#I tend to think those things are one and the same though. or one is a symptom of the other

[permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88]

So I'm not ashamed, here, I'll out myself with this. I am absolutely, 150% guilty of staying in my little cave of isolation, refusing to make the first move to contact anyone, because of the fear of being seen as desperate. Annoying. Clingy. Insert whatever other derogatory word you can think of, here. I've always been a person that tends to go overboard with interactions, and that leads some to view me as 'too much.' But I'm also able (right now, a year ago I definitely wasn't) to recognize that this post? It is utterly, and completely true.

Sure, reaching out is terrifying. Especially for those of us who have a history of getting burned doing so, in the past. We can put our all into someone, or several someone's, and find out that they're just...not that into us at all (and this applies both romantically and platonically, in my opinion). And that rejection? Knowing our message may have been 'seen' but was not viewed as worthy of a response? Or, heaven forbid, finding out that we were actively ridiculed behind our backs for daring to have the audacity to think someone wanted to hear from us?

It hurts. It hurts, dare I say, like hell.

Here's the thing, though. Just because one, or ten, or a million people did this to us in the past does not mean that every single person we encounter for the rest of our lives will behave the same way. In fact, one could argue, it is remarkably unfair of us to assume that they will. Not everyone is out to get you, use you, or otherwise mistreat you, and I say this knowing that I was, and still am guilty of assuming so even now. Am I a hypocrite for typing this out? Probably. Does knowing this in my head make it any easier to break past years of self-inflicted barriers built out of fear of rejection? Nope. But (and feel free to call me delulu here) I hope that I'm allowed to at least read a post like this, and recognize that even if I am absolutely abysmal at putting it into practice, the OP is far from wrong.

What am I saying with all of this? Not much that hasn't already been said, I suppose, aside from the fact that we all (myself included) should be bold enough to send that text/email, make that invitation/phone call, rejection be damned. Because sure, whoever we're initiating contact with may still ignore us like countless others have, before. But they may not, too, and cutting ourselves off from a real relationship because we're just...scared? That isn't fair to anyone.

And anyone who does see these little instances of people reaching out as bothersome, annoying, laughable, or worthy of mocking in their little clique? They're going to view us in that light whether we stay in our shell or dare to break it down.

That decision, ultimately, is on them, and it's nothing we can control.

(Now it's time for me to practice what I preach, I suppose...toodles!)

i know it's hard. but i so firmly believe the strongest antidote to loneliness is reaching out first. and continuing to reach out. again and again and again. excise any scrap of shame you hold about being the person who texts first or pitches the plan or asks to get lunch. everyone is tired and busy and struggling. and afraid of feeling unwanted and unimportant. don't let the people you love feel that way. reach out first. don't be a ghost in your own life.

[hell-drabbles]

Lucifer 5

Summary: Lucifer, compared to the other devil kings, tends to keep his distance, often preferring to be alone with his thoughts, ever observing what's going on around him. With you, however, you noticed he's been getting closer.

(More Companion and Lucifer intimacy! Been a long while. I wonder what other intimate moments between the Companion and Lucifer I should write?)

Of all beings, you never thought Lucifer would get caught up in your rhythm. Every other devil king you've met has been a storm of their own, a being that walks forward and expects everything and everyone to follow without a single question. They take pride in that, so much so that it leads to constant clashes with all the other kings around them.

All the other kings, save for Lucifer. He and the other devils share the title of kings, and are all collectively known as the seven kings of Hell, but that's about where the similarities end.

You can't say that the other devils treat Lucifer with respect, so much as they just generally leave him to his own devices, as though any attempt to butt heads with him was just not worth it. It's… almost a kind of caution, an awareness that so long as they don't directly challenge him, then Lucifer won't say a thing. It's almost the same social distance they give Asmodeus.

You can't say you're shocked, those two don't exactly think, nor carry themselves in the way the other devil kings do.

That being said, it was very easy to notice the way Lucifer was always one step closer to you than others. How he's taken to always face you with his entire body whenever you talked, no matter how he had to adjust his seat or posture. How, whenever you take a walk through Paradise Lost, Lucifer would eventually drift by and walk with you. Whatever you do, Lucifer was bound to not be too far behind.

And so here you both are, near a tree that Lucifer was just napping under until you walked by and paused to give him time to rouse himself. You didn't need to say anything. You both knew he was going to walk with you. It's routine by this point.

Lucifer walked past the usual distance he'd keep with others. He stopped right before you, shoes almost touching yours. You both nodded in greeting, then simply stood still, enjoying the gentle whistling of the wind and the calm flow of your breathing.

"Huh, you like being near me." It's not really a question, simply a statement of fact. No need to be a tease or coy about it. Why bother making a game out of it when the reward was right there for the taking?

"I do," he said, with that rare, gentle smile of his, barely there but too big a change to ever ignore. Of course he wouldn't mince his words.

"You find comfort in a human like me." You didn't lean away nor yearned to put distance between the both of you. Instead, you uncrossed your arms and upturned your palms. As though you've both done this thousands of times, Lucifer slid his hands against yours. "Weird."

"How so?" Lucifer's face settled into a carefully neutral expression, but you can tell he's just a hair away from frowning. You're sure an expression like that would scare the shit out of Ra-on.

"If you wanted to, I could easily just be another smear on the pavement." And such power brings about the expectation of arrogance, whether intentional or otherwise. All the other devils here, big and small, carried themselves with that air that only became more apparent once your physical limitations were discovered. You've grown used to arrogance and were ready to take it in stride. If not dismissed, you expected to be treated as the most fragile thing in Hell. "And here you are, treasuring me like an equal."

Lucifer didn't set you aside, nor did he insist what you can or can't do. Your anger was not a childish or reckless temper tantrum but a reaction to a problem that he knows must be resolved. For the first time in a long while, you found a piece of yourself relaxing. If you were to nap now, you know you'd wake up without dreading what you'll have to tolerate for that day.

"The place you call home weighs heavily on you," Lucifer closed his eyes, as though trying to imagine your every burden as his thumb stroked your skin, "in much the same way it does for me. Is it wrong to find solace in someone that understands? In someone that needs the quiet as much as I do?"

A short chuckle escaped you as Lucifer leaned in closer, but stopped short of pressing his forehead against yours. "Seems we're both just incredibly lonely, huh? But no, it's not wrong in the least."

"Then, I can assume that we both bring the other joy?" Strands of Lucifer's hair moved to the side as he tilted his head, pretending to be curious even though that smile said he knew what your answer was.

"Joy, huh?" you sighed, and allowed yourself to indulge just this little bit, "Yeah, I guess you can assume that."

[lanawinterscigarettes]

Blair Waldorf dating a chubby gn reader

Warnings: mentions of body image issues/insecurites, mentions of eating disorders, some suggestiveness/references to sex

A/N: requested by me because I'm chubby and wanted to write something like this <3 if you guys ever want me to do headcanons like this for other characters feel free to let me know!

First and foremost just know that you being chubby would not bother Blair at all, nor would she ever make fun of you or judge you for it despite her usual cruel demeanor toward others

She knows firsthand what it's like to have people commenting on her body so she'd never want to make you feel bad about the way you look

If she ever found out you struggled with body image issues or disordered eating then she'd try her best to help you through it (even though she might not always seem like the most sympathetic person around she's pretty good at comforting you because of her own struggles with that kind of stuff before in the past)

No one, and I mean absolutely no one would ever be allowed to make any kind of snide comment or mocking taunt about your body without Gossip Girl getting a sudden tip sent in about said person

Blair is absolutely not above destroying other people's reputations if they ever make you feel bad

That includes servers at restaurants and assistants at clothing boutiques who think it's funny to mutter something snarky under their breath about what you look like (they soon find themselves without jobs, courtesy of Queen B herself)

Speaking of which, you never have to worry about running out of clothing because she's totally got you covered

Fashion is incredibly important to her and she knows how important it is to only wear things that you feel absolutely amazing in so naturally you're given a closet full of brand new clothes the second you start dating her

Everything is tailored to fit you perfectly, and she only picks out clothing for you to wear that she knows you'll enjoy and feel comfortable in (sometimes she even gives you some stuff that goes with her own outfits so you guys can match)

Her hands always tend to linger on any area of you that's particularly chubbier than the rest whenever she's cuddling with you or adjusting your clothing out of instinct, such as your stomach and thighs (those are also places that get special attention whenever she's placing kisses on your body during certain activities)

Adding onto that she absolutely praises you during sex and worships your body the same way she wants to be praised and worshipped herself because she definitely thinks you deserve it

Often there's not really a power imbalance or struggle so much as it is the two of you just taking the time to appreciate the beauty of each other's naked bodies as you pleasure each other

All in all Blair values your love and devotion for her above what you look like, which is something she always takes the time to remind you

End notes: these are a little short but I think they're pretty cute regardless <3

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[gremlinwithacause]

You should have known better. It’s not the first time you’ve been ditched, but it might be the last. Huh. 

You make good money on your work. You’re nothing noble or special. You’re just damn good at your job. Fighting and killing come second hand. You could blame it on your parents. Blame it on working at a slaughterhouse. Blame it on getting picked on and having to fight for yourself. Blame it on needing cash to live. The details don’t matter all that much. You’re a good fighter and a better killer. Someone told you that your need to survive made you different. You don’t think so and you’re tired of hearing it. 

It’s not just the shady folks that hire you. You get plenty of employers of good standing. The adventurers aren’t special. A set in a line of many that want extra hands or extra cannon fodder. You tend to be lucky enough to be the former. You’ve ended up in jail more than once for people like this. Your wealthier employers tend to bail you out. You were valuable enough for the extra investment. Worth more alive, and all that. So you’ve been around a few dozen times. 

Being ditched in the field isn’t new but being half dead is. 

You should have seen it on their faces. You should have known better. They didn’t want you there, but someone thought they needed you. It makes sense they ditched you once the boss went down. 

But damn. They didn’t even watch it happen. Straight for the loot, huh? On some level you respect it, on the other level you’re bleeding out and you can only watch them run away. Not even a one liner? A spit on your body? A single piece of gold thrown on your body and a good “there’s your payment, you filthy animal.” 

Huh. Maybe you deserve it. You never messed with theatrics. Why would you get any? 

Things are fading in and out. Blood loss is always a pain to deal with. It would be easier to let go, you think. You still put pressure on the wound in your stomach and side and breathe through the pain. It’d be insulting if you just let yourself keel over, right? No, you’re just scared. 

“Guess we’re both expendable, huh?” 

You don’t have it in you to startle. The boss that you were damn sure was dead is not that. Alive enough to banter with you. It’s more than you offered anyone. What a sweetheart. 

“Dunno,” you say. “Never really thought of it.”

It makes sense. You’re not a hero. What were the chances of you actually out-living adventurers like the ones that ditched you here? You’re worth more alive, but when is the investment no longer worth it?

“‘S funny,” the boss says. Chatty, you think. What can you do but humor them? “Didn’t think heroes would leave their own behind.” 

“I was hired,” you say. 

“Really?” 

They laugh. Then cough and choke on blood or their own spit. You wait for them to finish their cackling, and then continue to wait for the end. 

“They're always picky with their heroes, huh?” 

Oh boy, the pronoun game. 

“Don’t care,” you say. May whatever higher power there is forgive your temper as you’re dying. “It’s work.” 

“Ah. You’re one of those,” they say. Like they know you. Ugh. You want to finish the job. “I always liked those. Basic motivations are the best. Nothing to second guess.” 

You roll your eyes. You’ve heard it all before. What is it worth now? 

“I tried the whole leader thing,” they say. “Good worshippers are hard to find, you know?”

You don’t. You won’t. 

“Sounds more like a cult.” “Eh. Same thing,” they dismiss. 

“What were you even the god of?” you snap. You can’t help it. This guy wasn’t any more special than you--that is: not.

“Anything I could get my hands on,” they say. “I wasn’t picky. Got enough of something that I became this, though.”

A boss. A few tiers above the usual monsters that you can find, always locked up in some kind of home base. 

“So were you a god or not?”

“No, never got that far. Wouldn’t have lost to you if I did.”

“Sure. Lie to yourself.”

They laugh again, “I like that. Confidence like that is usually up on some pedestal. Good on you.” 

“Yeah. Did me a lot of good.” 

“Did you enough,” they say. “You’re not new at this, must have been going for a while.”

“It’s work,” you repeat. It’s always work. It’s to survive. 

“You want a new job?” they ask. 

You lift your head enough to look over at them. They’re flat on their back. Your spear is still in their chest. It’s what’s keeping them from bleeding out. You know better than to leave the weapon in, but you were distracted by the whole dying thing. 

It’s getting harder to keep the pressure on your wound. Your hands are getting weaker. You’re getting weaker. You’re surprised you’re still awake. And what is this guy talking about? …You’ll indulge it. What else are you going to do? 

“Contract?” you ask. 

“Sure,” they say. 

A silver contract appears in front of you, something you don’t see too often. The consequences on silvers are serious, most people just do physical ones or bronzes. 

You squint to make sense of the blurring letters. 

“Follower? Really? What, are you still trying to form that cult?” you snort. It hurts and you dig your fingers into your skin. You don’t even feel it. 

“Good clerics are hard to find,” they say.

“Hah, and your lucky cleric is about to kick the bucket,” you say. “Sucks to be you.”

“Read it.” 

“Sorry. It gets hard to read with blood in your eyes.” 

“You live. You worship me.” 

You grimace. Sounds like a hassle. But… the idea of continuing to live is like candy. What else is there to do? It’s work.

You sign. 

You’re a mercenary hired by adventurers to defeat the boss. After the battle, they loot the treasure and abandon you wounded. The defeated boss crawls over and says, “Guess we’re both expendable, huh?”

[kacievvbbbb]

This is very Crocodile I think.

I can imagine him saying this to Mihawk trying to recruit him, trying to justify himself and his actions to a man that has never felt the need to justify any singular action he has ever taken in his life and was already going to join soley on the grounds he’d get paid to fuck up the marines day and a good bottle of wine.

Or even just saying it offhandedly to Daz Bones, his most loyal servant, as a kind of unneeded explanation during the initial planning of Alabaster’s down fall.

