It burns inside of me, all the time, and I don’t know what to do with it all. I love you I love you I love you. 

Instead, you say, in your smallest voice, “Yeah. Yes.”

The way he slips his hand behind your neck and kisses you against that wall, under the full August moon and between clouds of cigarette smoke, cools your blood. It’s the only thing that works. 

Later in bed, you watch him sleep, that same moonlight casting silver through his hair as you comb your fingers through it, again and again. 

Before he’d fallen asleep, you’d asked him a question that had been on your mind since the bar. 

Spencer?

Hm?

What am I to you?

It’d caught him off guard. He held your hand, pressed the circles of your bracelet just to your racing pulse on the underside of your wrist, and mapped your face with darting eyes, with an intellect that can’t read minds no matter how much he wishes it could. 

Do you actually want me to answer that question?

You’d nodded. 

Is the answer going to freak you out?

At this you’d shaken your head no—which was an assurance made in haste. But you were too curious. You needed to know. 

Spencer weighed something internally for a long moment. 

You’re like… a lens I see the entire world through. I can’t do anything, or make any choice, without thinking about you. I’m always thinking about you. When we’re not together, it feels like I’m waiting for my life to start again. Nothing really counts unless you’re there to experience it with me, you know? I think of you as… I don’t know. Everything. You’re why I know it’s all real. Why it matters. 

It was so much, you had to hide in the curve of his neck. It made you nervous. The bigger it is, the harder it falls. 

But, because it mattered so much to you—because he matters so much—you found the courage to whisper against his neck: Me, too.

It was a really scary thing to admit. Scarier than when you tell him you love him. He kissed you for your bravery. 

Now, he’s asleep. 

You trace the moon-glow line of his cheek. 

Spencer lies sleeping next to you like a Renaissance angel as hot tears burn a scar down the bridge of your nose, and you bargain with god. Let me be good enough for him. Let me be someone else. Anything. I’ll do anything, just—please. Take this feeling away. Make me into a girl who deserves this kind of love. 

God does not answer. 

August 19th

Something is off. 

It started when you and Spencer didn’t take the same car to the airfield. 

Of course, that’s not unheard of—but it is uncommon. If it’s at all possible, he’ll slide in next to you. Today he didn’t even wait—got engrossed in a debate with Emily and followed her right into an almost-full SUV. 

So you stood there, blinked, and climbed into the other car next to Rossi. You didn’t say a word for the whole fifteen minute drive, watching the muddy fields and warehouses roll by beyond the window. 

Spencer isn’t doing anything wrong. 

It’s just that it’s been nearly a week since you’ve spent a night with him. And it’s starting to make you feel restless. There have been crack of dawn doctor’s appointments, and nights where one or both of you are too tired to drive to the other’s place, and preexisting plans with other people. All valid reasons to raincheck. 

But you’re not used to sleeping alone anymore. It’s not what you do. It feels like a really big deal to you that you haven’t had a sleepover for so long, and he hasn’t mentioned it, or given any hint that it’s bothering him the way it’s bothering you. 

God, when was the last time you spent more than two or three nights apart?

The last time you broke up, you realize. 

That is a sobering thought. 

On the jet, it’s not much better. Again, Spencer doesn’t wait for you before boarding. You’re slamming the car door, and he’s already walking up the steps in animated conversation with JJ. 

There is an old, familiar pang in your chest. 

No. No, please—I’m past this. I’m too grown-up for this. 

He loves me. 

But there’s that old paradox, again. If nobody except Spencer knows that you’re dating Spencer—and he’s not acknowledging it—are you really even together?

By the time you get on, he’s at the table. The three seats around him have been filled. You eye each of your coworkers and try not to feel burning rage, because they didn’t do anything wrong. 

Instead, you sit on the far end of the couch, and you pick your nails. 

The whole first day at the precinct is pretty much the same story, though you’re able to engross yourself deeply enough into the job that it doesn’t bother you so much. 

It’s only when the day is over, and you’re showered, and you’re sitting on your perfectly made hotel queen bed, that loneliness turns into gnawing, tearing panic. 

You catch your breath as it hits you—as the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and dread washes out the shell of your body. It’s bad. Worse than you would’ve imagined. 

What is wrong with you?

Why can’t you ever just be alright?

You don’t know if the solution here is to go to Spencer or to remain locked in your room like a psych-patient in a padded cell. 

Panic makes you unreasonable, you think. Pushing off the bed to pace. Moving helps. Moving tells your body that you’re evading the threat, and the panic attack ends sooner. 

Something you’d learned from Spencer, of course. 

Spencer. 

Unreasonable, right. You’re not entirely dependent on him for your mental stability. You have developed implicit expectations, sure—you’re used to being alone with him every night, so you can talk about your days and drink tea and be close. That’s not a bad thing. It’s a routine you’ve developed, and one you’ve come to rely on. Surely it’d be disregulating for anyone if it suddenly changed without warning. It’s not because you’re obsessive, or sick, or overly-needy. And it’s normal for couples to take a few days apart. 

Not obsessive, not sick, not needy. It’s normal. This is normal. 

This becomes your mantra as you pace the patterned carpet, eyes closed, lips moving, like if you stop the panic is going to catch you and swallow you whole. 

For a few minutes, it works. 

Then, for no apparent reason—it stops working. 

And it’s like watching a dam explode from the valley below. 

For a second you don’t know if you should run to the bathroom and throw up or go to Spencer’s door, and then you’re questioning if it’s late enough to go to his room, if maybe someone on the team might be out in the hallway—but your brain is screaming, if you do not go see Spencer, you are going to die. Who gives a fuck about your fucking coworkers. 

You tap lightly at his door. 

He doesn’t answer right away, and the brightly lit hallway seems to stretch on forever. You’re so profoundly anxious that there is a moment of hysterical, perverse humor. Look at you. About to die in a hotel hallway, barefoot and in pajama shorts, if he doesn’t open this fucking door. And of course. Of course he’s not going to open it. This is great stuff. Really, awesome material. Perfect. 

Just as you’re gripping the door frame to stop the building from spinning, just as you’re really, seriously about to pass out—the lock clicks. The door opens. 

Glasses. Sweatshirt. Spencer. 

“Hey! I was just about to—” he stops. Perhaps notices your slumped posture, how you’re white-knuckling the door. Maybe the sheen of sweat on your face. “Hey, okay—come here.”

Spencer wraps an arm around you and helps you in, closing the door and then leading you to his bed. 

“You look like you’re gonna pass out,” he mutters, laying you down carefully—ideally to get the blood flow back to your head. You blink. 

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you okay? Did something happen?”

“I’m fine.”

You say it because you’re embarrassed. Spencer says your name with an edge that wants the truth. 

“It was just a panic attack.”

This doesn’t satisfy him. 

“Do you often pass out from panic attacks?”

“Um… not never.”

Your vision clears. Your ears stop ringing, and you push yourself up to sit against the headboard. Spencer has a bottle of water locked and loaded, holding it out for you as soon as you’re settled. 

The way he’s watching you as you drink, with so much unabashed and scrutinizing concern in that knit brow, is almost too much. You look away and screw the lid back on. 

“What triggered it?” He asks. 

“I don’t know, I was just sitting there—I was literally just sitting there, and suddenly my brain was like, by the way, you have five minutes to live, and—and I don’t know. I tried walking it off and breathing and stuff. I’m sorry I came here. It’s not your problem.”

“You’re not a problem. This isn’t a problem. You should’ve come before it got this bad.”

When he sets his hand on your knee, you close your eyes and try not to let it feel like medicine. 

It’s not his job to fix you. That’s not what he’s for. 

“Yeah,” is all you say. 

A pause. 

“Why didn’t you come sooner?”

It’s clear he’s putting the pieces together. You sigh and fiddle with the bottle cap. Untwist. Twist. Untwist. 

“I… don’t know. I was overthinking.”

“Overthinking what?”

You flash him a look, because he knows he’s pushing you—but he’s unrelenting. 

Spencer’s hair is a corona of unruly curls. He hasn’t shaved in a few days. You don’t want to have this conversation—you want to put your head in his lap and fall asleep to the hotel TV. 

“It’s stupid. It doesn’t make sense. I just—I don’t know, we didn’t talk all day, and—”

You take a quick, shuddering inhale, and close your mouth. Because you realize you’re about to cry. And now you can’t even soften the blow of your insanity—you can’t tell him, I know I’m being crazy, I know nothing is wrong, I know it’s okay for us to not talk for a day or to spend a few nights apart and it doesn’t mean you hate me. 

But you can’t say any of that. It wouldn’t be true, anyways. You don’t know any of those things. 

Spencer is observing you and you can’t tell what he’s thinking. You look down at your folded legs to hide your wobbling chin. 

There’s no hiding the plunk of a fat tear as it hits the mattress, or the subsequent bloom of saltwater grey turning the sheet into a ghostly, sad little garden. You wipe your face with a furious, punishing hand, and speak hoarsely. “Sorry.”

Spencer catches your wrist before you can take out your own eye. “Stop.”

“I’m fine,” you insist, snatching your hand away though you desperately crave the contact. “I don’t even know why I’m crying. I don’t know—I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Everything is fine.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t—you need to stop doing that. Minimizing everything all the time. If everything was fine, you wouldn’t have had a panic attack and you wouldn’t be crying now.”

“Everything is fine,” you assert. Anger—not at him—begins seeping through your tone, burning you at the edges. “Everything is fine, but I’m obviously not, and I’m sick of getting so fucking upset about nothing all the time.”

“Tell me why you’re upset.”

