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queenlucythevaliant · 2 years ago

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Her True Name

A Retelling of "That Dear Name," a Russian folk tale. Written for the @inklings-challenge Four Loves Fairytale event.

Note: I’m retelling this story based on the version by Pavel Bazhov in his beautiful book The Malachite Casket, which I happened to pick up at a used bookstore a few years ago. Unfortunately, I can’t find that or any other version anywhere online (it’s apparently way more obscure than I realized??), but the Wikipedia page for the original tale is here.

This is a fairy-tale, but it did not happen once upon a time. This fairy-tale happened in 1586.

It happened four years after Yermak Timofeyevich and his five-hundred-forty Cossacks rode against Kuchum Khan and the Six Tatar Princes in 1582 and turned their bones to water on the banks of the Irtysh River.

It happened two years after Yermak drowned in a different river, pulled down by the silver shirt of chain-mail that Tsar Ivan had given him as a gift. The Tatar Princes divided his armor up, it is said, but his body they buried with due honor. That was in 1584.

Two years after the Cossacks were left without their great leader, this fairy-tale happened. It began in Siberia in 1586. It is still happening today.

In those days, in a high and lonesome place in the Ural Mountains, there was a village whose streets were paved with gold. To the heroine of this tale, whom we will call Lidik, this never seemed extraordinary in the slightest

Lidik’s people were neither Russian nor Tatar nor Vogul nor Ostyak nor any other group that you may have heard of; they were an Old People who had lived in isolation for a thousand years, so that they neither knew nor cared about the world beyond their village.

Yet this land on which this Old People lived was the kind of place in which people often find gold. Flecks of gold were scattered through the sand of the streets. Larger nuggets laid about like ordinary stones: the men hunted with lumps of gold in their slingshots and the women pounded the washing against gold-veined rocks by the river. Children played with golden baubles and no one thought anything of it. Try to imagine what Lidik’s world was like: to her, gold seemed as common as steel is to you and me.

High in the Urals, these people lived and worked not in wooden buildings but in caves that their ancestors must have dug out of the rock. The largest of these was beneath Azov Hill: so large it was that even when lit with a hundred torches, a man standing at the entrance could not see full to the back. In the old days, the village would gather there for meetings and dances, weddings and funerals.

Now, the cave beneath Azov Hill is full of secret things. These secrets, and Lidik’s role in them, are the subject of this fairy-tale.

Lidik was the second child and the first daughter of the chief elder. Brave she was, and resolute; yet she was also kind and vivacious. She sang like a bird, and she laughed and wept with equal vigor. In the year in which our story takes place, Lidik played with the village children and sang round the cookfire with the other women. At festivals, she was the first to leap to her feet for a dance, and then all the young men of the village would line up to be her partner, and the old women would shake their heads and say, “Ah, to be young again.”

The Old People loved Lidik very much.

In those days, the world was growing smaller and people began coming to this remote village in the Urals from distant lands. First, the Tatars rode by on new trade routes, but they took little note of the village and did not linger. No, it was not until the Cossacks came that the trouble really began. Without knowing it, Lidik’s village had been annexed by Russia and now the Cossacks had come to tell them.

These Cossacks were not evil men; I want that understood. There are no evil sorcerers or black knights in this fairy-tale. No, these were men who had once lived free in a land of their own, the same as our villagers. Yet they had sold themselves into the service of the Tsar and were under his orders to tame the Siberian wastes. Once Yermak Timofeyevich was drowned in his silver shirt, his soldiers did as they liked for themselves.

As I have said, the Old People hunted with slingshots, but the Cossacks had muskets. When a scout returned to camp with reports of a village whose streets were paved with gold, greed bloomed in the Cossacks’ hearts and at once they decided that they would ride against the Old People, put them to death, and carry away all their gold.

Yet the Cossacks were not all of like mind. As plans were being drawn up for the attack on the village, one man – a lad called Stepan Vasilyevich —heard what they were planning and his heart recoiled against it. Stepan hated what had become of the Cossacks in Siberia since Yermack’s death (in the river, weighed down by the Tsar’s gift). What's more, Stepan Vasileyevich loved the Old People, though he had never met them. Thus, he made up his mind to go to his commanders in protest, though he feared they would not heed him.

“Have you no shame?” Stepan asked with a heavy heart. “Before, we attacked other soldiers who had weapons and fortifications. Then, we stripped merchants of their wares unprovoked. Now you mean to rob these folks of their last and put them to death for it? I say again, we are soldiers, not bandits. These people have not harmed us and may not even know of us; let us leave them in peace.”

Yet Stepan’s fears proved true: the other men heeded him not. Instead, one of them stabbed him in the belly with his saber and they left him in the forest to die.

