#JULIA 11% gets me so much

[nereidprinc3ss]

hourglass

in which spencer disappears from fem!reader's life entirely for three months, right as it seems they were finally about to make things official. when he comes back they reunite, all the while knowing things can't be the same as they were.

18+ (smut, angst) warnings/tags: oh god so many. NOT canon compliant in the slightest, i make shit up, softdom!spence, nipple stuff prob, fingering, oral f receiving, piv sex, unprotected sex, pet names, tara mentioned, depression, mentions of trauma cause its the prison arc duh, passing mentions of alcohol, mentions of spencer losing weight, reader mistakenly thinks spencer tried to kill himself BUT ONLY FOR A SECOND, where is diana reid, nobody knows or cares, probably filming glee, optimistic ending a/n: haven't posted smut in forever but this wip required it and the angst was so angsty i just had to finish it. it was started in jan or feb and subsequently added to and changed months apart and then edited so the writing quality varies from section to section which i apologize for. originally based on good guy by julia jacklin... also the odyssey by homer? can't really explain that one you'll just have to see for yourself anyway byeeee ilysm!!! PLS tell me if you liked it! or if you hated it! but preferably if you liked it! MWAH! wc <12k

It’s been about three months since you last saw Spencer Reid.

About three months since you had an early Valentine’s Day celebration (even though you weren’t a couple) complete with champagne (even though he doesn’t usually drink) and slow dancing (even though you swore you’d be terrible and he spent the first ten minutes laughing at you as you stepped on his toes.)

About three months since you finally settled your head on his shoulder and let the warbling vinyl carry you somewhere distant as the two of you danced slow circles on the parquet floor for what felt like hours.

You’d have liked him to stay later that night. You’d have liked him to stay all night if you were being honest with yourself, but at 11:45 he gently pulled away and told you he had to go.

“Curfew?” you joked, the corner of your mouth lifting a little and you hoped you were hiding your disappointment well.

“Actually, I’m going down to Texas for a few days to speak with one of the leading doctors in experimental Alzheimer's and dementia treatment. I’m going to see if he can get my mom into a clinical trial. I leave early tomorrow morning.”

“Oh my god, that’s amazing, Spencer! What are you doing still here? You should be at home getting ready to go!”

A rosy blush stains his cheeks and he looks down at the ground, laughing that little self-deprecating laugh of his. It makes your heart dance to see him so happy, makes you want to wrap your arms around him and never let him go so that he knows how much you absolutely adore him—but you settle for an affectionate squeeze where your hands have come to rest on his biceps.

“I wanted to see you tonight because I won’t be here for Valentine’s Day... but I still really wanted to spend it with you,” he admits meekly.

If before your heart was dancing, it is now melting.

The dreaded ‘what are we’ talk has been lurking in the dark corners of every conversation you have with each other lately—at least, in your mind it has. What you have with Spencer is not easily defined, and near impossible to explain to your friends—you act like a couple, you go out on dates, he introduces you to his team like you’re his girlfriend without ever putting it into so many words—but this validation that your pseudo-relationship might be evolving is better than any flowers he could have gotten you (although the peonies he brought will look very nice on your bedside table.)

“Four whole days... what will I do without you?” you whisper, brushing a hand along his face, and your chest aches with the heavy truth of it—despite the fact that he often is gone for stretches about that length. They don’t ever start to feel shorter.

“Well, you can start by reading that copy of The Odyssey I annotated for you.”

“Depressing,” you admit. “And a little ominous, considering you’re about to embark on a hero’s journey.”

“I think you’ll like this one,” he smiles.

You chew on your bottom lip, looking up at him as you think.

“Give me something to look forward to,” you say, earnestly.

“I—well, honestly, I just really want to kiss you and I’ve wanted to for a long time now and, you know, if that’s something you’re maybe also interested in then we could, uh, figure out a time to—”

“You want to kiss me?”

“Wh—you couldn’t tell?” Spencer says, like he can’t believe it.

As if on reflex, you lunge up and capture his lips with your own. It obviously catches him by surprise, but when you lower from your tiptoes he follows you, pulling you in closer and holding your face in his hands.

It’s too natural, too right, to be exhilarating. There’s no rush of adrenaline—it's more like stepping into a hot bath or warming your freezing hands at a fire. Like pieces clicking into place. It’s a relief.

You breathe into it, letting more and more of yourself melt against him. He keeps coming back to you deeper and deeper like a rising tide, and you want more than anything to keep getting closer to him—but then he stops. He stays close enough for you to breathe his air, but dodges your kiss gently before supplanting it with a gentle one to the corner of your mouth.

“I really have to go,” he breathes, before moving away from your mouth to kiss your forehead and speak softly against your skin. “If I don’t leave now I’ll be here all night.”

Which is exactly what you want, and the implication does little to make you want him less. But you care about him too much to be so selfish.

At some point, his hands found their way into your hair, and you gently grab his wrists.

“Incentive for you to come home.”

Nearly three months since that night.

At first when he stopped answering texts, you’d assumed he just had too much going on down in Texas. Which you could understand—you knew how stressful this situation with his mother was.

Even when four days came and went without even an alert from him that he was back in town, you thought, okay, maybe he’s been called away on a case. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s disappeared because of his work. But even then, he’d at least text you enough information so that you would know he was alive. Now, radio silence.

So you tried not to be clingy. You tried to act like an adult, to focus on school and your life outside of Spencer, but when Tara Lewis cancelled your weekly meeting due to an “unforeseen work-related emergency”you called her immediately. Tara was something of a mentor, and it was she who had connected you and Spencer to begin with. You had met the other members of his team by that point, yes, but none who you knew as well as Tara.

When she had informed you that Spencer had been arrested in Mexico and was now facing prison time for murder, you laughed.

Laughed until you realized her end of the line was silent.

Realized it was not at all a joke.

In a catatonic state of tranquility, you asked her for more details. Beyond assuring you of his innocence, she couldn’t (or more likely, wouldn’t) provide them. Asked where he was now. Asked all the right things that made sense to ask.

Then you hung up and had a panic attack because Tara said something about 25 years and you saw Spencer evaporate from your future like an apparition.

Slowly, you felt him evaporating from your past, too. Those memories from the night he left, became visions of you swaying with a ghost. Holding nothing but light between your hands as you kissed the peony air of your apartment.

He doesn’t want to see you, she had said into the phone one night, her tinny voice cutting in and out. You’re not on his list of approved visitors.

“You asked him about me?” you had whispered, curled up on top of your made bed in the dark.

I tried. I’m sorry. I’ll call you when I know more.

All your days melded together like a muddied smear of paint. Suddenly you felt you had nothing to look forward to. No anchor, no goal. Yes, a PhD... and then what?

The only thing that punctuated one 24 hour period from the next was the time you spent crying because Spencer was in prison and he didn’t want to see you and by the looks of things you may never see him again. When you weren’t crying, you were thinking about how your life was a big cosmic joke. An unfortunate statistical anomaly that didn’t mean anything to anyone else, and that you couldn’t do anything about.

That copy of The Odyssey, which wasn’t even bound and instead was a thick stack of printer paper organized by a single black clip, became something of a manifesto for you—a tome that your poured over, reading and re-reading each note in the margins, each word beautiful and imbued with meaning because you knew Spencer had selected every single one specifically for you. You traced the letters reverently, because in a way this was the last thing he had said to you—about Lattimore’s faith to the original text, Merrill’s strict use of dactylic hexameter, the stylings of Wilson and Lombardo, and how he thought you would enjoy Hammond’s prose just as much as he did.

Day by day it was becoming more prophetic than fictional, and you allowed yourself to sink into madness. You would rather be a deluded zealot than be nothing at all.

He didn’t want to see you.

He might as well have been dead, for all that you were grieving him. And you started to hate him, because he wasn’t dead, but wouldn’t do you the kindness of proving it. Like a festering wound, scratched open day after day so as not to ever heal, you had to live knowing he was less than an hour away. So no, you weren’t exactly over it. You lived day by day, waiting for the occasional call from Tara to keep you updated on Spencer, but either she didn’t want to share much about how he was doing, or he had specifically barred her from doing so, because she was always sparse on the personal side of things. That thought actually lifted your spirits, because it meant he was at least acknowledging your existence in some tiny way.

But your routine was becoming more regular, and so you staid on top of your classes and your non-Reid related meetings with Tara once a week, and you learned to dip your toes into existential dread and the oily black pool of depression every night without ever fully submerging yourself. You learned hope, because it was pretty much all you had, and the BAU had confidence that they would get Spencer out one way or another so you did too.

So you didn’t really think about it when you missed a couple of calls from Tara some evening in May. You were preparing for finals and had way too much on your plate academically to think about anything else which was a welcome relief so you fully embraced it. I’ll call her back tomorrow, you think, as you clean up from dinner before going back to the living room where your textbooks and papers are completely covering every available surface. Maybe I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life after school, but I’ll be damned if I don’t even make it that far.

Hours later, well into the night, you’d all but forgotten about the calls. A knock at the door takes you a bit by surprise, and you frown as you stand again, tugging your Georgetown sweatshirt down over your shorts as you shuffle to the entrance of your apartment. You’re not expecting anyone, so you crack the door, peering around the edge of it.

And you couldn’t even consider trying to hide that shaky inhalation of dead air when you see Spencer standing on the other side.

Surely you’re hallucinating.

Surely this man in front of you who looks like he just got back from a day of work didn’t spend three months in prison pretending you didn’t exist.

He looks the same. Hair a bit longer, maybe—and gaunter even more than is normal for him. 

But it's him.

You can’t think about the apprehensive look on his face—you can’t think about the impossibility of him being here. You can’t think at all. Without your explicit permission, your body surges forward into his, and he’s real, and alive, and warm, and he is an anachronism in the hallway as he accepts everything you pour into the embrace, doesn’t flinch when you move your arms from around his waist to loop around his neck and back to his waist again with crushing force because you just can’t get him close enough.

“I’m sorry,” Spencer mutters into your hair, I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry, he keeps saying, rubbing your back as you try to find a solid grip on the sleek material of his suit—try to gather all the pieces of him, already afraid he might fall apart and float away again.

“You—dis—disappeared,” you hiccup after an eternity, pulling away enough to look up at his pretty face. Tears blur your vision and darken the front of his jacket, bending the florescent lights so they form a kind of halo above his head.

Through the surreal haze you can see his throat bob.

“I know.”

He knows?

He knows?

You scoff.

“You have no fucking idea, Spencer. What the fuck is wrong with you? I—I'm—”

The hot anger is such a relief for a second, boiling the oceans of your despair into a wrathful, scorching fog, but as soon as you try to tell him how you feel, the barbed wire cuts into your throat again. You shove him away, skin burning where his hands had been.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, hands hanging uselessly at his side. There’s that kicked puppy look about him—and it’s familiar, but now there’s more damage. You don’t know anything about his time in prison, you haven’t heard a damn thing, but beneath the glassy desperation in his eyes there is an unfathomable void that seems to be preventing him from being fully present—and you realize for the first time that he is different.

It chills you.

Before, you and Spencer shared everything. There wasn’t one part of his internal machinations that you didn’t understand, nothing you kept from each other. But as you study him now from a few feet away, you realize there might as well be a yawning chasm between the two of you.

He is so different.

Those eyes look deeper. No gears turning just behind the slashes of gold and brown anymore—only an endless dark corridor that goes places you will never go.

Gone is the perpetual boyish up-turn at the corner of his lips that always made him look slightly vacant in a way that you found incredibly amusing. Something you had been so fond of, even if you teased him.

He seems to have aged ten years—if not physically, then in demeanor. And now you feel like a little kid throwing a tantrum.

You cross your arms, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.

You’re embarrassed. And pissed. And relieved. Everything is worse and better. You want to fall back into his arms, but you have been jarred by the revelation that this might not be the same Spencer. It might not be the same relationship. You have no idea where you stand.

He says your name gently, with so much familiarity you’re briefly jerked into the past. It makes you wish you could look up to find him as he was three months ago. Wish this was just a bad dream. But that’s not fair to him.

“Sorry,” you mutter, studying the grey carpet fibers instead of looking at him.

“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says immediately, “you’re right. I don’t—” he clears his throat— “I’m being incredibly selfish. I shouldn’t have just shown up, I’ll just—I'll leave. I’m sorry.”

A silent moment passes.

You don’t look up as he turns and swiftly begins to move down the hall toward the stairway, leaving as quickly and silently as he had come, like a few bars of a song sighed in and away on a fleeting breeze.

Your bare feet are concretely planted, imagining him jogging down the steps and speed-walking away from your building—

And suddenly you’re sprinting after him, feeling like you might puke because Spencer was just here and you let him go again—and even though you’re still so mad and confused and hurt, the realization that he is leaving again makes the entire building spin and lurch.

“Wait!” You yell, almost wiping out as you run down the stairs and whip around corners in your slippery fucking socks. “Please, wait!”

The lobby is already empty as you spill out into it, and cold dread tightens around your neck like a fist as you shoulder your way through the double doors and right into Spencer.

“Please don’t leave again, you just—I'm sorry, I really need you to not go—” you blabber, lachrymose once more, gripping onto his forearms for dear life.

“I’m not going,” he breathes shakily. “I tried to leave because I think you were right and maybe I should and maybe it would be better for you but I can’t.”

“You can’t,” you agree, more sob than spoken word. He cups your jaw, then your cheeks, wiping tears and brushing away hair like he can’t figure out how to hold enough of you between his hands. The wild kaleidoscope of his eyes, bright and alive and real as he scans you desperately captures your attention enough to slow the tears to a trickle. He notices this and stares back, entranced.

A silent agreement is made, or maybe an inevitable fate is accepted—either way, something was set in motion three months ago and it matters to see it through. Spencer kisses you and you’re ready for it. You don’t need slow or tender. You need to feel how he feels. You need to know what he knows.

You sling your arms around his neck and he pulls you closer until you almost tip backward, chasing the bruising kiss even as you regain your footing. You want to drink him in and you do your best, breathing deeply as he kisses you deeper, backing you inside and toward the elevator.

“Is this okay?” he manages, only after blindly reaching for and mashing the up button on the wall panel.

Ideally it wouldn’t happen like this, but the world you live in obviously isn’t ideal and your personal situations as they coincide are far from ideal, so this is how it has to happen. But it’s hard to explain, and you’d rather not admit that this is so far from what you wanted for both of you and follow up with the fact that despite that you need him like you need water. So you don’t say a word as the metal doors slide open promptly. Instead you pull him in and let him press you to the chrome wall as he hits your floor button, and that very hand comes back to grab your ass like you didn’t think Spencer Reid capable of. It almost aches as his fingers dig into the flesh, but it’s a good ache because it means he’s real and he’s there.

You gasp as he hitches your leg up, arching into him. The shorts that you’re wearing leave very little to the imagination to begin with, but they become downright indecent like this.

Quickly the elevator stops and the doors hiss open. You don’t hesitate to pull Spencer by the hand down the hall. When you notice you left your door wide open, you don’t even care. Neither does he, apparently—once you’re inside he slams it shut, flipping the deadbolt while his eyes are glued to you like you’re already naked. Now Spencer is shameless in the way he drags his eyes over every curve, every place your clothes and hair are disheveled from his touch and eye-fucks you so obviously it makes your face warm. Three months ago Spencer would have at least been bashful about it when he met your eyes again, but this Spencer is far from apologetic as he pins you with his burning gaze once more. His hand stays stuck to the door like he’s holding himself back.

“Is this what you want?”

There’s an undercurrent of sorrow below the gravely arousal, like this isn’t what he wanted for the two of you either. But you’re both at the mercy of fate. This is all you have, and it might be all you can do for each other anymore. So you don’t need to say that, because he understands.

“Yeah. Yes, this is what I want.”

For just a second more he watches you from his place by the door, and there’s an unexpected softness to it. He looks at you the way he would have looked at you before. Like as long as he stays there he can entertain the idea of being that person again.

Need wins out quickly, though, and he surges forward. Immediately you’re caught in the riptide of him, helpless as he kisses you all the way to your bedroom.

He’s never been in here before. You find yourself glad it’s relatively clean—one of the pastimes you’d picked up in his absence was keeping everything tidy. It was something you could control.

A lamp glows at your bedside. You lean against the footboard of your bed, hands timidly behind your back and suddenly shy to have in him in your intimate space. Both of you set aside the heaving desperation long enough to catch your breaths, and for him to scan the room like he too is being forced to reconcile with the innate and unexpected intimacy of the moment. He cuts a harsh, dark gash in your sweetly decorated bedroom, radiating something wild and powerful and unsure of himself like a chained bull as he takes in the soft, pale bedding, the paintings and photos taped to the walls, the woven rug and the sheer drapery. His breathing slows as he studies it all—eyes eventually catching on something behind you. Looking is unnecessary. You’re sure he’s spotted the dried peonies in their ceramic vase. Or maybe the now worn stack of papers that is his Odyssey, marked up and soft around the edges from constant flipping-through.

Then Spencer looks at you, and that softness seeps in again. Along with something like... fear? Grief?

In some other universe your first time with Spencer is sweet and giggly and kind and he smiles at the decor in your room and looks around with wonder because it’s another way he gets to know you. It’s a different way to learn you from the inside.

You sense that he’s caught in between universes right now as well, painfully aware of what he would have given you that he can’t anymore.

He breathes your name like an apology, and foolishly you let a second go by in which you think he might offer you one. But he doesn’t. Not with his words, anyway. His eyes tell a different story.

“It’s fine,” you say unprompted on a whispered exhale, then a little louder as you push off the footboard, crossing the space until your hands are on his chest. You focus on his tie, not making eye contact as you rush to undo it. “It’s fine.”

He lets you do this for a few seconds before finally covering your trembling hands with his own. You still can’t meet his eyes.

“We don’t have to do—”

“No! No, please. I want to. I need—I need us to be okay.”

“Hey,” he murmurs, catching your chin and forcing you to look at him. “We are okay. Me and you are fine.”

It’s a pretty thought, but it’s not true. In fact, it’s a hideous and abject affront to the truth. Sure, maybe you’re fine in comparison to last week. Maybe anything feels fine compared to an eight by six cell. But it would be impossible for you and Spencer, for your relationship, whatever that relationship may be, to be fine. It’s especially impossible for him to make that claim, after all he did or rather didn’t do while he was gone. What you need is for him to stay anyway. What you need is to find a way to be with him, to exist with him, even when you are so clearly not fine.

“I just need you to stay,” you whisper, and he’s already nodding, wide-eyed like he’d do anything for you. You ignore all the bitter venom rising in your throat. You pretend this isn’t all happening after he cut you out of his life with a dirty switchblade. Instead you focus on his hands on yours, the familiar smell of him, which invites you to let go of each and every thought and worry. He must’ve showered before coming here, you realize. How long has he been out? What happened? 

“Okay. Okay, I can stay. What else can I do? How do I make it better?”

You sniffle and look back down.

“You can untie that for me.”

He hesitates, then nods some more, fingers working under yours to undo the tie around his neck.

“Okay.”

A moment goes by and after that final whispered word, the tension begins to build again. Spencer senses it in the way your fingertips linger on his chest and you step even closer, dragging them down to his belt. The metallic sound of it unbuckling, despite being your own doing, still manages to flip your stomach. How many times have you pictured this? When was the first time you realized you wanted it? You’re sure you haven’t stopped wanting it even once since then.

Spencer tosses the tie away and is shrugging off his jacket now, then before you see it coming he’s kissing you again, ducking down to do it. He feels taller this close up, and especially in your bedroom, where he just seems rather out of place. But you want him here. God, you want him here.

You break the kiss, forced to look down as you fumble with his belt.

“Sorry,” you gasp, embarrassed by your lack of dexterity. The light is barely sufficient to see what you’re doing, especially when he’s wearing black on black and your eyes are still bleary.

“You’re okay,” he assures you, and it’s so Spencer a fresh round of nerves electrifies the tips of your fingers. That thing is happening—the thing you’d hoped to avoid if you hadn’t lost momentum partway through, where you’re allowing your actual feelings for him to get in the way rather than getting swept up in the pathos of the moment and letting everything be easy and mindless. “Here, can I help you?”

But he doesn’t actually wait for an answer before he’s finishing off the belt for you, tugging it loose from his hips till it’s a leather coil in his hands. Your fingers brush the material and he lets you take it as if it were your prize. It’s heavier than you thought it’d be, and you just feel the weight of it in your hands for a moment, your dropped head brushing his chest.

You have a terrible feeling that if you do this now, it doesn’t mean everything will be alright. Because it can’t just go back to normal. Spencer has told you nothing of what must be an enormous trauma, and you haven’t spoken about it at all, but you sincerely doubt that after this he’s going to be ready to just jump into that committed relationship the two of you had been toying with for months before his absence. You’re almost... scared of him, now. Scared of where he’s been and what he’s endured—things you’re sure you couldn’t have taken. What that does to a person, you can’t imagine. He seems so solid and real in front of you now—but you know that’s not always enough. Maybe you’re just scared that somehow whatever he’s been through will have made him care for you less. That you were too far removed from the whole ordeal, and now you’ll never understand. If you could understand, maybe you could fix it for him. Maybe he’d stick around.

Still—even if you do end up pushing him further away in the long run—won't it have been worth it to have had him so completely, even just once?

You toss the belt to the ground, compressing all of these very complicated thoughts and feelings into a few seconds so short he can’t ask you any questions about them. Instead you find his top button, and just as you manage to undo it with relative ease he’s gently grabbing your wrists. You look up at him, immediately surrendering.

“If we’re going to do this I need you to relax a little bit.”

Gears grind in your chest. You feel need and anxiety comingling in every square inch of your body. It’s a sick buzz—a high on an empty stomach.

“I can’t,” you admit.

“Yeah, you can,” Spencer gently disagrees, slowly lowering your hands. When he’s sure you’re not going to try ripping his clothes off again, he releases, and his eyes lower to the zipper of your hoodie. His fingers follow, warm against the soft triangle of revealed skin at your chest as he grips the small piece of metal between barely shaking fingers. “You can.”

You match his eyeline, breathing shallowly and watching as he slowly drags the zipper down. You wonder if that sound has haunted his fantasies the way the sound of his belt has haunted yours. If he’s seen this hoodie on you and wondered what’s underneath, staring at you and daydreaming during movie night with you none the wiser.

Both of you have your eyes glued to the span of skin as the zipper parts. Spencer stalls with the zipper at your sternum, just below the band of your bra.

Right. No shirt.

You look up and find his eyes already on you, tinged with a curious kind of humor.

“I wasn’t expecting guests.”

The words come out shy. Spencer’s chuckle has its own nervous airy quality as he resumes tugging on your zipper, leaning down until your noses bump.

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

Then he kisses you again, a little sweeter now. Sweet enough to give you butterflies and for them to flutter right out of your stomach and spill from your lips in a little whimper against his.

It comes as a surprise when he pushes the fabric from your shoulders without looking or asking. Not that you’d have said no—you're just underprepared for how assertive he is in this foreign context.

Left just in your flimsy shorts and your thin bra, you feel quite exposed—but Spencer’s hands are as demanding and hungry as his mouth. They skim up your sensitive sides and sweep lower, suggesting less proper placement over your ass and pulling at your bottoms until you gently put a stop to their wandering.

“Wait. We’re... we’re uneven.”

It’s a struggle to get any words out at all when he keeps chasing your lips, nipping at you like he physically can’t stand not kissing you, but they catch his attention and he laughs airily, pulling back to let his gaze pour over your less clothed form. It lingers and catches and lights you up everywhere it touches, drops of heat soaking into your skin and making you feel all fuzzy and needy.

“We are,” he acknowledges, tone low and colored with the faintest smile. “You’re a lot prettier without your clothes on than I am.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The challenge comes immediately and thoughtlessly. Spencer’s golden eyes flash up to yours. He’s breathing a little harder than usual.

“You want me to show you what I mean?”