“Because I’m crazy! Because we haven’t been together all week, and you didn’t sit next to me in the car today, or on the jet, and—and ever since I actually stopped holding you at arm’s length, I’m so fucking involved, and I care so much, and I knew this would happen. Before, it wouldn’t have mattered if we didn’t spend the night together for a week, because I wasn’t all in, and I knew if I was always giving you just a little less than you were giving me that the dynamic would be in my favor, and I would never have to feel like I was the unwanted one. But I can’t do that anymore, because—’cause I let myself care all the way, and I was so afraid of this happening, and it’s happening. I don’t have any fucking control over myself anymore. I’m so worried, all the time—it’s like, I have a doomsday clock inside of me, but instead of the end of the world it’s measuring how close you are to breaking up with me at any moment. Which is fucked, I know it’s fucked. I know I can’t read your mind, but I don’t have any perspective anymore. And the worst part is that it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I know the more insane and hyper-vigilant and codependent I get, the likelier you are to actually break up with me. It was never a problem before. It was never this scary because if I was the one who kept breaking up with you it meant I was in control, but I don’t wanna break up with you at all. I’m terrified of it. But it—it’s like my karma, I—”

“Okay. Slow down.” Your head snaps up—wide, teary eyes on Spencer. You almost forgot he was there. “Breathe. Just—take a deep breath.”

Fuck. You drag your hands to your face, fully prepared to curl in on yourself and die rather than face your own humiliation. 

“No, no—look at me. Come on.”

“I’m going insane,” you sniffle as he peels your hands away and forces you to look at him. “I c-can’t say anything that will make me sound less crazy.”

“You’re not crazy. Your nervous system is just shot, and you’re probably exhausted. Did you eat? I didn’t see you have dinner.”

Guilty, you shake your head. You didn’t realize he was paying attention. 

“I’ll call room service,” he decides. 

“I’m really not hungry.”

Spencer ignores this and picks up the phone anyway. You sit back against the headboard and hug your knees to your chest, staring at nothing as he orders something you’ll like. Waiting for the click of the phone back in its cradle. 

When the call is over, there is tremulous silence. A tension you’re not sure how to go about breaking. 

Spencer does it for you—finding your ankle and carefully pulling your leg straight, so he can run the length of it back and forth with his hand. You watch it go, like waves rolling in and falling back on sand. 

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to spend enough time together this week. I missed you, too. I absolutely do not want to break up. Not one part of me wants that.”

“I should be able to know that without you telling me.”

“But you aren’t, yet. You’re going to learn.”

“But—until I do—you’re gonna have to—to reassure me constantly. I’m going to be exhausting and irritating and you’re going to get sick of me.”

He regards you. 

“It makes me really sad that you feel that way. I think you severely underestimate how much I like you.”

“Why, though?” Immediately you’re rolling your eyes and throwing your hands up. “See? Fucking right there. Already. I’m already doing it.”

Spencer is holding back a smile when you look at him. You shrink. 

“No, no—” he laughs, leaning in. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you.”

You end up nearly lying down, with him over you. Breathing in his mint and eucalyptus bedtime smell. The smile fades slowly, as he thumbs over your cheek, your lips. Your lids flutter at the relief of it all. 

“I’m hoping… we’ll never have to do a week like that again. I didn’t like it very much, either.”

You lean into his palm, and don’t speak for a long while. 

“Spencer?”

“Hm?”

“Can—” you swallow involuntarily. You’re scared to ask. But you know what the answer will be. “Can we… I know I’ve messed up a bunch of times, but—can I be your girlfriend? We don’t have to tell anyone, I just… I want to be your real girlfriend.”

The slow blossom of his smile is like a swell in your favorite song as he grins down at you. 

“You’ve been my real girlfriend for a while.”

“I know, but… I want you to tell me that’s what I am. I want to know that when you think of me, you’re thinking about your real-life serious girlfriend.”

He hums. 

“And am I allowed to tell other people that you’re my real-life serious girlfriend?”

You chew your lip. “Some of them.”

“Which ones?”

He’s angling for something, and you know what, but you’re not sure you’re ready for that particular step. 

“I don’t know. We’ll find some.”

“I have a few in mind.”

“We can’t,” you murmur, hugging his arm to your chest. “Not yet. They’ll—it’ll change things. But… but maybe we don’t have to hide it quite as much.”

“Like… no running away when we see someone we know in public?”

You nod. “And I have a rule.”

He strokes your hair. 

“What’s that?”

“You have to always save a seat for me in the cars and on the jet. Always. Capiche?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

You tilt your chin up. He kisses you. 

Now that you’ve got him, you’re not going to let go. 

September 1st

“You’re delusional. Truly, you’re acting insane.”

“For wondering why you had to stay three hours late at work to review one interview transcript you could’ve done during lunch?”

Spencer drops his bag onto a chair and rounds the counter, pushing a hand through his hair. You remain leaning against the back of the couch, arms crossed.

“It is not that simple.” He insists. “You’re being paranoid and unreasonable. Again.”

“Or you’re being defensive.”

Spencer’s eyes narrow, like he’s just now seeing you for the first time since he got home. That is to say—his home. 

“Am I being accused of something?”

Words catch in your throat. Normally you’d hurl a ridiculous indictment as a matter of anything being possible—but not this time. It would be abjectly absurd to accuse him of cheating at anything other than cards. 

“No,” you huff after a weighty moment. 

“So what? What’s the point of this? I come home after staying at work three hours late listening to a man recounting in excruciating detail how he killed and ate an entire family because nobody else wanted to do it, and as soon as I walk through my own front door you start a fucking fight with me? Over nothing?”

The sudden slope in volume is startling as it rings off the walls like a gunshot. Rarely does he raise his voice before you have the chance to. 

For the few moments you’re stunned into silence, you take note of a few things you hadn’t before. The pound of his heart in his throat and just beneath his eye. Exhaustion evident in the strain of his voice and the mess of his hair, hanging over his face limp in some places and frazzled in others. The fragile glaze over his eyes, even as they widen and crackle with heat. It takes a lot out of a person to sit and listen to what he listened to for as long as he did. Even Spencer—even a man who can intellectualize and pathologize any human atrocity into microscopic pulses of electricity coursing through grey matter. 

It gets to him like it gets to everyone. You know that. 

Fuck. 

The most embarrassing part is that you started this fight because you missed him, and you still haven’t quite figured out how to not be afraid of that feeling. Sometimes when you miss him it feels like a threat to your autonomy, and by extension, your safety. You sure as hell don’t know how to just admit this to him. 

So instead you pick fights. Not as much, anymore, but sometimes when you’re in need of comfort and just can’t ask for it, you’ll start pushing your luck with inflammatory comments. You’ll trigger a meaningless argument. Spencer will eventually whittle your fighting words down to a simple, familiar truth. He will realize that this is your way of telling him you need something, and then you get the sweet after: where he rewards you for nothing, where he tries to apologize for a conflict you’d created with gentle touches and murmured words of comfort. Sun after a storm. It’s easy to accept affection and tenderness if you’ve intentionally scratched open all your old wounds—if you’ve earned it through trial by blood. 

Tonight, he’s not having it. You sense no reality where this ends with a sweet kiss and whispers so soft you can hardly hear them. 

Which means you need to backtrack. 

So you swallow your pride and your shame and your fear. Choke on it, really. But the words come out all the same. 

“I’m sorry.”

Spencer’s chest is still rising and falling quickly. The purple paisley silk of his tie catches your eye. It’s all astray. You want to fix it. He could breathe better if you took it off. And there’s no way he’s not bothered by his hair falling over his face. 

How can you make this go away?

Could it go in the other direction these quarrels sometimes do? Maybe it could end with you achey and tired in his arms, after he kisses the marks around your wrists, the little purple splotches on your hips and the starburst clusters of broken blood vessels on your thighs. Here, too, he’ll end up being sanguine—there’ll just be more steps in between. 

Just as you’re running scenarios in your mind, calculating outcomes and trying to chart the best plan of action, his tongue darts over his lips. It’s enough to stop you in your tracks. 

Why hasn’t his brow relaxed? Those eyes, still darting over your face with a kind of urgency—is that hunger or dissatisfaction with what he sees?

“You should go.”

A beat. 

This does not process instantaneously. You blink and shake your head as if you could clear it that way. 

“What?”

Spencer’s eyes are a forge on you, but he diverts them to the wall. Sparing you from the edge of a glowing sword. You don’t know how you’d prefer it—cool to the touch and sharp enough to cut, or soft and burning and prolonged. He’s probably decided he’s being civil. Doesn’t realize it lasts so much longer this way. 

“I think you should go home for the weekend.”

“Why?” It bursts from you, trembling and affronted. 

��Because I can’t—” he stops himself. Shutters his eyes and takes a deep breath that doesn’t seem to do much of anything. “I am not in the right headspace for this. I need you out of here.”

“What do you mean, this?”

“You. This thing you always do. I do not have it in me to make you feel better about yourself right now.”

It would’ve been quicker to just kick you in the stomach. 

For a moment you’re too stunned to speak as he blurs through a thick cloud of tears. 

“You are such a fucking asshole.”

The words come out too hurt, too quiet.

Spencer is unfazed—leans in closer as if to make sure you understand. Lowers his voice, and the tremor there is not the kind that comes from hurt feelings. You don’t know what it is. 

“Go. Home.”

It’s the kind of quiet that you’re afraid will culminate in a burst eardrum or something worse. He’s not like that, you know he’s not. Even at his worst. Even when you push him to his absolute wit’s end. But you can already hear it. Feel it. Ghost echos that have been rattling around in your head for years. 

A part of you—a rather large part—wants to cover her ears hard and sink to the ground, or otherwise apologize and beg him to love you again. 

But you are an adult. He’s asked you to leave. 

So you do. With an awful pulling in your gut and a hollowing in your chest like a sinkhole falling into itself. 

The static starts outside his door. The raking breaths. That awful warmth on the back of your neck and the greying of your vision. 

You stumble to the stairs and cover your face, letting the waves of panic wash over your shoulders. 

Was that a breakup? Does he still love you? Did he ever? If love can be so quickly taken away, was it ever really there? See, this is why—this is exactly why you’ve done what you’ve done, why you’ve been the way you have and treated him the way you did for so long. Because of this inevitability. Because of your nature, and what happens when a child tells himself he can enjoy a broken toy just the same as a regular one, until he keeps playing with it, and it keeps breaking worse and worse until it’s completely unusable. 

Something snaps inside of you. Gears grind and groan. The static doesn’t go away, it only gets louder, and it sounds a whole lot like his name over and over again—so you’ll just have to drown it out. 

-

It’s hot in this place, and it’s loud—so loud you can feel the throbbing techno beat in your teeth. The flashing lights wash over you like a tide of blood, rising and falling, filling your lungs. 