But the wound they gave him was a seeping wound, not a bleeding wound, and so Stepan did not die quickly. Instead, he staggered deeper into the wood in the hope of reaching the village of the gold streets. He knew the way the Cossacks meant to take and he followed it. “For,” he reasoned, “if I can find these people before I die, perhaps I can warn them of the attack.”

Here, at last, the maid Lidik enters our tale.

She was fond of walking the tree line as evening fell, you see. Even in winter when all was dark, she would stroll along the place where forest met stone after supper, singing softly to herself and nodding to any friend she happened to pass. One night, she was doing just this when she heard a noise in the distance. It was like the cry of a man’s voice, and in Lidik’s heart it stirred curiosity and compassion in equal measure. She ventured into the forest to find the source of the sound.

There, tangled in the underbrush, she saw the form of a strange man (who we know to be Stepan) lying where he had fallen when he at last could go no further. He was half-conscious and bloodied, but he cried out again and again though his eyes were closed. He was dressed in clothing that seemed to come out of another world and he bore weapons that Lidik did not recognize. Instinctively, she drew back in fright.

But Lidik was brave and her compassion won out. Moments later, she bent and inspected the man till she found his wound. She bound it with cloth from her garment, carried him to her father’s cave, and there began to tend him.

All the while, the strange man went on crying out, but because she could not speak his language, Lidik did not know what he was saying. She thought his words must be exclamations of pain.

In fact, Stepan was warning her of the coming attack with his every breath. Yet after a time, his breaths ran out and he lapsed into sleep.

When he woke, Stepan found himself surrounded by strange people, and the woman who had found him the evening before was among them. A man – who seemed to be the woman’s father– spoke an unfamiliar language, and Stepan could not understand him.

Yet as it happened, Stepan knew Tatar and some of the Old People, who remembered when the traders had ridden past, knew a small bit as well. Thus, in snatches of Tatar and with gestures to fill in the gaps, Stepan issued his warning.

The chief elder thought for a long time before replying. “The mountains – too treacherous – winter,” he said. “Men survive—children perish. We remain.”

“My people do not know I am here. You attack from your caves when they come–turn them back for a while,” Stepan managed to say. “Soon it will grow colder.”

As her father and brother went to confer with the elders, Lidik remained by the strange man’s side as though bound to him. For three days, she sat at his bedside and fed him meat, honey, and vegetables. As she tended to his wound, she often sang softly in her own tongue. In broken Tatar, she whispered “thank you” again and again. “Thank you. Thank you for coming here. Thank you.” Lidik loved her people very much, you see.

Meanwhile, the Old People set a rotating lookout atop Azov Hill. Day and night, they watched the woods with vigilance, prepared to light a beacon fire if any disturbance came from the forest.

As they spent their days together, Lidik and her stranger slowly began to speak. Their talk was some Russian, some Tatar, some the tongue of the Old People, a little Balachka, and much laughter. They bandied words back and forth in four languages and made up the deficit with gestures and looks and more than a little patience.

"I come from a place by the sea— a great body of water, yes?” Stepan said Russian. “A long journey south and west of here. My people are called Cossacks. Free men.” He gestured to himself, then west towards the setting sun.

Lidik repeated his words in Russian. "You are Stepan. You come from the sea. You are Cossack. From south and west.” Then, in the Old Tongue, she added, "It must be very far south, I think. You look like a man who sees a great deal of sun."

In the Old Tongue, Stepan replied, "Home is many weeks away by horse. It is very beautiful."

Then, because she still had not told him, he asked, “What is your name, lady?”

After a long pause, she replied in the Old Tongue. “You may call me Lidik, though it is not my name.”

Puzzled, Stepan repeated the question in Tatar. “Do you know what I mean, ‘name’?”

“It is how you are truly known, yes? Lidik is what I am called, but it is not my name.”

Are you surprised, Dear Reader?

Among the Old People, names were sacred things. Only Lidik’s father and mother knew her true name. When she married, she would give it to her husband: she would whisper it in his ear after their hands were fastened, or perhaps later she would gasp it to him when they came together. All of this, she explained to Stepan with no small amount of stammering and blushing.

“Only those who gave me life and the one to whom I am joined in the flesh can ever know me truly,” she concluded. “Is it not so with you?”

“No,” said Stepan. "My people shorten the names of those we love. My family called me Stiva. Yet for us, names are not a matter for blushing."

This only made Lidik blush all the more fiercely. "You are a stranger. Ordinarily, I would not need to explain such things."

The attack came at dawn on the fifth day, but the Old People were ready; they ambushed the Cossacks from their caves as the soldiers emerged from the wood. Since it was a dense wood, the Cossacks were not mounted, and the caves proved to be good fortresses. Thus, the Old People managed to turn the Cossacks away with nuggets of gold from their slingshots. Yet they knew that this was only a temporary reprieve.

