#and i there was a wip i probably spent at LEAST three hours on and i was super proud of that ill have to redo

[notthatnebula]

.

[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. 

[questionable-sanity]

Hmmmm a WIP, probably:

Hurt/Comfort Modern FengQing fic where Mu Qing, who lost his mother before his relationship with Feng Xin, finally meets Feng Xin's parents.

------------------

Mu Qing would never admit it, but he is extremely family oriented.

Feng Xin and his parents are distant. Feng Xin's mother in particular, who had been extremely focused on her son being successful from a young age, had been disappointed with her son when he'd broken his engagement with Jian Lan - an engagement decided between their families when they were teenagers. That was strike one, according to Feng Xin.

She had then all but disowned Feng Xin when he'd come out as bisexual. His father had done nothing in his defense. Strike two.

And she had not once spoken to Feng Xin when he announced either his relationship with and eventually his engagement to Mu Qing.

Strike three. That is, Feng Xin had decided at that point to go no contact with his mother and father.

Feng Xin is stubborn. So are his parents. Mu Qing had been under no delusion that he would be able to force them to make up, not until one of them made the first move.

So, when the invitation came in the mail, Mu Qing had bit his lip and hid it away so that Feng Xin wouldn't throw it away on sight.

Inevitably, when Mu Qing ambushed his fiancé with the invitation at dinner that night, it led to an argument.

But, if there's one thing Mu Qing has learned how to do in their four-year long relationship, it is how to slowly and subtly push Feng Xin in the direction he wants him.

(All of those seasons of Scheming Concubine worked to his benefit after all)

So, when Feng Xin finally agrees to one - one dinner, Mu Qing, I swear to fucking god - Mu Qing pulls out all the stops.

He drags the richest person he knows with taste (read: not Xie Lian nor Feng Xin (other than Hua Cheng, thank you very much, he still has dignity)). Shi Qingxuan helps him pick out a heart-stoppingly expensive bottle of wine to bring as a gift and spends literal hours with him shopping for the perfect 'meet your rich in-laws' outfit.

Mu Qing pulls out his mother's cook book and spends the day before pouring his blood, sweat, and tears into her most delicious and traditional dishes (made more difficult with the challenge of swatting Feng Xin's greedy hands away from the food at every turn).

He goes to bed the night before in full skin and haircare - including those heatless curlers Feng Xin absolutely hates given they get in the way of their cuddling.

And, perhaps most importantly, he spends the first half of that morning keeping Feng Xin relaxed, his fiance clearly feeling completely on-edge at the prospect of seeing his parents. (This, at least, is easy. Feng Xin is a simple, simple man, so all he has to do is drop to his knees once ("Hands off, idiot. Do not fuck up my hair.")) . The second half is spent ushering a pliant Feng Xin into a presentable outfit.

And in the afternoon, when he and Feng Xin arrive at the Feng household (Read: mansion. What the fuck Feng Xin?), Mu Qing gives his hand one last reassuring squeeze, and they knock on the door.

And at first, Mu Qing thinks it's all going well. He stays carefully polite, but quiet, and he watches with some relief as Feng Xin's shoulders become less and less tense as his mother showers her son with praise and affection.

And, truly, it makes Mu Qing so happy, because he never, ever wanted someone he cares about to lose their family, least of all because of an association with himself.

He never wants Feng Xin to lose this.

So, when the comments start, Mu Qing says nothing. They start innocuous enough, at first, to the point Mu Qing wonders if he's imagining things.

But soon, they become meaner, more targeted. It becomes clear that Feng Xin's mother has investigated his background - his father's criminal history and his mother's lack of education, namely - and does not like what she sees.

Mu Qing is a threat to Feng Xin's reputation with his family background, not even considering that he is a man. Feng Xin could have at least been paired with a much better match, male or not - The Feng's after all, have close ties with the Shi, Xie, Pei, Qi and plenty of other high-society families. Mu Qing's training as a doctor hasn't paid off yet, seeing as he is still in residency, and he hasn't chosen a more lucrative or prestigious subspeciality anyway, so his only selling point falls flat. He is attractive enough, but with his mother's history of cancer and autoimmune disease, his genetics are subpar. His personality is cold, unbefitting of Feng Xin's sunny and warm disposition. He is clearly not trained in proper etiquette, standing out like a sore thumb, an eyesore.

His detriments seem to be endless, and are told to him in every spare moment when he and Feng Xin's mother are alone.

Mu Qing is no push over and never has been. Never has he allowed someone to speak so disrespectfully to him.

But, as he watches Feng Xin smile at the dinner table, looking so at peace and relieved to have his family back -

Mu Qing, sick to his stomach, keeps his eyes on the table, biting his tongue. He can suffer any indignity for one night, if it means making Feng Xin happy.

The night continues on peacefully.

(That is, until Feng Xin finds out what's going on.)

-------------------------

Ugh the plot bunnies are heeeeere but I have to resist and focus on my main project. Maybe I'll flesh this out for a christmas one shot?

[alchemistc]

WIP Wednesday

tagged by the lovely @liminalmemories21 - thank you!

(when this fic is complete i'm fully gonna go through and see exactly how many obscure hockey references i made in this, i see at least two right here in this snippet)

Tommy’s no Phil Kessel, when it comes to his diet, but he’s staring at the meager contents of his fridge and trying to convince himself not to order in chinese food again when his phone buzzes in his pocket. Come over, the message reads, and Tommy stares at it for long enough that he feels a little guilty about leaving Buck on read. There’s a smile in Buck’s voice when he answers Tommy’s call. “Hey, Tommy.” It’s barely three, the sun still warm as it hovers over peaks too far in the distance for Tommy to be able to discern more detail than a craggy horizon line, and he’d planned on little more than resting, for the rest of his evening, but there’s an undeniable draw to the idea of seeing Buck, even though he’d spent an hour drifting in and out of his orbit during practice, earlier in the day. Still. “Evan, we have a game tomorrow morning.” There’s few enough day-games throughout the year that they’re a bit of a novelty — for players and fans and coaching staff and arena workers alike. He can’t actually see it, but in his minds eye there is a distinct image of Buck, grinning one of his charming little grins, a cheeky tilt to his head as he bites his lower lip. “So bring your game-day suit with you,” he says, and Tommy feels a kaleidoscope take wing in his gut. “Evan,” Tommy admonishes, with no real hope that he’s not about to be convinced into something ill-advised. His phone buzzes against his ear. “Just texted you my address. Ryker sent me home with some weird craft beer that you’ll probably love.”

no pressure tags: @rcmclachlan, @epiphainie, @ashesandhalefire

[idontknowreallywhy]

WIP-what-on-earth-have-I-got-myself-into-here…

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Ash had had access to both of their files for a long while… the visible parts anyway. The extensive redactions? Not so much. Well… now his new GDF rank meant he could get past those too but he hadn’t dared. Partly because he wasn’t sure it was a can of worms he was ready to face. Not now he had Scott back after so long.

The other big reason he’d resisted was because they’d know. The decryption keys were personalised… they’d know both who and when. And three weeks into the new job was a little early to risk getting fired.

Or worse. Knowing them… probably worse.

Tonight though, hours of the puffed up, clueless idiots squabbling about the new outbreak had forced him to relive so many parts of his experience ten years before that the phantom pain was almost unbearable. He rubbed at his lower leg, trying to fool his mind into thinking he was comforting the missing arm, soothing the nerves that tormented him but that he could never reach.

Scott hadn’t lost anything visible. But Ash knew they’d stolen a no less crippling part of him too. He’d watched his friend from a distance, scratching at a a similar untouchable itch in so many subtle ways. How much of his friend’s confident, controlled outward demeanour was as synthetic as the fingertips Ash realised he was rapping against the desktop? He flattened his hand, grimacing at the supposedly-unnoticeable delay between thought and movement that had rewritten his future.

Ash knew what his friend had lost. And he couldn’t help feel responsible - he should have been there. He’d spent countless sleepless nights trying to figure out how he could have prevented it all, if he’d spotted the clumsy sabotage as he should have, swapped with another jet… maybe he could have got there in time. Got him out.

Instead he’d just sat there shaking and bleeding and sobbing and helpless as first Scott and then Val’s radios had cut out. If Ash hadn’t passed out from the shock of his injury perhaps he could have got her out at least…

No. They’d got it right in her jet. She wouldn’t have known a thing.