If that means getting him naked, then yes, absolutely.

You nod, but rather than immediately stripping, he takes your hand and holds his own open next to it. A thick pink scar bisects some pretty significant palmistry lines, but you don’t mention that. Instead you swallow—your thoughts, your words, your nausea.

“That’s new.”

You wonder how you hadn’t noticed it earlier.

He nods.

“A lot is new.”

It sounds almost like he’s challenging you—there's a kind of tremulous force in his voice, despite the perpetual softness there, like he’s inviting you to say it’s ugly. And you realize he’s referring to more than just the glowing scar cutting an asteroid trail against the flesh of him palm. The scars he obtained in prison must form a constellation over his body.

“I don’t care. I wanna see you.”

Spencer swallows, cupping your face with the scarred hand once more. You can’t feel it against your cheek but you know it hasn’t gone away.

“I’m sure you think you do,” he permits, and that’s where the conversation ends for the moment—with his hand on your face and his lips back on yours. “For now why don’t you let me worry about you?”

Obediently, you breathe, “okay.”

This is, for whatever reason, amusing to him. The brief levity dies as quick as it comes like a snuffed-out brush fire as soon as he lets his hands fall back down to your hips.

“I want... I want to give you slow. But...”

But slow is for people who didn’t lose three months of their life. Slow is for people who don’t know what it’s like to be starving. Slow is not for the desperate.

You understand the feeling.

“I don’t need slow.”

You’ll let him use you up like quick-burning fuel if that’s what he needs. You’ll go as fast and as bright and as hot as he tells you.

“But you want slow,” he murmurs, a secret acknowledged into your own waiting mouth. You’d keep it there forever. You could be the object he hides his soul in. “I know you do. You deserve to get what you want.”

“I can go fast. I want whatever you can give me.”

Spencer’s shuddering exhale is like a drug, dizzying as you inhale it and your eyes flutter at the high, pressed head-to-head with him. For so long you’ve needed him so badly. It’s overwhelming to have him now, all over you. If only your walls could breathe him in the way you are, if this room could remember what it feels like to hold him the way you will, if any inanimate object could bear witness to how you’ll give yourself, any part of yourself, over to him, so willingly.

“I’m going to try.” Spencer’s voice is hoarse as he walks backward to the bed, taking you by the hips as he goes. “I want to do it right. I want to do this the way I... the way I imagined it, before...”

Now he’s sitting, and you’re standing between his legs as he finds the clasp of your bra and undoes it, his fingers a comforting pressure where they ghost down the slope of your back. Your heart is pounding at the confession, at the way his tongue darts over his bottom lip and his fingertips journey back up to your straps, looking up at you with haloed irises as if he’d find anything other than the most dangerous kind of smoldering devotion in your eyes—the kind cult-leaders seek and spend years nurturing, and he’d earned with a mere brush over your bare skin.

The fabric slides down your arms, and as it falls to the floor, you watch something like despair flash-flood his eyes. It is a deep, distinctly human grief. The ineffable kind where something is almost too beautiful; so perfect it offends the mortal senses because it should be permanent, but nothing is, and the clash of divine beauty with unstoppable time which oxidizes copper and covers marble with vine is almost as grotesque as metal rending delicate flesh. It is the grief that drove the first poet to write and the first parents to press their baby’s painted hands to the walls of a cave. It is the desire to do the impossible—to capture ephemeral perfection and make it eternal, and the knowledge that it is hopeless. You recognize it because you’ve felt it for him.

“I thought about you all the time,” he whispers, doesn’t bother calling you beautiful but you don’t mind because he’s telling you with his hands and his eyes and the waver of his voice. “When I was gone, I thought about you—”

You’re just as quiet, just as soft.

“Don’t, Spencer.”

He doesn’t get to tell you about when he was gone. Not now. Not after he acted like you didn’t exist.

“Okay.” He swallows the things he’d wanted to tell you like you choked on the things you needed to tell him for three months. “I’m sorry.”

But his hands—his hands are perfect over your waist and his lips are perfect where they kiss your ribs like they’re his homeland. You could forgive a thousand wrongs for each kiss he puts to your skin. Light from the full moon stretches over the room like a blessing from the cosmos, and you have every intention of making the most of that gift, how the silver gilds the planes of his face and highlights curls like they were carved, and invites you to search for something in each shadow.

Some of his kisses land over the sensitive skin of your breasts though you doubt he has much intention or that there is any sort of end-goal with the trail he blazes—in fact, you have to root your hand in his hair and pull gently back when he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s making you wait again. His eyes are glassy and cheeks slightly pinkened—you weren’t expecting this wave of fondness to knock you on your ass but here you are, falling all over again.

“You don’t have to go that slow.”

A slow smile splits the heart of his mouth at your bashful tone and he’s emboldened to bring his hands higher for a moment, thumbs brushing particularly delicate though not downright indecent spots. Nonetheless, your breath catches.

“Impatient girl,” he scolds, and though it’s lighthearted it still inspires heat to dance across your face. Oh, I think I’ve been plenty patient, you itch to say, but you bite it back because it’s only sad and true and unkind.

Still, he gives you the beginning of what you want, really only the tip of the enormous iceberg that is your desire for him, by slipping his thumbs into the waistband of your shorts and tugging them down. His hands slide up the fronts of your thighs, tracing the trim of your underwear, and you’d swear he’s not even breathing. The moment one of his hand loops behind your knee and pulls forward until it’s pressed to the mattress and you’re half-kneeling, half standing, desire begins to truly cloud your mind. Manhandling never seemed like Spencer’s style, but when paired with how softly he reveals your hip, pulling gently down on the fabric of your underwear just to admire you up close, you don’t mind it.

More kisses are littered over your stomach, and he takes you by surprise a second time with a quick maneuver landing you on your back and him on top of you.

“I wasn’t doing you justice with my imagination,” he murmurs against your mouth. “I couldn’t have known.”

“Couldn’t have known what?” you pant as he shamelessly digs his fingers into the plush of your ass. You almost hope it bruises.

“How pretty you would be,” he coos like he means it, and you dissolve, slipping through his fingers like sand in an hourglass. “You were holding out on me.”

It’s a tease, not at all serious, but you manage to hit him with a, “Was not, asshole,” and he chuckles, placating your little hurt with another sticky kiss, and you get another disorienting glimpse of some other timeline where you’re both a little less damaged. Where it’s a little easier.

But in this timeline, his touch becomes starving and ragged and urgent, and you accept the drag of his thumb up your thigh and between your legs, gasping when he runs his knuckles up the center of you. This touch is metal on screeching metal. It does not pretend to be anything more than what it is—brute, powerful, executed to elicit sensation. You get the sense that Spencer’s never touched anyone this honestly, and while you do envy the girls who got to have him gentler, you’ll take this as the compliment that it is. A kind of vulnerability that is nearing primal.

His lips, though—always his lips—are kind when they brush and land on your skin guided by some invisible map. A dip down your neck and chest and then a plunge, his tongue dragging over your hips, chasing the fabric of your underwear as he almost pulls it off and then reroutes, making room for himself between your legs and pushing lace aside to mark the hinge of your inner and upper-most thigh. Your chest heaves and you don’t dare move for fear he’ll stop leaving signs of himself on your body and you won’t be able to reassure yourself that it was real and he was here and it was not another dream.

Because something in you knows, if only consciously recognizing it for the first time now, that he will disappear again. That this may be your only chance.

The desire to make the ephemeral eternal. An impossibility.

He’s clearly losing himself to something, eyes shutting blissfully. You wonder when the last time he let his guard down even a  little was. You’re okay with being the thing he gets lost in, even if you’re not exactly okay with him—something you are becoming more acutely aware of as each touch makes a part of you want to cry. Maybe you still have some things in common. A strange pain that doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to you, for one thing.

You slam back into your body as his nose nudges against you through fabric, and his lips catch on cotton as he drags himself up, eventually settling a kiss against the little bow at the waist of your underwear. There he stays, eyes closed, mouth pressed to you.

“Is this okay?”

You swallow, buzzing. Is this really what he wants? After everything?

“You don’t have to...”

“But is it okay with you?”

Nothing more than an airy whisper, you reply, “Yes, if that’s what you want.”

Being emotional at this point seems wrong, but it’s difficult to ignore the fact that you have thought about this before and it’s finally happening but it’s not exactly as you’d imagined it. There is an indelible sadness to it, to the way he’s so hungry for you because he’s been deprived, to the desperation with which he touches you because he’s had everything taken from him.

For a moment, before he tugs your underwear down, he pauses, and you wonder if he’s freezing one moment in time, this moment, and grieving all the other ways it could’ve been, and accepting that this is the way it is going to be. You are.

These higher realms of thought abandon you as he finally pulls the last barrier down your legs and encourages you to spread them further. You don’t have time or energy to be embarrassed, not even by his staring, or the way his eyes dart up to yours and back down again, wide and shining, as if to say, have you seen yourself? Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?

All you feel is the lack of him on you, the pull to have him closer so strong it’s almost sickening because he could be gone at any second. Maybe he understands that because he doesn’t waste anymore time before he’s kissing the most sensitive part of you. The drag of his tongue has you loosing a shuddering cry.

His mouth wanders, making connections you wouldn’t have realized the value of until you feel them on your skin. Your hips buck as he traces you and you’re unable to stop yourself from tangling your hands in his hair. Speech fails you—hell, you can hardly breathe as you watch his with a furrowed brow and parted lips, only expelling air from your lungs in the form of little cries and gasps and failing to hold your hips down to the bed.

The tip of his tongue teases around your entrance and he catches your leg as your foot rises off the bed, slinging it over his shoulder and consuming you more fervently until you have no choice but to moan though you’ve never been one for theatrics. Nobody has done this for you like he’s doing it for you. Locks of hair fall in front of his face and you hold them back for him, shuddering as he shifts his weight and presses the tip of his finger to your cunt.

“Ah—please,” you manage, your first words since he started. Spencer groans against you and the sound is so wonderfully unexpected, so much better than in your dreams. You cant your hips up in further invitation, chirping as he takes it, pushing two fingers into you at once. Your eyes screw shut and you bite back a whine at the slight stretch, unconsciously writhing your hips either to get further away or take him deeper, you’re not sure.

Spencer pulls back, kissing your hips and thighs and pumping his fingers very slowly as you adjust.

“’M sorry,” you pant, “it’s been awhile, I...”

“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says like it’s simple, his own breath coming quicker. “How’re you feeling? Need me to stop?”

“No! No, it feels really good, I feel good.”

He holds your burning gaze, matching it with his own, and his hair is tousled and his cheeks are flushed as he continues to move his hand.

“Yeah?”

“...Yeah.”

This little show of obedience, of call and response, has him smiling before he occupies his mouth with something else once more. It’s a different smile than you’re used to from him, but you decide you don’t at all mind it.

Like that, with his tongue and fingers working tirelessly, your orgasm comes on quickly. The feeling is rare but not entirely foreign, and in that brief moment of utter disconnect between your brain and reality, of sheer white-hot pleasure, you don’t feel you’re missing out on anything at all. How could you be, when you are here and Spencer is here and for a moment all your neurons are lighting up and flashing neon? How could there be anything more to life than the searing feeling of him slowly withdrawing his fingers from you, than your hips between his hands like he’s cradling the world, and his lips, indiscriminate with where they kiss because every part of you is worthy of attention?

You’re reeling, and your legs are gelatinous as he so affectionately sucks the darkest mark yet onto your inner thigh like a parting gift, like he’s signing his trembling work. If you could clamp your legs shut around the almost painful aftershocks you would, but he’s climbing back up your body, so all you can do is wriggle against him and release delayed, stunted little moans. He stops to kiss your neck before he makes it to your mouth and drinks down all your sounds until you’re gentle and pliant for him like you haven’t been yet.

His voice is soft and sympathetic when he speaks. “Better?”

Wordlessly you nod, both comforted and unsettled by how well he knows you. What, exactly, has been made better, you’re not sure. Not trust. You don’t trust him anymore. Something cheaper, but temporarily effective. A sense of permanence, maybe, however fleeting it may be. You’ve completed something with him now, and he’s still here, still sweet.

He looks into your eyes, then, for a moment—and there is just enough light in the room for you to tell yourself that the shadows dancing there as he looks at you are love.

They morph as you watch into haunting, wild hunger. Pained even now.

He sits up abruptly and so do you, scooting back against your headboard and pulling your knees to your chest to protect your pounding heart as Spencer takes you in with darting eyes and quick breaths. His fingers find the collar of his shirt and he begins to unbutton.

“I need you to remember it’s all going to heal.”

He swallows, and you hardly have the wherewithal to study the way he unbuttons his shirt, a way he exists in the world that you had previously not been privy to. The words are too distracting.

“What?”

Sometimes he reminds you of a deer, with those big brown eyes that can’t help betraying anxiety. Moreso in those old pictures he’d shown you from his early days at the BAU—but it shines through occasionally even now. It’s reassuring to know that something inside of his has remained soft.

“Just...” his fingers don’t stop at their task, and you come to the disturbing realization that his knuckles are bruised. “Please don’t freak out, alright?”

Your mouth goes dry, eyes glued to the lengthening span of revealed skin.

And before he even has his shirt fully undone, something isn’t right.

He’s like a Pollack of bruises—starbursts and watercolor blots of discoloration blooming over his side and stomach.

You’re glad the light is off for two reasons: one, being that you don’t think you could handle the bruising in all its glory, and two, you hope the look of horror painted on your face is at least partially obscured from Spencer.

But you can’t. You simply don’t have the gas in the tank to freak out, as he’d said—at least not externally. Those bruises shouldn’t be there, but 96 days is a long time to be gone.

You drag your eyes back to his—nervous, deeply insecure and mistrustful. A deer. Just like those pictures of a 24 year old Spencer in an FBI jacket that was too big for him.

It’s enough to have you scooting on your knees across the mattress to him. Those big eyes stay glued to you as you draw near, falling as you carefully push open his shirt, cautious not to bump any tender spots as it falls to the bed. A flash of white gauze wrapped around his forearm that makes your stomach flip. How? You want to ask. Why?

He doesn’t seem to know what you’re going to do, and neither do you, until you’re grabbing his hands, bruised knuckles and all, and just... holding them for a minute.

“I lost weight,” he says quietly, as if that’s the most shocking thing about his current appearance, though it is noticeable.

“You’re still pretty.”

He smiles at this—a true Spencer Reid smile. Flattened lips, eyes tinged silver with sadness, voice quiet and anxious and wavering.

“I didn’t have a lot to spare.”

A moment goes by.

“I’m not going to ask you about them,” you promise, though you care so much and you want to know but you already understand that he won’t want to tell you.

Another moment. It doesn't surprise you to watch the shiny vulnerability in his eyes to freeze over completely. But he squeezes your hands once in thanks, and you know it’s still the same Spencer.

“Lie down.”

Oh. Right.

This.

You do as he says, taking a deep breath to try and exhale the concern twisting your stomach like a poison. Somehow your room feels so unfamiliar, so new with him in it. Even the whorls on your ceiling look different as you study them, trying to time the pattern of your breathing with the pattern of the paint and plaster and not let the sound of Spencer further undressing quicken your heartrate too much.

Soon he’s coaxing your legs apart again, reverently, and kneeling between them, studying every part of you—lingering not on the parts you’d expect. He traces the scar on your knee with his thumb, follows a line down your thigh to the freckle on your hip. The scrutiny is unnerving and warms you everywhere. Perhaps he senses the microscopic clench of your thighs as you imagine pushing them together, if he weren’t in the way.

“You alright?” He asks, still stroking your hip. Tender again. It’s so hard to keep up.

“I...”

Suddenly your heart beat is a deafening echo in your own ears. The tide of your breathing is too powerful, too in and out and whooshing, leaving you always too empty or too full but never comfortable.

Maybe he’s changed, and he’s harder to know now, but he is the same Spencer. He is the Spencer you’d fallen in love with. The hard part is knowing that now you may never get a chance to tell him that. You don’t know if he’d be able to hear it.

There are things you can’t have with him anymore. Not now, at least. Maybe not ever. But you can have this. It will be different, but you’d rather him be different and here than the same and only in your memory.

You swallow.

“I’m good.”

Tangling your hand in his hair once more, you pull him down into a kiss. It’s hesitant, at first—maybe he can taste your thoughts, where they’d been balancing just on the tip of your tongue. But the uncertainty fades and he kisses you deeper, harder, in a way that is hard to keep up with. You like the messy overwhelm of his lips, teeth, tongue. That’s the only way he knows how to want you.

When you go to wrap your leg around his waist he catches it, running his hands over the soft plush of your thigh. The hard line of him presses against you like memory foam and you gasp and he breathes it in deeply as your brain short-circuits, as you realize this is really going to happen, that you’re going to have him like you’ve never had him before and in ways you’ve only imagined and immediately felt ashamed for.

“Spencer,” you whisper. He ducks to leave open-mouthed kisses along your neck and your eyes flutter shut, craning your neck but not losing sight of your objective as you reach down blindly. When you find what you’re looking for he freezes, groans against your neck at the same time as you breathe the tiniest whimper. Just in your hand he feels impossible, hot and imposing and hard. Your heart palpitates.

Without thinking, you angle your hips up and encourage him closer, until the tip of him is smearing through your folds, and you both go utterly silent like the breath had been stolen right from your lungs. The moment crystallizes, time around you hardening like preserved amber to keep you frozen there forever.

And then he rolls his hips, catching the underside of his cock on the crux of you, and then he does it again, and you choke out a moan and so does he, and it’s beyond perfect—it's nirvana, more than you could ever have conceived of, with his weight pressing you into the mattress, arms caging you in, his heavy breaths hot against your neck and vice versa as you twine together like serpents on a rod, your foot floating in the air as you widen your legs to make more room for him.

And you’re not even fucking yet.

“Oh my god,” you whine, just for him, barely audible under the heavy cloak of night, the thickened air in your bedroom and the sound of panting and fabric shifting. It’s like your heart is trying to reach through your chest to his own where they’re pressed together—that is how hard it’s beating.

Spencer only breathes a long, low curse and shifts so he can grasp himself. Your fingers drift down the shaft of him as he slots himself at your entrance, notching half an inch in and you hold your breath, and you brace yourself—and then he’s kissing you again, but gentler this time. Reassuring. You soften, you can’t not, releasing all your air in a soft gust through your nose, and then he’s pushing in.

Your lips part at the stretch as it fuzzes your mind, but he stays right there, nose pressed to your nose, lips ghosting over your own. He’s not going anywhere, you think, and you’re glad for it, when it burns ever so slightly, and the tiniest whine escapes your open mouth.

“Shh,” he soothes immediately, low and soft, only fractionally louder than you had been. “You’re okay.”

Spencer. Your Spencer.

For a moment, you’re living in that alternate universe. The kinder one. The flash of pain you feel then has nothing to do with the way he’s opening you up.

This is the closest you have ever been, and in some strange way, the furthest apart.

Together, fingers brushing, you guide him until he settles at not quite your deepest point. You can feel that he’s not giving you everything yet, but you’re okay with that, as you adjust to the full feeling. Spencer again senses your desire to close your legs against the deep intrusion, and gives you the best he can by encouraging you to wrap your legs around him.

“Good girl,” he whispers tenderly, nudging at your jaw with his nose and dragging kisses along the ridge of it. Your stomach flips at the moniker and your brain turns to warm sludge as your eyes flutter shut. It makes you feel all light-headed and you flutter around him. Spencer chuckles into the junction of your neck and shoulder and the vibrations send a chill down your arching spine. “I thought you might like that one.”

“Mhm.”

“Mhm. How are you? You okay?”

“’M ready.”

“You’re ready?” His tone is dripping sarcasm and faux-disbelief as he pulls back the slightest bit only to push right back in deeper, this time. Your toes curl, one thigh sliding higher up his waist as you cling to him.

“Fuck,” you manage, a pitiful, high pitched curse tossed to the wind. He echoes the sentiment.

“Oh, my god,” he groans, continuing with that slow pace, “you feel so good, angel.”

You grapple at his back, searching for purchase as your brow knits. “Faster.”

This inspires another breathy chuckle, but he obliges, and you cry out softly. It’s almost unreal, your head buried against his neck, drunk on his scent and the drag of him like a shock felt in the far reaches of your body, again and again.

There’s nothing you can say that will accurately demonstrate what you’re feeling, so you elect not to speak, to remain silent and try to get a grip on this cacophony of sensation and emotion. But it’s too much to be alone with. You feel you have to get it out, to seek understanding. You can’t do it alone.

“Spencer.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t know...” the sentence trails off into a gentle keen. He moves to kiss you, speaking against your lips.

“You don’t know?”

Shyly you shake your head. Spencer sighs wistfully.

“Do you know how much I missed you?”

It’s like he can sense your need for comfort. For something grounding.

And while this topic was off-limits earlier—you're softer now. The stone walls that form your boundaries have been chipped away and lowered.

Spencer continues unprompted.

“I thought about you every day. Every night while I was falling asleep. You were always on my mind, angel girl.”

You whine. Whether it’s pleasure or distress is anyone’s guess—including your own.

“You were gone so long,” you whisper, eyes shut.

At this, Spencer slows again, and the tension that was building settles back to a simmer.

“I know. I wish I could—I wish I could change that. But I’m here, okay? I’m right here with you.”

Then he makes sure you feel every last inch, and it takes your breath away. If your thoughts were any more coherent, they’d be something along the lines of: but for how long? How long until you leave again?

“You’re here.”

You say it like a mantra, once out loud, and then again and again in your head, timed with every clash of your hips. With each repetition he becomes more real. Every little ache, every tingling, head-emptying brush against that most sensitive spot inside proves to you that he could not be any closer. This can’t be faked. It can’t be another dream to wake up in tears from.

“You’re here,” you gasp as it hits you, as it truly sinks in.

“I’m here,” he breathes.

There’s so much you want to say—three months of words you need him to hear, of things you need to talk to him about, things you need to yell at him for and things you can only say crying in his arms and things you can only say laughing or whispering or drunk or half-asleep—and in this moment you can’t manage any of it. Every word condenses into one drop of salt water, drifting away from your eye and down your cheek. Spencer doesn’t tell you to stop crying. He only kisses the tear away, and murmurs I’m here I’m here I’m here over and over again against your skin until he’s not even speaking it out loud anymore. But you feel it. With every brush of his lips, every breath, every movement, you feel it.

Soon he’s adjusting his angle, gradually picking up the pace but retaining that unforgiving depth, and your nails bite into the skin of his back as your jaw drops. Spencer hisses, pressing impossibly closer.

“I’m sorry!” you squeak.

“Do it again.”

“Wh—what?”

“Please,” he begs, low and hot against your jaw, just beneath your ear. “Do it again, honey.”

Honey.

You’d do anything for him if it meant he calls you that again.

When he shifts his weight to one arm and reaches down between your bodies to play with your aching clit in exactly the right way, you don’t really have a choice. You arch and moan wantonly enough to feel embarrassed as your nails scratch down his back. At the same time he’s making noises of his own, and you almost feel guilty for marking him up like this only you think he likes it. The most perfect and troubling tension is building in your core, so taut you almost fear the inevitable rebound when it snaps. But you’re driven to be exactly what Spencer needs right now, and to let him try and be what you need. Even if it scares you. Even if you’re not sure how.

Spencer groans, head tucked to the bend of your shoulder. “I’m not gonna last.”

Any response you might’ve been about to muster is annihilated by a sudden, deep bolt of pleasure.

“’M gonna cum,” you mewl like it’s a secret.

“Are you?” he asks, coming up breathless. If your eyes were open, you’re sure you’d see him above you.

“Mhm.”

“Look at me. Look at me.”

It is unmistakably a command—one you fight to follow.

You cry out as you meet the intensity of his gaze, those shadowy corridors suddenly ablaze and alive. They are not unending, like you’d thought. They are a door thrown open to let the light in, or maybe to let the fire out. They’re open in this moment for you.