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

Of my 2% capacity to be attracted to anyone, my type is like 90% women, 5% pretty men and 5% men you would swear are super fucking manly, and never questioned being straight and cis, but are now suddenly *stressed* that they can't figure out why their attraction to me [fully socially interpreted as a woman and labelled that way up until relatively recently] feels incredibly fucking gay

[piningpercussionist]

I saw from a post about how many asks you have and I was wondering why not just answer one ask then use that as your daily post? (I'm pretty sure you post daily from my memory)

I'm not a writer so apologies if I sound a bit rude or oblivious. But I think you don't do that because it might get tiring to write an in-character response each day.

I'm actually an Insane Person and ideally would be posting hourly/bi-hourly, if only I ever found enough content to queue up in such a manner,,

But, basically the delays can be summed up in three parts: tired or busy (lumping these together as one problem), no idea how to respond just yet (or respond in a way that satisfies me,) or I have ideas but they're art based and take more time.

I do have some wips for some art answers saved I think, but I've got, like, a single commission remaining on my docket and I refuse to let myself do other art until it's finished (barring one sketch I did for the sake of my sanity.... I cannot stress enough how much of a fight it is to get myself to do full shading and backgrounds 💀 mistakes were made.)

Now, admittedly, it's been a minute since I took a crack at writing out some more thoughtful or lengthy responses for some of the asks I've gotten- so far as I recall, at least- but the dissatisfaction problem is Extremely Real. No joke, I've had an ask sitting in my queue for several months now because I was like "yeah this is good enough," queued it, and then just before it could post I was overcome with an Intense distaste for it. I really liked the question and thought I could do better. (And still clearly have not done better....) Writing Kim honestly comes really naturally to me, and I could never really get tired of it, but sometimes an ask throws a curveball at me in a way that I just really cannot quite wrap my head around responding to. Other times, I get asks that I just can't let myself answer in a subpar manner- either the ask itself or the implications of the answer I concoct end up mattering too much to me, so I get super in my head about finalizing the reply.

And then me being tired is just a skill issue. (I'm joking; this only applies to like the last month or so, but I actually started taking some new medications recently that have been messing with me just a little in this respect. Sometimes I get tired, and when they DO give me the pep to do things, I've admittedly been trying to direct that energy into getting my life together lol)

[liquidstar]

i finally finished alternate outfit designs for my ocs :) well these five at least lol

ill put the individual frames under the cut!

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

I think someone put the brain of a mouse or maybe a squirrel inside my head at some point because all winter I was like “I crave nuts and seeds” and now that it’s getting warmer and brighter out my brain keeps going “it’s fruit time”

Like, modern transportation has made it possible to move many fruits all over the world (in theory) all the time! But the primal early plesiadapiform part of my brain is like “you must eat what is available this season”

[brittlebutch]

one of the many reasons Aabria is such a good GM is because of the very keen eye she keeps on the social dynamics and interactions that happens at the table and i absolutely Love her for it

[fandomsandfairytales]

IT'S ME

hyperfixation sucks I think just a little too hard about a guy who isn't even real and I could start crying any second

[traegorn]

while i completely agree with your assessment of realistically what a trump vs harris presidency will look like, i think the issue me and a lot of other leftists have is that there is no need to tell people (and effectively tell harris) that oh ofc we are gna vote for her despite these issues because trump is THAT bad and if you say you don't want to vote for her because her party is pro-war, pro-genocide, then you are condemning americans to a trump presidency. we know trump is worse! i don't want him to win AT ALL, but why would harris even consider even changing the language she is using (i'm looking at the absolutely stupid speech she was giving in michigan, given the large arab & muslim-american population there and given its a battleground state) if she thinks she is going to win on a not-trump basis? i know who i'm voting for on nov 5th if it comes down to it, but we need the democrats to THINK they are going to lose until the very last minute, we need them to feel like they can't just rely on being the lesser of two evils if we want any chance of a shift on palestine. because they very well might lose, for this exact reason (and i'm speaking again more to the votes of the arab & muslim-american population which is far more demographically meaningful than the votes of leftists) and if that happens, they have no one to blame but themselves.

So I'm going to tell you something important: You don't have the leverage you think you have.

Political campaigns are a machine that's been operating the same way for a long time on the Democratic side. The Republicans may have abandoned a lot of the old ways of doing things, but the Democratic party hasn't. And you've got people running these campaigns who are steeped in the "wisdom" of how you win.

And when a block of voters says they're not going to vote for their candidate, they tend to believe them. So they decide to go court the people who they think will vote for them. That's why you've seen the Harris campaign trying to court moderate Republicans who might be iffy on voting for Trump a third time.

Right now one of the reasons Netanyahu is refusing to commit to a cease fire is because he thinks Trump can win. If Trump wins, he has no reason to ever agree to one. One of the reasons he thinks Trump can win is because the polling is so close.

If you want to know why they've gone to the right recently, it's because they think they've lost the left. And since a lot of those leftists are claiming there's a line in the sand that they don't have the power to appease (because -- again -- they can't get Netanyahu to do shit right now), they're going to go for the centrist Republicans.

Also, there seems to be this weird notion that the only way to move the Democrats is during the election. That's not how you move people. You keep pressuring them during their term and it works. Like Biden is continuing to work on forgiving student debt even though he doesn't have an election ahead of him. Because they know that what he does reflects on the future of the party. Voting doesn't end this game, it's the start of it.

But none of it will matter if Trump wins.

[gutsby]

Make It Stick

Pairing: Old!Joel x Reader

Summary: Joel never thought he’d need a vasectomy. Then, one night, he accidentally finishes inside you.

Warnings: 18+. Unprotected-peepaw-p-in-v (I’m sorry). Accidental creampie. Age gap. Cumplay. Breeding kink. Ovulation has led me places I wouldn’t go with a gun.

Note: Convergence is a painting by Jackson Pollock. We studied it in high school and I thought it looked like jizz idk

Word count: 4.7k

Prequel | Part 1 | Part 2

He should’ve gotten snipped when he had the chance.

Should’ve taken the plunge, faced his fears of needles and fluorescent-washed doctor’s offices like any man his age could have done and gotten the damn vasectomy. Now he was here, nearly two decades older and still none the wiser in this cold, dead world with a pretty young thing like you between his sheets. In lieu of elective surgery, Joel Miller had only to grit his teeth, bite hard, and repeat over and over again in his head, desperate:

‘Don’t cum, don’t cum, don’t cum, don’t cum, DON’T—’

Words like those normally worked. With women that weren’t you, they tended to serve him exceedingly well.

But you were just so tight. And wet. And welcoming. And try as Joel might to pretend like he got laid on a regular basis, the truth was that he didn’t. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t seem to think straight when it came to this fixation he’d developed for you, so, instead, he let his dick do all the decision-making whenever he found himself around you. Ten times out of ten that ended in:

“J-J-Joel—oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck—I’m gonna CUM.”

And that made it worth every last life-endangering drop.

Feeling how your flushed, lithe body came apart beneath his touch. How you needed him. How your eyes grew to half the size of your face and you gaped up at the man, lips parted, like you couldn’t even comprehend how the friction of seven inches could make you feel so good.

If he had it his way, he would’ve loved nothing more than to show you that feeling every night, and twice the next morning if his hip wasn’t giving him too much trouble.

But, at present, the man had bigger fish to fry. Like not becoming a new father at fifty-nine if he could help it.

With the last two fluttering pulses of your heat, and almost going cross-eyed from the pleasure as he felt it, Joel yanked his big, slippery cock out of your body and made a fist around his member as he always knew to do. Tugged and pulled and grunted above you—‘Sweet girl, you’re so fuckin’ good to me’—and watched your tits and your belly for the milky white ropes to ensue.

Strangely, though, your skin stayed the same.

No cum-spray Convergence appeared before him, no opaque and cloudy fluids dribbling down your ribs, nothing. Your stomach was as bare as the rest of you, save for a few beads of sweat, and that was all there was.

Joel shook his dick harder, confused. Beneath him, you were still coming down from your high smiling ear-to-ear and staring blissfully at the ceiling. Your chest rose and fell, rose and fell in quick succession, and while you endeavored to recollect your mind, Joel was losing his.

Where the FUCK was his cum?

In no naked horizontal tango to date had Joel simply…cum without noticing. Shit like that just didn’t happen to men, least of all to ones his age, so when he’d wrung his poor cock like a sodden towel and still saw nothing come out, he felt his stomach turn and plummet inside him.

He dropped to his hands and knees in less than a moment and lowered his head between your legs.

“No, Joel!” you squealed, giggling. Kicking your feet, “Another round and I’m gonna combust, you old perv!”

But Joel wasn’t looking to get his dick wet again. He was inspecting you. Or trying to, anyway. Quickly realizing he couldn’t see a thing in the darkness, he let out a breath through his nose and lifted you off the bed. Your naked frame thrown over his shoulder, bare hip beside his head and your strangled, muffled cry of, ‘What the hell, Joel?!’ hardly seemed to register with the man carrying you off.

You were toted to the bathroom. Joel was about to ease you down on your feet. Then, appearing to change his mind at the last second, he set you onto the sink instead. Your skin bristled with indignation, anger. A little arousal.

“Last time we did it on a sink we broke the faucet,” you reminded him, feigning more dismay than you really felt inside. If anything, you liked it when your fossil-age fuckbuddy switched things up. You were just exhausted.

Heedless of your words, Joel kneeled on the floor and pried your legs apart before him. When you swatted at his silver-flecked head, he brushed your hand away.

“Hold still,” he grunted.

“How come?”

“‘Cause I said.”

How quickly he commanded that tone of a father.

“Wanna sleep,” you groaned, about to roll your eyes.

But you couldn’t deny you liked being doted on by him.

Joel’s touch was gentle. Probing. Spidering down the most sensitive parts of your bare lower half, between your thighs, and slowly coaxing you closer to the edge of the sink. Your breath hitched when you saw his head tilt.

He appeared to be deep in thought—a rare sight for anyone who’d seen Joel Miller in the postcoital state. Most every time he’d blown his load before, the man was dead asleep within ten minutes. His joints could barely hold himself upright after a half hour of plowing the back forty, much less carry you, too, so you were puzzled now.

He thumbed at the seam of your cunt, and you whined:

“Jo-el—”

“Can ya…push, baby?” His eyes flitted up quickly.

“Push?”

“Yeah, just…” With a look you couldn’t quite read, he placed the palm of his other hand on your belly. Then, pressing, “Like this. Like you’re squeezin’ somethin’ out.”

You cocked a brow in muted confusion but did as he asked. You watched his gaze, and it stayed on you.

Or, rather, on that soft and pliant spot between your legs the old man seemed to favor so much. On any other occasion, in a position like this, he surely would’ve been wearing a smile. Tonight, his lips curled into a grimace.

And twisted even further when you ‘pushed’ like you did.

At first you felt nothing. A gentle clench of your walls supplied little more than a sense of having been stretched—no novel concept to you, who’d spent the last three-and-a-half months or so getting fucked by the finest AARP affiliate alive most every night. It wasn’t until you clamped down again that you got the feeling there was something else. Something thick and warm and slow as molasses trickling out from between your folds.

You let out a low, tender, ‘Mmph’ without meaning to; it felt kind of nice. Beneath you, Joel’s face turned grave.

He watched as his spend oozed out of your freshly-fucked hole and thought of vasectomies again.

You were young—too young to know better. Too sweet and naïve to see any peril in spreading your legs for a man like him, in a world like this. And Joel swore he’d be careful. But no post-apocalyptic birth control method was perfect, or even close to it, and it was clear he’d relied too heavily on reflexes to keep him from cumming inside you. Joel was old—too old to be doing this shit.

Too grown and well-versed in sex to be making mistakes as stupid as that. His brow pinched in, and he drew his next breath as if the air around him was growing scarce.

“Joel, what’s—”

“When’s the last time you— you— uh…bled?”

Hardly more in control of his face than the rate his heart went thudding in his chest, Joel winced at the end. This time, you were the one to knit your eyebrows together. You could tell by that tight, discomfited tone he wasn’t talking papercuts, but were still unsure of his purpose.

“Like two, two and a half weeks ago. Why?”

Well, fuck.

Joel buried his face in his hands. You scooted closer to the sink’s edge, thinking little of his cum leaking out.

“Why?” you tried again. Softer this time.

An old, weathered head lifted to greet you. It was bleak.

“You see this?” Joel paused. Swiping his finger through the viscous white substance that had trickled out on the counter, in a puddle now, “Y’know what it means, right?”

You let his look, and the question, remain suspended in air for a second. Then another. Then you shrugged.

“Yeah. But…you’re old,” came your answer at length.

You’re old.

Joel and you both knew as much, but the former wasn’t quite following your train of thought. Still wanting to try and mitigate damages while he could, though, Joel reached for the roll of toilet paper that was fastened to the wall and tore himself a strip. He bunched it up and, reaching for one of your knees to spread you further for him, took to daubing the tissue across your entrance.

“What’s me bein’ old got to do with anything?” A little sharp, then, seeing you flinch when he drew too close to your clit, “‘m sorry, baby, just— gotta get this out of you.”

You made a face but let him continue anyway. Your eyes followed each movement of his hand, and reflexively, the muscles in your thighs tightened. Why bother with this when the man has so many better uses for his hands?

For a second, your eyes fluttered half-shut.

“Maria says old folks are, uh…infertile. Got something to do with a middle pause,” you said, breaths labored.

Joel stopped just long enough to shoot you a look.

“Menopause,” he corrected, all too matter-of-fact, before returning to his work, “is a woman thing.”

What the hell were they teaching in Jackson’s sex ed classes, anyway? Then Joel remembered how his brother sincerely believed that women peed out of their vaginas until he was twenty-three, and the thought of you not knowing the ins and outs of male virility wasn’t the most far-fetched idea in the universe. Besides, sexual health wasn’t exactly the community’s highest priority when the world around it was in a perpetual state of decay and hordes of fungus-faced fuckers ran rampant in the wild.

He curved a tender, careful finger against the ring of muscles framing your sex, trying to absorb more cum, and your grip on the edge of the countertop tightened.

“S-So, you—” You swallowed, throat constricting a little too, “You’re sayin’…men can make babies…whenever?”

