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waywardxrhea · 6 months ago

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Chapter 12 - My Consequence

What happens when you lie to the Devil? How long can one woman keep a lifetime of secrets from the Devil of Hell's Kitchen? The answer may surprise you...

installment list

pairing: Matt Murdock x enhanced!fem!OC

series content: coffee shop AU, fluff, humor, friends to lovers, pining, language, canon typical violence, angst, drinking, implied smut, medical emergencies, mental health disorders (PTSD, panic disorder).

"when you spill your guts, they don't go back in. if i bleed too much it's my consequence." - my consequence, hey violet

word count: 9k (this one got away from me, whoops)

Now Crystal has to face the consequences of her actions.

When Foggy and Marci got to the hospital, they located Claire Temple in the emergency department looking worse for wear. He asked Marci to go get the two of them water before offering a forced smile in greeting to Claire before saying, “I have a friend I think was admitted via ambulance here in the last few minutes, can you help me find her?”

She let out an exasperated sigh and ran her hand through her hair before asking, “Woman around our age, dark hair? Got the shit beat out of her?”

Foggy sighed and supplied, “Our…mutual friend said she had a fractured hyoid and ribs, a stab wound in the leg, multiple lacerations, a concussion, and a possible collapsed lung…”

“That’s the one…” Claire said with a sigh. “Thanks for the bit about that hyoid though, that one’s harder to diagnose, I’ll drop a line to the ICU and surgical suite about that.”

“ICU?” Foggy asked, feeling his heart drop at the news.

“Yeah, she’s being intubated as we speak. By the time she got here she wasn’t able to breathe on her own because of whatever the hell happened to her!” Claire replied, glancing over to the surgical suite down the hall. “What happened?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. She’s…she’s his girlfriend and he was understandably pissed about what happened so I didn’t really get much of an explanation over the phone,” Foggy replied, looking toward the suite as well. “Is she gonna be okay?”

“For his sake let’s hope so…” she replied, patting Foggy on the shoulder as she noticed Marci returning with cups filled with ice water.

Foggy led Marci to the waiting room and told her what Claire said, resulting in a call to Karen as well as Matt who he knew wouldn’t answer, but he made for Marci’s peace of mind. When Karen arrived to sit with them until they could see Crystal, Foggy departed from the two of them in hopes of seeking out Claire once more. When he located her, he pulled her aside into an unoccupied room and said, “Hey, I forgot to say this earlier, but… Matt told me to request for her to be a pub four, I’ll get you details on who’s allowed to know she’s here in a minute. He…he also asked for security to be posted near her at all times. He didn’t tell me what happened but said that the men who did this may come to finish the job.”

“Finish the jo-” Claire said, cutting herself off as she glared at him with steel in her eyes. “Finish the job sounds like this was a hit! What did she do to get a hit put on her?”

“I’m honestly not one hundred percent sure, but even if I was I couldn’t tell you,” Foggy replied.

“Why the hell not? I’d rather not have to deal with shit like I did at Metro General, so you better start giving me details Nelson, or I swear-”

Before she could finish her sentence, a voice rang out over the speakers saying, “Rapid response, ED surgical suite now. Rapid response, ED surgical suite now. Rapid response, ED surgical suite now.”

“Rapid response, what’s that mean?” Foggy asked, his eyes wide.

“I’ll keep you updated,” she responded before exiting the room and running toward the suite with a horde of other hospital workers.

Upon returning to the waiting area, Foggy slumped into the chair beside Marci and sighed heavily. “That was about her wasn’t it?” Karen asked quietly, her eyes rimmed with red from crying when Foggy told her what happened. Foggy nodded while running his hands over his face. Worry flooded the forefront of his mind as he sat back in his chair for one of the longest nights he’d had in a while filled with tough conversations with himself as well as Brett when he came to the hospital to speak with him about what he knew since he was the last one to speak with her.

One night a couple weeks later Matt met up with Karen, Foggy, and Marci at Josie’s after the three of them visited Crystal at the hospital. “How was she today?” Matt asked quietly, one hand fidgeting with the peeling label on his bottle of beer.

“Not great…” Karen replied quietly with a sigh.

Matt could tell that Marci was wiping a tear from her cheek as she told him, “We got kicked out of the room because her heart started acting up again. They had to shock her to get it back to normal…” His own heart clenched at the information and Matt bit the inside of his cheek to keep the tears pricking the backs of his eyes from falling.

From beside him, Foggy sighed and added, “They said it’s the third time this has happened since she’s been there. They want to do surgery to fix it, but she’s too high risk right now.”

“They won’t say it to us but I could see it on their faces as we were leaving. They’re worried about her,” Karen said, her voice wavering. She cleared her throat before asking, “Why don’t you just go visit her, Matt? They say that even when people are under sedation like she is, they can still sometimes hear and remember what was happening around them when they come out of it. You know she’d want you there.”

“I can’t,” Matt replied quickly with a shake of his head.

“Why the hell not?” Foggy asked, a sharpness in his tone that he hadn’t used around Matt in ages. Matt still hadn’t told him any details of what happened that night, and he could tell the omission was weighing on his friend’s mind.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Matt replied simply.

“Oh cut the shit, don’t be like that!” Foggy told him.

“I know the hospital’s really loud with all the hustle and bustle and students, so if it’s because of your headaches, we can get you some noise dulling headphones,” Karen told him, using their little code of ‘headaches’ when referring to his heightened senses that Marci was still unaware of.

“It’s not that, it’s just…” Matt tried, stopping mid sentence and shaking his head.

“Look, Matt, I know it’s hard, and we’ve all been hurting since the incident, but you can’t avoid it forever. And after how today went…” Marci told him gently.

There were a few moments of silence that Matt refused to fill that were broken by Foggy saying, “I think we should look at the flash drive.”

“Flash drive? What flash drive?” Matt asked, snapping his head toward Foggy wondering what the hell he was talking about.

“When she called me before…before she was taken, she told me that she hid a flash drive in the purse she sent with Raeyes. She told me that we shouldn’t open it until things took a turn for the worse, and well…” Foggy said, trailing off at the end.

“So just like that we’re giving up hope?” Karen asked incredulously. “Sure she wasn’t doing too hot today, but you’re acting like she’s dying, Fog!”

“I’m not saying I’m giving up hope! I’m just saying that she sent that flash drive off for a reason. Maybe it’s got information on it that we can use. We at least owe it to her to try to bring down the bastards that did this!” Foggy countered.

“What if the same people who did this to her come after us if we start snooping? Shouldn’t we just leave it to Daredevil?” Marci asked nervously. “As lawyers we can’t exactly do anything until these guys are in custody anyway so why go risking our heads?”

“Because she would do the same for us,” Karen replied firmly.

She turned to Matt and said quietly, “You’ve been awfully quiet, what do you think Matt? I think we should leave the decision up to you.”

After a few more moments of silence, Matt finally spoke, saying, “I think Foggy’s right. That flash drive could give us the evidence we need to bring these guys down. Or at the very least get someone responsible in cuffs.”

“That’s the spirit!” Foggy said with a gentle punch to Matt’s shoulder. “Karen, call Raeyes. Tell her we’re heading her way and to find the flash drive in Crystal’s purse.”

All the way to the apartment complex, Matt’s mind was racing with possibilities of what could be on that flash drive. Maybe it contained answers to the questions that had been plaguing him since that fateful evening. Maybe it contained an explanation.

“All right, I fished this out of a rip in the lining of her purse, I hope this is what we’re looking for,” Raeyes said as they all gathered around the coffee table in the living area of Raeyes and Crystal’s apartment.

As Matt heard Crystal’s voice coming from the laptop’s speakers, emotions began to flood his body. There was joy from hearing her beautiful voice, sorrow for what she was put through, guilt for holding onto the secret he was sure was being held on his flash drive, regret for not doing more leading up to the attack to prevent it from happening, and the slightest bit of lingering anger that she never told him about any of this when she knew he was capable of protecting her... He anxiously drummed his fingers on his knee as he listened to her speak.

“Hey everyone. Not to sound cliche or anything, but I guess if you’re seeing, or hearing this Matty, something’s happened to me. I’m making this video because I suspect I know what’s about to happen to me and I don’t want you all to be without a proper explanation. I owe you that much. Now, I don’t have long to film this because you’ll be home soon Raeyes, but I will try to get as much in as I can.”

She blew out an anxious breath before continuing, “For starters, I… I haven’t been entirely truthful to you all from the beginning. My name isn’t really Crystal Shaw. It’s Julianne Porter. The reason I changed my name when I came to the States was because I was a bloody coward running away from my past. If I’m right and I’ve been reading the signs around me properly, the person who attacked me was my father. He’s the reason I ran.”

She stopped her sentence abruptly, and continued hastily. “Blimey I had less time than I thought, you’re already back Rae. I guess I have to wrap it up now. I’m not sure how long my father and his men have been watching me, so I don’t know how much information he has on those close to me, but… I trust that since making this video, the proper person has been looking out for you all. I hope that I filmed this for nothing and I hope to see you all soon. Cheers.”

A stunned silence filled the room as the five of them took in what they were just told. The silence was broken momentarily though by Crystal’s voice returning once more to say in a hushed tone, “By the way, I have a second flash drive hidden in an unused menstrual cup box. That one’s a bit more personal and has some sensitive files on it, so please don’t open that one up unless I’m dead or back in your company. Please. I know it’ll be in proper hands with you. I should go now.”

“What the hell was that?” Raeyes whispered, breaking the silence once Karen was sure there was no more video left on the recording. “What the actual fuck was that?!” she asked as she jumped up from her spot on the couch and began pacing.

“Raeyes, where are you going?” Karen asked gently as she began storming out of the room.

“To get this dumbass fucking flash drive out of my bathroom!” she replied as she came back into the room. “That stupid lying bitch!”

“Hey, I get that you’re mad, but-” Marci tried but was cut off abruptly by the infuriated Raeyes.

“No, I’m not mad, I’m furious. Now I need to clear my head and I can’t do that with four other people here. Out!” she snapped before stalking off to her room and slamming the door shut. As the four of them began to see themselves out, Matt could smell the salt of her tears in the air and sighed quietly while shaking his head.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel the same anger when he first heard her father utter those words that confirmed that Crystal wasn’t who she said she was, but as Daredevil Matt had an outlet to take out his frustrations and that was directly onto the bodies of the men that hurt his girlfriend. Since then though as he began going after Porter’s men and had experienced what they were capable of, Matt had come to terms with the truth and he was beginning to see why she did it. Sure, he still wanted to hear a full explanation from her himself, but until that day, he’d been trying to see from her point of view and empathize with her. She was a victim of her father’s sick games and she just wanted out.

By the time the four of them got down to the sidewalk outside of the building, Marci was beginning to reach Raeyes levels of anger and hailed a cab home before anyone broke the silence that hung thick in the air. After she got into the cab, Foggy rounded on Matt, asking sharply, “You barely flinched when we watched that video, you knew the truth, didn’t you? That’s the real reason why you haven’t been visiting her in the hospital isn’t it? You knew the truth and you didn’t even bother to tell us!”

“It wasn’t my truth to tell, Fog,” Matt told him.

“How long have you known?”

“Since I went to save her that night. When I was scoping out the building I connected the dots that the Julie woman we were after was Crystal,” Matt replied. “His exact words to her were, ‘The only way this ends is with your lifeless corpse on this floor as payment for what you did! Crystal Shaw, Julianne Porter, it’s all the same when you’re reported dead on the news!’”

“How…how can you be so casual about this? She’s been lying about who she is this whole time!” Foggy snapped.

Matt ran his hand over the stubble on his chin before asking exasperatedly, “Did you not hear what I just said? Her own father planned on killing her! There has to be more to the story and I’m sure she’s got a damn good explanation for all of this. Come on, I… Karen, what do you-”

Karen sadly shook her head and whispered, “I’m sorry Matt, but I have to agree with him on this one. I just… I think I can speak for all of us when I say that I feel betrayed. I thought we knew her, but…maybe everything we know about her is all a big lie. You’ve said it yourself, you can’t always get a good read on her. She’s been lying to you about all this for so long for Pete’s sake! You’ve always said it was the heart problem, but maybe she’s just a good liar.”

“You’re one to talk, Karen!” Matt snapped in a moment of frustration. He shook his head and said, “When she’s talked about her past, as vague as it’s been, she’s been telling the truth. There’s got to be-”

He was interrupted though by Foggy as he snapped, “No! There doesn’t have to be anything! Lying by omission is still lying! So newsflash buddy, your whole relationship is built on a lie even the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen couldn’t sniff out. You’ve been swindled. We all have.”

“Fine! The four of you can be pissed all you want, but I’m going to take down the men that did this with or without your help!” Matt shouted, anger boiling up in his chest. He lowered his voice as he added to where only they could hear, “If that’s as a lawyer or as Daredevil I don’t care, but I’m going to make them regret what they did.”

Two more weeks passed before Matt finally found himself making his way through the hospital with a bouquet of hydrangeas in the hand that wasn’t navigating the halls with his cane. When he found the ICU and located the button on the wall that would grant him access to speak with the nurses inside, he took a deep breath before pushing the button. “Can I help you?” crackled a voice through the small speaker.

Knowing there was no one else around him, Matt cleared his throat and said quietly, “Uh, yeah, I’m here to see Crystal Shaw. My name’s Matt Murdock. I should be on the list of visitors she’s allowed.”

“Come on back,” the voice said after a few moments. The door buzzed and began opening before him and Matt took another deep breath before walking through, not knowing what to expect when he got to her room.

“Well you passed the study, but I still want you to make sure you’re not overdoing it for a little while okay? You were tubed for over a month, I want you to take it slow, got it?” That was the speech therapist as she left Crystal’s room in the ICU, and as the nice woman left the room, Crystal simply nodded and gave her a thumbs up to show that she understood the instructions.

Over a month on the ventilator with tubes down her throat while she healed and her body regained the ability to breathe on its own again. Over a month since the attempt on her life. Over a month since she assumed Matt found out about her real identity… And all Crystal had had was a few hours when she wasn’t sleeping last night to begin processing it all.

The pain in her body from the broken bones and knife wounds as well as the tubes still lingered, so as the pain began to become borderline unbearable, Crystal hit her call light and requested pain medication. When the nurse knocked and entered the room a few minutes later, Crystal felt her heart leap in her chest when a second person entered the room. That second person was Matt Murdock with a bouquet of her favorite flowers. “Matt…” she whispered, a tear slipping from her eye as she covered her mouth in shock.

As the nurse began scanning Crystal’s ID band and then the medication into the computer, a small smile graced her lips before she said, “It’s good to see people visiting you again, honey. I noticed you hadn’t had anyone in a while.” After hanging the IV bag of pain medicine, the nurse disposed of her gloves and said, “You two enjoy your visit. That should kick in within half an hour, I’ll check on you then.”

“Thank you,” Crystal responded, her hoarse voice barely above a whisper.

When the nurse left the room, Matt closed the door behind her and tentatively took a step toward the hospital bed, offering out the flowers as he said, “Hey Crys…or…Julianne?”

Hearing him say that name out loud felt like it hit her square in the chest and she could feel the emotion welling up as she croaked, “Matt, I- I’m sorry, I-”

“Hey, hey, hey, take it easy,” he told her, locating the chair the nurse had set up for him beside her bed and sitting down before taking her hand in his. He squeezed her hand before saying, “I’m asking to know which you’re more comfortable with. I…I learned a lot in the last month and had some time to do a lot of thinking and I just want to know the best way I can support you right now.”

After a few moments of letting the emotions fall from her eyes, Crystal nodded and told him softly, “I still would prefer Crystal if that’s okay.”

“Of course,” Matt told her, a small smile gracing his lips as he nudged the flowers he had sat on the bed closer to her. “I brought these even though I wasn’t sure you’d be off the vent because I have some big news. I remember Karen told me one day early on that even under sedation people may remember things that they heard while they were under, so…”

“They’re beautiful,” Crystal replied, bringing the bouquet up to her nose and smelling the light and fragrant scent. She sighed contentedly and said, “These smell amazing. Those senses of yours never cease to amaze me…” As she began toying with one of the flower’s many tiny petals, she asked, “So what's the big news you have?”

“Right,” Matt said. He squeezed her hand gently once more before telling her, “They’re in custody.”

“They…they are? All three of them?” Crystal asked, her heart jumping, causing the heart monitor to alarm momentarily before it shut off once again when the shock wore off.

“All three of them.”

“How…how did you…? What did you…?”

“Hey, we just talked about my senses, you don’t need to strain your voice,” Matt told her with a quiet chuckle. He sat back in the chair and took off his red glasses, placing them on the bedside table before saying, “A mutual friend of ours who runs around at night punching bad guys got his hands on one of the men lower on the totem pole and got him to flip. He sold out where they were hiding and Detective Mahoney got a raid team together to take them down.”

“So they’re…they’re being charged?” Crystal asked even softer than before so she could rest her voice.

“Yes. All three of them are being charged with attempted murder along with drug charges for the younger one because Brett found out that he was the one leading the drug operation in the Kitchen.”

“My brother,” Crystal told him, looking away, her head slightly turned downward as she said the words. “The younger man is my twin brother…”

A stunned silence filled the room before Matt asked, “Your brother? So you’re telling me your father and your brother-?” His voice was laced with anger as he spoke, so much so that he had to stop himself in the middle of the sentence, and Crystal knew why when a few moments later she heard the heart monitor alarm go off once more, presumably because of her elevated heart rate.

Crystal took a few seconds to calm down by toying with the seam of the warm blanket the nurse had given her before telling Matt, “Yeah. My father, my brother, and the man who I used to oversee when I… When I worked as head of security for my father’s…business.” Seeing Matt’s eyebrows furrow together, Crystal quickly added, “I never dealt with the drugs, I swear to you, I just stood outside of meeting rooms and intimidated people with my…abilities. He always wanted me to do more, to take over some day, but I just…I wanted out, especially after…” She couldn’t finish her sentence though as a sob clawed its way up her throat.

“Especially after what?” Matt asked gently, his hand meandering up to her face and brushing a free strand of hair behind her ear, his touch lingering on her jaw for a moment.

The touch soothed her and she closed her eyes, relaxing into the touch before asking, “You know how I told you Mum was dead?”

“I remember,” Matt said, his hand returning to lay on top of hers.

“Well, I…” She stopped again, blowing out an anxious breath before trying once more. “I was there when it happened… Watched a member of a different gang blast her brains out right in front of me…”

Before she could try and get more out, Matt had gently flung his arms around her in an embrace and that made the tears start flowing freely finally. “I am so, so sorry, Crystal…” he whispered into her hair as he held her close.

“It was my fault,” she choked out, struggling to keep her voice steady under the weight of so many emotions. “I didn’t see my father’s text that night and while I was out they got into the manor and… I couldn’t even do anything to stop them. It all happened so quickly…” Suddenly Crystal just found herself rambling, telling Matt, “One thing led to another and someone else was dead and then I gave information to the second biggest drug syndicate in London in order to have them fake my death so I could get out of there! I just… I thought that if I put everything behind me then maybe I could get a fresh start… That’s how I ended up in Hell’s Kitchen…and why I was so afraid of using my powers so publicly, because I was always paranoid they would figure out I wasn’t dead and that they would come after me…”

Matt nodded, staying silent for a few moments before finally asking, “Why didn’t you just tell me? After figuring out what I do as a lawyer, as Daredevil?”

“Because I thought that’s how I would survive… If I kept all of that information to myself and didn’t burden anyone else with it…”

“Then the people you care about wouldn’t be in danger…” Matt supplied, the pieces finally seeming to click inside his head.

“Exactly…” she replied quietly.

“I get it now…” Matt told her. He sat back in his chair once more before telling her, “Thank you for trusting me.”

“Always, Matthew,” she said, a ghost of a smile making its way onto her lips in response.

A few more weeks passed of Crystal recovering in the hospital, moving from the ICU to a medical surgical floor and then the rehab floor for a week before she was cleared to discharge from the hospital. After getting out, Matt took Crystal back to his flat, helping her slowly walk through the building, her strength still nowhere close to what it once was. When they neared the door and Matt began fishing for the key in his pockets, he cleared his throat and said, “Crys, there’s uh… there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, I just couldn’t figure out a good time, I didn’t want to stress you out too much in the hospital and all…”

“Is…is everything okay?” she asked, feeling her heart sink at the words, anticipating the worst, something she’d grown accustomed to here lately.

Matt didn’t answer the question, instead sighing before telling her, “When things were taking a turn for the worse in the beginning, Foggy, he…he told us about the flashdrive you sent away with Raeyes before you were taken. We all watched the footage that was on there and…”

“And they all hate me now don’t they?” Crystal asked in a sad tone of voice, her eyes flicking to the floor as she took a shaky breath. “I assumed as much when the nurse said I stopped getting visitors…”

“I’m sorry, Crys, I really tried to convince them otherwise, but with only Foggy and Karen knowing about-” he raised his eyebrows, silently signaling that he meant Daredevil, “-there wasn’t a way to even try to convince Raeyes or Marci, and-”

“When you spill your guts they don’t go back in…” Crystal said with a sad sigh. “This is just the consequence of my own cowardly actions…”

“Not cowardly,” Matt told her firmly, his hand going to grip her forearm gently as he shook his head. “In your situation, the bravest thing you could have done was run. And I will do my best to remind you of that every single day.”

Crystal simply nodded, overcome by emotions and unable to form words due to the lump growing in her throat. As Matt turned the key in the door, he cleared his throat again and said, “Before we go in, there’s something else… When Raeyes found out she was beyond pissed and she…she kinda threw your things out of the apartment. I took them all here, so when you come in and see all your stuff just know that’s why.”

“Oh…” Crystal breathed, a quiet sob making its way out of her throat as she followed Matt into the entry hall of his flat. When she turned her head to the left and saw the neat pile of her things in the corner, the tears began flowing freely and Matt took her into his arms and began rubbing her back in an attempt to calm her down.

“You’re more than welcome to stay here for as long as you need, okay?” Matt asked quietly into her hair as he held her close. He chuckled a little bit before adding, “Not exactly the way I would have imagined us moving in together, but…”

After this statement, Matt guided Crystal to his bedroom and just held her for a while, occasionally getting up to get the both of them a glass of water, but ultimately giving her all the comfort she needed after everything he just dropped on her. These were big changes, especially for someone who thrived on routine to keep her head on straight. The routine that blew up the moment her brother kidnapped her from her apartment. There would be no more Stardust for morning coffee and pastries, there would be no more late night fire escape talks at the old apartment when Matt would swing by after a night of fighting criminals, there would be no more girls’ nights, and the thought of all of that coming crashing down hurt worse than the occasional pain in her body from the beating she endured at the hands of people she used to trust.

Later that evening after Crystal seemed to run out of tears, Matt ordered the pair of them takeout from their favorite restaurant. When Matt opened the door to greet the delivery person and pay for the food, Crystal couldn’t help but overhear him talking with Fran, one of his neighbors from down the hall.

“That’s a lot of food for one person, Matthew,” the old woman said.

“It’s not just me tonight, Crystal’s here,” Matt informed her.

“Oh, are you kids still together? I hadn’t seen her in a while so I thought you broke it off!”

“Yep, all’s well here,” Matt told her, but Crystal couldn’t help but hear a bit of a forced chipperness in his voice as he spoke about the status of their relationship.

So when Matt returned to the living area and sat the food on the coffee table, Crystal asked quietly, “Matt…are we okay after everything that’s happened? As in our relationship?”

Matt took his time responding, which only worried Crystal further, but before the tears prickling the backs of her eyes could fall, Matt told her, “Of course we’re okay, sweetheart, it’s gonna take a hell of a lot to get rid of me. I mean…there’s a whole side of you I don’t know about, so things definitely aren’t exactly the same as before, but…” He pulled Crystal close, abandoning the delicious smelling food for a moment as he said, “I’d love to take tonight to find out about the real you. The good and the bad. Is that okay?”

Crystal nodded, quietly telling him, “Of course.” As they parted and Matt began pulling boxes and tubs out of the bag of food, she asked, “What do you want to know first?”

Matt took a few moments before he asked, “Why the name Crystal?”

“Well you know me and always honouring Mum,” she replied with a sad smile on her lips as she accepted the box of food Matt handed her. “She was a geologist, renowned in the country for her work with foreign matter. She loved crystals, so it just felt right.”

As the pair opened their respective boxes of food and began eating, Crystal cleared her throat before asking, "You remember that night we first kissed after my episode on the roof?"

"I remember it well," Matt said, a small smile gracing his features.

"Well then you'll remember how you asked me why I never got my heart condition fixed," Crystal said. She sighed and shook her head as she told him, "Growing up Father always dangled the condition over my head, telling me that it was punishment from God for having abilities that other people didn't... Who was I to question God? But then he doubled down and told me and Mum that there wasn't a cure, that it was just something I had to live with. He even brought a doctor in one day to tell us the same thing. In retrospect, it was just him manipulating me. I doubt that was even a proper doctor... So really, up until you told me there was a cure I had no idea..."

Crystal jumped when she heard the sharp snap of plastic cutlery breaking in Matt's clenched fit. "How could someone... I mean... A heart condition is life or death!" Matt sputtered out, his frustration seeming to make him have a difficult time forming proper sentences.

"You seem to forget he did try to kill me a few months ago..." Crystal tried to joke, but it fell flat as Matt tensed at the reminder.

Trying to change the subject quickly, Crystal said, "I guess if it's a trade off, I am grateful for my abilities."

“I always wondered how you got them,” Matt told her as he got up and went to the kitchen to grab a silver utensil to replace the broken plastic one.

Crystal couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her lips as she asked him, “You wanna hear the story of how we first found out I had them?”

“Well after hearing that beautiful laugh, I’m intrigued already,” he replied, relaxing into the back of the leather couch with his food.

“Flirt…” Crystal mumbled as she felt heat rising up her neck. Even after all this time together, Matt’s flirtatious comments always made her blush. After finishing her bite of food, she continued, “Anyway! When I was around five I was in the garden with Mum. She was tending to her flowers while I just wandered around. Well there were these bugs that kept buzzing around my head annoying me so badly! I got frustrated and started swatting at them and then rocks began flying everywhere! A few hit Mum in the back and on her bum, a few cracked some windows of the manor, I think I may have taken out some of the bugs too! It was an absolute chaotic mess, but I’ll never forget Mum’s face when she realized what I’d done. It was a mixture of astonishment and pride and confusion, oh it was brilliant.”

“Sounds like you were a little firecracker,” Matt said, a smile on his lips and adoration in his eyes.

“I certainly was a bundle of chaos until I learned how to control it,” Crystal agreed with a laugh. “One time when I went on a pub crawl with my uni friends I accidentally got so drunk that I stumbled through Regent’s Park using my powers like no one was watching. It took a lot of hush money to cover that one up.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as the type to get blackout drunk. I mean you’ve gotten pretty close here, but,” Matt teased, the sound of his laugh causing Crystal’s to pour out of her once more.

