#anyway I hope its good byeeee

[kananjarus]

for all the haunts and homes of men // buddie // apocalypse au

chapter sixteen

Eddie raised his eyebrows. “Are you in the habit of seeing ghosts?” It was a nicer way of asking if he was more or less insane. 

Buck squeezed his eyes shut, trying to overcome the vertiginous feeling that was threatening to sweep him up and carry him away. If only Eddie knew. “Not a for a while now.”

“Oh, well that’s reassuring.”

Buck lifted his face, and when their eyes locked together, they seemed to get lost in each other. Eddie no doubt trying to diagnose him, or to see if Buck was the kind of person he could trust. Buck, hoping to see past the deep-gut feeling of familiarity of the man he’d just met and realizing that with every second that he looked, his feelings only became more complicated. 

[choasuqeen]

Nia tried to breathe. It was dark. Why was it dark? There was something around her eyes. Shoot. She reaches up to take it off, and hears that voice again. “Leave it on!”

“Why?!” she reaches up to pull it off, and hits the wall. Her head cracks against it and she grunts. 

“Cause I said to.”

She tried to breathe again. Where were her friends? She called out. “Trixi?” No answer. 

“Arrio?” Nothing.

 “Matt?” Silence

“Christine? Maddox? Strike Peter Dick Raoul?” Still nothing. Where was she what was happening? “WHERE ARE MY FRIENDS?” Silence again, even the voice was gone.

She was alone then? Left in the dark and quiet? She reached up again, and hit another wall. She couldn’t breathe where were her friends where was she where was she. 

She sat down and tapped against the floor, messages to anyone listening. “Please” she tapped. “Please let me out.”

Still tapping, she stood up. If she couldn’t see she could feel right? Is this how Matt felt all the time? She couldn’t see. She stumbled forward, ears tuned to anything but there was nothing there wa nothing. Walls, it was a small room then. Feeling more, there was no door. She was trapped she was stuck. Blind. She sobbed then, collapsing to the floor.

[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. 

[lianaloverr]

4 𝙋𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙇𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧

Sam Goldbach x fem!reader

★

Summary: You've had a crush on Sam for 8 years, after another failed attempt to confess your feelings, you came up with a solution..

Warning: none

Word count: 1.2k

Hiiiiii!!!! It's been so long omgggggg, I hope y'all like this! This story was based of one of my favorite songs!

s

“”I’m sending him a 4 page letter, and I enclosed it with a kiss.”

“Yo, turn my music up?”

.

That's what I told my bestfriend Missy. “Alright.” she responded. “Hey, have you talked to Sam?” she added. “No? Why?” I ask kind of worried. All she did was smirk at me, I rolled my eyes. She loved to tease me about my crush. I’ve had a crush on Sam for 8 years, we’ve been friends for 13 years. When we were younger, we were inseparable. I never wanted to accept my feelings for him, but all the times I looked at him with pure love, and the amount of times I would get jealous at him introducing his new girlfriend’s. I just had to admit it eventually. But I never dared uddered a word about it to anyone, only my close friends. But somehow, some people caught on, but Sam was still oblivious.

I was scared honestly. Mama always told me to be careful who I love. And daddy always told me make sure he’s right. I took that to heart. But It felt different with him. Something I never felt before.

“You should text him.” Missy says, snapping me out my thoughts. “Yeah, yeah. Can you turn it up a little bit more?” I ask, “Text. Him. First.” damn, she's serious. “Okay, mom geez.”

Sammy 🩵

Me: hi sammyyyyyy

Sammy 🩵: hi bubba, is something wrong?

Me: no, I was just wondering if you wanted to hang out tonight? Yk, play some games, watch some movies, its whatever you want to do:)

Sammy 🩵: now bubba, when would i say no? Ill be there at 9

Me: okay sam, love youuu

Sammy🩵: love u too bubba

End of conversation

“Okay, I texted him. You happy?” I say snarky. “Yes, indeed.” She says standing up to hug me. “You know you have to tell him sooner or later right?” Jesus.. “Dude, we’ve already had this conversation. It's not the right time!” I slightly raised my voice out of irritation. “Okay babe;” she laughed. “There’s no need to be angry.” she said. “Yeah, yeah.. I’m sorry, I’m just stressed. You're right.” I replied. “Yes.. I know, I’m always right. But if you don't tell him, I will.” She concluded. I chuckled dryly. “Okay.”

—-------------

Me and Missy hung out for a couple of hours until Sam texted me telling me he was on his way. Seeing that I looked at the time and realized it was 8:30. “Oh crap. I gotta go.” I tell Missy, giving her a quick hug and rushing out her apartment door. “Okay, bye babe! Good luck!” is what I heard from the distance.

On my way back to my house, I get a phone call from Kat.

You: regular

Kat: bold

Heyy kitty kat!

Hii y/n/n! Whatcha doing??

Oh i'm heading back to my apartment, I got plans with Sam.

Y/n are you serious??

I know Kat.

Your playing yourself for him, everyone says he doesn't even notice you

Please Kat, let me have this. You don’t know him like I do.

Okay, whenever he doesn't show up I'll always be here.

Gee, thanks. Anyways I gotta go, I’m back home. Bye kitty kat!!

Byeeee!!