You sounded so innocent as you said it. Joel wanted nothing more than to club himself over the head for being the cause of this predicament—of being such an instrumental part of the perceived corruption, as it was.

Meanwhile, your head was swimming in filthier thoughts.

Deeper, Joel, keep…pushing in…dee-e-per. You would have scarcely had more luck giving a fuck what Joel was talking about now than if he’d just said the room was on fire. By his voice, you knew you should’ve been paying attention, but the dexterity of his fingers was too much. He was caressing the first couple inches of your inner walls, attempting to scrape what bits of his release he could get unstuck from the flesh, but it seemed he was succeeding mostly in just turning you on. Rendering you deaf to the drone of his words as you pictured him pushing something else inside your tight, throbbing—

“—whole lotta problems for us if you’re, uh…ovulating,” Joel finished, expression taut and oblivious. You hadn’t heard the first part of that sentence and didn’t care to.

“Ovulating,” you repeated slowly. Indifferent.

Joel carried on without a hitch.

“Kids just ain’t fit for this world. I know you know that.”

You nodded along, not hearing a word.

“And if you’re— if y’ever did consider, maybe…”

Your lungs took an extra sharp inhale when Joel’s fingers coaxed out a warm, sticky glob of his load, and he petted your folds with his thumb. Then let out a breath himself.

“…y’oughta start a family with someone your own age—”

That part snagged your attention. Too swiftly, it came:

“My own age?”

Sighing, in spite of those welts of pleasure so heightened by his touch that the space between your legs began to throb and ache. Hardly possessed of more sense to form words that weren’t just echoes of his own, you tried communication from a simpler source—your foot.

You nudged his shoulder, and Joel looked up.

“What?”

“What?”

Parroting was, evidently, a hard habit to kill. Your toes curled into the bare skin of Joel’s shoulder, and when he re-inserted his finger, you ground your heel even deeper.

“When’s that ev…ever stopped us from doing it before, hm?” you said, tone strained but laced with some humor too, “Thought you liked sayin’ you’d make me a mama.”

Joel’s face flooded pink at the recollection—as a matter of fact, there had been several such memories. Instead of answering immediately, he just averted his gaze again. He anchored one hand to your thigh, and with the other teased out another string of your shared arousal before wiping his finger on the tissue, clinically, and repeating. All he had to offer in reply after was: ‘That’s different.’

And it was, to some extent. Joel wasn’t blind to the sea of uneasy looks that trailed behind you both whenever you walked the streets of Jackson together. How wide the eyes would get when instead of observing some filial display of affection play out before them, as expected, you’d loop your arms around his waist and take his lip between your teeth as you kissed—‘Can we please go home now, baby?’—that Joel was certain he’d been cemented as the resident pervert among everyone in town. Just how much worse that reputation was liable to get if there ever happened to be a round and swollen belly between that embrace someday was unthinkable. Dirty talk was one thing; parenthood another entirely.

This is for the best, became the low, grating refrain in his skull. Why he dug so hard, pushed so far inside the wet, velvety interior of your body without a thought for his own desires in that moment; he had to cull every trace of himself out of there, before he had half a chance to think.

“Baby, hey, hey, no—” Joel cut in a second later, abrupt.

No, no, no. You weren’t thinking either. Wrapping your hand around his wrist, pushing his fingers deeper inside.

Smiling a little, too.

“What are you— no, honey, don’t— you can’t,” Joel’s words splintered in every direction, watching you plunge his own index and middle fingers into the slick and the warmth he’d just been trying to get his cum out of. He looked up and saw your lids were heavy, about to close.

“What are you doin’? This ain’t…no, baby, it ain’t…safe.”

Back to sounding like a dad in no time at all.

“What’s wrong with leaving it in a bit longer? Feels nice.”

You had no idea what you were talking about. Joel pulled back on his hand and, in less than a second, had it freed.

“I just told you,” he huffed, “You’re too young—”

“I’m plenty old, Joel,” you returned, eyes snapping open, “You’ve shown me that more times than I can count.”

Joel was silent, stunned. He rose to his feet as your eyes seared holes into his, and for a second, he was uncertain whether to take a step back or reach out for you again.

“Baby…”

To his surprise, something like hurt surfaced behind your eyes. You set your lips in a tighter line, and your grip on the counter grew firmer just the same. He would’ve taken that move as his cue to lean in gently, slot his body between your thighs, and venture an apology of some sort, when the next thing you did stopped him cold.

Without a word, you slipped your free hand between your legs—eyeing Joel closely, almost scornfully, as you did.

You took your middle and ring fingers and sank them into your cunt. Not intending to let a drop of his spend leak out, you wedged them in as far as they’d go. Joel watched. Gawked. Once sufficiently pleased with the look of shock taking over his handsome, aged features, you withdrew the fingers. You brought them up to your mouth, wrapped your lips around the tips, and sucked.

It was a rare thing to get a taste of you and Joel together like this, so you savored it. You moved your mouth further down to drink it all in, peering up with wide, indulgent eyes and a look that was meant to punish.

Feels nice.

Tastes alright, too.

You’d licked the last bit of this glaze off your hand when your stomach clenched. You knew it would happen. Full as you were, you feared your body still hungered for more. As such, it hardly came as a surprise when next your muscles tensed, and you shifted closer to Joel.

“Maybe I don’t want babies with someone my own age.”

Either one of your knees were nudging his hips. Drawing him in. Joel appeared to waver for a second, unsure, but the look on his face made it clear this was mostly a matter of a delayed reaction. He couldn’t get his legs to move because the rest of him was still in awe. Staring at your lips, where the residue of his spend was glistening, then to your eyes, which were no less inviting, then up to the crown of your head and over it, to fix his stare on the mirror behind it. You watched him watch his own reflection with a look that was both hard and unkind, breathing slow. When he didn’t stir from that position after a minute, you touched a hand to his lower stomach.

And, brushing the heel of your palm against what felt like a hundred grey hairs in the old man’s happy trail—your favorite ones—you smoothed a caress along his belly, back and forth, before moving it left. Your hand came to rest on a mound of muscle and fat sitting right above his hip. Love handles, Joel had remarked one morning with vague distaste. Love handles, you’d repeated, beaming. You held on tightly now, appreciatively, and used your well-loved wall of flesh to pull him closer. As with any beckoning of yours, Joel didn’t have so much as half a mind to resist. He did, however, refuse to meet your gaze while you tilted your hips and spread your legs wider, before winding your ankles around the backs of his legs.

“Don’t you think I’d look pretty?” You pouted up at him. Your folds made a light, warm suction rubbing along the front of Joel’s cock—of course he’d grown hard again, and you could hold him, point him down to that wet embrace awaiting him patiently at the edge of the sink.

Joel cursed under his breath.

“‘Course I do…” he said, voice hoarse, “Y’always look—”

“I mean…with your baby inside me, Joel. Right here.”

As if to put a finer point on your words, you nestled the head of his cock inside the first inch of your body. Joel had to seize the laminate underneath you and grit his teeth to keep from letting out a groan too loud. That tip may as well have been a first-rate conductor of heat, and your warmth the thing that might send him spilling again

“You don’t—” Joel choked out, nearly incensed, “—don’t know what the hell you’re sayin’, baby. What that means.”

In truth, there wasn’t a world Joel Miller could imagine where a girl like you could give more than a passing thought to getting knocked up by him—a man his age. What good would it do? You had your whole life laid out before you like a four-course dinner spread; there was no sense whatsoever in letting the meal go to waste on him.

He communicated as much by moving to pull out.

You met the effort with a push of your own, sinking down another inch or two on his shaft and smiling when you saw his eyes roll back in his head at the dizzying friction.

“I know more than enough, old man—” Grin stretching ear-to-ear as you dug your heels in his ass and tugged him deeper, “—who do you think taught me all this?”

Of course, it had been Joel.

Always, always him—the only one, in fact.

Your walls drew him in like a hug. For once, Joel conjured up the strength to take a look between your lower half and his, and when he did, the next moan was inevitable. It trickled through his lips. Your body looked sublime swallowing a third of his cock, and it was almost as though a maggot had crawled into his brain, chanting:

‘Make her full. Make her yours. Tell any man who’d even think of looking her way she belongs to someone else.’

He couldn’t.

Joel would never be so selfish. Just think of her youth.

But when his gaze drifted back to yours, every thought and any word besides seemed gently to melt away. Beneath him, your eyes were two pools of desire.

“You like this…don’t you, Joel?” Your voice was tiny.

“I do.”

In fact, he loved it.

“Then why can’t we?” Why shouldn’t we?

Minuscule now, the words that reached him barely exceeded a whisper. It was as though the moment itself had drained all fear from your face—and out of Joel, all common sense from his brain—leaving you both to stare at the other with shared, stupid, anoetic looks of bliss. The man who had you beat by thirty-odd years seemed nearly of the same mind, with almost identical ignorance.

Idiocy.

“Just once?” Joel croaked.

Somewhere underneath, unseen, you smiled.

“Just one?” you murmured back.

He sank in another inch. When your walls contracted around him, Joel’s hands found your hips by force of habit and pushed your back against the glass behind it. The mirror was cool, and inside you, Joel was throbbing.

“Once,” he repeated, not thinking too deeply.

“One,” you said, with a world of more purpose.

Joel relinquished the last three inches, and with it, all of his resolve. The handsome, scarred, and plainly greying features all twisted as one, and the expression that you knew too well to mean that the man was feeling good took on the slightest hint of guilt. He gripped you tighter.

“One?” Joel panted. Confused.

He pulled out halfway just to find his home again. Your pearly slick mixed together with his spend, and both coated over Joel’s shaft in a pretty, generous sheen.

“One more of you, I mean.” You sounded too sweet. There was no way in hell you’d actually meant it.

Joel’s cheeks flushed again, but he didn’t stop, either.

“Baby…” he trailed off instead. He pushed in, pulled out, felt your tender little hole make an ‘o’ around his shaft, and then he kissed the edge of your left cheek—maybe to rein in the need in his words before he spoke again: “One’a me takes and I’m givin’ ya fifteen more, y’hear?”

The smile he received told him as much as he needed to hear. He probably wouldn’t have believed it even if you’d said the words yourself. Joel’s thrusts sped up, and as the pleasure distended in the pit of his stomach with the friction and the feel, his words flowed a little more freely.

In disbelief, “Wanna be a mama that bad for me, huh?”

Your grin grew bigger. You nodded your head.

“Make your old man a daddy, is that it?”

Exactly. Senseless as it was, your look said it all.

To have slipped between the grooves and ridges of Joel’s brain and caught wind of even a fraction of the things he wanted to do to you then, a smarter girl would have run. Would have shoved him back out as swiftly as she’d let him in and told him no, that’s gross, and gone home. And, had the grey matter floating inside your own skull not been so completely dominated by primal need and wanting, that’s likely what you would have done, too. Instead, with a head full of lewd, youthful stupidity, you seized the black-grey curls dangling at the nape of his neck and drew him closer. You spread your legs wider.

“That is what you’ve wanted this whole time, right?”

Under his scruff, a muscle tensed as Joel bit down.

That’s all he’s ever wanted.

Let the neighbors talk.

Let them say what they wanted to say—it was probably all true to the point they were trying to make, anyway. That Joel was a pervert, of course. That you were naïve, also true. That you would look too good not to stare in a white cotton frock with a bump underneath, absolutely. These were the ideas permeating your brain and his while Joel took a firmer hold of your sides and brought his nose to rest against yours. With every stab of his hips, he pressed kisses to your soft, parted lips, speaking low:

“That what you want, too, darlin’?” More serious now.

The head of his cock nicked a sensitive ridge inside you, eliciting a whimper, but you nodded. You nodded again, feeling the brush of his stubble at your mouth and your chin, and nodded again when he bottomed out, stuffing you tight. It felt a little more momentous than any other time in the past, now that you were picturing a fullness that wasn’t just him. Him and you: a concrete being to soothe the sting of his absence long after Joel withdrew.

Something to stick.

“Please say it, baby.”

Someone to call yours.

“I want it,” you said, sounding desperate.

A coil was just starting to form in the place you felt him. Drifting up, pulling tight, making your eyes go glossy and wide while they stuck to Joel’s and begged him for more.

“Want what?” He sped up, and his thrusts got sloppy.

“Want you,” you breathed, “Inside me, Joel, please.”

As if predicting your next thoughts, the man lowered his hand to your belly. You hadn’t even noticed the smallest bulge had taken shape beneath the skin. Joel slowed, momentarily, then rubbed the base of his palm against the mound where your body was obliged to make room for his cock inside you. He drew soft, tender circles there and, with the motion, sent stars flying before your eyes.

“Good girl,” he murmured, “Right here?”

“Ri— right there. Right there.”

Joel adored that sound. The soft, elated look, the gentle knoll of flesh in a bump below his hand, the whimpers rolling off your tongue repeatedly, quicker and quicker the more the pleasure inside you continued to build. Joel’s release was coming soon, too. For the hundredth time that night, he silently wished he were a little younger; so he could fill you up once, twice, twenty more times until your insides were stuffed and painted white. As if reading his mind, as he had for you, you wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss.

“Hope our baby has your eyes,” you murmured to him.

It shouldn’t have had such a strong effect—but of course, it did. Joel pictured the small, sweet infant with irises that shone a bit like his, and his stomach caved in.

Tonight, tomorrow, or ten months down the line, he was getting you pregnant. He’d clear his whole schedule for it

“That right?” And now he couldn’t stop the smile as he spoke, leaning even further in, “What about their nose?”

He kissed the tip of yours.

“Hope they get this.”

He kissed either one of your cheeks.

“These too.”

You had to fight back a laugh while his scruff tickled skin. Two deep strokes away from the brink of release and he still somehow always stayed in tune with your needs.

The threat of your peak was perilously near. Joel’s spend and your slick, tender glaze made a chorus of sounds at each thrust, and the deeper he went, the bigger it swelled. Your smiles couldn’t stay for much longer when the feeling inside you both was being amplified like that. Sensing this, Joel took hold of your face and slipped his touch to cup your chin. He made you tilt your head up to him, as if to ask again, ‘Are you sure?’ and when you nodded, his lips twitched again. A fleeting hint of a grin, like he couldn’t be more eager to finish now if he tried.