EHZ007 was all over Scott’s file. And each time the reference was used, the following sections were blacked out. If he knew why, maybe he might get closer to finding out what had happened and why.

At the very least he might be able to reach out to his friend, to help him find closure. If he knew better what had occurred between that last desperate shout over the radio and the day that the gaunt face of his best friend had asked him to leave the ranch and never return.

It would look highly suspicious if the first Top-Secret graded file he accessed post-promotion was that of his old wingman. They were clueless in some ways, but not in all of them.

Giles, though. He looked at a lot of the TS material just for fun and bragging rights, if his boasting was to be believed. And this evening Ash had watched the man unlock his work phone with 1234. Someone that uncreative with passcodes might just have used the same one for everything…

Officer ID, rank code, personal pin, age in days. The man’s date of birth was on his Wikipedia page and so… Ash now had everything he needed.

Except the courage. He’d been staring at the encryption alert box for over an hour. His shoulder ached.

He disconnected his prosthetic and dumped it on the table before snatching up the scotch bottle and refilling his glass.

He typed in the number.

PASSCODE ERROR.

He swore and retyped it.

No! The man had clearly used another pin. Damn.

He drained the glass and dropped his head to the desk. It was probably just as well.

Out in the hallway his great grandmother’s clock chimed once.

It was later than he thought.

It was… tomorrow.

He sat up, cursing his own idiocy and typed the code again, increasing the last digit by one. The screen refreshed and the blacked out sections disappeared.

He was in.

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[anaer]

the time travel fix it fuck it up fic (wip)

in which gojo ends up back in time and decides its time for a hostile takeover

stsg/sukugo, rating: probably don't share with your family

According to the blurry numbers on the clock screaming at his face, it was 4:33 in the fucking morning when Geto Suguru, renowned cult leader, was forcefully woken by a loud cacophony sounding the destruction of at least three walls of his temple. He had half a second to try and process – ‘What the fuck was that?’ – before an even louder, much more familiar, much more annoying sound echoed through the compound.

“Suguru!”

Uncalled for indignation: that was the first thing Geto registered. The second thing he registered was a foot buried in his gut, and his body crashing into his bedroom wall. Well. He was awake now. Just in time to see a fist coming straight for his face, and he barely ducked out of the way, rolling past Satoru looking like death and whatever snit he was suddenly in.

“What the fuck?!” he demanded. “Do you know what time it is?” Everyone, especially Satoru, knew how he felt about his sleep getting interrupted. He couldn’t be his best self with less than eight hours and twenty-four minutes of sleep per night.

“It’s September!” Satoru shot back at him. “Three months before December!”

And also two years since the last time Satoru had hung up on him very rudely in the middle of one of his earnest entreaties to get him to come around to the better side of killing most of the world. This was how he decided they were talking again?

“I’m glad you know how to read a goddamn calendar? What the hell is your problem?”

Satoru slugged him right in the jaw, hard enough to make Geto’s head ring. “I know you’re planning to murder my student.”

What?

God, his fucking face hurt now. This was not how he wanted to start his morning; he had so much important cult shit to deal with today, and now he was going to be in a mood. And he wasn’t planning to kill any of Satoru’s students yet, so what was this even about? Another blow caught him in the stomach, and he doubled over gasping, grabbing onto Satoru’s t-shirt.

“Stop…punching me!”

Satoru complied, but only because a hand clamped entirely too threateningly around his neck to haul him up instead. The grin on Satoru’s face was honestly psychotic. Geto hated how hot that was. He’d really shot himself in the foot that time he’d convinced Satoru that mass murder was bad. Hindsight and all that…they really could’ve had it all. It was amazing how stupid teenage hormones and morality had made him.

“I have had,” Satoru began slowly, his grip slowly tightening on Geto’s throat, “a really bad year. Unbelievably bad. That stupid brain, then that stupid box, and then…well, the fight was great, honestly. A little embarrassing to die on live TV, but worth it, I think. Sukuna was—ahhh, he was so much better than I expected, and now that’s all ruined, which—not the point. At first, I was happy, in the airport, to see you again – things get weird when you die – but then I woke up this morning, alive, and I saw it was September.”

“You’ve already established it’s September,” Geto croaked.

Satoru scoffed, pinning him with a glare that did not intimidate him as much as turned him on. Satoru looked so fuckable like this.

“I woke up,” Satoru repeated, “and on my way here, I realised: you! You’re the problem! You are the root of all my problems. Every single one of them! I would kill you, but that’s what started this entire mess to begin with!”

Geto had zero idea what he was talking about. Not that he actively spent sixty eight percent of his time spying on Satoru or anything (he was a known liar), but he knew for a fact that Satoru had spent most of the past year fucking around Japan eating anything he could get his hands on, toying with underpowered curses, pissing off the higher ups, and avidly not teaching his students anything useful. He’d even fucked Nanami a time or two, which was something Geto tried not to think about too much for the thin remnants of his own sanity. Still: it’d been a pretty good year for him, as far as Geto was concerned. He’d definitely not done anything half as annoyingly obnoxious as die, let alone on live TV. Whatever the fuck bullshit he was spewing from his mouth was complete nonsense, which could really only mean one thing: Gojo Satoru had finally, fully snapped.

Geto thought about all that, and then didn’t think through his answer at all: “As if you could kill me.”

[lemonlyman-dotcom]

WIP (Work Is Published) Wednesday

Thank you for the tags @whatsintheboxmh @im-overstimulated-and-im-sad @thisbuildinghasfeelings @strandnreyes & @carlos-in-glasses 💕

From my Secret Santa fic, Como Te Quiero Yo (how I love you), wherein TK tries to give Carlos the perfect day on their beach honeymoon 🏝️

This is not how he wanted to spend their romantic beach vacation. He thinks this is probably the least sexy scenario they could have found themselves in on the third day of their honeymoon.

God, he’d kill for a good kidnapping right now. Or a coma. Anything, really, other than this nightmare.

Up until this morning it had been a perfect honeymoon. They’d spent the first afternoon at the beach, where they swam and splashed each other in the waves and dozed under a rented umbrella. Carlos had held TK’s hand on their beach blanket and kissed him sweetly in the surf. That night they made love on the balcony, Carlos’s thrusts timed perfectly with the driving waves of the ocean just below them. They’d cleaned up and gone for rounds two and three in their ensuite jacuzzi.

The next day they postponed pool plans for a lazy morning full of sleepy sex and breakfast in bed followed by more sex, which culminated in TK being shoved off the bed after he pulled off of Carlos to give him a detailed description of just exactly how he compared to the taste of a fresh oyster.

“TK, I swear to god, if you start comparing the mouth feel I’m canceling the rest of this honeymoon.”

Once they’d finally made it out of their room, they spent the second day bouncing between the beach and the resort’s six pools, sipping piña coladas (virgin for TK) and snacking from fruit trays and fresh guacamole.

But TK could tell Carlos was still feeling blue. Just a little melancholy.

When they checked into the hotel they’d found a large basket on the table in their suite, welcoming them with chocolates, salty snacks, bath bombs and scented lotions. The basket also held a card, addressed to Carlos and TK from their parents. They’d said how proud of them they were, how happy they all were to be welcoming a new son to their respective families, how they looked forward to watching TK and Carlos continue to grow together as a family, however big or small, and love and cherish each other. It was signed by all three parents — Owen, Andrea and, in large, looping cursive, Gabriel, who’d added his own little note about how proud he was of ‘both our boys.’

The honeymoon was their parents’ wedding gift. A compromise of sorts after Carlos and TK shut them out of the wedding planning months ago. Naturally, it makes sense they would have sent the card and made arrangements for the basket in advance. Before Gabriel was taken from them.

Carlos made a valiant attempt at keeping a straight face while he read the card. But TK knew him too well. His eyes glassed over and his mouth twitched, when he went to set the card down on the table his hand shook just slightly. TK needed no more encouragement than that. He’d crowded up behind his husband and wrapped him in a bear hug.

Carlos cleared his throat. “TK, I’m fine.”

“I know,” TK sighed. “I just wanted a hug.”

“Oh yeah?” Carlos chuckled, taking hold of TK’s arms and loosening his grip just enough so he could turn around. “I guess, as your husband, I better hug you then.”

TK rested his chin on Carlos’s chest and smirked up at him, “Yeah, husband, I guess you better.”