End call

I sigh and walk up to my house, excited to see that beautiful face again. About 5 minutes later I hear a knock on my door. Yayyy! I opened the door to be a little disappointed to see a pizza delivery man. (u thought that was Sam didn’t you?) “Hello, 3 pizzas for Sam?” He says. “Yes sir. Thank you!” I say as he handed me the pizzas. After I put the food down on the kitchen counter and look at my phone. That's when I saw a missed text from Sam saying he ordered pizzas. An audible “no duh” came out from my mouth. I text back with a “Got them!”

About 10 minutes later I hear a knock on my door. It was the one and only Sam. “Sammyyyyy!!” I yell jumping on him for a hug. “Hi y/n/n.” He replies, snuggling into my neck. “You surely took your time.” I whisper into his ear. “Oh I'm sorry, traffic.” He says. We stayed like that for about 10 seconds. “Maybe you should come inside hun.” you say, pulling away. You hear an audible groan come from his mouth, but he complied none of the less.

—---------

Sam ended up staying there for 5 hours and it was really fun. Y'all did a lot of stuff, and occasionally flirted. You thought it was really weird because Sam never showed signs of liking you. But at the same time he could be joking. I just overthink too much. On the way out the door, I couldn't help but wonder if I actually had a chance.

“Thanks for inviting me over Y/n, I had a lot of fun.” Sam says. “Of course! You're welcome anytime.” I replied. After that, we just stared at eachother. Wow, this is weird. It was like he was waiting for something, I just gave him a confused look. He just sighed and said, “Anyways, bye.” and rushed out the door. That was even weirder but it is what it is. Since it was 2:30, I decided to take a quick shower and head to bed.

The next day

—---------

It was currently 3:30 in the afternoon and I was up thinking all night. I don’t know why but when I tried to go to sleep, I couldn’t. But luckily, I know what to do with Sam now. I called Missy to tell her.

You: Regular

Missy: Italic

Hello?

Hii bestie!

Hiii babe, how was last night?

It was amazing! We played games, watched movies..

Did you tell him?

No but that’s what I was calling to tell you. I know what to do now about it.

Oh my god! Finally!! So what?

I’m sending him a 4 page letter.

… What?

It’s a great way to express my feelings without embarrassing myself in person.

That is… genius! How come you didn’t think of that earlier??

Honestly I don’t know! It just came to my mind after he left last night.

Yess! I'm gonna leave you to it, get it done and there as fast as you can!

Okay, bye.

End of call

I ended up sitting there and writing that letter for 1 hour. It was really a 4 page letter expressing all my feelings to him. The way he makes me feel. The way I felt this way for 8 years. The way he keeps me safe. How I hope when I get the courage to come to him, to promise not to diss me. I told that I was too shy so I decided to write instead of saying it in person. After all that, I contemplated putting my name on it, but eventually decided against it. I put it in the envelope and enclosed it with a kiss.

____

I sat there for about 15 minutes arguing back and forth with myself about sending it but I knew I had to, I couldn’t hide any longer. I walked out to the drop off box and left it in there. I walked back home with a scared but excited look on my face, in hopes…

˜”*°•.˜”*°•He would get it on time•°*”˜.•°*”˜

࿎࿎🎀

I hoped y’all liked it. I’ve missed you guys so muchhh.

[buggybambi]

hi mae <3

i had this idea and would love to hear your thoughts on it:

carmy with a ceo!gf. that man would be absolutely whipped and you cannot change my mind.

like, you're trying to get ready for work and he's just whiny and so needy???

and he tells everyone about you after they realize how much of a better mood he's been in lately (i feel like either richie or syd would be the first to notice)

for that alone, they already love you

anyway, love ur writing and i hope you're doing well

byeeee <333

oh my goodness ily thank you for this but IMAGINE (also thank you for this because needy carm is my favorite kind and ugh the nsfw blurbs i could write about him-)

you're so right!! he is so whipped. he lays in bed while you get ready (i'm imagining it's his day off and you've politely demanded he spends it resting), staring at the bathroom door just to watch you come out of the shower. an outfit on you that has him blushing and walking over to you while you're at the dresser mirror, holding you from behind and kissing at your neck desperately.

he whines and begs you to stay home with him, his mind already racing with the possibilites. you remind him that you have to go to work and he just has an adorable pout that you place a kiss on before you say goodbye to him.

even if it's his day off, without you home with him he sees no point in staying the apartment. so he makes his way to the bear and richie notices rather quickly that his cousin has a pep in his step.

"what the hell are you so giddy about?" richie questions as carmen hangs his coat up near the back. he then goes on to talk about you for a while.

and syd can't believe it either. in her time knowing carmen he's never seemed so happy, and its thanks to you!! they even tease when he's caught texting you and putting a photo of you on his desk. (i imagine he'd also 100% have a photo of you in his sun visor mirror in his car.)

they already love you just for bringing a smile to his face.

[perfectlyfrosty]

hihi! i was looking through your blog and i came across some fic title abbreviations that i didn't know, so i was wondering if you could tell me what they stood for and the author? no pressure obvs. haha

TLoA, TFoA, Translations, and Maces and Talons

anyway thnkyousomuch uhhhh byeeee!!!