Whatever is coursing through your veins is not enough to dull the ache. In the middle of the dance floor, and you’re still thinking of Spencer. Spencer. Spencer. With every beat of your heart. Not enough alcohol. Not enough anything. 

It’s so hot in here—sweat drips down your spine and the room is spinning, but all the writhing, shadowed bodies prop you up as you stumble toward the bar. No chance in hell the bartender would keep serving you in the state you’re in, so you find someone to buy the drinks for you. 

And you fall, fall, fall—chasing some wicked, Cheshire gleam at the bottom of that glass, and the next, and the next. 

That gleam is, of course, an illusion. It will shine so brightly you can taste it. It will convince you to reach just a little further. And it will wink at you from the impossible end of a bottomless pit. 

You don’t care. You tip over the edge and let the darkness swallow you whole.

Nothing but stardust, now. 

You blow across the silent black ether. 

September 5th

You’re practically dripping from Spencer as he locks your door.

“Help me out, a little?” he grunts as you make no effort to support your own body weight. 

“Sorry sorry sorry. I’m up.”

He breathes a laugh and walks you deeper into the apartment. It’s a slow process. 

“If I set you down on the couch… are you going to be able to get back up?”

“I don’t know,” you sing-song, stumbling, giggling, and grabbing onto him tighter. “Let’s find out.”

Your ankles threaten to buckle all the way across the room, but he holds you fast. 

“Easy,” he murmurs as you slip your arms from around his neck and drop heavily to the cushions. You blink at him, exhausted, admiring the view. At some point, you’d managed to pull off his tie and undo the first few buttons on his shirt before he’d caught your hands and given you a warning look. Looking at him now, you have absolutely no regrets.

Spencer kneels in front of you, undoing the delicate ankle strap on your shoe. Your blood is pleasantly warmed as you let your head loll to your shoulder—warmer with every sweet way he handles you. Carefully. Like it’s an honor. 

After he slips the heels off, he presses a kiss to the top of each knee. You lace a hand through his hair. “Excellent view.”

There’s a lazy sort of smirk on his face when he tilts his head back up toward you. 

“I’m sure. Don’t get any ideas.”

You grin. 

“Too late.”

Spencer slides a gratuitous hand up your leg, fingertips just brushing the short hem of your dress, and raises his other. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Easy. Six.”

He snorts, pressing his face against your thigh, and you melt into a puddle of giggles. 

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding! It was three. See—hey, you can make me say my ABC’s backwards, and I’ll walk in a straight line—”

“I’m not sleeping with you.”

Even that sweet, placating kiss to your thigh isn’t enough to temper the immediate and profound disappointment you feel at his proclamation. “What? Why?”

“Oh—why am I not going to sleep with a woman who couldn’t get up the stairs on her own?”

“Nonono, I’m dead sober. Please?”

He pushes off the ground, towering above you once more, and leans down to press a kiss to your lips. “Sorry. You’ll have to go find someone just as drunk as you.”

You linger there, your head tilted up, so he hangs in your silence, suspended less than an inch above you. 

“What?”

It comes out thin, with the crane of your neck. Quiet because your blood is frozen in your veins. 

Spencer pauses only briefly and then drops one more kiss to your mouth. At the contact your eyes flutter, in spite of yourself. 

“Nothing, baby. It was a joke.”

Then he’s up again, moving toward the kitchen. 

“Why would you joke about that?”

Spencer stops at the end of the couch and gives you an odd look. “Did it bother you?”

“Yes. Don’t—you can’t say stuff like that.”

Why are you breathing so quickly?

Now you’ve really got his attention. He turns fully back toward you, slipping his hands into his pockets.

Spencer doesn’t say a word. His eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. 

There’s a long stretch of silence. You can hear a faucet dripping and try to match your inhales to each plunk of water. 

“What’s wrong?”

One blink of hesitation and you realize your name is halfway signed on your own death sentence. 

“Nothing.”

“Don’t say nothing, you clearly—”

“Oh my god, I said it’s nothing. Just let it go. Jesus.”

And that final utterance, that subtle roll of your eyes, was practically a flourish of the pen. 

You haven’t gone the offense-as-defense route in a while. 

Immediately, something about Spencer’s demeanor goes cold. 

“Did something happen?”

The question is quiet enough to chill your bones and dry your throat. 

“Nothing. What? Nothing happened. I just don’t think it’s funny to joke about stuff like that.”

Fuck. Fuck. There may as well be a giant blinking sign over your head that says I’m lying. 

You watch it wash over him. 

The worst part is that he doesn’t say anything. He stands there for a moment—and then he turns, walking toward the kitchen again. For a moment, you’re frozen. Then you panic. 

“Spencer,” you call, and it breaks down the middle as you try to get up and sit right back down. He will not want to be followed. You take in a deep, grating breath, digging your nails hard into the sides of your legs and staring at the ground, willing the room to stop spinning. Willing your lungs to fill with air. 

Your entire body waits in suspense, taut like a steel guitar string, for shattering glass, or splintering drywall, or a slamming door, or something. It doesn’t come. He’s still here. You know he hasn’t left. 

But he’s going to. 

This is it. 

The unforgivable thing. 

Maybe five minutes later, you hear movement. When he reenters the living room, you keep your head down, tracking him only with your eyes. A yawning chasm seems to open up between your spot on the couch and where he stands, across the room. 

For a moment, neither of you speak—and then both of you try at once. More silence follows. You cover your face with your hands.

“We weren’t together,” you mumble into the cup of them. 

“What did you say?” 

His tone bites. 

“We weren’t together.”

“In your mind we were never together, so I don’t really know what you mean by that.”

“No, we—we got in a really big fight—”

“When?”

You swallow. Because you work together, you should be familiar with this part of him—this relentless part, this I-will-run-you-into-the-ground part. But you’re not. 

“Spencer…”

Spencer recognizes this type of quiet. This quiet which means things can only be worse than they seem. The punishing anger is quickly slashed and bled until you feel it swirling around at your feet like water waiting to be swallowed down the drain. Displaced by massive grief, so heavy that you hear the break. The word is small. Too small to be a real question—it is a plea for mercy on a dying breath. 

“When?” 

You try to inhale and choke on it. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t think we were together—”

He snaps. “We are always together. You know exactly what we are. Take some fucking responsibility.”

“I didn’t mean to,” you whisper, desolate. “I didn’t.”

A tremulous pause. Your skin is crawling and you can’t get out of it. 

“What does that mean? What do you mean, you didn’t mean to?”

Snippets come from a reel you’ve been working hard to bury. The blisters on your palms burn. There is blood and dirt caked into the half-moons of your nails, too heavy and too fresh. 

A phantom ache has taken up residence in your bones. It throbs. 

You only shake your head.  

Spencer comes to you again. Gets on his knees for the second time this evening, sets his hands over your legs again in some backwards sort of supplication. Some bastardized retelling of a sweeter story from a few minutes ago. Like he’s pleading with you to recant, rewrite—to fix it so he doesn’t have to leave. 

“What do you mean? Just tell me what happened,” he begs. 

“I can’t,” you whisper.

“Why?”

The pain in his voice pounds at the base of your skull. 

Words dance on the tip of your tongue. Because there is too much I don’t remember. 

But something deeper in your gut keeps them tethered. Pulls hard. Shame, perhaps. There is no excuse for what you did. There is no explaining it away. No circumstance in which you are innocent. A girl goes dancing. Looking for something. She gets drunk. She chases the thing she’s looking for into dark corners and down alleyways. She needs to know what it is she’s chasing—she needs to hold it by the throat and squeeze, thumb against hammering pulse, until it doesn’t have so much power over her.  

She wakes up in a stranger’s bed. That’s the part of the story that matters. 

“I just can’t.”

The words are too quiet, but he hears. Your lungs burn in the pulsing silence that follows. 

No solution. 

He gives you a few minutes in the dark living room to change your mind, to say the right thing. It doesn’t come. 

So he gets up. 

“Wait, wait wait—” your heart is pounding as you stumble off the couch and follow him, barely avoiding tripping over your own feet. He’s at the door. How did he get there so quickly? You catch the wall just behind him. “Spencer, wait.”

The tear in your voice is desperate enough you flinch. 

But it gets him to turn around. 

He looks exhausted. 

The pallor of his skin—the shadows exaggerating where his cheeks sink in and where the troughs beneath each eye get darker in purple half moons.

You fucked up so badly. 

How much more of you can he handle?

Is this the one thing to push him over the edge, for good? 

“I’m sorry,” you breathe. “I’m so sorry. It wasn’t—I can’t explain it, but it wasn’t right—I didn’t—” heat wells behind your eyes as you flounder and dig your grave helplessly, flexing and clenching your hands. “I’m never, ever gonna do that again. Something was—I wasn’t myself that night, and it’s not going to happen again, I don’t know why I did it. I was stupid, and I love you so much, and—please. Please, don’t go. I really need you not to go.”

Spencer regards you, gaze flickering up and down, swallowing. His eyes are all foggy and waterlogged. It makes you feel sicker.

“I know you’re sorry.”

Your chin wobbles. 

There’s nothing to fight with in his words. There’s nothing to scratch or kick or bite or cling to. 

“You’re gonna leave?”

A beat. 

“Yeah.”

“Are you gonna come back?”

It hangs in the air between you for a very long time. 

September 12th

When you see him at your door a week later, you’re not sure what to say. Spencer has hardly spoken to you at work. It’s not that he’s been cruel, he just… he’s been distant. Understandably so. 

This lack of words, you realize very quickly, is not going to be much of a problem. 

What he wants to do with you does not require a lot of speaking. 

In fact, you start to suspect he doesn’t want to hear you talk at all. It would be hard to form words when he’s kissing you like this.

But you have to try, don’t you?

“Spencer—”

He pulls away, leaves you reeling and head sparkling with fresh oxygen. Disoriented. Desperate to have him in any way you can. A thumb presses against the seam of your lips and you open for him without hesitance. 

He has you against the back of your door, locking it with one hand and pushing down on your tongue with the other thumb. You wish you could do more than let it happen. Do anything but suckle like a lamb. Make him talk to you. Fix it while you can. 