It’s how, two hours later, TK found himself at the front desk booking almost every activity the resort had to offer. He’s going to give Carlos the best day ever. He knows no amount of horseback riding and snorkeling will truly take away the pain of his grief. But Carlos, his sweet husband who would lift a car if it meant TK could be spared a second of pain, deserves a perfect day.

Tagging @chicgeekgirl89 @heartstringsduet @fitzherbertssmolder @guardian-angle22 @reasonandfaithinharmony @fckingyrs @alrightbuckaroo @bonheur-cafe @tarlosmalec @ladytessa74 @louis-ii-reyes-strand @herefortarlos @tellmegoodbye @carlos-tk @birdclowns @freneticfloetry @apothecarose @basilsunrise @rmd-writes @thebumblecee @welcometololaland @reyesstrand @your-catfish-friend @iboatedhere @liminalmemories21 @lightningboltreader @never-blooms @noxsoulmate @theghostofashton @paperstorm @decafdino and OPEN TAG 🏷️

[ouroboros-hideout]

WIP WHENEVER

@chevvy-yates tagged me for this. Thank you a lot 💚

This will be a huge wall of text aswell, since I am not really of the „visual“ side of creating atm.

Writing // Worldbuilding

I'm still writing the next two chapters for my fanfiction, but would rather briefly introduce my other OCs here (yes, Aon isn´t the only one by now). Maybe I can create all of them ingame at some point, depending on how stupid I´ll act with modding etc. when I start. Since things can change quickly in the story while I'm writing, I wouldn't say that everything is 100% set in stone, a lot of it isn't finished yet. But it's a good base. Most of them appear in my „Like Napalm“ fic. Some of them will be in my main GARMR fic aswell. So prepare for half backed character data entries and some rambling.

Gan

Gan Tomobataar, or Iron as he is usually called, is a mysterious man. Many stories surround the Mongolian giant and it always depends on who asks him whether he affirms or denies these tales. It is therefore uncertain which of them are true or fictional and he really enjoys keeping his past in the dark. He is said to have served in an elite military unit. The metal teeth that earned him his iconic nickname are said to have been lost in numerous boxing matches as he tried to turn pro to make a better life for himself and his family, and he is allegedly a descendant of Ginghis Khan (which is probably one of his favorite rumors). One can assume that his closest confidants have more clarity, but none of them would dare say a word about it. Undeniably true is that he has two brothers, of whom he is the second-born. Together with them, he leads one of the largest nomadic clans in eastern Europe and Asia. The Tomobataar nomads are divided into three large families, each led by one of the three brothers. Iron's family stays mainly in Mongolia and Russia, but he would also travel to more distant parts of the Soviet Union for profitable contracts. He doesn't have many vices, but one of them is definitely greed.

By sheer luck, at least that's what he claimed, he picked up Aon on the street when she was trying to flee Moscow on her own. He promised to protect her from the Secret Police and other bounty hunters if she proved to be a useful member of his clan. However, his methods for testing her worth would put the young woman to the test.

Yakov

Yakov always had problems finding his place in the world. He grew up in St. Petersburg, studying or an education other than working in his father's car repair shop were never an option financially, but the young man always yearned for something greater than being stuck in the alleys and streets of his childhood. He decided to join the military when he was old enough, but was discharged immediately after basic training for insubordination and general unsuitability. What remained for him was to work in his father's garage until he died after a long illness. Yakov tried to keep the store running on his own for a while, but he found it difficult to do good business without proper management and eventually had to sell the store. This was followed by a relatively dark period. He saw himself as a failure, was unable to find a new job and drank away the money he had received for the workshop in the bars in his neighborhood. One evening, a man came into his local pub. His car had broken down outside, he wouldn't get any further that night and kept him company for a few hours. The next day, Yakov repaired his car for the man called Gan and left the town with him to live with the Tomobataar nomads.

Gregori

Gregori's mother, a singer from New York, came to the Russian capital for a gig and met a military officer there. The two got together and the result was little Greg. Shortly afterwards, however, the couple fell apart and she took her son back to America, where he spent most of his childhood and youth being raised by babysitters and nannies, while the singer preferred to spend her time on tour or in the recording studio. Gregori at least inherited much of her creativity, starting to make music himself at an early age and drawing a lot. Just what small children do when they need to keep themselves busy.

When he was 16 years old, his mother died of an overdose. As she never bothered to write down a testament or anything similar, her entire fortune goes to her greedy manager, who leaves Gregori penniless.

The boy, who has spent his whole life sheltered without much contact with the outside world, is left with nothing and doesn't know exactly what to do. So he scrapes together the last of his money and buys a ticket to Moscow, where he tries to find his father, but in vain. He quickly goes off the rails, barely speaks a word of Russian, is recruited by a gang and gets exploited. An arms deal with a group of nomads goes wrong, a shootout ensues and Gegori is the only one left of the gang because he hides instead of fighting. Yakov, who was on the other side of the deal, takes pity on him and eventually takes him to his new family where he tries to find his place within the group.

Anna

Anna grew up with the Tomobataar nomads from an early age. Her parents were killed in a botched mission when she was just four years old. Iron, who in a way blamed himself for this, took on a guardianship for her and looked after the little girl like the apple of his eye. As the years passed and Anna grew older, the relationship between her and her foster father changed. He became increasingly demanding, punished misbehavior and put the still young girl under pressure. Aon, who had already earned her place in the clan by this time, could not tolerate this behavior as she herself had grown up under similar circumstances. No one else in the clan interfered with Iron's "parenting methods", which is why she ended up doing it. Anna and Aon then became inseparable and she naturally followed her later when they left the clan along with many others.

Anatoly

Anatoly, or Tolik as Aon calls him, belongs to the Russian working class in Moscow and cannot claim to own much. As a boy, he dreamed of studying mechanical engineering in order to open his own workshop or business. A dream that his father would never have been able to afford in this life. So after school, Tolik started working at his father's scrap yard on the outskirts of Moscow, not an easy job. He regularly drives into the city to pick up old components and scrap metal from SovOil and other big corporations, where he meets Alyona one day. The two strike up a conversation, exchange banter and hit it off straight away, which over time develops into a teenage love story. Aon spends a lot of time with him at the scrapyard, where she can test and improve her skills on old machines and has a place to hide from her hated stepfather. He, in return, benefits from the knowledge she brings with her from university, and his dream of building his own big thing soon becomes her dream too. Together they consider leaving the city at some point and make plans for the future

unnamed_chromed_up_terrifying_SovOil_Secret_Police_agent

Yea well, I don't know yet how to call him. After Aon has fled Moscow, the officers of the normal police force give up the search for her, as it theoretically no longer falls within their area of responsibility. However, since Kristof claims that Aon stole the data he wanted to sell to Petrochem, SovOil is naturally very interested in finding her and the data chip. So they send a Secret Police agent after her, who, together with a small unit, tries to track her down. He actually already had a kind of "Easter Egg" appearance in my other AU. He would have been the agent sitting next to Kurt if he hadn't switched the cards on the table. Funny how differently things can go. Anyway, he doesn't really have much of a backstory other than he used to work for the KGB and is a bloodthirsty hound dog who chases Aon halfway across the country (spoiler: and finds her). If I were to compare him to another character from movies etc, he would probably have the closest vibe to Hans Landa from Inglourious Basterds. The character was very well written, even though I would probably make my namesless_pig a bit younger than him. But since he'll be pumped full of cyberware anyway, it probably doesn't matter much in the end. It's just supposed to be a fucking horrible character and Aon's nightmare.

Robert Walker

Robert is one of the key-characters in my main fanfiction. I haven't thought about him in depth yet, but the general concept is there. He's a British journalist and photographer who wanted to go high by exposing wrongdoings in society. For him, there is nothing more exciting than achieving "fame and notoriety" as a whistleblower. He's not necessarily stupid or doesn't know what he's doing, he's just unlucky. He gets into trouble with the wrong people and upsets the even worse ones, which is why he has to flee the UK and ends up in NC. There he tries to start over and stay out of trouble. However, he soon develops an "unhealthy" obsession with Kurt Hansen. He is incredibly fascinated by him and spends every free minute in Dogtown so that he can perhaps take a photo (or two, or ten) of his idol. At some point, he goes so far as to seek direct contact and wants to interview him. Kurt is flattered at first, but has little desire to reveal information about himself in some strange blog or gossip magazine. But that didn't stop Robert from continuing to stalk him and even trying to become a member of Barghest. At some point, Hansen got too pissed off and gave him the choice of leaving Dogtown or catching a bullet. Robbie chose the second option. After all, he hadn't forbid him to camp outside the gates of Dogtown, had he?