HEYYYY SORRY ive been offline for the last couple months SO yeah i hope its still of any use!!!…

Honestly its been a while since ive touched this fandom lmao but TLoA is The Lights of Avalon written by @alkalinefrog anddd heres the link! https://archiveofourown.org/works/44763172/chapters/112624528

TFoA is That Feeling of Apricity written byyy someone who’s socials i dont know but here is also the link! https://archiveofourown.org/works/39400587/chapters/98605056

I havent actually read these two fics yet dont come at me-

BUT i HAVE read Translations and Maces and Talons, FUCK THEYRE SO GOOD GIMME UPDATEEESSS pls im still waiting i am on my knees for these 2 fics 🙏🙏🙏🙏

Translations is basically a rly cute n angsty gay ppl fic where its just classic hijack except theres a language barrier cause jack cant magically speak old norse 😭 its by @bignostalgias AND HERES THE LINK PLS GO CHECK IT OUT https://archiveofourown.org/works/50721133/chapters/128127409

NOW Maces and Talons, also super cool, it’s basically jumanji au but hijack its… yeahhhdshbhsgydgdhdgfbbf

The last chapters ending had me foaming at the mouth like bro i am way too invested in this. It’s a collab between @hijacksecrets and @kaeviche pls give them and the other authors some love anddd heres the link!! https://archiveofourown.org/works/51121339/chapters/129162928 pls read u will not regret

(erm authors hi sorry if u dont want to be tagged in this kind of stuff 😭)

[piplup335]

Skateboard stealing Sword’s sword to cut a lemon!

(Medkit is mentioned lol)

hey guys!

I’m not feeling too good rn :,) can’t rlly work on anything for you guys

but hey, I got this one out! might start slowly working on reqs, I’m using it as a stress relief tool when it comes to revision

also my bday is in less than a month so YAYYYY expect a fic then lmao

anyway enjoy :D

╔══════ ⋯⇋ ૮(•͈⌔•͈)ა ⇌⋯ ══════╗

╚══════⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯ ══════╝

It’s a beautiful day in Crossroads.

Birds were chirping, flowers were blooming.

On days like these, phighters like Skateboard…

…should be burning the pavement behind him.

On this day, Skateboard was, in fact, burning the pavement behind him. Passerbys and other phighters quickly stepped aside, not wanting to end up being a part of Skateboard’s collision course. It was evident to all that whatever Skateboard had to do or wherever he had to go, it was an important issue.

Surely it couldn’t be some minor and insignificant matter, right?

…right?

Skateboard blazed down the cracked concrete all the way to the dry, sweltering environment of Lost Temple.

“Sword? Sword! Where are youuuuu?”

He knew that Sword either stuck around Medkit or Venomshank.

And since he knew that Venomshank usually didn’t show up at such an early hour in the morning, he knew that his best bet was with Medkit.

Luckily for Skateboard, he knew exactly where to find the dull, emotionless doctor.

“Thanks, Medkit! You’re always ready to patch me up whenever I get injured, huh?”

“No worries, Sword. And yes, I’ll be here to patch you up despite all the times you go and blow yourself up even when I tell you not to.”

Sword walked out the door with a few new bandages, some around his torso, and some around his arms.

“And remember, don’t go blowing yourself up again. Though, I highly doubt you’ll even listen, considering how you got blown up.”

“Heh no promises, Doc!”

Medkit sighed in dejection.

“You got blown up by your gear. Your own gear isn’t even meant to blow up. It's meant to slash people dead, not act as a pipe bomb. I really can’t tell if I should be impressed or disappointed.”

“Just a little something I learnt from my friend! It’s useful for the phights!”

“It may be useful, but it shouldn’t compromise your safety. Especially because you still owe me for the past three visits.”

Sword laughed at this statement, knowing that Medkit would not, despite Sword’s unpaid medical bills, hold that against him. They were friends by faction, after all- and they were on good terms with each other.

The sound of plastic rolling across asphalt cut their conversation short, and they barely had time to react before a blur of red yanked Sword's gear out of its sheathe.

"HEY-"

Skateboard stopped a short distance away from them and stepped on the end of his board. The vehicle tilted upwards, and he grabbed it and placed it on the nearby wall.

"Skateboard! No! What do you intend to do with that?!"

"...whatever happens to any of you two, I'll make sure you pay your medical bills."

Skateboard pulled a lemon out of his pocket and threw it in the air.

"Prepare yourselves!"

He slashed at the lemon, a wide grin on his face as he visualised the lemon getting cut into perfect, equal slices from a faultless cut straight into the lemon. He could almost see Medkit and Sword staring at him with a bewildered expression on both their faces upon looking at the perfectly cut lemon, without a single cut or scratch on its surface...

Skateboard missed, and the lemon hit him square in the forehead.

╔══════ ⋯⇋ ૮(•͈⌔•͈)ა ⇌⋯ ══════╗

╚══════⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯ ══════╝

yep that’s it lol, short one bc I’m outta ideas :,)

also might be taking Pressure reqs soon, I’m probably gonna divert from my requests and write a Sebastian fic lmao

hope you guys enjoyed what can only be described as my brain having a stroke and dying :D

byeeee

[dreamwritesimagines]

helloooo my love I have MANY thoughts!!! I hope you don't mind!!! I'm here just to vent about the MANY reasons why I lowkey think Charm did the right thing in a way. And I knowwww it hurt Bucky's feelings and that's also 100% justified and he's right to feel that way, but let me explain.