When the Old People returned victorious from their battle with the Cossacks, they came again to confer with Stepan. Then, with Lidik’s aid, he told them why the Cossacks had come and why they would return.

“All the gold you have—the yellow metal, yellow stone–that is the cause of all this,” said Stepan in Russian, pointing to a gold trinket that sat nearby on his bedside table.

“What of it?” asked Lidik, with an exaggerated shrug for emphasis.

“My people come for it. They will kill you to possess it. They will never let you be.”

Lidik conferred with her father in brief, then mimed giving something to Stepan. “They can have it.”

“No. You must hide it from them. When the winter ends, word will have reached the Tsar that there is gold here and then you will have no life worth living.”

The elders again conferred. “What would you have us do?” Lidik asked in Russian.

“You must take these stones, all these yellow ones, yes and every golden trinket and bauble that you have, and put them out of sight. Cover the flecks in the sand with earth. Then depart for another place. Perhaps, if you do this, your children may someday return to live here.”

And Lidik told her father all that Stepan had said.

So it was that the Old People spent the rest of the winter moving all the gold they could into the cave beneath Azov Hill so that it was all out of sight. They covered their golden streets with black earth from which grass might grow. Then, they made preparations to abandon the village for another place when spring arrived.

All this time, Lidik continued to care for Stepan, but she was not alone in doing so. One of the guards often took it upon himself to carry Stepan to Azov Hill where he could sit with the lookout in the fresh air. "Good for the blood," he would say in faltering Tatar.

A neighbor woman made Stepan a gift of her thickest bearskin blanket. "My son is lame," she told him. "He cannot run. If we had been attacked without warning, my dear boy surely would have died."

The village’s healer looked in every day. She brought herbs and salves and even rich foods from her own larder. Yet for all her ministrations, Stepan’s wound continued to seep.

When at last, the day came for the Old People to leave their village (whose streets were no longer paved with gold), Lidik’s father issued instructions for Stepan to be counted a member of his own household. Stepan only shook his head.

“Death is close to me,” he said in Russian, looking to Lidik to translate. “I will not survive the journey. You must leave me here.”

Lidik turned back to her father. “He says that he is dying and will not leave this place.”

"But for you we may all have died. I will not allow you to be left behind alone. As chief elder, I forbid it."

Yet when she heard this, Lidik did not speak again for a long moment. She knew that Stepan spoke true when he said that he would not survive the journey; she had changed his bandages for more than three months and knew that he had healed very little.

Yet equally, Lidik knew that her father spoke true when he said the Old People would not abandon Stepan to die alone. They loved him too well, and for that they would joyfully waste precious time and resources on a man they could not save. This, she must not allow them to do.

“He will not be alone," Lidik said in the Old Tongue. In Tatar: "I will stay with him." Then finally, she turned back to Stepan and in Balachka, she repeated, "I will stay."

Didn't I tell you that Lidik loved her people? Didn't I say she was brave?

"What do you mean?" demanded her brother. "This man is not your husband. What is he to you that you should leave your people to be with him?"

"He is the man who staggered injured through the forest for love of our people, though he knew us not. I will not forsake him,” Lidik answered.

So it was that when the Old People left their village behind, neither the Cossack Stepan Vasilyevich nor the maid called Lidik was among them.

“Well then,” Stepan finally said once all the Old People were gone. “I still say you ought to have left with your kin—but all the same, I am grateful not to be alone.” Then, in Tatar, he whispered, “thank you.”

Together, Lidik and the dying man retreated into the cave beneath Azov Hill and she laid him among the piles of gold. They were terrible to behold: golden stones and nuggets and all manner of trinkets heaped like coal all throughout the enormous cavern. When the early spring light pierced the darkness, they shone like a thousand little suns.

They waited. Stepan slept a great deal, and when he woke Lidik gave him meals of dried meats and honey. She sang softly, both to comfort her companion and to occupy her own mind. But when at last she heard the sound of horses in the distance, Lidik got up and sealed the door.

Then, as the darkness settled over them, Stepan knew that his hour had come; but he wished to leave Lidik some hope. He did not have the words in any language she would understand to express what he really meant, so this is what he told her:

“Hear me, Lidik. A day will come in this land when there are no more Tsars or soldiers and even their names shall be forgotten. People will come here from all over and they shall not kill or steal, and one of them will call out your name—your true name—from beyond the cavern door. On that day—not before and not after, you understand?—you must go out to him with a brave, merry heart and take him as your husband. And when that day comes, let any man who wishes it take the gold, if they have use for it.”

In the Old Tongue, Lidik answered: “How will this man know my name if I have not given it to him?”