Technically I could tell something about Aon´s mom and her stepfather too, but I don´t have that much yet. So will keep em for the next WIP together with the other OCs for my main fic. There will be three more. A general, a corpo guy and the last is still up for discussion with my brain. Considering somekind of warlord or a netrunner.

Art

I tried to do something different than a full rendered piece of artwork. I am not yet confinced that I like it. I like, that it was finished really fast lmao but...I dunno.

Aon and Tolik - 2055

But happy that Aon is actually recognizable in the end. During the process she looked so much like So Mi at a point that my brain went: WHO ARE YOU GIRL. But I like the long hair. Will give it back to her in her 2078+ appearance. Not exactly like this, but longer than her normal style.

Not quite sure about Anatoly tho. I mean, he looks like this in my head, but I will reconsidere if he will get some cyberarms. He is poor like a mouse, so probably can´t afford expensive tech like this, but he feels kind of „empty“ without anything.

Congrats and huge thanks if you read this far. Brainrot stronk!

Tagging some ppl aswell. Everyone else is invited too to show off some awesome stuff ofc, no pressure as always!

@blackrevell @olath124 @cyberholic77 @cybervesna @pinkyjulien @theviridianbunny @therealnightcity @wanderingaldecaldo @miss--river @barghestapologist @kdval @streetkid-named-desire @aggravateddurian @androgymess

[taiturner]

NEW YEARS CLEAN-UP 🎊

rules: unburden yourself from the abandoned WIPS collecting dust in your folder and share 5 gifs, then tag five people. (tagged by @yenvengerberg, thank you i feel like i can do something useful with these things now 💖)

tagging with no pressure of course: @wyllhalsin, @capinejghafa, @cardvngreenbriar, @seance, @ayoedebiris, @ughmerlin, @craintheodora, @lottiemilfews, @natscatorrcio (yeah miles i'm tagging you to be funny i know what you did with those psds)

these are all from projects that i have in a folder titled "on the bench" that i want to pretend i'll come back to, but.... some of these have been benched for so long and they're no longer fresh in my head so i fear they'll be abandoned forever. should also be mentioned that a lot of projects on the bench are literally just me making all the typography first and then losing inspo when i actually wanted to gif things.... usually by the time i do start, i change my mind about the type anyway. i also have so many abandoned gifs from other gifsets i've already posted but i'm not even sure where to begin searching so... here are some things!

one of the many gifs i already created for a prompt from @yellowjacketsoctober to put the show in a different genre. ironically, a prompt that i came up with for the event specifically to make this gifset but didn't even complete. i spent so many hours and so many days trying to gif this entire arc for these three with the intent to make it a heist drama set but after so long i realized i was just giffing exactly what happened in the show and it started to feel pointless. but at least here's a preview of something that i'll never finish. my trio of all time, can they commit more crimes together please! (should also be said that this folder is 44gb because i already saved all the caps + because these psds are so heavy... new years clean up for real)

i don't know what it is about lydia that makes it so hard for me to finish any set for her, but every time i try i seem to always lose the drive eventually (probably because twd in general just feels really uninteresting for me to blend, for some reason). from a 2022 spotify wrapped meme, i'm pretty sure i restarted this specific gifset so many different times, unhappy with the colors and the blends and the text and everything -- which is why there are two very different examples here. my girl of all time though i will finish something for her eventually (and maybe even this one, because this song is still so good for her).

one of the many gifs that were abandoned by my scream vi set for favorite slasher in october. when tumblr first changed the image upload limit to 30, i promised myself to never take advantage of that too much, but i severely underestimated how many moments i would want to include for this movie and i made so many other gifs for this set but ultimately cut them so i could try to tone it down - 18 gifs in this set still feels like a lot but i spent so much time on this set that it was hard to part with many more. anyway here's sam being the hottest final girl in the world and correct about everything.

i don't know how long this has been on the bench but it was definitely a project i started way before season 2 even aired. i think i just got stuck and wasn't sure where to go with it, but anyway her!

extra spoiler for @wyllhalsin but this was supposed to be a pride edit in june for one of my favorite lgbt characters of all time. this show's camera movements nearly makes it impossible to blend anything so i lost the drive, but i will come back for felix someday (and for coty, obviously this set was for him).

[varlaisvea]

WIP Wednesday!

lol no one tagged me; I have 18 followers and I write mostly ESO fic. Clearly, I post for me. 😂

This won't make it into the final draft, but I like it anyway. This adorable ESO quest features a Nord whose wife is a High Elf—the only High Elf I can think of in ESO who married someone decidedly Apraxic. So I decided to have my also Very Apraxic OCs meet Viggol and Telline.

1.5k words, G-rated, discussion of racism

Two non-Altmer discuss what it’s like to be married to someone who has to keep you a secret—and who will live more than a century after you’re gone.

------

Viggol looked back to where our Elves were talking. “That’s my wife,” he said proudly. “Drives Telline crazy when I tell people that. She thinks these stick-arsed Elves are going to run us out of town, but I have yet to find one who actually believes me when I claim that beautiful Elf debased herself by marrying an idiot Nord.”

“In plain sight is this one’s favorite place to hide,” I said.

He grinned. “See! You understand—that is the upside of living somewhere where all your neighbors consider you to be a genetically inferior halfwit, no? It would be absurd to imagine that Telline’s dutiful house-servant is actually her beloved husband. That’d be like suspecting your neighbor is secretly married to their horse.” He paused. “Though, I suppose I did wonder about a few of my neighbors back in Dawnstar…”

“Ha, this one has spent several long, cold, dark winters in Winterhold…” We exchanged a knowing glance. “But we are only visiting Summerset. Thank Jone and Jode, we do not live here—no insult to you.”

“None taken,” he said. “Telline grew up here, but we’ve only lived in Lillandril together for a few years. Just us and Pickle.” He gestured to the elderly dog at Telline’s feet. “It’s almost insulting; our neighbors don’t even seem to suspect a dirty Apraxic affair, even though everyone has dirty Apraxic affairs on this damned island. But Telline says I am far too handsome for that to protect me for long.” He nodded to himself, acknowledging the truth of his wife’s concern, then turned to me and scanned me from ears to tail. “You can relate, of course.”

“Just so,” I said, nodding to join him in somberly considering this problem. “As an up-jumped animal, this one is even more genetically inferior than a Man—most Elves probably imagine Eymei and I are colleagues, if they think anything at all. But, this one is strikingly handsome enough that occasionally an Altmer casts a glance, as if they suspect Eymei has a wicked little fetish for sugar-tongued liars.” I met his eyes, and the look on his face suggested he already knew what I was going to say next. “It is not as sexy as it sounds.”

We both chuckled and watched seabirds soar over the waves. Pickle was attempting to chase a gull, but quickly decided his obviously-achy hips could not sustain the effort, and came over to lay in the warm sand next to us.

“It’d be a great story, if I could tell it to anyone,” Viggol said, after a long silence. “For two or three years, I jokingly bothered Telline about marrying me at least weekly, until I started to feel like the joking had a bit too much feeling behind it; like I was pressuring her. I knew she couldn’t marry me. I just wanted to be with her. But, two or three months after I stopped pestering her about marriage, we got drunk and she asked me! It’s illegal, not to mention dangerous and socially repulsive, here in Summerset, but we weren’t in Summerset—I hauled her right then and there to the nearest Mara shrine. Of course I wouldn’t actually marry her until we were both sober, but we sat right next to the shrine for several hours until we were both of sound mind. And she didn’t back out!” It was very sweet, how moons-eyed he looked as he recounted this.

“Ah, when an Elf is willing to do something moderately spontaneous for you, this is true love, yes? What convinced her?”