Holding your face, cock swollen and throbbing and desperate between your walls, he felt a familiar twitch.

There it is.

[nereidprinc3ss]

do you believe me now? | 7

in which spencer reid and inexperienced!fem reader sleep together for the first time

series masterlist

18+ (smut) warnings/tags: loss of virginity, oral f/m receiving, so much praise, pain during sex, unprotected sex, cr**mp**, bit of overstim, soft dom spence, if u don't like that freak shit (love and intimacy) this is not for u, spencer is a nerd, they're both nerds actually and that factors in heavily, you may get more from this part by FIRST reading how they met in this bonus chapter a/n: thank you all for being patient, ilysm, this was the most laborious thing i've ever done for no reason and also this part changed so many times and is not what i expected it to be so pls go in with tempered expectations and keep in mind that this story is more about the characters and their specific relationship dynamic than just being porn. i truly have no idea how you guys will react to this but i sincerely hope you love it and them like i do<3 also it's twice as long as the other parts so feedback would be very very appreciated! again i love u all and enjoy the penultimate part!

Spencer’s lips are on yours, and you weren’t expecting it—hell, you weren’t expecting him to be in your apartment. After all, he’d wished you goodnight and walked out only a moment ago.

“Spencer—wh—” 

But he’s insistent with his lips, kissing you bruisingly over and over like there’s nectar on your tongue and he’s parched for you. Still, he has enough decency to not completely ignore you, exhaling a quick excuse over your flushed lips. 

“I missed you.”

This time, though, you dodge his hungry kiss. Part of you thinks, as he watches you, eyes alight and breathing heavily, that he sort of likes your playing hard to get. It’s not something you do very often, admittedly. 

“We’ve been apart for like, maybe a minute.”

“I didn’t even make it to the parking lot.”

Your face heats.  

“Well you can’t just—you can’t just walk in like that! And I thought you said we weren’t supposed to mix fighting with pleasure.”

“Then start locking your door. And I thought you said we weren’t fighting.”

You roll your eyes in response, though your heart is still pittering in your chest. 

At least his hands move to your arms, stroking up and down relatively chastely—although he has this way of making everything seem intimate. Especially when paired with those amber eyes of his—glowing like a candlelight beacon in the window guiding you home. He speaks in low, appeasing tones and darts his tongue over his lips. 

“I originally said it’s a bad idea for couples to sleep together after an argument. But you know—makeup sex is ubiquitous across culture and time because it works. Anger and arousal trigger a lot of the same hormones, specifically norepinephrine which is involved in feelings of longing and—”

“Spencer.”

“You know what else?” He mutters in a way that feels dangerous. “It tends to feel better than regular sex.”

That earns a shaky exhale from you. Whether from irritation or arousal is anyone’s guess—probably a combination of both. 

“So you came back to fuck me?”

It’s probably evident to Spencer from your choice of language that this already isn’t going exactly as he’d planned. He doesn’t answer right away—just regards you, gaze bouncing between your two eyes like he’s trying to calculate your level of anger. 

“Is that what we’re calling it now?”

You push him away and move to walk down the hall. 

“Maybe your window of opportunity has passed.”

A warm hand wraps around your wrist in the dark of the hallway and he pulls you back until you’re falling against something tall and warm and lean. The smell of polished amber and sandalwood overwhelms your senses. 

“What’s wrong, angel? What happened in the minute I was gone to change your mind?” His voice is scratchy like a favorite record. It’s the voice he could hold you captive with. The one you have a very difficult time saying no to. 

“I don’t know,” you mutter, unintentionally leaning back against him. “What happened to change yours?”

His response comes pressed against your ear, half-lost in your hair. 

“You’re upset that I changed my mind. I thought you wanted this, honey.”

“I do,” you admit, letting your head fall back against his shoulder and bringing his arm to wrap around you. “And if you hadn’t walked out earlier I would’ve done it. But… I’m tired of us doing everything on your timeline. You just… you expect me to be amenable to what you want, constantly.” His nose and lips press into your shoulder. 

“What do you mean?”

“Like… I’ve been begging you to sleep with me for I don’t even know how long. And you keep changing your mind, and I feel like you’re being really confusing about it. Obviously you don’t have to sleep with me, you never did, but I just feel kind of… jerked around. And you did it again tonight.”

A beat of silence. 

“I understand your frustration,” he appeases, securing both his arms around you. You cling weakly to his wrist, to his warmth, like he’s a tether in a storm. “Would you prefer to wait until you initiate it?”

“No. Yes! I don’t know,” you huff, disentangling yourself from his arms and continuing toward your bedroom. “Now I’m annoyed at you again.”

He follows you right through the door. 

“Just tell me what to do! I don’t want to be annoying.”

“I can’t. I’m being unreasonable.” You flick on your adjoining bathroom light and examine yourself in the mirror. Yeesh. The eye makeup situation is abysmal after all the crying that has taken place over the course of the evening. 

“So choose to be reasonable and tell me what you want from me. I’ll give it to you.”

You frown at your reflection, pushing your hair back and rubbing at some excess mascara. 

“No, you’re not understanding me. I’m not choosing to be unreasonable. My thought process regarding the situation is inherently unreasonable and there’s nothing I can do about it because it’s just the way I feel.”

“The feeling being that I’ve been too domineering over how our sexual relationship has unfolded?”

Spencer watches you in the bathroom mirror, leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed as you tip some makeup remover onto a reusable cotton pad. You try not to check him out as you nod, but it’s impossible—with his sleeves rolled up to show defined forearms cradled in capable hands, and his hair all messy. 

When he pushes off the wall you freeze, unsure of his next move—until he’s gently spinning you around and taking the bottle and cloth from your hands. 

“Maybe it would help,” he begins, soft as he focuses on the new task, carefully bringing the round to your right eye so he can remove the bleeding mascara. You allow your eyes to flutter shut. “If I remind you why I’ve been so hesitant.”

“Because you hate giving me joy.”

He laughs, nothing more than one huff from his nose. 

“You’re spoiled and we both know it.”

Point taken, as he gently wipes your makeup away for you. Your silence is his cue to continue. 

“Everything I said about worrying that you would regret choosing me is true. It was especially true when I thought you felt lukewarm toward me. And all of that confusing stuff I said in the phone is true too—having sex for the first time is incredibly intimate and weird and sometimes scary. If you’re not 100% sure about your partner, or if you think your feelings are unrequited, it’s hard to be completely comfortable in such a vulnerable situation and your likelihood of getting hurt or having regrets skyrockets. I know that from experience. I wanted better for you than what I got. Still, I know it was wrong to project my feelings about the significance of sex onto you. In that regard, you’re right. I was being domineering, and I guess… I guess to an extent I’m still deflecting. I shouldn’t be trying to pretend like it’s about you when in reality I mostly just didn’t want to get hurt again. I didn’t want to go through that again, and that’s okay, but I shouldn’t have made you feel like it was something you could have changed.”

You try to process that. 

“Go through what?” You whisper hoarsely. Something about having him at such close range while he takes such care with you feels whisper-y. 

“Sleeping with someone who didn’t love me back.”

Your reply is small. 

“Oh. Right.”

How could anyone not love him back?

Spencer’s reply is simple and kind, without a hint of, obviously you dumb bitch—which is pretty much what you’re thinking to yourself. 

“Does that make sense, lovely? Do you understand why I wanted to wait?”

He lets you ponder for a while in comfortable-enough silence as he finishes removing your eye makeup with a characteristically gentle hand. When you open your eyes, he looks genuinely content, screwing the lid back on the bottle as if he’s got an eternity to wait for your answer. 

“Yeah. That part makes sense. But why did you seem so… I don’t know, like, wishy-washy about it?”

Spencer’s eyes dart up to meet yours, brows slightly raised. Then a small laugh bubbles up from somewhere inside him. 

“Because I’m obsessed with you. I thought about you like that constantly. I still do.”

Your breath catches at the casual admission. 

“Oh.”

Spencer hums, setting the bottle down before tenderly thumbing away some excess mascara that he must have missed from under your eye. 

“You didn’t think it was easy for me, did you?”

“Well… kind of,” you admit, tracking his eyes until they meet yours. 

“Not sleeping with you has been among the hardest things I’ve ever done. Especially when you started begging me. That first time, when I picked you up from Penelope’s and you asked me why we hadn’t had sex yet…”

He trails off, still rubbing at your cheek as he loses himself in thought. 

Eventually, you grow impatient, prompting, “what?”

“It’s not a nice thought.”

“Well, you have to tell me now,” you insist. 

He half smiles, thumb straying to your lips. 

“It was just… you had no idea what you were talking about, and you were ready to throw a tantrum in my living room until I gave you what you thought you wanted. Part of me was imagining bending you over the couch right then, since you thought you were so ready.”

It feels like someone has snipped the pulley that keeps your stomach in place. 

“Spencer,” you splutter, convinced your cheek is tangibly heating under his touch as your head reels at the revelation that he could have such a deeply dirty and mildly sinister mind. 

“I told you it wasn’t nice.”

You swallow. 

“Is that… is that still what you want?”

His brows flicker again and he tucks hair behind your ear. 

“To bend you over my couch? No.”

Your face warms even more and you turn to leave the bathroom, sick of his teasing. 

“Okay, goodni—”

“Hold on.” Spencer catches you by your waist and pulls you back into him for the second time tonight. A dangerous smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. “I know what you meant. And no, I don’t want to bend you over my couch.” He laughs, slipping a hand under your shirt to rub your back. “You know what I want. I’m more interested in learning what you want.”

“I want…” Your eyes dance between his, and your heart flutters against the confines of your chest as you realize what you’ve wanted for so long is finally yours for the taking. “I want to stop talking about it.”

His expression neutralizes and you know it’s probably intentional to stop whatever feelings you assume him to be having color your decision. 

“Oh?”

“I just think we’ve talked about it enough.”

Before he can say another word, or ask you another question, you kiss him with such passion there’s no way he can doubt how much you want this. 

Only a moment passes before he allows himself to lean into it, cupping your face between reverent hands and taking control of the pace of the kiss, slowing it down until you can hardly breathe. Your little noise of want has him quickening the process, pressing against you until you’re walking backward out of the bathroom. It’s like the first crack in a dam. After that, everything becomes inevitable. 

Your knees hit the back of the bed and you sit down hard on the mattress, smiling up at him. You skim the front of his thighs with your palms as he smooths your hair.

Spencer groans, leaning down and kissing you til you’re on your back. 

“Don’t make that face.”

An affronted huff from you breaks the kiss up and he pulls back to study your expression. 

“What do you mean don’t make that face? I was just smiling at you.”

“I know you were. And you have such a pretty smile it makes me feel guilty about… defiling you.”

Your brows flicker up and your mouth drops open with an affronted scoff.

“Watch yourself. I’ll defile you.”

“You already have,” he admits with a half-laugh as he kisses you again. “My mind was never this dirty before we met.”

“Hm. Tell me you like my smile.”

He pauses and then chuckles dryly against your mouth. 

“I love your smile. You’re gorgeous. Any more demands?”

Pleased, you shake your head and pull him closer, wrapping your legs around his waist. 

“Not currently.”

“Really?” he murmurs, trailing kisses over your cheek and down your jaw, “I’d do just about anything you asked me right now. You don’t want to take advantage of that?”

The sensation of his lips just below your ear threatens all rational thought in your brain, but you manage a reply with only a slight delay and a hint of a waver coloring your tone. 

“I shouldn’t have to demand things. You should just know to do them.”

His kisses drag lower, warm and unhurried and you’re trying not to let your hyper-sensitivity from going a week completely untouched show—but you doubt he misses the way your breath catches, or the barely audible squeaks, or the arch of your back or the tightening grip on his shirt. 

“Well, for future reference—” he nips at a sensitive spot and you gasp quietly, even as you tilt your head to offer him more access. More room to bite, if he so chooses. “—I happen to enjoy it when you make demands of me. Especially when those demands entail letting me call you pretty.”

“I’ve never not let you call me pretty before,” you huff. It’s a touchy subject, and Spencer can probably sense your hackles rising, but he has you right where he wants you and so he pushes anyway. 

“No. But you never believe me. We’ve had this conversation. You always act like I’m walking you to the gallows when I compliment you.” 

It’s hard to make a defense when he’s leaning his weight onto one arm so he can unbutton your jeans, when he’s looking down at you with sparkling onyx and scorched-earth eyes like you’re something to be consumed. But not violently, no—ardently. Like fruit heavy on the vine. Like you’re a religious rite to the devout and deluded. A sacrament.

But it’s not a blind passion. Spencer knows you; every inch of you and every loose thread on your soul begging to be pulled. He knows you and he still wants you like this. To be perfectly honest, you’d never thought you’d feel comfortable handing yourself over to someone like this—vulnerable and all your layers of armor shed. Never in your life would you have thought you could trust a person so implicitly that you’d hand them a knife and show them exactly where to press, that you’d say, I know once you open me and you see me you’ll not want to change a thing.

You adore him. Cosmically. Enormously. In every dimension. He’s lodged so deep in your heart you have no choice but to love him eternally. 

It’s deep in the midst of all these very profound revelations that you realize Spencer has stalled with your zipper undone. His hand has strayed to your hip, to sweetly push your shirt up and trace love letters into warmed and downy skin with his thumb. 

“I just wish you could see yourself how I see you,” he says softly, the weight of the truth a strain on his vocal cords. 

Sometimes, he is so kind it’s like a punch to your stomach. You’ve never been quite as kind as him. And nobody’s ever been as kind to you as he is. You’ve done nothing to deserve his kindness, but you know he needs a place for it, and you’re here with open arms. 

He studies you a moment longer, swallowing as his eyes trail over your face and lower. You want to reach out and brush strands of caramel hair out of his face, but he seems to be thinking so hard you’re hesitant to distract him. 

“I’ve never told you this, because I know you’d just shoot it down, but… you are genuinely the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met in my life.”

Something twinges in the depths of your stomach—the darker shades who live there and exist solely to whisper not enough not enough not enough to you every minute of every day. 

But they’re simply not a match for the softness you find when you do reach out for his hair, or the way he looks at you. Spencer loosely wraps his fingers around your wrist—not a cuff, but an affectionate hold. 

“Do you believe me?”