No more words are spoken after that—you cum hard, gasping as you fall and spin. Spencer follows very shortly after, like he was holding it together just for you, and your eyes are still locked though everything is a bit bleary.

“Fuck,” you whine as he continues to fuck you for as long as he can, despite your writhing hips, but you’re entranced by him, unable to look away now that you’re hooked. Until he slows to a halt, glances down at your mouth, and you just have time to pray that he’ll kiss you before he does. You whimper against his lips—a plea for understanding. A plea for him to stay, even though this is over. He kisses back so soft and sweet it’s like he can read your mind. Echoes of I’m here I’m here I’m here still buzz across your skin. His eyelashes tickle your cheek. Your heart stops beating quite so quickly, melting and warm like the rest of your body.

Soon the kissing ceases and you’re just breathing together, trapped and faced with the knowledge that it must end just the same as you had waited for it to start.

Eventually the air between you becomes mostly carbon dioxide and you let your head fall to the side, dizzy and giggling breathlessly as you nearly avoid asphyxiation. Spencer laughs too, letting his head fall to your shoulder once more, and you finally let your eyes flutter closed. To do something as simple as laugh with him again is its own small euphoria. It’s unexpected, and a soft landing once all that tension breaks underneath your combined weight.

It can’t last forever, you know that well. But the slow fade of it makes the next parts a little easier.

Spencer presses a kiss to your neck. “Is your bathroom through that door?”

You hum a confirmation and are only slightly disheartened when he pulls out and rolls off of you. You’re further disturbed when you see there’s gauze around his thigh, matching what’s around his arm, and you wonder how you missed that. Spencer scoops up his clothing and disappears into the adjoining restroom, assuring you he’ll be right back and leaving you alone with your thoughts and the whorls on the ceiling which have seemingly shifted into entirely new constellations.

He leaves the door cracked which is oddly reassuring—the sliver of warm light and the sound of the sink running. Only a few moments pass before he’s returning clad in boxers once more to sit on the edge of the bed, pushing away the sheet you’d just pulled over your chest and pulling one of your legs over his lap. Your face warms as he brings a washcloth between your thighs. As soon as he glances up at you and catches your eye you’re looking back to the ceiling.

“I should’ve asked first,” he says quietly as he cleans up the mess he’d made of you.

You speak just as softly, like you’re both afraid of disturbing some peace, of waking some sleeping giant. “It’s okay. I would’ve told you if I didn’t want it.”

His reticence, his unreadable face, make you nervous.

When he’s done, he rises to toss the dirtied cloth in the laundry bin, and with his back to you (as scratched up as it might be) you feel braver.

“Are you gonna, like... hate me now?”

It was a mistake. That’s clear by the way he turns around, brow knit deeply and grimacing slightly like even the suggestion offends him.

“Am I going to hate you?”

Again you pull the sheet up, and again you look away, studying the pattern of moonlight stretching out over the floor and scooting to make room for him when he steps in it.

“Not hate, I just...” the bed dips beside you and you are indescribably glad he’s not immediately running out the door. “I’m not dumb. I know what this was.”

He pulls you into him and you settle against his chest. It feels good. “I never thought you were dumb.”

This is your first real conversation since he’s gotten back, you realize. And how quickly you’re falling into familiar patterns, familiar syntactical beats. You know when to speak. You know when to bite your tongue and keep him talking.

The silence goes on longer than you’re used to. Maybe he got good at not speaking while he was away.

Eventually your eyes wander, falling to the white strip over his thigh where it is parallel to yours on the bed, only over the sheets.

“What happened?”

You said you wouldn’t ask, but that was then, and you’re upset again. You almost want to hurt him. To piss him off. You don’t know.

But it doesn’t work.

“Do you really want to know?” There’s a note of something heavy in his voice, and you look up at him. It’s a privilege to have him this close—his beauty is a constant surprise that you’d become unaccustomed to over the months. You say nothing, and he takes that as the yes that it is. “I... I did it to myself.”

He may as well have reached down your throat and grabbed for fucking heart for all its clenching. Tears well almost immediately, though they’ve been waiting in the wings all night.

“What? Did you—were you trying to—”

His eyes widen.

“No! No, honey, no.” You wilt as he gathers you closer, a deeply confused frown still contorting your features, too heartbroken even to cling to him, or to appreciate the ease with which honey slips past his lips again. “No. I was—it's complicated. I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, but I had to—I had to do it before someone else did something worse.”

The bruises covering his abdomen.

You sniffle and pull back enough to look up at him tearfully. “Why would they want to hurt you?”

Mist fills his eyes even as he’s looking down at you, a layer of separation, as if he’s two places at once. Even as he goes to brush your hair behind your ear, to stroke your cheek.

“I’m... not... the same, as I was.” It’s not an answer to your question—but it’s the beginning of the answer to a question you’d been too afraid to put into words.

“Don’t say that,” you beg, because you know where this is going. He keeps smoothing your hair like it’ll make this easier.

“But it’s true,” Spencer says gently, the slightest waver betraying his own emotion.

“You’re just going to leave again.”

And you’re losing to the tears.

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“But you will,” you insist, like a child crying to a parent come to comfort them after a bad dream.

“Not right now. Right now I’m here.”

I’ll stay until you fall asleep again.

For now, maybe that has to be enough. 

You cry on his shoulder. He kisses your head and doesn’t tell you to stop. 

Eventually, you sniff and wipe your eyes. 

“We were so close. Before you… we were almost there.”

You’re sure of it. You’re sure that if he hadn’t gone when he did you would’ve been a real couple. You would’ve told him you loved him. 

“We’ll get there again,” he promises, rubbing your arm. “I just… I need a little bit of time. I think you do too. But we’re going to get there again.”

Maybe it will never be like it was. 

But as so often is the case—Spencer is right. Difference doesn’t mean it won’t ever be good again. 

You have to believe that, just as you had to believe you’d see him again. 

You look to The Odyssey on your bedside table. 

The sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world. 

But the sun has a habit of rising, time and time again, after the longest nights, after the darkest storms. 

You feel the beginnings of its rise, see the golden tips of it lighting the room as he holds you. Even now. 

[lupinqs]

CHAPTER FIFTEEN ━━ Future In Our Hands

☆ ━ pairing: hopkins!paige x oc (dani callan)

☆ ━ word count: 6.3K

☆ ━ warnings: sexual content (fingering—p giving, morning sex)

☆ ━ links: my masterlist, take me to church masterlist

☆ ━ author’s note: well… that’s it. my first baby all grown up. i actually cannot believe it’s over yall, genuinely. i love all of you so much, i love dani so much, i love dani and paige so much—like how’re we supposed to say goodbye…. anyways thank you all for your support on this fic, take me to church will always, always have a special place in my heart. ALSO! i’m planing to write an epilogue, so i want you guys to send in some ideas of what you might wanna see in that!! i love you all so much, onto the next 🫡

JUST LIKE DANI thought they’d be, things are different now—but also so much better. After leaving her father’s house, she stayed with the Bueckers for a few weeks. They were kind, welcoming, and unwaveringly supportive, but Dani knew it couldn’t last forever. Paige’s family has their own lives, and—no matter how much they told her she wasn’t—Dani didn’t want to intrude. So when her Aunt Julia offered her a place, Dani accepted, moving into her aunt’s modest apartment just outside the city.

It’s been over a month now, and things are good—really good. Julia and Dani have grown close, almost like they’re making up for lost time. Dani feels lighter in this space, unburdened by judgment or fear. And then there’s Grey, Julia’s son. The baby has taken to Dani in a way that’s mutual and immediate; his face lights up every time she walks into the room, and Dani finds herself softening in his presence in ways she never thought possible. For the first time in years, she feels like she belongs somewhere.

The alarm on Dani’s phone blares, slicing through the comfortable silence of her new bedroom. She groans, reaching blindly to shut it off, and Paige groans along with her. Dani’s hand finds the phone, and she presses the button with more force than necessary, silencing the obnoxious buzz. The room goes quiet again, but it doesn’t last long.

Behind her, Paige stirs, nuzzling closer until her face is buried against Dani’s neck. Her arms tighten around Dani’s waist, one hand slipping beneath the hem of Dani’s sweatshirt to rest warm and solid against her bare stomach.

Dani lets out a breath, feeling Paige’s slow, steady breathing against her skin. “We gotta get up,” she murmurs, though the words lack any real urgency.

Paige responds by shaking her head, her voice muffled. “Noooo. Just a few more minutes.”

Dani huffs out a quiet laugh, the corners of her mouth lifting despite herself. “P…”

But before she can say more, Paige groans dramatically and shifts her weight, rolling fully on top of Dani. She’s warm, all long limbs and lazy strength, her hands sliding up Dani’s sides as she tucks her face against Dani’s neck again. Her lips brush against the sensitive skin there, leaving soft, barely-there kisses that make Dani’s heart stumble in her chest.

Dani sighs, her hands coming up to rest on Paige’s hips. “Paige, we’re graduating in a couple hours.”

Paige makes a noise somewhere between a groan and a sigh, finally lifting her head to look down at Dani. Her hair is a mess, her eyes half-lidded with sleep, but she’s smiling in that lopsided way that always makes Dani’s stomach flip.

“What time is it?” Paige asks, her voice scratchy and low.

“9:30,” Dani says, trying to keep her tone firm.

Paige scoffs. “We ain’t gotta be there ‘til 11:30. We got time.”

Before Dani can respond, Paige leans down, her lips brushing against Dani’s in a kiss that’s soft and lingering at first. Dani melts into it instinctively, her hands sliding up Paige’s back, but it doesn’t stay soft for long.

The kiss deepens, shedding its softness in favor of something needier, hungrier. Dani feels Paige’s weight pressing down on her, grounding her in the moment, the exhaustion they’d both been clinging to dissipating like mist under the heat building between them. Paige tilts her head to angle the kiss just right, her lips sliding against Dani’s with purpose. There’s nothing rushed about it, but there’s an urgency to the way Paige grips Dani’s waist, her fingers splaying against bare skin like she’s memorizing the shape of her.

And then Paige shifts her hips just so, grinding down in a way that steals the breath from Dani’s lungs. Dani gasps against Paige’s lips, her fingers digging into Paige’s shoulders, and she feels rather than hears the soft hum of satisfaction Paige makes in response.

It’s just enough to spark something deep inside her, enough for her body to react instinctively. Dani’s hips buck up to meet Paige’s, the friction making her head spin, and before she knows it, her arms are around Paige’s neck, pulling her impossibly closer. Paige adjusts, settling fully between Dani’s legs, her weight a warm and steady pressure that has Dani’s pulse thrumming wildly.

The hand Paige had been using to grip Dani’s waist slides up, her palm skimming the curve of Dani’s side and brushing just under the swell of her chest. It’s light, barely there, but it sends a shiver coursing through Dani all the same. Paige feels it—of course she does—and her lips curl into a smirk against Dani’s mouth before she dips her head to trail kisses along Dani’s jaw, her breath hot against sensitive skin.

“P…” Dani breathes, her voice shaky.

Paige doesn’t stop, doesn’t even slow down. Her lips press against the spot just below Dani’s ear, lingering long enough to make Dani squirm beneath her. “Hmm?” Paige hums, her tone teasing, almost lazy, like she knows exactly what she’s doing to Dani.

“Paige,” Dani tries again, her hands sliding up to bury themselves in Paige’s messy blonde hair. She tugs lightly, just enough to make Paige lift her head and meet her gaze. Paige’s eyes are heavy-lidded, her pupils blown wide, and the sight sends another jolt of heat through Dani.

“We’re—” Dani swallows hard, trying to focus, but it’s almost impossible with Paige looking at her like that, with Paige’s hand still skimming her side, her hips still pressed so perfectly against Dani’s. “We’re gonna be late,” she manages, though it comes out far weaker than she intended.

Paige grins, the kind of grin that’s all mischief and affection rolled into one. “We got time,” she says, her voice low and certain. And then she’s insistently reconnecting their mouths, lips sliding together perfectly, teeth clashing just slightly. Dani’s eyes flutter shut as she continues kissing the blonde, feeling Paige’s hands begin to trail downward. They slide along Dani’s stomach, tracing slow circles on her skin, almost teasing. It makes Dani squirm a little until Paige’s fingers brush along the waistband of the pair of Paige’s basketball shorts Dani wore to bed.

Without Paige even asking anything, Dani’s nodding against her, hips shifting. They’re on a time crunch, so if they’re gonna do this, they gotta do it fast. Paige grins against Dani’s lips—probably at her eagerness—before sliding her fingers under the shorts and Dani’s panties in one go.

Dani gasps just slightly as Paige’s fingers reach for her clit, the blonde humming against her lips as she begins to circle the bud. Paige’s mouth disconnects from Dani’s, her lips skimming over her jawline and along her neck. “Mmm,” she hums against Dani’s ear. “So wet, Dan.”

Dani feels her cheeks heat at the words, heat flushing through her face down to her core. She whimpers a little at Paige’s slow circling of her clit, bucking her hips enough to let her know she needs more. Paige understands immediately, and then two of her fingers are sliding inside Dani, the slickness of her making the motion almost effortless. The sound that follows is, indeed, sinful—the obscene wet noises filling the otherwise quiet room, making Dani’s stomach tighten with a renewed wave of arousal.

Paige groans a little, pulling back from Dani’s neck. She grabs at the brunette’s shorts with her free hand, pushing them down so she can see her fingers working, eyes locking onto her digits moving in and out of Dani’s cunt and the way Dani’s body arches up into her. Dani watches Paige watch, catching the blonde bite her lip, eyes almost glazing over as her fingers slide inside Dani.

It makes Dani whimper, her hips instinctively pushing back against Paige’s fingers. “Mmph… please…” she mumbles, not really sure what she’s begging for, but the need in her tone seems to spur Paige on.

Paige responds immediately, thrusting her fingers deeper, curling them just enough to hit that spongy spot inside Dani that makes her gasp loudly. Dani feels Paige’s free hand move back up her body, under her sweatshirt to squeeze at her breast, thumb brushing over her nipple. Paige’s lips find Dani’s neck again, too, biting down lightly before sucking a mark into her skin.

Dani cries out a little at the sensation, her body trembling as the pleasure begins to overwhelm her. “God, P,” she moans, voice ragged.

She feels Paige grin against her neck once more, her fingers moving faster now, her thumb rubbing slow, deliberate circles back on her clit. “Like that?” Paige whispers, breath hot against Dani’s skin.

Dani just nods, her breath hitching as she struggles to respond. “Yeah,” she finally manages to gasp out, her hips moving in time with Paige’s fingers. “Just like that.”

Dani bites down onto her lip hard, probably enough to draw blood, keeping herself in check because she has absolutely no interest in her aunt hearing her moan Paige’s name. Paige’s fingers are just relentless as they thrust in and out, the wet sounds between them growing louder and more obscene with every second. Dani feels Paige moan against her neck and that, along with the curling of Paige’s fingers, has Dani’s brows furrowing together, eyes scrunching closed, her whole body tightening.

“’M close,” Dani whimpers breathlessly, her voice barely above a whisper as her nails dig into Paige’s back.

Dani feels Paige’s fingers press even harder at her words, scissoring inside her, angling them just right. “Come on, Dan,” Paige encourages. “Wanna feel it.”

That‘a all it seems to take. With a muffled moan, Dani’s body goes taut, her muscles contracting around Paige’s fingers as she cums hard, her hips bucking as waves of pleasure crash over her. Paige holds her tightly, her fingers slowing just enough to guide Dani through her orgasm, her lips still pressing gentle kisses to her neck.

“Fuck,” Dani gasps, her body finally going limp as she collapses back against the mattress, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she tries to catch her breath.

Paige smirks down at her, slipping her fingers out. Paige presses a gentle kiss to Dani’s jaw, then her lips, then her nose, then the spot between her eyebrows before pulling back so she’s eye-to-eye with the girl. “Now it’s time to get up,” she says, cheesing.

Dani rolls her eyes, slapping at Paige’s arm lightly. “Shut up.”

THE FINAL APPLAUSE feels like it echoes forever, reverberating around the crowded football field. Dani sits there in the plastic chair, the edges of the graduation gown stiff against her arms, her cap threatening to slip off her head. She doesn’t move. Around her, classmates are already standing, hugging, and tossing their caps into the air, but Dani feels rooted in place.

It’s over.

Her childhood—whatever was left of it—has officially ended.

That’s the only thought looping in her head. The years she spent on cramped bleachers, in loud cafeterias, on basketball courts that smelled like old wood and sweat—all of it is behind her now. Her chest feels heavy with something she can’t quite name. Relief? Sadness? Fear? She shakes it off and stands, taking a deep breath that doesn’t fill her lungs the way she wants it to.

When the crowd begins to disperse, she finally spots Paige a few rows over, standing tall and blonde and unmistakable in her blue gown. Thaliah is next to her, smirking as she bats Paige’s hands away from the crooked cap on her head. Dani weaves through the sea of gowns, her own steps feeling distant and mechanical. But when she reaches them, her grin comes naturally.

“Look at us,” Thaliah says, throwing her arms around both Dani and Paige, drawing them into a three-person hug. Her grin is wide. “All grown up!”

Dani chuckles, pulling back just enough to breathe. “Finally free,” she agrees, brushing a stray strand of hair from her face.

Thaliah rolls her eyes. “Yeah, free to do what? Work? Be an adult? Ugh.”

Dani doesn’t answer because her eyes are drawn to Paige, who’s blinking quickly, her lashes wet. Dani’s smile softens as she takes in the way Paige’s lower lip wobbles just slightly before she sucks it between her teeth.

“Aww, babe,” Dani says, her voice teasing but fond. She steps closer, brushing her thumb under Paige’s eye to catch a tear before it can fall.

“I’m not crying,” Paige says immediately, sniffing and straightening her shoulders like she can will the emotion away.

“You’re totally crying,” Thaliah chimes in, her grin wicked. “Somebody get a camera!”

Paige narrows her eyes. “I ain’t crying!”

“You are,” Dani teases, her hand lingering against Paige’s cheek before letting it fall back to her side.

“Shut up,” Paige mutters, but the corner of her mouth betrays her with a twitch of a smile.

The three of them laugh then, the kind of laughter that feels bigger than the moment. It’s a release, a shared acknowledgment of everything they’ve been through together and everything that’s ahead of them. Dani lets it wash over her, lets herself feel the warmth of it as they shuffle out into the packed hallway.

The noise is overwhelming, a cacophony of voices and camera flashes and the occasional squeal from someone who’s just spotted their family. Dani’s chest tightens briefly, but she shakes it off. This is supposed to be a happy day. She forces herself to focus on the here and now.

“Alright, I’m off,” Thaliah announces, clapping them both on the shoulder. “If I don’t get to my mom soon, she’s gonna start yelling my full name in front of everyone, and we can’t have that.” She gives the pair one last grin before disappearing through the crowd.

Paige stays close as they navigate through the throng of people, her hand brushing Dani’s back as they walk. Dani can feel the slight tremor in Paige’s energy, the kind that only comes when Paige is overwhelmed, but she doesn’t comment on it. Instead, she nudges Paige gently with her elbow, and Paige gives her a grateful smile.

They find Paige’s family first. Her mom is the first person Dani notices, standing near the bleachers with a wide smile and arms open. Lauren, Ryan, and Drew are bouncing on their toes, waving furiously when they spot Paige. Bob is chatting animatedly with Paige’s grandparents, and her aunt is juggling a camera and a gift bag with tissue paper spilling out the top.

“Paige!” Lauren squeals, launching herself at her older sister the second she’s within reach. Paige laughs, catching her and spinning her around before setting her down. Ryan and Drew both aren’t far behind, wrapping their arms around Paige’s waist and clinging like a little koalas.

Dani watches it all unfold, a small smile tugging at her lips. It’s a lot, seeing all of them there, so many people who love Paige and want to celebrate her. A small pang settles in her chest, but she pushes it aside quickly.

She doesn’t have to look far for her own family. Julia is standing just a few feet away, holding baby Grey on her hip, her smile soft and full of pride. Dani’s grandparents are beside her, their expressions warm and welcoming. It’s quieter, simpler, but no less meaningful.

Julia’s arms are open before Dani even realizes she’s moving, and she steps into the hug, letting herself sink into the familiarity of it. “I’m so proud of you, Dani,” Julia whispers into her ear, her voice thick with emotion.

The words hit harder than Dani expects, her throat tightening as she blinks rapidly, willing herself not to cry. She pulls back after a moment, forcing a smile as she meets Julia’s gaze. “Thanks,” she says, her voice a little hoarse.

Grey babbles something unintelligible, reaching for Dani with chubby hands, and she can’t help but laugh as she takes him into her arms. “Hey, buddy,” she murmurs, bouncing him slightly. He giggles, his tiny hands grabbing at the tassel on her cap.

Her grandparents step forward next, wrapping her in hugs that smell like lavender and old books, murmuring their congratulations with quiet pride. Dani’s smile feels a little steadier now, a little more natural.

It’s not perfect. It’s not what she used to imagine this day would look like. There’s an emptiness where her parents should be, a hollow ache she tries not to focus on. But looking at Julia’s warm smile, Grey’s wide eyes, and her grandparents’ unwavering support, she decides it’s enough.

“Hey, kiddo.”

Dani turns to find Bob, Paige’s dad, leaning in for a hug. His grin is kind and effortless, the kind that makes Dani feel seen, like she belongs. She melts into the embrace, letting him clap her on the back as she smiles against his shoulder.

“Look at you!” he exclaims as they pull back. “High school graduate. You’ve done good, Dan.”

Her grin widens. Bob’s probably the closest thing she has to a dad these days, and she’s grateful for how steady he’s always been, how he’s never made her feel out of place. “Thanks, Bob.”

Before she can say more, Amy swoops in, wrapping Dani in a tight hug that smells like fresh laundry and perfume. “Aw, Dani, all grown up!” Amy squeals, pulling back to hold Dani by the shoulders and give her a good once-over. “You’re gonna make me cry.”

Dani laughs, brushing her hair behind her ear. “Please don’t cry, Amy. Paige’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

Amy laughs, her hands squeezing Dani’s shoulders briefly before she lets go. “No promises.”

Dani makes her way down the line, crouching slightly to hug Paige’s little siblings. Lauren and Ryan and Drew all beam at her, their arms wrapping around her tightly. Drew leans into her side, his small voice eager as he says, “You’re coming to the cookout after, right?”

“Of course,” Dani says, ruffling his hair before pulling Lauren in for a quick squeeze. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

When she stands, she feels a hand slide into hers, warm and familiar. Paige is there, her blue eyes soft as she looks at Dani, squeezing her hand gently. “Okay,” Amy says suddenly, clapping her hands together like she’s directing a photoshoot. “I need pictures!”

Paige groans, loud and exaggerated, her head tilting back like this is the most torturous request in the world. “Mom, come on—”

“No complaints!” Amy cuts her off, already holding up her phone. “This is a big day! Paige, Dani, come on.”

Paige rolls her eyes but grins as she tugs Dani closer by the hand. Dani follows easily, letting Paige guide her until they’re standing shoulder to shoulder. Paige’s arm wraps around her waist, her hand resting lightly on Dani’s hip, and Dani lets her own hand settle comfortably against Paige’s back. They tilt their heads together instinctively, their smiles wide and natural as the first flash goes off.

One photo turns into three, then four, and Dani quickly loses track of how many cameras are aimed at them. Both of Paige’s parents are taking pictures, as are their grandparents, Julia, and Paige’s aunt. It feels like every angle is covered, and Dani doesn’t even know where to look at this point.

“Oh, wait, wait!” Julia exclaims suddenly, waving her free hand while balancing Grey on her hip. “Take one showing the caps!”

Dani and Paige both blink at her, confused for a moment before they realize what she means. “Oh!” Paige says, reaching up to tug her cap off. “Yeah, yeah.”