“You and I have loved each other a little, have we not? I warned you of the attack, though it costs me my life; you have stayed with me, though it costs you yours. Yet the man who is your true husband has loved us a hundred times more. He knows your name and mine, dear one. I promise.”

"Then I will do as you ask."

"Good," he said in Balachka. "I pray the wait will not be too long."

With those words, Stepan fell asleep, there in the cave beneath Azov Hill surrounded by piles of gold.

His body cooled, and yet it did not decay. And what’s more, by some magic the woman called Lidik did not die or even age as the years wore on. She remained forever young and vivacious, alive in her cavern of treasure with Stepan's body beside her.

See? I told you this was a fairy-tale.

From that time, no one could enter the cavern beneath Azov Hill, though they tried in every way. Gold is a powerful incentive. Soldiers came with cannons, but the door did not yield to them. They bore into it with shafts and hammers. They tried dynamite and buried charges of black powder. In the ‘60s they fired at it with missiles, but even that was no good. The door holds; no one can gain entrance by force.

Yet there is an even greater hope for laying hold of all that gold, piled like coal in the keeping of a maid who does not age.

Over the centuries, crowds of people have come to stand by Azov Hill. They shout all manner of words. “Azovka!” some cry, “Lapochka!” Others call out every female name they can think of, "Natasha!" "Anna!" “Soo Lin!” "Jenny!" Still others shout gibberish until they lose their minds with it; until they forget what words are and babble only nonsense till they die. Each man hopes to happen upon the lady Lidik’s true name so that she will open the door to him. To this day, none have ever succeeded.

Yet I can assure you that the lady called Lidik lives still. You can hear her singing if ever you come to Azov Hill. When the serfs were freed, some said she sang for joy, and likewise some claim that her songs turned melancholy when the Iron Curtain descended. Others will tell you that her song never changes: grief and hope are blended in her songs, and so it has always been.

That was how it seemed to me on the day I stood before Azov Hill and listened to the sweet voice that seemed to come from the very heart of the mountain itself. I did not try to guess Lidik’s true name; there is only one who can know it. Instead, I simply called to her in my own language. I told her this: “I’m waiting too.”

#as soon as i saw the theme for this challenge i knew i was going to retell this story #it is the most overtly Jesus-y fairytale I've ever read it's unreal #'someday when they world is made right your husband will come and speak your name and then you must go to him'#that's like #that's just the Bible guys #this was like the next-to-last story in the book and it totally shook me to a stop when i finished it #sorry the original is apparently so inaccessible ☹️#this is what happens when you pick up random books at used bookstores #fairy tale: that dear name #theme: agape #story: complete #inklingschallenge #leah stories #pontifications and creations #posting now because darn. what a day. it's time #inklings challenge

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vatelixx · 2 months ago

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The enormity of my desire (disgusts me),

Very very early seasons (1 — start of 2) Spencer Reid x afab!BAU!reader

SMUT!! (and fluff, some angst in relation to Spencer’s past because it can never be too happy, we’re not allowed nice things here). first times & explorations of intimacy.

──── autistic spencer (it’s a central theme to the plot), reader is actually morally good (for once).

Warnings: sub spencer (what did u even expect?), heavy corruption kink, first time for Spencer (all i do is sit around and think about how i’d like to devirgin that genius), HEAAVY praise kink, very very inexperienced Spencer, slight? oral fixation, they’re both just rlly down bad (i told u i would write something light, i delivered), Reader is whipped, Spencer is sooo much worse. Biblical references, Religious imagery, i think i talk about math equations???? And random metaphors/complexes.

w.c: 4k

a/n: i rlly wanted to explore aspects of spencer that criminal minds swept under the rug (cough cough his undiagnosed autism, cough cough his social exclusion, cough cough his crippling fear of forever being alone). Next upload will prob be heavy angst/no smut post-prison spencer (god help me please, i must be a masochist for the way i make myself suffer)

───────────────

There’s a lot Spencer hasn’t done.

He knows he’s behind, that he never quite caught up when it came to the taboo of sex and intimacy. Everything, everything, he’s ever had has been centred around exclusion, alienation, he feels like he’s lived on pause. Frozen, never advancing, stuck on ‘go’. Touch isn’t easy for him, interpersonal relationships are worse. He’s different, god he’s heard that his entire life. ‘You’re not weird, you’re just… different’, but maybe he is weird. Maybe his whole existence is just one big cosmic fuck you, because he’s missed out on so much, so much that he can’t understand, comprehend, act out against. Falling behind; this is the only area of life where he continuously comes up short, inexperienced, naive, he’s not used to being incompetent.

He’s never experienced want the way others do. He could never just hook up, fall into the body of another, expose them to the vulnerable elements of his stature. Open himself up to scrutiny. He might be a genius, he might be intellectually advanced, accepted into a multitude of ivy leagues before he was old enough to vote, but there’s drawbacks to his success. Social awkwardness, an inability to blend, mould, be one of the crowd. Sometimes he wishes he was average, something grey and mundane, so far reduced from the person he is now— it would all be plainly simple.