There’s so much earnest hope in his voice it almost jars you. He so badly wants you to understand how feels about you—he’s been trying to tell you for months and all you know how to do is refute his praise and insist on your worthlessness. 

Ever since Spencer, you don’t see the faces on magazine covers or in superhero movies, no matter how mathematically flawless they are. Nobody gets close to being as beautiful as he is in your eyes. He’s in an entirely different echelon, and despite how you feel about yourself, you have to accept that he might feel the same about you. 

“I do,” you say, equally soft, and 100% honest. You believe that he believes it, and that’s enough. It’s all that matters. 

The shallow knit of his brow loosens. His lips ease into a suggestion of a smile. But it’s most visible in his eyes—the way smoldering coals reignite, melting the amber glass of his irises until they’re molten. 

The way he kisses you then, you’d think you’d lassoed the moon and pulled it down from the sky for him. But apparently all it takes to make him incandescently, contagiously happy, is to accept a compliment.

There’s a renewed sense of urgency on his breath as he kisses you deeply and quick enough your heart is racing. It only goes faster when he remembers his previous task and begins tugging your jeans down, but he doesn’t even bother to pull them past your knees before his hand is creeping up your thigh. Goosebumps race each other across your body as you try to remember what it feels like—what he feels like. But you can’t, even as his thumb fans over your inner thigh and pushes it open, gently encouraging you to give him more access to you. 

“You’re not wasting any time,” you breathe against him while he traces the edge of your underwear.

“Do you want me to slow down?”

Judging by the way the tips of his fingers only barely shy away from the fabric, he really wants the answer to be no. But you know in his searching gaze that he’d never push you. 

“No, it’s fine. As long as we… don’t go this fast the whole time.”

“We won’t.” The hasty words are of lower priority than the next kiss he plants to your swollen lips. “We won’t. I just missed you so much.”

“Yeah?” You giggle airily as he drags his fingers over your clit through the material, trying to ignore the way it makes your head spin. 

“Yes. Yeah.”

You’re not sure you’ve ever seen him like this, so… desperate for you, as he drops his lips to your neck and presses barely-there kisses everywhere he knows you’re sensitive. Just the feeling of his breath against your skin has you shivering. His hand between your legs only brushes your most nerve-dense spot, but a few touches in and you’re already wound up, like if Spencer doesn’t give you more soon you’ll burst. And not in the good way. 

When he finally commits to actually kissing your neck, you squeak, warmth emanating from that spot just below your jaw all the way to your toes. The frantic energy of earlier is slowly melting away, and he loses focus with his hand, as it begins straying wider, stroking your hip, your inner thigh, your stomach. It’s like your nerve endings are on overdrive, delivering twice as much feedback to your brain as they normally would. Each touch feels like he’s conducting electricity over your body, like you’re a plasma ball. He’d probably like that analogy—you, a core of alternating voltage, and him, the conductor, tracing a path and giving all those electrons an easy release. If you weren’t so distracted, you’d tell Spencer you found a way to work Nikola Tesla into your mutual sex life, and he’d probably propose on the spot. 

But that electricity is building fast—even more so when he drags his lips down just above your collarbone. Your breath hitches, simultaneously trying to crane your neck to give him more room, and curl into him so as to escape the stimulation. Finally he pulls away, and losing the softness of his mouth while the air feels so cold against the places he’d kissed almost hurts. 

“You’re a mess,” he chuckles affectionately, raising his hand to brush hair away from your face before stroking the heated high point of your cheek. “What am I going to do with you?”

It’s teasing, but so low and gentle and honeyed it swirls your stomach. 

“Whatever you want,” you admit quietly. It’s a shy confession more than it is a salacious flirtation because he already has you. And you want nothing more than for him to act on that in any way he so pleases. Whatever he does, it will be careful, and kind, and because he loves you. You know that no matter how he takes you apart—he’ll put you back together again. 

“I don’t know if I can. You’re all jumpy.”

God, he has the prettiest smile—even when it’s twisted with sarcasm and a thin veneer of guilt, like he knows he shouldn’t be teasing and just can’t help himself. 

“I’m not,” you defend, face heating further. “I’m not nervous. I don’t know what it is.”

That sticky sweet tone is back, pooling in his eyes and dripping all over you like nectar as he languidly looks you over. 

“I didn’t say you were nervous. Just a little bit jumpy.”

It’s not accusatory—he’s simply stating a fact. Easy, gentle, designed to soothe. 

You shrug helplessly and chew on your lip, unsure of how he wants you to respond. It’s definitely true that excited as you are, you’re slightly on edge. You feel taut as a string on a guitar, tense and waiting to be yanked at any second. 

His expression is serene, and his thoughts inscrutable as he continues lavishing you with his eyes, down to where he’s lying over you and back up. His lips part, but he doesn’t speak for a moment as he formulates his words. 

“Can we try something? There’s this tantric exercise that might help you relax.”

Your brows draw earnestly and you nod up at him, not requiring any convincing even though you have no idea what he’s talking about. 

Spencer directs you to sit up, and you do—kicking your jeans all the way off so you can sit criss-cross with your hands braced on your ankles. 

He’s next to you on the bed, at a slight angle, one of your knees in his lap. You blink at him. 

“Now what?”

“Now you give me one of your hands,” he says, tone tinted with a hint of an amused smile, as if your impatience is funny to him. Of course it probably is. 

Frowning only a little, you unlock your left arm and hold it out for him, watching curiously as he takes your one hand between his and flips it palm-up. 

“Did you know,” Spencer begins, voice low and confidential, “that the fingertips are the second most sensitive part of the human body?”

“What’s the first?”

“Lips,” he murmurs, eyes fixed on your hand where he’s brushing the tips of your fingers light enough it almost tickles. “They’re both incredibly important for keeping you alive, which is why they’re one and two. But you’ll be particularly sensitive anywhere you’re vulnerable.” His words are trailing off as he brushes his thumb over your palm and to the delicate skin of your wrist. “Like here.”

His knuckles skim up your forearm, to the crook of your elbow. 

“And especially here.”

You’re fascinated as he traces back down the length of your arm and over your inner-wrist, feather light. Then up once more, with the blunted edges of his nails, and your breath catches. You’ve never noticed how sensitive such an innocuous part of your body could be, but it has your stomach flipping—more so when he looses a breathy laugh. “You know, some people are actually able to reach orgasm just by light stimulation to this area.”

Your response is just as airy—you don’t recognize your voice when it comes out like that, hanging in the pitch black between you. 

“Really?” 

An affirmative hum from him, as he lifts your hand and places an intentional kiss over your pulse at the bend of your wrist. Your chest aches and heat is pooling in your stomach as his gently trails them up the delicate skin of your arm. Maybe you should be embarrassed by the reaction you’re having—after all, it’s just your arm. But he treats every part of you like it warrants love and attention and intimacy. Even the parts you typically ignore. Certainly parts you never considered to be sexually or romantically relevant. It’s dizzying. It’s like magic. 

“Arms up,” Spencer finally directs, just as sweetly as he’s doing everything else, and helps you tug your shirt over your head. Every brush of fabric, every seam against your skin registers more than it normally would. Everything is heightened, and despite your state of undress you’re still warm. “Your neck is really sensitive, too. It’s the most commonly acknowledged erogenous zone.”

Erogenous zone. Of course this all comes back to biology. 

“Tilt your head for me, honey.”

Utterly entranced and useless to not abide by him, you do so. Spencer brushes your hair over your shoulder, and if the slip of it down your back weren’t enough, the graze of his fingertips against the nape of your neck has you shivering. 

The warmth of him at your throat feels completely brand new, despite having already had his lips there only minutes before. But now they ghost over your skin with a kind of novelty, and your own lips part in silent pleasure, head lolling to allow him greater access.

“Lie back.”

Without hesitation (but perhaps a bit sluggishly in your stupor) you obey, sliding down until you’re propped up only by pillows once more. Spencer takes his place propped above you once more, thighs slotted with yours as he quickly picks up where he left off. 

The sweet kisses are perfect and feel so much better than you’d ever thought to notice before—but at the same time your core aches and there’s that pressure building again that’s starting to get to you. 

“Spencer,” you try, and it comes out hoarse but you don’t care at all. “More.”

“You want me to leave marks?” 

And the offer is so tempting you’ll wait a few more minutes to ask for what you really need, nodding semi-frantically and ‘mhm’-ing desperately. 

As he gently latches onto a spot that will require concealer later but feels fantastic for now, one of his hands slips down your side, just barely letting his nails skim, and your back actually arches. It’s a shocking amount of stimulation for being nowhere near any sexual hotspots. That tiny caught breath dissolves as his fingers continue down just as lightly over your hip and thigh. Your muscles tense as you chase and run away from the feeling. It’s ridiculous.

There’s no point in trying to keep your eyes open now—they grow heavy and you let them fall shut as he sucks another love bite to your throat. 

“Feels good, doesn’t it? It’s kind of weird.” He says, voicing your thoughts as he eventually decides the mark will be sufficiently dark. 

“Yeah,” you agree, lacking all eloquence as he caresses every sensitive place you didn’t know you had and your hips writhe minutely in a little desperate dance of your own creation. 

“Most people aren’t aware of the potential of the erogenous zones that aren’t actual sex organs. They don’t pay attention to them. You know what else is an interesting function of erotic stimulation to areas that aren’t directly involved in reproduction?”

“Hm,” you hum as his hand skims to your back. You lean into it and he promptly undoes your bra with a single hand—a skill you’re not even sure you have. 

“It releases not quite as much oxytocin as an orgasm but more than sexual pleasure alone. So you’re less tense before sex than you usually would be, and you’re primed to build more trust and feel more connected with your partner during.”

God, he’s a nerd. And it’s so, so hot. 

You roll over on your back again and look up at him through half-lidded eyes. The corner of his mouth flickers as he takes in your expression, before trailing downward, following the path his fingertips make over your skin as they tug the straps over your shoulders. Trying to stop him, to be shy, would be a pointless venture. He’s seen you like this and you want him to see you again. 

A shaky exhale of his own brings a little smile to your face as he pulls your bra away and observes the newly bared skin with a hunger that you can feel. 

“I missed you,” he murmurs, eyes cast pointedly down and thumb brushing over the side of your right breast. 

“You mentioned.”

“I’m not allowed to say it again?” He teases, leaning down to kiss you soft. Your lips curve against his. 

“You can say it as many times as you want.”

Spencer hums, finally thumbing over your breast’s sensitive peak. It sends a chill down your back and seeing as you’re already worked up to the point of near insanity, the pleasure from such a simple touch is much stronger than it would be otherwise. 

“Good. Because I missed you a lot.”

After that, he doesn’t waste much time—only toying with your flesh for another minute as he kisses you before his hand is skimming down your abdomen and dipping below the waistband of your underwear. 

“Please,” you whisper, tilting your hips toward him when he doesn’t move to touch you anymore. 

“Please what?”

“Spencer, don’t.”

He smiles at this, pressing another kiss to the corner of your mouth as his hand travels lower. Fingers slip between wet folds and he begins making the lightest of circles over your clit. 

“You’ve probably been waiting long enough, huh? I should be nicer.”

Your answer is a breathy almost-whine as you seek more friction against his hand. 

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, pressing down harder. The sensation sends sparks down to your toes and you attempt to clamp your legs shut around his wrist. “These need to stay open,” Spencer chuckles, “or else I can’t help you.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” The words are a sweet sing-song against your cheek as he kisses you there, before hooking his fingers into the fabric of your underwear and pulling down. You try to help wiggle out of them as best you can, gasping when he tosses them away and immediately returns his hand between your legs. He dips his head down, tongue lathing over your breast, and teases you with the tip of one finger circling around your entrance. 

“I need—”

“Shh. Let me worry about it.”

With that, he’s dipping his ring and middle fingers just barely inside of you to the first knuckle, then back out, before pushing a bit deeper, and repeating the cycle until they’re as far as they’ll go. When he slowly starts fucking you with them, still mouthing sweetly at your breast, you’re ready to melt. 

The room is quiet except for your breathy mewls, the lewd, wet sound of his fingers inside of you, and the blood rushing in your ears. Soon your breast pops from between his lips and he finds somewhere else to leave his mark. Spencer is turning you into a work of art, with his fingers, with his mouth. You don’t mind at all. You’d let him sign his name, if he could—but you doubt he’d let you get his name tattooed. 

Soon you stop fighting the perpetual tug of your lids down and let them flutter shut, loosing a freer moan as he brushes over that sweet spot inside you. Even when he’d told you how to find it over the phone, it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t like this—maddening enough to have your hips twisting again and that hot bed of coals in your tummy sparking. 

“Spencer,” you warn, leg twitching as he stokes the fire beyond the point where you can passively enjoy it. Either he’s got to slow down or he’s got to let you burn all the way up. You practically jump when you feel his tongue flick over your clit—you hadn’t even been aware of his shifting positions. Maybe you’re more out of it than you’d previously thought. Your eyes shoot open and he does it again. “Oh, fuck.”

The words are simple, quiet, and apparently that’s not enough. Before you can even process the sensation of the tip of his tongue on you he’s latching onto your clit, suckling in a way that has your vision momentarily going out. You cry out and kick involuntarily, hips jumping up, but he captures your leg and presses you down into the mattress so no matter how much you squirm and squeak you can’t get away. 

“Fuckfuckfuck, Spencer I wa—ah—sn’t ready—oh my god.”

He remembers his fingers deep inside you and begins rutting them and you hiss, inhaling sharply through your teeth before letting it all out in a tremulous moan. The orgasm is building up so quickly it almost feels like an attack on your poor body as you try to process it all to no avail. Every sound you make is a vulnerable mess of pleasure and pain, a clear fear of surrendering to something inevitable. Of course, it doesn’t really hurt at all. As usual, he’s blindsided you. Found you unprepared. You rake your fingers through Spencer’s hair, continuing on with your shaky moans that sound half-worried. 

“Oh, please.” Really, you’re just pleading to be put out of your misery. It’s in moments like this, as the black is creeping in around the edges of your vision and your thoughts become threads in the tangle of an existence knotting in on itself with no discernible end or beginning in your mind until everything is completely abstract, that you’re reminded why the French refer to orgasm as the little death.  