So that was how the two of them spent the rest of their night, telling tales of their past they had never told each other before; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Crystal told him about her father’s manipulation tactics to get her to work for him and Matt told her about losing his dad and how it was growing up after that in the orphanage. She laughed as she recalled tales of her younger self making faces behind her Tai Chi instructor’s back while her mother watched on and Matt did the same as he told her about some of his college stories.

While settling into bed later that night, Crystal took a breath before asking, “Matt…?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you…do you think they’ll ever forgive me?” she asked quietly, of course referring to Karen, Foggy, Marci, and Raeyes.

“I did. Who’s to say they won’t once they know the truth?” Matt asked, pulling her impossibly closer as he ran his hand up and down her upper arm. “How about, when you’re ready, we invite them all over for a sit-down and we can discuss everything? Get everything out in the open so they can make their judgments when they have the whole story.”

Crystal thought about it for a moment before nodding, telling him, “I think I’d like that a lot…”

“Great. So then tomorrow when I go into the office I can talk with them about it.”

“Sounds good,” she told him as she snuggled closer to his chest, relaxing into the most restful sleep she had had in a very long time.

The night of the dinner Matt had gone out last minute to grab some beer and wine to hopefully help with the nerves the evening would inevitably bring. Crystal had been a nervous wreck all afternoon even though she tried to hide it from Matt. Because of this he had been afraid to leave her alone with her thoughts, but she insisted that she needed wine for the night, both for cooking and drinking.

Even after she was extubated in the hospital and on the mend, the doctors felt she was too high risk to perform the surgery to fix her heart, so that was still causing her problems. Those episodes that always set off alarms in Matt’s head had been happening more often lately because of her stress and he cursed those damn doctors every time she almost passed out from one. So as Matt approached his apartment, those alarms began going off again when he heard the heart within his apartment racing once more. “Damnit,” he whispered, quickly fishing the key out from his pocket and getting the door open.

Upon entry into the apartment though he quickly realized that it wasn’t an episode of her heart acting up. When he tasted salt in the air and heard her rapid breathing, he knew it was something else and wished he never went to the store. Tossing the bags of beer and wine onto the couch, Matt quickly made his way to the bathroom. When he approached the door, he knocked quietly and said, “Crys, sweetheart, I’m coming in.”

Matt cracked the door open just enough to slip in and quickly kneeled on the floor beside Crystal, who was in the midst of the panic attack he had been working on helping her avoid all afternoon. He sighed quietly as his heart clenched in guilt for her current state. Shaking away those thoughts, he sat down beside her and gently eased her onto his lap, facing him. When she instantly clung onto him, Matt smiled and whispered, “My little koala,” as he ran his hand up and down her back to soothe her.

They sat like this for a minute before Matt asked her quietly, “Hey, can you breathe with me?” She nodded and started following Matt’s slow deep breath, but stopped short as a sob fell from her lips once more. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, let’s try again,” he told her gently as he hugged her close.

After a minute or so, Matt finally got her breathing down to a normal rate along with her heart. He kissed her temple before asking, “Did you want to talk about it?”

She nodded and took another shaky breath before whispering, “I’m just scared… What if Raeyes doesn’t show up? What if they all still hate me? What if-”

Without warning, Matt placed a gentle kiss on her lips before asking, “What have I told you about the ‘what if’ rabbit hole?”

“To not go down it…” she replied. “It’s just-”

Matt kissed her again, which she couldn’t help but giggle into. When he pulled away, Matt told her in a teasing tone, “You know, if you continue to spiral we may end up in the bedroom and while I wouldn’t be opposed to that I’m pretty sure our guests wouldn’t want to be held up on that account.”

Foggy, Foggy, Foggy, Foggy.

Upon hearing the automated voice calling out his friend’s name, Matt fished his phone out from his pants pocket and answered, “Hey Fog, what’s up?”

“Hey man, we’re outside, I’m sure you already knew that, but I knocked and didn’t get an answer so I was just making sure everything’s okay,” Foggy replied.

“I was helping Crystal out with something and wasn’t paying attention. Door’s unlocked, we’ll be out in a minute,” Matt replied.

“If you mean helping her out in the bedroom we can just wait-”

“No, no, not like that,” Matt replied with a quiet laugh. “We’ll see you in a minute.”

While hanging up, Matt sensed the uptick in Crystal’s heart rate and told her quietly, “Hey, it’ll be okay.”

“Who all is here?” she asked as she once again buried her face into his shoulder.

Matt listened for a moment before telling her, “Fog and Karen. Foggy’s telling Karen that Marci got called into the office for a last minute case.”

“Oh…” she replied quietly. “And no…no Raeyes?”

He gave her another quick squeeze before telling her, “Maybe she’s running late. And even if she doesn’t show, it’s her loss. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah…” she whispered as a few fresh tears rolled from her eyes.

He held her for another minute before asking, “Will you be okay if I went and played host while you get cleaned up?”

“Yeah, I’ll be okay,” she replied quietly.

“That wasn’t very convincing, sweetheart,” Matt joked with a kiss to her temple.

“That’s because I trust that if it isn’t you’ll be right back here,” she admitted.

“You’re damn right about that,” he told her before helping her to her feet. “I’ll get the wine and beer cooling off. Just call if you need something.”

“Okay,” she replied quietly before turning on the tap to begin washing the tears from her face. She applied a generous layer of makeup, wanting to cover up the scar on her face from Ridge’s knife. Even though Matt was really the only one she had seen in the week she’d been out of the hospital, she always made sure to cover it with makeup because of the shame it filled her with.

After pulling on the dress hanging from the back of the bathroom door and covering her scar riddled arms with a cardigan, Crystal took one last look at herself in the mirror, taking a shaky breath as she did. Despite knowing that Matt was probably listening for any signs of distress, she looked at her reflection and whispered, “Whatever happens, happens. Just tell them the whole truth… Over dinner once you’ve had a glass or two of wine…”

Once she exited the bathroom finally, she was greeted nearly instantly by Matt with a glass of rosé. He placed a kiss on her temple before asking, “I heard someone needed some liquid courage?”

“God, yes, I’m terrified. This is going to be so awkward…” She cast her eyes to the floor as she asked, “Can I just start cooking? That panic attack sort of set back serving time…” After asking this, she took a long drink from the glass, savoring the flavor of the wine on her tongue.

“If that’s what you want, yes. I put your cooking wine by the stove along with the rest of the ingredients for the pasta,” Matt told her as he escorted her to the kitchen, making it look like he was whispering sweet nothings in her ear before letting her get to work.

“You two seem as close as ever,” Crystal couldn’t help but hear Karen comment to Matt as he sat down on one of his chairs in the living area.

“I think after you two hear her out tonight over dinner, you’ll feel the same,” Matt told her, a smile evident in his voice. He seemed confident that they would be as understanding as he was, but rather than relaxing Crystal, the statement almost made her more anxious.

She tried to keep those anxious thoughts at bay while getting her mum’s homemade pasta sauce going, but they soon started to creep in, slowly at first and then relentlessly. What if Matt’s wrong and they hate you even more? What if they leave before the pastries are even in the oven? They probably think you’re ignoring them right now, God this is so awkward. What about-

Her thoughts were interrupted though when all of a sudden she felt Matt’s strong arms wrap around her waist. She jumped at the touch initially, but calmed when he kissed her temple and mumbled in her ear, “Sweetheart, you’re so tense right now your body is practically screaming at me across the room.”

“Sorry, I-” she tried, but was stopped when Matt shook his head.

“Don’t apologize for your anxiety. Please. I just came over here to see if there was anything I could do to help you relax,” he told her gently. She could hear the smirk in his voice as he added, “I mean I know what would relax you, but we have guests over and I’m sure if I had my way with you against this counter I wouldn’t exactly be a great host…” He ended the sentence by nipping at her earlobe and pulling her close.

Crystal let out a quiet gasp as she chastised, “Matthew!”

“Your cortisol levels are dropping already, sweetheart.” He hummed against her skin before whispering, “And while that sauce smells amazing, there’s something else I’m smelling that I’d rather bury my face in tonight.”

Her jaw hung open for a few moments in shock at the words as more blood rushed south in response. “You’re a cheeky little shit tonight, aren’t you?” she asked with a laugh before sneaking a kiss.

“Well it’s helping you relax,” Matt commented with a self satisfied smirk on his lips.

“Well assuming all goes well tonight I feel like it’ll be cause for celebration. You can have your way with me then, darling,” she told him before pouring herself another glass of wine. “But for now just relax, dinner’ll be ready soon and hopefully it won’t be a completely awkward mess.”

“Even if it is, I’m behind you no matter what,” Matt said, snagging another kiss before grabbing a beer and heading back to the living area.

Before she knew it, dinner was ready to be served. And Raeyes still hadn’t shown up. As Crystal plated up the pasta for four, Matt sidled up to her and said, “Hey, I can feel you getting upset again… Raeyes?”

“Yeah. I just- I thought she would show is all… I know she thinks I’m a lying bitch, but…” she whispered, her voice breaking at the end.

“Screw her,” Matt said simply as he steadied her shaking hands.

“Sorry?” Crystal asked, her eyebrows furrowing.

“Screw her and what she thinks. If she’s okay with cutting you off without hearing you out then she doesn’t deserve to be in your life, sweetheart. Just focus on the here and now and if you need help along the way with anything tonight just let me know.”

Crystal nodded and bit the inside of her cheek to hold back her tears. “Thank you… I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said as she grabbed two plates to take to the table.

As she placed plates down in front of Karen and Foggy, Karen was the first to address her, saying, “Thank you, Cry- uh Julianne? Sorry, I just-”

At the words, Crystal already felt her heart jumping into her throat and the tears once again pricking the backs of her eyes. Before she could respond, Matt did for her, telling Karen, “Crystal. She still prefers to be called Crystal.”

“Right,” Karen said quickly with a nod.

“Thank you…” she whispered for Matt to hear as she grabbed the last plate to put in her spot.

When she sat down, Matt’s hand was instantly on her thigh, squeezing affectionately in order to calm her down. “The food smells amazing sweetheart,” he told her, breaking the silence at the table.

“Thank you, love,” she said before taking another long drink from her wine glass. When she placed it down, she cleared her throat and said, “I guess while everyone eats I should address the elephant in the room. I realized when I was saving the video I made onto that flash drive I had to leave out some pretty massive details so…that’s why you’re all here. To hear the full bloody truth. Even the worst parts…”

And so that’s what she told them. She told them about her childhood and how she was always used by her father because of her powers, how she was forced to work for him from the day she turned 17, how abusive he was to her, everything. How her brother always hated her, how he always took it past a normal sibling rivalry, how he was always jealous of her abilities, and how he always fought for their parents’ attention. By the time she got near the end of the tale, everyone’s plates sat nearly empty. She stood up and put the pastries in the oven before telling them, “There’s a little bit more… This part I haven’t even had the heart to tell you yet, Matt, so bear with me.”

She excused herself and quickly found the second flash drive Matt had hidden in the bottom of his Daredevil trunk for safe keeping. Crystal came back with the drive and her laptop in hand, telling the three of them, “There were two events that ultimately made me leave England. The first was Mum’s death. She…she was killed by a rival organization. Right in front of me. Father blamed me and so…”

A quiet sob tumbled from her lips as she turned the laptop toward Foggy and Karen. Karen let out a soft gasp and covered her mouth at the sight on the screen and Foggy’s eyes went wide as he said, “Oh my God…”

“What’s going on?” Matt asked quickly, his unseeing gaze darting around the table between the three of them. “Everyone’s body is reacting differently to whatever you’re looking at.”

“There’s a picture of…a dead body… Beat to death it looks like,” Karen whispered, eyes shutting as she shook her head.

“He’s got a note…nailed to his chest that says, ‘This is on you Julianne,’” Foggy mumbled.

There were a few silence filled moments before Crystal found her voice. Barely audible due to the tightness of her throat, she said, “That…that was Kit, my boyfriend at the time. I was on a date with him right before Mum was killed. My father texted me that he was having a last minute meeting I needed to stand guard at but I wasn’t looking at my phone. I never saw the text so my father blamed me for her death. This was his way of telling me to stay in line… Turns out it was my brother that did it… That was the last straw before I sold him out to another rival and fled the country. And…well, you three know the rest. They both came here to finish me off…”

Crystal jumped as Matt abruptly stood from his chair, knocking it down in the process as he exclaimed, “That son of a bitch! I-”

“I’m sorry…” Crystal whispered instantly, hugging her arms to her body to comfort herself.

At the words, Matt was instantly by her side, kneeling on the floor as he took her hands in his, telling her, “No, no, don’t apologize. I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

As Matt wiped away tears from her cheeks, Foggy spoke up, saying, “God I’m so…so sorry that happened Crys… All of it.”

Karen nodded and added, “Wow…knowing what you ran from I feel really, really shitty for how we’ve been acting…”

“It’s okay, I just-” Crystal started.

“That’s a lie and you know it,” Matt said, cutting her off quietly. “It’s not okay how any of us reacted when we first found out, but what you ran from was far worse. We’re going to make it right. Got it?”

“Got it…” she replied, a ghost of a smile making its way onto her lips.

After regaining her composure, Crystal cleared her throat and told the table, “There’s more on this flash drive than just that picture by the way. I have evidence of everything my father did that I could get my hands on. Names of syndicate members and buyers, locations of meeting houses, offshore bank account numbers, all of it. If there’s anything you can use to take down the bastard, take it.”

“We may be able to use some of that for drug charges, but unfortunately, they’d have to be tried in the UK for…for Kit,” Foggy told her quietly.

“They’re pleading guilty here for the attempted murder charge though, so they’ll all go away for that,” Matt said, gently squeezing her hand.

“If anything though we can try and get him on trial virtually in the UK so when he’s out here he can be sentenced in there for that.”

“And the bastard will never see the light of day outside of the prison yard again,” Matt finished firmly. In response Crystal simply nodded, her emotions at the whole situation still overwhelming her, but she was thankful for the company she kept because without having lawyers in her life to explain all of this to her, she was sure she would have already spontaneously combusted with frustration.

“Speaking of, how are you feeling about the sentencing hearing? Do you have a victim impact statement ready?” Karen asked quietly.

“I’ve written a few but they never seem to come out right…” she admitted, sighing quietly.

“If it makes you feel any better, some of the best impact statements come from the heart day of,” Matt told her gently, shooting a soft smile in her direction.

She scoffed quietly before joking, “God this would have just been easier if I faked my death at the hospital.”

The room was instantly filled with laughter as Foggy asked, “Okay what is it with the two of you and faking your deaths? If I had a nickel for every time one of my best friends faked their death I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. Nearly three times!”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I tend to have a flair for the dramatic,” Crystal commented once she stopped laughing.

“Just more evidence to why you two are perfect for each other, faking of deaths and all,” Foggy told her. When the timer on the oven beeped, he perked up and asked, “What did you make for dessert?”

“Even though he wouldn’t admit it because he was pissed at you, Foggy’s definitely missed your pastries,” Karen said with a nudge to Foggy’s ribs.

“I can’t help that she’s a pastry goddess, Karen!” Foggy countered.

So as the four of them dined on pastries, the rest of the evening was filled with more laughter and stories about happier times in all of their lives. It was such a good night that it felt like old times, and it helped her forget about the endless mountain of stress looming in front of her - most of all the impending sentencing hearings for her attempted murder. But for now, for the first time in weeks, Crystal could say she was truly happy again.

next chapter

#daredevil #daredevil x oc #matt murdock #matt murdock x oc #fanfic #marvel #fanfiction #romance #friends to lovers #angst

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fierceawakening · 2 years ago

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Hey, Fierce! I’ve been somewhat following your discourse on “is there such a thing as bad foods” (in the sense that I follow you and your posts about it keep showing up on my dash). First I just want to say that I appreciate how respectful and well-reasoned you are in your arguments, and it’s been interesting seeing everyone’s different takes on the issue and considering where everyone’s coming from. I don’t know if you really want to engage in any more discourse on this topic, so feel free to entirely ignore this ask if you so choose, but if you’re okay with it, I’d like to share my perspective.

It seems like while most people agree that eating a lot of junk food is not the healthiest, we all have a bit different ways of conceptualizing what that means, and different ways of conceptualizing things work well for different people. Personally I would characterize it not so much as “junk food is inherently bad” (from either a moral or a health perspective) and more as “junk food is bad for you when you eat too much of it,” though I definitely see your point about it being specifically designed to encourage overeating. This is a useful understanding for me, but I also have a different relationship with food than you, and I’m glad your conception is useful to you.

I also think it’s interesting to think about how our ideologies and our interpretations of different concepts are often formed in response to our environment. For example, I probably have a less charitable view of “alternative medicine” than a lot of people because I’ve had significant exposure to questionable information from naturopaths and chiropractors and didn’t realize how flimsy or outright contradictory the evidence was for some of the things they presented as fact until a long time later. Especially with the way the internet allows us to so easily pick who we interact with, but even outside of the internet just based on our real-life communities, two different people can end up with very different perceptions of not just how the world works, but also how other people think about the world, and form different values and beliefs in response—and neither are necessarily wrong or unreasonable, but they are responding to different things.

So I guess what I’m saying is this has been a very thought-provoking discourse and I’ve enjoyed thinking about how words and concepts can mean different things to different people and how important the context in which we form our opinions can be and also how that context is often stripped away in conversations because you just can’t and probably wouldn’t want to expound upon every single thing in your life that has led you to form those opinions, and I wish you the best.

Thank you!

I dunno. Maybe I’m just strange but I feel like there are a lot of people in the world who just.. don’t want to let things suck a little? It feels to me like people can be very… how dare you say that we’re not all fine? About things.

And that’s never made sense to me. Like, take the conservative old saw “facts don’t care about your feelings.” It’s mean and it’s often used by people who are also mean to argue that things are facts that very much actually aren’t. But the reason it works as a hook is that it’s actually in one sense true. There’s a lot of shitty crap that’s true and isn’t going to stop being true because we say it’s not. Like… I gained more weight than I planned to in part because I was in an online environment I do think was kinda controlling, and I really did get the sense that if I didn’t enjoy the foods I liked whenever I wanted them, I was letting fatphobia, literal unfounded fear becoming fat, due to propaganda about it, win.

When my doctors started noticing me gaining I had ready defenses: you’re fatphobic, and my blood pressure is only doing that because I have ptsd.

Ultimately I decided, feeling scared as this kept getting worse and maintaining the belief that others were fatphobic and I was fine became more difficult, to test whether MY weight and MY blood pressure are correlated.

FOR ME? They are. I've seen them increase and decrease together enough that I'm satisfied there is a correlation.

So when I hear “fat people can be healthy,” it’s not so much that I think that’s clearly wrong and people are lying, but I get very interested: which fat people? Do we know which people have this blood pressure thing and which don’t? Can we predict it, even roughly? Cos I spent like a year wrecking myself for political cred and it didn’t really get me much, and who knows, there might even be some damage.

But when you start asking what is pseudoscience, some people can take it super personally, and that’s… I don’t know what I do about that really. I mean if I was the kind of person who was more concerned about avoiding conflict than about trying to fact find I would stop talking, but I’m not that kind of person, fortunately or unfortunately for all concerned.

And my thing is toxic positivity lately I think, again, because my own work in therapy lately has been learning that it’s okay to say things aren’t fine. Like I know it’s okay to say, but I have a lot of experience with being judged for being the one who says it, and that’s… that’s hard, because I don’t know how to not mention truth when I think I know it.

And the truth I think I see here is, hey, some of us actually do need to make diet changes for health. Some of us don’t. But letting those of us who don’t talk over those of us who do for politics is (clutches pearls) BAD. It literally got me hurt.

I might have some of the facts wrong, that’s very possible, but I CANNOT possibly be the only one.

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abusedandromeda · 6 months ago

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Picking Favorites

Hey y’all! I know I’ve been a little quiet but I’ve been a little busy irl. Also, due to some medication, my PTSD has been a little worse but it does help with depression so I can do more stuff. I’ve decided to write about my most recent memory and vent about it so here it goes!

It’s exactly like the title said: my birth mother had a favorite outside of the family. I really don’t wanna dox her, so we’ll just call her J. A little bit of backstory: We met during 4th grade and she was a little bit of a farm girl. She had to take care of chickens and a couple horses. Unfortunately, this does come into play later. My birth mother took a liking to her and got to know J’s mom as well. J was basically things that I lacked in: hard-work, pride, had a ton of friends and was very leaderlike. Compared to me, who was lazy, spoiled and dramatic.

Shit hit the fan in middle school. There was an incident that made me cut J out. No, there was no abuse involved or anything major. In fact, I don’t even blame J now but at the time, I disliked her but I figured after I had cooled down, maybe we could reconnect because the thing is she apologized over email over and over. I would’ve definitely talked to her again…if it weren’t for my birth mother. During this time, she made it known that she hated the fact that I wanted space. Never said I’d cut J out. Just wanted space. But over and over again, my birth mother would say “she was such a nice girl, you’re acting spoiled” or “you should be more like J. She was such a hard worker and had so much pride in her work.”

In fact, I remember I was with my bio grandparents over the summer trying to deal with high school registration and she tried to talk about J and how we should be friends again. When I didn’t respond, she yelled at me “being too prideful and spoiled” to the point where I wanted to cry. Again, she yelled at me for crying and being dramatic. (Very unrelated, but I felt guilty for leaving my birth mother last week and then I remember all this shit and knew I did the right thing. How’d she expect me to stay??)

Anyway, this made me go from disliking J to absolutely fucking hating her. Other than a couple differences in lifestyles and opinions, she wasn’t actually evil. Yeah, she was a hardworker. She was an average C student and took pretty good care of herself despite how many things she had to do in her life. Even though I found it odd at the time that we only played on our phones when we hung out, I realized now that that was one of the rare times she actually got to relax. When we did hang out, she was always moving when we weren’t in her room. So basically, she deserved none of the hate.

Thankfully, I rarely verbally took it out on her, but I did very much emotionally did. She was very hurt that I cut her out. She told me she was crying and at the time, I just didn’t care because I just hated her for basically being my birth mother’s daughter. She may as well have been because my birth mother had so many great things to say about her and none to say about me. But still, it just sucked ass because she didn’t deserve to feel like shit. While I don’t blame myself 100%, maybe just one email saying at some point that it wasn’t her fault or just something.

We did end up talking for a bit during high school, but not as often and we didn’t hang out after we started talking. Emotionally, I was pretty busy. Pretty sure I never told her of my plans to cut off my birth mother. So fast forward to when I cut off my birth mother, I did end up getting a message from her asking what was going on. I was honest and told her and mentioned that my birth mother really favored her and we ended up basically having a conversation where now why she was always so busy came up.

Basically, I MYSELF WAS HER MOTHER’S FAVORITE. I’m not sure if she mentioned the exact reason, but it may have been along the lines of school. Like I said, she was a C kid, which wasn’t bad at all considered what she did day to day. I couldn’t imagine maintaining a C and also having a farm to take care of but apparently that wasn’t good enough. I guess my birth mother mentioned me being an A and B kid and that was what her birth mother wanted. That’s just another reason why I figured nothing I did would ever be good enough for my birth mother. Because even if J was her real daughter, my birth mother would only find flaws in J. With abusive parents, they’ll always want more. The favorite child is only a comparison, not the standard for them. So it just sucked ass for both of us because even if both of our bio parents traded, it wouldn’t be enough for them.

It’s still so bewildering to me that no child would ever be enough. J woke up at like 5 in the morning before school to take of the farm and was passing in school and still had time for clubs and activities while I was a scholarly kid who also used to balance clubs and activities and yet it just wasn’t enough.

This might be a tough lesson but unfortunately, even if you became a carbon copy of your abusive parents’ favorite child, it won’t be enough. They’ll always demand more from you until you can’t perform so they can find all of your faults. Anyway, J and I don’t talk as often. We didn’t end up as friends due to other differences in lifestyles but the main reason would be because we were basically pitted against each other because we weren’t enough for our birth parents. I don’t remember the convo but hopefully I did apologize for being so cold😔.

Like I know it was my birth mother’s fault. I wouldn’t have hated J so much if it wasn’t for my birth mother but J also went through the same thing and still reached out :/.

Hopefully, though, my bio brother is enough for my bio mother but when I think about how she is nowadays, I highly doubt she’ll ever change. Anyways, sorry if this is a little more rushed lmao. It’s 11 and I haven’t eaten dinner and my food is here so night y’all!

#emotional abuse #toxic parents #child abuse #toxic family #mental health #toxic household #toxic mother #dysfunctional family #unsupportive parents #favorite child #golden child

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lottiexevans · 5 months ago

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LOTTIE: Free donuts…the way to any (semi) sane person’s heart.

LOTTIE: I can say I’ve never really given it a chance because growing up it was more ‘what’s the cheapest thing we can get that will still make sure everyone’s fed’ you know? And then Yale and the Marines didn’t really lend the chance lol. I would greatly appreciate any tips said guy can offer, for sure. I’d be open to lessons too. Just for the record.

LOTTIE: It definitely wasn’t for the feint of heart, I can say that, but it wasn’t all bad. It started as a way to feel connected to my dad, and sort of morphed into something that felt like duty. I honestly did intend for it to be a career. I didn’t expect to enjoy serving as much as I did, but it started to feel like that’s where I was supposed to be. At that time at least.

LOTTIE: Mimosas and Bloody Marys are the perfect start to the end of my day 😂

[ A few minutes later, knowing full well she skipped over the question ]

LOTTIE: It’s not something I ever really talk about, I think my family are the only ones who knows what happened, but as my therapist says I can’t avoid it forever.

LOTTIE: I got engaged on my last tour to one of the other Marines. His team was sent out on some op that went sideways. My team was sent out to help provide support and medical attention, but his injuries were worse than we thought initially. He died in my arms while we were trying to get them out.

LOTTIE: I wasn’t going to get out after. I thought I was okay after a bit. But I definitely wasn’t. Almost got my own team killed because of PTSD. So when it came time to re-up, I decided to get out and come home instead.

RIVER: National Donut Day is the best! Free donuts are always a win. And hey, cooking is a skill that anyone can learn with a bit of practice. I bet you'd surprise yourself if you gave it a shot. Plus, you know, you know a guy who's able to give you tips and whatnot. RIVER: Wow, three tours overseas? That's intense. It sounds like you've been through a lot. I can't imagine how tough that must have been. I mean, I know I deal with some pretty heavy stuff in my job, but even I can't say it really compares to the stuff you guys do in the military. RIVER: Did you plan on it being a career before whatever happened? I won't really pry, but I am curious on what happened that made you leave. RIVER: Mimosas and Blood Marys? Sounds liked a good start to the morning lmao

#tw: mention of death #tw: death #tw: military #{ ooc | just in case }#{ text messages }#{ texts | river }#{ river jackson }

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runnning-outof-time · 3 years ago

Text

Love Again | Tommy Shelby x Reader

Request: yes by anonymous

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x reader

Summary: A day out on a whim in Small Heath allows for two people to finally meet in person. Tommy finds himself standing right in front of the beautiful woman who he'd only known through words and in pictures. (Y/N) finds herself starting to love again.