But for the first time in a week he’s close and he’s looking at you like he wants you and you could cry. 

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he whispers, eyes darting rapidly over your face like he’s hungry for the sight of you. “You are going to listen to me. If I ask you a question, you can say yes, or you can say no. If we need to stop, or if something doesn’t feel right, you tell me. Otherwise, you don’t talk. Do you understand me?”

Your delirious nod is not enough for him as he slips his thumb from your mouth and grips your jaw, angling you carefully upward so as to look right at him through shuttered eyes. 

“Do you understand me?” He repeats lowly, and your breath catches. 

“Yes.”

Those eyes slow, taking you in, that gaze dripping from you like honey. Just barely, he strokes the line of your jaw. He ducks to kiss you again and this time it is not so urgent. 

“Do you want this?” Spencer asks just shy of your own mouth, soft without warning. 

The fabric of his coat bunches in your fist. 

Only if you still love me, you want to say. But you know why he doesn’t want you to talk. So you can’t say things like that. So he doesn’t have to tell you of course I do. Please spare me the humiliation of admitting it. 

“Please,” you whisper. A trembling breath. More than a plead for sex. You are asking that he be kind. Perhaps it’s more than you deserve, but you can’t do this if he doesn’t touch you like he loves you. Not with him. 

You are asking for him to fix something big, something thus far unspoken and which you don’t totally understand yourself. It’s too complicated. He shouldn’t have to do this for you. He doesn’t owe you anything. 

Erase it, you want to say. Make this feeling I can’t talk about go away. I know you love me enough to do it. 

All this, with one please. 

Spencer exhales. And he kisses you again. 

Of course, Spencer’s not good with enforcing rules. Not when you’re opening up to him in this way. Even now he looks at you like you’re a marvel. Touches you like you’re a miracle. As soft and as careful as you could’ve asked for if you’d used the words—he may as well be tracing love letters into your skin. 

All you can do is try and respect his wishes. You hurt him, badly, you know you did. Don’t add salt to those wounds. He needs you to be predictable right now. No sudden movements. No derailments. To the best of your ability, you are quiet and good and gracious and docile. 

But you are only human. Those times you gasp his name under your breath, he just holds your hand tighter. A plead or two are lost against his skin or into the sheets. He takes pity on you—murmurs gentle questions just to give you an outlet. Kisses your teary cheeks as you give your shaky answers. 

He loves me, you think, in absence of the words, over and over, until you feel it, until your whole body is buzzing with it. Until you’re buoyant and nothing is hard anymore. 

Afterwards, his stillness is what draws you back. His heart pounds against yours, he’s exactly the weight and the pressure you need. But he’s still. The momentum of the passion is wearing off, and you can sense it. 

So you allow yourself one quiet, distressed little chirp. One nervous bid for reassurance. Spencer comes to his senses and quells you with a chaste kiss. 

And then he’s out of bed. The weight of all the air in the room, the heavy cold, comes crashing down—pressing into your skin, your stomach, all at once.  

Suddenly you’re paralyzed, unable to look away from the ceiling as he dresses, grabs the glass from your nightstand and disappears into the bathroom. A few moments later he returns bearing a cloth and a full cup. The cup hits the nightstand. The edge of the bed dips. He slides one hand up your calf like always, and you acquiesce, letting the weight of your leg fall against him. A warm washcloth finds your inner thigh. 

Your mind is screaming, deafening static. 

“You okay?” Spencer asks gingerly after a few beats of silence. There is a hesitance, there. A feigned lightness, like he’s afraid of asking. Afraid of opening up this line of conversation and too good not to. 

Your tongue is heavy in your mouth as he cleans up any evidence of his having been here. 

“You got up pretty quick.”

More static. Something fights its way up your throat and you swallow it down. 

“Yeah. An old professor of mine is town. We have dinner plans.”

You don’t know what to say to that as he retrieves a few things from your dresser and returns. Normally he’d slide underwear up your thighs for you and pull a shirt over your head, but today you’re grabbing the garments from him before he has a chance. 

“I can do it,” you mutter, hurrying to yank the clothes on under his measuring gaze. Under other circumstances he might take offense to this. Might at least ask you about it. Now he only stands to give you space and pockets his hands. 

Because he knows. He knew the whole time. 

He’s not sticking around. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally says. Dust particles swirl through thick beams of molasses light, pouring in from the windows and warming rumpled sheets. How long was he here?

You hug your bare legs to your chest and settle your chin over folded arms, mapping dust like stars in a galaxy. “Why’d you even come?” you murmur.  

The world quiets down. Waits with you, holding its breath for his answer. 

“I don’t know.”

Light glares off the floor in a blinding white pool. Sends shooting pains into the back of your eyes as you fiddle with your own shirtsleeve. 

“Were you trying to… hurt me back, or something?”

“No.” The answer is firm and immediate. “No, I am not trying to hurt you.”

You say nothing. Wood creaks under shifting weight, but you’re not looking at him as he sighs. 

“You have to give me some time.” Your name on his tongue is reprimand, a thing he shouldn’t have to tell you. “It’s been a week. I don’t have any of this figured out. I’m not thinking straight.”

“You were thinking straight enough to drive over here and tell me not to talk while you fucked me.”

“I—” he sighs. At a perpetual loss with you. “I told you it wasn’t well thought out. I’ve been spiraling. All week. I’m not sleeping, I’m not making good choices. I mean—you—you fucked me over!” The words burst out, the way they do when he curses. “I haven’t had anybody to talk to about this. You are the only person. Do you see why that would be difficult? You hurt me so much and I miss you and I’m furious and you’re the only one I can talk to about any of it. That’s insane, right? I think you owe me some grace.”

“Did I owe you that, too?”

You gesture toward the unmade sheets and then bury your face against your arms once more. 

Humiliated. Like usual. 

Spencer is stunned into silence for a moment. 

“No. No, you didn’t. Did I—did I make you feel that way? If that didn’t feel right—”

“No,” you assuage tearfully. “I just wish you t-told me you weren’t going to stay, ’cause I wouldn’t have—I just can’t do that with you.”

“Can’t do what?” he asks, sitting on the bedside once more, hand twitching but ultimately leaving you be. 

“I can’t have sex with you if you’re gonna leave after. I’m sorry, I know you didn’t know that. But, like—you are the one person who can’t—I just really really can’t do that with you, because—” you stop yourself and change course with a shuddering breath, pressing your palms to weeping eyes. “I’m sorry. I know this is literally all my fault. I don’t get to ask for things. I know that.”

Fireworks dance against the back of your lids. Spencer is quiet. 

Then there are hands around your wrists. A thumb smoothing the delicate skin under your palm. You hiccup a gasping cry and melt toward him. It might be the most you get from Spencer, so you focus on the small touch until it burns. His voice is soft—a balm you don’t deserve. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” you sniffle, hands falling an inch, then two, as you go lax under his touch. “You don’t owe me an apology. Just—I can’t do that with you again until… until we have things figured out.”

The stroking thumb stops, and then restarts. 

“Okay.”

Finally, you open your eyes. Can’t make sense of the neutrality on his face.

“What?”

He only shakes his head. Nothing. 

Too tired to push him, you let your hands fall to your lap, and he keeps hold on your wrists. Sweeping. The lines he makes entrance you. 

“I’m sorry I put you in this position,” you whisper. 

No response. Back and forth. 

“I know you’re mad at me. You really, really have the right to be mad at me. I’m sorry for making you be nice to me. That’s so stupid, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for—”

“Angel.”

You bite your tongue and sink your gaze. What a ridiculous petname it is, now. How terrible of him to keep using it. 

“Sorry.”

Afraid to tell him he can leave, and too ashamed to let yourself enjoy his presence while it lasts, you remain in limbo. His silence does not tell you exactly how much he hates being here, but you think if the tables were turned, you wouldn’t be able to stomach it. Is it really better, his lingering, if it’s not because he loves you? With each pass of his thumb, you imagine him hating you more. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not. 

“I’m not going to do this again,” he murmurs, jarring you from your obsessive contemplation. 

Now, when you look up, he’s focused on your wrist. 

“… I know.”

“No, honey. I mean… it needs to end.”

This sinks in slowly, with a heat in your face and the back of your neck and a sick tide rising in your stomach. 

The first thing you feel is panic. Drops of adrenaline in your bloodstream like you’ve just realized you’ll need to run for your life. 

“Why? Because—if this is because I said I can’t sleep with you until—”

“That was completely appropriate. You were right. It’s not good for either of us.”

“So why does that mean we can’t try again? I mean—I know you need time. You can have it. You can. We always do this, and then we get back together and it’s better. I already did the worst thing I could do—we’ll get better.”

The breath he takes is quiet, uneven and pronounced. The kind of breath you take when something hurts more than you thought it would. 

“You’re asking me to get over something I haven’t even fully wrapped my mind around.”

You falter. 

“No, I’m—I’m just telling you I’m going to wait, and you can have as long as you need—”

“Stop,” he says, more sad than angry. “You need to stop.”

“I can’t stop,” you whisper, closer to forlorn every second as you tear up and spill all over again. “I have to try.”

Spencer’s voice shakes as he speaks. “Do not do this to yourself. There is nothing you can say, alright? This needs to be over, so it’s going to be over. It’s not good for us.”

“But—but… you can’t just say it’s over, Spencer, we put so much—I’ve been trying so hard. I know I keep messing up, I’m sorry, I’m trying so hard. I don’t know what happened, I’m—I can do more, I know I can.”

“You can’t—this isn’t going to work. You can’t fix it.”

“But I love you. I want to be with you. I did it all for you, all the hard stuff, not for me, I just—I love you. I want you.”

You don’t realize you’re sobbing until he’s wrenching your hands from your face once more and pulling you into him. 

“I know you love me. I wish we were better for each other, angel, I do. But it’s not supposed to feel like this.”

It’s not supposed to feel like this. 

You shudder a cry. 

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to hurt you, really. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want that. You d-didn’t deserve it. I’m so, so sorry, Spencer, I ruined everything, I—”

“Shh. Just… I’ll stay for a little bit longer, okay? Just a while.”

And he does. Until the room goes dark, and the stars watch silently from above.