First of all ☝🏻 this might be controversial and I would love to hear your thoughts on this honey bc you probably know them more than I do, but I think Bucky would have gotten mad anyway. I love him and he's very hot and they have a great connection, but he is arrogant and he is possesive, and I think from the start he wanted Charm to get to the top through him, by him, and not so much through other people's help (ofc he would have supported her either way but i think he just likes it better when he's an actual crucial part of it). I think he likes feeling needed, especially by her, and any other way pisses him off a little; he would call it being "protective". So if Charm had told him about her plan, in my head he would disapprove the idea in the name of being "protective", they would fight, he'd play the "seems like you don't need me anyway so do whatever you want" card, and they'd end up pretty much in the exact same place. That's just what I think. Sooooo that's why Charm telling him or not telling him makes absolutely no difference to me.

Second of all ✌🏻 this might be way too harsh but honesty, who expects actual, honest to God trust in this business? lmao sorry but it's been said many times that these people can never 100% trust each other. And if I remember correctly, Bucky and Charm weren't oooooverly close right before getting married; they've known each other all their lives but that doesn't make them close, that doesn't equal trust, at least not to me. And yeah of course they have a lot of care and respect for eachother, but let's be for fucking real, as a woman, who 100% trusts a man?????? a man???????¿?¿?? and on top of him being a man, they're in a business like this???????? on than environment???? with the way Charm has been raised and the examples she's had???????? like pleaseeeee give me a fucking break lmao when she said "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to take this from me", that's all I needed to hear. No one can tell me it doesn't make sense or that that fear was unfounded.

So yes, I 100% support Charm, she did nothing wrong, she's the best, she's an icon she's a legend and yeah I mean she's not perfect she has ISSUES and by the love of good its like she's a fucking baby with the way she seems completely incapable of talking and communicating properly, but she's certainly not the careless "perfect new boss" villain Bucky is seeing her as.

and also him saying that to her???????? as if this business sustains itself on charity and good deeds and he's the pope himself?????? give me a fucking break. anyways I could keep ranting forever but it's been too much already sorry darling please let me know what you think if you wanttttt ok love you byeeee

MY LOVE I AM KISSING YOU ON THE FOREHEAD AND BAKING YOU COOKIES I LOVE THIS SO SO MUCH OMG I'M SO GIDDY 😍

I LOVE YOUR IDEAS! ❤️

I am putting this under a read more because I am so going to fangirl over you❤️❤️❤️

I think from the start he wanted Charm to get to the top through him, by him, and not so much through other people's help This is such a great analysis on Bucky's character and their dynamic omg omg-

You're absolutely right! Bucky would get upset over Charm's plan whether she told him or not for this exact reason! As much as Bucky says otherwise, there is still a part of him that sees Charm as the girl who had a crush on him and was basically lovestruck whenever he was around, thinking he's so cool 😏 And even though he knows Charm can take care of herself, he wants to be the one who helped Charm the most when it comes to getting that crown 😏

There are two factors for it, for him wanting to be that person, number one is that it is such a huuuge ego boost for him😂 Like you said, he loves being "needed" especially by Charm, because Charm left the town as the girl who got heart eyes whenever he was around, and came back as the girl who hated him and was not impressed by anything he did or said 😁 Even if he is really really good at what he does, it does nothing to Charm -even if it impresses everyone else- so him being the key person to put her there is very important for him😏

The second factor is that, in his head it's a way of making amends 😈 He knows the way he turned her down was quite brutal, and he wants to make himself forgiven for that but Charm is not interested in any apologies coming from him, so he wants to show it with his actions ❤️ By helping her get the crown, he thinks he can prove to her that he's not that person anymore but Rhett helping her? That makes him furious 😈

who expects actual, honest to God trust in this business? YOU ARE RIGHT AND YOU SHOULD SAY IT! 😁

Bucky and Charm weren't close at all! 😂 I mean honestly, they were closer when she had a crush on him, and after he turned her down and she left for college, they didn't even speak to each other except in summer breaks when they had to, and when she came back? The only time she spoke to Bucky was when she wanted to be snarky😁 So of course she doesn't trust him when it comes to that!

let's be for fucking real, as a woman, who 100% trusts a man?????? a man???????¿?¿?? THE FACT THAT I CAN HEAR THIS ASDFGHJKL😂

And there's also the fact that Charm has been actively betrayed by HER OWN FATHER when it comes to business? Like, she had to watch her father take away the heir position she was promised, and give it to her cousin who hasn't stopped rubbing it in her face from day one! 😏 She knows this business consists of constant backstabbing, so she couldn't trust Bucky to just "hand her the crown" 😈

she's certainly not the careless "perfect new boss" villain Bucky is seeing her as. And she was so so surprised to hear that Bucky actually thinks that about her! 😱

and also him saying that to her???????? as if this business sustains itself on charity and good deeds and he's the pope himself?????? I AM SCREAMING YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT😂

Like, so far Bucky has had the privilege not to have been backstabbed by the people closest to him, the same can't be said for Charm! And also, ALSO, he was always seen as the golden heir and when he was made the boss, no one even thought of going against that decision but Charm went from "heir" to "daddy's princess" and she has to prove herself right now to every single powerful person in the city and the people who work for her own family, aka Ian and her father 😈

I LOVE YOU AND I LOVE YOUR IDEAS AND ANALYSES AND I AM ABSOLUTELY FREAKING OUT, YOU'RE AMAZIIIING! 😍

[vivaladicamillo]