Warnings: smoking, war, mentions of PTSD, character death

Word Count: 3512

A/N: I very much enjoy writing glimpses of Tommy during the war. Enjoy! :)

I’D LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK! - YOUR THOUGHTS & COMMENTS HELP ME WRITE!

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged in future stories like this one!

Tommy made sure that his back was against the wooden pillar before he slumped down to sit in the dirt. He brought his knees up in front of him before he tipped his head back to look up at the sky. It had been at least a week since he'd seen it. It seemed like a foreign sight after being stuck in the tunnels.

He didn't even acknowledge the soldier that sat down next to him. Instead he glanced over to see that the man had several pieces of paper in his hand. Most of them looked to be letters, but one happened to be a picture of a woman. Even from the grayscale nature of the photo, Tommy was able to tell that the woman was beautiful. He didn't even know he was staring at it until he was addressed by the very man that was holding it. "Don't have anything better to do?" His words made Tommy drag his eyes from the picture up to the soldier he was sitting next to.

"Not really, no," he saw no point in lying, his blunt answer making the soldier chuckle. "She your sister...friend, woman?" he decided he'd ask about the woman he'd been staring at.

The man to his right laughed again as he glanced down at the photo for a moment. "She's my wife," he answered then, a smile on his face.

"She's beautiful," Tommy nodded, feeling no shame in complimenting him. It wasn't like he was saying something degrading about her. He was simply stating a fact.

"She is. Has a heart of gold too. I'm not sure what exactly she saw in me," the man agreed, a knowing smile still present on his face. "I'm Robert, by the way," he introduced himself, extending his hand outward.

"Tommy," Tommy reciprocated the introduction before he shook the man's hand.

"You get any letters ever, Tommy?" Robert asked then.

"Occasionally."

"Have anyone back at home waiting for you?"

"No. No one special. Just me family and a business," Tommy looked to the ground, trying not to remember the very reason why he'd volunteered to fight: the death of his first love. Robert nodded before looking down at the letter in his hands. It got quiet between the two for a few moments before the sound of Robert laughing made Tommy glance over at him once more. "Does your wife write to you?" he asked while craning his neck as he tried to get another look at the picture.

"All the time. She writes to me about everything. I swear she even includes what she'd eaten that day, which makes me bloody jealous because the food here is shit...if we even get any," Robert happily obliged in telling him. It seemed like he was eager to talk about his wife. Tommy laughed slightly before mumbling an agreement about the food. It was even worse for him because his company of tunnelers only saw hot meals when they surfaced from their missions. "I'll have to fill you in on some of the things she tells me...sometimes I wish I had someone to talk to about the stuff she gets up to."

"I'd like that," Tommy agreed with Robert's idea, "it'll give me a break from all the shit going on around us."

Hearing the stories that Robert's wife wrote to him quickly became something that Tommy looked forward to. The more stories he heard, the more he found himself wishing that he'd be able to meet her. Who she was as a person sounded just as beautiful as she looked. And although he didn't want to admit it, he had a bit of a crush on her. Which was a crazy idea for a man like Thomas Shelby...he wasn't one to have crushes. No one captivated him like Greta had. Well at least until he saw (Y/N)'s picture. She was truly the only thing getting him through this war.

This particular morning started out like any other. Tommy and Robert were leaned up against the wooden support beams as they talked about what (Y/N) had written in her latest letter. She had disclosed to Robert that she wanted to paint the walls of their home when he returned. Of course, she wrote him an entire dissertation about the potential colors they could use and why each one would be a good choice.

They then heard a bunch of screaming coming from further down the trench. Both men looked at each other with furrowed eyebrows. "What do you think they're yelling about?" Robert pondered out loud.

"Someone probably fucked up the rations again," Tommy guessed, shrugging his shoulders.

"I think that would make them mad. These sound like happy cheers."

"Germany has signed an agreement! Armistice has been reached!" a soldier yelled loudly as he ran down the trench, past the two men sitting along the side. He repeated his message as he continued on, not even acknowledging Tommy or Robert.

Both men looked at each other with wide eyes. The war was over. Peace had been declared. Now, only one thing was on their mind: "what do we do now?"

-One Year Later-

Tommy removed his peaked cap and set it down on the counter of the Garrison's bar. All he needed to do was nod at Harry to make the barman immediately get to work on getting a bottle of whiskey and a glass to pour it in. He poured Tommy his first glass before he set down the bottle and helped the next customer. Tommy tipped the glass back, drinking all of its contents before he set it back on the counter. He then turned around and leaned up against the bar.

Glancing around, he saw people going about their conversations while drinking whatever they had ordered. He scanned the room a few times, and each time his eyes stopped on the woman who was sitting in the corner booth. She had a wide smile on her face as she was listening intently to the man who was sitting across from her. She was beautiful. Unlike anyone Tommy had seen in a long time. But at the same time she looked so familiar. So he poured himself another glass and knocked it back before he decided he'd go introduce himself to the woman in the booth. He'd just become the owner of this pub, so why not go around and talk to the patrons?

"Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to introduce myself. I'm..."

"Hello, Mr. Shelby, how are you?" the man that the beautiful woman was sitting with cut Tommy off before he could get his introduction out.

"Have we met before?" Tommy questioned with furrowed eyebrows as he looked between the two people. Surely he would have remembered a woman that beautiful.

"I guess we haven't," the man said, his confidence now noticeably deflated as he stood to extend his hand, "my name is Bradley (Y/L/N). I work as the head foreman for the steel factory in the city," he formally introduced himself.

"It's nice to meet you, Bradley," Tommy nodded, shaking the man's hand before he turned his attention over to the person he really wanted to talk to. "My name's Thomas Shelby. I don't believe we've met before," he then introduced himself to the woman who was still sitting with a smile on her face. As soon as she heard his name, her expression changed. Immediately, Tommy started wracking his brain for someone he may have crossed, and/or dealt with who was related to this woman. But he was drawing a blank.

He didn't get the ability to question it though, because the woman stood out of her seat and out of nowhere, wrapped her arms around him tightly. He was confused by the sudden embrace, but returned it nonetheless. "I can't believe I'm meeting you in person," the woman said in a whisper as she pulled away. Tommy just stared down at her, still completely lost. "I'm (Y/N). Robert's wife. He spoke a lot about a man named Tommy Shelby in his letters. I never thought I'd get to actually meet the soldier who my husband swore enjoyed listening to all of my silly stories," she cleared up his confusion as she explained the reason behind the hug she'd given him.

It made sense as soon as she told him who she was. She was the last person who he found beautiful. She was one of the sole reasons why he made it through the war with the majority of his sanity still intact. She showed him that maybe there was hope in the world. And now she was standing right in front of him.

"It's very nice to meet you, (Y/N). I also only thought I'd ever know you through your words and photographs," Tommy shared her surprised sentiment, "and might I say, you are certainly more beautiful in person," he couldn't stop himself from complimenting her. Then someone else came to mind: "how has Robert been?" he figured he'd ask about the man who essentially introduced the two of them.

He immediately wished that he wouldn't have asked the second he saw the smile drop from her face. "Robert, uh...Robert passed away two months after he returned home. He fell ill from exposure to the chemical weapons that were used, the doctors said. His health declined quickly," she told him, the happiness that was once gracing her features now completely gone. It was easy to tell that his death still affected her.

"Oh. I...I'm sorry to hear that," Tommy responded, a look of shock surely still on his face.

(Y/N) tried to smile despite her sadness. "I think there's a reason why we came to this tavern. My brother was suggesting another one, but I made him stop here when we were driving," she said, glancing over at the man who Tommy now knew as her brother. "I think I was supposed to meet you today, Tommy," she then looked back over at him, her eyes now twinkling. Tommy decided then that he could stare into them all day and not get tired of it. "We should get dinner sometime," she suggested then.

"I'd like that," Tommy agreed with a nod, hoping that his expression didn't give away how excited he was at the chance to spend more time with this woman.

The details of the dinner were ironed out right after the suggestion was made. They agreed to meet each other at one of the restaurants Small Heath had, and Tommy promised her that they'd get the best table the establishment could offer. Of course, he left out that the reason why was because this restaurant paid the Peaky Blinders for protection.

(Y/N) was buzzing as she made her way from her brother's home to the restaurant she was to meet Tommy at. She was eager to get to know more about the man that her late husband had talked so much about in his letters home. There was something about him that drew her to him...something that made her want to learn more.

Tommy was waiting outside the restaurant when she approached it. His eyes met hers, and he flicked the cigarette to the street before he opened the door for her. (Y/N) sent a smile as a sign of gratitude before she entered the establishment with Tommy following behind her. "Follow me this way," he told her, stuffing his peaked cap into the pocket of his suit jacket as he took the lead and brought her further into the restaurant.

Soon enough, they were at a table in the very back of the eatery, where no other diners were. "This is very private," (Y/N) commented with a smile as she took the shawl off of her shoulders and draped it over the back of her chair. Tommy merely nodded as the two sat down across from each other.

A waiter then came over and took their orders before leaving them alone once more. "Do you live in Small Heath?" Tommy started up conversation as he leaned back in his chair.

"I don't," (Y/N) shook her head, "my home is in Saltley. My brother just accepted his promotion though, so I figured I'd come down for the weekend to celebrate the occasion," she explained to him her reason for being in the city.

"I feel honored that you'd take some time away from your celebrating and spend it with me," Tommy commented with a grin, making (Y/N) smile in response. "Do you mind if I smoke?" he asked her then, fishing his packet of cigarettes out of the jacket's pocket. (Y/N) shook her head and he nodded, offering one to her then. She declined it and he accepted her response, sticking one between his lips before he struck a match to light it.

"What was he like, Tommy?" (Y/N) asked after she watched him exhale a line of smoke.

"Who?" Tommy answered with a question of his own.

"Robert. What was he like when he was in France?"

"He, uh..." Tommy paused for a moment, trying to pull some memories back from the dark confines of his mind. He'd shut the door on the war and never thought that he'd be speaking of it again. "He liked to talk. Loved to tell me stories about you," he paused again, smiling as he saw her smile, "he said he was happy that I'd agree to listen to him; that he'd wanted to have someone to talk to about the things you were writing to him."

(Y/N) couldn't help but let out a slight laugh at Tommy's words. "He liked to talk," her smile dulled slightly before she continued, "he didn't do much of it after coming home though. The war changed him completely."

"He was certainly happy when he was speaking about you," Tommy told her, hoping that his words would offer her some sort of respite. She sent him a closed-mouth smile in response.

The food came to the table then, and Tommy and (Y/N) kept talking as they ate. They talked about the stories that he remembered Robert telling him from the letters she wrote, and she bashfully admitted to him that some of the things she'd written about hadn't actually happened. Instead she was creating them as a hope that they would brighten the soldiers' spirits. She was pleased to know that they succeeded in doing so.

(Y/N) then became curious about the man sitting across from her, "so what is it that you do for a living, Tommy?" she asked, leaning forward slightly before she continued, "I remember Robert telling me that you had a business that you left to go fight."

"I did," Tommy nodded, taking a drink before he continued, "and I still do. My family runs a betting shop. We take bets on the races. I also own the pub that you and your brother visited yesterday. We have a few that we run around the city. I have several other avenues that I also intend to delve into in due time."

"You run multiple businesses?" (Y/N) asked in a surprised manner, "I'm impressed."

"Keeping myself busy helped in forgetting about what happened in France. It was easier to just throw myself into the work of making the business the best it could be." It shocked Tommy how candidly he'd just said those words.

"In hearing that, I am even more impressed," (Y/N) spoke in a sweet manner as a smile formed on her face. Hearing her words made the corners of Tommy's lips tug upwards.

"This was a lovely dinner, Tommy. Thank you so much," (Y/N) smiled over at him as they exited the restaurant.

"You're welcome. I enjoyed the time we spent," Tommy nodded as he spoke, holding the door open for her as they stepped onto the street. "Are you heading back to your brother's now?" he asked then.

"No. I'm walking back to my home in Saltley," (Y/N) answered.

"Walking?"

"I have no other means of transportation," she gave him a matter-of-fact response.

"I'll drive you," he insisted rather than suggested.

"I couldn't burden you with that, Tommy," she immediately tried to get him to retract his offer.

"It wasn't up for suggestion," was all Tommy said before he nodded his head to where his car was parked on the street. (Y/N) wordlessly followed him, judging that by this point, he wasn't going to try and kidnap her or anything. So she got into the passenger’s seat and began the task of directing him to her home.

“Let me walk you to your door, (Y/N),” Tommy said as they parked in front of her home. She couldn’t even contend his statement because he was already out and at her side before she could think of the words to do so.

“I had a really good time tonight, Tommy,” (Y/N) told him as they stopped at the front door. She smiled at him before craning her neck up slightly to press her lips to his cheek. Tommy felt his mouth go dry at the feeling of her lips against his skin. The feeling was gone too soon though as she pulled away to look at him once more. Silence fell between them as they looked at each other. Then (Y/N) found herself admitting something profound, “it scares me how quickly I’ve developed feelings for you,” she started, continuing on even though she saw Tommy’s eyes widen slightly, “the last time this happened to me was when I first met Robert.”

“I’ve had feelings for you before I even met you, (Y/N),” Tommy responded to her shocking statement with one of his own. “I saw your picture while in the trenches...Robert told me those stories about you. They quickly became my sources of motivation. I’d push on through the week to get to the day when the post was delivered so that I could hear what you wrote to him.”

“I never thought I’d meet you,” (Y/N) admitted in a soft voice.

“Me neither, love,” Tommy responded as he glanced down at her hands before taking them into his own. “I’m happy I did though,” he added before giving her hands a squeeze.

(Y/N) also glanced down at their intertwined hands, her mind moving at a million miles a minute as she tried to get a grasp on what was happening. Was she really falling for the man that she’d just met yesterday? “I’m happy too. Robert would want me to be happy. He wouldn’t want me to be stuck on my own for the rest of my life. He’d want me to move on...to find love again,” she said then, her mind thinking back to what Robert had told her before he left for France. How he’d said that if he didn’t come back, he didn’t want her to spend the rest of her life in mourning. That he instead wanted her to hold onto his memory, but to also make herself happy. She felt that she was doing that right now.

“I didn’t think that love would be possible after what I’ve been through,” Tommy’s words were soft, like he was telling her a secret. “But I think maybe I’d be able to find it again with you,” he told (Y/N) as he looked her in the eyes.

“I think I also may be able to find it again with you,” she agreed with him, a smile forming on her face as a giddy feeling arose in her stomach.

“Would you like to go out for dinner again soon? As an official date this time?” Tommy asked her. He tried to make his words come off as serious and confident, but the smile that formed on his lips as he spoke showed just how excited he was at the moment.

“I’d like that, Tommy,” (Y/N) eagerly agreed with his suggestion, a wide smile on her face as well.

“We’ll make it happen then, eh?” he grinned and she nodded before she stood on her toes to kiss his cheek again.

“I’m looking forward to it,” (Y/N) told him once she’d pulled away.

“As am I,” Tommy agreed, his head still spinning from the feeling of her lips. “Goodnight, (Y/N).”

“Goodnight, Tommy,” she sent one last smile in response before their hands broke apart so that Tommy would be able to go back to his car.

(Y/N) stayed outside until he got into it and pulled away from her home. Then she opened the door with a wide smile on her face. She was excited for this new beginning. She had a really good feeling about this. It felt like she was falling in love again. And that was most certainly the best feeling in the world.

Tagged: @alreadybroken-ts @magicalxdaydream @the-anxious-youth @cloudofdisney @look-at-the-soul @golden-hoax @elenavampire21 @peaky-cillian @julkaamazing @mrsalwayswrite @julyzaa

MASTERLIST

#tommy shelby #tommy shelby x reader #tommy shelby x yn #tommy shelby imagine #peaky blinders #peakyxtommy #peaky blinders imagine #peaky blinders fanfiction #peaky blinders fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic

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c-is-for-circinate · 4 years ago

Note

Wait, isn't "anti" stuff more like "anti-pedophilia" and stuff? Like, you have a point about anti-porn attitudes, but from what I've heard just "anti" on its own means against stuff like kid porn and incest porn and legitimately f*cked up sh*t like that.

Okay! So this, I think, is actually a great example of what I was talking about, and a really useful thing to understand. (CW rape, child abuse, etc)

Smarter people than me have written much better essays about why policing thoughtcrimes is a bad road to go down, and I will probably reblog some of them next time they cross my dash for more context. What I want to talk about is the trigger mechanism, the ‘oh, this looks like danger!!!’ immune response in how we look at different kinds of porn, and how that applies to anti culture.

Here’s the thing: I am anti-pedophilia. I think that, for most people, that’s a stance that largely goes without saying! Adults who prey on children are bad. I’m also against incest; relatives who prey on their family members are bad. Above all I oppose rape. Sexual predation of any kind is bad. In fact, I’d say that’s the most important item on the list. There is plenty of room to argue about where the lines are between ‘adult’ and ‘child’ and how teenagers fit in the middle, and there’s plenty of room to get historical about the lines between ethically terrible incest, distasteful-but-bearable “aristocratic inbreeding” between distant cousins, and the kind of consanguinity that tends to develop in a small town where everyone’s vaguely related to everyone else by now anyway. The core of the issue is consent, and it has always been consent. Pedophilia and incest are horrific because they are rape scenarios where the abuser has far more power and their victim far fewer resources to cope, both practically and emotionally; because harm to children is, to us as a culture, worse than harm to adults, for a lot of very valid reasons; and because they constitute betrayal of trust the victim should have been able to put in their abuser as well as rape--but they are all rape scenarios, and that’s why they’re awful.

These things are bad. It is good for us to have a social immune response system that recognizes these things when they’re happening and insists we step in. That is a good thing to develop! It helps us, as a society. It can help the people being victimized. It’s the same reason educators and childcare workers in the US are all mandated reporters, why we do background checks on people working near kids. These things happen, and they’re terrible, and it’s good that we try to be aware and prepared for them. (Though obviously studies show we’re a lot less good at protecting the vulnerable than we’d like to pretend we are.)

The question is: why does that same social immune response trigger, and trigger so angrily, in response to fiction?

Anti culture is fundamentally an expression of that social immune response. Specifically, it’s that social immune response when it is set off by a situation that, while it has some similarities to the very bad real-life crime of sexual predation including pedophilia and incest, is in and of itself harmless.

If you’re instinct is to flare up in anger or dismissiveness because I’m calling these things harmless, I want to ask you to just take a deep breath and bear with me for a bit longer. What you’re feeling right now is an allergic reaction.

Humans tell and read and listen to stories about “legitimately fucked up shit” all the time. It’s part of the human condition. It’s part of how we process those things happening, not just to use, but to other people in the world around us. It’s part of how we process completely unrelated fucked-up shit, playing with fears and furies and insecurities that we all have, through so may layers of fiction that we don’t even recognize them any more, playing with power dynamics in metaphor and making characters suffer for fun. Aside from the fact that literally all stories do this to some extent or another; aside from the fact that drawing lines between ‘ok that’s good storytelling’ and ‘that’s too fucked-up to write about’ is arbitrary, subjective, and dangerous in its own right; aside from all of that, these stories are stories. All of them.

Even the ones about rape, about incest, about pedophilia. They’re words on a page. No real children were harmed, touched, or even glanced at in the making of this work of fiction. This story, pornographic though it may be, is part of a conversation between consenting adults. (And if a teenager lies about their age to consent, that is a different problem altogether.)

Stories in and of themselves, no matter what they’re about, are no more dangerous than a crate full of oranges. Which is to say: utterly harmless, unless all you have to eat is oranges, all day every day, and you find yourself dying slowly of nutrient deficiency--which is why representation matters. Or unless someone wields one deliberately, violently, as a tool to cause harm, and someone gets acid in their eye--which is the fault of the person holding the orange. And unless you happen to be allergic to citrus.

The key here is this twofold understanding: First, the thing that hurts you can also have value to others. Real, legitimate value. Whether you’ve undergone trauma and certain story elements are straight-up PTSD triggers or you just don’t like orange juice, that story, those tropes, that crate of oranges may be somewhere between icky and fundamentally abhorrent--but we understand that that is still your reaction. Even if you don’t understand how anybody could ever enjoy it; even if every single person you surround yourself with is as sensitive and disgusted and itchy about this thing that makes your eyes hurt and your throat stop working as you; that doesn’t make it true for everyone. That doesn’t make oranges poisonous. No real children were involved in the writing of this story. It is words on a page.

But, secondly: the thing that has value to others can also hurt you. Just because a story isn’t inherently poison doesn’t mean it can’t cause you, personally, pain. That’s what a PTSD trigger is: an allergic reaction, psychological anaphylaxis, a brain that’s trying so hard to protect its own from a threat that isn’t actually present (but was once, and the brain is trained to respond) that it causes far more harm and misery than the trigger itself possibly could. And no, it’s not just people with PTSD who sometimes get hurt by stories. There are many, many ways a story can poke the part of your brain that says, this is Bad, I don’t like this, I don’t want to be here. The story is still, always, every time, pixels on a screen and ink on paper. The story causes no physical harm. But it can poke your brain into misery, it can stir up your emotions, it can make you want to cringe and run away. It can make you want to scream and fight and go after the author who brought this thing into existence. It can make you hurt.

This is an allergic reaction. This is your brain and body, your reflexes and instincts, trying to protect you from something that isn’t really happening. And just like a literal allergic reaction, it can do actual harm to you if it gets set off. This is real. The fact that stories can upset you to the point of pain and mental/emotional injury is real, even though it’s coming from your own brain and not the story itself. There are stories you shouldn’t read. There are stories I shouldn’t read, regret reading, will never read, because they hurt me. That doesn’t mean they’re the same stories that would hurt you. That doesn’t mean they don’t have value.

And, finally:

If getting upset about stories is fundamentally an individual person’s allergic reaction, their brain freaking out and firing off painful survival instincts in the face of a thing that isn’t, in and of itself, a threat? Then the anti movement is a cultural allergic reaction.

Fandom as a whole has a pretty active immune system, which doesn’t mean we have a good immune system. We try very hard to be aware of all the viruses and -isms and abuse and manipulation and cruelty, both systematic and individual, that exists around and within our community. We’re primed and ready to shout about things at all times. The anti movement is that system, that culture, screaming and shouting and fighting at a harmless thing on a grand scale. It wants to stop that thing, that scary awful thing that trips all of its well-primed danger sensors, at all costs. It’ll swell up and block off our airways (our archives) if it has to. It’ll turn on the body it came from. It’s scared and protective and trying to fight, and it’s ready to fight and destroy itself.

Luckily, fans and fanfic and fandom and fan culture are a lot bigger and older than they often get credit for, and it’s not like these cultural allergies are anything new. We could talk about shippers and slashers in the X-Files fandom in the 90s. We could talk about the birth of fandom in the days of Star Trek. We could talk about censorship and book burning going back centuries. We survived that and we’ll survive this, too.

But god, does the anti movement my throat and eyes itch. Man is it irritating, and sometimes a little suffocating, to realize how many stories just aren’t getting told out of fear of what the antis will say. And that’s the real danger, I think. What are we losing that would have so much value to someone? What are we missing out?

#fandom #anti culture #anti-anti #I guess?#asked and answered #you are not WRONG or BAD or BROKEN if a story hurt you #but neither is the story #Anonymous #anti discourse day

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withgreatpowercomesmyfuckingdick · 1 year ago

Text

Wrote the idea out!

This ended up…very long? Long enough to possibly be a fanfic in the future, who knows. Enjoy all you angst lovers!

(If you are schizophrenic or know someone with schizophrenia and have suggestions or feedback for this concept, please let me know! I mostly have second hand knowledge and my own independent research so if I showed something incorrectly or in a way that might be offensive, please tell me. I very much don’t like displaying mental illnesses incorrectly, so I’d rather correct it than leave it as is 🫶)

TW: Depictions of schizophrenia, including hallucinations and paranoia. Allusions to dissociation. Canon/fandom typical references to amoral scientific experiments.

Sephiroth learns very early that he shouldn’t say anything about the ‘shadow people.’ The only reward is that he ends up on Hojo’s table for much, much longer than usual. He hears voices, and when he was younger he’d respond to them. He eventually stops when Hojo constantly asks what they’re saying—he’s given prompts, told to try to communicate with them, but he doesn’t like it and if he looks at them for too long they disappear. It’s never productive and as a child, slightly terrifying. He gets over the sheer terror with time, learns that the shadows can’t actively hurt him, but it never ceases being confusing.

Hojo’s hypothesis is that Seph is having visions, a sign of a developing connection to the planet. Mental illness never crosses his mind, not when his creation is so perfect.

Hence, Sephiroth is never told that what he’s seeing isn’t real.

He connects dots a bit more over time, but all it makes him conclude is that what he’s seeing aren’t humans. Humans have heartbeats and their eyes gleam. The people he sees out of the corner of his eyes don’t leave audible traces that aren’t their voices, so he concludes they’re something else that only he can see.

It isn’t until the war that he realizes how abnormal this is.

The battlefield is empty. He’s surrounded by the fallen. He hasn’t stopped swinging Masamune. Whatever soldiers accompany him, in the days they bothered to accompany him, make sure to stay well off the battlefield. They learned the hard way after his first few episodes that he can’t tell the difference between ally and enemy.

Those episodes, which eventually become a very unpleasant mixture when mixed with his PTSD, are Sephiroth’s personal hell. It’s like his enemies keep multiplying, screaming things at him he can’t understand. Beyond it all he keeps hearing the drills Hojo put him through as a child, every sword form he knows yelled at him, accusations that he’s still doing it wrong and he can’t afford mistakes and that if he doesn’t kill them, worse things will happen, and it’s all his fault if he doesn’t kill them.

He never says anything back, but his expression is…terrifying. His eyes are wild, his teeth gritted so sharply his lips pull back. Some compare his expression to the demonic masks some Wutaiian martial artists wear. No one that stands on the battlefield with Sephiroth ever forgets it.

That’s how he gets his nickname as the Demon of Wutai.

When he first meets Angeal and Genesis, he doesn’t think they’re real. Genesis calls his name from behind and he doesn’t respond. He calls again, accusing him of holding himself aloft. Sephiroth still does not respond. Finally, Genesis runs to catch up with him and intercepts his path, looking Sephiroth in the eye before demanding a duel. Sephiroth seems genuinely surprised, but takes him up on the offer with no issue. Angeal comments something behind him. Sephiroth doesn’t respond, instead asking Genesis if he has a place he wants to spar. It isn’t until Genesis snaps at Sephiroth not to ignore his friend that the man turns, mildly confused, and once again looks surprised to see a person there.

Angeal and Genesis quickly become known as Sephiroth’s ‘handlers’ because they’re the only ones that take time to understand how he works. They understand faintly that he sees and hears things, but due to his childhood instincts, he never really elaborates. They don’t seem to judge when he mentions those things, which is good, and if they ask small questions or make observations about things he does, he doesn’t mind giving smaller details.