October 29th

It’s not going to be warm enough to enjoy the outdoors for much longer—but today, the beams of sun are still thick through the turning leaves, still gold when you close your eyes, and the sweet smell of autumn is enough to keep you out criss-cross on Rossi’s swing. 

The seal on the glass door suctions open and then slides shut again, and Penelope is joining you. You accept the mug of apple cider, holding it carefully in your lap. 

“What a gorgeous day,” she sighs, and you hum in agreement. “Probably one of the last good ones. I saw rain on the forecast later this week.”

“It begins,” you mutter. 

“Yeah. And I haven’t even found a suitable mate to hibernate with yet.”

Your brow knits. “You’re not with—”

She pauses mid-sip as you turn to look at her. Right—you weren’t supposed to have seen her with Kevin last spring. Your face warms and you try to play it off. “Oh, right. You guys broke up forever ago.”

To her credit, she doesn’t actually confirm or deny. Instead, a quiet settles. Or—a sort of quiet. Down the yard, in grass that is still lush and green, JJ and Spencer are playing some sort of game with Henry and Michael. One that seems to invoke a lot of delighted screeches from the young boys as they run around and fall over and get back up. 

“What about you?” Penelope asks. 

Apple and clove melt on your tongue and warm your throat. 

“What about me?”

“Are you hunkering down with anybody?”

“No,” you admit without fanfare. Garcia doesn’t respond—probably hoping to get more information out of you. You hesitate, and then go on. “I mean—I was seeing a guy. But it ended a little while ago.”

She speaks her pity gently, in a tone like the velveteen undersides of flower petals. 

“You didn’t tell me.”

You shrug. 

“It wasn’t… official.”

“How long were you seeing him for?”

“It would’ve been a year next month.”

This time, she’s silent for too long. 

When you finally glance over at her, she’s not looking at you, as you would’ve expected. 

She’s… looking at your feet. 

You glance down, ready to be very confused—and then you see the problem. 

Your jeans have ridden up. One sock is striped purple and green. The other, brown, dotted with horseshoes and cacti. They’re visibly too big for you. 

Quickly you try to tuck them further under yourself. But you’re sure it’s too late. 

You could explain this. You could say you forgot to bring socks on a case, and Spencer let you borrow a pair. 

Before you can, she speaks. 

“I worried that maybe you guys had split up.”

You flash her an alarmed look. “What?”

Penelope glances toward the house to make sure nobody’s about to come outside. 

“I mean… honey, you guys weren’t very subtle. I don’t think anyone who lacks my perceptive genius and emotional intelligence would have noticed, but I noticed. Like, I really noticed.”

You swallow, opening your mouth before you’ve decided your plan of action. Deny? 

“When?”

“Well, everyone always knew that you liked each other. But there was this one time—and this was a total invasion of privacy, and I will never do it again unless I have to—where, you know, you… weren’t answering your phone about a case, and I got worried, because no offense, but this team kind of has a track record when it comes to going missing, and so… I checked your location… and it pinged at Spencer’s apartment… who had just told me he didn’t know where you were. And then you both showed up. I’m so sorry, but in my defense, I was not trying to snoop—”

“Penelope, it’s fine.”

“Well—okay—and there’s this other thing that I haven’t told you about because it would’ve been mutually assured destruction, so I kind of don’t ask don’t telled it, which was… me and Kevin saw you guys on a date last spring. And me and Kevin were not supposed to be on a date. And you were not supposed to be sharing spoons—spooning, if you will—with Spencer. But I did see it. And I didn’t tell you and I felt really squicky about it for a long time and I’m sorry.”

You blink. Try to process. 

“You didn’t tell anyone else?”

“No! God, no! I like to gossip, I don’t like to ruin people’s relationships.”

“Who’s ruining whose relationships?” JJ asks breathlessly, carrying a tuckered out Michael on her hip and holding Henry’s hand as she approaches. Your head snaps up. Spencer is trailing a few feet behind her, eyeing you. 

Heat blooms in your cheeks. 

“Theoretical conversation,” Penelope supplies quickly. “Are we finally ready to harass Rossi about dinner?”

JJ looks anything but convinced—and in typical fashion, lets it go. 

“I think we are. What do you think Michael—pizza?”

“Pizza!”

Everyone cheers at that—aside from you and Spencer. Penelope hurries inside after JJ and the boys. Spencer lingers. You quickly try to get your shoes back on before he can tell that you’re wearing his—

“Nice socks.”

You sigh, pausing just a moment before you finish pulling your boot on. 

“Sorry. I need to do laundry.”

You stand, and Spencer opens the door for you. “What socks you choose to wear are none of my business.”

Halfway inside, you pause, glancing up at him. “Do you want them back?”

He narrows his eyes thoughtfully. 

“That’s okay. I have a pair just like them at home.”

This is the first time you’ve exchanged more than a few work-related sentences since he ended things for good. 

It’s sort of ridiculous, after all the melodrama. 

It’s sort of a relief. 

January 1st

Garcia’s New Year’s party was a success. There’d been the most FBI agents you’ve ever seen crammed into her apartment at once. There was a chocolate fountain, three kinds of champagne, and an elaborate charcuterie setup spanning nearly the entire counter. At midnight, you’d popped a confetti gun and blew into a noise maker and cheered and jumped around and hugged your friends. 

An hour and a half later, you’ve taken over as impromptu host—Penelope is decidedly out of commission, snoring atop her bed, still in heels and sequins. 

“Bye, guys! Happy new year!”

You wave as the last stragglers head out the door.

When you close it, and turn around: “Holy shit.”You wade through confetti and streamers and napkins, kicking a few balloons out of your way. Any flat surface is covered in sparkly plastic cups and champagne flutes. “We trashed the place.”

From the kitchen, Spencer chuckles. “It’s pretty bad.”

You frown when you notice him stacking plates. “Hey, you don’t have to do that. I told Garcia I’d handle clean up.”

He checks his watch. 

“The odds of being involved in a fatal car accident are up 208% percent right now, and they won’t be going down for a few hours. Plus, my own blood alcohol content is probably hovering around point zero four, which is well under the legal limit to drive, but I’d prefer for it to be zero flat.”

You shrug and make your way over to the record player, which had finished up A Night At The Opera a while ago. “If you want to ring in the new year by helping me clean, I won’t stop you. Blue or Abbey Road?”

“Neither?”

“Boring,” you accuse, and put on Coltrane. The jazz comes slow and crackly and warm through the speakers. 

Spencer steps aside as you enter the kitchen and hunt for trash bags under the sink—compostable, because it’s Garcia. 

When you stand back up, you’re unprepared for how close he’s going to be—barely an inch separates you and you stumble on your quest to pop backward. “Whoop—” instinctively, he reaches out and steadies you. You grasp onto his arms, eyes flickering up to his and laughing nervously. “Hey.”

Spencer’s gaze is warm and easy on you as he pulls a little smile of his own. “Hi.”

A stuttering inhale. 

A moment that is just too long. 

His fingers seem to relax against your arms, just fractionally, for just a split second. Like he could hold you. Like you could stay this way. 

“Sorry,” you breathe, releasing your grip on him and stepping back. 

“You’re okay.”

A lazy sax solo traces its golden fingers around your thrumming heart until your skin is buzzing. His eyes are the same color as the music. Just as soft. Just as leisurely as they vamp the distance between your own. 

Bio-derived plastic dampens under your fingers as you flee to the living room. 

The next fifteen minutes are spent kneeling in front of the coffee table, cleaning drips of chocolate and splashes of champagne, and trying not to think about the way his eyes caught on your lips. 

Spencer doesn’t miss you. Not like you miss him. Apparently he even went on a date a few weeks ago. 

And with the way things ended, you’re lucky that he doesn’t despise you. Being on decent terms should be enough. Letting your perpetually smoldering want trail its smoke under his nose isn’t fair. Not to you, not to him, and certainly not to his mystery girl. He’s trying to move on, and you don’t have the right to drag him down.  

But, just—that one little moment. One touch, and you’re totally thrown off your game. Now, you’re reading into the silence. You’re wondering what he’s thinking about you. If he’s thinking about you. 

Later—much later—the living room has been mostly cleaned. You’re taking the final trash bag to the kitchen when you notice something on the ceiling fan and pause, frowning up at it. 

“Spencer?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you come here?”

He appears. “What’s up?”

You point at the fan. 

“I think somebody put a cup up there.”

Spencer makes a face and reaches up to grab it. He reads the name Sharpie’d on the side and snorts, before showing it to you. 

Kevin, scrawled next to the worst smiley face you’ve ever seen. 

“How do you mess up a smiley face?” you laugh. 

“I’m sure he’d be able to tell you.”

You suck your teeth. “God—do you think they’re together again?”

“Kevin and Penelope?”

The trash bag drops to the ground as you flop onto the couch, exhausted. Spencer crushes the cup and tosses it in, standing just in front of you, studying you as he thinks. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t entirely surprise me. They’re pretty good at remaining inconspicuous.”

You hum, slinking lower in the faux-leather. Maybe some friendly chit-chat is in order. Friends ask each other questions, don’t they? “Speaking of inconspicuous relationships… I heard you went on a date.”

He slides his hands into his pockets and picks his words in silence for a moment—you hate that. You hate feeling excluded from whatever internal conversation he’s having. Knowing that he’s measuring how much truth he’ll dole out to you. 

“Who’d you hear that from?”

You track him with your eyes as he takes a seat next to you. 

“Did you?” you ask, ignoring the question—more focused on the stubbled line of his jaw. 

Spencer considers his answer for a moment, head reclined on the back of the couch, charting the glittery paper stars suspended from the ceiling. 

“I did. Two, actually.”

Two dates? With the same person?

“How’s that going?”

He approximates a smile. 

“You’re not being very subtle.”

“I’m just curious. You don’t have to answer.”

Spencer meets your eyes. Studies them in turns, like there’s a secret language etched into the fractals of pigment.  

“I like her,” he decides. And your stomach sours. 

“But you didn’t bring her tonight?”

Spencer rolls his head back toward the ceiling—and very nearly his eyes, as he dryly reminds you, “We’ve been on two dates.”

“If you like her, you should’ve brought here. You could’ve kissed her at midnight and sealed the deal.”