RYAN DUNN WITH A GOTH AND METALHEAD GN READER

heyy yalll im backkk, took a little break for a bit but IM BACK BABYYYY, ive been getting into goth culture a lot as of recent and have been changing my style to fit around it more so this is js a silly little thing to fuel my brain ☺️☺️ enjoyyy

WARNINGS: none

—————————————

GOTH

ok so really i think ryan would LOVEE a goth s/o

but it depends on the era of him

if we r talking BEGINNING of cky days i feel like he would be into it but NEVERRR let yk abt it

if we r taking 1999 ryan oh my god hed fall in love with u then and there

we all know back then he had a little thing for more hardcore women (COUGH COUGH YALL EVER SEEN GLOREN BRO, the leather jacket RYAN WE KNOW WHO U RR)

i feel like he would be curious about it

just with how intricate the style is

i feel like hed be into all the styles of goth ngl, hes js so curious on how it all works

the closet thing hes really seen of goth is bam fanboying over ville

soo not much to compare it too

i feel like he would ask so many questions

just like “where do u find clothes like that??” “how long does it take u to get ready?” js air headed questions

if u started dating him tho oh my god hes a sweetheart

anything halloween related that looks edgy in the slightest he will buy and say it reminded him of u

will help tie up corsets, clip on necklaces, and always have a spare pair of flat shoes on him just incase ur heels start to kill ur feet

obsessed with the make up, he thinks its so cool (and so hot)

oh bam is lowkey so jealous

especially if u are a fan of ville

ryan would try and color match his shirts to ur outfits

u wearing red? his shirt is gonna be red

purple? he has a purple button up somewhere

hes js so in love w u he doesnt care

will be the type of guy to run to the store last minute to get accessories for an outfit for u

also will buy u those overly expensive edgy ass heels from the store bc he know u will rock them

probably has tried on some of ur platformed shoes or heels and busted his ass

bam would probably be there dying laughing bc of it

or he would casually put on a hair piece or some necklaces and imitate you (he swears it out of love)

honestly would let u give him a gothic makeover, js dont show bam

he doesnt reallyy get whats going on but he loves it anyways bc he loves u

METALHEAD

oh he thinks ur so cool

depending on what metal genre u prefer he would listen to so many songs from it

i feel like he’d be a little intimidated at first bc mf thinks HIM and CKY is hardcore

he will buy patches for ur battle vest

love hearing u go on about the bands

WILL GO TO CONCERTS WITH U

warning tho hes gonna try and fucking stage dive into the mosh pit

hes gonna get his ass KICKED

loves ur accessories

the gauntlet cuffs, the bullet belts he thinks its so edgy and cool

hes a little scared of the corpse paint tho

hes seen bam do it but never fully going out with it

when he walks into the room and see u just with two massive black holes for eyes a white face and a frown drawn on it kinda scares him for a second

but he thinks its so cool after he realized

wants u to do it on him

literally if u do he will js be staring in the mirror of a good 20 lins is awe

will go to bar shows with u

cant fight for shit tho so if someone starts shit goodluck LMAOOO

lowkey would grow his hair out bc one of ur fav bands fav members has long hair

hes wayy more into this probably then the gothic vibe but tbh ryans such a sweetheart if he liked u, HE LOVEDDD u

—————————————-

hey yall so hope u enjoyed, ive been really into both these scenes recently and broo the goth metal style is my favvv, its hella cool. i need to start writing on here again lmk if i should do other cky/jackass members with different styles and genre loving readers!! byeeee :))

[filmorgue]

As the girls enter the building, they were struck by a weird surge of power. This place is radiating with magic which could probably go without saying.

F: Noice, where should we start?

D: I'll like see those archives, point me towards the books

R: I rather just mingle round to be honest

F: Shouldn't we tour the place first

D: Eh, there's plenty of time for that later

R: Yeah, but if that's what you want to do. I won't stop you

D: We can always meet back here when we're done

F: Umm o-okay

D/R: Sweet byeeee!

They smiled and wave back before parting ways. Flint just stood there confused and a little overwhelmed.

F: Geez, made new friends and they already abandon me. Nice

?: I hope I'm not interrupting something, Ms. Lockwood?

Shocked, she let out a gasp before spinning around to confront the mysterious man. The sharpness of his features gave away his true nature - he was a vampire. Despite his alluring eyes, there was an intimidating aura about him.

F: Y-you know my name?

L: As your headmaster, it'll be very unprofessional if I didn't. Don't you think?

F: Headmaster? Wait, you're Luis Van Hellstring?

He gives a slight bow

L: At your service and Mr. Hellstring would suffice. It's also been brought to my attention; you are late. Cutting it close already I see

Flint blushes away and scratched the back of her neck. Clearing her throat before speaking.

F: I-I'm sorry sir. It won't happen again I swear

L: *chuckles* That's quite alright Ms. Lockwood. As long as you're here now, I see no point of punishing you. I don't partially hold grudges anyways

F: Good to hear, I guess

L: So are you ready to complete orientation. Seems like the others rather keep to themselves. But no matter, I hope you don't mind sparing an old fossil a couple minutes of your time

F: Not at all, please after you sir.