He laughed. “She said—” he did his best impression of his wife “—‘I have never done anything stupid enough to risk regretting. I suspect you’d say risking regret is the only way to do something that thrills you.’” He looked over to where she was standing, with unabashed adoration on his face. His eyes were dewy when he turned back to me. “That was what she said. Why she was willing to marry someone who would die before she was middle-aged. She said she wouldn’t stay married to me unless she was right about it being thrilling. That was almost fifty years ago, and she’s still here, even though I don’t have more than ten or fifteen years left.” He wiped a tear and laughed self-consciously. “Sorry. I don’t usually get to tell people how wonderful she is.”

I just smiled. “This one can sympathize; please, do not apologize! You have found just the right audience. Fifty years is a long time to keep such things hidden.”

“Heh, if you’re asking for advice, friend, I don’t know that I can be helpful. Before this, we lived in Solitude for a couple of years—no one gave a skeever’s arse about our relationship there, though we still had to be discreet in public, and careful around Altmer. We did live in a cave for a few years; that helped.”

“An Elf willing to live in a cave for you! That is love, walker!”

“Don’t I know it! She was actually the one who originally suggested Blackreach. My adventuring days are over, but I found Blackreach to be more neighborly than Lillandril, if that tells you anything. But after fifty years of adventuring alongside her crazy Nord husband, at very least, Telline deserves a few years of uneventful, easy living.” He smiled and shook his head. “I was younger than you are now when I met Telline, and she was a bit older than your… wife?”

Somehow it felt fitting that this strange Nord would be the first to hear the news. “Yes. As of yesterday,” I said, with an unexpected choke in my throat. “Married in Eymei's ancestral tradition. There will be no Rings of Mara for us, but that is unimportant—two days ago, we both truly believed we'd never consider marriage. To each other, or at all.”

“Ha! An Elf willing to do something very spontaneous for you,” he said. “Congratulations! That sounds like quite a story!” We both laughed, and he hugged me with boisterous Nord enthusiasm. I was surprised at how much I appreciated it. “If you’re ever back in Lillandril, I’ll buy you a pint of ale so I can hear it. Or… whatever sickly-sweet thing you probably like to drink.”

I glanced back over to Eymei and Telline. They were both staring stone-faced at the waves as they talked.

Viggol said, “can’t imagine their conversation is as fun as ours. Not that most Altmer particularly enjoy fun, far as I can tell.”

I laughed sadly. “Congratulations on the sand slipping through your fingers!”

Viggol laughed too. “Since I was a little mer, I dreamed of being young and sexually frustrated while my spouse grew withered and elderly.”

“It is unjust that we must hide our relationship from Praxis-obsessed Altmer, but at least I get to spend decades waiting for my beating heart to be torn from my chest with well over half of my life still ahead of me.”

“Yes, I am so looking forward to the isolation and despair of grieving my life’s love, whom most of my kin consider a lesser being.”

Now Viggol and I were also staring stone-faced at the waves.

After a long silence, he said, “you’ll lose your mind if you don’t give voice to thoughts like that sometimes. I’m glad we could help each other—I don’t get to meet a lot of people I can talk to about my marriage. But friend, if there is one piece of advice I can give you… that Elf married you with full knowledge that that would be her future. I don’t even have to know your wife to know she has already stared all of that in the face. Am I right?”

I nodded.

“It weighs on me every day,” Viggol said. “It’s going to weigh on you, too, and believe me, it’ll only get worse as you get older and she stays young, capable, and beautiful. Part of the reason I was a bit in denial about the end of my adventuring days.” His voice came out strained as he continued. “It took me almost losing Telline to get it through my skull: I could either get crushed under the weight of what she’s willing to face for me, or I could be worth it.”

I looked down at my hands. “It is hard for me to imagine anyone being worth that.”

“Me too, friend. It’s impossible for me to say whether I’d make the same choice, in her place. But… doesn’t matter what I’d do. Fact is, I’ve got that Elf fooled well enough that she keeps making that choice every day—I’ve gotten to live my life knowing for damned sure that the wisest, kindest person I know thinks I’m worth it. So, I decided that until the day I die, I will do my best to be the person Telline thinks I am. I don’t always live up to it, but the effort has made me better in more ways than I can count.” He waited until I met his eyes. “Don’t do what I did. Don't waste your time worrying that you’re not worth it. Be worth it.”

I looked over at the Elves. They were sitting on the sand now; Pickle had wandered back over to them, and was laying next to Eymei. I think Eymei might have been quietly casting a lay-on-hands on his hips, as Telline talked.

I sighed. “The person Eymei thinks I am is… quite a cat.”

Viggol smacked me on the shoulder good-naturedly. “What if she’s right?”

[freebooter4ever]

Havent done this in a while so here's a WIP breakdown :) the above sketches are the first thumbnail versus the initial under sketch, versus the final sketch. You can tell from the left that im a total natural at drawing planes. Especially the corsair whose wings go 'flap' up like a bird \o/

The three above are the lighting and flat color. The light is on the left, the flat color is in the center, and on the right is the added shadow. The lights are roughly 3 separate layers (rim, fill, bright), and the shadows are 5 or 6.

When im lighting, I have my main 'folder' set with a toggle option to see the desaturated version, this way i know if im hitting my goals for the luminosity of the composition. In the photos above, the first is the flat colors desaturated. In the center is the flat colors with the light and shadow desaturated. And the far right is the final result.

Ok here's the real key point - the references. Cause i feel like i was mostly just copying in this art LOL. So, you can probably tell that the airplane was taken from that center photo. I must have spent hours trying to figure out how to draw a damn corsair, and eventually i said fuck it and picked the angle i wanted from a grainy photograph of 3 on guadalcanal or somewhere. I basically fitted it into the scene where i wanted and traced it. Then the original inspiration for the whole thing are my two favorite pilot portraits on the right - these were used as recruiting posters and stuff. I really, really love the black and white one especially, and I knew that for my poster I wanted the contrast to be in shadow in the foreground, and then lighten as it receedes in space. Which is why in the desaturated version the propellers are the darkest, and the scene fades to white in the background. I wanted it to look like eugene was emerging from the light kinda like the portrait. And then, for color you can see I used the cheesy '70's tint from South Pacific, lots and LOTS of goldenrod. I wanted it to feel warm, and sunny, and beach-like, and as far from the reality of the pacific theater as possible. This is an optimistic version of eugene (i think pilots really had to be), probably during the golden hour of sunset after a long day of flying. LASTLY but definitely not least lmao, are the joe references. Poor joe, these ones aren't the most flattering but I was using them purely for how the light hits his face and that bright carrot top hair. Not pictured are the 16 or so gifs I picked out in particular of his face in as similar an angle as i could get it. I think i found a few exact matches - i cant rememeber cause i deleted them all once i was done with it.

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

glimmadora patched-up WIP, since i spent all night in a haze gluing an ending on it. AO3 link

rated G. fluff. more fluff. stressed out glimmer. paperwork. fluff

Opening the door to Glimmer's room, the first thing Adora does- like usual these days- is worry.

“…Glimmer?”

No answer. Easing inside, Adora shuts the door and scans the field of battle.

It doesn’t look good. Papers cover the desk, dripping down to the floor and spreading out across just about every flat surface. All personal items and furniture have already been overwhelmed by sheer numbers, soft hues blanketed with the endless ranks of blank white sheets and harsh black ink.

Frowning, Adora feels a deep crease cut between her eyes. The single document in her hands suddenly seems both very inadequate and also like far, far too much.

At least she doesn’t see any person-sized lump lying on the floor this time.

Lifting her voice a little, she calls again. “Uh- Glimmer?”

“Rrgh.” Comes a groan from above. Paper whispers and cascades over the edge of the hanging bed in a fluttering waterfall.

“I’m not here. Come back when the Horde attacks or someone accidentally sets fire to the royal solicitor’s office...”

Adora watches the last drifting papers settle on Glimmer’s floor. “I finished the draft report on best methods for quickly disseminating counter-Horde tactics to the general Rebellion public.” She lifts her document helpfully. “Do you still want to go over it first before I file it with the General?”

Another groan. Then a hand pops into sight, waving limply from the hanging bed. “Up.” Glimmer calls.

The floating steps are mostly in place today, only a few repurposed as midair shelf space, and Adora knows them well enough to read over her report one last time as she climbs.

At the top she finds a young woman in fine clothes and a state of clear disheveled disheartenment. Glimmer is staring blankly up at the ceiling. Her eyes, pupil-less pink and iridescent where they catch the light, look somehow dull and empty. There are papers blanketing her bed, more papers lying on her chest. An smudge of ink stains one cheek like a bruise. Little bandages in colors white, pink, and pale blue cover half Glimmer’s hands, hinting at papercuts and threatening to turn her fingerless gloves into full ones.