Dani does the same, pulling her cap off and holding it in her hands. When she glances over at Paige, she can’t help but laugh. “Ooh, cap head,” she teases, nodding toward Paige’s hair, which is flattened awkwardly where the cap had been.

Paige narrows her eyes at her, a mock glare that doesn’t last long. “Fix it.”

“Please,” Dani corrects, smirking as she leans in to do just that—fix the mess. Her fingers comb through the strands of blonde until Paige’s hair looks normal again. Paige huffs but doesn’t pull away, her lips twitching upward in the smallest smile.

When Dani’s satisfied, she steps back, only to feel Paige’s hand brushing against her own hair. “Hang on,” Paige mutters, her fingers quick and sure as they smooth out Dani’s own cap-induced disaster.

Once they’ve both deemed each other photo-ready, they angle their caps toward the cameras, holding them up so the bedazzled designs are clearly visible. UConn logos sparkle under the sun, the rhinestones they painstakingly glued on last night catching every flash.

“Go Huskies!” Amy cheers from behind the phone, her voice bright with pride as the camera clicks again.

Dani feels her grin stretch impossibly wider. In that moment, she forgets about the ache in her chest, the absence of her parents, the uncertainty of the future. All she feels is this—Paige’s arm warm around her waist, their friends and family laughing and cheering, and the glimmer of the UConn logos they’ll carry with them into the next chapter of their lives.

THE NIGHT feels heavy in the best way—cool air brushing against Paige’s skin, her hoodie soft against her arms, and the low hum of cicadas filling the spaces between quiet laughter. It’s dark now, the kind of dark that stretches across the park like a blanket, broken only by the dim glow of the streetlamp by the parking lot and the stars above. The four of them—Paige, Dani, Thaliah, and Jalen—are settled into their usual spots at the park they’ve claimed since what feels like forever. The basketball court has cracks they know like the backs of their hands, the picnic table has their initials carved into the wood, and everything about it feels like home.

Paige leans against the basketball hoop, dribbling lazily as Jalen sets up for a halfhearted shot. He misses—terribly—and Paige laughs, grabbing the rebound and tossing the ball back to him. “Bro,” she teases, “you might need to rethink that NBA dream.”

Jalen points at her, mock offended. “You laugh now, but when I’m in the league, you’re not getting courtside tickets.”

“Good,” Paige fires back with a grin. “I’ll be too busy winning nattys at UConn anyway.”

The words feel easy, automatic, but they carry a weight she’s only just starting to realize. UConn. Storrs. It’s been this abstract, glittering thing for so long, but now it’s real—a fresh start, a new chapter. Summer sessions start in just a couple weeks. Basketball in the basketball capital of the world. And Dani. Dani will be there too.

She glances toward the picnic table, where Dani’s sitting shoulder to shoulder with Thaliah, both of them half-focused on Thaliah’s phone. Milkshakes sit abandoned on the table, sweating in the humid air, and Dani’s curled hair falls into her face as she leans closer to the screen. Paige watches her for a moment, her grin softening into something quieter.

“Aye,” Jalen says, nudging Paige with his elbow and smirking a little. “You good?”

“Hm?” Paige blinks, startled out of her thoughts. “Yeah, I’m good.” She spins the basketball once, catching it easily. “Just thinking about how much better I am than you.”

Jalen groans. “Aight, thin ice, Bueckers.”

Paige laughs, tossing the ball his way before walking toward the table, her curiosity piqued by whatever has Dani and Thaliah so engrossed. She hops up onto the bench beside Dani, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the table. “What’s so fascinating?”

Thaliah glances up briefly, holding her phone out so Paige can see. “My roommate at UCLA,” she says, scrolling through an Instagram profile of a girl with tanned skin and lots of beach photos. “She’s already from Cali, so.”

“Hmm,” Paige hums, tilting her head as she studies the photos. “She seems chill.”

“I think so too,” Dani agrees.

Thaliah nods. “Yeah, she’s nice. We’ve been texting. She’s into film, which gives us somethin’ in common, and she’s already invited me to a festival this fall. I think we’re gonna get along.”

Paige nods at the words before watching Dani groan dramatically, leaning her head against Thaliah’s shoulder. “I still can’t believe you’re gonna be in sunny LA while I’m stuck in Storrs with this creature.” She gestures lazily in Paige’s direction without looking up.

“Aye!” Paige exclaims, feigning offense. She ruffles Dani’s curls lightly, earning an indignant squawk. “Watch that mouth.”

Dani swats at Paige’s hand but grins, leaning back in her seat, humming, “Mhm.”

Paige smirks. “It’ll be fun, you know it.”

“Debatable,” Dani shoots back, but there’s a warmth in her tone that makes Paige’s chest feel strangely tight.

Jalen finally joins them, the basketball tucked under one arm. He stands behind them, leaning over to try and get a glimpse. “What’re we looking at?”

“My future roomie,” Thaliah says, holding up her phone again.

Jalen squints at the screen, then nods approvingly. “Damn. She fine.”

Dani bursts out laughing, nearly spilling her milkshake as Thaliah groans and mutters something about boys being predictable. Paige just shakes her head, leaning back on the bench and letting the easy rhythm of their banter wash over her. It’s moments like this, she thinks, that she’s going to miss most.

But then Dani’s hand brushes against hers, her fingers curling briefly around Paige’s, and she thinks maybe she doesn’t have to miss it. Not really. Not when Dani’s right here, and when tomorrow, and every day after, will start with both of them heading toward the same place. Together.

Jalen’s phone buzzes on the bench, the screen lighting up with a notification. Paige notices it before he does and glances over, catching the slight furrow in his brow as he picks it up and reads the message. “Ah, man,” he says, standing and shoving the phone into his pocket. “My mom’s tellin’ me to get home. Graduation tomorrow and all.”

Thaliah stretches, groaning a little as she stands. “Guess I’m out too, then. He’s my ride.”

Paige frowns, tilting her head at them. “Wow, ditching us already?”

Thaliah smirks as she grabs her jacket. “Hey, not all of us can be completely irresponsible. Some of us have families that enforce things like curfews and sleep schedules.”

“Lame,” Paige teases, but she stands to hug Jalen, patting him on the back. “Congrats ahead of time, though. Have fun tomorrow.”

Jalen grins, hugging her back.

Thaliah waves as they head toward the parking lot, leaving Paige and Dani alone on the weathered wooden bench. The night feels quieter now, though not uncomfortable—just different. The cicadas hum in the trees, and the faint smell of grass and pavement lingers in the air. Paige lets herself enjoy the moment for a second, her gaze drifting over to Dani.

Dani sits quietly, staring out at the court, her expression unreadable. It’s the kind of stillness Dani falls into sometimes, where Paige knows she’s in her head about something but won’t say what.

Paige stands, grabbing the basketball from beside her and turning it over in her hands. The weight of it feels familiar and grounding. “Play with me?”

Dani turns to look at her, eyebrows raised. “What?”

“Play with me,” Paige repeats, her tone lighter, teasing. She bounces the ball once against the ground for emphasis.

Dani snorts. “You can’t be serious.”

“Dead serious.” Paige grins, holding the ball against her hip.

“Uh-uh,” Dani protests, shaking her head. “We both know how that’ll end.”

“And?” Paige arches a brow.

Dani doesn’t move, her expression skeptical. Paige rolls her eyes, stepping closer and grabbing Dani’s hand, tugging her to her feet. Dani resists for about half a second before giving in with an exasperated sigh.

“You’re annoying, you know that?” Dani mutters.

“Yep.” Paige leads her toward the court, the basketball bouncing lightly in her other hand.

Once they’re on the court, Paige dribbles a couple of times before passing the ball to Dani. “1v1,” she says, her voice challenging.

Dani catches the ball awkwardly, holding it for a moment as she stares at Paige. “This is stupid,” she says, but there’s a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth now. “We both know who’s gonna win.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Paige replies, dropping into a defensive stance. “C’mon. Play.”

With a small shake of her head, Dani starts to dribble—slowly, clumsily. The ball bounces unevenly against the pavement, and Paige bites back a laugh. She gives Dani a few seconds before darting in to steal the ball.

Dani yelps and pulls the ball to her chest, her arms wrapping protectively around it like it’s a lifeline.

“That is illegal!” Paige exclaims, standing in front of her with her hands on her hips.

“Then quit tryna take it from me!” Dani fires back, her voice half-laughing, half-exasperated as she shifts away from Paige.

Paige grins, circling around Dani like a shark. “Aight, fine. If you wanna be like that, we can be like that.”

Before Dani can respond, Paige lunges, trying to pry the ball free. When that doesn’t work, her fingers find their way to Dani’s ribs, tickling mercilessly.

Dani shrieks, laughter spilling out of her uncontrollably. “Paige! Stop!” she yells, twisting and turning to escape, but Paige keeps going, grinning against her ear.

“This… is… definitely… a… foul!” Dani manages between gasps, her laughter growing louder as her grip on the ball falters.

“Don’t care,” Paige replies, her voice smug as she tickles harder. Dani’s back presses into Paige’s chest as she struggles, her legs wobbling beneath her.

Paige spins the brunette around, her fingers relentless against Dani’s ribs, tickling so hard that Dani’s squealing, “Paige!” nearly collapsing under the weight of her laughter.

Finally, Paige relents, stepping back as the basketball slips from Dani’s grasp and rolls across the court. Dani leans against Paige, panting and giggling, her forehead pressing lightly into Paige’s chest.

“I hate you,” Dani mutters breathlessly, swatting weakly at Paige’s hoodie.

Paige just grins, her hands settling on Dani’s hips. “Nah, you don’t.”

Dani pulls back slightly, glaring up at her with an exaggerated pout. “Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t,” Paige replies, her voice softer now, teasing but with an edge of sincerity. Paige’s grin widens, her hand sliding upward to cup Dani’s jaw. Her thumb brushes lightly against Dani’s cheek as she leans in, her voice barely above a whisper. “C’mon, Dan, you don’t hate me.”

Dani rolls her eyes, relenting. Paige thinks she hears her breath catch. “No, I don’t.”

And then Paige tilts her head, her lips brushing against Dani’s, soft at first, as if feeling the rhythm of the moment. But then, the hesitation fades. Paige presses forward, coaxing Dani’s lips to part, and with a quiet, deep inhale, her tongue slips into Dani’s mouth.

Paige feels Dani’s mouth opening slightly more, a sigh escaping her lips. She shifts closer, hands sliding down from Paige’s chest to her sides, pulling them tighter together, the warmth of her body mingling with Paige’s. Their tongues tangle, teeth clashing slightly.

Paige’s hand on Dani’s hip trails downward, fingers slipping, finding purchase on the curve of her ass. She squeezes lightly, feeling the taut muscle beneath her fingertips, and that small movement has Dani grinning against her lips, the playful smirk against Paige’s mouth making Paige’s stomach flip.

Paige lets out a soft laugh through the kiss, a breathless sound, but she doesn’t pull away. She deepens the kiss instead, her fingers pressing a little harder, pulling Dani closer still. It’s like a slow burn, the way their bodies are melting together, hot and heavy but not frantic.

Paige takes her time. She lets her lips linger, firm but careful, savoring the way Dani responds. There’s a heat between them, an energy that buzzes under Paige’s skin, but she reins it in, keeps it simmering just beneath the surface. This moment isn’t about rushing forward—it’s about Dani, about the way she fits so perfectly in Paige’s hands, the way her lips feel impossibly soft and warm, the way she melts into the kiss.

Dani shifts slightly, her hands sliding up from Paige’s chest to loop around her neck. It pulls Paige down further, and she lets it happen, leaning into the touch, into Dani. The kiss slows for a beat, their lips brushing more gently now, like the initial spark has given way to something softer, something steadier.

Paige pulls back just an inch, her forehead resting against Dani’s. She opens her eyes slowly, and the sight of Dani—her cheeks flushed, her lips slightly swollen, her eyes half-lidded and searching—nearly takes her breath away.

“Dan,” Paige murmurs, her voice low and a little unsteady.

Dani blinks up at her, her fingers still playing lightly with the hair at the nape of Paige’s neck. She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t have to. The way she looks at Paige—like she’s seeing her for the first time and yet has always known her—says everything.

Paige feels her phone buzz against her skin, the vibration pulling her reluctantly out of the moment, out of Dani’s warmth. She lets out a soft breath of frustration, but she’s still not ready to fully pull away. Her hand stays on Dani’s ass, fingers tracing the curve of her hip in a way that keeps their bodies pressed together.

She pulls the phone from her pocket with a sigh, glancing at the screen, but the feeling of Dani still so close, so tangible, is enough to make her hold on just a moment longer. It’s a message from her dad asking if she and Dani want to come back and watch a movie with Drew, Ryan, and Lauren.

She shifts the phone to face Dani, letting her read it for herself. The light from the screen illuminates their faces, casting soft shadows across Dani’s features. For a second, Paige just looks at her, at the way Dani’s brow furrows slightly in thought as she processes the message, and then the way her lips curve into that familiar smile that always does something to Paige’s chest.

“You wanna?” Paige asks quietly, her voice soft but steady, letting Dani know she’s willing to go along with whatever she decides.

Dani looks at the message and then up at Paige, smiling just a little—like the smallest of secrets are being shared. She nods, and that small gesture makes Paige’s heart skip just a little.

“Yeah,” Dani says, her voice barely above a whisper, but there’s something in her tone that makes Paige’s chest tighten with affection. “Let’s go.”

Paige smiles back, the warmth spreading in her chest, and presses one last kiss to the corner of Dani’s mouth. It’s soft, lingering for a second longer than it probably should, but Paige can’t help it. She can’t help but savor the taste of Dani, the way her lips feel like home. It’s like everything before this—before the arguing, before the space between them, before all the pain—has led to this.

This moment. This kiss. And everything that comes after it.

When she pulls back just a fraction, still feeling the heat of Dani’s skin under her hands, Paige wraps her arm around Dani’s waist and guides them back toward the picnic table. Her fingers graze the soft curve of Dani’s waist, a quiet gesture of possession, of love, of a future they haven’t yet fully realized but are starting to piece together.

They collect their milkshakes, Paige grabbing both cups, offering Dani her Oreo one, who takes it with a grateful, quiet smile, and they walk side by side, their shoulders brushing with every step. They don’t say much, the silence between them comfortable, an unspoken understanding that fills the space where words aren’t needed. There’s no pressure, no rush, just the steady rhythm of their footsteps as they head back.

Side by side, they walk back to Paige’s house, their bodies pressed close enough that the warmth between them is constant, never faltering. Neither of them speaks much, but the air between them feels thick with the weight of it all—the unspoken words, the shared memories, the connection that neither of them can deny anymore. They walk in sync, like they’ve always been meant to, and Paige finds that she doesn’t need words to fill the space.

The familiar sights of their neighborhood pass by, the houses and the trees, the sound of their feet on the pavement, the occasional rustle of wind through the leaves. They pass Dani’s dad’s house, and neither of them looks at it. Paige’s mind briefly flickers to that house, to the past, to the pain that had lingered there for so long, but it’s all behind them now. That part of their lives is a closed door, and neither of them needs to open it again.

They reach the front door of Paige’s house, and Paige can’t help but glance at Dani as she opens it. The door opens with a soft creak, and for a brief moment, Paige holds the door open with one hand while she rests her forehead against Dani’s. It’s a simple thing, but there’s something about it, something about the way Dani’s body fits against hers, something about the softness of her skin under Paige’s touch that makes it all feel like it’s meant to be.

And in that moment, Paige knows, without a doubt, that everything before this was just the beginning. Because this—this is their forever.

Then, Lauren calls for them both from inside, telling their names. Dani grins up at Paige, murmuring, “C’mon,” pulling her inside.

And as they step inside the house, with their hands still intertwined, the door closes softly behind them, sealing shut their childhoods, their high school days, and all the ups and downs that surrounded them. The future’s wide open, and Paige and Dani are ready to take that step into it.

[malakaie]

had some feelings to write out – for/about @tommyend, no pressure at all to respond

I started watching wrestling – specifically, AEW – in late October 2023. It’s been just over a year since I started watching, and I didn’t expect it to consume as much of my brain-space as it has. When I started watching, I didn’t really know who anyone was. I had heard a few names – Randy Orton, CM Punk, Jade Cargill, Roman Reigns – but had no real concept of the landscape I was entering or what it would mean to get invested.

Truthfully, it was a little overwhelming, and there was more I didn’t understand than I did. In those first few weeks, I received one very helpful piece of advice: don’t try to understand everything. Find a wrestler or two whose vibe you like and stick with them – the rest will click into place eventually, or it won’t, and either way is fine.

And so I did. I think it was around the lead-up to Full Gear 2023 that I started really paying attention. There was something about what House of Black was doing that was different from anything else I was seeing. I could understand just enough to recognise talented athletes when I saw them, but I wasn’t quite plugged in enough to the overall wrestling “ecosystem” that that was enough on its own to get my attention. Now that I understand more of what I’m looking at, it’s easier to understand what I’m meant to be impressed by – it’s easier now to have that moment of, holy shit, how did they do that?

But I didn’t understand yet. I’d been watching wrestling for about a month and was still finding my footing. What I saw, and latched onto, in House of Black was a group of four impressive performers that I could tell were in love with the art of what they were doing. Everything was done with intent – the way they entered the ring, the different but cohesive styles with which each member of the House wrestled, the gear they wore, the ever-evolving paint on Malakai’s face, the evolution and growth of Julia’s character.

It was both the moment that I finally, properly understood that professional wrestling was also theatre—and, I think, the moment that I was magnetised. It felt like a faction that was made for me: a band of storytellers who wanted to take my hand and show me what wrestling could be and was and is, and had the creativity and cohesiveness and physical talent to pull it off.

I could breathe a sigh of relief. I wasn’t lost anymore, desperately trying to catch up to understanding something that everyone around me already seemed to know. I had a guide of some sort, and one that resonated: I’ve been reading since I was 3, writing stories since I was 11, have always been a little “strange,” drawn to creative types and niche hobbies and other people that don’t have many friends. And here was someone who not only felt like me, sounded like me, but was wanted and loved and succeeding. A stranger to me, in the way that performers and public figures always are, but I felt like it was going to be okay. If Malakai could make it—though I didn’t and don’t know him personally, I had no way of knowing if he was ever afraid, or if he doubted himself—then maybe I could, too.

The more I watched and the more I learned, the more true that became. I’ve been depressed and anxious most of my adult life. I have scoliosis that is likely to get worse as I get older, and causes me pain multiple times a week, if not every day. Hearing someone whose work I admired be open about his mental health—especially when sports industries have typically not been kind to people, perhaps especially men, who are vulnerable in that way—and be honest when he’s in pain shook something loose in me that I hadn’t quite realised was stuck and frozen in shame. It’s okay that I’m afraid. It’s okay that I have days where my brain is trying to consume itself. It’s okay that I’m in pain. Did I get out of bed today? Have I been outside? Have I eaten? Have I done something to be kind to myself—or, failing that, kind to someone else? Have I done something creative today?

I started my “gender journey,” for lack of a better phrase, in 2018. There was a lot, a lot, of messing around with pronouns, labels. I didn’t know what I was, only that “just a girl” didn’t feel quite right anymore. And then I felt like I was lying, because, well—I was fine being a girl when I was ten, and thirteen, and sixteen, so why was it suddenly different at 25? Sometimes I still feel like I’m lying. The generation above me often still holds an image of trans people that requires them to have always been miserable, always been “pretending.” A few months ago my mother suggested it was fine if my idea of being feminine had expanded, but she didn’t really believe I was trans, because I’d never been unhappy as a girl child, and besides that I looked like a “clone” of the small handful of other transmasc and nonbinary people she’s met. I must be a pod person. (Newsflash, mom: This is just what queer people look like, a lot of the time. I cut and dyed my hair and got one singular tattoo. How terrible.)

She didn’t ask me how I feel when people call me she, or her—it makes me feel horribly small and unreal, by now—and in fairness to her, I didn’t quite defend myself either. I cringed and shrunk and asked for time to think about it, when what I wanted to say is yes, I know I haven’t had the history you expect to see from me, but this is who I am, and I’m not telling you that I was never a girl. I’m telling you that girl isn’t the place where I stop.

But I was scared, and I felt cornered, and I didn’t say any of that.

What I did have, though, was an artist and a performer and a storyteller who did things with his expression, his clothing, how he presented himself to the world that was like a lightbulb going on. The confidence of a man who told stories with the way that he looked, and who used feminine symbols to do it. He wasn’t any less masculine—but it was an embracing of both that cemented who he was, and I thought: holy shit. I can do that. Our identities are not the same, and I’m not too keen on speculating about the identities of public figures that I don’t know in any event—but it’s reassuring, motivating even, to be able to regularly see someone comfortably expressing his gender (because, yes, cis presentation is gender expression too) in a way that makes sense to him and incorporates the feminine and resonates through his art without doubt or reservation or compromise. This is who we are. Take it or leave it.

I don’t know what’s coming next for any of us. AEW looks like such a different place—in a good way—from when I started watching, and the world is looking pretty scary these days, but I’m still here. The art that got me interested in wrestling in the first place is still here, and I have my theories—unsubstantiated, so far—about where Malakai and House of Black are taking their story, but regardless of theories I’ve been so fortunate to watch them continue to grow and evolve over the past year. There’s a lot I don’t know, but I know the love for the story and the art is real.

I don’t know you personally, Malakai, and I don’t want to claim to, no matter how many scraps I’ve gathered together from interviews and how much of the backlog of matches I’ve done my best to watch so I can understand where you’ve come from and where you’re going next. But your work and your love for your craft has moved me, and I’m glad I stayed alive when it was hard so I could be around to see it when it mattered.

[daryldixonfanfiction]

What you fight for! Pt.11 - Pure intentions (*18+)

Masterlist

Summary: Discovering she's unexpectedly pregnant, Julia struggles with breaking the news to Daryl...

Warnings: *18+, SMUT!, age gap, mutual pining, morning cuddles, fluff, comfort-sex, unprotected p in v, fingering, aftercare, scary situation, creepy men, protective!Daryl, unexpected pregnancy, pregnancy symptoms, aversion to blood, mention of abortion, fear of abandonment, anxiety, panic attack, dissociation, angst.

wc. 5k

Flinching awake, Julia found herself in Daryl's arms.

His breath blows against the nap of her neck, like the tide, a steady rhythm. He was holding her tightly against him, and she didn't miss his one hand cupping her breast underneath her shirt. It was adorable. Daryl Dixon, completely out seeking comfort in his sleep like a baby. It was unusual to be the first one awake, but she was glad she was, cherishing the innocent moment of his softness.

Careful to not wake him, she turned so she was facing him. And it was a sight to see. His face was laxed with sleep, the harsh lines were not as prominent making him look much younger. And she felt curious, not knowing his age, remembering she had told him hers. It had not thrown him off so he could not be that much older, right? Honestly she didn't think age matters that much and neither did she care if he was. At most she thought him to be a decade older and she didn't see anything wrong with that.

Julia smiled, before pressing her lips to his cheek in a silent thank you. A thank you for him still being here and not regretting her. His confession echoed in her mind just as clearly as he had said it,

“I never regretted you and that's the truth. You hear'n me.”

and she felt so happy, her heart pounding freely in her chest, feeling that part of her that had been hurting melting away with the sunrise glowing on there faces.

Julia didn't know if it was love or what, but how she feels in his presence must be something close to that. And it had been there, slowly growing inside her heart sins that morning. And she had recognized those feelings for him, something significantly deeper, more profound than one would feel for a friend. Staring up at his sleeping face she knew she wanted more than a friendship, that what she truly wanted was what she had longed for…

Love.

Daryl pulled her closer, still in his sleep wanting her flush against him. His face was so close, their foreheads almost touched, and she washed him there closely, tracing the pads of her fingertips along his strong features. And, oh…how she adored him, finding him innocent in his state of sleep. Brushing his bed head out of his face she couldn't help but to feel the attractiveness there, he was a very handsome man. But no. He was far more. She found him beautiful in a way she didn't know a man could be.