But he’s not, he’s not. So, this is the weight he has to bare for the brain he never asked for.

Pyrrhic victory, he’ll always be renowned for his intelligence. ‘You’re going to change the world kid,’ maybe, but simultaneously, he’ll never get to experience said world. There’s a chance he’ll always be on the outside, watching normal people gravitate towards each other. Live dreary lives of domesticated simplicity. Stacked bills, arguments over money and parenting techniques. Going to bed angry, only to turn around, mid-night, and resolve it, to not sleep on bad blood. To take them off the couch, to settle into predestined sides of the mattress.

There’s not enough possessions in the world he’d sacrifice just to experience love.

Hedgehog dilemma, the challenges of human intimacy. The hedgehogs want to move closer, to preserve heat during cold. But, they are forced, biologically cursed to remain apart, in order to prevent themselves from harming each other. Spencer doesn’t want to be hurt, to hurt, it’s a morbid byproduct of his upbringing; all he ever endured was mockery.

He thought he’d never get to experience the physical, carnal aspects of existence. And sure, he made peace with the notion, accepted the consequences of being born atypical. Learnt to live without.

But then, oh then there was you. Pretty, intellectual you who quite literally tipped his world on it’s axis. Upheaved the most stable of routines. New to the BAU, he wanted you to last. To stay around, endure the worst of the job. If only for his selfish benefit of orbiting in your presence.

He remembers how it all started: Detroit, another case, more budget cuts, forced proximity that sent you spiralling into a shared bed for the night.

“You’re my favourite person in the team.” you admitted, “And I know that’s dumb, because we’ve spoken the least, but… you’re just, so you. That’s a good thing by the way, a really really good thing.”

He couldn’t quite believe you were talking about him. Spencer, who spilt coffee, and slipped into ceaseless tangents about obscure information. Spencer, who walked into walls when you were around, stumbling over his sentences before deftly, very astutely, giving up, walking away mid-conversation. He wore sweater-vests and colourful mismatched socks, it’s not like he was going to be crowned ‘white boy of the month’.

“Not dumb.” Spencer had responded, shifting closer to tangle further into the warm mess of this accidental situation. “That’s good. I like being me.” he mumbled. “Sometimes…. sometimes it sucks. But that’s okay. I think it’s okay?”

He moved to press his face into the crook of your neck, but you were faster, gathering him by tousled hair, forcing him to look you in the eye.

Oh.

“Please. Please.” he whispered, breaking apart, fracturing, “Please like me. And more than in a weird, ‘just friends or coworkers’ way.”

You did. You do. He should’ve kissed you then, but maybe he was scared, maybe he couldn’t quite discern his feelings, separate the logic from the emotional. So he waited, waited, waited until now. Your third date, you take him to an exhibition within a science centre: replica models of the solar system, filling rooms up, papier-mâché sculptures illuminated by light.

Best date ever. You listen, even when he’s rambling about planets, when he’s pointing out that yes, Jupiter’s density is less than water. That, technically, it would float in a bathtub, if one was built to accommodate its size. You don’t care that he’s not exactly the staple-piece for conventionally attractive males. That he’s nerdish, and awkward, and so so inexperienced when it comes to this.

In his apartment, later, much later, he looks at you, looks at you like you’re the one who just solved the fucking Riemann hypothesis.

“What do you want the most? Like,… if you could ask for one thing.” you say, and god, Spencer loves when you pose these deep, hypothetical questions. When you make him think, because you, you are the biggest challenge to his intellect yet.

You. He wants to say. But he settles for ‘Being remembered,’ instead. He works to untangle layers of fabric, your scarf, your jacket, letting out an exasperated laugh when he meets your amused gaze. “Right now though? I think I’d settle for kissing you.”

You cup his jaw, tracing your fingers along the sharp curve, and god he has perfect anatomy. “Settle huh? You should be more appreciative.”

He leans forward to press a chaste kiss against your lips. Drawing away for a moment, just to return because he’s never had this before. Because for the first time in his life, he gets it. He gets physical attraction, even if it took time. He’s kissed, been kissed, yes. But he could count those moments on one hand, and if you asked how many he truly enjoyed, he’d be left with no fingers raised.

“Believe me, i’m very appreciative…”

This isn’t like before, what he felt in the past; he expected something monotone, flighty, a brief fleeting moment of satisfaction. Means to an end. No, it’s actually the best thing he’s ever experienced, and he’s going to become so insufferable after this, because he’s just found out he is very very into kissing.

Correction: he’s very into kissing you.