L: Thank you

As he effortlessly glided past her, a mischievous smirk played on his lips. In that fleeting moment, she couldn't help but envy his ability. Lost in her thoughts, she realized that their first destination seemed to be the cafeteria.

L: At the cafeteria, many students enjoy lounging around. Our talented culinary team is here to cater to all tastes. You're welcome to hang out even after hours, just remember to clean up after yourself and avoid starting any fires (I know easier said than done). Let's show some gratitude to our hardworking staff

F: Exciting! Very noisy though

L: It can be a bit crowded. Right this way. We'll start from the lower level

Van Hellstring escorts Flint through the crowd of people, leading her down the corridor towards the Observatory. The corridor opens up into a spacious room, resembling an arena at its center. The lighting casts a slightly subdued glow, creating a captivating atmosphere.

L: The observatory, commonly referred to as "The Pit," serves as a tranquil setting where students return to hone their magical abilities, particularly witches and sorcerers. Occasionally, students engage in friendly duels with their peers, and the observatory also hosts tournaments and challenges for all to partake in and compete for prizes

F: Wow, that sounds fun but..what if someone gets really hurt?

L: We, as staff members, prioritize the safety of our students. I can confidently guarantee that we always have highly skilled paramedics available and responsible observers present at every event. We encourage our students to act responsibly and avoid endangering themselves or their peers. Any reckless behavior will lead to immediate dismissal.

Flint sensed the tension in the room and in Hellsting's voice. She pondered if there was a specific moment he was referring to, but she decided not to inquire. With a nod of her head, she trailed behind him as they made their way back upstairs towards their next stop.

L: Welcome to the enchanting archives, or rather, one of the numerous libraries we possess. It is meticulously designed to house an extensive collection of books and passages on magic, encompassing the history, present, and even the future of various species. The entire structure is a haven for book lovers, with shelves upon shelves filled with captivating literature. However, we do take extra precautions to safeguard the more 'sensitive' books. Trust me, it's for everyone's safety, although I must admit, the secrets they hold are truly fascinating.

F: Umm, alright (not ominous at all)

Chapter 5 "Tour"

Rhiannon @sadraccoon061 , The Starnes Twins @invisiblequeen, Xen @xstardustbatsx (tagging everyone so ppl can get custom to the cast again. Sorry it's been awhile)

previous/next

[ambiguouswren]

Hey you read any of my TLT fanfics before?

Maybe you've read my estranged Griddlehark Modern AU Feel The Pain, Kill it Twice?

Or maybe, my more recent cake: a fantasy/blacksmith AU written for the TLT Big Resurrection Event called Strike it While its Hot ?

Well, buckle up cuz we got a new one coming. Got super inspired by LesbianJesusLovesYou's Fic Porch Swings & Sweet Dreams in which Gideon and Harrow are kids, something I hadn't super considered. (Seriously it was so good. Esp if you're a kid who grew up in the 90s. Also, it's a heavy fic but the topics are handled so well)

So anyways, got inspired and wanted to try my hand at a kind of coming of age story. I started a Summer Camp AU that will (barring disaster) debut this Thursday.

It's called Paint a Picture of You and Me of the Days When We Were Young

I hope you'll check it out. It'll be posting chapter by chapter hopefully every week on Thursdays (I'm EST for now). I'm very excited to share this story. It's already been a lot of fun and I have SO MANY plans.

Anyways thanks for reading byeeee.

[iamthecomet]

GAH fair enough i'll try cook up something else.... i will say sometimes i do send different people very similar things by complete accident because my memory is horrible and i forget what i've said to who😭😭

just from the top of my head right now though (just finished a nightmare hell world shift at work so i need to think about The Characters or i'll die):

cirrus helping aurora discover and explore Butchism❤️ BUTCH LESBIANS 5EVER

cumulus washes, dries, and brushes cirrus' hair for her when her arms are too sore/tired to reach up (in my mind cirrus has EDS just like meeee:3 )

controversial take but short cirrus and tall cumulus is so real to me.... BUT cirrus is still the big spoon. she jetpacks it

cumulus: why is it taking her so long to text me back....

cirrus: google how do i spell gorjus

cirrus has AWFUL penmanship (it's either EDS or autism, or both! I'm still figuring that out myself.) and cumulus cannot stand it. she loves that girl but absolutely despises her handwriting. in a similar vein, cirrus is god awful at wrapping presents and cumulus will confiscate them and wrap them herself ("ITS NOT THAT BAD ITLL GET TORN OFF ANYWAYS!" "it is that bad and i don't care")

i think cirrus is just bad with her hands in general for a number of reasons (world's worst handjob giver💔 sad but true. millions cried.) so cumulus often does fine motor tasks for her (writing things down, wrapping presents, sometimes cutting up her food for her when it's just the two of them. they are so tender.... ue ue ue)

cirrus can't swim. that's all

ironically, cumulus is somewhat afraid of heights and cirrus is TERRIFIED of flying bugs (especially moths) (which makes phantom very sad because he loves them. she tries VERY HARD not to squash them whenever he's around....)

THIS ASK IS TOO LONG SO THATS ALL FOR NOW HOPE YOU ENJOY BYEEEE🧡🧡🧡🧡😇😇😇😇

WAHHHH I love your takes on Cirrus! The fandom as a whole (me included) get really caught up on Cirrus being the responsible, smart, in control one who is elegent and is good at everything because someone has to be, and I just love seeing thoughts of her that don't subscribe to that. Especially bad penmenship, bad speller, terrble present wrapper Cirrus.