“You stare at me very hard when I speak, you know.” He’s making sure they’re human by looking for reflections in their eyes and listening to their breathing. The shadow people don’t breathe. “I noticed that when people call you, you don’t answer?…” If he can’t immediately see a face for the voice, he assumes it isn’t a human. If it isn’t that, he’s usually hearing things he shouldn’t, things that weren’t said out loud. “I’m starting to think you have a leather fetish, General.” Sometimes the voices say there’s something under his skin, in his veins, that he needs to scratch it out. The leather keeps him from doing any actual damage should the urge strike him. “You don’t like these public events, do you?” Everyone is staring at him. He can hear their thoughts. He can hear everything.

(They do notice he never questions if the people or voices are real, but rather if they’re human. They very pointedly keep it between the both of them, but they’d be lying if they said it didn’t scare them occasionally.)

Genesis and Angeal can somewhat ground him, but it only goes so far. There’s a three month cycle they get used to over the years, as much as they hate it.

The first month, Sephiroth is responsive and can pull himself away from his hallucinations with a degree of ease, or as easy as it can be. Angeal teaches him to use his PHS if he’s alone, either to record where he’s seeing things or to tell whether he’s hearing things or not. Genesis flat out buys him a camera set for that purpose only and helps him set it up in his office.

(He doesn’t tell Seph he checks the footage to see how often he’s having episodes. He doesn’t tell Angeal either. But out of the three, he does the most research and has an inkling Sephiroth is schizophrenic and not being treated correctly.)

The second month things get a little worse. He hallucinates more often, gets jumpier (or as jumpy as he can get, you can’t tell he’s alarmed if you don’t look him in the eye), and will even mouth responses to the voices even though he isn’t speaking. Angeal and Genesis have to check on him more often, but usually he ends up pulling into himself and isolating.

When they do catch him, he’s panicky, eyes constantly wide, whispering like he’s afraid to be heard. Sometimes he speaks and they have to ask him to repeat himself because it sounds like absolute gibberish, and he gets more and more anxious the more it happens. His most vocal breakdowns happen during this month. It’s the period of time where he can tell that something is wrong and is actively unsettled by what’s happening to him. He operates on his missions as usual, almost on autopilot, but every time they catch him in private he’s a mess of frayed nerves and fear.

The third month is the worst because it’s a complete about face. It’s when he needs the most supervision, but Gen and Ang can’t babysit him 24/7. They try to get Seph to stay in contact on his own, but he doesn’t text as much. He’ll call, occasionally, but the contents go wildly between being strictly work related or being absolute nonsense. Those calls are the only time Genesis sheds his usual persona in favor of trying to calm Seph down. That is how they both learn that when Sephiroth is deep within his psychosis, he speaks very, very softly and with perfect enunciation.

(“Who am I? Am I one of them? They keep saying this isn’t who I am. I need to shed my skin and join them. They keep saying that. Are they right? Am I human?”)

He disappears often. They aren’t always the ones to find him when he gets back, but the Turks usually stay on top of the situation and don’t let anyone see him. Sometimes he smells like smoke and ash. Other times he returns drenched in blood. They can’t always tell what it came from. Angeal asks the Turks if they know what happened, if they know where he went, and they always pinch their lips and call it classified. A few rounds of this and both Ang and Gen decide they may not want to know.

Asking Seph never gets anywhere either. He goes on those soft rambles, monologues that sound pulled from a poetry book or one of the more dramatic renditions of LOVELESS. Except his appreciation for LOVELESS is minimal and the sloping, gentle tone he speaks in is so performative it’s disturbing. It eventually all jumbles into nonsense, because he’ll look to the side and is suddenly having an entirely separate conversation.

It’s at the end of that third month that there’s a call from the scientific division. Hojo is calling in a maintenance check for the General. If they’re lucky, Sephiroth is in a moment of clarity and goes down willingly, a haunted but resigned look in his eyes. Other times, he is too deep to do anything but make absolutely visceral threats through a small, soft smile, saying the voices don’t like Hojo (he always speaks in a collective ‘they’, and ‘they’ eventually seems to include himself). Half the time, there’s a fight and he has to be forcefully neutralized (often with Turk assistance). The other half of the time, despite his threats, he walks himself down with his smile intact the entire time. That often feels scarier than the alternative, even though the former costs a lot in damage repairs.

That cycle happens four times a year, every year.

Until they’re gone.

For the first few months, Sephiroth is beyond lost. He tries to do everything they taught him to do when things like this happen; they have this protocol for what he needs to do until he can see them again. Try not to leave tower too much if he can help it. Call them when he doesn’t feel okay. Keep his PHS on vibrate instead of ring, use the camera often, don’t answer the door unless it’s them. He tries. It doesn’t work.

He gets worse.

For the first time, he types full paragraphs into their chat rooms as he hyperventilates on his bathroom floor, hearing scalpels scraping the wall, beeps from the monitors used for his tests, certain that somehow Hojo’s gotten purview over his apartment, that he’s done something wrong again, and he tries so hard. He tries to call, and when it rings to voicemail, he talks anyway, but it doesn’t do much. He stops doing the other things after some time, but he can’t stop calling. Sometimes he thinks he hears Genesis pick up, and he’s so relieved, until he pulls the phone away and realizes that for the thirty minutes he’d been talking, the phone was already hung up. And he has no idea for how long.

That often causes a separate breakdown.

All this, and even knowing they’ve left, he doesn’t understand that Genesis’ and Angeal’s degradation made them leave for two different reasons but the same causes. He fights alone, because while protocols for leading SOLDIER are left behind, the Commanders leave Zack absolutely nothing about Sephiroth’s issues.

Zack’s too busy leading SOLDIER almost entirely solo to coddle Seph, at least in his mind. From the outside it just looks pathetic: the General completely isolating, refusing most if not all missions having to do with the war, and listen, Zack gets it, they were his friends. He looked up to them too! He didn’t want to fight Angeal! But he doesn’t get why Sephiroth isn’t talking to anyone at all. Are the others in SOLDIER somehow not worth his time now that his best friends are gone? What’s his deal, walking into the cafeteria and then walking right out? Zack will call his name while he’s heading somewhere, (which for a guy taking minimal missions, he lurks in the hallways an awful lot), and Sephiroth never responds. He gets grief, he’s grieving too, but Shiva, does the guy have to be rude?

He seems okay when they do on missions together; single minded, maybe a bit of a stick in the mud, but he’s not mean spirited. But outside of missions? The guy is just weird, and Zack always gets the feeling there’s something else going on he still doesn’t know about. But hey, he tries to keep his smile on and cheer the General up anytime they’re together; there isn’t much else he can do.

Then Nibelheim.

Sephiroth is in the third month of ‘the cycle.’ Two years of dealing with it on his own means he never fully stabilized. All Hojo does is flood him with electricity until his brain decides to behave, and it never lasts long. If anything, everything has escalated.

That’s why Sephiroth finally determines that he’s going to retire. He can’t do anything properly anymore, and the voices are always reminding him. It’s harder and harder to feel like a human being everyday. He opens his eyes from a horrific dream, ready to be in his bed, and he’s exactly where the dream occurred. He’s walking for hours, trying to lose the figure he knows is following him, that has a black wing and red hair and should be dead, but he can’t lose it. He keeps hearing Angeal’s voice in the wall their apartments share, and he goes to knock on the door, and it’s Zack that answers. It’s driving him insane. He genuinely isn’t sure how much longer he can take it.

(He has dreams of fire and his blade through all sorts of chests and his hands around throats and blood spraying on his clothes and dunking his head under water and severing heads from bodies and screams for salvation and so, so many horrors.)

(He is not always certain he is dreaming.)

He tries to hold it together for this last mission. It’s the last one, he tries to tell himself over and over in their transport, but there’s a shadow curved over one of the infantrymen, laughing at his misery while the soldier tries to hold back bile. Sephiroth wants to snap at the creature, tell it to leave the man alone, but he has to hold it together. Just a little longer.

The townspeople’s eyes on him feel like electric nodes taped to his skull, cold, staticky, impossible to ignore. There’s something about the way the guide looks at him that makes his skin crawl for no reason, and when she gives a small smile he sees malice in her eyes he knows isn’t in her voice. He can’t stand it.

Her father wants to take a picture. There are eyes in the camera lens, staring him down, glinting white. He keeps a respectful distance from the others in hopes they can’t hear how short his breath is. Just a little longer. It’s the last one.

He almost makes it. He really does. Then the reactor knocks his careful composure back into the shadows, leaves him in their clawed hands.

What he sees in the reactor disturbs him on some level, the inhumanity of it, but it’s quickly replaced by the voices becoming a cacophony of US US US YOU YOU YOU US US US. Every monster he looks at, they get louder, telling him that’s his destiny, that they’re reunited, that he is the greatest of them, the most beautiful monster.

It solidifies what he’s known for years: they were real. They were real all along. And they weren’t human. At first, he’s devastated, because he was right, he was one of them, born in the wrong body, confined in his skin when he should be free in the shadows with his kin. He raises his hands, looks at himself, and tastes acid in his throat. If they are monsters then what is he, he who is one of them, incapable of even existing correctly?

What is he?

The Shinra Manor makes everything click. His destiny. His calling. They’re Cetra, and they’ve been leading him. All his life, all the agony and confusion, it wasn’t for nothing. They were looking out for him, showing him the way, showing him here. This is his destiny. To save the planet. Yes, he was born with skin for a purpose, not meaningless suffering. All the dreams, the screaming, it was to prepare him for this. He had to know how it felt to put his sword through an innocent, because no human is actually innocent, and he needed to know how to do it. They screamed at him, made him listen to screams, so he could ignore them now, understand that human screams are futile before the greater purpose of his Mother’s survival. The fire in his hands, the homes crumbling before him, it was training of a different sort. This is what he was always meant for.

Salvation. He isn’t a human. He is salvation.

They call him for reunion, tell him to make himself complete. He smiles as he burns Nibelheim, plunges his sword into anything that moves, easy as breath because this is what he was made for. This is his higher calling. He’s vibrating with the excitement. What will it be like, being whole? What will it be like, belonging?

Zack is but an obstacle. He’ll die with the old world. All has to die before the planet can renew herself. Before his mother can live on, and then he’ll live with her, nothing but them for eternity. He is so, so excited. It is a feeling he’s never had before. He becomes so enthralled with it, he makes mistakes.

He dies. At the hand of a human no less. It’s disgraceful, shameful, and he vows selfishly he will make that human pay for disturbing his chance, his one chance, to finally be at peace, to fulfill his purpose. He’s lost it all now.

But not quite.

He is not alone there. He is never alone, never has been alone from the moment he knew words and could open his eyes. But it’s different now. There isn’t chaos, no confusion, no conflict between what he wants and what his mind is telling him.

It is quiet, save for one voice. It is steady, unwavering, and it wraps him in warmth rather than skinning him to the cold.

My son. My chosen one.

Chosen. Something he has never felt, split as he’s always been, scattered and uncertain, all he had forced upon him like a beast of burden. He has never been chosen, only used.

But there is no room for doubt here, not in the security he is finally given, the true single mindedness; Sephiroth is complete.

No, not yet, the voice chides, but it is so kind compared to what Sephiroth is used to. There is nothing but her now, all the harsh, ruthless words gone. We must reunite. You must return to me. Then we will be complete.

He reaches for her and for once, for once, for once, what he is seeing reaches back. He can touch it. He is reflected in its eyes. It breathes as he breathes. The excitement returns.

Yes, Mother. It is time for our Reunion.

has anybody headcanoned Seph as having schizophrenia yet. because like. it would make sense. seems incredibly withdrawn, but struggles to express emotions both verbally and physically? not to mention how the psychosis in and of itself would make his breakdown in Nibelheim MUCH deeper? Literally sinking into this idea hold on

#ff7 #final fantasy 7 #ffvii #sephiroth #sephcanons #this is not safe or sane #writers on tumblr #tumblr fic #(kind of?)#headcanon #angst #triggering content #tw: mental health #tw: dissociating #tw: hallucinations #long post #ff7 fanfic #liddle’s little fics

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boldlyvoid · 3 years ago

Text

Wheels Up

Characters: Spencer Reid, Reader (Y/N), Aaron Hotchner, David Rossi, Derek Morgan, Savannah Hayes, Emily Prentiss, Elle Greenaway, Tara Lewis, Jennifer Jareau, Matt Simmons, Luke Alvez

Summary: JJ goes on maternity leave, Spencer falls in love with her replacement that he's supposed to be mentoring, Emily Prentiss and Elle Greenaway work a case together that brings Simmons and Alvez in for help...

Warnings: Genius!Reader, mutual pining, idiots in love, drinking, star gazing, lots of fluff, mentions of past assault, grooming, drug addiction, spencer's trauma, Abductions, Rape, Murder (typical canon violence)

word count: 9.4K

a/n: this is for @starry-eyed-spence and @simmonsmilf CM fanfiction week, Day One: Favorite Character... only I couldn't pick just one.

To say Spencer fell in love at the least opportune time was a bit of an understatement. Everyone he’s ever come close to admitting his love to has either left him or died. Now he’s stuck with loving someone in secret, keeping it to himself and hoping that one day she’ll love him back.

He fell in love with a co-worker once again… which wasn’t the worst thing, office romances happen and it’s quite frankly all Rossi’s fault that they even had to worry about fraternization policies. The part that makes liking Y/N so difficult is that he’s supposed to be her mentor, he’s 5 years older than her, and if he was to ever make a move she would feel inclined to reciprocate in order to keep her job because that’s the unfortunate truth behind office relationships with significant differences in positions.

And worst of all… she doesn’t like him that way at all. She’s called him the brother she always needed, a best friend, the best mentor ever. She wasn’t interested in him in the slightest.

“And why would she be?” He’s said this to everyone who knew about his crush on her. “I’m old and boring and she’s so cool?”

But he didn’t get it. He didn’t understand that every time she asked him to hang back to help her file something, or when they would buddy up in hotel rooms to discuss cases all night and end up down some star trek rabbit hole instead, every time he talked to her she was falling in love with him right back.

It once again all circles back to Rossi, if it wasn’t for him, Spencer wouldn’t even know her. She wouldn’t have ever been introduced to the unit, he wouldn’t be attached to her at the hip and he probably wouldn’t be as happy as he is with her in his life. Even if she wasn’t his girlfriend.

He’ll never forget the day Rossi asked him to meet her, to help her settle in…

“Spencer, can I talk to you for a minute?” Rossi called him into his office.

He sighed, putting his book down and walking up the stairs to his office. He closed the door behind himself and smiled awkwardly, “what’s up?”

“Sit,” he gestures to the chairs in front of his desk, where Spencer pulls one out and proceeds to sit down, anxiously. “As you know, both Kate and JJ will be out of the field in the next few months to have their babies and we need to bring someone in to fill the void until they return, so I reached out to the academy to see if they have any up and coming Dr. Reid like agents that they could loan us.”

“Why?” Spencer laughs at the choice of words.

“Well, honestly, why get new 2 agents when we could have two Reid’s? JJ will be back after a month or 2, it’s better to have more brains than brawn.”

“So they found someone and you want me to be their chaperone?” Spencer clues in. “Who are they?”

“Y/N Y/L/N, she’s a wonderful agent, but she’s pretty quiet, I don’t know much about her personally.” Rossi prefaces. “She’s a genius, high IQ like yours and just a plethora of knowledge inside that mind of hers. You’ll like her.”

“Alright,” he nods. “When do they start?”

“When JJ’s water breaks, but I’d like you to meet them and maybe even have them shadow you for a day?” Rossi asks, “I’ve actually arranged for you both to get dinner at a friend's restaurant?”

“Is this an arranged date or purely business? Don’t send me in there blind,” he worries. “I need at least a week's prep before I go on a date again.”

“It’s not a date, kid,” Rossi laughs. “She's just a lot like you were when I met you, and I know from watching you all these years that it’s not easy to do it alone, so can you just walk them through it?”

“Of course.”

That first dinner Rossi set up for them was more exquisite than either of them prepared for.

They spent the whole night discussing dissertations and their independent journeys through becoming a genius. He understood perfectly why Rossi and the Academy would think she was a lot like him, she was a genius, but she was awkward. It took a while for her to break out of her shell and open up, but by the end of the night, he already knew they were going to be friends.

“So,” she smirks, “would you mind telling me honestly how hard this job is?”

“Why?”

She sighs, “I’ve heard a lot about Thee Doctor Reid and how you were the youngest hired to the BAU and all the shit you’ve been through.”

“What are the rumours these days?” He awkwardly smiles back, rolling his eyes slightly.

“That you were brain dead in a cemetery from an overdose and yet you’re so smart you came back from the dead to kill the unsub and escape…” she looks more and more disappointed in the rumour as she tells it.

His tongue hits the roof of his mouth as he opens it to speak, making a tsk noise as he shakes his head. “Well, I did OD but it was the unsubs main personality that resuscitated me.”

“Holy shit,” she whispers.

He nods, “what about you? I’m sure you have a reputation based on a rumour?”

She presses her lips together the way he always did, just as awkward. She sighs, huffing the air out of her nose and looking fed up. “I was groomed and assaulted by an older boy who then told kids I had a stalkerish crush on him so if I was to ever tell anyone what happened, then no one would believe me.”

“I’m so sorry,” Spencer knows the words don’t make up for what happened. “I’m guessing that’s why you wanted to get into profiling?”

She nods, “I got away with some PTSD and trust issues, most girls go through much worse… they deserve someone who gets it to look into their cases.”

Spencer nods. “That’s how I felt after my kidnapping too. It took a while for me to look at crime scene photos and not think about how they felt, and wonder why I lived when so many die?”

“I’ve never been a religious person,” she prefaces. “But I do believe we are here for a reason. Whether you choseto be here after your last life or this is some learning opportunity, or God is actually real? And you’re supposed to do good.”

“In narcotics anonymous, they reference god a lot, it’s helpful for the addicts, but I never get into it,” he opens up with her more than he’s ever opened up with any friend. “If my Devine purpose is to suffer in order to relate to those I’m supposed to help that’s a load of bullshit… honestly, I can get pretty angry thinking about why I’ve gone through what I’ve gone through doing this job, but it’s not as bad as what happened to me growing up, and it leads me to believe that I probably wouldn’t have had an easy time no matter how I live.”

She nods, “I know, I get that.”

“Sorry,” he snaps out of it. “I didn’t mean to trauma dump on you.”

“It’s exactly what I asked for actually,” she reminds him with a soft smile. “If you can still come to work every day, after all that, you must be incredibly strong— and if I’m anything like you the way people say I am, I guess I can do it too.”

He had no idea she would end up being his best friend.

She shadowed him just once in the office, picked up everything right off the bat and immediately made a name for herself in the unit. Derek tried multiple names on her before one stuck, and they knew it stuck when even Hotch called her Baby Genius.

She brought a different knowledge base to the team, similar to Spencers but visibly younger. She fit in with the crowds of kids they had to interview, she understood why kids reacted the way they did to trauma and abuse, and she was still a kid at heart. It was the reason Spencer fell for her.

She allowed him to feel free again. They went out together outside of work, going to events he always wanted to go to with a partner but never had a chance. She loved all the same things as him, and she takes him to places he’d never imagine enjoying before her.

Like laser tag… that was an afternoon he’ll never forget with her.

When JJ went into labour, that’s when Y/N started full time and Hotch hired Tara Lewis in the same week. The team barely had time to adjust to being undermanned before they were restocked.

Joining Spencer every morning for every case, she waited out front of her apartment for him to pick her up most mornings, sticking to his side throughout the long days and nights until he drove her home again. Even at work, they were partnered up for everything: heading to the M.E. together, bouncing facts back and forth at the precinct, playing good cop bad cop with perverts, and her personal favourite… Making the geoprofile.

And Spencer liked doing that part with her as well. Because it typically meant they were completely alone in a room, spreading out a map and leaning in close to each other as they placed every sticker and marker. Brushing hands, bumping shoulders, longing glances as they made connections… he also just liked to watch her hands move.

She was delicate and careful and precise… and he was falling in love with everything about her as the days went by.

Everyone on the team had noticed. It was really hard not to when they’ve all known Spencer for almost 11 years now. He was so different with her in his life, he was happy and giddy and dressing even better than before. His hair was perfect and he was glued to Y/N’s side. Or she was glued to his.

Even though they were mentally similar, physically they were polar opposites. Y/N wore all black and was a lot more outgoing than they expected. Rossi thought she’d be quiet… But she was constantly talking. To Spencer, to other officers, to witnesses, she never stopped talking and starting conversations, and thank god she did because she’s cracked 4 cases that way.

The biggest surprise the team learned about her happened on a case in Florida, a shooting in a local park in broad daylight with lots of witnesses meant the whole team was on the boardwalk asking questions. She went out to do her thing, talking to the local skaters, asking them if they knew anything but they didn’t want to cooperate.

They were too cool for the feds.

“Can I see your board?” She asks, “if I do some tricks will you answer some questions for me and Doctor Reid?”

“Knock yourself out,” one of the boys laughs as he hands her his board.

She hands Spencer her gun and shoots him a wink before taking off to do a few tricks. The whole team watches in awe then as Y/N showed off. Cruising along the halfpipe effortlessly like she was a professional.

“Okay Tony Hawk,” Morgan teases her, “where did that come from?”

“Skateboarding is easy, it’s just physics,” she shrugs. “I can figure skate too…”

“What do you want to know?” The boy takes his board back. “We always see some sketchy guys around here.”

Morgan pats Y/N on the back with a smile, applauding her ability to get anyone to open up before leaving her to take the statement.

“Agent?” One of the girls pulls her aside just before they are about to leave, “how did you do that kickflip? I’ve been trying to learn and the boys won't help me.”

“Sure thing,” she takes the girl's board and demonstrates a kickflip first.

“So, you see as I start the kickflip I bend my knees?” She shows her another kickflip all while explaining it. “Much like the with an ollie, I’m building pressure so I can apply it to the tail, making the board pop. The one thing that makes this trick different from the ollie is that instead of sliding my foot up, I just flick my toe out to the right of the board, by doing this, the board flips in a 360-degree motion.

She demonstrates again and it’s another flawless kickflip, and a huge smile on her face as Spencer watches her.

“How fast the board spins depends on how much force I put into it when I flick it out. As soon as the board flips in a full 360, your feet should connect and drive the board back to the ground.”

She hands the board back to the girl, “your turn.”

She takes a deep breath and shakes her nerves out before taking off on her board, looping around and carefully bending her knees, she follows every step and it’s a flawless kickflip.

“Flawless!!” Y/N claps. “Those boys better watch out, you’re a natural.”

“Thank you,” she wraps her arms around Y/N and gives her a hug, “it’s taken me so long to be able to do that, you’re so cool.”

“You’re welcome,” she smiles. “Good luck out there.”

She waves as she takes off on her board, leaving Y/N with a smile as she turns to Spencer. “I miss being that age and thinking everything is so cool.”

“You are really cool,” he agrees. Smiling softly as a blush fills his cheeks. “You’re always surprising me. Is there anything you can’t do?”

She laughs, “yeah the one thing I want to do the most.”

“Which is?”

She sighs, “maybe I’ll tell you someday.”

—

He’s sitting beside Penelope and Savannah, watching Derek and Y/N get drinks for what’s left of the group as the night drags on.

“When are you going to tell her?” Savannah asks.

“What?” Spencer pretends he doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

“You have a crush on the new girl…” she pokes his cheek as he blushes and gives it away. “Tell her, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“She could feel forced to say yes because I’m a supervisory special agent and she isn’t and she wants to keep her job so she feels like she needs to,” Spencer worries. “I want her to like me back because she fell for me and I want her to initiate it because then I’ll know it’s not just a power dynamic issue.”

“Have you tried asking her, genius?” Penelope teases. “Because if you asked her then you’d know she has a crush on you and she’s afraid you’ll turn her down because you’re an SSA and she isn’t.”

“When did you hear that?”

Penelope pretends to lock up her lips and throw away the key, making Savannah laugh loud enough to get Derek's attention at the bar. When he and Y/N return, that’s when the questions start.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Spencer gets up and leaves the booth, walking out towards the smokers' exit at the back of the bar, getting a moment of semi-fresh air to think about what Penelope said.

“Spence?” She calls to him from the door, “are you okay? Can I come out here?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “Sorry, I needed some air, it’s nothing.”

“Do you need a hug? I read it helps the most when people are stressed out,” she plays it off with a shrug.

“So you do have a crush on me?”

“She told you?” Her face lights with fury, “what the fuck, Penelope?”

“She didn’t mean to,” he tries to cover it up. “It was only brought up because I have feelings for you as well.”

Her eyes widen, her brows raise and her mouth slowly opens as she freezes.

“Y/N?”

She blinks a few times and shakes her head, “impossible. There’s no way.”

He laughs, “I’ll take that hug now?”

She lunges for him and wraps her arms around him so tight. Breathing him in, her hands wander his back as she takes in every second if it and he does the same. He can’t believe she’s that close to him, her hair smells nice and she’s so soft in his arms.

It’s quiet outside, they can hear the music behind the door, the people in the ally talking and the crickets in the night. It’s just them outside, holding each other in the smoking section with smiles on their faces, amazed that it’s finally happening.

“Can we keep this between us?” She whispers into his ear. “Just for a bit? I don’t want to go through all the paperwork and have to separate in the field if it doesn’t work out?”

“Wait,” Spencer pulls back. “Are you asking me to be your boyfriend?”

She nods, “well yeah isn’t that what happens when two people have a mutual crush? They date?”

“Okay,” he smiles, staring at her lips and then flicking his gaze back to hers with a blush. “I have more than a crush on you, I really, really like you.”

“Prove it,” she teases, “let's go on a real date soon?”

“You know what, let’s get out of here. I have something I want to show you,” he takes her hand and waits for her to nod.

“Take my lead okay? You don’t feel good and you’re going to wait outside while I say goodbye,” she has a plan right away

“After you,” he holds the door open for her and lets her inside first.

—

“I’m taking Spencer home, he’s not doing well,” she’s a much better actress than Spencer expected, patting his back and watching him leave the bar before her like she asked him to do. “He’s really anxious?”

Penelope looks worried, “oh no, I fucked up. I told him you like him.”

She just shrugs, “if he didn’t know that already then I guess he’s not as smart as he pretends to be.”

“See,” Derek looks at Savannah. “I told you everyone else also thinks he’s faking being that smart.”

“Shut up,” she shoves him and turns her attention back to Y/N. “Go make him feel better, he’ll like your company.”

“I’ll see you guys at work on Monday,” she waves them goodbye, surprised they bought it as she rushes her way back outside to Spencer.

He’s already in his car, engine running and waiting for her with a smile. “Come on,” he hurries her inside and is taking off down the road before she even has her seatbelt on yet.

“What’s the rush, Spence? It’s only 1 in the morning I’m sure tones of places are open still?” She teases.

“You’re going to like this, I used to go here all the time when I started with the bureau,” he explains, leaving the main road to take a back root, and eventually they’re driving on gravel.