She washed him snuggled into her chest, clearly searching for comfort in his sleep, and she wondered what he was dreaming about, if it was a good or a bad dream, but he looked peaceful, so she assumed it must be a pleasant one. Caressing his stubbled cheek she wanted the moment to never end, that they could stay like this forever. But as it got lighter nature called and she thought she could hold it just a bit longer, but it got to the point it felt painful. Carefully unwrapping his heavy arms from her waist she doesn't get far before he pulls her back.

“Were you going?” his deep voice questions.

"Bathroom.”

Daryl sighs with closed eyes, clearly against the idea of letting go, “Can’ it wait, let's sleep some more.”

“I got to go, Daryl.”

With a heavy sigh he opened his eyes, and she washed him back, smiling sweetly up at him.

“What?” Daryl questions.

“Nothing,” Julia smiled.

“What?”

“You slept like a baby, it was adorebulle.”

“Shut up,” embarrassment evident on his face, making Julia stifle a laugh.

Julia grabs her pack to tack with and it’s when she gets up to stand it feels like her body isn't keeping up. With her hands on her knees, slightly bowed over waiting for her vision to return and the lightheadedness to go away, Daryl moves closer,

“You good?”

“Uh, yeah. Think I just got up too fast,” Julia reassured, feeling herself coming back.

A warm hand grabbed her chin, tilting it upwards, “You're pale,” Daryl stated.

And Julia could feel she was but this was nothing new, she had been anemic her whole life so she didn't make a big deal out of it and her answer seemed to ease his worry as he released her chin, beginning to busy himself.

Julia didn't waste any time, heading straight for the bathroom. All the aisles were looted but a small area was left untouched. Female products were almost stocked to the brim with brands upon brands of pads, tampons and hair products. And she didn't think much of it until her eyes landed on the middle shelf. There was almost an audible click in her brain. She felt her mind racing and her body shaking as she stood there before the brands of pregnancy tests.

There was this intense feeling of realization washing over her. That even though she had always been irregular her entire life never had it been this late. No she can’t be - shouldn't she be throwing up if she was, she didn't know. And she certainly didn't understand why there were so many different tests, why couldn't there be just one? It was all too overwhelming and she was starting to jump to conclusions. But she couldn't stand the thought of not knowing in case she was. And she probably wasn't, right?

It almost felt like she couldn't think anymore and in her panic state and her need to pee she snagged a Clearblue week indicator test and a First Response test and locked herself in the bathroom near the back of the store.

Julia sat herself on the toilet with her pants down with the two brands of tests in each hand. She wasn't familiar with brands or which one was best. Did it matter they had expired by a year - she hoped not. Her being an anxious person she felt indecisive in which to pick so she decided to try all of the tests, which all together was six tests. Finishing up she pleased them all face down, letting them develop on top of the toilet lid.

The wait was tormenting and it read she had to wait for 3 minutes. She couldn't stay still for that long, she had to do something in her wait so she did her morning routine, changing undergarments, brushing teeth and fixing her hair. The feeling of doing something normal in a situation like this made her calm somewhat even though she was still shaking.

Taking a deep breath she looked herself in the mirror and she really was pale like Daryl had pointed out, but now it was more likely because she was scared more than anything. With a shaky hand she went for it, flipping the First Response tests over, and to her shock there was an unmistakable strong red line on all three of them, and she just stared as if the lines would disappear if she did so long enough. Then she looked at the Clearblue ones, and to her devastation it said,

Pregnant

3+

Oh, god.

Reading the package over and over again she confirmed she was 6 weeks pregnant and she have had no idea, having completely ignored all the signs.

Julia almost collapsed backwards into the sink as her mind made sense of it. But it wasn't translating - it wasn't even computing as a fact. But the positive tests were there, clear as day, staring right back at her…And it was very real.

Julia covered her mouth, eyes watering as she stared back at herself in the mirror as the world-shattering news sunk in. It feels almost like being given the news that someone was dead...That feeling of reality slipping away like it didn't exist. Her chest expanded suddenly, inhaling a deep breath to keep her from blacking out right then and there - and she looked down at herself, her eyes resting on her stomach. She took her jacket off and in her shirt she backed up so she could see her abdomen in the mirror, turning sideways and smoothed down the fabric there. It was way too early but she was already beginning to show. She could see the little curve there, feeling like it was staring right back at her - and all this time she had mistaken it as bloating. But what about the period of pain she had been feeling and her tender breast? Was it supposed to hurt? Was it normal to feel like this - and she wished she had all the answers, but she didn't, of course she didn't.

It was alive in there. A small thing that was a part of herself and a part of the man she had slept with and woken up to - no… it was a part of Daryl.

Julia felt tears in her eyes. Stupid - stupid - stupid, how could she have been such an idiot? They hadn't - they hadn't been safe at all. Not even a little bit. And why hadn't they been safe? Well...none of it had been planned - it had just…happened. Both desperately seeking comfort in one another without the thought of consequence. The thought hadn't even crossed her mind in either of the moments they had spent together - because she had craved it so badly. But then again, had Daryl not thought about it, or had he just not cared?

Julia felt like she might fall over again - the thought of Daryl...of him knowing - of it actually happening…Oh, god. She felt sick to her stomach of just thinking about it. They had barely begun a journey of knowing each other, but there was a connection there between them that had begun to come to the surface that felt far deeper than just sleeping with one another.

Her hands moved underneath the fabric of her shirt to press down her stomach, and she shut her eyes, and it felt… different, it was definitely something growing inside of her.

Several tears fell just at the feeling and the notion there was a very real baby in there, and when she opened them again she had to sit down on the floor before she would fall over. She was completely devastated, having thought things would be okay and happy, but of course something would destroy…she didn't want it to end.

She didn't know if she could stand yet, it almost felt like she actually would throw up on the floor. And she wondered if that was a sign of morning sickness or because of the anxiety?

She got on her berings slowly, vision tilting just slightly as she held herself up with one hand against the wall. Knowing if she took any longer Daryl would come knocking. So she calmed herself as much as she could, drying her tears and putting on her jacket and pack back on, discarding the evidence in the trash bin before heading out.

Walking back to the same aisle, feeling like she deserves some sort of control over the situation. Because she just wanted to feel like she had a choice and she knew she had to make one before it was too late. She wasn't sure of what to take for an abortion, if any of the over the counter pills worked and she felt like a shameful person as she grabbed an emergency contraceptive. Standing there and just staring at the box in her hand she was still making that choice in her head - and she just didn't know what to do. Did it make her a bad person if she took it? Was it irresponsible? Immoral?

On the back of the package it read, DO NOT USE: If you're already pregnant (because it will not work).

And of course it wouldn't. It wasn't an abortion pill after all, it was to prevent pregnancy after conception. If she wanted an abortion she would have to find a pharmacy, and how was she gonna explain that to Daryl? How was she gonna explain she was already 6 weeks p-

Voices of men entered the store. Julia watched the group of men begin to go through the shelves, looking for food probably and they didn't seem to know they were there. And speaking of, where was Daryl?

Julia continued to hide, staying silent as she carefully begun to move backwards, away from the intruders that loudly chatted amongst themselves and she didn't really listen to anything they said until,

“Thought you said there would be a girl here?” One of the men complained.

“No, I said I saw a girl and a man heading this way.” the other man clarified.

“You claim her?”

“Boys remember the rules. There is no such thing as claiming, only free game,” another man said and all the men started laughing.

Her stomach sank, the feeling of horror had her frozen in place. These were bad people, very bad people and if they were to find her, she imagined very horrifying things would happen.

There was movement behind her and before she could make a sound, large hands clasped over her mouth. She fought against it, tried to scream for Daryl, but she was left defenseless against the strong body. The only sounds that could be heard were the men talking and moving around the store, and her panicked breaths against the hands silencing her. Then one hand moved away and she was being turned around, faced with the man she was silently screaming for… The father of her unborn child.

Daryl.

Thank God.

Julia stopped fighting against him, looking up at him with fearful eyes. The thought she was carrying his child in a world of the walking dead was terrifying for many reasons. She could tell he was scared too, though his fear stemmed from adrenaline and survival to get them out of there, because… he didn't know.

He motioned for her to stay silent with a finger against his lips, Julia nodded and his hand released. She could see him thinking of a plan, because how could they escape unnoticed, and there were many, 8 if she counted wright, all armed. But then she remembered the window in the bathroom, they were close enough to make it without being seen.

Julia pointed towards the bathroom behind the aisle of feminine products and drew a window in the air with her hands. Daryl seemed to understand what she was referring to and he nodded, leading the way to the bathroom.

With the door closed behind them, Daryl opened the small tinted window, then motioned for her to make it true. Glancing towards the trash bin before stepping on top of the toilet lid Julia hoists herself up and out. Daryl passed his bag and crossbow before following, careful to not to make a sound he closed the window shut, to not reveal their escape.

“Go, go, go,” Daryl ordered, and they rushed into the forest away from the band of men.

Hands in her pockets she could feel how the heavy weight of anxiety loomed.

The more she thought about it, which she had done all day, finding out she was pregnant felt like either choice she was left to mourn something, it already felt like she was. She didn't even know if she was ready to take care of another life even though she had always wanted to be a mother, be married and have a family of her own. But the world was far different then when she had those innocent dreams.

Daryl turned to face her, and his pause almost made her trip over her own feet. He was staring down at her, his gaze making her feel naked, like he could tell what was wrong. With that same expression when he had told her she looked pale he said,

“I don’t like that color on your face.”

And of course her face was still pale, probebully paler for him to comment about it, but she was feeling unwell for reasons she could not tell him yet.

“I’m fine, let's keep going,” she lied.

“We're setting camp here,” Daryl declared, not even bothering to call her out and began to skin the squirrels he'd been hunting along the way.

And of course Daryl didn't buy it, she was the worst of liers there was. Their close encounter this morning had scared her deeply and jumpy all around, which she also knew he had picked up on. He seemed to notice things most people didn't, but she was relieved he didn't push for the truth.

Concentrating on tending the fire as Daryl gutted the animals Julia could not watch on like she usually did. Feeling like the sight of blood or just the notion of it made her sick. It was ironic that it was first after finding out she was pregnant she began feeling symptoms.

Only when eating did the sickness stop. She had been starving all day, the feeling of having warm food in her stomach felt so, so good.

“Slow down girl, no one's gonna take it from ya,” Daryl said from across the fire.

“This is slow.” Julia said, food stuffed in her mouth and she didn't care for manners, she was starving.

Throwing the bones into the fire it didn't take long for that heavy feeling to return, and she just wished for it to leave her alone. Hugging her pack feeling terribly overwhelmed by the events of the day she hadn't noticed Daryl watching her. He moved from across the fire, kneeling on one knee in front of where she was sitting on the cold ground, and as if he was speaking to an injured animal he said,

“Julia. Hey, look at me.”

Slowly her teary eyes looked into his. His look was one of concern, and deeply so. She knew he couldn't fully understand the visual display of emotions nor the reason behind the fear she felt - he probably thought it was a response from their close encounter with the men in the store, which was parsley true. He reached out, wiping a tear away from her cheek and said,

“Let’s go to bed, okay?”

Julia nodded weekly “Okay.”

The fire was soon to burn out, the last ambers drifting off into the night. Huddling up against one another, having zipped their sleeping bags together Julia laid turned from him, letting tears fall along her nose down into the bedding. The smallest of sniffles escaped her. Daryl moved closer, pulling her into his arms, his body warm and comforting against her. Looking up at him as she stared into his blues, taking in his lovely features. He looked so soft in moments like these, she had almost forgotten what was underneath that rugged exterior and what he was capable of. His watercolor eyes looked almost like a creature that would never harm anyone, especially when he was looking at her, with all his kindness and worry.

“Way you cryin’?” He asked, gently drying the wetness away.

He was such a sweet man.. So, why was she so scared of telling him? She didn't know - she didn't know anything anymore. Her world had turned upside down, her bubble had finally burst, and she was just too overwhelmed to think straight and, and…

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she managed to tell true the tears that just kept on coming.

She was un ugly crier, probably making him feel put off by her distraught state. But he was not put off, more so determined than anything to find the reason behind the tears, and she didn't feel ready to tell him yet.

“Why don’t you know?” he questioned further.

But the tears worked against her, not allowing her to speak.

“Yah scared?” he tried, continuing to wipe her face.

And maybe it was evident that she was, because faces said so much, gave so much away. Especially hers.

“You don’t gotta be scared no more, they're not gonna find us,” his deep voice was so very gentle.

But she could not shake the feeling, and it was as if all the terrifying experience with men tore into her like a sharp pain shooting through her chest. Shaky hands reached out, holding onto the fabrike off his chest like a lifeline, the fer poured out before she new it,

“No! They are gonna find us! And - and, they'll kill you and then they are gonna rape me!”

Only after her words came to life did she realize she admitted to a fear so deep within herself she shocked herself. She felt him stiffen to her words, his heart beating louder as he held her as if he was gonna lose her.

“No, no,” his deep voice rumbled from his chest. “Nothing like that’s gonna happen. No one's gonna hurt ya and nobodys’ gonna kill me.”

“You don't know that. Didn't you hear what they said? They said I was ‘free game and-”

Daryl moved on top of her, caging her in and his eyes looked intense making her worry she had upset him somehow. Tears spilled from the corner of her eyes down to her ears as she stared up at him. With a more serious tone he said almost darkly,

“No. Yah ain't.”

It felt like she couldn't breathe. It sounded like a confession. He didn't outright say it. But why else would he so straightforwardly denie the idea, as if the thought angered him.

Oh.

Did he already see her as is? That would explain the protectiveness, the anger and the gentleness in his touch. Her mouth trembled and the softness in his eyes returned. He searched her face before leaning down and enveloping her in a kiss. The kiss so soft she could feel the pure intentions behind it. It calmed her to the point her tears stopped falling.

Daryl pulled away, resting his forehead against hers, Julia closed her eyes as well. The feeling of his warm breath against her face was pleasant against the cold air as he said almost pleadingly,

"Please stop crying. Just tell me what to do.”

Julia couldn't help herself as her arms wrapped around his neck, and it felt like she could not word what she needed. He let her hold him close in response to her desperate need of comfort. She opened her mouth as if to tell him about the baby. But she just couldn't get the words to leave her. She was so scared. But she needed him now more than ever. His protection, his touch, his voice, him underneath her skin, but even that wouldn't be near enough.

She felt him lean into her ear, “Tell me,” he begged.

She unwrapped herself from the embrace, her hands resting on either side of his face. Gazing up at him she felt shy to say what she wanted. He was staring right back at her, as if reading her, making her feel like an open book underneath his gaze. But what she also felt was his desire hardening against her thigh. His eyes had darkened with lust, filled with that same desire they had shared last night.

He seemed to understand what she was asking for. That same pulse began to beat between her legs and she spread them apart, welcoming him. It seemed to have heightened his own desire as his lower body moved against hers and he did it so very carefully, gauging if she would stop him. But she wouldn't. This is what she wanted. All of him inside of her.

With her hands still on his face she kissed him. His tongue entered her mouth and before she knew it he had taken control, their tongues dancing and it felt like he always was in a desperate need for more. His hips rocked against her front and the feeling of his hard length had her walls squeezing around nothing. Wetness pooled like a poodle, staining her jeans and she wondered if he could feel it. His hand traveled down, cupping her mound she gasped into his mouth. She could feel him undo her jeans, assisting she lifted her bottom and with one swift motion they were pulled down and all the way off, tossing them out without breaking the kiss.

Daryl had her panting as he pulled away for the need of oxygen. She washed on as he pulled his jacket and shirt off, leaving himself in a sleeveless button down, reminding her how strong and broad he was. Just as fast his lips returned to hers and she melted into his mouth, his hand cupped her and she just wanted him inside already. It felt like he was teasing her and probably enjoying her desperate state, feeling the wetness over her undergarment. Painfully slow his hand went underneath the fabrike, thicke fingers going along her folds almost curiously at how wet she was. Just with his fingers down there it felt so good she had to pull away from the kiss and when he dipped his fingers inside of her, going for a spot she had no idea existed inside of her, had her within seconds away from climax.

She could feel him washing her, that intense feeling building and belding before it- His hand clasped over her mouth before the moan escaped her. Julia swore he had her seeing stars, feeling almost lightheaded as she came down. A kiss was pressed to her forehead and she gazed up at him only wanting more.

The unmistakable sound of him undoing his pants has her stomach flutter in anticipation, her legs spreading even wider as he moves closer to lube himself with the wetness. Just as he aliens himself, feeling his head pressed against her entrance he paused, whispering,

“You gotta be quiet, okay.”

Julia nodded, wrapping her arms around his neck and before she could ready herself her promise went out the window. His hand clasped over her mouth once more, his other hand cradling her head. Entering her all the way she could feel how her walls adjust to the intrusion. It was a tight fit but she liked the feeling of him stretching her out.

Daryl pulled almost all the way out before he pushed himself inside, beginning a steady pace. Every rock of his hips had her making sounds into his hand, making him remind her to keep quiet. But how could she stay silent when he was making her feel so good.

Daryl buried his face into her shoulder, heavy breaths of pleasure leaving him. Her legs wrapped around him, sending him deeper. His breath became more laborde as she did so and she could feel him holding himself back, not allowing his own sounds of pleasure coming to life.

The hand covering her mouth was exchanged into sloppy kisses. The pace slowed for just a moment letting her breath for a moment before his hand returned and the pace of his hips as well. Pressure built in her stomach as he went faster, his breaths turning into grunts. But he kept them low and controlled. Daryl was locked in. Eyes closed, chasing after his climax. His hair had become dampened with sweat and in her pleasure she takes in his rugged, wetherd face, his masculine beauty exudes from him. Before she knew it she was on the edge of her second climax, her face turning hot, the intense feeling building up before it would explode like a supernova. The feeling was so intense she couldn't make a sound, legs shaking intensely as she went true it, feeling the wave all true her lower body, down to her feet. It was overwhelming in a pleasurable way, having her almost feeling drunk as she came down. Opening her eyes only to be met by his piercing blue ones as he continued to move inside of her. He seemed to like washing her as much as he liked to kiss her and it felt so good to be wanted.

She could see him fighting it, as if to prolong his chase. But she could see the shift behind his eyes, the primal instinct to finish burning inside of him. As if he couldn't take it anymore he thrusts his hips harder, the pace overstimulating, bringing tears to her eyes. Their flesh collided inside the sleeping bag and she worried the noises would alert nearby walkers.

With an animalistic grunt he pulled out, finishing on her thigh. Their panting breaths filled the night as he stopped himself from completely collapsing on top of her. He reached clumsily for something in his back pocket and cleaned his mess off her thigh, the aftercare sweet she couldn't help but smile.

Puting the rag away he pressed the softest kiss she had ever received from him, closing her eyes she melted into it, completely worked out and ready for bed. With an arm he pulled her into his chest, his chin resting on top of her head and this was where she felt the safest she had ever felt in her entire life. In the arms of the man she trusted her life with, that also was the man that had made her pregnant and had no idea because she had failed to tell him.

It was nice, the unintentional comfort he provided, holding her as if her world hadn't just turned upside down and their shared journey wouldn't come to an end. Because she knew when he found out everything would change and she had a feeling it would break her heart.

And that was when she decided to not tell him. That for the sake of the future, for her selfish desires for love she would simply not tell him. Under no circumstances was he to find out until they found the doctors and finished what she was set out to do. And Julia hoped he would not hate her for it, that he would find it within himself to understand.

With her ear against his beating heart and his steady breath she drifted away from the harsh reality she would be woken to. But for now she would be with the man she just began to know and love.

Pt.12 Masterlist

[fluffytheocelot]

Hello it’s extremely late oops. Did not realize how long this thing would take (28 and a half hours apparently according to procreate lmao) but finally, here it is!

Carmen Week Day 8: La Femme Rouge

Holy crap that was a lot of characters! For day 8 I wanted to draw all the ways I've drawn/imagined Carmen over the last 5 years! There are many I didn't do for one reason or another, but it mainly boiled down to space lol. These 10 (11 including canon Carmen) are (most) of my favorites of my AUs :)

this turned out so cool im putting it in a frame when i get a chance lol

Info and solo drawings for each under the cut! it is. so long lol

as usual, i'll gladly answer asks about em :) i have plans to write a few for sure, but it's gonna be A While for them lol

Cat:

Both a Warriors AU and also just my "_____ as a cat" style!

This ones a lot less fleshed out so just bear with me lol. (ATM there might only be 2 clans, ACME and VILE, idk yet lol. idk what to name em either cos stickin "clan" on the end don't feel right XD)

In the Warriors AU, Sheeppaw grows up learning 2 contradictory versions of the Warrior Code: The true one from Shadowstalk, and the VILE version from older warriors. She gets made an apprentice a couple moons early, but is relegated only to camp duties until shes 6 moons old.

She trains alongside Cracklepaw, Tigerpaw, Molepaw, Goatpaw, and Silentpaw. At her first gathering she meets another apprentice, maybe a few moons older, from the other clan: Jewelpaw. The two hit it off and become good friends (and develop little mutual crushes). Sheeppaw also sneaks out and meets a kittypet: Player, who she also becomes very good friends with.

When her mentor, the deputy, Shadowstalk fails her on her final warrior assessment she pretty much has most of the same reaction as the show, just in the WC style.

After witnessing a murder, she hightails it out of there and encounters the newly named Crackletail. Panicked, she hastily and vaguely tells him she saw something and needs to Leave.

She makes it to Players yard and lays low for a while, and he introduces her to the neighbor cats, a sibling pair named Zack and Ivy. The four brainstorm and Sheeppaw is renamed Carmen. They know they cant let VILE keep doing what they're doing. So rogue Carmen and her kittypet friends start figuring things out from behind the scenes.

Pirate Cat:

Exactly as it says, bipedal cat world. Black Sheep was dropped off at a random orphanage in England, with a small stuffed black sheep (where she got her name). Since everybody are cats, Black Sheep isn't that atypical of a name. Sorta a mix of normal people names and cat names.

She grows up there alongside her self-appointed older brother Graham. When she's about 10-11ish she meets the princess: Julia Argent. Childhood friends to lovers letsgoo (its a recurring theme in these lol. its cute i like it).

The two eventually get together (in secret, yay homophobia and also societal status) It doesn't help that Black Sheep had a habit of getting in trouble so she could see the princess her princess.

The two get caught one night, and Black Sheep is nearly executed for "corrupting royalty", but Julia manages to talk her father down from that. Instead, she is exiled. If she ever sets foot in the kingdom after dawn, she WILL be killed this time.

Julia visits one last time, and Black Sheep promises to return someday when she finds somewhere where they can be together freely. She gives Julia her stuffed sheep to look after while she's gone, and asks her to take care of Fuega while she's gone (on one of their sneak-outs, they found a baby dragon that Julia managed to convince her dad to let her keep). Julia gives her the triangle choker. yay tearful goodbyes ;-;

Black Sheep and Graham (because no way is he letting his little sister go into exile without him) go from place to place, stealing when they need to and end up accidentally stowing away on a VILE pirate ship.

VILE pirate training to avoid death, they escape. Graham appoints the newly named Carmen Sandiego captain of their little ship, and they also pick up Zack, Ivy, and Player along the way. Carmen becomes very well known around the globe: civilians/lower class people see her as a Robin Hood hero (correct), while most royals and nobles see her as nothing but a filthy pirate (incorrect).

A few years go by when suddenly the crew gets word that the King of England is trying to marry off his daughter, who has recently come of age. Cue panicked race home + childhood lover reunion.