She looks exhausted. “Report.” She also sounds exhausted.

Standing on the last step next to the bed, Adora hesitates. “I could revise it again. Come back in another hour or so.”

“Report.” Glimmer repeats lifting a hand an waving it vaguely in Adora’s direction. “It’s important. And knowing you, you’ve probably already rewritten three times.”

“Five times.” Adora shuffles the document, double checks the spelling in the sentence-long header.

A head of fluffy pink hair, extra fluffy and with fewer sparkles in it than normal, lifts from the bed. “Five times? But I only asked you to start writing it this morning! That was only three hours-”

“Ten.” The stain glass windows of Glimmer’s room glow softly with evening light.  

“-ten hours- What?” Paper crackles as Glimmer jerks upright, twisting wildly to get a view of her main window.

Outside the second evening moon is starting to rise over the mountains. Glimmer looks down at the shadows stretching across her floor, painting the scattered papers warm fuchsia pink and cool periwinkle blue. It’s beautiful, but Glimmer’s expression is horrified.

Adora feels the crease between eyes deepen. “You didn’t come to lunch. The kitchen staff said they’d bring you something here.”

Shoulders drooping Glimmer sighs. “Someone might have knocked at some point. I think I told them the same thing I told you, only maybe with more yelling. Possible also some cursing…” Another sigh, this one deeper and frustrated as Glimmer turns forward again, burying a hand in her short hair. “Great. Now I need to fit apologizing into my non-existent schedule.” Her free hand curls into a fist, crumpling an unlucky page of what looks like finances.

Seeing Glimmer like this sinks a lead weight in Adora’s chest. “Oh.” She sits on the edge of the hanging bed and clasps her hands on top of the report in her lap, hiding as much of it as she can. “Can I help?”

“It’s fine.” Yank, a few sparks wink out as Glimmer tugs at her hair. “Or no it’s not fine but it’s not like I was actually doing anything anyway- Not doing anything all afternoon apparently- so it barely even counts as a missed meal!” Glimmer glances up through spiky bangs, anxious. “Don’t tell my mom? Or Bow?”

“I won’t.” Adora says firmly. “But Queen Angella might already know.”

A snort. “If she did she’d be banging down my door and passing a law that not having lunch is punishable with a month of being grounded.”

Blonde ponytail slips over on shoulder as Adora tilts her head. “I thought you’d have immunity now.”

“Hm?” Glimmer grunts. “Immunity to what, my own mom?”

“No the, uh.” The strange word stumbles on Adora’s tongue. “The grounding. And having to take orders from the Queen of Bightmoon. If you don’t have independence already then we need to bring that up at the next meeting.”

A look of confusion, then understanding. “Oh, you mean because of the whole ‘got voted new leader of the new Princess Alliance’!” Glimmer laughs. “That thing!” Her laugh is sharp and not at all happy. “The thing slowly driving me insane and that I’m almost Definity messing up right now as we speak!”

Adora nods, stops. Frowns instead. “You’re not ruining the Alliance.”

Up comes the fist with its crumpled paper victim. “Well I’m sure not doing a good job running it.” Glimmer waves the paper as an example. “Ten hours reading, sorting, trying to figure out what ideas are most important and who needs to talk to who about getting what done when, and do you know what I have to show for it?” Releasing her hair Glimmer uses both hands to ball the paper up, crushing it furiously. “A mess!”

Hauling back she throws. Adora’s head swivels, following the paper ball as it smacks into one of the many posters on Glimmer’s walls, striking a crudely drawn Hordak square in the mouth.

“Good shot.” Adora turns back as Glimmer buries her face in her hands. “Those decisions have too much to do with the Kingdoms and non-military governing for me to help with, but I could organize a little if you want.”

“Organize?” Glimmer’s voice comes out muffled. “Adora, my room looks like someone set off a bomb in a printing press.”

Unclasping her hands Adora scoops up the nearest mess of papers. “You’ve been laying things out so you can reference them easily. All that needs is a system. Maybe some color coding. Bow brought me ‘the whole rainbow in sticky notes’ after he saw my Princess Prom workshop, so we have the materials already. We can get started right after dinner.”

Slowly Glimmer lifts her head. “You’re serious.” Her eyes are wide, disbelieving.

Adora nods. “It’ll help. Probably.” Scraps together a tentative smile. “At least it’ll look good.”

“Like organization, like organizer.” Glimmer shakes her head at Adora’s confused look. “Nevermind. Don’t you have other reports to make? Other peoples’ reports to look over?” She points accusingly at the report lying abandoned in Adora’s lap. “You spent a whole day doing just one of those, you don’t have time to clean my room on top of all that! You need stuff like food- and sleep!”

“So do you.”

Glimmer pouts. “I get half my energy from a magical shiny rock. One missed dinner won’t kill me.”

Adora mimics her pout. “But it’ll make me sad.”

“Oh hush.” The corner of Glimmer’s mouth quirks up even as she said it, Adora notices. “Still. Five hours on ONE report. Not good! You need rest.”

“Actually I spent one hour working on a different report, took a lunch break, and did some five minute sword exercises whenever my hand started cramping up.” Setting down the now neatly stacked papers, Adora meet and holds Glimmer’s gaze. “This would help me too.” She promises. “With the reports. I won’t have to rewrite them so many times if I can get a better idea of how things work in and between the Kingdoms. Which is basically your job, now.”

Glimmer’s hand falls. “Right… You do know my mom was running the Alliance for years and I only got started yesterday. If you have questions, ask her not me.”

“She isn’t the one who’ll be setting new policies going forward. Also.” Adora gives Glimmer a look as the princess opens her mouth to interrupt. “This isn’t the same Alliance your parents founded. It can’t be. The war has changed, your way of fighting it has to change too.”

“Our.” Glimmer corrects instantly, frowning. “Our way of fighting.”

The papers scattered around Adora are suddenly very interesting. She picks another sheaf up and looks it over, a vaguely agreeable sound rising in her chest. “Mm.”

There’s quiet in the room. No fountains or water features here, just the faint whisper as Adora turns over a page, still reading.

Then the bed shifts and Glimmer carefully moves the newly stacked papers to the side, making room for herself. Legs dangling next to Adora’s she hunches forward, arms braced on her knees, hands tangled tight together, still frowning.

“I hate that stupid vote.”

Papers settle on Adora’s lap, instantly forgotten. “You don’t want to lead the rebellion?”

“I guess I do?” Glimmer worries at her gloves, tugging the fingers, picking at the band aids. “I just never pictured it happening this way. Or being like this.”

Adora leans forward too, hands clasped between her knees, mirroring her.

“I don’t know what ‘this’ is…” She confesses as she watches Glimmer slowly peel off a strip of adhesive, ducking her head a little to see every line pinching between Glimmer’s eyes. “…unless you mean the paperwork.”

A hollow laugh as Glimmer flicks the band aid away to fall into the mess below. “No, I about knew that part. It’s more the sitting around for hours thing. Doing nothing. Alone.”

The light in the room is fading but instead of standing out brighter the sparks in Glimmer’s hair seem like they’re dimming along with it, like the darkening room is squeezing the life out of them.

The thought squeezes something in Adora’s chest.

“You don’t have to.”

Adora’s fingers creak as she clenches them together, staring down at them, wishing for her sword and a problem simple enough to cut through.  

“You have Bow and your mom.” She says instead, as if Glimmer could’ve somehow forgotten that. “Perfuma, Mermista, Entrapta, Frosta- and Swift Wind would stay for an afternoon, if you asked. Castaspella always wants you to visit. Spinnetta and Nettossa have the most field experience of anyone…”  

Out of the corner of her eye she can see Glimmer looking at her. Listening. Waiting.

Adora takes a deep breath. “…and me.” She tacks on softly, “I’m here, too.” Clearing her throat she decides she will never not have her attention on her own white-knuckled hands. “I can organize papers. If you want.”

The room is full of shadows. The last light of the bight moons has drained away-

-but a there’s a faint glow besides her, Adora realizes suddenly, painting her own shadow faintly on the far wall, lighting the room with soft and shimmering sparks.