“If you’re taking me here to murder me this is a dumb way to do it because they all know I left with you,” she teases. “At least when you go to get rid of me, do yourself a favour and dig 6 one-foot holes instead of one 6 foot hole…”

He laughs, “would you really give your murderer tips?”

She nods, “my goal would be to piss him off so much he either lets me go or murders me quickly. I don’t want to go through all the pain.”

“It’s not fun, that’s for sure,” he shrugs it off but she knows it hits too hard.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, reaching her hand out for his to hold by the gear shift. “I think you’re like the strongest guy in the world, you know that, right?”

“Why?” He asks as if that's a preposterous thing to say.

“I think if I got kidnapped and tortured at 24 I wouldn’t still be working in the FBI,” she admits. “I barely made it through the academy, I know this job is intense but I don’t think I could handle being in that situation.”

“If it’s up to me,” Spencer squeezes her hand tighter and brings it to his lips for a kiss. “You’ll never experience anything like that.”

He’s so good at making her feel safe that she almost believes he has the power to do that. He would do anything and everything to move fate for her safety.

He turns down another back road then, around the edge of a lake and towards a clearing. He follows old tire tracks and parks by the dock. “I found this spot one night on a random drive to clear my head.”

“I thought you hated driving?” She quizzes him.

He shrugs, “I like to drive at night when no one else is on the road because then I don’t really have to worry about anyone else. I hate driving because I can’t always anticipate other drivers' movements. If I could read minds, then I’d drive more.”

“Valid,” she nods, “now why is this such a special spot that you needed to show me right away?”

“Well, I have a telescope and it’s been in my trunk for the last 13 years so that every time I come here, I can look up at the moon…”

“You brought me here to look at the moon with you?” She swoons, “that’s so cute.”

“You think?” He looks like his heart is doing the same swelling as hers.

She gets out of the car before she can lean over and kiss him the way she wants to. In his trunk, he does have a telescope, and a blanket, which they set out on the dock and sit upon.

The sound of the lake, the loons in the distance, frogs and crickets and music travelling from somewhere down the lake. The moon was big, the stars were amazing, and this was the closest she has ever seen them. It's amazing, and of course, it was Spencer showing her everything.

He was everything to her.

And it didn’t take long for him to become everything to her either.

Joining the BAU was a dream to many at the academy, but Y/N never thought that she would get the job, overjoyed that she did. They were a family unit; they got the job done, they protected each other, and it was a wonderful environment to be a part of. She obviously liked Spencer the most out of everyone. He took her in, he made her feel comfortable and safe and she opened up more with him than she has with anyone she’s labelled a “best friend” in the past.

She liked everything about him. The way he talked with his hands, how his sweater, vest, shirt and tie always match, his gun looks a little out of place on his belt, like it’s too big for him, but it’s cute. His hair’s been getting longer too, sometimes he wears glasses and sometimes if she’s lucky, he doesn’t shave every day.

She can’t take her eyes off him when he’s busy and won't notice, just to then move her focus away when he stared at her. She only wishes she could see the way he stares at her in awe, because if it’s anything like how she looks at him, he must love her.

She keeps her hand in his, trading the telescope back and forth in turns, her face was close to his every time they switched and she kept getting bolder with each exchange. Letting Spencer look, she kept her face close to his, kissing his cheek softly as soon as he was busy peering up at the moon.

He turned to her with a gasp, “what was that for?”

“You’re cute,” she shrugs. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for a while.”

“How long?” He teases, leaning in closer and kissing her nose to make her laugh.

“Since you dropped me off at my house after that first dinner…”

“So this is me,” she nods out the window, “thank you for the ride, I appreciate not having to be in an Uber all by myself.”

“Anytime you need a ride, you can give me a call?” He asks. “Seeing as we’ll be going to the same place anyway.”

She nods with a smile, “I’d love that, do you live close to here?”

“Just up the street,” he nods. “So we could carpool?”

“I can drive some days if you want?” She asks, “I know you mostly take the subway, and I know that because I’ve seen you reading on there before.”

He can’t help but smile, “so you never thought to say hello?”

“No,” she shakes her head, “you looked peaceful, and I’m sure you don’t get many moments like that in your line of work.”

He sighed, knowing she was right. “If it ever gets to be too much for you, please never feel like you have to pretend to be okay? None of us expect you to be stone cold, none of us are either. The job gets to us, just tell me if it gets to be too much?”

She looks from his lips back to his eyes and over again, “thanks, Spencer.”

He does the same to her, “anytime. Should I walk you to your door?”

She shakes her head, “that’s okay you’ve done enough for me tonight.”

“Fair enough,” he laughs. “Have a good night Y/N.”

“You too, Spencer,” she smiles before she exits his car, smiling at him from her porch before he drives away.

“So it’s been mutual this whole time?” He shakes his head at the absurdity. “I’ve been so lonely for so long and then I found you and you make me feel like I don’t need to be alone anymore.”

“You complete me too,” she makes one more comment before connecting their lips.

It’s like the world stops then. It’s silent and serene and everything she thought kissing Spencer Reid would be.

She pulls back with a smirk, “oh no.”

“What?” He worries.

“I’m going to want to kiss you all the time now…”

“Good,” he mumbles the words against her lips before reconnecting them.

—

At work on Monday, it’s very hard for them to look at each other without remembering that they’ve kissed. Spencer’s practically glowing with admiration for her that he gives it all away. He’s overly happy, offering to do things for others, standing way too close to her and bringing her coffee all morning.

“Okay, pretty boy,” Derek takes him by the scruff of the neck and redirects him into his office. “What’s going on with you today, I know you’re not this happy for JJ’s return?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you get laid or something?”

Spencer laughs, “no, you know I don’t get laid. You actually remind me of that fact quite often.”

“You’re so happy I’m worried you’ve moved to crack,” he says it. “Okay, you were acting weird on Friday, you missed brunch on Sunday and now you’re waaay too happy.”

“I’m not on drugs again,” Spencer assures him. “I’m just letting myself enjoy my time with Y/N, if she falls in love with me in the meantime that would also be nice.”

“Oh, so you’re doing this to get laid,” Derek teases him again. “That’s good, I’m sorry if I triggered you by asking, but I had to make sure you’re okay.”

“No, no,” he places his hands on Derek's shoulders, “thank you for caring.”

“Always—“

“Guys!” They hear Hotch yelling from the bullpen, cutting the tender moment short, saving Spencer from spilling the truth.

Rushing back, he sits beside Y/N at the briefing room table. “We have a bad one,” Emily Prentiss of all people walks in the door, followed by Elle Greenaway.

“We’ll have time to mingle in a minute, right now there is a woman who needs our help,” he announces.

Spencer quickly reads over the case files, recognizing Elles handwritten notes, she was a private investigator now. “With Penelope’s help, I’ve been able to set up alerts in College chatrooms in the area so that I can help to missing and assaulted women right away.”

“She’s alerted when someone reports a missing woman and she has advertisements for people to reach out to her for help,” Penelope explained.

“I’ve been working on these cases for the last 9 years,” Elle announces. “This morning Aasia Desai called me saying her sister Bahni never showed up for lunch and it’s not like her, we know she went clubbing last night and so far Penelope’s tracked her down an ally and then she’s gone.”

“Her parents are British diplomats so Interpol has asked me to join, luckily I was just in Ontario so it was a short trip over,” Emily adds. “JJ will be here in half an hour for her first day back, and we will celebrate when we can, but I see we have some new faces here?”

“Special Agent Y/N Y/L/N,” she waves, still glued to Spencer’s side. “I’ve heard a lot about you both from Doctor Reid.”

“Doctor Tara Lewis,” she stands and shakes Emily’s hand, and then Elles.

“So it says here that the first missing case was in 2006 just after you left the BAU?” Spencer changes the subject before anyone can pry into why he would be telling her about the women who worked there before her.

“I did,” Elle nods. “I was too late for her, by the time her parents realized she was missing and called me in the case was cold. I started this as a way to get ahead of it.”

“How long has she been missing?” Tara asks.

“She was last seen at 1:07 this morning,” Elle confirms. “We have 25 hours, maybe, to beat the odds.”

“Reid,” Hotch cuts in, “I would like you and Elle to go check out the street she was last seen on, find any private cameras or anyone who might have seen something.”

He turns to Y/N who just shrugs in silence; “it’s fine.”

“Tara and Derek, I’d like you to interview Aasia when she and JJ get here, Garcia can you do a deep dive into Bahni’s spending and academic records?”

“Sure thing,” she starts clicking away on her computer immediately.

“And Y/N,” Elle looks at her. “I need you to go over the footage of the man who followed her to the alley and get familiar with his face. We’re using you as the face of the investigation to hopefully draw the unsub out.”

“How would she be able to do that alone?” Spencer gets defensive, a way he used to with JJ when she was the media liaison.

“If she goes on the news and makes Bahni seem like a person while describing the unsub as someone who can help solve the case, it will draw him out,” Emily explains for Hotch, who is glaring at Spencer for second-guessing the plan already.

“And she’s college-age,” Elle adds. “If that’s who he’s been going after all this time he will want to come in and talk IF he can talk to her.”

She places her hand on his leg under the table, “it’s a good plan.”

“It is,” Hotch agrees.

“What do you not have a saying to replace wheels up when they stay in town?” Elle teases him.

“Wheels away?” Emily joins her, “that works?”

“just get to work,” Hotch tries not to smirk at them.

Spencer stands up to leave with Elle, “can I just talk to Spencer before he leaves?” She carefully asks Hotch.

“Make it quick,” he agrees reluctantly and lets her follow him down to his desk.

Spencer rests his hands on the back of his desk chair, holding it tightly in an attempt to calm himself down.

“I’m going to be fine,” she assures him. “I don’t think the guy on the tape took her, we’d see him leave if he did.”

“Unless he lives in the alley,” Spencer combats. “Can you ask Penelope to do a background check on all the cars coming in and out of the campus and that street between midnight at 2 am?”

She nods, placing her hand on his gently. “Good luck out there, okay?”

He nods, “it’s been 2 days they’re going to know by the end of the week.”

She laughs, “so be it.”

He says fuck it right then and there, wrapping her up in a hug and kissing the top of her head as the team watches in the briefing room. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yes you will,” she smacks his side as he lets her go. “If you’re going to make a scene at least give me a real kiss.”

“Hmm,” he teases. “No cause then I’d have to sign some paperwork and I’ve got to go…” he starts to back away.

“Coward,” she teases.

He just shrugs, meeting Elle by the door and heading towards the elevators in silence.

She doesn’t ask, not even when they get to the garage or inside the SUV. They’re driving down the road for maybe 2 minutes when Elle finally brings it up. “So—”

“What do you want to know?”

“It's that easy now? What happened to you?” She teases. “You’re so different from the baby Spence I left.”

“Well you missed my drug problem, my dad being a possible child molester, getting shot in the knee, getting shot in the neck, my girlfriend dying, and now my mom might have Alzheimer's so you know… I had to grow up a bit,” he lays it all out for her to ask any question she wants.

“Why don’t you ever call me? I would have been there for you through anything,” she reminds him.

“I know that,” he reaches over for her hand, “thank you. But I was a big fan of suffering in silence… and now I have Y/N and she makes me feel normal?”

“That’s good, you deserve some fraction of normal in your life and she’s really cute,” Elle smiles back at him before returning her focus to the road. “How old is she?”

“27,” he smiles. “She’s the best.”

“You love her,” Elle notices it.

He presses his lips together to fend off a smile as he nods, “I think I do.”

“Tell her, you deserve to hear that someone loves you back.”

—

She’s anxiously tapping her foot as she waits for the elevator to arrive with the suspect, Rossi standing just behind her. Only 15 minutes after being on the news, the man that was in the security footage contacted them. Making his way over for a voluntary interview.

He looks Y/N up and down with a smile, “I heard you were looking for me.”

“I sure was,” she plays along with it, smiling and making him think she’s interested as well. “I knew you’d get the message, we just need all the help we can get right now.”

“Of course,” he has his ego stroked so well that they can roll with it.

“Would you mind coming with me and Agent Rossi to talk about everything you saw?” She batts her lashes at him, really selling it.

“Sure,” he follows them down the hall.

Rossi opens the door and lets them in first, letting her get him settled and a glass of water. “So you can tell me everything from that night?”

“Sure,” he nods, explaining his taxi job, his run for the night and his alibi.

“So why did you step back into the doorway?” She asks as she sits in front of him. Straight-faced as she catches him off guard.

“Excuse me?”

“You stepped out of the way to let her pass and then followed her, she made no motion to say she wanted your services, so I’m just wondering why you would follow her before she disappeared?”

“Huh,” he suddenly feels played and his personality switches. “I thought this was just a chat?”

“I’m simply asking you questions? If you don’t have answers that makes you suspicious. An innocent person would have given me an answer,” she fights back.

“She’s right, you got very defensive very fast,” Rossi finally speaks up.

He shakes his head with a huff. “I was going to ask if she needed a ride, she looked pretty messed up. And then some guy came over and wrapped his arm around her and they walked off. They seemed to know one another. I thought she was safe in his hands.”

Only his tone doesn’t match the words. He sounds jealous— It’s not like she would have been a large tab, he wasn’t jealous because he lost a customer. No, he’s jealous like someone stepped in and prevented him from snatching an easy victim.

“Fair enough,” she pretends to believe him. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

“I can go now?” He changes right back to confused.

She nods, “I’ll escort you down if you’d like?”

“Thanks,” he stands and follows her to the door where Rossi stops her.

“Are you sure?”

She nods, “I’ll be back up shortly.”

She catches up with him by the elevators, “did you have to drive far to get here?” She makes small talk.

“Not really,” he shakes it off. “I like your necklace.”

She touches her necklace and her face drops, “thanks.”

“Necklaces are my favourite.”

“You don’t wear any?” She notices in the form of a question.

He shakes his head as the elevator opens at the ground level. “I think they’re nice gifts.”

She nods along, pretending that didn’t set off every ret alert and alarm in her mind, “well here you are. Thanks again for all the help.”

“No problem,” he goes to leave, turning to stop and block the doors from closing. “If you want, later tonight I can show you everything I saw at the alley?”

“Yeah, sure,” she agrees with no plan to go.

“8 pm? At Cafe Linda?”

“See you then,” she agrees and he steps back letting the door close and then she loses her cool.

Feverishly smashing the floor 6 button, and begging to make it back up to Hotch to tell him everything. But she also just wants to cry but she holds it in as she makes it to their floor matching past Rossi and right into the briefing room.

“He may not be our unsub but that man is a creep,” she announces. “He not only complimented my necklace but he asked me to come to the alley tonight so he can walk me through what he saw.”

“You’re not going,” Hotch announces.

“I didn’t plan to,” she snaps. “I think we need to look into him because he’s either giving little girls necklaces to keep them quiet or he’s taking necklaces after he kills women.”

“Kathy’s parents said she was in a necklace when she went missing,” Emily adds. “His connection to this case and being at NYU right before she went missing gives us enough probable cause for a search warrant.”

Hotch sighs, “fine. I’ll call a judge, you and Y/N can go and search his place.”

“So shouldn’t we arrest him before he leaves the building?” Morgan asks.

“He’s still in the garage, I’ve let the security know to stop him and arrest him at the gate,” Garcia adds, listening in and planning in advance.

“Thank you,” Hotch smiles at her, “you’re always reading my mind.”

Garcia smiles back at him, “always, sir.”

“Okay, let’s go,” she looks at Emily and waiting for her to turn to leave the room.

“Let’s,” she motions for Y/N to take the lead and follows.

The drive to his house is so weird… she doesn’t quite know how to talk to Emily, knowing only slightly about her and her knowing nothing about Y/N.

“So how long have you and Spencer been dating?” Her first question just gets right to the point.

She laughs awkwardly, “3 days…”

“Oh…”

She hums as she nods along, looking out the window and avoiding Emily’s eye contact. “It’s new, we’re both pretty infatuated with each other but we’re taking it slower than most people because I’m afraid to let my feelings change how I do the job.”

“Makes sense,” Emily replies. Her voice is so sweet, she has an aura of calm that follows her and lets Y/N feel safe. She gets why Spencer said she was his best friend on the team before her.

“The necklace comment… why did it make you so wary of this guy?”

“When I was in middle school a guy gave me a necklace while he was grooming me,” she whispers. Looking out the window and pretending it doesn’t bother her now. “It’s fine, I don’t have it anymore, but I knew this guy had that same vibe.”

Emily put her hand out, letting Y/N interlock their fingers and hold it. “I know I just met you, but you’re family now. I’m here if you’re ever suddenly not fine with it anymore…”

“Thanks,” she smiles. “Let’s get this fucker.”

—

By the time the warrant went through, Spencer and Elle had joined them to search the first suspect's house while Emily left to help the rest of the team with suspect two. Tracking all the license plates in the area like Spencer suggested lead them to a Chinese food delivery driver in the area.

That didn’t stop Y/N from destroying her suspect's house. They tore the house apart, searching every nook and cranny for any answer that would make sense. She was tempted to lift the floorboards up, call in SCSI to run ground-penetrating radar and search the fucking walls if they had to.

But then she found it.

A small metal box in the laundry room contained some tools and when she lifted up the fake bottom, she found 5 necklaces.

“Elle!!” She yelled through the house.

They both came running down the hall to her, “is this Kathy’s necklace?”

“Oh my god,” she whispered with a nod.

“I want to kill this guy,” she mumbles under her breath as she places the necklaces back in the box and closes it up.

“Spencer doesn’t need another girl he has a crush on to murder someone and get kicked out of the bureau,” Elle teases.

“What?” Y/N asks.

“Way to go,” Spencer nudges her.

Y/N stands up with the box and slides it into a large evidence bag before taping it up. “I guess he has a type then.”

“I don’t,” Spencer tries to cover up. “I mean, if I do then it’s people who are nice to me…”

She smiles at him, unable to even pretend to be jealous or mad. “It’s hard to be mean to you when you’re so cute.”

“Ew,” Elle announces her disgust as she leaves the room.

“Let’s get out of here before I end up kissing you in a murderer's laundry room,” Spencer teases, taking her hand and leading her out of the house as the rest of the forensics team takes over the bagging of evidence.

“Guys,” Elle rushes back to them with her phone pressed to her ear. “We have a bigger problem than we thought with Bahni.”

They rush into the SUV, putting the team on the speaker to hear the most unthinkable. “So I did what Y/N suggested and searched every single driver coming in and off-campus and the last street she was seen on,” Penelope explains back. “And I came across a man who was delivering Chinese food under the name Tom Larson… and it’s ironic his name is tom because he has a plethora of peeping offences and general creepiness alongside a metric shit-ton of abuse from his dad and dead mother.”

“Okay?” Elle follows.

“Tom Larson lives near Bahni,” Emily explains, “I was just at his house where I found him and his father had been murdered.”

“So we have not 1 but 3 creeps in this case, and none of them are who took Bahni?” Spencer rubs his eyes. “Please tell me we know who was in Tom’s car last night.”

“That’s where it gets tricky,” Penelope says with the doles tones of keys clicking behind her words. “We were just contacted by the fugitive Taskforce because they believe one of the murderers they’ve been tracking took Bahni… but he has ties to a much larger scale global sex trafficking ring.”

Elle flies through the streets with their lights on, pulling back into headquarters and right up to the security check. “So who is this guy?”

“Once you get back up here, Agent Simmons and Alvez will explain everything,” Hotch confirms. “I’m taking Derek to see Cruze, we need to tell him what’s going on.”

“Sounds good,” Elle hangs up and throws the SUV in park.

Y/N hesitates, staying put and taking a few breaths as Spencer watches. Elle’s left the car and is already on her way to the elevator. “What’s wrong?”

“Can I just have a hug real quick?”

“Yeah,” he wraps his arms around her and holds her close. “Are you okay?”

She nods against him, “yeah it’s just good to have at least 8 hugs a day.”

“Hug me whenever you need to,” he whispers against her hair, kissing the side of her head before she pulls back.

“Kisses are helpful too?”

He smiles, leaning in and pressing his lips to hers, mumbling against them, “how many?”

She hums, “10?”

He pecks her lips 10 times and counts each one, making her giggle, it takes so much effort to hold her smile back to keep kissing him but she feels much better.

“Thank you,” she beams and she can swear Spencer's eyes sparkle as he smiles back.

She pulls him into another hug, “I hate that we have to go catch a killer right now.”

“Come on then, as soon as we get him we can go on another date somewhere?”

She shakes her head, “after this case I think we should take a nap together… I’m exhausted and I don’t want to let you go.”

Spencer shakes his head in amazement, “you really like me?”

“Yeah, maybe I do,” she teases him. “You should get used to it because it’s only going to get more intense and I will smother you with love.”

He just shrugs, “it’s about time—“

They’re startled with a knock on the window, “we get it you’re in love, can we go now?”

“Sorry!” Y/N calls back with a giggle, pulling him in for one last kiss before getting out. Spencer follows with a deep blush that everyone will see when they get back upstairs, but it looks cute on him.

Luke Alvez has been trying to catch one criminal for the last 2 years. Simon Garrett has been a pain in the ass for the FBI, the CIA and DEA. He first showed up on their radar when his DNA was found on 14 women’s remains, all of who had been missing for at least 5 years.

His DNA was then traced to his son in the foster system, who’s been off the radar for the last 10 years. Everette Garrett.

“Now he’s interesting because I’ve been investigating his sex trafficking ring between Canada and the United States,” Matt adds. “All 14 women his father's DNA was found on were thought to be in his ring, which means when they get too old he hands them to his father to take care of.”

Y/N shakes her head as she listens, “so if you’ve been looking for them for this long what makes you think we can find them in time to save Bahni?”

“We’ve been tracking him for a while, we knew that he had a new girl on his radar and when we heard it was Bahni Desai we knew it was time to get you guys,” Matt explains.

“So far we know that she has to be taken to this warehouse in Alexandria before she goes any further, we’re going to intercept them before they make it to the warehouse and then use their car to gain access to take the whole thing down,” Luke rolls out a map of the facility then.

“We need to have the place surrounded for any runners, SWAT is getting prepped, we’re going tonight at 3 am,” Matt adds. “Morgan, Hotch, Prentiss, Alvez and Myself will be running a team at each of the 5 exits. Once inside, each team's swat unit will deploy gas to carefully knock everyone out, from there we need someone to cuff everyone at least until we know who is a victim and who is working there.”

“We’re taking everyone alive?” Spencer makes sure he hears them right.

“We need to know what the step after this warehouse is if we want to rescue more victims,” Luke’s voice is gentle yet stern as he explains. “I’ve seen this man take too many women from good homes and ruin their lives, I’m not letting him slip out of my fingers.”

“We’ve had this planned for months, we just needed to wait for the next confirmed drop-off.”

“Who’s driving?” Y/N asks, having a feeling it was her and Spencer.

“He’s Reids age,” Hotch announces from the door as he walks in with Cruze, “so we’ll replace Everette with Reid and Bahni with Y/L/N.”

“Rossi and Elle will be there to apprehend Everette, we’re setting up a fake traffic spot to irritate him and inhibit him from running. You two will be in a duplicate car arriving at the warehouse at the arranged time,” Emily confirms. “We just have to prep SWAT and then we can leave.”

“Alright, let’s get ready.”

—

Pretending to be kidnapped in the back of a car driven by her boyfriend was possibly the weirdest way to spend a Tuesday morning. Driving the exact make and model as their unsub, her heartbeat was loud enough to cover the sound of the engine and distract her from the long drive. She was overly anxious, and rightly so, it was her first sting.

And she was doing it all without coffee. Tired but full of adrenaline, she wanted to close her eyes and drift off but she knew she needed to be ready to apprehend the men at the gate with Spencer.

She feels the large bump, indicating they just went over a speed bump and she knows what that means. The car slows and she can hear the muffled talking before swat steps in, soon enough Spencer is cracking the trunk open and reaching in for her.

“Are you okay?” He helps her to her feet and makes sure her bulletproof vest is on right before handing her, her gun and watching her clip it on.

“Yeah, what happened?”

“The guards are down, Swat moved in as soon as we arrived, now we have to stand here and wait for them to clear the building,” Spencer explains as they walk to the front of her car.

She draws her gun and keeps it pointed low, guarded as they watch the front entrance for anyone to escape. “Do you know if Bahni is okay?” She whispers towards him.

He nods, “they radioed in that they got her, she’s being airlifted to the hospital with JJ right now.”

She nods with a deep breath, “okay good.”

“It’s going to be fine, we have enough SWAT here to take the government,” he tries to joke, getting a laugh from one of the officers… very strange to see someone laugh while holding an assault rifle.

One of the swat side steps towards Spencer, “I’m hearing on the line that they’ve cleared every room. They’re cuffing everyone, you’re free to enter.”

“Thanks,” Spencer replies.

The high-pitched screech rubber gripping asphalt in an attempt to stop draws their attention backwards. Elle and Rossi jumping out with their guns drawn, ready to join even though the exciting part is long over.

“No runners?” Elle asks, holstering her weapon. “Aw man, I was excited.”

“Not a one,” Y/N adds, watching the front entrance for the rest of the team to start funnelling out with the unsubs.

Luke exits first with a big smile on his face, Simon Garrett cuffed and barely stumbling out the door in front of him. He finally got him.

“well done,” Elle congratulates him. “Let me help you get him in SWAT van.”

“I think she has a thing for Luke,” Rossi leans into Y/N to gossip. “she wouldn’t stop asking about him on the drive…”

“Ooo,” Y/N teases, getting more and more tired as her adrenaline drops. Her eyes are heavy and Rossi can tell.

“Why don’t I bring you and the good doctor home, I don’t think they need all of us for the wrap-up,” Rossi pats her back. “You’ve had a long night, kid.”

“Thank you,” she smiles, holstering her gun and turning with him towards the SUV. “I’m so exhausted.”

“Well you’ve been on the job for almost 24 hours now, you’ve officially made it through your first overnight sting op,” Rossi congratulates her like he’s her grandpa.

She turns back when she doesn’t hear Spencer following her, “Spence? Are you coming?”

“Um,” he has something to ask as he follows then but he doesn’t say it. “Yeah, sorry.”

“It’s okay, come sit with me in the back?” She asks, sliding in beside him and resting her head on his shoulder as soon as their seatbelts are on.

“Did you still want to have a nap together?” He whispers, feeling her nod against his shoulder before she pulls back.

“Come here,” she tugs him in against her chest, snuggling in as best as she could in their sitting position. Holding him close and feeling him drift off in her arms. She has no problem following suit.

When she wakes, Rossi is parked outside of her apartment, “here you go, Y/N.”

She hums as she comes to, shaking Spencer awake too, “Spence, come on, let’s get to bed.”

“He’s going with you?”

She nods, “don’t tell Penelope. She’ll have a field day, I just want a nap.”

“You better get more than a nap,” Rossi orders. “You guys need to actually rest before you come back to work on Wednesday.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she teases him. “We will.”