A ditch in the conversation. The perfect depth and width for hiding a body, as something in the air changes. Drops a degree or two. Thickens. 

“What are you doing?” he murmurs, looking back at you and finally putting an end to your game. Your face gets warm. Oops. Too far, maybe. 

“I’m being supportive.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. Is that allowed?”

“You’re sure it’s not surveillance?”

“Yes!”

Even to you, you sound overly defensive. 

“Fine.” A moment passes. He’s staring at you, in this lazy sort of way. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You didn’t bring anyone either.”

“Well… I’m not seeing anyone.”

It’s embarrassing to admit. You pinch at the fabric of your skirt, worrying the glitter sewn into black like drops of silver. Stars, or beads of rainwater. 

“Why not?”

“Do I need an excuse to be single?”

“Just curious. Is that allowed?”

Evidently the look you cast him then is not as withering as you’d it to be. Not if he’s so unfazed. Still reading you like a familiar book. 

“God, this is frustrating,” he mutters, as if to himself, tongue darting over his lips and frowning like you’re a question he doesn’t have the answer to. Your own brow pinches, ready to be offended. 

“What is?”

“I just… I thought I’d stop wanting to kiss you by now.”

Behind the safety of a bone cage, tucked where he can’t see, your heart does a somersault. It probably shows in the way your spine straightens, the catch of your breath. 

“Oh. I’m… I’m… sorry.”

Spencer cracks a dry smile. 

“You’re sorry? Why are you sorry?”

“Well—I don’t know. Because… I don’t know. it just seems like… the wrong thing to want. You have a girlfriend.”

The softening of his eyes, the tilt of his head, all spell pity. Like you’re naive. 

“That’s not what she is, honey.”

Honey. You try to remember to breathe. To think.

“Then what is she?”

He hums. 

“Not you. As much as I tried to tell myself that was for the best.”

Scratch somersault. Back handspring. Or maybe a round-off. You swallow. Pick at your nails. 

Did you think this into existence? Was all your desire really so loud?

“Spencer…”

“What?”

“That’s… that’s not fair.”

His eyes are melting glass on yours, voice lowered in a way you’ve sorely missed. “How so?”

It takes you a moment to remember yourself. “Because I’m—I’m trying to be better. I’m really trying. I don’t want anyone to get hurt ’cause of me. So if this girl likes you—”

“Angel. Nobody’s getting hurt. She knew I had someone else on my mind.”

“You can’t call me that,” you whisper brokenly. But he’s close enough you can feel his breath. You don’t know how he got close like this—when you gravitated toward him, charmed as a snake by a flute. When the inevitable outcome limited itself to brilliant, disastrous collision. “We can’t do this.”

“Why not?”

“Because… because we’re not together.”

“When has that ever stopped us?”

All your air comes out at once. “This is so stupid.”

“You’re so pretty.” Delicately he cups your jaw. Strokes the tips of his fingers along the hollow of your cheek. “I was thinking about it all night. Noticed the glitter as soon as I saw you. Did Penelope do it?”

“Spencer, please.” Breathless. Pathetic. Desperate for him to put you out of your misery, one way or another. 

His throat bobs. “Come here.”

So you do. You lean in, one hand balanced on his knee, the other on his shoulder, and your lips brush so softly it can’t even be called a kiss. Still it sends a high-voltage shock through your whole body. He tastes like champagne as you kiss him deeper, as his hand wanders to the back of your thigh and hoists you across his lap. The other roots in your hair and your head spins. 

“Missed you so much,” he breathes into your mouth, not even bothering to pull away, or even to stop kissing you really. Mellow ivory and brass do a good job of concealing your soft breaths. Less so the undignified noise you make when Spencer shifts you roughly on his lap to pull you closer. 

“This isn’t a nice thing to be doing on ’Nelope’s couch,” you gasp between kisses, gripping at the front of his shirt like someone’s going to try taking him away from you. He alters his course from your mouth to trail down your neck. Lets fingers dip just beneath the hemline of your skirt until you shudder. 

“Then we’ll stop.”

Your jaw drops in a silent squeak as he nips at a delicate spot on your throat. 

The problem is that with the two of you, there is never any stopping. Not definitively. Never permanently. You can say it as emphatically as you’d like. You can even sort of mean it. But the cosmos has other plans. 

Outside, silent snow falls from a blue-black sky. There is nothing but the headlight glare from the occasional passing car. The popping and crackling of distant fireworks set off by the over-imbibed, ringing twelve o’clock in hours after the bloom of the new year. It must be midnight somewhere, you suppose. 

It’s just like you and Spencer, to be in the wrong place at the right time. It’s like you to slip through time-space cracks until you find each other in the accordion folds of the universe. 

It’s basically tradition.

spoilers: reader kinda cheats on Spencer but the consent there is questionable seeing as she was incredibly intoxicated

if u read this far WOW ily I hope u liked it :D I put blood sweat and tears into this bad boy. also shout-out @aliteralsemicolon for helping me so much with this fic she is a very helpful and willing consultant I think this never would've seen the light of day without her!!! ALSO THIS FIC WAS INSPIRED BY LIZZY MCALPINE’S SONG OF THE SAME NAME and each line corresponds to one of the dates of the scene!!! Read that here!!

[allllium]

Just an Accident

~ Jason todd x reader who was accidentally hurt

~ Fluff, Jason being dramatic, WC:

~ Inspired by @mostly-imagines

[Thank you guys for being so patient while I finished this and thank you for all likes 💓💓 I really wasn't expecting anything till this was finished. Hope this meets your expectations <3]

Jason tried really hard to keep his secret secret from you but let's be honest, he's very obvious about it. Especially once you meet his family.

After he finally came clean to you about everything, he became even more protective. More protective than you ever thought possible.

He would freak out anytime he didn't know where you were or if you got hurt in any way.

"I'm so so sorry." Bruce says, following you through the mansion repeating his apology.

"It's okay, Bruce, it was an accident." You reply, "I should've known."

Honestly there was no way you could've known that Bruce was creating some elaborate booby trap on the kitchen counter that would fail and smack you in the face when you walked into the kitchen.

It didn't hurt too bad, luckily Bruce was testing things with plastic and not the real materials.

From the look of it though, you'll definitely have a mark on your nose and possibly a bruise under your eye.

"I had no idea it was gonna do that." He continues defending, knowing how Jason will react.

"It's fine, I swear. I know you wouldn't do that on purpose." You walk into the living room and sit down on the couch. Bruce sits next to you.

"Can I get you anything?" He asks. Obviously freaking out.

"No, it's alright. It really doesn't hurt."

"Oh shit." You hear Dick gasp. Coming in through the front door with Tim.

"Oh, what did you do!?" Tim asks, "Jason is gonna kill you."

"It was an accident, everything is fine." You try to calm everyone down.

Seeing that you're okay, Dick can't hold back his laugh.

"Wow, Jason is never gonna trust you again Bruce." Tim hits Dick on the arm and rolls his eyes. To the side of you, Bruce leans forward to hold his head in his hands.

"I think you guys are being a little dramatic. Jason isn't gonna kill him."

"No you seriously underestimate how Jason will react to this." Tim tells you.

"Yeah, remember he almost killed me for making jokes about you when you first got together."

"What?" You turn to Dick in confusion, "I don't remember that."

"Not important," he waves it off, "The point is, we need a plan."

"A plan for what?"

"A plan to hide this from Jason" He tells you, in a tone that screams obvious.

"How would I do that, Dick? I live with him."

"I don't know yet, that's why we need a plan!" He exclaims, pacing in front of the couch.

You roll your eyes, "You're being dramatic."

"No he's not." Bruce says. You fall back into the couch and cross your arms over chest.

"Bruce please. I need at least one of other person here to be an adult."

You can hear Tim laughing as he sits in the chair next to the couch.

"Well, he's right. Jason's gonna be pissed." Bruce shakes his head at you. He stands from the couch and starts pacing with Dick.

"They're gonna make me lose my mind." You mumble under your breath. You run your hands over your face, this childish behavior you're watching isn't what you were expecting from Batman and Nightwing.

Okay to be honest you were definitely expecting this from Dick.

Tim leans over to whisper to you, "You should make a break for it, they're too busy plotting to notice you leave."

"Let me guess," you whisper back, "you've had to make a break for it a couple times?"

"More than you know." He shakes him head and has a serious look on his face.

"Well, have fun with that." You laugh and walk out the front door. Tim was right, both the guys were so busy trying to figure out how to hide you from Jason, they totally forgot to hide you.

You rush home to meet Jason. You were supposed to meet for dinner but obviously you got a little distracted.

"Hey baby." You sigh when you walk through the door. Jason is in the kitchen cooking dinner. Whatever he chose to make, made the whole room smell amazing.

"Hey. What took you so long?"

"I stopped by the mansion to borrow that thing from Alfred but he wasn't there." You tell him, referencing some cooking tool you wanted to make desert for after dinner.

"Where did he go?" You want into the kitchen to see him while you talk.

"I have no idea. I got distracted by something Bruce was doing." You walk over and take a piece of food that he's cutting.

Without looking, he softly smacks your hand away.

"Rude." You laugh.

"This is my sacred space." He puts the knife down and gestures over the whole counter.

"You're ridiculous." You laugh again and kiss him on the cheek.

"How dare you." He puts his hand on his chest in fake offense. Only then does he turn to actually look at you. "What happened?" He immediately asks.

"Oh it's fine, just got smacked with some plastic " Which is apparently not the answer he wanted.

"What the fuck does that mean?" He grabs your face gently and examines the marks on your face.

"It means I got hit with some plastic. But it doesn't hurt." You quickly explain, but he doesn't let go of your face or stop freaking out.

"What plastic?"

"Bruce was experimenting with something and it didn't work."

"He did this?" He lets go off your face to run his hands over his own.

"It was accident. He wouldn't hurt me on purpose and you know that."

"I don't care if it was an accident, you're hurt."

"Jason." You say firmly. He's obviously surprised considering you never use his name to address him. "An accident is an accident and you're not gonna hold this against Bruce. He already apologized and clearly felt bad."

"But you're hurt" He pouts.

You step forward and wrap your arms over his shoulders. "It doesn't hurt. It was just some plastic."