In the moment between parting, and touching again, he assumes you to be divinity personified. Spencer has never been religious, but something of this magnitude should be canonised. He wants to ask you. Ask you when you became this beautiful. When you became the person he needs to kiss a second time, kiss a third time, kiss until his lips go numb.

A shaky inhale, a pause. “I hope… I hope that it was okay - I mean, it was good for me. Really, really good. Um—“ to be honest, he’s just glad he didn’t say thankyou.

“Yeah, Spence. That was… wow.” you draw your bottom lip between teeth, press into tissued flesh. Jesus Christ. “Wanna try again?”

Yes yes yes yes. He looks at you, pupils blown obscenely out of proportion. Part of him wants to say, ‘why didn’t we do this sooner?’ But that’s not fair; he’s only ready now. Now that he feels, now that he might be a little in love with you.

“Please,” is his answer, and then he’s catching your face in the palms of his hand, tugging your lips back to his, because admittedly, they have ached in the long, extensive period you were apart (53 seconds).

This time it deepens and Spencer sees stars. It’s an astronomical phenomenon, something interstellar— and god, he’s relating kissing to space. They should just tape the word ‘virgin’ to his back and call it a day.

There’s soft little breathy sighs escaping his mouth now, bleeding into yours. And yeah, spontaneous combustion might be a real threat. Actually no, it would hardly be spontaneous; there’s a clear, clear cause, and it just so happens to be your ruinous lips.

This is an entirely new facet of the human experience. The kiss is electric; he’s always been partial toward physics, and right now his veins carry an alternating current.

You know, he could probably write a thesis based on this.

You both stumble back back back until he’s hitting a wall, and yes, thankyou. He’s making all sorts of sounds he can’t justify, and it’s a supernova, an infinite black pool of— oh, he thinks he might die, ascend, transcend, when you press your thumb against his chin, hold your lips at just a little slant from his. Force him to wait there.

“Please,” he’s never been above begging. A worthy sacrifice, one he’ll certainly repeat again because you return to the kiss, and the world around him dissolves.

You’ve got one hand tangled in his hair. Tousled auburn, fingers sinking into strands, pushing all the way down to the root. The other is still cupping his face, keeping him close, keeping him selfishly close actually.

“Spence,” you murmur. And yes. Yes. He likes that. The way his name sounds rolling off your tongue, like it was destined to be there. Like he was destined to be yours.

His world is ending. So is yours. Fuck it, he presses himself against your thigh, and ohmygodohmygod. He’s being loud, he’s actually being so criminally loud right now because apparently he’s the most whorish virgin to ever exist.

“I lied, I lied,” he admits between messy kisses, “When you asked what I wanted the most? It’s not to be remembered, well it is, its on the list. But—“ he groans, kisses you again because talking interrupts matters that are more important. Like your lips.

“I wanna cum.”

Eloquent.

Spencer Reid being dirty? Oh, it’s hot, it’s so hot to reduce someone to such an obscene state. To reduce him, the boyish fumbling nerd (who just so happens to be the most beautiful person in existence) to such a degrading mess.

Still, there’s shock. Not because he said it (you greatly appreciate the indecent things falling from those pretty lips right now), but because—

“You’ve never? Haven’t even experienced it once? By yourself?”

He should be embarrassed, but his lips are red, his eyes are glassy, and the bulge in his pants is straining to be touched. “Never,” he sighs shakilly. “Never, and i’m— i’m starting to understand why it’s so popular.”

He whimpers, pushes himself against your thigh, because the friction, yes. “Is that weird? Please don’t think i’m weird. Because I’m really, really weird. Just maybe… not in that way?”

It’s never been enough. His body sometimes feels numb to the touch, and yet still so very overstimulated. Like he manually blocks himself from feeling, already prepared for the flinch. How does he explain that life hasn’t been kind to him? That he hates his body because of what people made it out to be when he was a child. Stripping him naked, tying him to a goalpost, always the underdog. The one to be targeted, tormented.

“It’s actually kinda hot,” you interrupt his thoughts, and just because you’re evil, corrupt, the worst, you press your thigh harder against his clothed cock, palm covering his mouth when a plethora of whiny sounds escape his mouth.

It’s performative, really. Alone in his apartment, there’s no need for noise control. So when your thumb slips between parted, swollen lips, he knows to suck. The average human hand has between 10,000 and 10 million bacteria, and Spencer does not actually give a fuck anymore.

“To think that you’ve never even felt what it’s like. That you’re gonna feel it with me for the first time. I get to see that shit— god, you’re going to look so fucking pretty for me.”

You draw your thumb out of his mouth, and he has the audacity to whine.

He’s never wanted anything more in his entire life. It’s all tertiary now. Only this matters.

“Please don’t praise me—“ he protests, “I’ll probably finish in my pants.”