Your fingers lace tight enough in the wilds of his hair to pull, and he groans against you, and those vibrations are your undoing. You succumb to the dark momentarily but he continues a loving assault of gentle kisses to your clit—careful enough so as to be inoffensive even after the euphoria abates and you’re hypersensitive, still relishing soft strands of hair between your knuckles. 

You’re breathing hard as you blink your vision back, looking down at him as he looks up at you from his place between your legs and rubs the top of your thigh.

“I wasn’t ready,” you pant, lips flashing into a tired smile that doesn’t hold a candle to his own livelier one. 

“Took it like a champ.”

If you weren’t already so warm his sarcastic comment would inspire more heat in the apples of your cheeks. 

“Dr. Spencer Reid using sports idioms?” You smile as he climbs back up your body. 

“It’s unreasonably sexy that you said idiom and not simile.” He kisses you, grin mirroring yours, and you don’t complain about the slick still on his lips. “And look at that. Not afraid to kiss me when I taste like you anymore.”

“I remember what you said,” you whisper, eyes bouncing between his, glowing amber pools in the low light. The words echo in your head from the first time he’d gone down on you and you’d been hesitant to taste yourself. 

One day, I’ll make you come just like that again, and then I’m going to fuck you, and you’re really going to want me to kiss you then, angel.

“So do I,” he points out needlessly. “Eerily prophetic, hm?”

“I think you just like going down on me,” you laugh. 

Without the light on, his smile is just as brilliant as usual.  

“You might be right about that.”

Another interlude of quiet begins, but you don’t mind it. Taking this slow, as desperate as you’ve been for it, feels nice. Easy. Waves of burning need ebb and flow, but for now, it feels nice to be bathed in his candlelight gaze, know you’re loved, and nothing else. 

“What next?” You whisper after a long moment, lifting your hand to trace the line of his jaw. He leans into it slightly, lips brushing your palm. 

“That’s up to you, angel. What’s going to make you feel most comfortable?” 

Your bottom lip rolls between your teeth as you think and he tracks the movement, corner of his mouth twitching fondly. 

“It might help if you weren’t fully clothed.”

“I think we could probably do something about that.”

He pecks the tip of your nose playfully and then he’s pushing off the bed. Your brow wrinkles as you follow suit only partially, sitting up with your legs folded under you and pulling the sheets over your body to combat the chill and the vulnerability of being completely naked. 

“Oh, my god. You had your shoes on that whole time?”

“I got distracted,” Spencer defends, almost tripping over himself in his hurry to slip the loafers off. 

You clutch the sheet to your chest, watching the adorable way he pushes his hair out of his face as he rushes. He’s so clearly excited—it shows in the flush of his cheek and his even worse than usual coordination. 

“But on my bed?”

“I’m sorry,” he says without seeming very apologetic, leaning down to catch your chin between his thumb and forefinger and pressing his lips to yours. “I’ll pay to have your comforter dry cleaned. I’ll buy you a new one. I don’t care.”

“How chivalrous.”

“I am,” he insists against your lips, shaped by what is surely a boyish smirk. 

Unsurprisingly, you get lost in the kiss, dropping the sheet to hang onto his shoulders. Spencer takes advantage of the once-more revealed skin, rubbing your thigh with slow passes in a way that has you all lit up again already. It doesn’t help that his tie is skimming right over the recess between your folded thighs as he leans over your seated form, kissing you deeper as the moments pass. 

“You’re distracting me now,” you scold, but your voice is quiet and smiley as your noses brush. 

“Do you want to help me with my clothes?”

You nod, heart hatching like a cocoon and already slipping a finger into the knot of his tie so you can tug perhaps not gently enough. He chuckles, bracing himself with his fists on either side of your lap as you pull and yank until the fabric comes loose and you slip it from around his neck, flinging it blindly for dramatic effect. Then he slowly draws back to his full height, until you’re about eye-level with his chest. His gaze fixes on you, feverish and intent as he finds the buckle of his belt without looking. The slide of leather on leather, the jingle of the metal has the hairs on the back of your neck rising and you fight a chill as he pins you with his stare—feeling rather powerless as he towers over you, still essentially fully clothed while you’re completely naked. 

You probably shouldn’t be as thrilled by it as you are. 

Spencer tosses the belt on the floor and watches on, utterly charmed as you rise to your knees. His hands find your waist, steadying you as you begin unbuttoning his shirt with slow, careful fingers. 

“See?” You murmur bashfully. “Helping.”

His voice is equally as soft. 

“Very helpful. Thank you.”

The tension in the quiet room gets to be too much and you have to focus hard on the task at hand, failing to bite back a twisty smile. For once, he keeps his stupid perfect mouth shut and lets you push the fabric of his open shirt from his shoulders in humid silence. 

Your fingers skate down his torso and you watch the muscles tense. You wonder if he notices the way he pulls you slightly closer or if it’s subconscious as you both track the path of your hands. 

“Your button is on the wrong side,” you note, voice wavering slightly, once your fingers stall at the waistband of his pants.

Spencer chuckles. You feel silly. 

“Men and women’s clothing tend to have the buttons on different sides, if that’s what you mean.”

“Oh.” A beat of silence, before the words come pouring out. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I’m still a little bit nervous, I think.”

“That’s okay,” Spencer assures you, hands gliding up and down the soft lines of your waist. “It’s okay that you’re nervous. But I’m going to take really good care of you, okay?”

You nod, not looking away from the exposed skin of his torso. 

“And if at any point you need to take a break or stop, you’ll tell me.”

“I will, but… I don’t need to stop right now.”

“Then you can go as slow as you want.”

You swallow and take a moment to gather yourself before continuing on undoing his pants. With his assistance, you pull them down, and with them his boxers tug an inch or two lower, exposing a subtle v-shape before it disappears beneath the waistband. The fabric is obviously tented. A ball of nervous anticipation spins faster in your stomach, drawing all the heat in your body down between your legs. He’s pretty everywhere. You’d nearly forgotten. 

Spencer’s stomach tenses under your light touch as you drag your fingers down, down, just to the waistband. It’s then that you look up at him for permission to continue, and find his eyes already on you, heated and intense. 

“Go ahead, honey.”

Again you find yourself quite excited to touch him, but you start cautiously, simply letting your hand fall over the shape of him through the fabric. Even that has his chest rising and falling at a slightly quickened rate, and one of his hands finds your unoccupied one, twining them together. That small gesture inspires you to bolden your explorations, becoming more insistent in the way you palm at him. He feels big, which is a concern of yours. But you try not to let that intimidate you.  

Already he’s quite hard, you suspect from going down on you earlier (which is flattering as much as it embarrasses you) and your fingers graze a small wet patch of fabric. You fixate on the shaky little breath he releases as you push down his boxers with new fervor, and his cock springs up. 

He’s still perfect. 

You smear beads of precum down his tip, and he sighs, letting his head fall against yours as you both watch. A few coquettish pumps and he’s humming, kissing your face and dragging his lips down your neck where he makes a home for himself. Apparently the sight of your hand wrapped around him had been too much to bear. 

“So good. Missed this.”

“It’s just my hand,” you whisper, a little insecure that he’s maybe playing it up for your benefit. 

“It’s you.”

His voice is so breathy, you sort of have to believe him. 

“Can I…?”

Too nervous to voice what you really mean, you trail off, but it apparently doesn’t matter to Spencer. He lifts his head like he’s in a stupor but you’ve said something urgent. 

“Anything you want. You can do whatever you want.”

“Okay. Um…”

You let go of his hand (and his dick). Spencer automatically rotates to accommodate you as you end up on your knees on the wooden floor in front of him. 

“This is what you want?” He breathes, already pushing his fingers through your hair and gathering it back as you look up at him and nod. 

Very quickly you have him back in your hand, trying to remember what you learned from the few times you’ve done this. You start perhaps a bit softer, less eager to prove yourself than you have in the past—simply dragging him over your tongue before enveloping his tip in your mouth, and releasing with a pop. Despite being overtly, explicitly, and undeniably sexual, there’s something almost chaste about the way you handle him. It’s a (dirty) expression of love, and you think he understands that as he rubs at your cheek affectionately. 

Eventually, however, you get too excited, and you take him into your mouth in earnest, bobbing your head slowly and seeing how much of him you can take without gagging. 

Spencer makes the prettiest noises—they’re breathy, and not ostentatious, but he’s got such a nice speaking voice it’s like his gasps are bars in a song. You whine around him, wriggling your hips in a rather pathetic display, and then all too quickly he’s tugging your hair so you can’t keep him in your mouth. 

“What?” You ask, closer to pouting than you’d care to admit and voice slightly hoarse. “You said I could do anything I want.”

“Not if you’re that good at it. Come here.”

He helps you up and catches you in a deep, messy kiss before you’ve fully regained your footing, swaying against him, but he holds you fast, pulling away slow like strings of honey trail between your mouths. 

Spencer’s eyes are fixed on yours, lips parted in a sort of wonder before he glances down to your own mouth, wiping the shine from your bottom lip. Any moment you’re expecting him to say something, to tell you you’re beautiful or perfect or that he’s in love with you—but instead he just meets your eyes again, that same wonder-struck look on his pretty face. A tiny, breathy laugh forces itself from his chest like you’re a genuine miracle. 

You feel so observed—seen in a way you’ve never been seen, looked at closer than anyone has ever looked at you before. And he still looks at you like you’re the human embodiment of love, the closest mortal manifestation of the divine, Galatea come down from her marble pedestal. The way he looks at you has your heart pounding and your breathing hastened. Adoration has never been something so physical, so tangible, ever before in your life. Your blood hums at the frequency of his electromagnetic field—an energetic aura that surrounds each person and can be detected from several feet away, as he’d explained it to you. It originates from the heart and if you spend enough time close to  someone, syncs up the beating of your most vital organ with theirs until it’s a perfect match. Maybe that’s why, almost as quickly as your heart had begun to pound, it slows again, and you feel any reservation flush from your body like a fever. 

“Okay,” you breathe, cataloguing every angle and curve of his face to store with all the rest, all the moments that feel important. Of course, you’ll never remember them like he does yours. But you’ll be damned if you don’t try your hardest. 

“Okay?” Spencer asks. He understands the confirmation for what it is, and searches for signs of hesitation on your face while rubbing reassuring circles into your hip. You nod resolutely. 

As he lays you down on your bed, it feels like you’re entering some kind of altered state. Everything is muted and glowing with a watercolor aura in the dark and you really only care about the man on top of you and the way moonlight dances on his skin and the way he smells like smoky amber and rain. He makes sure the pillows are fluffed under you, before sweeping your hair from beneath your shoulders into a corona around your head. All the while his eyes are so soft on you, just like his hands, and his lips when he leans down to touch them to yours. 

One of said hands finds its way to your jaw, trailing down over your neck and collarbone, before settling over your breast where he swipes a thumb over your nipple, lightly, slowly, several times. 

Once again you’re struck with the odd feeling, even with his hand on you like this, that the situation isn’t sexual in the way you’d anticipated. It’s not pornographic, or even very dirty. Everything Spencer does, even as his hand sneaks down between your legs, he does because he loves you. 

“One more like this,” he mutters against your jaw after a moment. 

“Why?”

Your impatience yields a smile you can only feel against your skin. 

“Just want you relaxed and feeling good. That’s all.”

When you assent, his fingers are already slowly pushing inside you. 

It seems you’ve entered some sort of time warp as well, because you reach a gentle peak in what feels like record time, aided by his easy murmurings and saccharine praise.

“Perfect. That was perfect,” Spencer says with a kiss to your shoulder as he slides his fingers from you and you feel yourself literally dripping onto the sheets. “Can I ask you something before we get carried away?”

“Mhm,” you hum, sweet and compliant as pleasure dulls your inhibitions for the second time tonight and your head lolls into the pillows. 

“Baby,” he croons, voice soft as worn paper as your lids flutter and lashes brush febrile cheeks, thumbing over the heated skin. “Need you a little more alert, sweet girl.”

“’M trying,” you whine, though it’s half self-effacing laugh. Spencer chuckles too as you shake your head and take a deep breath, trying to reinvigorate yourself. “Okay. Go.”

“Well… we don’t have any protection.” Before you can groan, loudly, he hurries on. “And that’s… I’m okay with that, if it’s what you still want. I trust you. But there will come… a moment of reckoning. And I need to know where I should… reckon. So you don’t end up surprised.”

Now you’re really laughing—a giggly mess beneath him as your arms loop over his shoulders. 

“Stop it,” he whines, pressing his nose to your cheek as you turn your head in an effort to not snort at your boyfriend to his face. “That was for your benefit, you know. You get squeamish.”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t take you seriously when you refer to it as reckoning.”

“Fine. I’ll rephrase. When I come, you essentially have two options. Inside, or on your stomach. Tell me where you want it.”

Your breath catches and your stomach does that tripping-over-itself thing again. 

“Um…”

Another fond half laugh, at your expense, is pressed against your skin. It’s enough to prompt you into answering—he doesn’t have to say anything to make his point about your being squeamish. 

“Inside,” you mutter, shy as you attempt to bring him closer so he won’t be able to look at you quite so closely. You wonder if he’s remembering the conversation you’d had over the phone last week—before he’d accidentally kind of broken up with you—about this very subject. You certainly are. 

“Okay. I want you to have everything that you want.” A few kisses to your neck later, between nips, he speaks again. “Just need to hear that you want this one more time.”

“I want this,” you repeat, obedient and honest, plain and simple. “Now, please.”

Spencer responds by first kissing you, firm and loving. It soothes you, and he punctuates it with a kiss to your cheek, before he’s reaching down and guiding himself between your legs. You feel surprisingly calm, more overcome with love and the light pleasure rolling down your back as he drags himself over your clit than you are by nerves. Still, you pointedly hold his gaze, not looking down in case you psych yourself out. He slots himself in place, tip resting against your entrance. 

“Remember, if you need to stop at any point—”

“I remember,” you cut him off hurriedly. 

Okay. So perhaps you’re still slightly nervous. 

He watches you, sympathetic though you’re not sure what for. 

“I need you as relaxed as possible, okay? I want this to be easy on you.”

You take a moment, scanning your whole body for tense muscles. When you feel sufficiently relaxed, you offer Spencer a small nod, and at that, he begins pushing into you ever so slightly. 