"It left a mark."

"I promise I'm okay. And I want you to promise you won't hurt Bruce for this." You look right into his eyes and do your best to give him a puppy dog look. Which isn't necessary because he can't say no to you anyway.

"Fine I promise I won't hurt him." He presses his forehead to yours, "I'd rather leave him to stew in fear anyway."

You chuckle at his words. "As long as no real harm comes to him I won't stop you from having fun."

"Good." He kisses you once and heads back to make dinner. You have no doubt Jason would ever actually hurt Bruce over something so small but you'd rather be safe than sorry.

Hopefully this'll stop Dick and Bruce acting like absolutely children in the future.

Yeah that'll never happen.

Not even 10 minutes after finishing dinner you get a call from Dick.

"How dare you?" He asks the moment you answer the phone. "You're a traitor."

"Again with the dramatics Dick. You can't stop me from going home."

"Let me guess Jason's on his way here to get some revenge right now." He says in a very childish and fearful tone.

"No! I was right, you guys are way more dramatic than you should be and he has no intention of killing anyone." Jason looks at you as you talk to his brother. Clearly wondering what he has to do with this situation.

"I don't believe you. You've shown where your loyalty lies."

"Why are you talking like I'm an enemy or something?"

"Maybe you are! How should I know?"

"Okay you're right." You decide to play along, "I couldn't stop him from wanting to kill Bruce, he's on his way there right now."

Jason furrows his eyebrows in confusion.

"I knew it! Mark my words one day-"

His voice cuts off when you hang up.

"There is something severely wrong with your entire family." You tell Jason with a blank face.

"Yeah I know." He puts his arm over your shoulder and pulls you into him.

Hmm you wonder how long it takes till Dick realizes you lied.

[roturo]

⋆⭒˚｡⋆ SHE'S BACK!

GUESS HE COULDN'T KEEP IT IN, SO HE HAD TO KEEP IT INSIDE! ₊˚⊹♡ dilf!gojo satoru x teacher!reader

tags: smut, unprotected sex, breeding kink, exhibitionism, getting caught, he fucks you while he's on the phone, overstimulation, dumbfication, fluff, gojo has an ex-wife, yuuji is gojo's son, age-gap.

A/N: well, this was surely and adventure and maybe self-indulgent title because guess what?, i'm back baby.

It was a nice morning, he felt clean. Like his life was finally steadying. Even after some stressful weeks trying to get rid of his now ex-wife, he won the trial and kept Yuuji. Poor little boy, just turning 5 years old and he’s already facing all this type of stress. But thankfully he will not be experiencing enduring his crazy mother behavior. Which basically was a gold digger, and a bitch– Not that he would ever say that outloud, maybe with other words? Bastard? Witch? Not that it really matters right now.

He could finally take a break now, just focusing on raising his little boy, and being an old boring 31 year old dad. Life doesn’t sound that bad.

“Daddy! Daddy!,” His son went running to his arms, almost stumbling by himself- clear happiness shown on his face. Quickly, Gojo opened his arms ready to lift the young kid. “Miss Y/N congratulated me on my homework! She was pretty amazed!”

Your name wasn’t unknown to him, Yuuji was very open when talking about his favorite teacher, even though he hasn’t seen you yet- from what he’s been told you’re the kid’s favorite, including Yuuji’s. “I had to talk about who’s my hero, and I chose you!” If this day wasn’t going great, it was now. Because his son's comment just made his whole week, life even.

“Oh look dad!” The little boy pointed towards your moving frame, each time getting clñoser towards them. “Daddy, this is Miss Y/N!” Yuuji kept presenting the both of you. He was really excited to present his two favorite persons to each other- but all Gojo could think of what’s how young and beautiful you looked. He expected someone older, maybe even an old lady with wrinkles and that loving grandma vibes, but what he saw made his heart beat in a way he never thought he would feel ever more.

“Daddy? Are you paying attention?” The little boy gained Gojo’s attention back, face now looking at him again. “I’m sorry kiddo, kinda just zoned out there. What did you just say?”

“Uhh, what was it? Oh! Did I tell you Miss Y/N told me you were a very handsome man?”

“Yuuji!” His gaze moved towards your blushed face, a hand covering part of your face. “I’m so sorry Mr.Gojo, I didn’t intend to say-”

Gojo cut you off before you could continue apologizing “It’s okay, I also think Ms.Y/N is a very beautiful woman.” 

Uh, well. So this is how kinda you found yourself in this situation right now.

You swear it wasn’t your intention! You really tried, you really did, but how could someone say no to Mr.Gojo? And mostly because he really showed his attraction towards you. Sending Yuuji with a rose for you every day, and the little boy was rooting for his dad, because dear god- he did not shut up about him, and how happy he would be with a new girlfriend and maybe one he could call ‘mommy’ and give him a sister. 

That made you blush. 

Not only because the little boy commented on it, and was agreeing- but because it was his dad’s idea.

“You’re so wet, s-shit.” Loud thrusts filled the room, he was fucking you raw on his sofa– waiting for Yuuji’s mom to bring him back, the little boy was eager to come back and ‘see Ms.Y/N and his daddy finally starting to fall in love’

Kids being kids. But, he was right- the both of you were falling in love with eachother.

Gojo throws back his head, immersed in the warmth radiating off your walls and he lets your moans take him to another world. In a haste decision, he slips your dress over your head before tossing it. He mouths at your tits, plump and stiff between his lips, and he hurdles a deeper round of thrusts inside you. 

When you get a little too loud, his hand comes over to clamp your mouth, wolf like eyes staring back at you, “Shut it. You don’t deserve to speak.”

His thin white tee that stays a barrier between you and him does not hide the rippling body underneath that seemed to be sculpted by gods. He presses into you, grunting, using you like his personal sex doll and you embrace it, thrive from it, come to it. Your hips contract, slewing in perfect circles, before having your legs fall gradually lifeless as you arousal drip down your thighs.

“Ffffucckkk- oh baby, would you like that? Be full of me and my baby? Make me a daddy again?”

“yesyesyesyes, make me yours Mr.Gojo-” 

He pays your climax no mind,a smirk clearly showing on his face while he fucks you on his sofa- You could muffle your screams of pleasure easier here. Turning your head back to face him, you notice now he’s shirtless–taut and shiny from sweat like a large set of Hawaiian rolls–before seeing how quick he is to fit back inside you.

“Good girl.” His husky voice resonates and pushes you back into the sheets. “Good girls get rewards, don’t they?” Your poor fucked up mind couldn’t think clearly now. The way your abused and overstimulated pussy was still taking his rock hard cock gratefully inside you was making every feel giddy. A sudden noise bringing back a little part of your senses, Gojo clearly grunting grabbed his what you suppose phone, and answered. Not bothering to stop his thrusts.

“Yeah?,” His voice sounded almost like a whisper because of how breathy it was. “Gojo? I’m almost at your house- Yuuji wanted some ice-cream and bought some for you and… your new girlfriend?” His chuckle interrupted his ex-wife’s conversation, accompanied with a whimper at the feeling of you clenching on him- overstimulation clearly bringing you back to climax soon again.

A slap was heard from his part of the line, an unbelievable laugh coming from his ex-wife line, clearly noticing what was going on and then she finally heard you moan. You couldn’t keep it in anymore, and you were too fucked out to feel embarrased about it right now.

“Finish before I leave Yuuji- Enjoy yourself.” Gojo was so lost in pleasure that he didn’t even realize she hung up before he even processed what happened.

His grunts and sounds of skins slapping are all you hear as he pounds you back into the sofa. It feels like heaven beneath his weight. You were feeling flushed to the touch, but making contact with his skin was like an inferno. He was the embodiment of heat and as suffocating as that could’ve been, it melts you like it’s how it always should’ve been.

His pace eventually falters, followed by a hushed “fuck,” and he empties out into your used hole. The moment he pulled out, a knock was heard. 

“Shit. Can you walk?”

PART 2

[salsakiyoomi]

sukuna had been gone for ten days.

he won't answer his phone, he won't answer his texts, you even tried to send him an email — yeah, no use.

by the tenth day, you were starting to feel less worried and more angry.

that's when he finally came knocking at your front door.

it was a random tuesday night when you were crying your eyes out at an angsty romance movie when a series of knocks came at your door.

quickly, you wipe away your tears and you head towards the door, creaking it open slightly to see who it is.

a gasp escapes you at the familiar sight of the tattooed face of your stupid, stupid boyfriend.

you swing the door open and before he could get any words out, you drag him in by the collar of his shirt and slap him across the face.

stunned is an understatement.

if anything, sukuna is thoroughly dumbfounded — sure, he knew you were feisty, except, he never thought you'd throw hands, especially as sexy as you did just now.

“where the hell have you been?!” you yell at him, but he's still flabbergasted, with his hand on his cheek where you had just slapped him.

“sukuna.” you growl, and he knows that he’s in trouble.

“sorry, something came up.” he says under his breath, rubbing his cheek.

holy hell, you sure knew how to throw a slap.

“really?” you huff, an angry scowl on your face at the audacity of his curt and vague answer, “that's all you have to say for yourself after ten whole days of being MIA?”

“look, baby, i'm sorry —” “i don't want your apology! i want an explanation! i called you, i texted you, i even sent you an email and you never responded!”

sukuna feels something close to guilt and maybe even…joy? because wow, were you really that worried about it? how flattering.

“i just had a deal going on.” he mutters under his breath, knowing you're going to reprimand him for it.

“what?” you utter out, “a drug deal?! seriously, ryomen? again?! you promised me you quit that shit!”

“it was a good deal, okay?!” he responds, starting to feel frustrated now, “and i needed the money.”

“you could've asked me for money!” you tell him and he scoffs, “yeah, like you're any less broke than i am.”

“sukuna.” you warn and he shakes his head, avoiding your gaze.

“look, i'm sorry, okay?” he says, “it was a moment of weakness.

“yeah, like all of the other times?” you ask sarcastically, “get out.” you add, pointing at the front door of your dorm and already ushering him out.

“oh, come on.” he chides, using the tone that he knows makes you weak, and looking at you with those stupidly convincing red eyes of his, “i said i'm sorry baby, okay? i won't do it again, i promise.”