A bandaged hand reaches over and brushes her tight knuckles.                                                                                                                     

“I’d like that.” Glimmer says, already smiling as Adora glances over at her. “You sure though? I mean. It’s paperwork.”

“I’m sure.”

Adora confirms, the lead weight in her chest melting away along with the lines of tension in Glimmer’s shoulders.

“Anyway.” The words slips out too fast for her to review them. “The only thing I like being around more than paperwork, is you.”

“Oh?”

Heat burns Adora’s face. She tries to at least keep her expression straight as Glimmer’s smile breaks into an enormous grin.

That gets a lot harder as Glimmer pries one of her hands free and takes it gently in hers.

“Well in THAT case!” With a hop and a twirl Glimmer lands on the first of the floating steps, still holding Adora’s hand, still smiling in way that makes Adora’s neck prickle and her stomach swoop with vertigo even though she is very clearly not falling at the moment.

Then Glimmer bows, sweeping her cape aside with her free hand, silly and graceful- and now Adora is grinning too.

“Join me for dinner, your highness?” Glimmer asks with a playful wink.

Still grinning, Adora snorts. “Yes. And I’m not royalty. Maybe a bureaucratic officer.”

“Madam secretary, then.”         

Adora looks pointedly around at the paper-strewn room. “Does the Rebellion even have those?”

“We do.” Glimmer un-bows herself and tugs, and Adora lets herself be pulled to her feet. “They’re just busy with non-top-secret stuff. But I’d make them a thing, if we didn’t have them already. For you.”

Her eyes really do shine don’t they? It isn’t just reflected light- there’s dream-like moon glow to them that Adora always somehow forgets about until she’s face to face with Glimmer again and staring down at her like this.

…maybe she should stop staring.     

“Maybe you still could.” Adora muses aloud, still staring. “Make them a thing. The bur- the secretaries. Maybe I could be your top-secret secretary.”

A squeeze on her hand, a laugh from Glimmer, bursting and bright as she teleports them.  

“Alas!” Glimmer sighs dramatically even as the sparks clear, “that’d probably be some really big work code violation. You’ll have to do volunteer work, I’m afraid, at least until after the war and someone else gets voted in as head of the Rebellion.”

Adora settles back on her heels on the solid floor and blinks. “After the war? Someone else?”

“Sure.”

Glimmer says it as easily as breathing as she steers them both towards the door.

“We’ll need to renamed it. Something less rebellion-y, more unity-y, but- You can help Mermista or whoever with paperwork during the day, since you like it so much. And I’ll take you out to dinner each night!”

Dinner each night? Ah, then that would be- “Sounds like on of those ‘date’ things Bow was telling me about.”

Glimmer freezes, free hand on the door handle.

“Um. A- a date, yeah.” Tentatively she glances back up at Adora. “If you, if you want?”

Adora smiles and nods. “After the war, we’ll have dinner together every night.” After. Huh. What a weird thought. “It’s a date.”

What a strange light that suddenly flares in Glimmer’s face.

“Right. One sec.”

A flash and Glimmer is back on her bed, frantically grabbing up handfuls of papers and stuffing them into her arms.

Still smiling, Adora shakes her head and calls up. “Remember dinner? I'm filing it under "critical resource management priorities". You said you’d eat first.”

“I will!” Glimmer says from the rising flurry of papers. “I will I will, I’m coming, just-”

Flashing back down she grins sheepishly over her pile of haphazard documents.

“Don’t wanna fall behind on the war-winning.” She laughs, then coughs as Adora beams back at her, and finally awkwardly holds out her elbow- the only part of her arms not already occupied. “A-anyway. Shall we?”

“Sure.” Adora eyes the offered elbow for a second before carefully tucking her hand into its crook, the way Glimmer did with hers sometimes. “Like this?”

“Ye-p." Glimmer pops the 'p' with giggle. "Exactly like that.”

All that paper gathering has left Glimmer a bit red in the face. The flush doesn’t go away as Adora opens the door for her and they slip out into the hall, falling in step side-by-side.

In fact Glimmer’s face is still a little pink as she coughs again and asks.

“So uh. Not to pry but- WHEN was Bow talking to you about dates? No, wait- why. WHY was Bow talking with you about dates.”

“I don’t know why.” Adora admits, making a mental note to check Glimmer for fever if she’s still flushed an hour from now. “It was right after the three of us went on that wilderness training exercise. The one where everything was fine because Bow had the map, only then suddenly we didn’t have Bow, and then it was night.”

“Oh.” Gimmer winces. “That.”

“Yes. We had to cuddle up together for warmth, remember? And then Bow found us the next morning-”

“I remember I remember!”  

“Well.” Adora nods, happy to be on the same page. “It was right after we came back from that.”

“Okay good. Great." Glimmer mutters. "Very normal.” Mumbles to herself. "Noooo ulterior motives there." Growls softly. "Jerk." Sighs. "I hate it when he's right.."

Listening vaguely, Adora watches how rather than fading, the redness in Glimmer’s face only gets worse. She shortens her steps a little- Glimmer might still be winded from paper gathering, she might need the extra breath to get oxygen into her blood and finish recovering. Basic aerobics. Something she understood.   

But since Adora herself does not need to recover and there are other things she doesn't understand, she continues cheerfully.

“Bow was also talking about vehicle stability versus streamlined design, I think." She's been wondering why ever since. Maybe Glimmer understands? "Specifically the redundancy of a third wheel, for some reason.”

"He was WHAT!?"

Glimmer's yelp sends an avalanche of paper cascading from her arms and all over the floor. It is another ten minutes before they finish gathering, and re-stacking, and can start walking towards dinner again. It takes that long for the renewed flush in Glimmer's cheeks to fade away.  

Adora is smiling the whole time.

And, despite her earlier alarming sound of distress, Glimmer is smiling too.

Dates are nice, Adora decides, linking arms with Glimmer again as the head off, especially if they help Glimmer relax.

Hmm....maybe we should have a few more, before the end of the war? She considers the thought carefully. As a moral booster. Or a maintenance procedure. For strategic purposes...             

Glancing down at Glimmer's bright eyes and easy grin, Adora feels her stomach forget where the floor is again. 

... and not because I feel better looking at her. 

Glimmer catches her staring and winks. 

Adora grins back weakly. Well. Keeping my own moral up is important too, probably...

...

I'd better put that in a separate folder though.    

-

Somewhere a safe distance away, Bow sneezes.

“Gay,” he blesses himself, and smirks. “Speaking of- I bet they’re finding excuses to snuggle up with each other right now. I bet Adora went to make sure she had dinner, and Glimmer didn't throw a hairbrush at her," he rubs ruefully at the oddly overly neat spot in his hair, "and then she got all clingy, and- Ahh.”

Bow sighs, leaning back on his chair with his arms tucked behind his head. "I love peace and quiet. And I love being right~" 

He was and they were, but he wouldn’t know that for sure.

Not until two hours later, anyway, when Glimmer exploded into his workshop and imploded into excited sparkles about it.

[auntie-coagulant]

Writer's Roundup: 2023

(Ganked with love from @pikapeppa)

Words written (published or not, WIPs totally count too!): Published: 108, 307; Total: 114, 709

Smut scenes I've written: 18

New things I tried: Writing fic in general. I started writing my first fic that I posted on AO3 12/28/22. The last time I tried to write, AO3 didn't exist, and it was two or three drabbles on Livejournal. Yes, I know I just dated myself. Shut up.

Fic I spent the most time on: What's a Sex Tape Between Friends? hands down. Travis Tate moved into my head and bought up all the real-estate.

Fic I spent the least time on: All Mother's Children I cranked it out in an hour while crying into my Fruity Pebbles about Sona.

Favorite thing I wrote: Other than Sex Tapes? Probably At Ease, Marshal. And then Fashav decided to kick off an entire series on me.

Favorite thing I read: Ohhhh, this is super DUPER hard - I read SO much amazing fic from so many amazing authors! Probably Shorefast by knitbone. The way that they write grief is so intensely visceral that it almost made me feel sick.

Writing goals for next year: Finish these WIPs! Or at least most of them. I feel like my "everyone gets a happy ending but Tekotteh" series Bandage Up the Trenches might take a while, considering I keep adding fics to it...