“Praise kink, noted.”

You laugh, and he can only groan, curse existence for being this cruel to his overworked, undervalued body. “Don’t— don’t laugh. You’re not supposed to laugh, that can heighten performance anxiety. Increase insecurity, and…” he sighs, “You do not care. Sadistic tendencies, noted.”

“Shut up. Wanna see you.” you say, and he’s just muttering breathless mhm’s, too delirious to function; his body is betraying the last iota of self-control like the little whore it apparently is.

His sweater comes off first, then his top. Discarded fabric, his raised arms when you mutter a candid ‘up’, giving way to exposed skin. In response? Your pupils dilate. Spencer knows because he’s analysing, profiling. If you hate him like this, he’s fairly certain he’ll drag himself into a self-dug early grave. He wishes he was being melodramatic. That your approval didn’t have such a substantial impact on his carefully-constructed ego. But, oh, it does. It does.

Thin, with a long, defined torso, he blushes, rose blemished skin, when your hands drag across his stomach. He’d love to say he reacts sanely, suavely. Urbane to your touch. But that would be a total, discreditable lie. Instead, his back arches, seeking contact, following the path of your fingertips with pitiful desperation. He feels malleable, willing to bend and contort, if only to feel more.

“How can you not think you’re pretty, Spence?” His pants are gone next, then his stained boxers, fabric borderline sheer now, soaked through with pre-cum.

Spencer feels betrayed. His body never responds, not to his own hands, not to his own thoughts. And yet, the moment you’re on him, he’s a live-wire. It’s sick, heinous, double-crossing. Maybe it’s purposeful, done just to spite him. Figures.

“Holy shit, look at you. Look at how perfect you are.” Spencer wants to object, because he distinctly told you not to praise him. However,.. right now, the lights are on but nobody is home. Brain-death, he’s certainly in a vegetative state.

“Ohmygodohmygod,” he whimpers, because no amount of knowledge about human anatomy and physiology could prepare him for how he feels under your touch. No amount of education in the psychology of relationships could inform him of how viscerally wrong the way you look at him feels.

Because it’s not wrong, not all. It’s the most right he’s ever felt, and he’ll tell you that if you’ll just keep it up.

The sounds he’s making are phonographic, lewd, you’ve given up on trying to stifle them now. Where have you been hiding? Your eyes fall, and he wants to blush away from the exhibiting gaze, but he’s just…. too far gone; the thought of your touch outweighs any previous reticence. Then, oh then, you drop to your knees, and shit. He expected your thigh, maybe your hand if he was lucky, not—

This. Your mouth, your tongue, your pretty lips; god, god, is this a sin? Because if it is, he’ll take it.

“Please,” he whines, and he can’t look anymore because the sight alone is going to send him over the edge. He’s gripping the wall, scrambling scrambling for purchase, because he’s trying not to grip you, but how exactly does he keep this respectful?

He’s pretty sure they’re past that, considering your mouth is currently wrapped around his cock, and he’s debauched.

You want this, you want him, he feels like he’s transcended humanity, like he’s become someone, anyone and anything, that deserves the way you’re taking him apart, piece by piece. In the aftermath, he hopes you don’t leave a single ounce of him intact.

“Wanna kiss you. Oh— oh oh,” he’s sobbing now, “Come back here. Miss your mouth— even if it’s,” he looks down and that’s a mistake. “Please.”

Of course it would be Spencer to disrupt the best (and admittedly only) head of his life because he needs you closer.

You oblige, raising from your knees, and Spencer thinks it might be sacrilegious. But then again, he feels religion in your touch so it can’t be too profane. Maybe? He’s not sure, he’s not sure and it doesn’t matter. Ethics and morality have long since disintegrated, sins are engrained into humankind. He almost wants to thank Eve for tearing into the apple, because it’s allowed this irreverence to occur.

Spencer blindly follows you through the apartment, stumbling and muttering until he can collapse against the bed. Baring his pretty neck as his head hits the bedframe. Tangled in sheets, draped over his lap, his deft fingers run across your waist, mapping out the structure of your frame. If only to remember, recite this act of blasphemy.

“Spence,” you whisper, and then his lips are crashing into yours, stealing breath, stealing sanity. He whimpers, murmurs a protest when you draw back, and you can only laugh. “Lets get you off, yeah? You wanna feel an orgasm, pretty boy?”

“Yes, yes please. That would uh— yes.” he’s not even sure how he’s conscious right now. His body, god his body, has endured more pleasure in the last hour than it has for the majority of his life. Your hands scathe, and Spencer is willing to indefinitely burn, if just to feel them one more time.

You only stop to take off your clothes, and surely there needs to be prep? To reaffirm, he knows anatomy, the correct procedure, how the transgression is supposed to occur. And yet, that’s from a clinical, objective mindset. Do this, do that, etc etc. Nothing works out like that in practice.