“Bye Dave,” Spencer whispers as he gets out of the car. “Thank you for the ride.”

“Anytime kid,” Rossi waves them off, waiting for them to enter the building before driving away.

“Finally,” she sighs, dragging Spencer down the hall and towards her apartment. “I’m so fucking tired.”

“me too,” he barely says.

He follows her inside like a lost puppy, taking off his vest and shirt, slipping out of his pants until he’s in an undershirt, boxers and his mismatched socks. She’s amazed by how comfortable he is with her, but she has known him for 3 months, it’s enough time to fall in love with someone… right?

She’s loved him since she started working with him. When she realized he valued her opinions, he looked at her as a person and he genuinely loved her company. She felt a real connection with him, not just childish infatuation. He was everything to her.

She slides into bed beside him and snuggles in, wrapping an arm around his middle and resting her head on his chest.

“I guess I really can do everything,” she smirks.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

She pokes his chest and giggles away the awkwardness, “the thing I wanted to do most, the thing that I couldn’t do… that was to fall in love with you, but I did it anyway.”

“Well, then I guess I can do everything too.”

She pulls away to look at him, “I love you, Spencer. I don’t know if it’s too soon, but I’ve loved you for a while.”

He pulls her in for a kiss, shocking her as he breathes her in and holds her there. “I love you, more Y/N.”

Permanent tag list

@goldensonlyangel @doctorspenceryeet @samuel-de-champagne-problems @reiding-recs @shemarmooresfedora @reidsfish @manuosorioh @mochionly @jswessie187 @k-k0129 @blanchardsbk @measure-in-pain @dreams-in-blxck @doc-padfoot @nomajdetective @xoxospencerreid @mggswhorificlover @dinonuggets1967 @meganskane @kya-li @reidsbookclub @muffin-cup @sassymoon @shirleyrose @reidsacademia @this-is-doctor-and-its-calm @spooky-goob @strawberryspence @thatsonezesty13 @lonewolf471 @cmvibess @a-mended-pact @ssa-uglywhore27

#spencer reid #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #spencer reid self insert #spencer reid request #criminal minds smut #criminal minds imagine

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caspercryptid · 3 years ago

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The Gioparafication of Jayce Talis

So this is going to be long but i’ve seen a lot of discourse about how Jayce Talis and Jayce Giopara aren’t remotely the same character and, the ret-con of his appearance aside, I’d like to address my theories to the contrary. Warning! this is going to get A Little Fucking Long. (And if you want to see my theory in action, read the superhero fic I write with @the-neon-pineapple, HAMMER TO FALL) (no but really)

This is, throughout, going to draw off a couple things that are from my personal theories as I build. Other people before me in the league community have posited that Jayce Giopara has ADHD, and I agree, I think the symptoms of that are clear with Talis too. My additional thing at play here is that I think Jayce very well could have suffered from brain damage in the explosion at his apartment. It took out about half the building and he was standing right next to it. Certain degrees of brain damage can cause issues that can exacerbate ADHD, so like. Brainfog, memory problems, impulsivity, headaches. Impulsivity is the big one. Brainfog can make decision paralysis worse! so all the stuff already noted as Jayce’s character flaws.

The main thing I think about with all of that is the fact that Jayce was seriously hurt and instead of getting medical attention he was interrogated and arrested, and shortly after that he loses everything and tries to jump off a building. It's an interesting additional element to add in to, at that moment when Jayce is already losing everything else, losing an additional bit of control over his own mind and body. Jayce feels like the kind of person to go "i'm not disabled, i'm fine!" since he (for the most part) still has his mind and his intelligence, it's just his ability to access that intelligence that's affected at times. He can still Pass and even though it's limiting he can just work harder and jump it.

You don’t have to think he has ADHD or Brain damage for those to factor in though- it is 100% canonical that Jayce Talis has PTSD. He had his first near-death experience as a child in an event that he’s fixated on his entire life since. That man is Not Okay well before he walks out onto a bridge and sees large-scale death and loses his lunch. Moving along, though.

Talis is characterized by this complete inability to do anything smart under pressure. He just fucks up repeatedly forever and I think that's a perfect representation of trying So Hard to just Be Fine when in fact he's acting while Limited. I think it's an excellent parallel to Viktor to have the visible/invisible disabilities divide where Viktor is very good at what he does in part because he knows his limitations, and Jayce is inhibited too but absolutely does not know where those limitations are.

The key to the pipeline between Talis and Giopara is the fact that Talis fucks up so bad. Because really, to end up as jaded and miserable as Giopara is, you need to have really believed at one point. It's like activist's fatigue. Talis cares too much for it to even be remotely sustainable. He's heading towards a burnout with the force of a goddamn comet, even before it's all ended Very Finally at the end of the series. A lot of people give him shit for the scene where he says he's got a lot on his plate to Viktor while Viktor is...actively dying, but he does. He's taken the whole weight of the world onto his shoulders and tasked himself with fixing literally every problem in Piltover, picked up records, tried to listen to absolutely everyone's input, which has obviously not worked in the slightest. but he can't see where he's going wrong. And because he can't see where he's going wrong, he's Doomed. So he's going to end up considering the entire venture hopeless because nothing he does makes any difference and sitting down and going "fuck it".

"Okay, we can't help Zaun, we need to give them independence" was already basically a manifestation of that. It was "this is beyond me" and now that solution has failed to pan out, and he's going to be forced into an action he doesn't believe in because you literally can't let an act of aggression like that go unanswered as a politician. So he will have absolutely no choice but to sit in this position he's stuck in and play his part and he hates it-- already hates it-- says as much to Mel, none of this is what he wants to do.

And that is how you make an idealistic sweet man into an asshole.

#jayce talis #jayce giopara #arcane meta #netflix arcane #disability info #I am disabled by the way literally with a long term chronic illness when I say jayce had a lot on his plate I mean it

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nightowlwriting · 3 years ago

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summary: steve is acting weird. avoiding you, being snippy and mean, leaving the room when you enter. all you want is your boyfriend back, but all he wants is to pretend you don't exist. when he's almost hurt on a mission, you do what you're made to do.

word count: 11k

reader specifics: no race/gender/sexuality/body type mentioned, no pronouns for reader used, powered!reader, insecure!reader

warnings: steve is mean to the reader in the beginning, heavy angst, hurt/comfort, canon-level violence, brief ptsd symptoms, slight description of blood, brief mention of racism in the '30s & '40s

brief mentions of: reader's parents being toxic, homelessness, past accidents, ableism in the past & present

note: this one hurt me lmfao. idk why this went the way it did but i'm not mad at it // also i am a queer, trans, disabled american. i have fundamental disagreements with things that marvel/the mcu as it stands for and some of the more nuanced things that you might not notice unless you're looking for it. this will take place in my writing because i cannot separate myself from the lens in which i consume/create content.

title credit: lil nas x

mobile masterlist - request - support my work? - ao3

Falling in love with Steve Rogers went against every instinct you had. You knew that he was going to hurt you from the first moment your lips touched his. Sure - he’s clever, righteous, courteous… You can’t forget he’s also drop-dead gorgeous because every trashy gossip magazine in a three-state radius of New York doesn’t let you forget. Neither does the sight of him waking up in your bed every morning. (Well, actually, maybe that would remind you if he was still fucking doing that.)

But lately, you’ve had to rely on the fucking tabloids to catch a glimpse of your super-hero boyfriend. The university class you had picked up on a whim at the end of the summer - Life & Times of the ‘30s and ‘40s - avoids any mention of Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandos. Not that your classmates do because, Christ on a bike, those magazines manage to catch pictures of you and Steve in moments that you don’t even remember. Plus, you’re an Avenger too. It’s bound to catch some attention when you waltz into a college classroom.

You’re sure if you were an undergrad trying to fill a gen-ed requirement and were sitting next to someone who could kill you without blinking but also dating Captain Rogers you’d be a little distracted too. You try not to blame your classmates too much, but they do make it hard to concentrate with their -really dating Captain America?- and -wonder if I could get an autograph- whispers. None of that matters because you’re learning, really studying, in between missions and missing Steve and believing that maybe the gossip reporters are right.

Maybe he’s forgotten about you.

You grit your teeth and push the thought away. It does you no good right now, while you’re training with Peter. He’s working his way up to bona fide missions and, because you’re the only one on the team who has experience with real-life teenagers outside of saving their lives, it’s up to you to get him to the level that he needs to be. Plus, the mission where he’s going to get his gills wet is just you, Tony, Steve, Nat, and Bucky. You’d much rather be the one to train him because you won’t traumatize him.

Right now, though, you’re just kicking his ass to try and get rid of some of the tension in your body. You feel a little bad about it, but when you started as his mentor you told him point-blank that you’d never go easy on him. That meant if you were having a bad day he either needed to up his game or he’d have a bad day too. It appears he’s taken that to heart as he struggles to dodge the hits you’re throwing his way. He lunges out of the way when you try to land a right hook but practically walks into the leg sweep that sends him crashing to the ground.

“Awe,” Peter groans, letting his guard down. You take the momentary lapse of focus to grab him by the collar of the hoodie he’s wearing and haul him to his feet, jerking one fist back to cold-clock him but he beats you to it. You hear the sound of your nose cracking before you feel it but then the pain rushes you all at once. You’ve had worse but coming from Peter, the move surprises you. You don’t yell out but he does when you push him away from you and call the fight off. Peter practically yelps your name, hands up by his head as he watches you bend at the waist, both hands over where your nose is absolutely gushing blood. “I am so sorry, I just reacted-!”

“It’s fine, Pete,” You shake your head and stand straight again, the blood beginning to leak through your fingers, “Just go get me a towel, okay?” Peter practically trips over his feet to get something for your nose and as you track him on his way into the locker rooms, you see Steve, Bucky, and Nat. The latter are looking your way, eyebrows raised like they’re asking you if you’re okay. Steve hasn’t even broken stride in his conversation so you wave them off with a bloody hand. Peter’s back in a flash, pressing a wet towel into your grasp and snapping you out of your self-pity party. “It was a good hit,” You compliment as you wipe your face off, “I just wasn’t expecting it. Prob’ly wouldn't have landed it if I had.”

He wrings his hands, shifting from foot to foot. “I’m sorry-”

“It’s a good thing, Peter, means you’re getting better.” You deadpan, checking to see if your nose has stopped bleeding yet, “I don’t think you actually broke it, but I’ll go down to medical to check later.” You do your best to clean up your hands with the wet towel, but it’s so soaked with your blood that it mostly just smears it around. You grimace and shake your head. “Well, I should go now before our sparring match ends up looking like I murdered you.”

“I’ll go with,” He offers, “I’m the one who broke your nose.” You let Peter walk you down to medical even though you were originally going to refuse. Perhaps petty, but it was the way that Steve didn’t even look your way as you left that made you let the teenager walk you the two floors to where you’d be able to clean yourself up. He hums in the elevator and you know that he wants to ask you something - it’s the way he holds his mouth when he’s prying for information or keeping a secret that tips you off. Finally, just before the elevator opens, you sigh and turn to him.

“What, Peter?” He grins but then it falls when he has to skitter after you down the hall. Maybe that’s why it falls - the question he asks next nearly sends you to your ass.

“Is everything okay with you and Captain Rogers?” He easily catches up to you when you stop in your tracks, ignoring that you’re still bleeding a little bit down your face and you might be dripping blood everywhere from where it’s run down your arms.

“What?” You do your best to look confused like everything is fine, but Peter is perceptive. He may fumble around and be pretty awkward, but those are really just teenager things that he’ll hopefully outgrow. You should have known that when someone caught onto how bad things are on your end, it would be Peter. (You wonder if Nat or Bucky has brought it up with Steve, considering he’s spent more time with them in the past week than he’s seen you in the past month.) “We’re fine.” Your words are stilted as you begin walking to the medical wing much faster than before.

“I just thought I’d ask, well, because I’ve sort of noticed… Something just seems off, you know? Like, you two used to spend a lot of time together, and maybe it’s the recon mission coming up, but I was just thinking that you two really barely look at each other even when you’re in the same -”

“Peter!” You say his name much louder than either of you expected and both of you jump. “Peter,” You say softer, looking at the glass door to the medical wing instead of him, “Just leave it, okay? It’s nothing you have to worry about, kid.” Peter ducks around to open the door, forcing you to look at him. “He’s just focused on his stuff and I’m focused on getting you whipped into shape for this mission. We only have two days.” Once you’re inside and surrounded by the medical crew Tony keeps on staff, he thankfully drops it. You love Peter, you do, but it’s a lot like having a little brother. You can only love them so much before you want to fucking strangle them. Eventually, as the doctor checks to make sure he hasn’t broken your nose, you have to order him away to go study or something. “I’ll join you later,” You promise him as the doctor prods at your tender flesh, “I have an essay due soon.”

That’s another thing that’s been bugging you that Peter surely picked up on. Nearly everybody knew you were taking a course at the local community college, but nobody knew what it was about. You’d wanted to keep it a secret until you told Steve, but the day you had registered he’d flown out for a two-week mission without telling you or saying goodbye. After that, you decided it didn’t really matter if anyone knew what class you were taking, and keeping it a secret sort of spiraled from there. If they wanted to know they could look it up. Maybe it was petty, but you just wanted the class to be over and done with so you could forget that you really only picked it up so you relate to your boyfriend more.

If you can even call Steve your boyfriend anymore. You’re not so sure where you stand and, honestly, you’re really close to giving up on the relationship as a whole but you can’t do that. Before you were dating, you were friends, and Steve… He never gave up on you. Not once. How could you repay him by giving up on your relationship? The one that you thought was The One? Even if it hurts, even if you’re unsure more than sure these days, how could you? Somewhere, though, you know you deserve better. You don’t deserve the sinking, dark feeling that lingers in your gut for most of your days now or the way that you second-guess every move you make - even in the field. It’s dangerous but you can’t do anything to fix it.

You’re too scared. You know that eventually, it will happen, he’ll break up with you, but you’d like to put that day off for as long as possible. To relish in the love he once had for you, how pure and powerful it was. You’re sure that you’ll never experience anything like that again.

Hell, you might never fall in love again.

Those thoughts don’t do anything to help you, though, so you try not to have them. You get clearance from the doctor and get cleaned up as much as you can without taking a full body shower. The idea to go back to your room and take one crosses your mind but you know that Steve’s probably done training, probably heading back for his own shower, and you don’t want to open that can of worms. Instead, you go to the common room and drop into the couch between Peter and Tony. They’re talking about something something science something something, but you pull your stack of books and notebooks out from the shelf underneath the coffee table and continue outlining your essay from where you left off. The assignment was focused on how the end of WW1 changed American life and then how life changed leading up to and during WW2 but that had hit a little too close to home for you, so you’re writing about the racial tension and overall racism of the times. Tony and Peter keep talking over your back and then you hear footsteps heading toward the common room.

You barely look up when they enter - Nat and Bucky - because it’s fine. It’s normal. They’re just two of Steve’s best friends, that’s all, nothing to be jumpy about. You don’t even register that emotional pain that hits when you realize that, yeah, you’re not one of his best friends anymore. You doubt you’re even considered a friend in his book.

You groan and lean back into the couch, bringing your study materials with you. Peter glances over, skimming over your page and a half of shorthand, and gags. “Jesus, can you write like a normal person?”

“Oh, sorry,” You say lazily, not looking up as you continue to scribble in your incomprehensible code, “I do forget that some of us had privacy at home.” You lift your lips just a little bit to let Peter know you’re kidding, looking up at him through your lashes as you slouch next to him. He looks red in the face. “Besides, once you have to start doing mission reports you’ll be begging me to learn my shorthand and use my stenography machine.”

“I keep telling you that I can update that ol’ thing,” Tony draws your attention. For the first time, you realize that Nat and Bucky are on the loveseat looking at you expectantly. Steve is standing in the corner over their shoulder reading a book from the bookshelf in front of him. His back is tense and he looks like he’s not reading, just listening. You force your eyes back to Tony on your right and shake your head.

“No, because then you’d know my shorthand and it makes me too happy to see you spend hours trying to decipher it.” His eyes wander to your essay again, trying to find any patterns that he can use to figure out what the hell you’re writing on anything ever. He’s opening his mouth to make a smart-ass remark that will no doubt lift some of the weight off of your shoulders when another voice speaks up.

“Wow,” Steve doesn’t even look at you even as he says your name sardonically, “Way to be a team player.” Your mind comes to a screeching halt, trying to figure out what the fuck he’s playing at. Even Bucky and Nat look surprised at the cold way he spoke to you, Tony and Peter both gasping from your side. You can’t say anything, throat tight and burning with tears as you stare at your boyfriend with raised eyebrows. What do you say to that? How do you respond? You know it wasn’t a joke because he’s not laughing, not smiling, not even looking up from that fucking book in his hands. You can’t tell if you’re more hurt or embarrassed, but either way, you don’t want to stick around for someone to get the nerve to say something.

Instead of replying, you slam your textbooks shut and bundle everything into your arms. You doubt Steve even notices that you’re making such a hasty retreat but if he does, he doesn’t say a fucking thing. You feel like you’re in high school - practically running through an empty hallway with your notebooks and textbooks pressed to your chest, trying not to cry. It’s ridiculous. You’re a trained assassin, you’re an Avenger, you are strong and powerful and yet… And yet. You’ve given so much of your heart and soul to Steve Rogers that he can knock you down eight pegs without even trying. Without even looking at you. You can’t wait to go on this fucking recon mission, where you can put all of your focus on making sure Peter is doing okay and gathering the intel. Where you can stop thinking about how easily Steve Rogers seems to be pushing you to the side.

You spend the next two days writing your essay, ignoring almost everyone, and working on your essay. On the day of the recon mission, you’re running out the door for your eight a.m lecture, printed essay in hand, and reminding Tony that he promised to pick you up on campus after class for the mission.

You’re lucky that you went, too. You hadn’t counted on the professor making everyone stand up and tell the class the subject of their essays - didn’t realize that it would be twenty-five percent of the grade on the paper. You’ll never understand college professors and the weird shit they do, but the class is informative and entertaining. He goes around the room, starting on the opposite side of you, so you’ll be last. Great.

Several students did their papers on the propaganda of the time, one student was brave and did her essay on the ethical dilemma of the super-soldier serum and eugenics, and most of the other students focused on pop culture and how it changed. When your professor looks at you it’s almost like he’s expecting you to have done nothing but fawn over Steve and Bucky, considering you know them personally. He looks surprised when you clear your throat, stand and say: “I focused on the casual and institutional racism that faced non-white Americans at the time.” You almost preen when he looks impressed and then the shame fills you. It’s just… You want Steve to be proud of you. You want him to congratulate you on going back to school, even if it’s just for one class. You want him to be happy and surprised that he was the inspiration for taking the class.

Though, lately, the class has been more for you than for him. You like learning new things, pushing the boundaries of assignments, making people uncomfortable with the truth of the times you’re studying as told to you by two people who lived it. It’s nice. Normal.

Everyone needs a little bit of normal.

But, honestly, normal is fucking boring. By the time your class is over and you’re handing in your essay it’s like ants are crawling over your skin. A combination of nerves from the upcoming mission, a head full of fog from whatever is happening with Steve, and a little bit of fear at the thought of taking Peter into the field has you bolting for the door the moment your essay is taken from you. You’d worn your tac-suit underneath a pair of baggy sweats and a loose hoodie, so you don’t even bother slowing down as you head toward the car that Tony has waiting for you. He’s in the front seat, grinning at you from underneath his aviators and Peter is driving.

You slip into the backseat without thinking or looking at who’s there, tossing your bag in the back and peeling your hoodie off. “God, Tone, we’re goin’ to die before we even get to the mission with Petey driving.” You toss your hoodie back to join your bag and finally see who’s sitting next to you.

Of course, it’s Steve. He’s looking at you - but not really. He’s looking through you, like he can’t stand that you’re both crammed in the backseat of Tony’s electric car. His gaze catches you and holds you in place. Everything around you goes cold and fuzzy, making you miss Peter’s indignant complaining that he has his license so he should be able to drive… And then Steve scoffs and looks out his window, ignoring you. It stings but you have a job to do. You make some witty retort back to Peter, but it falls flat as you struggle out of your sweats. This is what life is, you think. Relationships aren’t meant to be forever - you learned that at a young age.

Until your accident at fifteen, you had watched your parents run out of helium, their relationship expanding and cooling in arguments, in days spent not talking, in trips to your grandparents without the other, in passive-aggressive computer searches for divorce attorneys left open for anyone to see. Then, after you were trapped between those machines - after you spent hour after agonizing hour with electricity pressing between your atoms, being torn apart and rebuilt as a young god - after that day you watched them expand against each other before the neutron core of their relationship collapsed on itself and the resulting supernova sent you to the streets. But then Fury found you. Then Tony, then Nat, then Steve.

Your parents exploded out from each other and the shockwaves ruined your life. At least now, your relationship with Steve is ending silently. There’s no explosion, no collapse, no rapid expansion to take over your cosmos. Your relationship with Steve is simply approaching the event horizon, where it will hang in the air until one of you takes the final step and you both become frozen, two collapsing objects on opposite sides of the universe. Maybe that’s what you already are. You feel so far away from him in the back of Tony’s car - like he’s eons and light-years away from you - and you feel so cold. Frozen, down to the bone. It makes you stiff in your replies to Tony and Peter, slow on the uptake when the car pulls up to the quinjet, nearing stasis and unable to respond when Nat asks if you’re okay.

Finally, you turn to look at her, nodding. “Fine,” You clear your throat, “Been a rough day.” You do your best to smile at her, but your face feels heavy. Your chest feels cold and tight, making you worry about your performance on the upcoming mission. When Peter shakes his head next to you, discreetly telling Nat not to press, you’re focused on Steve and the electricity humming in the most base part of your body.

He scoffs and rolls his eyes. You turn away and force yourself to smile, throwing a weak and numb arm over Peter’s shoulders. “Are you ready for this, Pete?” You jostle him back and forth, leading him toward the sitting area behind the cockpit. “Gonna get your ass kicked?”

“Please,” He shoves you off, nervously laughing, “Not with the skills you’ve taught me.” He mimics throwing webs, making hissing noises under his breath, and you bark out a laugh, shaking your head.

“You’re payin’ my medical bills when I have to save your ass, Spidey.” You shake your head and strap in next to the wall, Peter taking the seat to your right. Tony, from the aisle across from you, points a thick finger your way.

“You don’t pay medical bills anymore,” He waggles his finger, “So you’ll just have to make him do your homework for a week.”

“Mister Stark!”

“He’ll have to earn shorthand to do your essays,” Nat chimes in from between Bucky and Steve, who are both doing their best to not look at you - or anyone really. “You willing to share that with him?”

You lean back in your seat and jab at Peter with your elbow. “Hell no, so I guess Spider-Boy better do his best.” The arachnid in question grumbles, crossing his arms and slouching in his seat.

“No pressure, right?” He complains, “Not like I’m already nervous or anything.”

“You’ll do fine, kid,” Bucky pipes up, drawing your eyes back to Steve, “It’s goin’ to be a cakewalk.”

“Don’t jinx it, Barnes,” You warn half-heartedly, tucking in on yourself, “We need this to be easy.” From the look on his face - everyone’s face, really - you know that they heard you loud and clear when you were really saying I need this to be easy.

After an uneasy laugh from Bucky, a claustrophobic silence settles over you all as the jet begins to take off. You’re in for an hour ride and plan to spend it going over battle plans with Peter when harsh whispering catches your ear. It’s Bucky and Steve nearly crushing Nat between them until she gets up and sits across from Peter, rolling her eyes. Still, you try your best to run him through the actions you both had planned - the names, the setups you needed to execute them, everything. If something happens to Peter, you’ll never forgive yourself.

And then, cutting through your soft promptings to Peter and his equally soft replies, Bucky’s voice. “Leave it, Steve. Until after this mission.” Even Tony looks up from his tablet, curiosity piqued. Their faces are both red, set hard and angry at each other and your stomach drops. What the hell is going on that Steve ‘Till The End Of The Line Rogers is fighting with Bucky You And Me, Pal Barnes? You must shift, or lean too far into Steve’s eyesight, because for the first time in what feels like years he is looking directly at you - and seeing you, too. It makes your pulse jump and, almost instinctively, you want to reach out and ground yourself on the rubber of the seat underneath you.

You don’t get the chance, though, because Steve speaks. “No, why should I? This is clearly affecting the team.” He’s still looking - glaring - at you like you’ve done something wrong. “What’s the point of waiting? I’ve been waiting to talk about this.”

“Bo, I don’t think this is the time,” Bucky looks over his shoulder at you, then, and you know what’s coming. You know that it’s time, that Steve is about to break up with you in front of your teammates. Your friends. Your family. You steel yourself for the anguish you’re about to feel and then jerk your chin out, hardening your resolve.

“Buck, it’s fine. If Steve wants to address something, he can.”

Natasha says your name, a low warning over the hum of the quinjet. “I think he should wait.”

“Well, I’m not goin’ to wait!” Steve unbuckles himself and stands, “I have tried waiting, and look at where that has gotten me.” He puts his hands on his hips and puffs out a breath. You unbuckle and stand, too, unsure of where this is going. “You need to,” He holds one hand out, pointing at you while his voice shakes. You notice his hand is shaking, too, but fractionally. If you didn’t know Steve as well as you do you may have never noticed it. “You need to get it together.”

“I need to get it together?” You question, eyebrows nearly hitting the ceiling with how fast they shoot up. You’re not totally sure you’ve heard him right because what do you have to get together? The broken shards of your relationship? The information and research for your final paper? The awful way you’ve let yourself be treated for what seems like forever?

“You heard me,” Steve says, at the same time Bucky leans his head back and groans deep in his chest. “What? Someone had to say it.”

“We should wait for this,” Nat speaks up again, but lifelessly. She knows now that you and Steve are both on the warpath, neither of you are going to stop. (That’s also why the two of you work together as a couple so well. Very rarely are you both so worked up about something that you can’t back down, so the other is always there to meet you halfway and get you back to earth.)

“No, no, no,” You say, near hysterically, “No, he wants to do this now? Before a mission? Instead of the fuckin’ weeks we had to hash whatever crawled up his ass and died out? Be my guest. He’s already dragged everyone into this by treating me like a pariah.” You’re not sneering, but your teeth are gritted so tightly together you can hear them scraping and feel a tension headache beginning to bloom in your temples. Bucky looks… Almost incredulous at your statement. Like putting the blame on Steve is a dick move or something.

“Oh, so I’m the bad guy here?” Steve is curling his lip, glaring at you. There’s something behind his eyes, but he’s buried it so deep that you can’t reach it and figure out what it is. “I’m the bad guy, right. Right, right, right.” He scoffs, shakes his head, and then he’s running his fingers through his hair like he really can’t believe what you’re saying to him.