[youngster-monster]

i wish i could show you the erm the Category dedicated to my uh. 22 discord wips. but unfortunately i cant send images thru anon and also then you get to see what each individual channel is named and a. none of the titles make sense and b. the titles of some of them make them sound WAY WEIRDER than they actually are because no one save for me and one other person were ever supposed to see the working titles and i dont have any ideas on how to change them so ALAS

im like a zoo animal you get to read off all my facts and i get to stare straight into your soul while not a single thought passes through my brain. i need the world to know about my bad discord wip organization

writing is actually about the full year spent turning into a pile of dust,

all worldbuilding!!!! my oc who started as a kleptomaniac prettyboy is now a god with layers upon layers of lore and i dont know what i did but now hes really way worse than he started and i take great pleasure in describing his antics to friends who werent around to see it happen in actual rp. i shudder to think what would happen if i turned that world into a ttrpg he'd be a freak (TEMPTING THOUGH)

there are and i cannot stress this enough TWENTY-TWO INDIVIDUAL CHANNELS and one of them is the OLD snippets channel - yes, i have two, no i cant explain myself - and everytime i think about sifting through it for writing ideas in moments of desperation i feel as though it will grow hands with which to strangle me with and so i dont touch them. they will rot but its better them than me

i may have to pick up those niche ships again because i imagine it feels VERY rewarding and also then you and the other three (3) people who like that ship can sing kumbayah in a circle or whatever

glad the beastly noises comment was a hit! now if youll excuse me i need to sit down at my computer and listen to monkey noises 10 hours while doing bad animal impressions and brainstorming a wip i wont ever complete ,

Weird titles are one of the joys of writing. I wish I could be one of these writers that give wacky names to their wips but unfortunately in this I am terminally boring lmao if it's not descriptive I am Never finding it again

Grabbing you like Steve Irwin showing off a baby alligator to zoo goers. And here is where the Bad Organization Practice goes :) isn't it neat 😌

Give in to the siren's call of ttrpg-ization.....

With rarepairs you either create bonds of steel with the two other miserable fuckers writing with you or a rivalry that gets imprinted into your bloodline. "He would Not fucking say that" but it's the only interpretation you get that isn't your (obviously more correct) own

(statistically I am this for at least one other kaellidan fan. Probably more. I often joke that whoever dislikes my writing is gonna be really mad about how much of me there is in that tag lmao)

[hartxstarr]

hey so I am BONKERS late but. I just wanted to say I love your writing excerpts that you put up!! Fracas au does some kinda thing to my brain and I always love seeing more of it, and even (especially!) with the tiny other snippets I love seeing your takes on the characters in general. I know from experience it can be hard to like old writing, but like. It was really good and you should be proud of it!! Anyway I probably could have worded this better but thanks for sharing and have a nice day :)

hello hello!! thank you SO MUCH honestly i know i can be a little hard on my old stuff (ESPECIALLY fracas) but just know that i dont actually hate any of it. i just compare it to my writing nowadays and see just how different it is! it’s always nice to hear that someone likes my writing. i’ll read the comment over and over again and get so happy. and then come back later and read it again lol so for you to say this means a lot to me 💚

fracas au was something near and dear to my heart at the time. i ended up posting like three works about it (one deleted) but i spent countless school-hours writing about it in notebooks and i have so many wips in my files…in the end, i dont have those notebooks anymore and only remember the barebones of the complete story as it was. fracas would have spanned from forest-dwelling reds and blues, to them taking down a Super Secret government operation, to them returning to their home once more. with many, many, many shenanigans in between, and overlapping storylines, of course.

anyways, here’s another 2017 snippet of a fracas wip i never finished. this would have been the opening to the fic haha (i have gone in and cleaned it up just a tiny little bit but i refrained from going too hard at it, least i end up finishing the entire thing)

---

“I ain’t sharing no vegetables with no-good, dirty Blues.”

Leonard squinted into the face of Sarge while the Red raised his chin in response—more so turning his nose up already to whatever the Blue leader was about to say than to his sudden proximity.

It was like a standoff in an old western movie and, if they were in a more sparse, drier climate—where thick evergreens didn't grow and the shabby pavement beneath their feet weren’t littered with pine needles—a pinecone could take the place of a tumbleweed and roll pass them down the length of the avenue, out of sight.

But as it was, they weren't in an old-town desert outside a local tavern, readying their pistols, spurs jingling. Instead, they were smack-dab in the middle of town in each others faces, the trees parting enough to let in a few good, generous rays of sunlight; and Leonard, swimming in his hoodie, didn’t seem to have a good rebuttal.

Despite this, Michael from afar whispered with as much enthusiasm as he would atop a theatre stage, “Leonard will win” like it was, in fact, some kind of duel-gunpoint competition set up for all of their amusement.

The Reds and Blues stood in a sort of collective semicircle, watching their respective leaders size each other up. Transactions never were an uneasy affair in Blood Gulch, the mutual desire for an item far more powerful than the animosity the teams constantly lived within—but, of course, Sarge wasn’t the one usually making deals.

Richard had tried to passively refrain his leader from going with him to make business with the Blues; he had wanted Dexter—as was the standard—but Sarge seemed to be bored that day, perhaps, and mentally decided that the only way to stir the light of day was to make trading far more difficult than it needed to be. Obviously. So, it was in his wake that the entirety of Red team came to witness Leonard still unable to come up with a response to his rival team leader's declaration.

“Oh yeah?” he tried after a moment more. “Well—we don’t want your fucking vegetables—”

“Yes, we do!” Lavernius threw his hands up in despair.

“Yes, we do want your fucking vegetables,” the Blue probably thought it was a pretty good save. “So—just give them to us,” and he still doesn't know what to say. “Why are you even here?”

Sarge seemed to swell at the question, back straight and towering over Leonard not in stature but in pure aura alone. “I'm here to make sure you don't swindle my team out of valuable goods!”

“Don't worry, Sarge!” Delano called out from the back. “My goods are too precious to give away so easily!”

“Thanks for the info, Delano.”

Del was always so unwaveringly cheerful. “You’re welcome, Sarge!”

[the-crafting-gremlin]

It's been a hell of a few months since I last posted anything...

I got a couple of WIPs finished, I visited family I hadn't seen in ages, my department at work has lost four people (and only one has been replaced; one is moving to a different position and is staying in my department until we can find at least one replacement; another has left already, and the other is leaving next week), and we have some major system changes at work that are going to throw my short-handed department into further chaos for at least a week.

My ass also violently met the stairs last night (I misjudged where a stair was, my foot slipped off the edge, and the only reason I didn't slide all the way to the bottom was because I was holding onto the railing), too. Definitely bruised my tailbone but I probably didn't break anything. I'm sore but not in any great pain.

While I was in Michigan visiting family, I asked my sister if we could hit up a couple local yarn shops since there are three in a reasonable radius of her house. We ended up only visiting one because the first one we visited was heavenly (Ewe-nique Knits in Royal Oak, MI for anyone curious). It was the first stop because it was the closest and I loved the name. And holy shit, y'all. The staff was awesome. The selection was awesome. The prices were definitely reasonable. They had some amazing kits, including a shawl kit I'm going to get once I have a little more disposable income and a little less yarn.

I spent more than I was planning to. And yes, I know I said I was gonna work through my stash before I got more yarn but this was a special exception because I can't just go there whenever I want. I also didn't get that much--only 5 skeins. And they had some books and patterns on sale so I got some of those, too.

One of the skeins and patterns was a beanie for my sister (she picked out both); that is already done and just needs to be blocked which I'm planning on doing this weekend. That yarn was a superwash Uruguayan merino in fall colors (Laneras brand). Then I got a couple of absolutely gorgeous, and so soft, skeins of dream in color's Smooshy Cashmere, one of which is definitely gonna be a pair of socks. The other may be as well, but I'm still debating.

The last two skeins don't have a project yet; they're Blue Sky Fiber Metallico, and are a mix of baby alpaca and silk. And OMG that yarn may be the softest thing I've ever touched. I'll probably need to order a couple more (Ewe-nique Knits has a website. I'm thrilled. My bank account is not.) to really make anything substantial with it, but that yarn is waiting for the perfect pattern.

(I'll update this post with links to the yarns on the Eqe-nique Knits site once I'm home tonight.)

I'm working on the socks right now between calls as my department waits for the chaos to descend. We've got probably an hour before that happens so I'm trying to relax myself as much as possible and hopefully I'll be able keep knitting through it. That may be the only way to save my sanity...