Daughter of Poseidon (Carmen Sandiego and the Olympians):

Percy Jackson AU! Replace Percy with Carmen, Grover with Player, Annabeth with Julia, and switch/move around some plot points and that's about it lol. I keep telling myself I'll do some scene rewrites of this one so we'll see. Includes PJO and HOO acting as prequels for Carmen Sandiego. Def wanna do dome rewrites for the canon show for this AU too lol

Dino Squad:

I'm out here combining one obscure kids show with another lol. If you haven't seen it, Dino Squad is this early 2000s animated show about these 5 teenagers that get mutated and can turn into dinosaurs, and go around stopping the bad guy from turning everything into dinosaurs. (I think the entire series may be on youtube lol. its goofy but man i loved it as a kid. i wanted dino powers so bad)

This is basically a high school au but most of Team Red has dinosaur powers. :P

In this, Dr. Bellum is experimenting with bringing dinosaurs back, but instead of just cloning them, she figures out how to mutate already-existing organisms into others.

(in the OG dino squad, the bad guy IS a dinosaur that evolved into a human--long story--and believes everything should still be dinosaurs. hes technically right, tbf, if the meteor hadn't hit they prolly still WOULD be dinosaurs. why does bellum want dinosaurs? because she's Bellum and she Can lol)

Carmen Wolfe and her twin brother Graham (they're fraternal twins. why? bc i thought it would be funny. yes he still has his accent. its my world i do what i want) are raised by Carlotta and Dexter Wolfe in Kittery Point, Maine. Carlotta is a paleontologist/biologist and Dexter is a history and geography teacher at the high school. They do know of VILE and what Bellum was working on and have been monitoring it in secret from the kids.

Carmen and Julia are those friends that met bc they were both hiding under the slide in like. Preschool and just stayed friends lol. They're the kind of best friends that will just. Show Up. usually Julia at Carmen's house because "You have better snacks" also Julia's parents just Don't Like Carmen. (Why? idk bc i said so. idk they think she's a bad influence. she's really not lol) Literally Julia has like a spot on the couch and a table setting. She's basically the third twin these three have known each other essentially their entire lives.

Zack and Ivy joined the group in middle school, when Ivy had the same class as Carmen, Julia, and Gray. Zack joined via association. (Zack and Ivy, on the other hand are not twins. again. bc its funny. each sibling pair thought the other was like them. zack and ivy thought Carmen and Gray were just normal siblings, and Carmen and Gray thought Zack and Ivy were twins. Julia had to explain to all of them it was not the case lol)

Player is Carmen's online friend that the whole group includes. they all game together and he gets ALL the public school tea. hes about the same age as Zack, so about a year-ish younger than Carmen, Gray, Ivy, and Julia.

At the end of their freshman year, Carmen and Julia start dating. Their friends and Carmen's parents know, they keep it secret from everyone else. At the end of the summer everybody (aside from Player) go to the beach for one last day of freedom before school starts. They swim through the mutant goo, and over the next few days discover their powers.

Carlotta IDs each dino: Carmen is a (large/person sized) pyroraptor, Gray is a T. rex, Julia is a troodon, and I still cant decide on Zack and Ivy's dino forms lol. Carlotta and Dexter explain the whole VILE thing and the group just kinda simultaneously goes "welp guess we're superheroes now. cool"

so yea dealing w highschool and also mutant dinosaurs and superpowers. this ones fun bc they can just be stupid kids lol

The Last Wolf:

My werewolf AU. The one that started all this mess and my love for making AUs of this show. It was my first fanfic i ever wrote, and it is very near to my heart. it's also gotten out of hand and become a franchise at this point it's ridiculous. (Seriously i've got a prequel of her parents planned and also a series of shorts set in the universe) It's gonna be a long ride, boys. Hope people still like CS by the time it's done lol

A Thief's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse:

Zombie apocalypse AU! Talked about this one a bit for AU day, and also as of this post I have ~1k words written of the first chapter! I also have a bunch of the major plot points outlined too ;) I wouldn't expect anything soon tho lol.

She wears a wetsuit under the coat bc it's really hard to bite through, especially with rotten jaws. She's got some boots she probably scavenged or traded for, and of course: the Walkman she probably found looting some abandoned building. She collects cassettes to listen to. Gotta keep sane in the end of the world.

How is this one a literal apocalypse and its still more lighthearted than the one based on FNAF lol

Redd Wolf (Five Nights at Redd's):

FNAF AU. I've truly lost it lol. I have this one completely outlined, nothing written but a lot of things are VERY clear in my mind. This ones uh. a lot more intense than even Thief's Guide. It's FNAF. its immense violence and child death. Seriously, Carmen, Player, Gray, Ivy, Zack, and Julia all end up possessing animatronics at some point. It ends happily, but it is based off a horror thing so if that's not your thing b careful <3

its supposed to be more of a mystery that gets unraveled, but if anyone wants specifics of it u can drop an ask :) i only have animatronic designs for Carmen, Julia, and Gray so far tho. I have ideas for the others too.

This is one I wanna share with y'all at some point. its probably the shortest of the AUs I have outlined so far, so yk. maybe in this lifetime lol.

Carmen and the Age of Wonderbeasts:

Mega Jaguar Carmen. This ones more of a ~vibe~ than an actual plot but i like drawing mega jag carm :)

Plushie Dragon:

This one's not an AU, but actually based on doodles of these 2 plush dragons! Matching red/gold and blue/silver dragons named after carmen and julia lol. I'll get around to posting more drawings of em cause they're cute

the plushies <3 (they have spikes u just cant see em:

ik they look goofy i lov them anyways

Wings of Fire:

Wings of Fire AU! Carmen is a rainwing/skywing hybrid (rainwing dad, skywing mom) She can camoflauge, fly decently fast, and has a prehensile tail. She can't breathe fire or use typical venom, BUT she figures out her venom, while not face-melting by itself, IS in fact flammable. again, more of a ~vibe~ than a story and plot, but I like drawing dragons.

Canon Carmen:

She's front and center, the one that started all this.

Way back in 2019, the autism and ADHD departments in my brain came to an agreement: This show is the greatest show of all time.

It was the first fandom I actively contributed to/interacted with. (I still read fics from other fandoms before, but had never been active in a fandom) Like I mentioned with Last Wolf, I had never actually written fanfiction before, and definitely never posted it. I love writing and telling stories (and boy howdy do I have A Lot of stories rolling around my brain). between all of the AUs ive come up with, I've gotten to practice so much worldbuilding and characterization. English classes usually focused on expository stuff, with like. a brief fiction writing thing. So I've definitely gotten to stretch my creative writing muscles with this show, and hopefully I can put em to use on original projects someday <3

I fell in love with the first season, and got ridiculously excited for every new season and the interactive. (heck, i played every possible option for the interactive the day it came out, and binged every subsequent season the day they aired.)

This show has been a big part of my life the last five years, and the original show will always be special to me. It's the reason I started learning to draw people lol, I have a drawing of Carmen from 2020 that I'm still really proud of. It's hung on my bedroom wall to this day.

So thank you, Carmen Sandiego. For everything.

[indierpgnewsletter]

Every Game I Played in 2024 (So Far)

It’s time for one of my favourite posts to write every year. Here is every game I’ve played in the first half of 2024:

Series

Fathoms Deep (as GM): Let’s get my own game out of the way first: I’ve ran about 11 playtest sessions of Fathoms Deep, a game about a community of salvagers aboard a living ship in a flooded world. The game is my big project. If I was studying game design, this would be my masters’ thesis. It’s got a lot of parts – action-packed underwater dives using my flavour of card-based Forged in the Dark, a cool map where you move your ship around, downtime scenes, campaign arcs based on survival, hope and salvation, etc. There’s a lot of tinkering left to do and I am in no hurry to finish because, deep breath, it’s about the journey! Like in the game!

Pasion de la Pasiones (as GM): We took the spanish telenovela game and set it in a X-men-like school. Sadly we didn’t get to play past the first couple sessions but it’s a slam dunk concept and a great game. My game of the year for 2023 if I remember correctly!

The Wildsea (as GM): This was the big campaign that marked the first half of the year in my (online) home game. It has a lot of overlap with my own game, Fathoms Deep – both are pirate-games-without-pirates. But Wildsea has a very different tone – it’s optimistic high fantasy in the vein of some of the best D&D 5e games I’ve played. I would easily recommend it as a game for people who are playing 5e and want something to easily switch to. The world and setting is lovely – a solid thematic core garnished with a variety of fun ideas, great flavour, and lots of stunning, evocative art. I had so much fun playing zany characters to match the vibe of the zany world. The system isn’t my cup of tea for a variety of complicated reasons but this is a fantastic achievement, especially since it was the designer’s first game afaik!

Rich Kid Problems: Last year, I played Capitalites by Sam Mui and this year, we returned to that classic genre of rich people behaving badly with this game by Maria Mison. It’s a light storygame – improv heavy but good fun.

Last Fleet (as GM): We’re one month into this Battlestar Galatica-inspired game by Josh Fox. It’s far future space opera with humanity on the edge of extinction – all inter-personal politics and feelings in the face of almost certain doom. I love this game already. It meshes perfectly with my directorial GM style and helps me serve up some fantastic moments. It feels like every session, I am throwing some impossible decision or loyalty-threatening revelation at my players who pick up the ball and run with the ball unflinchingly. It definitely helps to think about it as prestige TV and frame scenes using that language – lots of walking and talking in corridors, that sort of thing. The characters aren’t on the same side, there aren’t missions – just agendas and obstacles. Will write about some of the cool design stuff going on when the campaign is done.

One Shots

Okay, got to rush through these!

This Ship Is No Mother (as GM): I ran 4 great games of my little lets-make-Mothership-a-storygame game. These were mostly at online cons or things like that. I love playing this game.

Wizards Grimoire and Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands: Getting to play two games from the Bakers was a real treat. Wizard’s Grimoire is the start of a series of games that flip the GM-player relationship in great ways. You should check it out. Firebrands is a game of daring mech pilots told in dramatic vignettes where the less you force a narrative, the better!

Steal away Jordan and Tales of a Fisherman’s Wife: These are two games from designer, Julia Ellingboe. I think Steal Away Jordan is my favourite of the two. Even as you wrestle with the discomfort (if you’re not Black) of playing Black slaves in the American south, it’s still a game about being heroes with a lot of delight and joy at the heart of it! Fisherman’s Wife is a game of Japanese ghost stories with tentacle porn on the cover. I’m not sure what else to say!

Navathem’s End (as GM): This game by Pam Punzalan and Sin Posadas fits well with Wildsea on this list because it feels like an alternate take on the genre that is D&D 5e. It’s that light-hearted brand of heroic fantasy but with a different ethos – less colonial, more grounded in community.

Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast: A book which is probably as fun to read as play. You probably have heard about it enough but if not, go listen to the Yes Indie’d episode about it.

After the Mind, the World Again: This is a Disco Elysium inspired game where there’s one player and four GMs who play facets of a detective’s mind. It’s not really a one shot game – definitely takes 4 hours or more but we rushed the ending and got somewhere. Also, free!

City of Mist (as player): I always joke about wanting to read this game but bailing as soon I as open the PDF to see that it has more than 500 pages. The new version has cut half of the system out so maybe I had a point.

The Hunted (as player): This is a slick one-shot game – Forged in the Dark folk horror in the vein of Blair Witch Project and the like. Easy to play and run, would do again.

Swords without Master (as GM): This game should’ve inspired a whole design lineage. The text is a bit tricky to parse but if you get a chance to play this, you should take it!

Damn the Man, Save the Music: If you like Empire Records and don’t mind doing some improv, this game is great.

Cloud Empress (as player): The giant psychic cicadas are a great linchpin for a setting. If you play the game, head straight for them.

There was a bit more here and there. I already wrote about playing older games like Metamorphosis Alpha, Bunnies & Burrows and Dallas RPG on here. There was also a lot of playtesting including a very fun session of Protect the Child by Mint about a found family of monsters looking after a child a la Monsters Inc. Overall, another very satisfying half-year.

[swarayaps]

INTRO POST + FRIEND APPLICATION <3

oh boy, this might be a bit long... but it's worth your read, i promise!

hello hello~! swara here from my main @swaramalani !! so this is my first post here on my secondary blog, where i'll be— yep, you guessed it— yapping as fuck.

﹒✧ name : swara <3 ﹒✧ age : 17 ﹒✧ from : india! (IST) ﹒✧ prns : she/they ﹒✧ sexuality : sapphic abro (+taken!!)

﹒✧ purpose of this blog : to pour the chaos out of my mind and into words. and make some 4lifers along the way.

﹒✧ hobbies and the sorts : (i have a list of hobbies n interests so be prepared lol) writing, singing-songwriting, art, listening to music (!!), making digital products (including aesthetic discord servers, notion dashboards, subliminals, carrds, wallpapers, etc.), animanga + series, movies, manifestation, gaming (occasionally; genshin impact + ddlc), content creation, streaming (again, sometimes), being queer as shit, being addicted to social media, aesthetics, blogging + more! (pretty much anything and everything that catches my attention) ﹒✧ current obsessions : social media (discord, tumblr, pinterest, instagram, spotify not exactly a social media, but you get my point, youtube), 13 reasons why, random shit on youtube that gives you the chills or makes you paranoid (like this), sanrio, patreon, overworking myself, my kuromi plushie, the cute barbie merch from miniso (and the whole of miniso itself, ngl), arcade gaming, cafes (!!) + more!

﹒✧ list : i'll list some of the fandoms i'm into and some music artists i like! not ALL tho, since that'll end up taking the entirety of the post lol ﹒✧ music artists + bands : taylor swift, conan gray, chappell roan, girl in red, megan thee stallion, julia wolf (SUPER underrated, HUGE fan. if you're into her music, pls pls pls hmu !!), ayesha erotica, shayne orok, ariana grande, cigarettes after sex, sabrina carpenter, doja cat, penelope scott, lana del rey + more! (do keep in mind tho, that i mostly just listen to random music by random artists; whatever i like basically) ﹒✧ animanga + series + movies : sasaki to miyano, attack on titan, jujutsu kaisen, horimiya, kimi ni todoke, boku no hero academia, haikyuu!!, junji ito maniac, ginny and georgia, gilmore girls, heartstopper, 13 reasons why, moonknight, all of us are dead, loki, descendants movie series, everything disney + mcu, the princess diaries, mean girls + more!

﹒✧ dni + dislikes : basic dni criteria. dni if: lgbtqphobic, racist, hater, sexist, rude etc etc etc. basically just be a decent person. "i'll respect you as long as you don't disrespect somebody else's existence." also, dni if: -15/21+, cishetero males (got nothing against the men, but... i've just had some bad experiences with them online, most of which include them wanting to date me) as for dislikes, i can't really say i dislike much things, but keep politics and religion out of the convo.

﹒✧ socials : @/swaramalani everywhere: instagram, patreon, discord, pinterest, twitter, youtube, soundcloud, spotify. so stalk me/add me all u want xx (ps: bonus points if you're from india!!)

created : 15/11/2024 3:48 pm (friyay)

[canirove]

My neighbour Rúben | Chapter 11

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Masterlist

When I woke up, it took me a while to realize where I was. That I wasn't on my bed, that it was Rúben's, and that he should be sleeping next to me, his big arm around me. But he wasn't. If he had left for the hospital without telling me...

As I left the room, ready to go looking for him, I heard noise in the kitchen, so I went there. 

"Good morning" I said.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty" he replied. He wasn't wearing the small pajamas anymore, just a plain white t-shirt and some grey joggers that made his bum look perfect, just like the peach emoji. And he was smiling. 

"Did the hospital call?"

"They did. The surgery was a success, and even though now Ivan will have to work really hard, he'll recover."

"Oh, that's wonderful!" I said, running towards him and throwing my arms around his neck, hugging him. "I told you everything would be alright."

"You did" he said, hugging me back. "Thank you."

We stayed like that for a while, neither of us saying a word until the toaster startled us both. 

"I hope you like toasts for breakfast" Rúben chuckled. 

"That actually is what I have for breakfast. And some fruit."

"Then you've come to the right house. C'mon, when they are cold they don't taste the same" he said with a quick kiss before letting me go. "And oh, Lucy texted. She asked if you were with me."

"What did you tell her?"

"That you had spent the night here and that you would explain everything later."

"If she lets me" I sighed, sitting down.

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"I want all the details. Now." Lucy said the moment I walked into our apartment. "Was it good? How many times? How long? Is it big? It has to be big."

"Lucy!"

"What? Those are very important questions! Though to be honest, if he knows how to use it, it doesn't matter if..."

"Lucy, nothing happened."

"Yeah, sure" she snorted, following me into my room. "Are you telling me that you disappeared with Rúben, slept in his house, and nothing happened?"

"Yes, exactly that."

"Liar."

"We went to the hospital."

"What?"

"His brother was in a car accident, that's why we left."

"Oh dear. Is he ok?"

"His leg is broken in a few places, but they called this morning and said that the surgery was a success and he will recover."

"Thank God" she said, sitting down on my bed. "Wait, are you leaving again?"

"You don't mind, do you? Rúben is going back to the hospital and I don't want him to be alone."

"No, of course not. Go. Julia and I will be fine, she's still sleeping."

"Thank you" I said, disappearing into my bathroom to get changed.

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"You didn't have to come."

"I know. But I wanted to."

"Thank you" Rúben said, kissing my hand. Once again, he hadn't let go of it since we had left the car. 

"Oh, Mr. Dias" the doctor said when we arrived at the floor where Ivan's room was. "We were just checking on your brother."

"How is he doing?"

"Good. Tired and sore, but good. Let me introduce you to Dr. Newton. She is the one who performed your brother's surgery."

"Nice to meet you, ma'am. And thank you very much" Rúben said, letting go of my hand to shake hers.

"Just doing my job" she replied.

"Can we go in and see him?"

"Yes, of course. He's been asking for you, though he is a bit afraid you may be mad at him and act like the big brother despite being the younger one" Dr. Newton smiled.

"I have someone to keep me in check, don't worry" he said, putting his arm around my shoulders and pulling me closer to him. Both doctors were now looking at me, and I could feel my face getting warmer and warmer by the second. 

"Oh, you came!" Ivan said as we walked into his room. "And you brought company."

"Hello to you too" Rúben said to his brother. "How are you feeling?"

"Peachy" Ivan said, trying to smile. Though even that seemed to hurt. "Is she... Her?"

"Yes."

"Are you dating then?"

"We are just friends."

"With benefits?"

"Just friends, Ivan" Rúben said, his cheeks turning a bright shade of pink. Was he... Blushing? I knew I was, though I had been since we met with the doctors.

"Yes, sure. Whatever you say. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too" I smiled.

"You can tell me if you've fucked her, you know? I’m your brother" Ivan whispered in Portuguese, totally unaware that I was able understand most of what he had said. How did I know the word fuck in Portuguese? Fanfics. Always learning something new.

"She understands Portuguese" Rúben whispered back.

"Oh" Ivan said while looking at me, his eyes wide. "Sorry."

"About what?" I said, acting as if I hadn't heard him.

"Nothing" Rúben quickly added. "Mama and Papa are flying today, so get ready."

"She's gonna be so mad... But it wasn't my fault!" 

"She knows. But she's sick worried, so let her take care of you."

"Yeah, yeah..." Ivan said. "Now, tell me more about you. Piano teacher and nanny? Wow.”

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"You didn't have to drive me to the train station, you know?" I said to Rúben. "You probably have enough with training and having Ivan and your parents at home."

"Exactly. Leaving the house to be with you is just perfect."

"But it is pouring with rain and we are stuck in traffic."

"But we are together, aren't we? That already makes it better" he said with a big smile, resting his hand on my thigh. Despite wearing jeans, I could still feel his touch, and my cheeks were showing it. "So, what are the final plans for your Christmas?"

"Stay with my grandparents. Who will show up, is a mystery. And then on Boxing Day we are going to watch Arsenal play. Grandad somehow became friends with Ramsdale's dad and he got us tickets in the VIP area. Not the biggest fan, but at least I'll be warm."

"Why not the biggest fan?" 

"Because all the wives and girlfriends are there, and it just feels... Weird."

"Does that mean that for my next game I can't get you tickets there even if you could fit in the wag category?"

"You know what wag means?" I chuckled, totally ignoring everything else he had said. Just thinking about it made my heart start beating like crazy.

"I hear things in the changing room” he shrugged. “The other day I learnt about dilf and milf."

"Any thoughts about it?"

"Not really. You?"

"I don't think I like anyone who is a dilf."

"Not even John? That's how the conversation started, because people called him a dilf."

"Yeah... No."

"Because you like me better. I know" Ruben smirked before focusing on the road again, his hand not leaving my thigh. 

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"I can manage, Rúben."

"If I don't help you, you'll end up soaking wet. C'mon" he said, leaving the car and opening his umbrella. A few seconds later, he was by my door. "You hold the umbrella, I'll carry your suitcase."

"Are you also coming to the station with me?"

"I am. I'm not letting you go to London without a proper goodbye kiss."

"What if someone recognizes you and takes a photo?"

"That's why I'm wearing this" he said, pointing at his head. He was wearing a beanie and, of course, looking stupidly handsome. 

"But..."

"You don't want me to kiss you? I thought you enjoyed it" he asked with that smirk of his.

"I..." 

"That's what I thought. C'mon" he said again, putting an arm over my shoulders and starting to walk towards the train station.

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"Oh, there you are!" grandma said when I walked into her house, giving me a big hug. "I've missed you."

"I've missed you too" I replied, hugging her back.

"How was the road?" she asked grandad.

"Not bad considering the weather" he said.

"Was it the same back in Manchester?"

"Worst. We were stuck in traffic for ages."

"Did Lucy drive you?" grandma asked, walking into the leaving room and asking me to sit next to her.

"Yes, she did" I lied.

"So glad you've found a friend like her" she said. "Have you made any other friends? Maybe male friends?"

"Oh, please don't start" grandad said, rolling his eyes.

"I'm not the one who wants to set her up with that blondie."

"Who?" I asked.

"The goalkeeper. Your grandad and his dad want you to meet, they say you are perfect for each other" grandma said.

"Ramsdale and I?"

"He's a nice lad, and your grandma finds him cute."

"But she is the one who has to find him cute, not me. And I actually like his friend a lot better. The one with the tattoos" grandma winked.

"Tiger tits? No way" he laughed.

"Who is tiger tits?" I asked.

"Ben White."

"Oh..." I said. 

"Oh? What does that mean? Do you also fancy him like your grandma does?"

"No, I just..." I said, already feeling my cheeks get warm.

"She just has eyes in her face" grandma smirked. "Besides, we are not the ones who tell him I love you when he is playing."

"He's a great defence, alright? Worth the money. But I don't want him as a grandson. What about Saka? Too young?" 

And that was the conversation for the rest of the afternoon and part of our night: trying to decide which Arsenal player would be my ideal boyfriend. If only they knew that I already had my eyes on a footballer, but from another team...

[italeteller]

Thoughts on Undead Unluck 208

I love horny women

ngl tho I'm kinda sad Rip's got abs this loop, I'd hoped he'd have a more regular-guy kinda body now that he's more doctor than fighter. Also I'm gonna be annoying and wonder if Tella could actually play the guitar or not with Untell. But also also... damn, look at all that beefcake buffet. Tozuka really knows how to keep the fanbase well fed

Sean's mom's likely dead like his dad, so he knows what Fuuko feels like wanting to see her mom again

Eyy they gave Julia a Union uniform, that's nice

Neat little detail, Sean has the mind to keep one eye open even when being splashed with water so as to not trigger Unseen with civilians around, you know he's been training his reactions

I guess this is implying Fuuko gets her looks from her dad? Seeing them side by side her eyes are rounder than her mom's, and her hairstyle looks similar to her dad's, though with her mom's color

Also it's really damn funny that Fuuko's dad is completely used to the disaster of a human being that is his future wife. The man loves his cringefail girl. Though also, it's weird that Fuuko doesn't seem to have realized that the guy is indeed her dad. Maybe she had more of a relationship with her mom?