“Well, what else am I supposed to think?” You throw your hands out to the side and let them slap back down on your thighs. “You ignore me, you make me feel like shit, you talk down to me like I’m some insignificant foot soldier. How else am I supposed to take that, Steve?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe ask me what’s wrong? Maybe ask me why I’m acting like this, instead of ignoring all of your problems like a child?” He mirrors your moments, but the sound his hands make when they hit the outside of his suit is more powerful than yours. Fueled by anger, you think. Anger and whatever the hell was in the serum Erskine pumped into Steve.

“Ask you?” You repeat, near-hysterical, “Ask you? Oh yeah, let me get right on that. Hey, Mister Rogers? Mister Captain America? Mister Ignores-His-Partner-For-God-Knows-Why? Hey, just why are you doin’ that?” You’re surprised that you’ve said something so snotty, but you don’t back down. (Steve looks surprised, too, and Bucky has stood up next to his friend like he’s about to start berating you as well. At least he looks more cautious about it, like he’s not totally sure that this fight should be happening.)

The more surprising part of your fight is how fast it’s shut down. Tony and Nat stand at the same time and exchange a glance like they’ve surprised each other. “That’s enough,” Tony starts.

Nat cuts him off. “I don’t care if you fight this one out instead of talking, but if you do it before this recon mission you two are going to blow it. Do you understand me?” She looks dangerous, the sharp edge of a knife spiraling through the air. You force yourself to look away from her, from Tony, from Bucky, from Steve. She’s right. You know she’s right - especially on this mission. Peter is there, going to be in real danger even though there’s not supposed to be one Hydra agent in a four-mile radius. You have to clear your mind and focus on protecting him.

Steve seems to think the same thing because he stands down. When you watch him collapse in on himself, Bucky’s arms around his shoulders, into the little quinjet seats your everything aches. Heart, lungs, eyes - everything. Even though you don’t know what’s going on, what could have possibly happened to make your relationship sink this quickly and out of the blue, you still love him. He’s still The One for you. You still want to be the one to comfort him and make him feel whole when he’s struggling.

But you can’t. You can’t and it kills you.

The heat of battle makes a lot of things fade into the background. Important things like why the fuck are there Hydra agents here? and Steve is going to break up with you when you get back on the jet and Tony swore on the fucking limited edition AC/DC vintage tour poster he has in his office that this would be an easy in/easy out information mission. None of that matters, though, because you’re in deep shit. There are seventeen of them, all primed to the teeth with weapons made to take your team down permanently.

You’re practically glued to Peter, calling out commands and plans for him to initiate. It’s when all of your plans fall through that you take a hit from a heavy fist on purpose, hitting the ground hard. “Plan F, Spidey, Plan F!” You cover the instruction with a groan and then you’re back on your feet, working your way toward him.

“Plan F?” Tony says, somewhere above you in his suit. Your comms crackle ominously as another heat-seeking grenade is launched, interfering with the radio waves your tech relies on. You don’t worry about it, because you know Tony is on it. He’s your eyes in the sky.

Peter is the one who answers his question, watching your close hand-to-hand tilt out of your favor briefly. “Plan Fuck It, Mister Stark.” He grunts as he webs up a Hydra agent, jerking him away from where he was about to slip a knife up and under Natasha’s kevlar. You finally drop the guy in front of you, ignoring Steve’s disappointed Language! and toss one of your knives toward Nat for her to use. Tony is still laughing in your ear, wheezing as he drops down and snags the rifle from one of the snipers and then takes back off.

What your little protégé failed to mention about Plan F is that it’s not just chaos, but controlled chaos. You let loose, letting a soft current cover every inch of your skin as Peter switches to his conductive webbing and takes special care to not web any of his allies. Except for you - if you’re in the way and he catches you in a web it doesn’t matter because you’re you, alive with electricity that drops the men that get caught in the web, too. You rip out of the webs and turn the current off when one of your teammates gets too close.

More Hydra agents are pouring out of the woods, topping out their numbers around twenty-five. That’s twenty-five too many in your opinion, especially when you can see Peter getting tired, his anxiety spiking, his moves having more and more hesitation behind them. You need to get this over with quickly, but you don’t have the options to do that. Steve, Bucky, and Nat are really the heavy-hitters - you, Pete, and Tony are the only ones without serums despite all of your individual abilities. Desperately you reach out for a web that’s still connected to Peter’s arms, pulling him out of the way of a baton that’s about to come down on the back of his neck.

The baton the agent is wielding glints in the coming dusk, freezing you as Peter scrambles past you with a quick apology. You’ve seen that before - seen it, felt it, know it like the back of your hand. There’s no way that you could ever forget that weapon. The man stumbles when his hit doesn’t connect but then rights himself and searches for a new target.

A long, black baton that splits into two prongs at the end is heavy in his hand. Electricity crackles between the bulbs at the end, flashing in the setting sun and your memories. The man only has one, but if it was hooked up to a machine, spinning. If there were four, five, six. If you were pinned between them, screaming in the pain as they rewrote your DNA… You’ve only felt it once, but you’ll never forget it.

And now, you’ll taste it again. On purpose this time. The man holding the stun baton is going for Steve’s back - his strong back, the one that protects people, the one that holds the weight of the world, the one that lays in your bed, the one you see whipping out of rooms as you’re entering just so that he doesn’t have to look at you - and you can’t let that happen. It only takes ten amps to kill a regular human, but you know those things are cranked up to twenty minimum. You don’t want to see how many amps of current it will take to stop Steve’s heart. You’re between the baton and Steve before you can think about what you’re doing or what comes next, the hard bulbs settling unyielding into your side and cranking out maximum power for maximum damage as soon as the current is connected and able to flow from one bulb to the other.

The pain hits you and your throat catches on it. It burns through your body, setting everything on fire - your chest hurts as your heart protests the electrons and then your powers kick in, sweeping them into your very atoms and cells. You’re a live wire now, ears humming and body thrumming with power you’ve only dreamed of. It hurts, and it burns, and you feel tears rising in your eyes because you’re back there - back begging for death or for life or for God and god at the same time - but then it’s over. The man sees that you’re not seizing up, not dropping dead in front of him, and he takes three steps back.

It’s not far enough.

You’ve only felt like this once before - right after you were unhooked from the machine that changed your life and brought you to your new family. You remember how you looked when you were put in front of a mirror with all of the pent up electricity circling your body - how your eyes were filled to the brim and dripping with bright and blue electricity, the way it was jumping across your body, how you didn’t need to breathe because your body was fully saturated with pure, unadulterated power. You wonder if you look like that now and assume you do because you can see the bright blue reflecting in the terrified eyes of the Hydra agent.

Your suit, unlike everyone else’s, is not grounded. It’s metal, metal, metal. You’re made to conduct, born for it, and the earth beneath you comes alive with bright white as you release all of the energy, the power, surges down and out. You’re practiced. You can reach out and feel the synapses and neurons of every human being in the clearing, know exactly where your teammates are standing, and know exactly how to target everything but them and the pitiful amount of electricity their brains carry. You grin, something truly feral and unhinged, and you can see the fear in the Hydra agent. Then, you let go.

You know that everyone is going to be pissed. (Maybe not everyone.) You’re not built for this, not made to take down nearly twenty fucking people at once. As you let go, you feel what they feel. The seizing muscles, the stopping of their hearts, the inside of their bodies crisping against their bones. At that moment, that delicious moment, you see the universe.

You become God. You become everything - your mother and your father and God and god and anyone else who’s watching your life from the ether. You become the judge, jury, and executioner of souls that you don’t know from Adam. You become lightning, and thunder, and exposed nerves of the cosmos at the same time. The world bends to your will and you relish in it, taking that power in your fist and wielding it to protect the man you’ll love for the rest of your life and the family that you’ve made. You will stop at nothing to end this, even if it means turning yourself inside out to do it.

You damn near do turn yourself inside out too, but that doesn’t matter, does it? The blood spilling from your ears, nose, and eyes feels like heaven. It’s hot, and thick, and it’s proof of the power that your body holds. You’re a temple and a sanctuary, a war-room and a bunker, a field of flowers and a sun-dry desert. It does not matter if Steve doesn’t love you at that moment, because you are love and hate wrapped into one package. You are everything and nothing, spread thin at the beginning and the end of time.

And then none of that is true. You are just… You. Standing in a clearing, surrounded by twenty-something dead Hydra agents and your terrified, terrified family. It hurts to breathe and you can taste blood in your mouth, but that’s an afterthought. Steve is still standing behind you, but he is alive. That is what matters.

This is what love is, you think.

Pain and pleasure.

Even if he leaves you, you will always love him.

Pain and pleasure.

You’re weak at the knees when he finally turns to see you - and you’re a sight. Struggling to stand, fingertips blackened with soot but not burnt, blood pouring from your nose, ears, eyes… You look like death, but you feel like life. Someone says something behind you - Peter, maybe? Or maybe Tony, in your comms? - but you don’t hear it. Everything tunnels out, your weak knees finally collapsing as you keel backward.

Steve bears down upon you almost immediately. You’re halfway to unconsciousness when he wraps you up in his arms, keeping you from falling in with the pile of bodies around you. He’s saying your name, harsh and soft and then in a voice like he’s ordering you to wake up. You loll about as he drops you down onto a patch of clear grass, hands searching your body for wounds. When he skims over your side, where the baton has burnt through your suit and your flesh, you surge back toward being able to have cohesive thoughts. The pain brings you back, hands wrapping around Steve’s arm and calling out his name. “Steve! Fuck, that hurts!”

“Honey,” He breathes, “Fuck, we have to get you back to the jet.” His jaw ticks, hair dirty and loose from its normal style. “Why’d you do that?” Steve doesn’t wait for an answer from you, ordering Peter to web something up to carry you over your protests.

“I’m fine,” You argue, only slurring slightly, “I feel fine.” But you’re going to let Nat and Bucky load you up on the webbed stretcher anyway because it’s the first time Steve has cared for you in a long time. You want to relish in this moment, the way that he didn't say your name but called you honey.

Well, and because Natasha slides a thumb across her neck over Steve’s shoulder in a silent threat.

You groan when Bucky accidentally grabs your calf where there is an absolutely awful stab wound, but you wave off his apology. “How could you have known?” To be honest, you hadn’t even known it was there until his Vibranium hand was slipping against it and sending shockwaves of pain through you. Peter is next to you the whole time that you’re being carried back to the jet - Tony staying back to begin scanning the bodies of the Hydra agents for the information you need and any other information they may be carrying. The poor kid is nearly at a breakdown, so you reach out to him and shake his arm when his fingers twine with yours. “Chill out, kid, I don’t know how you got it into your head that this is your fault, but it sure isn’t.” He sniffles, but hands back with Steve as Bucky and Nat get you situated in the small medical room of the jet. They transfer you and then make to leave, only Bucky hesitating near the door.

“Stevie’s goin’ to be here soon and… I don’t know what made you do what you did but you have’t explain it to him. He’s bendin’ over backwards to figure it out, and we don’t have’a clue. Came out’a nowhere.” He looks at you for another moment before shaking his head and stepping out of the room. Your head is spinning, partially from what Bucky just said and partially from the pain and stimulus of electricity. You wait there, then, because this is it. This is the event horizon. You wait there, eyes closed, until you hear footsteps approach the med room, and then the door slowly opens. Steve says your name, holding all the finality and weight of an atomic bomb. You don’t open your eyes until he swings a chair next to the stretcher and lays a hand on your calf.

“You don’t have to do this,” You finally say, pushing yourself up onto your elbows to watch him. “I know that you don’t want to.” Steve only scoffs and begins to wash the stab wound using a packet of soap and a water bottle. You say his name twice before he looks at you, something between hate and hurt curdling into a glaze over his eyes that stops you in your tracks.

“Just let me do this. It is the least that you can do.” His words are painful and stilted, like it’s taking force to push them past his teeth. You lay back down and close your eyes, content to just feel the pain of Steve beginning to stitch you up and then dress the wound before you feel the pain of Steve leaving you like you knew he always would. (Falling in love with Steve Rogers went against every instinct you had. You knew that he was going to hurt you from the first moment your lips touched his.)

When he’s done he sits back and puts his elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He heaves a heavy sigh and then shakes it off, “I’ll dress your burn, and then we’ll talk.” And normally, yes, you would agree but this is too important. You want to get it over with so you can lick your wounds metaphorically and dress them literally - and then you want to go home, you want to pack your bags, and you want to disappear and remake your life somewhere else.

Some far-off place where everyone you know won’t take one look at your face and know that you’re still painfully, deeply in love with Steve Rogers, end of your semester be damned. Family you’ve made be damned. You can’t sit around and be in love with him like a neon sign on a dark highway while it’s painfully clear that he hasn’t had a sign on his highway in a long time.

So instead of agreeing, you swing your legs over the stretcher and swallow your flinch when the burn pulls tight. Steve opens his mouth to argue but you give him a tight-lipped shake of your head and his jaw snaps shut. “No,” You say, voice not giving in to the emotion swirling in your chest. “I have let this go on long enough.”

It’s the wrong thing to say because Steve fucking scoffs again and looks away from you. “One day was long enough.” He says, cutting straight to your core. Okay, ouch. You take a deep breath and shake your head to try and bite back the tears that are inevitably rising in your eyes. If one day was long enough for him to realize he doesn’t want to be with you, why did he let it go on for nearly a full year? Why did he spend so long leading you on, pulling you by a thread before garroting your heart with it? What was the point?

“If you want to leave me, just say that,” You reply harshly, standing and wobbling away from him. He just watches you go, watches the way you struggle past the lead weights your muscles have become, the way you’re starting to feel the stab wound on your leg, the way the skin on your burn is beginning to blister and only just now losing its heat. He just watches you, where the Steve that loved you once upon a time might have helped. You turn your back on him, hands on your hips so that you can hide the way that you’re crying and your hands are shaking.

“If I want to leave you? If?” He says. You hear the scrape of his chair as he stands, “I think after what you’ve done, it’s not an if, sweetheart.” The way he says it tastes like iron. Steve never calls you sweetheart like he never calls you by your name. It’s always honey, lover, dovie. You don’t turn to face him because you’re struggling to keep yourself above water. “I spent so long thinkin’, wonderin’, askin’ myself - God damnit, will you look at me?” You turn slowly, not because you’ve never heard Steve speak like that but because his voice is desperate and raw. When you turn, you’re not sure what to expect. Maybe him, standing in front of you, broad-shouldered and disappointed like in those PSA’s he had to film once. Maybe he’d be angry, hands clenched at his sides and eyes narrowed like he gets in meetings when he doesn’t agree with something but he’s out-voted. But you never expect to see him crying, lip wobbling, folded in on himself like a young boy instead of the strong, invincible man you’ve come to love.

He looks so different.

It hits you, then, that you’re not looking at Steve Rogers. Not really. He's not Steve Rogers, not Captain America, not even Captain Rogers. You see him as he was - before America spat it’s untruths all over him and injected him with a serum that changed who he was, is, will be. He’s not the able-bodied man that you know, not strong and unreachable, not the heartthrob that overshadows the team during press events. He’s not America’s Darling, not really. Not where it counts.

You’re looking at Stevie Rogers. Stevie Rogers who, for all intents and purposes, was supposed to die before he made it out of toddlerhood or soon thereafter. Stevie Rogers who the doctors said wasn’t supposed to survive. Stevie Rogers who grew up sickly, rattling painful breaths and never playing ball with the neighborhood boys. Who couldn’t walk until middle school when he got his braces off. Who never had a partner because Bucky, strong and handsome and tall Bucky, was always deemed the better option. Who believed in his country so much that he tried to sneak into the second world war, subjected himself to a painful medical procedure so that he could change his very DNA to be what the world wanted him to be.

Captain Steve Rogers. Captain America. Strong, blond, patriotic, resilient.

You’re sure that if men don’t want to go to therapy now, in the modern age, they certainly didn’t want to go in the ‘40s. So where did that leave Steve, your Steve, standing in front of you and looking small, and broken, and sad, and alone? Did they expect him to take his new, taller, working body and run with it? Did they not think about how he would lose a part of himself in the process? How did they expect him to go from disabled to abled without some disconnect?

You think about the You That You Were Before and the You That You Are Now, and how you lost a part of yourself when the accident gave you your powers and how you’d lose yourself if someone figured out a way to take them away. You Before formed your identity around being normal - living in a shitty home with shitty parents, sure, but normal - and You Now form your identity around your powers, your team, your job, your love. If you lost those things, what did you have left? Who would you be?

When Steve lost his identity and became everything that America wanted everyone to think that America was, what did he have left? Sure, he could tell himself that he represents America - strong and patriotic and just - but it must have conflicted with everything he knew about himself before that. You know that disabled people now know that American society is unjust, unfit for them with abled people not willing to make room to allow them to thrive. You can only imagine what it was really like for Steve in the ‘20s and ‘30s and ‘40s. What he had to do just to survive. (Medical experimentation, you remind yourself. Did they know it wouldn’t kill him? Did they know his body wouldn’t rip itself apart with the new sinewy muscle they were packing on? Did they care? Or was he just a body they saw as broken? A project to fix? To turn him into something more like them and call it patriotism?)

You shake your head at him, still filled with despair, and try to figure out what he’s talking about. “Stevie,” You start, pet name easily replacing what you had been calling him because it’s not fair to shoe-horn him into a body that doesn’t feel like his own. You wonder if he still expects the bone-grinding pain that he used to tell you would happen when it rains. He raises a hand, a strong and family hand, shaking his head.

“I just need to know why I wasn’t enough for you,” Steve looks sad, slouching in on himself like he’s expecting to get his ass handed to him in another alleyway and hope Bucky is there to save him. “I need to know why you wouldn’t just break up with me if you wanted to see other people so badly.” You suck in a shocked breath because, okay, that’s not what you were expecting. Between that and the paradigm shift you’ve had on how Steve must view his identity, body, and self, you’re stunned. Steve continues like he doesn’t even register that you look shocked and pale and now you’re crying because he thinks you’re cheating on him? “And I get it. I get it. You have no idea how much I understand. If I were you, I wouldn’t want me either, okay?”

You cut him off there because what the actual God damn fuck is he talking about? “No, Stevie, I’m not cheating on you.” You shake your head again and this, your statement, lights a fire in him. He still looks like Stevie rather than Steve, but there’s anger there. You imagine that’s what it might have looked like moments before he got himself in trouble back before he was serumed. “I’m not.”

“Oh, yeah?” He challenges, jaw ticking and chin jerking up, “Oh, yeah? You can’t lie to me. I know, okay? The act is up, it’s over, I know, okay? You can stop pretending.”

“Steve, I do not fucking know what you’re talking about but I”m not cheating on you!” You raise your voice, not really angry but more out of necessity. You need to get it out of his head that he is anything less than everything you want - that you could possibly love anyone more than you love him.

“I wanted to clarify something for you,” Steve says like he’s reading an old script from when he was just a beefy, red/white/blue stage prop for the American military, “I am excited to meet with you, but there are some rules. Do not talk about Captain Steve Rogers. I don’t want to hear about him,” As he continues to recite something that has clearly hurt him, you go lax. You know exactly what’s happened - your fists unclench, your jaw drops a little bit, and it feels like someone has gutted you, “I think it is wise to keep work and pleasure separate, and it’s a rule I will enforce heavily. I look forward to seeing you again.” He’s sneering at the end, tears falling down his ruddy cheeks.

“Steve,” You try again, but he cuts you off.

“Am I just work for you?” His voice is shaking more than you thought possible, and so are his hands. You’ve never seen Steve so off-kilter, so thrown, and it breaks your heart that yes, technically, you’re the cause of this. Before this, before this horrible misunderstanding, your relationship with Steve was the paragon of trust so neither of you cared if the other read emails or texts. You remember the email - the email from your fucking college professor - because it had made you so angry that he’d referred to your relationship with Steve as something as simple and base as just pleasure - like you could even put words to the galaxy of a relationship you had with Steve - that you’d gone to the gym to work off some of that irritation. You hadn’t wanted to take it out on anyone accidentally. When you came back from the gym, Steve was gone on that two-week mission that he’d left on without saying goodbye.

Oh, God. You feel sick to your stomach as the paradigm of the way that Steve’s been treating you shifts violently to the left. You have to physically hold yourself up and try to speak past the lump in your throat. Steve looks… Brokenly smug. Like he knows he’s right, but he’d rather gnaw his own legs off than be right.

“No,” You croak, “No, Steve, you’ve got it all wrong.” You want to reach for him, but it feels like the room is closing in on you. You’re second-guessing everything now - especially what you’ve just said. How many people said the exact same thing to him pre-serum because they said something meant for Bucky to him? How many times did he hear that when he was getting a new diagnosis, hoping for the best? How many times had his own mother said it to him when he told her something someone had said, fresh-faced and not yet used to the way that abled people sometimes treated disabled people? You think you might be sick. “That email was from my professor, Steve. I’m not cheating on you, I’d never.” He laughs darkly and sits back down in his chair, head in his hands again. You try to gather the strength to move toward him when you see his shoulders shaking, a telltale sign that he’s crying.

“A professor,” He says with a watery laugh, “Right.”

Finally, you realize that he needs you, needs to know you love him, that you’d do anything for him. You can iron out the kinks later - figure out why he didn’t want to come to talk to you past the original hurt, why he treated you so coldly, why he didn’t trust that you wouldn’t do this to him - but now, you need to show him that you’re here. That you choose him. That you’ll always choose him.

You make your way to him and set a shaking hand on his shoulder. For a brief second you think he’s going to shake you off but then Steve’s hand shoots up and latches onto where your hand is resting, dipping his head to press against your arm. “Stevie, please,” You say, unsure of what you’re asking him to do, “I picked up a class, just one, and it’s… I picked it up for you, it’s about the ‘30s and ‘40s and…” He looks up at you and he looks so broken - face ruddy and wet with tears, lip wobbling, chest heaving as he tries to not sob. His brows are knit and he looks confused, “I just wanted to be able to understand you better. You had to leave so much of yourself at the door when you joined the Avengers, had to leave so much of yourself in the ice… In Erskine’s lab… Stevie, I just wanted you to be able to be you when you’re with me. I wanted to know the you that you were before you became Captain America.” Your voice is shaking, knees knocking together, and honestly? You feel like you might blackout.

“What?” He rasps, “What?”

“He sent that email because too many kids signed up for his class thinking that they’d be able to look at pictures of you and Buck for a semester. Emailed me directly because he knows we’re…” You choke on your words, shaking your head because you’re not even sure there’s a we anymore, “Because he knows I’m on the team. Didn’t want me walking in and making his class about just a few years in the ‘30s and ‘40s rather than the culture of the time.” You don’t know how else to explain it to him, but Steve isn’t saying anything - practically isn’t moving or breathing- so you continue to try and explain what’s really happening as best as you can, “And - and that email made me so angry because he singled me out, didn’t email anyone else about it, and I left to try and work some of that out; I didn’t want to take it out on you, or let it spoil - let it spoil… But when I came back from the gym, you were gone. You were gone for two weeks and I didn’t know why.” You’re crying harder now and pretty sure that within the next sixty seconds you’re going to collapse if you don’t sit down.

Steve shakes his head, still looking like he doesn’t understand. “What?” He says for a third time, “A class? A college class?”

“I just wanted to feel closer to you,” You confess, “Just wanted to understand a fraction of your life without making you do the heavy liftin’ and teachin’ me. Shouldn’t have’t do that,” You’re sobbing, barely biting out your words as you realize that something you’ve done to strengthen your relationship with Steve has destroyed it, “Shouldn’t have to explain a whole different time just to feel loved, Stevie. Should be able to be with someone who understands without you havin’ to explain.” You’re not sure you can say Peggy’s name out loud, and you hope he understands what you’re saying without making you actually say it, “Should’a been able to have love with someone who knew, and I know I’m nothin’ compared to what you should’a had, but I want to be. I want to be in the same ballpark instead’a watchin’ from the stands.” You wipe your face with your free hand and look away from Steve when he stands in front of you. You don’t want to see the look on his face - what he’s thinking about what you’ve said.

He says your name and you glance at him, but his expression stops him in your tracks. Where Steve looked broken and hurt and fuming with anger to hide the anguish, now he looks stricken. You shake your head, “No, no. I didn’t say that to make you feel guilty-”

“You think that I care about whether or not you can understand the ‘40s?” He cuts you off, hands moving to curl around your biceps, “You think that I care whether or not you can relate to a time in history when you weren’t even thought of?”

“Of course I love you. I love you more than anything in this world, but you shouldn’t have to not care, Steve,” You argue, shaking your head, “That’s what I’m trying to say. You should be with someone who understands without explanation. I just wanted to give that to you - didn’t know that this would happen.”

“I should be with someone who loves me,” He argues back, “If you love me, that’s all that matters. My past be damned.”

“But your past is you!” You try to pull away from Steve, but he anchors you there. You’re dizzy from being so close to him after this long, but also because of how many different twists this situation has taken. You can barely keep up with how bad your communication with Steve has become - barely keep up with how you need to fix it, or how to fix it. “Your past is you,” You repeat when you realize that Steve isn’t going to let you go. “And you shouldn’t have to give that up so that someone will love you.”

“But you love me,” He says desperately, ducking his head so that he’s nearly nose to nose with you, “You love me, right?”

“More than anything,” You say, closing your eyes and relishing in the feeling of being so close to Steve, “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I don’t care about what anyone else thinks, or anyone else. I’ll even stop goin’ to class if you want me to - Steve, I just can’t do this anymore. Can’t do this thing where you don’t talk to me about what’s botherin’ you.” You’re choking up, barely whispering, but you know he hears you. YOu can feel his warm breath on your face, “Nearly fuckin’ killed me.”

“I thought it was goin’ to be easier,” He breathes, nose bumping yours, “When you eventually decided to leave me for him. Thought I was savin’ myself some trouble.” You can practically taste his tears as they fall again, “Buck and Nat tried to tell me that you weren’t - that you wouldn’t - but I just couldn’t believe them.”

When you open your eyes, his are closed. This close to him you can see the soft freckles that are blooming over his eyelids, his soft eyelashes kissing his cheekbones. You can feel him breathing, feel him nearly pressed against you in a way that feels hauntingly nostalgic and terrifyingly fleeting; like you’ll be able to feel his warmth for years to come, but he’s about to disappear. “That’s okay,” You finally whisper, “It’s okay that you didn’t believe them. That you thought what you thought. It’s okay.” He shakes his head against yours, opening his mouth to protest, but you refuse to let him feel guilty about feeling this way - you have plenty of time to sit him down and talk to him candidly about the way he acted because of these feelings, anyway. “If I would have been in your place I’m not sure I would have believed them.”

“I treated you so badly…” He shifts and wraps his arms around you. It’s almost immediate - you relax into his arms and wind yours around his waist, keeping him pulled against you as he presses his face into your neck and you press your cheek against his chest. “So awfully.”

“We’ll talk about that, okay? But later. Right now you just need to know that I love you, Steve. I love you more than I can tell you - more than I can express.” You want to kiss him, but you can’t. Can’t kiss him, you need to wait for him to kiss you, for him to close that gap and show you that he still loves you like you love him. “We’ll have to have a talk, a long and hard conversation about this, Stevie, but for now… For now, I’m just content to be with you, okay? MIssed you so much.”