We all headcanon her as such a perfectionist but what if she isn't? What if she's actually sort of a trainwreck sometimes? Also scared of heights cumulus? Butch Aurora and Cirrus? fuck yeah. FUCK YEAH. I love finding little ways to make the ghouls more "human" and well-rounded. I love the idea of reserved, elegent, sure of herself Cirrus--but I also love the idea that maybe she is also sort of a mess too. Terrible at painting her nails neatly. Impatient. One of the worst cooks in the Abbey. But genuine, and funny, and kind, and absolutely willing to step up and take care of her pack when she needs to. UGH I JUST LOVE HER SO MUCH.

[place-appreciator]

D-D-D-Desire Path Review!

Monster energy got me hyped rn, so yeah its back, I found one that deserves a review, so lets go!

Allrigh, mhm, yea. That sure is a path, so.

First off I really like the overall texture and look of this one, the way it blend with the untrodden part of it, its just a very pleasant gradient.

You might be able to see that it goes in 2 directions, more prominently to the left tho. So to the left it goes to the entrances of the appartment building and to a sandpit where some kids were chilling. And to the right there was a little field with a really bad looking soccer goal and an unsupervised ball.

What this means, is that this is and will be a very nostalgic place for a lot of former kids. Just the whole aesthetic, you're going out with the neighbor kids, kicking a ball around, chilling around the sandpit, just doing stuff. Even tho I don't have these feeling for that path that stands in the middle of all that, I can still imagine.

So overall a very emotional one that a lot of people depend on, so lets rate this.

10/10

We fucken did it, the perfect path, and its such a good one at being the first perfect one.

So yeah im happy with this, anyways I hope you like my little ramble.

Ok thats it, byeeee!

[storynerd121]

it's not saturday anymore (at least for me) but i don't care and i hope you don't either...

(yes, i'm gonna ask you one for nearly each point, cause... that's like my personality...)

i'm not very original here, but i'm excited for your answers!!!

☆ fuck, marry, kill:

(really not original, but i wanna knowwwww)

james, sirius, remus?

regulus, evan, barty?

mary, dorcas, marlene? (and lily too?? ahhhh how can i add her???)

☆ top 3 of...

hmmm... i'm gonna do that differently: if you could only eat (don't worry about drinking) 3 things for the rest of your life, what would it be?

☆ are you a dog or a cat person?

☆ ahhhhhhhhhh i can't think of something for the next two... (okay, that's like half true i'm just too shy... sorry...)

☆ headcanons... that's a long answer probably? and this is so long already... but... tell me something if you want to? about anything? anddd one question: what do you think about ravenclaw barty?

☆ hmmmm... i don't really knowww... okay, this is weird maybe, but i think, you'd be awesome in a cartoon? that isn't even question-related... yeppp... i mean that in the nicest way possible btw!!! i think you're that mix of being sweet and cool that i associate with cartoon characters? okay... that's kinda dumb... my social anxiety/awkwardness is screaming at me... (what i mean is that i think you'd be awesome in a cartoon what leads to that maybe i'd ship you with a cartoon character? but i don't know enough about cartoon to give a character... i just kinda got that vibe...)

☆ my day was kinda boring... nothing special, but also very chilled...

how are you doing? how was your day? :)

byeeee

<33

hiiiii!! Thx for all the questions (im bored so this is perfect for rn. i honestly don't care if its not sat. anymore lol.) Anyways here's my answers.

☆ fuck, marry, kill:

kill james (im sorry my love 😭 i still adore u), fuck sirius (i may be ace but u get the point), and marry remus (bc we would be book lovers together).

kill barty (😭😭😭), fuck evan (bc why not), and marry regulus (he's just a bby thats in need of love). (bro it was so hard to choe between barty and evan omg. im still not sure lmao)

i'm gonna do fuck, slap, mary, kill for the girls bc i wanna add lily in. marry lily (ily queen), fuck dorcas, slap marlene, and kill mary (im gonna be honest here i dont rly know/read a lot abt them but i wanna read more good fics so recommendations r welcome)

☆ top 3:

Ok so if i could only eat 3 things for the rest of my life it'd probably be.... chocolate (bc i need it), chicken (bc i need protein and why not), and peas (my fav veggie). thats a hard question lol. i kinda just picked what i need for a balanced (ish) diet....

☆ dog or a cat person?

i love dogs, but im a cat person. (i also have 2 dogs and 1 cat. i love them all <3)

☆ headcanons… that's a long answer probably? and this is so long already… but… tell me something if you want to? about anything? anddd one question: what do you think about ravenclaw barty?