I love that the Union can just call Fuuko's ass out and she remains eternally oblivious to her shonen MC behaviors

The fact that Unluck gets explicitly mentioned twice makes me think there's some negation fuckery afoot. I know everything we've seen so far makes it look like no two people can have the same negation at the same time, but still. Maybe it'll be a red herring, but I have to wonder

Ok, the big thing of the chapter. I have no idea what is going on, by all means it doesn't make sense, but Tozuka specifically brought up how this shouldn't be happening only to make it happen, so I believe he's got a plan, and the man plans good, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I also wanna point out that this is the very first loop someone other than Juiz is the looper, so this is literally the first time this scenario is happening in this world

Baby Fuuko in her panpanda onesie is the cutest fucking thing I've seen all week

Ok so Billy and Tella are indeed part of the Tatiana rescue mission (no Nico in sight tho, which is weird). I was so fixated on Gina being part of the idol mission I didn't even think she'd be a big asset as the only other russian on the team. And Chikara also makes sense, a quick activation of Unmove might be able to freeze Tatiana's Untouchable before it can blow her parents to dust. I hope that's the only reason he's there, and Tozuka isn't planning to resume the nonsense ship this loop too

Rip and Latla are on Bunny duty, no surprises there (though again, no Ichico, which is weird) and Shen and Mui are training literally under Feng. Sad day for Mei fans though, she seems to have been demoted to tea girl and isn't even training anymore. Guess my hopes of her being the Mui of this loop are dashed

Hoo boy. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I desperately wanna see the whole Union play musical band. On the other hand, Tozuka has done a big group arc three times: on the 11 minutes fight, the Unmove arc and the Sick, and he only pulled it off on the 11 minutes fight. I'd much rather have only Gina, Mui, Latla (and Leila! Twin idols shtick!), Yusai and Haruka get solid focus than have a big group where a few people get most of the screentime and everybody else gets three panels like the Unmove and Sick arcs

Idk what Tozuka has in store for Kururu, but I don't see how she's gonna outshine all of this

[asherthephoenix]

Oooh! Here's a question! What is one (1) headcanon you have for each reboot kiddo? (One for Priya, one for Bowie, and so on.)

Most of these I've had for awhile but thanks for helping me realize there were a few characters from this cast I never bothered to make hcs for lol. Some of these are gonna be sadder than others (I like making angst). TW FOR MENTIONS OF: Child neglect, transphobia, homophobia, the foster care system, child abuse, relationship abuse Caleb: Dumped Priya shortly after the season 2 finale when he realized they just weren't compatible and he'd rather just be friends (please let this be the case in s3🙏) Axel: She's related to Shawn and has a part time job as an instructor at the flower shop and fighting school. Years after the show she gets promoted to manager/class organizer

Nichelle: She's the daughter of the in-universe equivalent of someone like Beyonce or Will Smith, and so she got into acting as a baby.

Lauren: Her parents paid very, very little attention to her when she was a small child because they were preoccupied with their (full of illegal practices) circus buisness and Lauren was primarily raised by her older brother (who is 11 years older than her.) The computer was her babysitter a lot of the time and she got into creepypasta stuff at like age 4 Damien: He's trans ftm and was disowned by his parents after coming out, luckily he had a supportive aunt who took him in and allowed him to start HRT. He signed up for TD without hesitation or even bothering to look up what the show entailed when he heard he could win a million dollars because he knew he could use that money to A. repay his aunt for her kindness and B. afford top surgery

MK: Raised in the foster care system alongside her twin brother. She barely ever got anything for herself growing up and developed her klepto behavior after stealing her first video game and console (a 3DS and pokemon sun for anyone curious)

Raj: Figured out he was gay in middle school. Didn't want to come out because while he knew his immediate family would be supportive, his extended family overseas certainly wouldn't be. Needless to say his family cut contact with a lot of distant relatives after the show aired Wayne: He'd never actually had a girlfriend prior to being on TD. When the purple haired intern (who I hc started liking him after he helped her in the fear challenge) told him she had a crush on him she had to explain it very slowly several times over in order for him to understand what she meant Ripper: also had it rough growing up unfortunatley; he mentions at one point his parents dropped him a lot and told him that babies ruin everything so I don't think it's a stretch to say his parents were abusive. Axel was the first person who truly made him feel loved and accepted.

Zee: Uses perscription marijuana for anxiety. The soda is a clear metaphor for weed; while yes he drinks a lot of it normally since he probably wasn't allowed to use drugs (even perscription) on camera he seriously upped the amount of soda he drank as a sort of replacement

Chase: Was actually a decent person once upon a time and legitimatley did woo Emma over with actual charm. With time unfortunatley he started the youtube channel and once it took off the fame got to his head so he would do anything to make the next "viral video," including putting his GF's life in danger.

Emma: She used to be a model student- straight As, participated in a lot of extracirriculars, had a ton of friends, etc. All of that went down the drain when she used 90% of her time to work on the youtube channel. After breaking up with Chase (the second time) she went to therapy and is trying to become the great person she once was, but it's going to take quite a bit of time.

Julia: She first came out as queer for the sake of a pride month post/getting sponsorships from "queer friendly" brands but hadn't actually thought much about her sexuality at the time. Getting to know MK (and Bowie + the hockey bros) during TD made her realize she actually is a Lesbian, she wasn't lying like she thought she was. Millie: Developed a HUGE crush on Priya during s1. She first started gaining feelings around episode 6 or so but didn't quite process that it was a crush until she realized just how happy she was to have Priya back when she forgave her in the season 1 finale + how upset she would have been if she lost Priya. She cried herself to sleep after watching the season 2 livestream at the playa😭 Bowie: Was a huge brony when he was a kid and got into arguments about the show with grown men online in middle school Priya: After season 2, she was contacted by Courtney (who very reluctantly checked out the new seasons and was horrifed by Priya's situation) who offered to be her lawyer when suing her parents for the right to access the s1 prize money. They were sucessful and Priya moved in with Millie afterwards 😉

[whichuniverseisthis]

I finally had the time to watch the whole reboot (not true, I've just been avoiding studying) so here's my final overall opinion for both seasons.

I think I like season one more, mostly because of the less romance drama and the bigger focus on friendships and rivalries and because Bowie was there the whole time. So here my opinion on each character, in alphabetical order. This shit got way too long for no reason.

Axel: she was cool. Overall fine, it was fun watching her, especially in the second season. I like that she has an artistic side to her that isn't needed for survival, with poetry and painting. I think my favorite episode for her was the third of season two, when she gets stuck to and has to deal with Ripper, and they actually start to get along.

Bowie: I don't think there's any way for me to not have him as my overall favorite. He's too much fun, he's smart, strong, confident, friendly, but he isn't perfect at all, and he showed it especially in season two. The relationship with Raj was adorable, the rivalry with Julia amazing, the friendship with Emma great and I'd say perfectly handled in the first season. He got involved in all of the main plots of the first season, and had a huge role in all of them. I just love him. I can't decide a single favorite episode for him, it would be between episodes 1, 9, 11 and 12 from the first season and episode 5 from the second.

Caleb: I've seen so much hate for him after the second season. But I'll tell you what: I actually enjoyed him, especially in the last couple of episodes. He's not a favorite, not even close, but they gave me the time to learn more about him (maybe even way too much). I liked him especially in episode 12 of season two, where he couldn't decide how to handle Priya and Julia and keep a balance between his alliances that he worked so hard to get, the greatest bit being when Priya made him promise to not tell Julia about the betrayal, and he said his word didn't matter anymore. And in the end he just didn't listen to neither of them.

Chase: well, what to say. He was fine. He was good for what he represented, and he actually had some fun moments. The fake death bit with the bears was hilarious, one of my favorite comedy moments overall. Though I'd say my favorite episode for him was the fourth of the first season, because of some great interactions with Priya and Millie, as well as him being the voice of reason of the team for the elimination.

Damien: I love him. He's overall funny, and his sarcastic comments especially in season two were great. Did he deserve more? Yes. But I'd say sixth place is plenty respectable. I'd say my favorite episode for him is the sixth from the second season. Him winning the tourney, especially defeating Julia and Bowie out of sheer luck, was way too funny and great to see.

Emma: I can't bring myself to not like her. She's fun, there's actually people like her and Chase out there - hell, TV is full of those couples. She deserved way more, and if there will ever be a third seasons, I honest to god hope she wins. I think my favorite episode for her was episode 11 of the first season. Even if she was out of her mind for Chase and she got eliminated, she actually did amazing in the challenge, and the confrontation with Bowie is probably one of my favorite scenes overall.

Julia: there she is. She and Priya are probably the two with the most stuff to talk about, they made it obvious that they are the protagonists of this reboot. Let's say her relationships were all great in general. The rivalry with Bowie, the weird friendship with MK, the twisted alliance with Caleb. I think I did prefer her more in the first season, though. She was more of a "less talking, more acting" kind of villain, which was a nice change of pace from the ones we had in previous seasons, and a great contrast to Bowie's playing style. I'd say my favorite episodes for her were either 9 (my favorite overall) or 12 from the first season.

Millie: I'm saying it: Millie is an amazing character. There. Her arc in the first season is great. You can see her evolving throughout thanks to her friendship with Priya. You see her realize she did some wrong stuff and feeling guilty about it. You see her trying to get better as a person, surpassing the obstacle that is Bowie and finally having the face-to-face that she owed to Priya. She was never meant to become a great player, which is why she did a lot of mistakes in the second season. She's not a powerhouse like Bowie, Priya or Julia, and she paid for what she did wrong. I think my favorite episodes for her were 10 and 11 of the first season, when she realized she was acting badly and decided to change it.

MK: just like Damien, I love her. I always love a snarky character, and she's a great follow up to Noah. She's probably what he could have been if they had given him more space, actually. Anyway, I already said that her friendship with Julia is great, I don't think I have much else to add. I'd say my favorite episodes for her were either episode 4 from season one, or episodes 3 or 7 from the second.

Nichelle: yeah, here's where I get jumped. Because I think it's fair to say she's my least favorite of the cast. It's not even like I don't like her, as I am neutral at most. But she did have some unbearable moments. And I think the fact my favorite episode for her was the second of the first season, where she didn't even get that much screen time but had some actual interactions with other characters, shows a lot how much of a presence she had in the second season for me.

Priya: there she is, too. What to say? She's great in the first season. For me, she and Bowie are the most deserving finalists since Heather and Alejandro in World Tour. But man, it was heavy to watch her in the second season. When it still wasn't out, I thought she took a lot of screen time with Millie in the first, but watching both seasons back-to-back made me realize how much more sparse their scenes were compared to those with Caleb. And as I prefer friendship over romance in general, it was really hard to keep seeing them going. So yeah, that's pretty much it. It's hard to pick a favorite episode for her, though I think I could go for the two final episodes of the first season. The notebook reveal scene is amazing.

Raj: the baby ever. Not a baby actually, but he is adorable with Bowie, though I already said it before. I love the hockey bros. Do I think Raj should have got Wayne's place in the second season? Yeah, but as I've said for Damien, I think fifth is a respectable placement. Favorite episodes, I'd say either 6 of the first season, the best kiss episode of the reboot, or 5 of the second, where he finally confronts Bowie once and for all about the cheating, and they make up for good as most good couples do. You know, like normal people.

Ripper: the man, the mith, the legend. He is fun. No matter how much people hates him, and how much the reboot itself wants you to hate him, he has some great moments that I can't ignore. And I like how in the first season he was actually almost smart for most of the challenges, especially in the cassowary one. Though I'd say my favorite for him is episode 4 of the second season, where he shows to know the others quite a bit. And I loved his poem for Axel, it was actually adorable how he put together both of their hobbies in it.

Scary Girl: well. She's fun. She's there. She's there to be fun. Overrated (I still can't get over people saying she should have won, because no she doesn't), but still enjoyable for what she has to do. Favorite episodes for her either 2 or 3 of the first season.

Wayne: as I said, I love the hockey bros. And rewatching the whole reboot, I came to the decision that while yes, Raj would have probably been a better finalist than him, between the three we actually got he was the best option for the victory. Julia would have been unfair to all the others. Caleb was basically just trying and failing to seek revenge for Priya, and he was barely liked by his own team. While Wayne is a good representation of a finalist who's had fun throughout the season, rather than being overly competitive. You can see it when he has the wackiest adventures during each challenge. He actually has fun, and you have fun with him. We already got a competitive winner in the first season, so why not have one who actually enjoys being there for a change? Plus, I think the authors made it plenty clear that the bros are their favorite too. Favorite episode I'd say the second of the first season, where he gets to show off his leadership skills.

Zee: just like Scary Girl, he is there, and he is fun. I love that he has the dumbest eliminations, but they feel completely in-character for him. And I love how they treated his disability in a fun way rather than it being some angsty shit that I honestly think would have just taken away from the character. Favorite episode either 2, 6 or 9 from the first season.

Overall, this cast is great. I don't think it would be a reach to say I prefer them over the original cast, though I would need to rewatch the rest of td to confirm it.

If you've read all the way down here... Well, congrats. You get to take a cookie.

[kitausuret]

Know Your Venom

A handy guide to differentiating all those spider-y symbols! (Part 1 of 2)

(Venom #150 "Malled!"; Michelinie, Lim)

Hey there, true believer! Are you tired of looking at comics with your favorite black-and-white wicked webslinger and not knowing who's beneath the goo? Fortunately for you, I'm here to help! We'll take a look through the years and hopefully give you some pointers on how to tell who's who. This isn't a foolproof guide by any means, but I hope it's helpful!

So, let's start at the beginning.

(Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #7-8; Shooter, Zeck)

It's very important to me that people understand that the original black suit costume came from Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter)! That's why I often, and will for the rest of this guide, refer to it as the Carpenter Symbol. Know your roots!

For the most part though, we see this design used as a mockery of Spider-Man by the first Venom, Eddie Brock.

(Amazing Spider-Man #299, #331, and #362, by Michelinie and McFarlane, Larsen, and Bagley respectively)

The earliest artists for Venom all drew the Carpenter Symbol very close to how it originally was designed. You see this continued pretty much to this day, and so if you see a stocky guy in this look with biceps the size of his head - that's probably Eddie.

Early comics are easy, because the only other person to bear this symbol is Anne Weying, and her She-Venom look is. Well. Distinctive.

(Venom: Sinner Takes All #3; Hama, Luzniak & Palmiotti - Venom: Along Came a Spider #3; Hama, St. Pierre)

A few artists will draw the legs of the spider-symbol either much, much closer together (sometimes if the shot is tiny enough they'll just look like a solid mass), but others like Ron Lim will at times draw them further apart. For the most part it's pretty consistent though.

(Venom: Lethal Protector [1993] #5; Michelinie, Lim)

And then... we get into the 00s.

(Venom [2003] #16-17; Way, Skottie Young)

The above looks are pretty unique to how Skottie Young does Venom. And even then, Young's Venom nowadays looks less... like that. I'm not going to share a lot from this series, but we start to get a beefier-looking Venom. This would continue into Spectacular Spider-Man (2003) by Paul Jenkins and Humberto Ramos.

(Spectacular Spider-Man (2003) #3, #5; Jenkins, Ramos)

In some ways, you can kind of explain the inconsistency in the symbol by the fact that Eddie and the Symbiote's symbiosis was crumbling - but it's also just. Not that well-written as a Venom story.

And then we get into other hosts.

I feel obligated to point out that Trish Robertson was the first host of the Venom clone that would eventually become Mania - she literally only appears in Venom (2003) but she's almost indistinguishable from Venom.

(Venom [2003] #16; #18. I'm not going to describe what's happening in these panels, I took too much psychic damage just gathering them.)

Best I can give you is; Trish!clone!Venom is slightly more grey-purple and that's all I'm gonna give you on this topic.

Angelo Forunato was only alive for 2 issues, and he has one look:

(Marvel Knights: Spider-Man [2004] #7-8; Millar, Dodson)

He's the first Venom we see fully deviate from the Carpenter Symbol. He also has really distinctive eyespots and the first instance of seeing an actual eyeball in the spot. The legs of the spider-symbol are fully separated from each other, and even extend down to the thighs.

The symbiote, displeased with Angelo (and having thrown him off a roof), next went to Mac Gargan, arguably the third or fourth most important Venom to carry the name.

(Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #10-11; Millar, Dodson)

Beyond! is an interesting case in that it's the first time we see Mac!Venom with the Scorpion tail, which we don't really see again. It's an odd duck of a series overall, but it is kinda fun to see Mac utilizing some of the shapeshifting abilities. But, more to the point of this guide, you can always tell him apart by the white spider-legs going over the shoulders and up the arms.

(Beyond! #5; McDuffie, Kolins)

Thunderbolts is when you really start to see deviations from the original Mac look. This series especially leans into a very grotesque-looking Venom, but usually there's still some semblance of the original symbol. That's what to look for. But if you see a chonky boy and it's in that mid-2000s art style? You're probably looking at Mac.

You also get variations on the way the spider-legs are drawn. Some artists make them a little skinnier.

(Thunderbolts #114; Ellis, Deodato Jr. - Thunderbolts #122; Gage, Blanco - Amazing Spider-Man #570; Slott, Romita Jr.)

Here's where it gets tricky.

During Dark Avengers, Mac adopts the Carpenter Symbol (and a slimmer look) at Osborn's behest, and immediately starts looking anywhere between your classic Black Suit Spider-Man and Eddie's look as Venom. Your best bet during this era is to use context clues. Based on the art style for this era, if you're thinking "that's probably not Eddie", you're right. Eddie's running around as Anti-Venom.

(Dark Avengers [2009] #1; Bendis, Deodato)

And, yes, that means that this scene... is Mac Gargan. No other Venom would let Norman Osborn boss them around. Please, for the love of God, get this one right.

(New Avengers Annual #3; Bendis, Mayhew)

Mac keeps this look all the way up until he and the symbiote are separated, which leads us to...

Flash Thompson, AKA Agent Venom.

(Coming in Part 2!)

[padfootagain]

Something Good (XI)

Chapter 11 : The Banks of the Thames

Hello, lovelies! Here is a new chapter for my Ben Barnes series!

Still in London and OH BOY THIS CHAPTER IS AN IMPORTANT ONE!! AND AN EMOTIONAL ONE TOO!!

You will finally learn what happened between Ben and Julia…

Hope you like this chapter! Tell me what you think!

****

Pairing: Ben Barnes x Reader

Warnings: none! Slow burn, professor AU.

Summary: Coming out of a divorce and trying to get used to being a single mom, while teaching your classes at University, you thought your life could not get more complicated than it already is. But when you are asked to take care of the theatre club with the colleague that you really can’t get along with, you realize that everything can still get ten times more complicated in your life. And when you start actually liking Professor Barnes, the troubles only grow exponentially…

Word Count: 3872

Masterlist for the series – Ben Barnes’ Masterlist – Main Masterlist

You had found a costume, actually.

Despite how crazy your week in London had been, you did get the time to find a costume to attend this party with Ben.

You were waiting for him in the hall of your hotel to go to the party. You would have lied had pretended not to be exhausted after working so much this week, but you actually loved it. You had spent a great time in London, and you reckoned that it was mostly due to Ben.

You had spent a lot of time together. Many lunches and dinners spent laughing and talking about silly things and important subjects, from your families to politics and your favourite books…

You had grown much closer during this trip, you reckoned. From colleagues, you now considered him a friend. How crazy was that? A few weeks ago, you could barely bear his presence at all, and now you craved for it… You wanted to spend time with him. If you were fully honest with yourself, it was the thought that pushed you out of bed during this trip.

Hurry up! If you’re up early, you can leave with Ben…

Ridiculous, right?

You weren’t sure where these thoughts were coming from, what had triggered them. Perhaps they had appeared that night at the pizzeria. Maybe they had bloomed during the trip to London, when Ben had listened to you talk about your daughter for so long and had been amazing calming you down…

You weren’t sure, it didn’t matter much, anyway.

You were exhausted after your intense week, still, you were happy to go to this party. You reckoned that you could use some fun time, and since your daughter was born, you had barely had any occasion to go to this kind of parties. You were quite excited, although you were nervous as well, at the idea of meeting some of Ben’s friends.

Speaking of the devil, Ben was stepping out of the elevator right then, but he didn’t join you right away. He slowed his pace as he spotted you, coming to a full stop.

A fond smile formed on his lips as he caught sight of you, dressed up in a Harry Potter uniform. He guessed you had chosen the colours of your own house. He didn’t know. He didn’t really care. His fond smile turned tender, dreamy.

You looked stunning.

He wasn’t even sure why, because… it was a silly costume, but still… there was something about you that was glowing. Something that made him see no one else but you in this busy hall. The second his eyes fell on you, his entire universe shrank to rest into your hands, into your eyes, into your frame...

Magic trick of yours.

He fell into your eyes as you turned to him, saw the crinkles form at the corner of your eyes as you smiled. Those infinite, beautiful eyes…

He didn’t notice the way your breathing stuttered, the way your heart skipped a beat as he approached, the way butterflies flew across your stomach… He was too busy staring at you for that.

He was handsome. You had always noticed, but this time, it was hitting you fully. Which was a little ridiculous, because he looked silly and goofy now. You had seen him in prettier outfits, in clothes that truly made him look unbearably handsome. And yet… you couldn’t find the strength to look away as Ben walked slowly over to you, dressed up as Marty McFly. Ridiculous. He looked silly. He looked stunning…

He wasn’t wearing his glasses for once, it was strange to see him without them.

“You found a costume, in the end,” he teased you, voice deep, warm, playful, you adored that sound…

“Yeah!” you looked down at your silly Hogwarts costume. “Went for the sexy student vibe, obviously,” you joked.

“Obviously,” he smiled, but you barely noticed the way he was out of breath. “Not sure it was the tag on that costume though.”

“Really?”

“No…”

“Ha, that’s because I’ve never been one of the sexy kinds,” you joked. “I should have taken the sexy nurse one, my bad.”

“You look beautiful.”

It was a little too earnest, Ben blushed fiercely as he spoke. You looked away, trying to hide your grin and the frantic beating of your heart.

“Thank you… although, you’re not wearing your glasses. So, you’re probably saying that when completely blind.

“Contact lenses,” he explained, chuckling. “I can see perfectly well.”

“I thought you hated those.”

“The glasses didn’t fit the costume.”

“Right…”

“My brother said no one would recognize who I was dressing up as…”

“Who wouldn’t know Back to the Future?”

“My answer, precisely,” Ben grinned.

“You…”

You cleared your throat, and he didn’t miss the way you were a little shier as you spoke again, voice a little hesitant, a little weaker too.

“You look great, by the way.”

His heart went still for a second.

“Thank you,” he grinned.

When the two of you walked out of the hall, you were both a little shier than usual. As you walked towards the Tube, you were both a little hesitant to start a conversation.

Your hearts were beating a little too fast for that…

Ben was with his brother now, but he was getting seriously annoyed. You had split at one point during the night, and even though Ben kept an eye on you, you were busy talking with one of his friends.

“She’s just a friend. A colleague, actually,” Ben repeated for the fifth time, annoyed now.

The party was getting too noisy for him, many were dancing, and it had never been his thing. And now that his brother kept on getting on his nerves, he just wanted to leave.

But then again, when he turned to you, you looked surprisingly pretty in your ridiculous Harry Potter costume. And you seemed to be having fun, talking and drinking and swaying to the music without noticing.

Maybe he could bear a few more minutes…

“I’m just saying that… she’s… very nice.”

“She is.”

“She’s also very beautiful. Seems to have a lot of things in common with you…”

“She’s also a colleague. And has a child.”

“You’re great with kids!”

“You’re missing the point.”

“I didn’t know it would be a deal-breaker for you.”

“It’s not! I’m just saying that it would be incredibly complicated. And that because she has a child, she would not simply… jump blindly in a relationship, I assume.”

“That’s what dates are for. To casually learn stuff about the other and decide whether or not you’re compatible for more.”