You’re so wet, panties stained through, he spares a moment to run his fingers across your thighs, hand slipping beneath fabric to graze your clit. The moan that follows has him distracted, thumb tracing circlets, over and over until you’re pulling back to return the balance. The balance, which admittedly is skewed, tipped scales, you’re on top. He falls to the weight of your influence.

And yeah, he’s more than fine with that. Jesus, you drag your panties down, down your thighs, your legs, then they’re reaching your ankles, pooling there for a moment before they’re being discarded, tossed somewhere on his floor — leaving behind a souvenir that yes, yes this happened.

“I can’t,” he says, burying his face into your shoulder when you take him. It’s slow, sinking onto his cock like every inch of warmth will destroy him. Maybe it will. Maybe he doesn’t care, because he deserves this. He deserves to feel after so much repression.

Or maybe, maybe he’s just become the biggest slut known to mankind. Likely.

Your body presses against his, and he thinks he’s going to disintegrate, because he feels so good. He understands now, he understands why people do this. Why it’s integral to the function of most. This is the best day of his life. This. Is. The. Best. Day. Of. His. Life.

There’s this noise, this pathetically loud whimper when you start to roll your hips— and oh your body is wet against him, and you’re so tight, and it’s perfect because he doesn’t have to do anything.

He can just sit here, look pretty, and cry.

He knows he’s a giver, that he’d bleed himself dry for you. It’s a curse, he supposes: so willing to bend backwards for the satisfaction of the people he trusts. But, this is foreign, and he wants to watch you, aimlessly stare, dumb and empty-headed as you wield his body like a weapon. Turn him into something perniciously yours.

Spencer has no reference for what an orgasm is supposed to feel like, and yeah, he’s really good at guessing in these type of situations. Because he’s rolling his thumb over your clit again, and he wants to draw it into his mouth, to see you laid out across bedsheets, writhing, unable to do anything but suffocate him with your thighs.

You clench around him, back arched, releasing a series of strained moans. With one hand tangled in his dishevelled hair, the other pressed against his chest, your face contorts, your body stiffens. There’s no way his incessant whimpering just got you off?

Okay. So you like him desperate. Point taken.

“Please— please, wanna cum. Wanna feel it so bad,” he’s slurring over his words, sentences punctured by devastating whimpers. And look at him, asking for permission, waiting even though his body has been teetering on the edge for so long now.

“Shh, shh..” you press your forehead against his, and he melts. Reoccurring theme. His hand grips your jaw, thumb pushed firmly against your chin, keeping you close. “You wanna cum for me, baby? Gonna give me your first?”

“Mhm— mhm…” is all he can say. When you pick up your pace, he has to burrow his face into the crook of your neck, whimpers messy and broken off, suppressed against your warm skin.

“Oh. Oh…” he repeats, again. Like there’s anything else he could utter, because this is earth-shattering.

It’s the sun, and all eight planets combined, and the universe collapsing in on itself, and he’s bucking, squirming, releasing into you, spilling deep.

He sobs. Breaks down. Because it’s so so good, and he can’t believe he ever deprived his body of this.

Neediest whore to ever exist, apparently.

It takes him a while to come back. Longer to regain motor function, to sink into present day. Life, and expectations, and everything, everything, your touch eradicated.

“Just… just stay like this?” he asks, collapsing against your body after he’s drawn out of you. There’s mess, evidence of your ministrations, but cleanliness seems futile when he’s blissed out, caught in a post-orgasmic haze that yes yes yes he needed so badly.

You card your hands through his hair, watch the way he stares up at you, large, widened eyes, chin resting against your chest. “Hi,” he mutters dumbly.

“Spence,” Spence, Spence, Spence. He could drown himself in that nickname.

“Yeah?” he breathes out.

“You we’re so good—“

He rolls away from you, finding a home for his face in the pillow. “Stop. Stop.” he groans, “Don’t do that. You’re going to destroy me. I’m not… equipped for this, for you. Someone should just sedate me, put me out of my misery, a coma sounds like—“

He tilts his head to the side, relinquishing, “Okay. Sorry. Meltdown over. Can we shower? Then maybe do this again? Which will make the shower inconsequential, I suppose. There’s a new documentary I want to watch, and oh, you still haven’t seen the third Star Wars—“

He’s happy, content, over the fucking moon, to be silenced with your lips. “Yeah,” he murmurs, hand interlocking with yours as you both fall back against the mattress, “Let’s do this again.”

#criminal minds #spencer reid smut #sub spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid angst #spencer reid #giving him the happiness he deserved #he is my roman empire #his excess trauma is also #my #roman empire #thank u and good night america #i’m not even american

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