ooooo, ok. so ravenclaw barty (bc im starting with the question). I honestly like it. I feel like he's both sytherin and ravenclaw (like me) and i honestly like him in both houses. ig sytherin is a little better for him but honestly i still like him in both. idk why it just feels kinda right?? (and he still gets cute moments with evan in both houses so i cool with both lol)

hmmmm... a headcanon of mine..... i'm gonna stick to the marauders fandom bc why not. one of my fav headcanons is just soft reggie. like just for james. he's srsly so adorable and he loves to cuddle with his bf (even tho he's to embarrassed to ask at first so james just kinda pulls him into a hug/kiss every time he senses reg doesn't wanna ask and reg gets all flustered. he does get comfortable with it eventually tho). another one of my fav headcanons is abt wolfstar. I feel like siri is the one who stays with rem after every full and they just snuggle and enjoy each other. even before they get together (rem is so scared of ruining everything by confessing so he just holds it in bc he just loves siri so fucking much that it physically hurts him to even think of losing him.) anyways one day after the full they're chilling on rem's bed and siri just whispers i love you bc he needs to say it and they both just freeze. siri apologizes over and over and rem is just kinda stuck on the fact that siri actually said i love you?? to him?? and then he registers that sirius is crying so he just kisses him before he can think abt it. it ends well ofc. (i feel like these aren't rly headcanons and they're just little random stories but we're going with it for now lol)

☆ okay, this is weird maybe, but i think, you'd be awesome in a cartoon? that isn't even question-related… yeppp… i mean that in the nicest way possible btw!!! i think you're that mix of being sweet and cool that i associate with cartoon characters? okay… that's kinda dumb… my social anxiety/awkwardness is screaming at me… (what i mean is that i think you'd be awesome in a cartoon what leads to that maybe i'd ship you with a cartoon character? but i don't know enough about cartoon to give a character… i just kinda got that vibe…)

thank u!!! idk why but this is honestly rly sweet! cartoon characters r awesome so i absolutley love this thank u! u may have just made my day lol. (also the social akwardness is so relatable lmao) also a ship with a cartoon character? that sounds kinda interesting....lmk if u think of someone bc now im kinda curious lol. (i've never been in a relationship but im curious to see what cartoon vibes i give off and who u'd ship me with)

☆ my day was kinda boring… nothing special, but also very chilled…how are you doing? how was your day? :)

my day was pretty good actually! i hung out a friend's house (i haven't seen the friend in a while so it was cool to see them again) for a while so that was nice. although the misgendering was kinda annoying.... im doing meh. im rly anxious abt my upcoming presentation and also everything i've gotta do but i'm ok rn. how r u? ur day honestly sounds nice (i love lazy days so i may be biased lmao). I hope it was nice to have a relaxing-ish day tho.

thx so much for the ask btw!! ur sirius-ly awesome (ignore my marauders humor but i had to). <3

byeeeee!! <3

[shubaka]

Hey your secret santa again, sorry for not getting in touch in between but shit went wild in my life.

I just wanted to tell you that your gift has grown faster and mor in amount than mushrooms after rain. So would you mind me continuing it after the exchange as well as mentioning you in the chapters that overflow from the limits?

This is my first fanwork that i planned to go beyongd one chapter and I did not expect this to bloom as much, though I guess its still pretty small (for now lol) according to regular fanwork perspective, we are after all blesssed in this fandom with so many talented people.

Anyway hope you're doing good byeeee

Ohmygod, hello! I hope you're taking care of yourself!

Absolutely, that's no problem at all ahsgdgajakddh I'm sorry it won't stop growing (that "for now" is particularly ominous 🤡🤣)

I am really looking forward to reading what you write! 💖💖🥰

[m4yasnotthatcool]

Can u pls write a Tristan x reader fluff fic? Whatever prompt you want.😋

Can u pls write a Tristan x reader fluff fic? Whatever prompt you want.😋

TRISTAN X F!READER HC

yea so my bsf actually requested this and they specified female reader in one of our messages

like, if i dont specify im prolly gonna do g/n or female reader idk

btw its hc because im not rlly confident in my actual fic writing skills just yet

anyway, my writing sucks, enjoy! (btw i say this just to not get ur hopes up or anything, if i actually tought it was that bad, i wouldnt be taking requests)

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

okay, so

first of all, he would "bully" you so much dude (actually just make jokes, but if you ask him, yea, hes a big bad bully, so dont tell him otherwise)

but if he saw it made you uncomfortable or sad or anything like that he would stop

clingy asf

like this boy would be all over you at all times

you could be just sitting on a random bench and idk, reading something, and he would just spawn out of nowhere and get his hand around your waist

its kinda cute actually, but it could be frustrating at times

like, lets say your parents wanted to meet him so you arranged for all of you to have dinner

and ofc he sat next to you (and you didnt complain, hes your boyfriend after all)

but he would just randomly put his hand on your thigh, and while you didnt usually mind it, you did now

(after the dinner he got a whole speach from you about why it was not okay that he did that, but he continued doing it anyway)

also gets overprotective easily

if he sees you talking to anyone and you seem uncomfortable, he would be right there by your side in a matter of seconds asking you to leave because of his "big, great emergency" while getting his hand around yoiur waist

you would of course agree to go with him, and when you werent looking he would shoot a death glare towords the person you were talking to

over all, great boyfriend, i dont know what else to tell you, rlly

after his dad sent him to that other school (god help me, i havent watched this show in so long) he wpuld send you letters and whenever he could he would call you

like, he would find a way to stay in touch with you

and he would keep all the letters you sent him back

in conclusion, 10/10, good job for getting him, and i hope you like him because hes not leaving soon (thats all i have for today, sorry)

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

anyway ily byeeee

yea so,(i was gonna say ur name but id rather not have strangers know your name so..) bsf, if this sucks ass dont come to me bitching about it, okay? (do come, i havent written anything in a really long time and constructive critisism would be rlly good rn)