Ben looked at you again, and he slapped his brain for not pushing his brother’s words away immediately.

“This is ridiculous, Jack.”

“It’s not! It’s not ridiculous at all!”

“I don’t even like her.”

“Now, you’re blatantly lying.”

Ben fiercely blushed, and downed his entire glass of punch.

Because his heart was racing at the thought, and… it was all because of that night. Ever since that night at the pizzeria he just… couldn’t get you out of his head. Couldn’t stop himself from staring at you, and couldn’t control his stupid heart when it skipped beats every time you smiled and went crazy whenever you laughed and…

Jack rested a soothing hand on his brother’s shoulder.

“You should tell her about what happened with Julia.”

But Ben shook his head, fear now painted over his features.

“I’m not ready for that,” he croaked, grabbing some more alcohol.

“When will you be, Ben?”

The two brothers stared at each other for a moment. And Ben hated him for saying all those things, but Jack knew he needed to hear them all the same.

“You’re an idiot. You’re acting like a coward. She was a bitch, she broke your heart. Everybody gets their heart broken, eventually. Doesn’t mean every single person out there is going to act like her. It’s been two years, Ben…”

“I don’t need your advices when it comes to my love life,” Ben snapped. “I don’t need your advices in general, actually.”

“No? Then can you tell me what kind of stupid game you’re playing at?”

“I’m not…”

“Ben, you need to stop being terrified like that.”

“I’m not! What are you talking about?”

“She won’t judge you if you tell her.”

“I don’t want to tell her. It’s none of her business, Jack! She’s not even a friend, she’s a colleague.”

“You’re a moron.”

Before Ben could reply, his brother had walked away, leaving him alone by the table covered with wine, punch and empty cups.

And Ben was frustrated with his brother, angry at him even. What did he know about all this anyway…

He jumped when you rested your hand on his arm.

“Oh, sorry…” you gave him an apologetic smile.

“It’s okay I… I was lost in thought… You’re alright?”

“Yeah! I had a lot of fun tonight, thank you for bringing me here. But it’s quite late, so I think I’m gonna head out.”

Ben nodded.

“I’ll go too.”

“You can stay, I can call a cab.”

“No, I… I was waiting for a good excuse to leave, actually.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m knackered.”

You exchanged a smile, and headed out, waiting for Ben to bid a good night to his friends.

It was past midnight, but London was still busy, tonight more so than usual, as it was Halloween, and parties were still raging all over the town.

It was cold, despite your warm coat you shuddered as the frozen wind hit your cheeks. Ben tightened his hold on his own jacket too.

You seemed to be looking for a cab. But Ben didn’t want to go to the hotel. Not yet. Not when your hair shimmered under the golden light of lampposts, not when you looked so pretty with your colourful tie. Not when he felt so calm now that he was alone with you.

Just a few more minutes. He just wanted this to last for a few more minutes.

But why would you want that? With him? Jack was right. He was a coward. Had been for the last two years.

He thought about that stupid evening again, the one with the veranda, and the pizzas, and the confessions and…

He wanted to tell you. He wanted to tell you everything…

He simply hoped you wouldn’t think less of him after he was done.

“Y/N?”

You turned to him, humming to let him know you were listening.

He had a crush on you. A stupid, all-consuming crush on you.

His heart skipped a beat at the sight of your features bathed in the golden light…

“Can we take a walk? I know you’re tired but I… I wanted to tell you something.”

You frowned a little. Ben seemed nervous, worried even. Whatever it was he wanted to tell you, it seemed important.

“Okay, if you’d like.”

“It won’t take long, I know you’re tired. But we’re close to the Thames, maybe we can…”

He let his words suspended in mid-air, but you nodded, offering him an encouraging smile.

“Sure! Sounds good!”

You took his arm when he offered it to you. You let him guide you across a couple of streets before you indeed reached the Thames. You could see the London Eye shining further down the banks, city lights glimmering on the turbulent waters.

You heard him taking a couple of deep breaths, but gave him all the time he needed.

“I… I don’t know why I wanted to tell you all this, it’s ridiculous,” he backed away, shaking his head. “This is ridiculous…”

You looked up at him with a small frown, head tilted to the side in wonder.

“This… it’s ridiculous, I’m sorry, Y/N. I… My stupid, idiotic brother he… he almost convinced me to talk about all this, and… I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay,” you reassured him, a warm smile on your lips. “You can tell me if you want to, or not. It’s alright.”

“It’s… about… my ex…”

“Yeah, I had guessed that.”

You gave him the warmest smile, and he was almost unafraid again. Almost…

“I… never talk about it, to be honest.”

“I had guessed that as well,” your smile widened a little, but it was still soft, gentle, enough to calm his nerves and make him want to spill it all out all over again.

He let out a chuckle.

“There’s no use to bore you with this… it’s none of your business anyway…”

But you frowned, and when he tried to walk again, you held him back.

“You… You can tell me if you want, or not, you choose,” you explained, choosing your words carefully. “I understand that this is difficult for you. But… I do care, Ben. I care about you. And if you want to talk about it with me, I will listen. Just like you listened to me. Just like you helped me. I’ll try to help you, if I can.”

“I don’t need help…”

“Sometimes, having someone to talk to, it’s already of great help.”

He heaved a sigh, running his hand through his dark hair.

Damn you… damn you and your gentle voice and your comforting tone.

You spotted a couple of benches a little further down, facing the water.

“Let’s take a seat,” you offered, and he nodded.

It was quiet. There were people passing by from time to time, but less so than in the streets around. Maybe it was the cold, drawing people away from a stride by the banks.

You both remained silent for a long time, sitting side by side on a cold bench. You were still holding onto his arm, gesture gentle and comforting. He calmed down, losing his gaze upon the many lights alit on the opposite shore. And the feeling of your hand holding onto his arm…

When he spoke, he barely noticed the words coming out of his mouth.

“We were engaged.”

You looked up at him, waiting for him to continue. A sad smile tugged at his lips.

“Julia and I, we were engaged. We were to get married three weeks later. I was so certain about this. I was so certain that I would spend my life with her, that she was the one. And then… it all just… crumbled.”

He cleared his throat, and you waited for him to go on. He didn’t look at you. He couldn’t. It was too hard.

“She slept with my best friend.”

You let out a gasp, eyes growing round.

“A classic, really,” Ben went on with a bitter, breathy chuckle. “And I didn’t notice anything. I was the worst idiot on Earth. It went on for months. Even before we got engaged. And I didn’t notice anything. The two people I trusted the most in the world outside my family… were sleeping together behind my back, and I noticed nothing.”

He shook his head, let out a long exhale.

“Paul and I had been friends since we were seven. And I thought… I never doubted that we would remain friends till the end. He was like family to me. And Julia… I…”

But he fell silent again, and this time it seemed too hard to start again, so you spoke gently instead.

“How did you find out?”

“Another classic. I came home early from a conference.”

“Damn…”

“Yeah…”

He heaved a sigh.

“I took it hard. Really hard. I’m… it just chattered everything, really. I think it just… broke too many things I was certain about all at once. I trusted them both, so much. And I never questioned her when she said she was working late, when she said she was out with friends… whatever alibi she used, I never questioned anything because I… I loved her. And I thought she loved me. And I trusted her too blindly. And Paul, of all people… Same thing, I trusted him too much to imagine he could do something like that. All of a sudden, all my plans for the next twenty years were shattered. I lost the two people I trusted blindly. And I just… lost it. I completely lost it. And the worst part is that… if they had simply come clean at the beginning, if… if nothing had happened between them, and Julia had broken up with me and they had started dating afterwards, I… I would have forgiven them. It would have hurt, but I wouldn’t have felt betrayed. I loved her enough to let her go. I loved them both enough to end up being happy for them if they loved each other. But they didn’t do that. Instead, they lied to me for months, and they just…”

His voice broke, his jaw clenched, and there was as much anger as there was pain in Ben’s eyes when he lowered his gaze.

“I just… I just closed up a lot after that. Because it was too painful, too risky to let people in. And as every single thing that I relied on in my life just collapsed I… I started planning things out a lot more. Silly things. My shrink of a father calls it ‘unhealthy coping mechanism’, and I know he’s right, but I felt better when I did it so… I started to settle more into habits and…”

He heaved a sigh, running a hand across his face. He seemed tired now, more than anything else. Impossibly tired…

“It was two years ago, I feel better now. But it’s still hard to talk about all this. And I know that I’m a little… too… strict and organized sometimes. I’m sorry about that. I’m trying to get back to normal, to a more balanced life but it’s tough.”

He turned to you, eyes glimmering with withheld tears, but he was determined not to let them fall. He gave you a shy, apologetic smile.

“I’m sorry if I’m annoying with all my lists and my… struggles with change. I’m trying to get better. You can tell me if I’m bothering you, I’ll make more efforts to not be so… annoying and uptight. Because, to be honest I… I don’t want you to find me annoying. I care about you too much for that now. I’ll change, if you want me to.”

He was surprised to see tears gather at the corner of your eyes, shimmering under the lamplights. He frowned a little, but he was even more taken aback when you wrapped your arms around him without any warning, and held him close.

He froze, unable to react, eyes round in surprise. It felt nice though. His heart was beating so damn fast…

“I don’t want you to change, Ben,” you breathed against his ear, and the feeling of your warm breath against his cheek made him tremble. “I get it. I’m so sorry something like that happened to you. But I… I don’t want you to change, it’s alright. I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel bad before. You can tell me if I make you uncomfortable, okay? I’ll slow down. I’m sorry, Ben.”

You tightened your hold on him a little more, and at last, he reciprocated your gesture and wrapped his arms around you as well.

“You… You’re sure? You don’t find me annoying?” he asked, voice weak and unbearably fragile.

You let out a chuckle, looking up at the sky to hold back your tears, but you failed.

“I find you extremely annoying,” you answered. “But I like it. You keep me on my toes. Besides, I know I annoy you to no end too. I guess it’s just our dynamic.”

He laughed, earnest and bright this time. Almost tender…

“That’s quite true. You’re insufferable.”

“See? I knew it.”

“I like it though. I like it when you annoy me. It’s endearing.”

“Same.”

You pulled away, hands still holding onto his arms, and he did the same. You stared into his dark eyes, a warm smile on your lips.

“You’re a good man, Ben. We all cope and get over whatever life throws at us in different ways, and with different paces. You should take your time. It must have been a lot to go through, a lot to take in. I don’t… Liam and I, it was completely different, but… I get that feeling of being completely… lost. Like all your plans have shattered and all of a sudden, this road you were so clearly following just vanishes and you don’t know where to go from there. I get that. It’s… it’s the hardest part for me too. That and… the loneliness of it.”

Ben nodded, and you could read in his eyes that he got it, that he knew what you meant. It was the first time that someone looked at you like that when talking about your divorce, and you actually believed them. No empty words of comfort. He understood, you knew he did…

You felt so much less lonely now, holding onto Ben’s arms this way, staring right into his dark eyes, the little puffs of his warm breath drawing white patterns into the cold air. Your eyes fell to his lips, a little reddened by the frozen night, but they looked soft and welcoming. Like they were calling for you. Calling for your own mouth… and you wanted to… you wanted to…

When you looked up again, Ben’s eyes were tender, soft, almost loving…

Merely ‘almost’ though?

Your breathing had quickened, your hold on his arms tightened as you stared into his eyes, these eyes you found unbearably attractive, magnetic, that seemed to have trapped your very soul…

And you wanted to…

The loud noise of glass shattering made you jump, broke the spell, made you look away.

Two drunk guys dressed as vampires stumbled out of a nearby alley, one of them had dropped his beer…

“We should go,” Ben spoke, voice deep, barely more than a whisper. “It’s late.”

You nodded, following him as he stood up and headed for the Tube and guided you to the right station.

“I’ll go to the National Gallery on Saturday morning,” you told him as you settled into an empty seat, waiting for the doors of the train to close.

He nodded, sitting by your side.

“I know. You said you wanted to.”

“Would you like to come with me?”

His smile widened, bright and luminous and able to light up the darkest of nights.

“Sure! How could I say no to a museum? Especially with you.”

There was so much fondness in his tone, you wondered if he too…

You shied away a little, the grin on your lips uncontrollable, and you hated yourself for feeling as giddy as a teenage girl all over again.

It felt nice though. When his knuckles brushed against the back of your hand because of how close you were sitting, and that he didn’t pull his fingers away, it felt unbearably nice.

When you were finally alone, in your hotel room, by yourself, pressing your back against the wooden door, lights still off, you let out a shaky breath, your palm pressed to your lips.

Damn… you were falling for Ben Barnes.

******************************

Taglist : @reg-arcturus-black @sergeantbuckybarnes @wolfmoonmusic @kpicard @idek-what-to-put

[johnwickb1tsch]

Hello, my Gremlin goddess!

11/20/22/25/30, please <3

Thank you Scarlett!!!😘😘😘❤️❤️❤️❤️

11. A WIP you’d like to finish

All of them? 😆 Seriously, I have full intentions, I haven’t abandoned any of them. Probably Bittersweet first though, if that makes anyone feel better. 😬😬Then…the Paul Sutton fic. Y’all gotta let me kno how evil Don John’s gonna be!😆 Aaaaand look for this Donaka Mark fic i’m working on soon. ::ducks::  

You all make writing in this fandom SO fun, the ideas that bounce around our crazy little circle and the rabid enthusiasm have brought me so much joy these past months. It’s like dumping gasoline on the creativity fire. I work at home on the computer all day. Writing is my little treat during breaks to keep me sane, and there’s nothing id rather be writing right now. From the bottom of my heart, I can’t thank you enough Scarlett, and everyone else too!!!❤️❤️❤️

20. what year did you publish your first fic?

Oh dear…here’s how old Julia is…🤣 Probably 1998-9? It would have been an Anita Blake Vampire Hunter fic. I was 12-13. They were trash. 😬 But I feel like the first *good* fics I published were in the POTC 🏴‍☠️fandom, many years later, c 2015. 

22. do you ever worry about public reaction to what you’re writing? how do you get past that?

Not so much writing fanfiction here, because it’s fairly anonymous, and I’ve been so lucky to have found my tribe. Like, I’m not showing my in laws this shit, ya know? 🤣🤣 I haven’t really had any antis come after me, I’m sure it wouldn’t feel good, but i don’t think it would stop me. I really feel like so long as you put adequate warnings on your fics, you can write what you want. 

25. besides writing, what are your other hobbies?

does wine count?🍷🍷🤣🤣

i used to travel the world, but now i have old lady hobbies! 😆 I live in the country, i love to garden, flowers & food, & houseplants too. i have a big collection of orchids. I’m an artist, I draw & paint. I have a degree and everything, for what thats worth.🙃 My hobby farm is my other big hobby, I have chickens & ducks and we’re slowly restoring the 100 year old barn and the grounds of the old farm we live on. someday i want goats and highland cattle 🐐🐂🥰🥰🥰

30. share a fic you're especially proud of

oh dear. isn't that like choosing a favorite child? 🤣 Besides Bittersweet…I’m pretty proud of Vino Veritas, the destination wedding frank x reader fic. that grumpy man gives me the FEELS!😭😭😭

gif from google

Thank you Scarlett! This was so fun! xoxo🥰🥰🥰

[queatherine]

td spoilers episodes 9-13 (long post; more in depth thoughts towards the end)

ep 9:

the dudes being there for priya awwwww that was so sweet !!

hey julia, is that car cool enough :)

sighhhhh mkulia

julia is that tiktok lumberjack lesbian,, i think shes canadian too

ep 10:

listen, i think we could all agree that the moment damien found that immunity idol way back when sealed his fate that he was NOT going to be a finalist,, so i wasnt surprised, just saddened

julia manipulation truly is everything i love evil women

ep 11:

MACARTHUR??!?!??!??!? truly not the cameo i expected, but i did not mind it!!

can we stop this annoying distrust arc between priya and caleb?

cant believe they killed off raj

so like,, did dinosaurs just never go extinct in the total drama universe??? is this one of the insane lore bits like 9/11 never happening (or happening some time after 2009???) 9/11 was the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs

CANT BELIEVE THEY VOTED OFF RAJ NOOOOOO IM WAYNE FRRR

ep 12:

me 🤝 priya afraid of lighting + thunder

OLD MAN TENNIS YAOI????!?!?!?! PULLED THEM OUT OF THEIR GRAVES FOR THIS CAMEO WOW

can we stop this annoying distrust arc between priya and caleb? pt2

i dont ship juliayne (juliayne shippers i do not hate you please do your thing i love you), but goddamn i want more interactions between theyre sooooo silly

ep 13: listen, i think wayne winning is fine. do i love himbos? yes. was i rooting for him in the finale? yes. in the grand scheme of things, do i think he is a good finalist? no. we can all agree that hes very much an owen, and i dont mind that!! i actually think having a fan favorite, comic relief, underdog third party winning makes sense in this season, because i dont think caleb or julia winning would be a satisfying end (especially how they were handling them by the end)

caleb's story was messy, and at the end of the day (and i know that the intentions changed), he did start his alliance with priya to use her. him winning, after all of the drama, after priya was gone, wouldve just idk felt shitty. he did get the girl in the end, which concludes his story better than him winning it. (if im comparing this to the tdi 2007 final three,, i guess hes the gwen)

as for julia, she had two seasons to be villain, and it was amazing. she is so good at what she does and she is such a joy to watch. and we all know how total drama handles its villains, they need to get their comeuppance. did bowie double cross her last season? yes. and she came back still was the main villain and was AMAZING at it. but she was still the villain for another 13 episodes, AND HER GETTING PRIYA OUT LAST EPISODE, she cant win. was her just desserts satisfying? meh. nice callback to heather (we all know julia is the heather of this comparison), though i can understand people who dont like this callback and think its tiring or something. they couldve done something else, but im not mad (i kinda fuck with the mullet). i just see no satisfying way for julia to win with how she was presented in these seasons: she was not world tour heather, with three full length seasons and a greater threat to overcome; she was island heather, and therefore could not win.

overall thoughts of the season:

im someone that thinks the hockey bros jokes nearly always land, so i enjoy the shit out of them (i think im in the majority?)

im someone that did not like priyaleb at first, grew to being more neutral about it, but still found it to be a bit tiring. i like priya, i like caleb, i dont like tiring romantic subplots, and it sucks that that was the entire thing for these characters this season

the julia mk duo was AMAZING, one of the highlights of this season and one that i never wouldve expected to be real. mkulia wins in my heart and i hope they start their podcast (JULIA WAS GOIGN TO USE THE MONEY TO START THE PODCAST WITH MK HOLY SHIT GIRL IS IN LOVE)

it sucks that certain characters really got nothing this season (millie, nichelle, emma, and even axel to an extent).. but i get that characters like millie and emma already had a lot of screentime last time and someone has to be an early boot (just realize the ones i listed off were all women,, damn the writers fr just hate women)

at the end of the day, i really enjoyed this season. and i think the most important part of that enjoyment was this was the first time i got to watch a season and have no idea what was going to unfold. i watched the first four season of total drama when they were airing, but i was a little kid with poor comprehension skills. the first three seasons aired before i knew how to read (i learned to read late). and with tdpi, rr, and tdi 2023, i watched them after the fact and knew who the winners were going in. this was the first season i watched were i truly did not know the winner, and that added to my enjoyment. not to mention this being the one and only time i was present in an online space to talk about show as the episodes dropped. this season was a bit messy here and there, but it delivered some great stuff. i found myself laughing out loud and just having a good time, which is all i need out of my silly little cartoon

[polite-pandemonium]

[LISTEN] -  always an angel, never a god - a Shoko Ieiri playlist that very much is meant to represent her post chapter 236. Sad tunes by female musicians. Also - female rage. Gege doesn't seem to want to show us her feelings, so I will do it through song! All songs are Shoko centric, but some definitely could be directed towards either Satoru or Suguru or both!!!!! I tried to have this sort of follow a narrative that takes place pre, during, and post the Shinjuku Showdown arc, while making sure the music still flowed. IDK, I took this very seriously lol. Tracklist: 1. I don't like my mind - mitski 2. in hell - japanese breakfast 3. final girl - chvrches 4. days of oblivion - metric 5. not strong enough - boy genius 6. doomsday - lizzie mcapline 7. both all the time - faye webster 8. you always get what you want - the japanese house 9. when was that? - angus and julia stone 10. only the strong - laura marling 11. girls against god - florence + the machine specific lyrics for each song under the cut!

I don't like my mind | mitski I blast music loud and I work myself to the bone and on an inconvenient Christmas, I eat a cake a whole cake all for me and then I get sick and throw up and there's another memory that gets stuck inside the walls of my skull waiting for its turn to talk and it may be a few years but you can bet it's there waiting still for me to be left alone in a room with the things that I've done a whole cake so please don't take take this job from me

in hell | japanese breakfast with my luck, you'll be dead within the year I've come to expect it there's nothing left to fear, at least there's that and under the fluorescence, another sterile room where no one ever tells you just how clinical death looks and I can't unsee it the two shots it took hell is finding someone to love and I can't have you hell is finding someone to love and I can't see you again

final girl | chvrches swallowing the seeds of sin we sewed into the ground keeping secrets until everything became a bit too loud I would wash it down, I could drown it out by filling up the silence with an organ sound and by writing sentences I used to think were quite profound and it feels like the weight is too much to carry I should quit maybe go get married only time will tell in the final cut in the final scene there's a final girl does she look like me?

days of oblivion | metric all the times that now and then appear as only dreams all the stuff from way back when that's coming up don't self destruct you don't have to call for the wrecking ball or burn the world to ashes all you have to do is ask me to I'll stop you where the descending stairs drop I've unlocked all the doors and I've lost all the keys and I live in a mansion made up from memories I know I need you don't ever leave me I'll never leave you behind I know you need me the way I need you I'll never leave you don't ever leave me behind not strong enough | boy genius do you see us getting scraped up off the pavement? I don't know why I am the way I am not strong enough to be your man I lied - I am just lowering your expectations half a mind that keeps the other second guessing close my eyes and count always an angel, never a god I don't know why I am the way I am there's something in the static I think I've been having revelations coming to in the front seat, nearly empty skip the exit to our old street and go home go home alone doomsday | lizzie mcalpine doomsday is close at hand I'll book the marching band to play as you speak I'll feel like throwing up you'll sit and stare like a goddamn machine I'd like to plan out my part in this but you're such a narcissist that you did it on Halloween I had no choice in the matter why would I? it's only the death of me both all the time | faye webster will I stop crying for once? it's hurting my eyes there's a difference between lonely and lonesome but I'm both all the time I'm loneliest at night after my shower beer and I'll go to sleep without turning out the lights pretend like somebody's here you always get what you want | the japanese house and you've left now but it's better that I know you're gone and I breathe out dizzy from the last hour of holding on and does he do right by you? and does he work so hard? I know you'll miss me, but you'll call me back you always get what you want when was that? | angus and julia stone I wonder if you can hear me wonder if you can feel my heart beating now I wonder if things will be okay wonder if things will keep changing will I fall down? take me back to when things were easier take me back to a place where I belong take me back to a place that feels like home when was that? only the strong | laura marling we've been here a thousand times wish I could go back and find letters I wrote you in my mind perhaps I could unknot us from this awful bind hope that you can change my mind had to leave this crying all behind I hope that you don't think that I'm unkind just somebody told me only and only only the strong can survive

girls against god | florence + the machine if they ever let me out, I'm really gonna let it out I listen to music from 2006 and feel kind of sick but, oh god, you're gonna get it you'll be sorry that you messed with this oh, tell me it's not over yet and in my darkest fantasies, I'm the picture of passivity waiting for you side of stage suppressing all my private rage oh, it's good to be alive crying into cereal at midnight and if they let me out, I'm really gonna let it out when I decided to wage holy war it very much looked like staring at my bedroom floor but, oh god, you're gonna get it you'll be sorry that you messed with me