He sighs, nose pressing against yours again. “Missed you too, dovie. Missed you more than I can even say,” His voice breaks as his lips brush yours. Your relationship is not without its flaws and problems - Steve’s actions when he thought you were cheating on him are proof of that and, well, the fact that you didn’t realize what was happening, why it was happening, or a large part of your boyfriend’s psychological makeup having an impact on your relationship while it went unknown by you… There is a lot of work for the two of you to do, a lot of work to do, a lot of communication to be done… But you’d do it all for Steve, over and over again.

When he presses forward and presses his lips gently to yours, you know that he’ll do it all for you, over and over again, too.

#steve rogers imagine #steve rogers/reader #steve rogers x reader #marvel imagine #mcu imagine

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twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat · 9 months ago

Note

i am munching on my cupcake i am sipping on my coffee i am scribbling in my lil journalist book :333

OHHHH WE HAVE SO MUCH TO TALK ABT LET’S SEE LET’S SEE……. first of all!!! i agree that the pacing is a bit clunky sometimes!!!! everything just kinda goes off the rails at the end…. i loved the more small-scale cases most so i would’ve liked them to be a bit longer :’3 but obv i understand that the writers probably planned The Big Case beforehand…… still though.

AND YOUR FAVESSS THEY’RE ALL SO LOVELY i’m so happy u loved edamura sm mickey he’s the meowmeow ever i’m always thinking abt these fits bc he looks so cozy n cute :((( so bf :((((((

BUT GODDDD THAT SCENE…… it just felt sooo satisfying to see him snap a little bc he gets treated like shit the entire show 😭😭 like i STILL refuse to forgive them for traumatizing him sm towards the end AND ALSO JUST??? getting him roped up in their schemes when he was trying so hard to improve???? seeing him go crazy was so nice i was almost kinda mad that it turned out to be an act BUT at the same time i feel like it’s also implied to Not be an act … i think i remember laurent telling edamura that he’s happy that he finally shared his true feelings and whatnot. even if it was partially for the Scheme. idk i just want him to be happy :(((

ALSO THE SUITTTT U GET IT SUITS ARE MY WEAKNESS edamura is truly so versatile like he’s a sweaterboy a suits guy …. he would look great in anything. we should put him in a maid dress i think idk 🤔🤔🤔 just a thought.

AND LAURENT MY SILLY LITTLE CONMAN he’s so awful and funny and tragic <3333 very gojocoded to me he’s just . Worse. but no that one scene where he’s hallucinating dorothy will always get me i’m suchhhh a sucker for silly guys who drown in their own loneliness when no one’s around to see and i know u are the same mickey 🤝🤝🤝 he’s so charming. VERY gender so true. and obv i also loveeee his dynamic w edamura <333 extremely funny extremely gay in the dub he calls him ”my little soybean” idk if that’s in the subbed version but it makes me explode everytime i think abt it … BUT WAIT I HAD NO IDEA JUNICHI SUWABE VOICES HIM????? THAT’S CRAZY?????? THEY KEEP GIVING HIM THESE SEXY ASS ROLES SMH.. now i need to watch the sub 😞😞 THE DUB IS SUPERR GOOD BTW i’m picky when it comes to dubs but i totally recommend checking this one out… they did a great job :33 laurent’s va is easily the best though he sounds sooo sassy and queer i need him so bad it’s crazy …

ALSO BEFORE I FORGET U BEING A MASTER AT JOB INTERVIEWS MAKES SOOO MUCH SENSE TO ME i’m just imagining u in the bathroom beforehand rehearsing what to say.. jimmy mcgill style…. very silly very cute VERY impressive btw i’m kinda in awe ……. our charismatic working man mickey <33

OH AND AND ABBIE MY BELOVEDDD SHE’S SO GOOD SHE’S SO COOL I CAN ALWAYS TRUST UR TASTE… i loved her case a lot !! she’s so cool when she’s driving the plane ….. when she’s abt to literally just Kill a guy ……… her ptsd is handled soo delicately and thoughtfully i thought it was great. AND SO REALLL SO TRUE I HATE FORCED ROMACES SM their friendship is just the sweetest!!! :((( they rlly do feel like besties who bully each other and i think it’s so nice.

AND CYNTHIAAAAA MY WIFE my list of favorites is the exact same as urs except i’d put cynthia in my top 3 instead of abbie i think OBV I ADORE THEM BOTH but cynthia …. she’s so mommy. so gorgeous. and and andddd her case is my favorite too !!! :333 it’s just so lovely, i think the way her ex and their relationship is handled is so bittersweet. i loved them. and there were so many funny moments in it too !!! kittymura working in a kitchen hehe … his malewife duties …… laurent better get him his own restaurant after the shit they put him through smh. BUT ALSO IM SO SORRY FOR GETTING U SPOILED PSVDKVFJF 😭😭😭 i’m gonna be honest i kinda . Forgot. abt her being a double agent ….. in the beginning……..

AND AND I ALSO HATE THE DAD LET’S GOOO 🔥🔥🔥🔥 usually my own set of daddy issues compel me to sympathize w the father but in his case i was like … sighhh ….. he’s such a loser. so boring. i think that esp after seeing such a good father in the first case i’m like …. this guy is so bad…. i do think edamura’s daddy issues are super compelling though and i ATE the blade scene right up like edamura getting ready to stab him … even if it was technically an act i cheered ok. i think he should get to kill his dad. as a treat.

anyway i’m SOOO happy u enjoyed it!!! :D i can’t wait to see how they handle the continuation …. can’t wait to see everyone act even more gay ……. AND ONE MORE THING WAHHHH IM SO EXCITED THAT UR STARTING HQ i’m almost finished w s4!! and i love it w my whole chest!!!! hinata and kageyama are the sweetest little meowmeows… so far i have some predictions for ur faves obv but i’m still undecided on some of them!! just keep an eye out for oikawa !!! he’s super good kinda silly he thinks he’s a whole Villain but he’s just a boy who likes volleyball smh …. kenma & kuroo are so cute too T_T there are sooo many wonderful characters!! i’m sure you’ll love them !!!!

MICKEYYYY I’M EMERGING FROM THE BLANKET FORT HAPPILY i come with gifts :33 🍡🍡🧋🧋🌻🌻 i hope today is treating u as kindly as u deserve!!!

OK SOOOO since u finished great pretender there are things i Need to know……. journalist ari is here to interview u i am twirling my little pen and gazing at u fondly ….. first of all!!! i’m gonna have to know your general feelings on the show 👀👀 what did u think?? did u enjoy it??? any parts u especially liked/didn’t really like?? AND then i also need to know your top 3 characters + your favorite case/arc….. it’s extremely important to me.

anyways i love u here is a funny meme that made me think of u <333 they mean the world to me

HIHIHIHIHIIIII HII ARI MY ANGEL!!!! pls know that i love this fucking meme so much but what i love even more is that you sent it to me<3333 and that it made me think of you<33333 love u MWAH

i am now sitting very comfortably with my dr. pepper and i am ready to Go A Little Crazy. btw i am staring right into your eyes are you getting nervous yet little dove? /hj HERE GOES🔥🔥🔥

OKAY OKAY OKAY GREAT PRETENDER!!!!!!! I LIKED IT A LOT!!!!! the fact that they were speaking english in the beginning caught me so off guard i can't even explain it.......... lmao it was cute though!!

i think the second season was my favourite!!! i thought it was really nice how they took more time with the case although yes i understand that there was a lot happening overall so they needed to take more time but i kinda wish the first cases were a bit more drawn out too.... some parts felt a little rushed. like the literally the beginning?? edamura is stealing his wallet but now suddenly they're already in la and that all happened in like the first ten minutes??? that was a lot for a start. but overall i liked it!!!

as for my favourite characters...... look i am truly not immune to little skrunkly kitty cat guys with brown hair and brown hair okay...... edamura my sweetheart<33333333333 (just on a side note i love when ppl wear suits idk something about it just scratches my brain and he was constantly wearing one in the second one i loved it sm)

i felt soo bad by the end of the second one bc nobody treated him right:(((((((( like they didn't tell him anything:(((( yes whatever it was for "his safety" but that doesn't make it right okay:(((((((( like when he got betrayed by his dad after they rescued the kids for the first time???????? and then the whole boat thing??????? he had to watch his friends (fake) die???????? even worse he had to watch his own dad shoot them and then he himself shot his dad?????????? and all that for what??? "for his safety" yeah okay...... HE'S MY BABY:((( kittymura

so i definitely thought that he was gonna betray his friends in the end...................... i'm not saying he's a good guy............. but that old lady was treating him quite nicely wasn't she............. so yes i did think that that was gonna happen buT I DIDN'T THINK THAT WAS STILL A PART OF THE PLOT IN THE END??????? so i was still bamboozled. in a good way i enjoyed that a lot bc i feel like i very often figure out things like this whether i want to or not so i don't get too surprised that often anymore but this did it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I WILL GIVE KITTYMURA HIS OSCAR I PROMISE I WILL!!!!!!!!!!!! like holy shit that scene was so good!!!!!!!!!!! i think u said u watched the dubbed one right? anyway i watched the subbed one and the voice acting was top tier in that one too!!!!!! when he starts laughing and saying that he finally bested the blonde bastard or whatever i got chills waaaa that was so fucking sick and then the best part!!!!!! the same u commented about too............. the one where he covering his eyes and then the hand drops over his lips 🥴🥴🥴 SO COOL HE ACTUALLY LOOKED MENACING THERE I LOVED IT SOOOO MUCH i won't lie i might've been rooting for him (sorry to my other beloveds...) but yeah that scene was amazing i was sitting so close to my computer screen i just couldn't pull myself away i was so into it

LAURENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAYYY YIPPEEEE YAYY!!!! MY FAVOURITE BISEXUAL CON-ARTIST. very gender if i do say so myself. i loveed him!!!!!!! i love suave and charismatic characters a lot i think i'm TRYING to project onto them yk. btw have i said that every time i have a job interview or anything alike i just think that i'm george clooney. i'm not even kidding. i just think of him in ocean's 11 and i repeat to myself that I Am A Charismatic Man Who Doesn't Speak Too Loudly Nor Too Fast I Smile And I Keep Eye Contact And I Make A Joke Here And There And I Will Get This Job Because I Am A Cool Guy btw i've gotten every job i have ever been interviewed for.

and i LOVEDDDDDD him in season two!!!!!!!!!! i loved loved loved his background story so much it's so good to see the suave guy who never fucks up.... fuck up. like when he was stammering at their first job plsssss that made me love him so much more. and to see him with dorothy too:((((((((((((((((((((((((( i thought they were really really cute!!! the speaks-too-much and the stares-fondly dynamic always gets me going<33333333 the way he treated dorothy and how sweet he was i almost cried what's new....

+ i just loved when he Showed Emotion. he always had a smile and he was constantly cracking jokes so it was good to see him upset too. made him more real ig.....

PLUSSSS JUNICHI SUWABE IS SOOOOO FUCKING GOOD AAAAAA PLEAAASEEEE HE NEEDS LIKE AN OSCAR TOO he did such a great job with laurent he fit him so well and just overall he's so fucking good like obviously him as sukuna BROOOOOOOOOOOOOO I GOT CHILLS LIKE EVERYTIME HE OPENED HIS MOUTH OKAY and ofc odasaku too............ whewww okay this is another side note bc idk i love voices so i recently also discovered that he voiced viktor from yuri on ice????????????????????? that made my eyes drop out of my head i think voice acting is so fucking sick how do you voice a guy like viktor (btw i've never actually seen it but i've seen clips) and then a mf LIKE SUKUNA THE NEXT DAY THAT'S SO COOOOOL WAAHH

wait also THE LAURENT AND EDAMURA DYNAMIC!!!!!!! INSANE ACTUALLY!!!! very funny and gay. the end of season two made me go very crazy.. like when edamura is losing it and pointing the sword at his dad and then laurent steps in waaaaaaaaaaaaa that was so cool and i loved all of the times when edamura thought he had bested laurent only to realize that that indeed was not the case lmao they're so cute i can't wait to see more of them!!!!

what da fuck i just scrolled up when did this get so long...........anyway my third favourite character drum roll pleaaaaseee..... ABBBIE!!!!!!! I LOVED HER SOO MUCHHH finally a female character who doesn't smile!!!!!!!!!!!!!! very refreshing to see it and what's even more refreshing was that they kept her like that for the whole thing!!!! i feel like typically they'd make her "break" or whatever by the end of the show......... yk like idk if they made edamura n her kiss or something. ew. definitely feels like if a normie would watch it that's what they'd hope for and i'm very glad they didn't give in to that!!!!!!!! not every female character needs a love interest!!!!! she and kittymura made very very good friends and i hope they stay that way!!!!!!

btw i loved cynthia too i am bringing her here aswell!!!!!!!!! i was a silly goose and i kinda spoiled the first plot twist for myself bc.......... when u mentioned her i might've googled her............. just for the looks i wanted to know it's her when i saw her but............. i didn't realize the whole twist was that you wouldn't know who she really was.................. she appeared as the fbi agent and i went waittt isn't this???? 😐😐😐😐😐 yes. yes. it is................................. that was completely on me that was stupid....

anyway i adored the painting arc a lot!!!! it was so sweet and again it let us see the mighty swindler in a way different light and i really appreciated that it can get a bit boring when the characters are JUST some cool people who are always Cool and Successful it's nice to see them have emotions like i said before

i wasn't a big fan of the dad......................... idk if it's really my own daddy issues kicking in but i hope edamura stays mad at him....... that's kinda petty i guess but he fucked up sooooooo badly aaaaaaaa. i get it ur friend dies but then you just completely abandon your family???? yeah okay you had like a masterplan and had other people taking care of your son buT HE'S STILL YOUR SON?????? HE WAS SO TINY BACK THEN AND THEN HE'S JUST WILLINGLY LETTING KITTYMURA GET INTO THESE BIG GIGS wahh okay something about it just doesn't sit right with me okay....... even if it all worked out in the end........... edamura deserved better......

OKAAAAAYYYYYY THIS GOT SO LONG I AM NOT SURPRISED. LONG STORY SHORT I LOVE KITTYMURA AND I LOVE BILAURENT. VERY FUN SHOW AND I AM THANKING YOUR FOR THE RECOMMENDATION MY LOVE!!!!! <33333333333

and we are now reversing the roles as i beg you to answer the same questions please please pretty please!!!!!

(this is my chance to tell u that i watched the first ep of haikyuu last night!!!!!! and i of course liked it a lot what a surprise..... hinata is soo cute very baby and the beef he and kageyama already had made me laugh so hard but i did only watch the first ep so i can't say more but trusttttt i will let you know when i have my favourites picked out hehe)

OKOK ENOUGH ENOUGH HERE'S SOME NICE WARM TEA FOR MY PRETTIEST IRIS ☕☕ oke maybe it's coffee actually either way it's a warm drink to keep you nice and.. warm!!!!! yk since i can't be there to hug you or whatever😒😒😒 ANDDDD HERE'S A 🧁 BC YOU NEED SOMETHING SWEET I KNOW YOU DO!!!!! no rush with the reply bc this turned into a novel but yeah!!! can't wait to hear more of your thoughts!!!! I LOVE YOJUUUUU<3333

+ they're hugging<33333333 kittymura is just surprised but we both know he hugs him right back<33333333333

#also mickey dw i too thought abt journalist!gojo 😞😞😞😞 i kin him i fear #i neeeeddd to become a little journalist boy i need to walk around w a pen behind my ear going ummm actually 🤨 every two seconds #it would heal me i think #(i also Need to get sandwiched between a pair of beautiful vampires but that’s another matter entirely ok)#I LOVE U MICKEYYY i am sending fluffy vibes ur way :33 #just the fluffiest #lots of fluffy kittymuras #i love how both him and laurent are canonically cat men like no wonder they’re so good <33 #mickey !! ✩

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littlepadika · 4 years ago

Text

Calling Home (1) | Frankie Morales x Reader

Summary: You are a receptionist at the VA. Frankie Morales keeps calling. Yearning ensues...

Rating: M -> E in later chapters

Warnings: fem!reader, age gap (legal), praise kink, voice kink, discussion of addiction/PTSD/trauma, no use of y/n, no beta reader, reader is bad at Spanish, Frankie has a sexy voice 😩

Masterlist here

AN: My first fic. Pedro writers have inspired me to finally start writing again 🥺. Concept inspired by the movie RED. I hope you like it ❤️Set after triple frontier.

Chapter One

~~~~~~~~~~~

The first time he called was an ordinary Thursday.

“Veterans Affairs, how can I help you?”

You had been working at the VA office for about two weeks. Fresh out of college you felt lucky to have a job in the first place. You went to school to be a writer but your big idea for 'The Next Great American Novel' had yet to present itself. At least here you had access to the most inspiring stories and interesting people. Men and women who had seen more and done more than you probably would in your entire life. You loved talking to clients on the phone. It was weird but something about only being able to hear people’s voices excited you. You would sometimes write little stories in your head about the people you'd talk to, filling in the details that were unknown.

Your desk accessories reflected your love of books and writing. You had your growing collection of books sitting on your desk sandwiched between baby pink bookends. Next to them was a matching desk organizer filled with your favorite sparkly pens and sticky notes. You had decorated the plain cubicle walls with posters of quotes from your favorite books. You also brought your favorite candle from home. Even though you couldn’t light it you still liked to lift it to your nose once and a while and smell it between chapters. When you weren’t on the phone or scanning documents you would read. You finished To Kill A Mockingbird in your first week on the job and were now halfway through Murder on the Orient Express.

You were starting a new chapter when Frankie Morales called the first time.

You picked up the phone on the second ring already mustering your chipper 'customer service' voice. “Veterans affairs.” You stated your name. “How may I help you?”

“H-Hi. My name is Frankie- uh-Francisco Morales." A deep voice answered you. "I’m calling because I have gotten my benefits check yet. It’s been a month. I was hoping you could tell me if it got sent?”

“Okay Mr. Morales." You flipped on the computer. "Let me check. Can you spell your last name for me?”

“M-o-r-a-l-e-s”

“Okay... let's see.” You clicked on his account. You were momentarily distracted by his picture likely taken when he graduated basic if you had to guess based off the uniform. He looked sweet. Sharp nose and strong jaw balanced by kind eyes and a shy smile. You could imagine how age would continue to soften his expression making him even more handsome. The image was a strange juxtaposition to the voice you were hearing on the phone which was much deeper and rougher. His profile said he was special forces. A pilot. The rest of the information was blacked out. Something you were used to seeing on many people's accounts but even his years of service were redacted. He must have been involved in some dangerous stuff, you thought to yourself. The dates that were not redacted were mostly in Latin America. You clicked over to processing requests. “Looks like the check got sent one week ago.” You informed him.

"I'll look again but I haven't seen anything-" It sounded like he was apologizing when clearly it was not his fault.

"No no. It's probably a mistake on our end." You interrupted. With how shitty and outdated the payroll interface was you wouldn't be surprised if there was a mix up. "I’ll go ahead and let payroll know to send another."

"Great. Thanks." He replied sounding relieved. The roughness in his voice gave way to a smooth baritone.

“No problem. I'm sorry for any inconvenience it may have caused. We'll get it sent right away." You hoped he was not relying on this benefit check for anything important. While you could promise you'd fix the problem, the administration was notoriously slow. When he didn't respond you asked, "Is there anything else I can help you with today, Mr. Morales?”

“Uh-no" The roughness back in place. "Thank you." He paused before adding your name onto his thank you which made you smile. People usually never remembered your name.

“Alright. Have a nice day and thank you for your service.” You chirped before hanging up. The smile he put on your face lingered for a few minutes as you returned to your book.

The next time he called was exactly twelve days later.

“Veterans affairs” you answered, your routine greeting cut short as your eyes were still on your book.

“Hi- I’m calling because uh I still haven’t gotten my benefits check. This is Frankie Morales.”

“Oh Mr. Morales.” You recognized his voice even before he even said his name. You quickly shut your book, pushing your hair out of your face. Had you been thinking about him? No! Okay maybe you stared at his picture for a few minutes longer after he hung up. Yes, it was probably very unprofessional but you couldn't fight the curiosity. You were trying to rationalize the contrasting sharpness and softness of his features with his voice. How it all worked together. How one person's voice could change textures and colors so easily. You wondered what kind of things this man might have seen on the job. Most of the veterans you would help day to day did not have so many redacted missions and deployments. You were in the middle of Narcos season one so you immediately thought of drugs or something equally dangerous. After much pondering, you had come to the conclusion that Frankie Morales was both insanely attractive and insanely courageous. “Still no check, huh?”

“Nope.” He sighed the sound making the phone's shitty speaker crackle as you held it to your ear.

“Let me just check that it was approved...“ you found his profile again and scrolled to the status page. “Hmm... it says it was sent out last Friday after we spoke. That’s so weird...”

“Yeah. Really weird.” He echoed your frustration on the other end.

Typical payroll, you thought to yourself as you rolled your eyes. “I'll get another one sent to you right away. I'll see to it myself.” You tucked the phone under your chin and typed out a short email to Mary in payroll letting her know you'd be stopping by her office to explain the situation. You realized he hadn't hung up yet.

“Sorry for the back and forth.” You said, trying to fill the silence.

“It’s not your fault." The earlier irritation gone. "You’ve been really helpful.” His voice sounded warm and reassuring. Less gruff than it was last you spoke. Instead it was that rich baritone that you caught of glimpse of last time.

You feel your face warm at his compliment. It was this annoying reflex you had. Praise always made you blush no matter what context but it was worse when it came from a (you assume) gorgeous stranger.

“And just to verify that your address is correct- you’re on Maple Lane in Miami, Florida?”

“That’s right.” He confirmed.

“Okay. Sent!” You clicked send on the email, which caused the window to close and reveal Frankie’s profile page again. “I was curious-" You spoke before you really made the decision to speak. You didn’t want to overstep but once again your curiosity got the better of you. Honestly, you were just searching for a way to keep him on the phone. The day had been so boring.

“Your profile says you were stationed in Costa Rica.”

“For a bit.” He replied after a moment. He didn’t sound too defensive but there was definitely some tightness in his answer that made you feel bad for asking. Like you were scratching a wound.

“Did you like it? The country I mean.”

“Are you planning a trip?” He sounds a little amused.

“Yeah- well- kind of. It's more a trip in my head right now. I’d like to go there one day. It looks so beautiful.” You sighed closing your eyes trying to imagine the heat on your skin.

“It is." He agrees. "Really humid though.”

“Mm that sounds nice.” You would kill for some warm weather after such a long winter in DC.

“It was too muggy for me at times." He grumbled. "If you do go, stick to the costal areas where it’s more breezy or else you’ll just be sweating the whole time.”

“I don’t mind a little sweat” you shrugged, still thinking of the awful east coast winter you were currently suffering through. The sexual connotation of what you said hit you hard as soon as you heard the statement in its entirety. You felt your face flush again, though the man on the other end would never know.

“I’m learning Spanish!" You announced loudly trying to move the conversation past your awkwardness.

“Wow. Muy impressivo.”

“Si” you replied but after a moment you admit “I don’t really know what you said.”

Frankie laughed loudly on the other end and you couldn’t help but join in, drawing dirty looks from the elderly lady, Donna, working in the cubicle across from you. You ducked your head behind a stack of papers to avoid her glare.

“Fake it till you make it.” He chuckled.

“Maybe you should help me out.” You took on an indigent but still playful tone. “You sound better than duolingo” Your smile widened when he laughed again. His laugh was what you hoped it would be, by all your assumptions from his picture. It was an unencumbered, unburdened, rich sound with only a hit of roughness from the air behind it.

“Tell me you’re not using that dumb app to learn.” he scoffed, saying your name in an almost scolding tone.

“I’m got my thirty day streak today.” You boasted.

“You’ll be a total tourist if you go by duolingo.”

“But the owl is so cute every time I get something right!” You argued your voice taking on a more childish cadence.

“That’s how they trap you, silly girl.” He teased right back. Usually such a condescending nickname would piss you off but something about the affection behind him using it made you feel very differently. You felt warm like you were proud to be silly as long as it made him laugh.

“Then you saved me just in time, Mr. Morales.” You bit your lip. His scoffing and laughter died down on the other end.

“Frankie” He corrects you.

“Frankie…” You repeated it, smiling at how well the nick name suited the voice over the phone. Honest, sincere, and not pretentious at all. Way better than the pompous guys you know with equally stuffy names like “Edward” and “Christopher.”

“So what do you want to know?” Frankie interrupted your thoughts. “Dime”

You started asking him questions in Spanish to the best of your ability. Granted they weren't particularly probing questions. What is your name? What is your favorite color? What is your favorite animal? What's your favorite book? I am reading Gone Girl. He answered them all with patience and amusement, occasionally interrupting you to correct your pronunciation or explain what a word meant. Every time you’d repeat the word back correctly he would say something like “good” or “there you go” or “you got it”. You hated to admit that his kind words and his praise was doing something to you. You didn't even realize you were clenching your legs together unconsciously, almost in anticipation of his next correction or next answer. His low voice so sweet and encouraging against your ear, more tangible when he was speaking Spanish. You just wanted to hear more of it. Would it be this sweet in other situations? Would it get huskier or rougher? If you closed your eyes it was like he was sitting right next to you. It would be all too easy to slip into that daydream and escape the dull office.

Suddenly out of the corner of your drooping eyes you saw a flashing red light on the phone console meaning another caller was waiting.

“Shoot- i’m sorry, Frankie- I have to take this call.” You shot forward in your chair, legs uncrossing.

“Of-Of course. I should let you get back to work.” He sounded a little sad or so you hoped. You felt bad for interrupting him after you both were having so much fun. You wanted to say he could wait on hold but he killed that idea when he said, "I have work too. Technically I'm five minutes past my lunch break."

Your pout turned to a smile. He was spending his precious lunch break with you? Get a grip! you snapped at yourself.

“You’re welcome to call again if you want.” You threw out the offer in a small voice, scared you would be rejected. You peered over the cubicle wall to see if you were still being glared at. Thankfully Donna was away from her desk. Probably out for a smoke. “It’s really boring here and usually no one calls.”

“Maybe I will.” He replied and you could hear the smile behind those words. You felt your heart clench weirdly in your chest like it didn't know how to process the sudden spike in emotions.

“Bye, Frankie.” You beamed.

“Bye”

This time the smile on your face lasted for hours. Frankie’s laugh echoed around in your head, taunting you, sending your mind to the gutter. His voice went from grit to molasses on a dime. You wanted to be the one to bring out those sounds. You wanted to hear his voice bend and stretch and strain as you fucked him. What the hell is wrong with me? you screamed internally. You had never been so depraved and with a stranger no less! You clearly needed to get laid fast because this much yearning would not end well.

Frankie got the second VA check a few days later and this time he didn’t even feel bad about ripping it in half. He was already reaching for the phone to call you.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: Message to be added 💕 no minors please!

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