“you stress me out, ryomen.” you huff, crossing your arms.

“i know,” he says smoothly, “i won't do it again, for you.”

he knows he's let you down again. in his history of fuck ups, this was probably one of the worst — breaking your trust, again.

and yet, he knows you'll always come back to him, forgive him and coddle him — just like you always do.

there was no denying that you were weak for him.

“....fine.” you mumble, “but if you do it again, i'm breaking up with you.”

“yeah yeah, i know.” he chuckles, his hands at your hips, “i won't.”

“good.” you huff.

he hums in response, leaning in to kiss you to make you forget about everything he's ever done and he practically feels the way you melt into the kiss, sinking into his touch as he caresses the soft flesh of your hips.

he was a manipulative piece of shit and he knew it, but if it meant having you under his touch? yeah, he won't give it up.

you bite on his bottom lip and he groans, pulling you closer.

after a moment, he pulls away, the both of you gasping for air.

he smirks, “i can tell you miss me.”

“shut up.” you huff and he chuckles, his hand sliding up to caress the back of your neck and pull you in closer.

“i'll hit from the back tonight if you let me.” he whispers in your ear and you blush, slapping his chest.

“ryomen!” you exclaim and he laughs, “come on, baby. don't you miss me?”

before you even get a chance to respond, he's hauling you up and carrying you to your bedroom.

sukuna's a manipulative piece of shit who probably has nothing better to do than play around and break hearts — he doesn't get attached.

and no matter how many times you threaten to break up with him, he knows you'll always stay.

he was just that good.

[retiredteabag]

I’m listening to you

Including: Gojo, Nanami, Choso, Sukuna, Toji, Yuuji, and Megumi

Synopsis: You stop talking because you assume they aren’t listening… how silly of you, but how do they react?

my masterlist

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Satoru

It would probably be like any other day, he had probably just come back from a mission, laying across the couch and you would be in the kitchen making a snack board as you talked about numerous different things.

The conversation would shift through a multitude of topics as one thing would then reminded you of the next.

As you were getting the chips, you would explain the drama at work after that you would go and get some hummus while you explained the love life of one of your coworkers thereafter you would be reminded of a friend of yours from high school while piling up some cheese cubes.

Throughout all of this, there were very few breaks in your speech. When you finally came to the living room, Satoru would be facing towards you, with his head slightly tilted back on the armrest and his feet dangling off the other edge.

You could see him, just not very well. His blindfold would also be on, not an uncommon occurrence, but it would still be hard for you to see the slight changes in his facial features that typically depicted his emotions to you.

After awhile, you might start to wonder if he was feeling tired from the mission or if he just wasn’t paying attention. It’s okay, getting distracted happens to everyone sometimes.

Your words would taper off.

Believe me when I say it would not take this man any longer than say…five seconds for his head to raise and voice to pipe up,

“Well what happened next?”

And with a grabby hand he would add,

“Aren’t you gonna share those?”

Turning to point at the snacks in your lap.

For such a chatty guy, you would be surprised by how much he enjoyed just listening to others. Especially if it meant listening to you.

Nanami

Let’s be realistic here, this man would never take his undivided attention away from you.

That being said, the situation would be a little bit different with him. You guys would probably be out for coffee. Maybe the both of you had been busy for a while and felt the need to make a day out of catching up.

You know that embarrassing feeling when you get the notion you’ve been talking too much? It would be something like that.

You would have been gesturing and looking around the room while you talked about this and that. Unbeknownst to you, he would have hearts in his eyes while he listened to your ramblings.

That sudden itch would get to you though, the notion that, maaaaaaaaybe you have been talking about yourself too long.

One quick look at your man caused a shiver to run up your back at the eye contact.

There would be a pause in your speech, and he would nod at you to encourage more words to spill fourth, but now you were all flustered.

You would trip over your words, stuttering every so often before eventually apologizing.

“What is it, dear?”

He would ask, after a moment of you trying to collect yourself, he would assume that you had simply lost your train of thought and remind you of the topics you had been previously sharing.

You would thank him even though that wouldn’t have been the issue at all.

How could you not get shy when he was looking at you like that?

Choso

This would have to occur after a long day. Either during nap time or before you both went to bed.

He would be laying his head on your chest as you played with his freed hair. Talking about stuff you had seen online, talking about your plans for the next day, talking about what you were planning to eat for lunch tomorrow, the list could go on.

Every so often he would hum or nod his head. But after a while, you would look down and see that his eyes were closed.

It wasn’t hurtful, or embarrassing. It has been a long day for the both of you, and he was probably just tired. He often fell asleep easily when you combed through his hair with your nails. So you wouldn’t be offended as you go silent.

After you stop talking, though, he would grab your free hand and fiddle with your fingers, saying,

“I like those tacos too… we should get lunch together!”

You would giggle and tug on a lock of his hair, “I thought you were asleep.”

He would spin around onto his chest, chin pressed slightly into you while he looked up at your eyes through those big, long, lashes of his, “But you were talking to me?”

Sukuna

This man :| he would get offended if you insinuated that you could possibly be boring him.

Of course, it would be his fault, too. He would complain and whine all the time about how uninterested he was in your life. Griping that he had better things to do than just sit around and listen to you talk.

But don’t misunderstand, there was nothing he desired more than to watchyou speak about things that impassioned you.

But perhaps one of those instances you would take to heart, he was a busy man after all. It’s not like he had all the time in the world to listen to you yap about nonsense.

So after a long while in his chambers, you would just kind of go silent. ‘Allowing’ him a little time to himself.

Just earlier that day, you would have been telling him a story about one of your fellow workers at the estate. Sukuna had rolled his eyes at the incompetence of his staff as you giggled on about how a man got his hand stuck in a jar full of fertilizer.

You would take his disinterested countenance to assume that he was bored with you. For someone so ancient, he did have an attention span fitting to the times.

He always told you not to make assumptions about him, but after him asking you on several occasions, “and why are you telling me this?” You couldn’t help or conclude that he wasn’t all that interested.

I’ll tell you now. As much as he would like to pretend that was the case, it is far from the truth.

He would frown while laying on his bed. “Why did you stop?”

You would spin around, slightly surprised that he had even been paying attention. “Oh I just thought maybe I was boring you…”

That would cause him to sit up, scowling in your direction, “Did I say that?”

“Well…”

“Did. I. Say. That.”

“…no?”

Undeniably, sassy, he would splay out his arms in a “see??” type of motion. Waiting rather impatiently for you to continue on so he could relax to the sound of his lovers soothing voice while pretending to be impartial to it all.

Toji

This prick.

He wouldn’t do a thing lol

This man would let you assume he isn’t listening, let you think he’s off somewhere else, let you think he’s checked out.

But that could not be more wrong.

Maybe he’s eating his lunch, or watching tv, or texting someone. Whatever the case, there’s nothing he’s more locked into than your words.

In fact, it would take you a while into your relationship for you to realize this, but sometimes you would have to be careful around Toji because once you said something, this man would remember it forever.

You probably wouldn’t even think about it when you stopped talking, deciding to put your efforts into something else. But Toji would notice.

He wouldn’t bring it up though, not for days. But eventually he would crack the conversation back again, flipping the newspaper over and avoiding your eyes.

You would spin around on him, wondering how he even knew the things he was talking about. Then it would hit you.

“Wait… you were listening?”

He would scoff, elbows on the table, finally looking at you over his reading glasses. “Excuse me?” He would point an accusatory finger at you and set down the paper. “Was I listening?”

You would gape at him open mouthed, “Well… how was I supposed to know?”

He would roll his eyes in the most dramatic of fashions, getting up from the kitchen table to stroll over to you. “Please,” he would groan, grazing a knuckle over your neck,

“You’ve always got my attention.”

Yuuji

One might think this would happen early on in the relationship but I would argue this situation would happen after years together.

Why? Well, Yuuji is a super excitable guy, he also just loves talking to you. You both make a great pair because the two of you always converse in a way suitable to each other.

For example, sometimes you’d interrupt one another, never in a rude way, but in a way that shows passion about the topic at hand. That would bring on a whole new discussion and keep the conversation flowing.

Yuuji was a great listener when he needed to be but mainly he was a great conversationalist. Neither of you needed to do heavy lifting when you talked. It was great!

After awhile though, the two of you would become more and more comfortable around one another and more accustomed to the way you spoke.

That’s why it was so weird to see him less active in a conversation. He wasn’t interjecting with his little agreements or experiences. He would still be looking at you, but it was different.

It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he might just be uninterested in the topic so you would get all quiet, focusing on something else until he spoke up.

“No, keep talking.”

Grinning at you, he looked just like he always did.

“You’re not bored?”

He would squint, confused at the notion, “Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know, you just seem a little quiet I guess.”

But he would just smile at you, “I don’t know what it is… but recently I’ve been liking just admiring you.”

He would say things like that out of the blue all the time by the way.

“Yuuuuujiiiii” you would groan.

“What? Doesn’t mean I’m not listening!”

Megumi

Inversely to Yuuji, this would happen with Megumi early on in y’all’s relationship, likely pre-relationship when the two of you were just getting to know one another.

Megumi wasn’t really shy at all, he was more reserved, even though you weren’t all that talkative, he could still unintentionally make you feel like a blabbermouth at times.

The two of you would probably have been out on a walk together, or maybe in the cafeteria getting lunch, wherever, you would have been sharing some piece of yourself with him.

It would also probably have been a long time since he had spoke up. Sometimes he wouldn’t even give listening cues so it’s not too unusual to suppose that he was checked out.

Megumi was NOT checked out though. He was filing every little word you said away into his brain, and thinking of the best way to respond to you.

You might not know this though, so after awhile you might get all shy, suddenly looking off, fiddling with the hem of your shirt. Embarrassed that he hadn’t heard a word, that’s when he would turn to you,

“I’m listening.”

Simple as that.

Reassuring but not overly affectionate.

He would do it in public and in private. If you were in a group and he could tell your confidence was slipping he would jump in to let you know that he cared about your thoughts and opinions.

And like in this instance when it was just the two of you, he might reach over to grab your hand, letting you know,

“I’m still here.”

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