At first, it just feels foreign. He’s going so slowly, so carefully, you’re not sure he’s moving at all—until he finds resistance and the odd full feeling changes to a hint of burning stretch. Your hips jump and your breath catches, and Spencer stops immediately, relieving the pressure with a tiny shift in position. 

“It’s gonna hurt,” you realize, eyes darting between his like he might be able to tell you otherwise. You’d always been aware of the possibility, but you were holding out hope that you’d be one of those people who didn’t experience any pain their first time. 

“Just for a minute. Then it’ll feel good, angel.”

You swallow and nod. At the end of the day, you trust him completely. You trust him enough to let him hurt you. 

“Super deep breaths for me.”

He watches intently as you follow his directions, taking several deep breaths in succession, before he begins pushing into you once more. The pressure builds and builds until he pushes past that point of resistance, and it’s like he’s breaking you in two. 

“Ah,” you gasp, abs twisting as your body tries to escape the sensation without any input from you. 

“I know. I know, baby, that was the hardest part. Breathe.”

He drops his thumb to your clit, rubbing circles with light pressure to distract from the pain.

You nod, lips pressed together tight as the deep ache muddles your brain. It’s an insistent pressure against something does not seem to want to budge. It burns and stretches and is laced with sour, flirtatious pleasure so that you can hardly tell what it is you’re feeling. Mostly, you’re dizzy and hot.

“Relax, just like that,” he strains, looking down. “My good girl. We’re almost there, baby.”

Cries spill unbidden from your mouth and your eyes shut as he continues to open you up deeper, until finally, finally, his hips settle into the cradle of yours. 

Spencer sighs a curse under his breath, so quiet you don’t think it was meant for you. 

He’s inside of you. It’s bizarre. 

You whimper, and he snaps out of whatever revery he’d been in. 

“You okay? How does that feel?”

You take a shuddering breath, closing your eyes and trying to clear your head to no avail—your thoughts are like TV static. 

“I’m good. I need… I need a minute.”

“You can have as much time as you need. It’s a lot, huh?”

“Yeah,” you admit, voice small and weak. 

“I bet,” he agrees, peppering soft kisses all over your face. “But you’re doing so well. Proud of you, brave girl. You’re doing so well and we’re gonna make sure it feels good soon, okay? Whenever you’re ready.”

“Will you please kiss me again?” you whisper, and Spencer’s brow knits with concern. 

“Of course, angel. Of course I’ll kiss you,” he says, and makes good on his promise with his lips on yours. It sweetens the ache. “I’ll do whatever you want. You can have anything. You’re so perfect.”

He kisses you again, just as lovingly, and soft, like you’re delicate. All the praise is only contributing to your lightheadedness, but you don’t mind at all. It feels good. 

“You can… you can move.”

“Okay. We’ll go really slow, yeah?”

He waits for your nod before his hips are pulling back and you arch at the odd sensation. When he pushes back in, eyes carefully locked on yours the whole time, you keen slightly, frowning and brain shorting out as it tries and fails to process this new feeling. 

“Uh-huh. You’re okay, I promise.”

At first it doesn’t feel good. It mostly hurts. But slowly, the pain begins to abate as you acclimate to having him inside of you, and he’s careful the whole time. 

“Spence?” 

“Hm?”

He sounds concentrated on the task at hand—you’re entranced by the sight of him above you, the parted lips, the unkempt hair over the brow furrowed in pleasure and focus. But he’s never too busy for you. 

“Does it… um—” you pause to hold back a whine—“what does it feel like for you?”

At this, he slows even further and chuckles—it’s a strained, slightly breathy sound. 

“For me?”

“Mhm.”

“You feel perfect, baby. You feel so fucking good.”

The slight fry in Spencer’s voice as he curses, which is a rare event in and of itself, flips your stomach, turns you on immensely. The idea that you’re giving him pleasure too—it’s almost overwhelming. That’s when it starts feeling good. 

“Oh—” you squeak, jaw dropping and bucking your hips inadvertently as the first bolt of true pleasure shocks deep in your core. He hums. 

“Yeah, is that it, sweet girl?”

But you can’t answer for a long moment. Your brain is melting as your legs lock around him. 

“Mm—it’s—it feels…”

“I know it does,” Spencer murmurs.

You whine and press your face into the curve of his shoulder as each thrust gently rocks your body. As the pace picks up bit by bit, you feel yourself clenching hard around him. His hips stutter and he hisses. 

“Ah. Can’t do that, lovely.”

“What? Did I hurt you?”

He laughs breathily. 

“No, you didn’t hurt me. You almost pushed me out. You have to relax.”

“Sorry,” you whisper. “’M trying.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. I know you’re trying, baby, you’re being so good for me.”

Your nails skim his back—a small expression of a much larger desperation. Once he’s sure you’re relaxed around him, begins going faster. 

Your gasps and soft moans come more often now as he finds a steady rhythm and it feels so different when he’s actually fucking you. It feels like he’s everywhere. Every time your hips meet you feel the sweet shock of it in your teeth, your toes, the back of your neck. In the best way, you feel consumed by him. It’s not at all like you’d imagined, and it’s perfect. 

“Wait, Spencer,” you breathe, struggling to form the words. Immediately he stops again, lifting his head from your shoulder to examine your face. 

“What is it?”

He sounds just as wrecked as you feel, panting and strained and it feels good to hear. 

“I wanna watch.”

For a moment his eyes dart between yours like he’s trying to determine what you really mean—but you said exactly what you meant. Then he laughs, a huff of air from his nose as he presses his head to yours and gives you a quick kiss.

Your toes curl as he readjusts his position, holding himself a little higher and resting your heads together so you can both look between your bodies. 

“There,” he murmurs as he slowly begins to withdraw again. “Like that?”

But you can’t answer, because you’re too busy whimpering at the sight of him pushing into you. The feeling seems to increase tenfold as you watch it happen. Distantly you wonder how the fuck it fits. 

“Yeah,” you whisper. “Like that.”

Spencer takes this as a blessing to find a pace again, slower now as he seems to be just as enthralled by the sight as you are. 

“Give me your leg,” he rasps after a few moments like that, and you don’t know what he means exactly but you lift your right leg slightly only for him to press his hand to the back of your knee and push toward your chest, effectively opening you up and giving him more range of motion. It also enables him to fuck you even deeper. Again he slows, apparently savoring the feel of you yielding around him all the way down to the hilt. 

Black spots dance in your eyes as he settles at your deepest point—not pain, necessarily, just overwhelming sensation. Your jaw drops and you choke out a moan as he presses into recesses you didn’t know you had, as he shows you a part that you might have gone the rest of your life without knowing existed. He stops there, like that. Everything stops there, like that. If the cars on the road below ceased to drive, if the airplanes froze in the sky, you’d not be the least bit surprised. Somehow, you’ve unlocked a small eternity. There’s no sound but your joint heavy breathing and your heart pounding in your ears. The words just come bubbling up out of you in a little whine. 

“I love you.”

Spencer’s breath pauses for a moment before he’s letting it all out at once, brushing his lips up the ridge of your nose before they settle on your forehead in what seems like a permanent kiss. A few breaths in, you allow your eyes to flutter shut. Your heart rate slows down a touch, and you settle into the moment, never having been quite so content as you are like this—never having felt quite so adored and safe. 

“I love you,” he finally echoes, voice rasping, lips still pressed to your skin, still breathing against your hair. When he starts to move again, drawing back ever so slowly, you hiss softly. He raises his head from yours, and you look away from where he’s pulling out, meeting his eyes just in time for him to push back in, just as deep. They shine in the mostly-dark room and you moan unabashedly. It’s a high-pitched, sweet thing, nothing that will have the neighbors complaining—but so clearly true, from the depths of your soul, an expression of everything you’re feeling—not just the pleasure. 

Although that’s good, too, as Spencer shapes you to him again and again, the head of his cock kissing places nobody’s ever been and places you hope nobody else will ever venture to. This is all you need. Him. 

“Jesus,” Spencer groans, eyes fixed on your face as he fucks you slowly. But you can’t bring yourself to talk, too new to this kind of pleasure to find it anything other than mind-boggling and world altering. Your lips are still parted, allowing each sound to pass without filter. “Listen to you, beautiful.”

When he stops again, just to look down and marvel at you, you’re conflicted. On the one hand, you can taste the pleasure on the back of your tongue and he keeps taking it away when it’s so close. But on the other—you’re just as overwhelmed as he said you’d be. Your body has never had to process this kind of sensory information before, and you’re exhausted, but it’s so good. 

“Spencer,” you manage. He looks up, pupils blown and eyes lidded where they’d normally be wide. “Please don’t stop.”

He swallows, spurred into action again as soon as you say it. 

“Good?”

You nod and whine again as he picks up the pace bit by bit, remembering to push your leg back once more so he can get as deep as you need him. 

“So good,” you exhale at the top pitch of your voice. Your brows pinch and you release a fuller moan as Spencer finds a speed that’s fast enough to constantly feel good no matter where he is. You’re gasping for breath, back arching—and he finds a new angle, catching against the spot inside you that renders all those years of human evolution that gave you sentience and intelligence a waste. He chuckles airily at your series of series of affronted moans and halted gasps. 

“Right there? That's a good spot, isn’t it?”

“Oh, go—fuck, fuck!”

It feels so good it almost hurts, and your eyes are stinging to prove it. Your legs clamp tighter around him and you realize there’s a very lewd wet sound and you can’t believe that’s you. 

“Spencer, you’re—oh my god, I love you,” you whine, and it sounds like you’re pleading for your life. At this makes his own sound of pleasure, and hastens his messy circles on your clit as if in reward. 

But it’s too much all combined. 

Your hand claps to your mouth to obscure the loud, licentious moan that comes out—but Spencer immediately moves his hand from between your legs to grab your wrist and pin it gently to the bed, intertwining your fingers. 

“Don’t do that. Let me hear.”

You nod, and he lets go of your hand to return his fingers to your clit. If possible you get wetter around his cock—you can feel yourself gushing. 

“Fuck, I’m gonna cum,” you whine as if pained. 

“Yeah? Gonna finally let me feel you cumming, angel?”

He has a filthy mouth when he wants to. The words hit like high voltage to your core and the very pit of your stomach. You can’t even respond beyond a desperate sob. 

“Show me, baby. I’m right here. Let go.”

You cum around his cock with a broken cry and it’s like a purge of every drop of angst you’d felt over the past week or so—hell, it’s a purge of all the insecurities that had bubbled to the surface since you started dating him. None of it matters anymore. How could it matter when you have him? When you have this?

The orgasm washes you out like a tidal wave, taking everything with it. It’s strong, and it’s so good, so intense, your body is overwrought with sensation and it’s too much even though it’s perfect. Your brain is drawing a blank as it tries to react to the feeling, and it’s like every button on the damn panel has been hit. 

“Fuck, I’m close,” Spencer grits, and you feel it in the way he adjusts his position, shifting as he grips at the edge of the mattress for leverage and the thrusts become messier, needier. You gasp as his other hand tangles in your hair, turning your head to ghost your lips over his forearm. It’s not entirely surprising when his own lips find your shoulder—but the feeling of him finding his release just as his teeth sink into your skin does come as quite a shock. It doesn’t hurt, and you’re sure there’s no skin broken, but it’s an undeniable fact that he has grounded himself in the throes of passion by biting down on you.

Inside you, he feels hot. Searing, almost, as his spend tries to fill space that doesn’t exist. There is absolutely no room for anything else inside of you. Stars dance in your eyes at the overstimulation, but long after he’s finished he’s still fucking into you—albeit much slower and with far less technique. Spencer moans like a two bit whore, like he’s reached pain to a point of ecstasy, and to you it’s as good, as special as the singing of the planets. If he’s as sensitive as you are now, it’s no small feat for him to keep going on like this. It’s a testament to how much he doesn’t want it to be over. The pleasure is carrying him away, but you’re beginning to feel how soft you must be and how if he continues on like this you may bruise like an overripe peach. 

“Spencer,” you manage, skating your hand up and down his back in what you hope are soothing lines. “Baby.”

He whines as his lips detach from your shoulder, but his hips finally slow to a stop, nestled inside you. 

“Jesus, fuck, I'm sorry,” he breathes, opting now to bury his face in your neck (with significantly less biting this time).

You’re still reeling, toes still curled, still struggling to breathe as your head spins and spins and spins. His chest pushes against yours with every heaving breath, hot and heavy on your skin, and that’s the only sign he’s still alive until his hand eventually reanimates in your hair, scratching your head tenderly. 

For a span of minutes, you stay like that—silent, twined together like caducean serpents. His weight on top of you is perfect. This, the lack of differentiation between your body and his, is perfect. You don’t know where he ends and you begin and you don’t need to. It’s a blissful moment. 

“Hey.”

Spencer’s voice is hoarse when he finally speaks, lifting his head to look at you with flushed cheeks and messy hair and sparkly eyes. 

���Hi.”

He smiles. 

“You’re so pretty.”

“You too,” you murmur, moving your hand from his back and pressing your thumb into the hollow of his cheek. His eyes map the curves of your face as he pushes your surely askew hair back. 

“How do you feel?”

It takes you a moment to seriously consider his question, scanning your body for any undue pains, but for the moment, you find none, beyond a dull aching throb that you can manage. 

“Good. Tired.”

You wince at the uncomfortable feeling of him pulling out. Spencer hums sympathetically and presses a sticky kiss to your lips which makes it a little better, though you can’t ignore how uncomfortable all the previously pleasant wetness has become between your legs. 

“Here—stay here, I’ll get a wash cloth and—”

“It’s fine,” you insist, holding on even as he tries to roll off of you. “I just need… will you stay here for a little bit?”

“Of course,” he promises, now pressed close to your side and propped up on an elbow, “whatever you want.”

You lavish in his gaze, warm like a spotlight, as he strokes your cheek and plays with your hair. Very quickly you’re lulled into a doze, eyes fluttering shut. Minutes stretch. You feel drunk on waking dreams, and perfectly at peace. Safe. 

“Angel girl,” he christens you fondly. More than anything, it’s an observation, so lovely it sinks into your skin like a balm, soothing every tired muscle and little mark he’d made. Even half-asleep, it makes you smile. 

“You’re an angel,” you slur, reaching blindly for him, and he chuckles, catching your wrist and helpfully settling your hand on his cheek. 

“I thought you were asleep.”

You hum, “mm-mm,” looking up at him with just as much adoration as he has for you. Those cuddle hormones must be kicking in because soon you’re attempting to pull him back on top of you. He doesn’t quite comply, probably for fear of crushing you—rather he settles next to you, gathering you in his arms. 

Silence blankets the two of you, but it’s not unpleasant as you just watch each other with barely-there smiles curling your mouths. This kind of intimacy still manages to give you butterflies, even after everything else you’ve done. This kind of satisfaction, reverie in the sound of each other’s blood flowing and lungs filling. Setting aside words because you don’t need conversation as a pretense for wanting to be around each other anymore. You don’t need an excuse to look at him like this. You don’t need words any more than you need clothes. It’s enough to just be. 

“I love you,” he says, a soft reminder, and entirely redundant with the way he’d already been looking at you, touching you. 

“I know. I love you too.”

The smile flickers brighter on his face. 

“And thank you.”

Your eyes narrow minutely as you consider what he could possibly be thanking you for. 

“For what?”

“For loving me. And trusting me. It’s…” your heart squeezes as you realizes tears are pooling in his eyes. He takes a moment and clears his throat. It’s incredibly endearing. “It means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me.”

You look down, thumbing at the sheets where you’ve hoisted them over your bodies. 

“You do realize how lame we are if we have sex and both immediately start crying, right?”

At this he laughs loudly but not loud enough to pop the little bubble you’re in, and you look up just in time to catch the brilliance of his smile, the way it changes his whole face and he becomes superhuman in his beauty, the lines that form by his eyes and the way they narrow and crystalline tears bead his lashes like precious gems. 

“Don’t cry,” he requests gently, hypocritically as your own eyes sting. The way his smile fades is like the sun setting. Gorgeous, like everything else he does. “You’ve cried so much, honey. Please don’t cry.”

You sniffle, gathering yourself. 

“I’m not. That would be pathetic.”

Spender leans forward to kiss you tenderly a few more times. Ordinarily you’d worry about coming across as clingy when you hold onto him so closely and so insistently like this, but for now you don’t care. Neither does he, it seems, as he seems unable to get you close enough. Eventually, you end up curled against him, head tucked under his chin and dozing on and off as he traces shapes into your skin. 

“What are you writing?” You mumble some time later, cheek smushed against his shoulder. He only responds with a soft hm, like he was lost deep in thought. You clarify, “it feels like you were writing something.”

“She Walks in Beauty.”

Your lips pull into a sleepy smile. 

“The Lord Byron poem?”

The first time you’d met Spencer, he’d inadvertently caused your painstakingly annotated copy of Lord Byron’s works to go flying all over a cafe, and then kindly helped clean up the pages and reorder them for you in record time. Among the poems had been She Walks in Beauty. 

“Yeah. I was trying to figure out when exactly I fell in love with you, and as someone who is deeply skeptical about love at first sight, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I keep coming back to our first conversation. I mean, I believe in genetic compatibility, and how that contributes to attraction and what we think of as chemistry, but—”

“Wait, what about our first conversation did it?” Your cheeks ache from smiling as you speak. “As I recall I was being a bitch and I was covered in coffee.”

He laughs dreamily, still tracing letters over the small of your back. You wonder what part of the poem he’s at now. 

“Yeah, mean to me and covered in coffee is pretty much exactly my type. But I think it was actually the annotations on that copy of Lord Byron’s works. They were so insightful, and personal, I—it kind of took my breath away, and I know I shouldn’t have read them all but I couldn’t stop. You were compelling, and charming, and funny and wildly intelligent and beautiful and… and I didn’t stand a chance.”

Everything aches. It’s a good ache. Despite being seconds from tearing up all over again, you snort. He never told you about that first day.

“You thought me writing ‘sister fucker’ in all caps every time he mentioned Augusta was charming?”

“Oh, obscenely so. But now that I’m looking back, I feel like… I feel like I can’t remember not being in love with you. I mean, I remember when I realized I was, and that was later. But it was like I met you, and then I was just… waiting for you to catch up.”

You grab his hand and interlace your fingers, watching the way the ambient nighttime light from the window and the bathroom dips them half in color. 

“We were pretty much on the same page. I was debating courthouse versus small intimate ceremony as soon as you left.”

You watch him watching your joined hands, features soft and relaxed, fiddling with your fingers absentmindedly as he speaks. 

“Definitely small intimate ceremony. I have too many friends who would kill me if they weren’t invited to the wedding.”

You giggle and pretend the thought doesn’t give you butterflies. You imagine a ring on your finger, the one he’s got between his own. Marriage had never been something you’d considered. Not when you had no reason to. It seemed like something for other people. But maybe one day, it will be for you, too. 

“Did you know Lord Byron had a daughter who is regarded by many as the first computer programmer? She wrote the first algorithm for a theoretical machine that was so complex it couldn’t be built with the technology available at the time. It was called an Analytical Engine.”

He sounds almost wistful as he gives you the utterly unprompted, but still welcome, abridged version of her life. The description is ringing a bell—but you can’t quite place her, sleepy as you are.  

“What was her name?”

“Ada Lovelace. She was exceptionally gifted. The odds of parent and child being so extraordinary in their respective fields are incalculable, but from a purely theoretical perspective, negligible. I mean, they’re both massive historical figureheads. That’s extremely uncommon.”

You adore it when he goes off on these tangents—the passion that stains his voice, the ardor that grips him until he has no choice but to tell you exactly what’s got him so excited. You could listen to him talk for hours. It means he’s here with you, and he wants you to love what he loves. 

Since he met you, that’s all Spencer has wanted—for you to love what he loves. 

You want the same. 

“Pretty name,” you murmur, eyes fluttering shut. “Tell me more.” 

-

part eight

[rabbitrah]

A continuation on my post about unloved foods, specifically this is my in-depth defense of root beer.

Root Beer isn't inherently gross, it's just one of those weird local flavors that's off-putting to people who didn't grow up with it. We all like different things and also we all tend to like flavors that are similar to what we grew up with. That's okay! But honestly root beer is pretty unique and, in my opinion, delicious.

One of the main complaints against root beer is that it tastes like medicine. Funnily enough, it was originally marketed as medicinal! This is true for most OG sodas actually. Pretty much as soon as carbonated water was invented, people were drinking it to soothe various ailments. A lot of the original soft drinks were actually invented by pharmacists. I just think that root beer is especially cool because the main flavor came from the root bark of sassafras, a common North American shrub. Because it's so widespread and aromatic, all parts of the sassafras plant have been used in food and medicine by many different Native American tribes throughout history and was subsequently picked up and used by European colonists. In the 1960s, some studies indicated that that safrole oil, which is produced by the plant, can cause liver damage. Whether or not this would actually remain true after it had been boiled and added to root beer is unclear, but it was really easy to replicate the flavor, so the sassafras in commercial root beer these days is artificial. Another fun fact about safrole is that it's a precursor in the synthesis of MDMA. None of this information has stopped my childhood habit of eating sassfras leaves right off the shrub whenever I walk past it on a hike. I'm like 85% sure it's safe and also mmmm yummy leafs go crunch.

Another root beer complaint is that it tastes like toothpaste. I think this is probably because another key flavor in most root beer recipes is wintergreen. I'm assuming that the people who think this are the same people who think mint chocolate chip ice cream tastes like toothpaste. I can understand and even respect that some people don't like mint and associate it only with brushing their teeth, but like. Mint is a pretty common flavor. I mean I think it's safe to say that humans have been eating mint flavored stuff for longer than toothpaste has existed... anyway!

Other common flavors in root beer (real or artificial) are caramel, vanilla, black cherry bark, sarsaparilla root, ginger, and many more! There's not one official recipe, and root beer enthusiasts often have strong opinions about different brands. Some root beer is sharper, with more strong aromatic flavors, and others are mild and creamier.

Another thing I think is cool about root beer is that it's foamier than most sodas. This was originally because sassafras is a natural surfactant (and why sassafras is also a common thickening agent in Louisiana Creole cooking.) These days, other plant starches or similar ingredients are added to keep the distinctive foam. Root beer foam > all other soft drink foams. That's why root beer floats kick more ass than like, coke floats.

If you've never had root beer before, imagine if a sweetened herbal tea was turned into a soda, because that's basically what it is. If your first response to that is a cringe, fair enough. That's why lots of people don't like it. If your first response to that is "interesting... I might actually like it, though" then I encourage you to track down a can of root beer today, hard as that might be outside the US and Canada. Next time you see an "ew, root beer tastes like medicine/tooth paste" take, know that there's a reason for that, but also the same could be said for literally any herbal or minty food/drink.

My final take on root beer is that it would be the soda of choice for gnomes. Thank you and good night.

[mostly-imagines]

answering a question nobody asked: what are jason's love languages ranked?

giving:

5 ) gift giving is bottom tier for him. i just dont see how he could value that more than any of the above because of the way he grew up. like material things and money seem like something he’d reject more than anything to me. but he does still give you presents, of course. he’ll buy you flowers randomly and jewelry and little things he’d noticed you admiring. but i dont think he really does it as a method of expressing his love for you so much as just like a little nice thing to do for you. its not his preferred method of communication, at least.

4 ) a little lower on the list comes words of affirmation because i don’t think it comes as naturally to him. he’s a man of few words and those chosen are caked in sarcasm and dry in a way that attempts to push people away, even if he doesn’t mean to. i just think his words can be rough around the edges even if his meaning isn’t. when he can work through it though, his words are very gentle and genuine. not one for hyperbole but really truly means what he says. he hears that you’re insecure about how a dress looks on you and he’s telling you to ‘shut up, you look good.’ or you’re nervous and he’ll say “you’re fine, don’t worry about it.” to someone else’s ears it might sound dismissive but you know that not how he means it. there’s a lot of unsaid words with him that are more significant than whats coming out of his mouth. like i said though, only like level 10 acquaintances and you will ever know him well enough to decipher those secret meanings.

3 ) he tends to treat himself like a loner, pulling away from people like second nature, but after he met you he found himself wanting to be around you all the time. he’s not the best with words or romantic gestures so quality time is an easier way of reminding you he loves you. he likes just sitting with you and letting you ramble about your day—listening to your voice is a big part of his calming down process every night. but sitting in comfortable silence with you is probably his favorite. he doesn’t get that with a lot of people. silence—sure; comfortable—not so much. he loves the implied intimacy and trust of quietly cooking, napping together, or doing your own things in the same space.

2 ) physical touch is another big one for him. only unlockable after entering a relationship with him. he does it for a lot of reasons, common ones include: as a reminder that he’s there, to ease anxiety (yours or his own), as a sort of fidget, or if he’s feeling a little possessive. its honestly going to shock his family how much he initiates touch with you. he’ll shove them off of him when they try to hug him and is likely to throw hands if they get too touchy. so when they meet you for the first time and he’s squeezing your hand in his the whole night, shoulder to shoulder with you—they’re surprised, to say the least. as time goes on they start to notice that he looks borderline uncomfortable when he’s not touching you—like he doesn’t know what to do with his body. his favorite ways to touch you (non sexually) include: keeping you pressed back to his chest, having your leg hooked atop his when you’re sitting hanging out, hand on the back of your neck, and hands on your hips are a must.

1 ) jason's prime method of communication is through acts of service. he fully believes it’s his responsibility to take care of you and doing things for you comes very naturally to him anyways. he’s known to refuse to let you carry things, let you have the comfortable chair, give you the last of his snack, that kind of thing. he also wants to make your life easier as much as possible—he’ll insist on you telling him about things you need, especially things you aren’t able to do yourself. you never ever have to hire a guy to come look at anything broken in your apartment, jason’s got that shit under wraps. he’d honestly be a little hurt if you did. he’s got a wide array of skills under his belt, he can fix leaky pipes, install locks, build furniture, repair cars, you name it.

receiving:

5 ) he always appreciates getting gifts from you but it’s not necessarily his preferred way of receiving your love. gift giving and acts of service are bottom tier because they’re the only ones that he feels like are taking away from you. costing you money or energy, wasting it on him—he doesn’t want you to do that. he can’t feel loved by the gesture when he’s busy concerning himself with the idea that he’s putting you out for it. when you do give him gifts he likes it most when they’re little things, especially things that you made. make him a friendship bracelet, a simple painting, a fucking paper crane—he’ll love it. with things like that, it makes him really happy to see how excited you are to show him and that’s when he feels the love from you.

4 ) it’s always a little hit or miss with acts of service. he has a hard time accepting help, especially from you. he tends to feel like its his job to take care of you and if you have to help him, he’s doing something wrong. the best way to perform acts of service for him is through littler things. cooking his favorite dinner, checking up on how his stitches are healing, covering him up when its cold and he’s too busy/stubborn to go get a blanket. don’t make a whole thing about it, just do it and he’ll notice and he’ll be thinking about it for a while.

3 ) for the same reasons as mentioned earlier, he loves quality time with you. he prefers being on the receiving end of it though because he is a little insecure and absolutely loves when you go out of your way to spend time with him. tell him you want to be around him, tell him you miss him, tell him you’re happy he’s here. warning: he might cry.

2 ) you’ll notice this one because his breath will literally hitch. physical touch is one of the most prominent methods of affection in your relationship and he never gets used to it. the presence of just your head on his shoulder or your hand in his provides such a noticeable release of tension for him. he’s a huge huge fan of you tracing patterns anywhere on his skin, playing with his hair, and wrapping your arms around his middle so you can hold him close. climb on his lap unexpectedly and his heart will skip a few beats.

1 ) he won't ever admit it, but words of affirmation are his absolute biggest weakness. your boy has a praise kink, but i also think it's difficult for him to accept that so you have to be subtle about it and work up. it gets him really blushy and if you can manage to get him talking, he’s stammering. he can’t hold eye contact for shit when you call him pretty and it’s very amusing to you to see such a quick and drastic shift in his disposition. things that have straight up put him out of commission include: calling him “my pretty boy,” or “sweet boy,” “you always take such good care of me,” “you’re so strong,” “you’re the love of my life.” “i’m proud of you” will literally put him on his knees.